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This project will focus on four Latin American writers' autobiographies: Autobiography, by Alberto Gerchunoff; A cross and a Star. Memories of a Jewish Girl in Chile, by Marjorie Agosín; Memories, by Adolfo Bioy Casares; and Stories from Happy Times, by Osvaldo Soriano. The selection of these texts was based upon the underlying themes that they have in common. Three of them are texts written from the outskirts of the social fabric: Alberto Gerchunoff is a Jewish immigrant in Argentina at the turn of the century, struggling to find a place in which to create his own roots. Marjorie Agosín, daughter of European immigrants in Chile fleeing Russian pogroms first and Nazism later, and an immigrant herself to the United States, writes about the difficulties of finding roots in the Latin America she loves so much. Osvaldo Soriano, a native of Argentina, recreates his childhood by stressing the significance of belonging to a lower middle class family involved in the political and social struggles of the 40's and early 50's in his country. Finally, Adolfo Bioy Casares, also Argentine born, is the only one writing from the center: he belongs to one of the very few old, affluent landowner families in the Province of Buenos Aires, and represents the feelings and the political skepticism that characterize the members of his class. This study will attempt to explore the purposes that these writers set for themselves in the creation of their texts. My thesis is that autobiographies are a particular case of discourse in which the writer's feelings of belonging to a group, be it ethnic, national, ideological, gender or class related, set the stage for the elaboration of autobiographical texts. The personal story embodies others, and politics, history, and ideology come together and justify the very existence of writing itself. The personal becomes a literary strategy utilized to render the ideological background visible and to assure the text's impact on the reader. This study will show that autobiography as a genre questions the assumption by which there is a clear-cut difference between reality as opposed to fiction.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 254-270).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 257-267). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

The Parrot and the Cannon. Journalism, Literature and Politics in the Formation of Latin American Identities explores the emergence of literary journalism in Latin America as a central aspect in the formation of national identities. Focusing on five periods in Latin American history from the post-colonial times until the 1960s, it follows the evolution of this narrative genre in parallel with the consolidation of professional journalism, the modern Latin American mass media and the formation of nation states. In the process, this dissertation also studies literary journalism as a genre, as a professional practice, and most importantly as a political instrument. By exploring the connections between journalism, literature and politics, this dissertation also illustrates the difference between the notions of factuality, reality and journalistic truth as conceived in Latin America and the United States, while describing the origins of Latin American militant journalism as a social-historical formation.

This dissertation examines the avant-garde as one of the last significant cultural manifestations in Latin America that attempted to offer an alternative to capitalism in the twentieth century. My study redefines the avant-garde as a global critique of modernity whose emergence can only be explained from a geopolitical perspective. During this time, the world order dictated that metropolitan areas like Western Europe be engaged in a mutual economic dependence with peripheral regions such as Latin America. Consequently, a revolutionary socialist impulse originated from within secondary economic areas in the world like Russia and Latin America. Movements such as Dada and Cubism conveyed the necessity for art to break from the autonomous status attributed to it by the bourgeoisie; but ultimately, these aesthetic projects did not address an essential component of the changing social picture, namely the articulation of collective fantasies directed at the emerging masses. The avant-garde was able to articulate these dreamworlds only after art intersected with socialism. With this convergence art claimed a different kind of autonomy, one not based on innocuous insularity but on a socially conscious critical capacity. The revolutionary discourse that resulted from the combination of political and artistic realms aimed at addressing the masses as an integral part of a new modern society. The chapters include muralism (Diego Rivera), periodicals (Amauta), and poetry (Vallejo). Building upon local and global geopolitical perspectives, these works constructed socialist dreamworlds, expressions of utopian desires to transform the world, against the backdrop of art's tendency toward new modes of production and aesthetic sensibilities in the early twentieth century. Sifting through the ruins of these cultural artifacts, I discuss topics such as the figure of the intellectual and the history of radical ideas in Latin America; Marxism; public art and state sponsorship; iconography of revolution and spectrality; and the autonomy of art at the intersection of politics and aesthetics.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-03, Section: A, page: 0951. Adviser: Luis Davila. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed March 21, 2007)."

This first full length reading of the Peruvian Alfredo Bryce Echenique's 1970 novel Un mundo para Julius approached from a deconstructionist viewpoint shows how prior misreadings have led to its being interpreted primarily as a realist work with innovative passages. Through extended close reading, it is shown to be an early Latin American example of postmodern entropic comedy. Parody and the ludic aspects of the novelist's art in the work present a view of reality in which all metanarratives are negated. An analysis is included of deconstructionist theory/strategies showing deconstruction's contribution through non-belief in the primary text to recognition of the viability of translation studies as an academic discipline. The first translation into English of Bryce's novel accompanies the dissertation and is drawn upon extensively for interpretation of passages that have previously caused interpretative problems. The prominence of the comic in postmodern literature is discussed, along with the nature and provoking of laughter. Explanations are suggested for Bryce's highly comic novel not being read as such; rather, in prior criticism the tragic has been foregrounded at the expense of the comic elements. It is suggested that Bryce's and other Latin American novels of the 1960s and early 1970s be viewed as marking a transition from modernism to postmodernism, putting Latin American literature in line with the novelistic mainstream worldwide. The boom, far from being a new move in Latin American literature of the 1960s, is seen as belated critical recognition of a modernism which dates back at least to the 1920s, with sporadic manifestations of the postmodern spirit existing there from the same time. Since the nature of deconstruction is to affirm that no definite conclusions or final readings may be drawn, this dissertation is put forth in the spirit that it be conducive to refutation and to foster further readings of the work of Bryce and neglected modernist and postmodernist Latin American writers whose work should by now be seen as part of world literature and not as a local or exotic variant.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Oct. 8, 2009). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-03, Section: A, page: 0890. Adviser: Steven Wagschal.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Spanish and Portuguese, 2005. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-02, Section: A, page: 0607. Adviser: Kathleen A. Myers. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Oct. 18, 2006).