Thesis (M.A.)--Baylor University, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 109-112).

<p> The difficulties to assimilate within any country when one&rsquo;s parents are from another country has its own set of obstacles, especially within second-generation U.S. born Central Americans, or Mexicans. Second-generation children are constantly situated within positions to assimilate into U.S. culture, presented with stereotypical images of Latin-American figures like the Cholo, Spitfire or the unwanted illegal immigrant, have familial expectations to be a part of the &ldquo;American Dream,&rdquo; but still keep true to their ancestral roots. The struggle to completely assimilate into U.S. American society without losing one's cultural identity is a strong influence for the works of poets and book artists, and is reflected within the artist&rsquo;s own internal conflicts in struggling to unite their cultural heredity with their new U.S. American culture. This paper will explore the work of LatinAmerican, U.S.-born book artists and poets and argue how their artwork has been impacted by their struggles to merge their cultural heritage and their present culture. This paper will also examine and highlight how social conflicts within both cultures augment further struggles within the formation of identity.</p>

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)."

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago Dept. of Comparative Literature, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

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.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 397-412). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

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).