My dissertation Sea-ing Words: An Exploration of the Maritime in Contemporary Caribbean and Latino/a Literature analyzes how writers from the Spanish-speaking islands and their diaspora have moved past the ever elusive Pan-Antillean quest for unity, rooted in the acceptance of a foundational Trauma (with a capital T). The writers I examine venture to humanize the basin, highlighting the routes, exchanges, and negotiations that currently distinguish the region. In doing so, the idea of one edifying Trauma is displaced by the existence of multiple and individualized iterations. As marginalized discourses infiltrate the center, the flow of the conversation is altered, opening up spaces for new interactions. Through their uses of the maritime, these writers transform the sea into a stage from which new perspectives on Caribbean and Latino/a literature emanate. / Romance Languages and Literatures

<p> This dissertation explores the question of indigenous development and its literary representation through an investigation of depictions of growth in novels from the United States and Peru where boys mature, perhaps, into men. I find that texts with adolescent characters intimately connected to indigenous communities challenge western concepts of maturity and development as presented in the traditional <i>Bildungsroman</i>. Specifically, I read Jos&eacute; Mar&iacute;a Arguedas&rsquo;s <i>Los r&iacute;os profundo </i>s (1958) and Sherman Alexie&rsquo;s <i>Flight</i> (2007) as parodies of the genre that call into question the allegory of a western civilizing mission with its lineal trajectory of growth in which the indigenous is relegated to an uncivilized time before modernity. I describe the protagonists of these novels as inconceivable saviors; inconceivable in that the West cannot imagine them, as indigenous, to be the saviors of the nation (i.e., its protectors and reproducers). They are border-thinkers who live in-between epistemological spaces and the stories of their lives serve as kinds of border-<i> Bildungsromane</i>, narratives of growth that arise in the blurred time/space of a border culture, or Bil(<i>dung</i>)sroman, stories of the abject or expelled. Arguedas&rsquo;s and Alexie&rsquo;s narratives confront the issue of race, a problem that allegories of the consolidation and development of the nation (e.g., <i>Bildungsroman</i> and foundational fictions) evade through magical means by turning the form into a fetish and presenting fetishized fetal origins that offer reassurances of legitimacy for the western narrative of modernity and the nation-state. That is, the traditional form acts like a talisman that magically disappears the fragmentation of coloniality by providing a history to hold on to, creating an origin that does not really exist. Instead of conforming to the model of the genre or rejecting it, Arguedas&rsquo;s and Alexie&rsquo;s texts yield to the power of the original form, appearing to tell the familiar story while carrying a subversive message. Their power derives from the uncertainty inherent in this mimesis. In this way, these novels encourage readers to question the maturation process as conceived and represented in the west and in western literature and to consider alternative paths and formations of self.</p>

Creative Portion abstract (75%): Literary Fiction Manuscript Souvenirs of the Revolution Against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, betrayal, sexual deviance, rigid morality and a fatal subservience to moral correctness drives the Montelejos clan: complex and self-serving, innocent and deluded, larger than life, an illustrious family line in its final decline. Mariabella Montelejos, who tries to sell her only daughter for the price of a new carriage during the bloodiest part of the Revolution. Her daughter, Portensia Montelejos, who leaves her mother’s body to moulder in the front room after soldiers come at the point of a gun. Gloria Vasquez, celebrated beauty, practising witch, and tormentor of her step-sister, Teresa: ill, gullible, naive, awoken to her destiny by the surreal birth of her daughter. Paulina, a child who once communed with the holy, made an empty vessel by the abuse of her father – and revered as a living saint as she lies dying in a Pueblano convent. The men of the family, weak and susceptible to the mandates of their dying class, are no match for the machinations of such women. Evil abuser Ebner Collins, paralyzed by a jealous man’s bullet in the middle of the Sinai desert. Hernando Vasquez, cowed into marriage by the longing for his dead wife, Evelyn Cuthbert. Guiermo Fuentes de Solis, cuckolded husband. Jaime Vasquez, who hears voices and lives at the bottom of a bottle, unable to save his cousin Paulina. The Revolution is the beginning of the end for Montelejos, and the miraculous will be its undoing. Analytical Portion abstract (25%): An Outsized Reality: How “Magical Realism” Hijacked Modern Latin American Literature With the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’s Cien Anos de Soledad in 1967, Latin American writing captured the world’s attention. Critics, readers, and imitators rushed to discuss and emulate this astounding novel. A whole genre of literature, “magical realism”, was popularized, and with it, critical discussion of its influences, history, genre limitations, and the sheer “imagination” it brought to the forefront of literary debate. In this thesis I will discuss the problems associated with “Western” critical analysis of Latin American writing, specifically as it seeks to define, without a proper context, the literature which draws life from the history and culture of Latin America and categorizes its literature without the cultural understanding required.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 69-05, Section: A, page: 1690. Adviser: Stanley O. Ikenberry. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 361-371) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis (M.A.)--Eastern Illinois University, 1995. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 77-83).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Latin American Languages and Literatures, June 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

abstract: En esta disertación se exploró el desarrollo del sistema de la literatura infantil decimonónica en México. La investigación se inscribió dentro de una perspectiva interdisciplinaria, exploratoria y descriptiva (e interpretativa, aunque en menor medida) de los aspectos histórico-culturales y literarios a los que pertenece el sistema, autor y obra. En la búsqueda de una todavía limitada pretensión interpretativa, en este estudio se trazó una periodización para caracterizar el desarrollo que la literatura infantil adquiere en los dos períodos delimitados para el siglo XIX: sujeto educando de la divina revelación y sujeto educando de la ciudadanía. Se concluyó que en la fábula compleja de la literatura infantil se introduce y construye un discurso integrador de la nación mexicana. En esta formación identitaria, las publicaciones periódicas y los libros para niños fueron un discurso formativo de fundamental soporte a las políticas sociales que guiaban al país, la joven nación republicana. De igual forma, se recopiló una valiosa información sobre el estado del arte de la literatura infantil latinoamericana y mexicana; se exploraron los textos precursores del haz de escritores fundacionales de la literatura infantil latinoamericana; se delimitó el surgimiento, desarrollo y consolidación de la LI en México y, por último, se compiló una lista de publicaciones sobre historia, consulta y crítica de la literatura infantil y juvenil en Latinoamérica con el propósito de establecer líneas futuras de investigación. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Spanish 2012

abstract: In the face of what many scientists and cultural theorists are calling the Anthropocene, a new era characterized by catastrophic human impact on the planet’s geologic, atmospheric, and ecological makeup, Latin American writers, artists, and filmmakers today from various disciplinary and geographical positionalities are engaging in debates about how to respond ethically to this global crisis. From an interdisciplinary perspective that incorporates cutting-edge theories in multispecies ethnography, material ecocriticism, and queer ecology, this study examines multispecies relationships unfolding in three telescoping dimensions—corporealities, companions, and communities—in contemporary Latin American cultural production while uncovering indigenous and other-than-dominant epistemologies about human-nonhuman entanglements. I argue that contemporary cultural expression uncovers long, overlapping histories of social and environmental exploitation and resistance while casting the moment of encounter between individuals of different species as hopeful figurations of human-nonhuman flourishing beyond the Anthropocene. Instead of remaining hopelessly mired in the dire geographies of planetary decline, the works of Uruguayan writer Teresa Porzecanski, Mexican author Daniela Tarazona, Mexican textile sculptor Alejandra Zermeño, Argentine filmmaker Lucía Puenzo, Colombian installation artist María Fernanda Cardoso, Colombian poet Juan Carlos Galeano, Colombian graphic artist Solmi Angarita, and Brazilian poet Astrid Cabral dramatize a multitude of multispecies encounters to imagine the possibility of a better world—one that is already as close as our skin and as present as the nonhuman “others” that constitute our existence. These works imagine the human itself as a product of multispecies interactions through evolutionary time, multispecies companionships as formed around queer kinships, and biocultural communities as emerging through communicative, ethical encounters. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Spanish 2017

<p> This dissertation studies how the melodramatic mode shapes the approach to political violence in six novels: <i>Libro de Manuel,</i> by Julio Cort&aacute;zar, <i>El beso de la mujer ara&ntilde;a,</i> by Manuel Puig; <i>Historia de Mayta,</i> by Mario Vargas Llosa; <i> Estrella distante,</i> by Roberto Bola&ntilde;o; La hora azul, by Alonso Cueto; and <i>La vida doble, </i>by Arturo Fontaine. Beyond the realm of sentimental formulaic melodrama, I define this term as the interpretation of events after subjective emotions. By studying these novels, I propose that the melodramatic imagination has become the most employed set of tropes for the interpretation of public and private interactions in contemporary fiction. My analysis exposes how literary writing addresses commercial, political, and artistic aspirations through a combined use of strategies such as moral polarization, pathos, emotional interpretation, scenic emplotment, and sensationalism. </p><p> Chapter One analyses the connections between political violence and melodrama in Latin American literatures and cultures. Chapter Two is a study of Cort&aacute;zar&rsquo;s <i> Libro de Manuel,</i> a novel which fictionalizes what I call melodrama of the revolutionary, an emotional, uncritical identification with leftist urban subcultures. Chapter Three studies Puig&rsquo;s <i>El beso de la mujer ara&ntilde;a</i> to illustrate the existence of reactionary practices in progressivist and queer sectors, limiting their capacity to generate political change. Chapter Four is an analysis of Vargas Llosa&rsquo;s Historia de Mayta, a dystopian diatribe against leftist politicians in which a melodramatic understanding of experience appears in both dominant and marginal sectors. Chapter Five studies Bola&ntilde;o&rsquo;s <i>Estrella distante,</i> a novel in which the search for a neo-avantgardist artist obsessed with the use of corpses as material allows the dramatization of melodrama in artistic sectors, leading to the normalization of totalitarianism. Chapter Six is a reading of Cueto&rsquo;s <i>La hora azul,</i> a novel in which national reconciliation becomes a middle-high class subjective conflict, interpreting historical experience in terms originated in audiovisual melodrama. Chapter Seven analyzes Fontaine&rsquo;s <i>La vida doble,</i> in which the voice of a former revolutionary and intelligence agent reinforces the idea that leftist convictions are futile, normalizing emotions that normalize material and symbolic inequity. Finally, the last section summarizes this work&rsquo;s contributions.</p><p>

<p> This thesis explores the possible creation of a new categorization of American Literature as presented in the Andean novel <i>El pez de oro: Retablos del Laykhakuy</i> (1957) by Gamaliel Churata. In <i>El pez de oro</i>, Gamaliel Churata presents a strategy for the recuperation of native Andean cultural agency that enables the Andean subject to reclaim traces of their ancestral past under more verisimilar and verifiable terms. Churata argues that through a recuperation of native language and its infusion into the body of the major colonial language, Spanish, the Andean subject is equipped with a new culture producing tool that enables the recuperation of language, agency, history, and, ultimately, representation and inclusion within cultural and political institutional frameworks. By introducing his own function of bilingualism, vernacular language, and mythological infusions into the body of colonial letters, Gamaliel Churata is able to destabilize and disrupt colonial historical and textual authority to the point where the invented concept of America and the colonial product of American identity can be re-examined. Through this examination emerges a new option for the categorization of American identity as an aesthetic construct. Within this new categorization of aesthetic American identity, the Andean subject can begin his own process of self-identification through his native language toward the production of a future Andean American subject.</p><p>