Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4190. Adviser: Dara Goldman. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 132-138) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

<p> Antipoetry, a form of poetry developed by the Chilean poet Nicanor Parra, instances a privileged example of a self-regulatory trait of the poetic genre which responds to poetry&rsquo;s need to destroy itself in order to renew itself. This need reveals a structural mechanism or a logic of autoimmunity, which informs the possibility of language and, moreover, of all living beings. </p><p> Antipoetry&rsquo;s departure from the Nerudean poetic tradition justifies the use of a colloquial language that also preserves and continues Neruda&rsquo;s interest in opening a space for the &ldquo;popular&rdquo; in poetry. Against Neruda, Antipoetry also consciously repels romantic and heroic aesthetic principles and ideas. </p><p> Parra&rsquo;s aesthetic principles, however, do not result solely from avoidance. Parra is a realist poet heavily influenced by physics. His poetry needs to mirror reality. The principles of relativity and indetermination play major roles in his poetic experimentations, and will come to the aid of Antipoetry&rsquo;s need to create in times of censorship. Parra&rsquo;s experiments with language are in large measure interpretations of the laws of physics. In this regard, his scientific realism is related to Gertrude Stein&rsquo;s work. The poetry and poetics of the latter provides a touchstone and a constant reference in <i>Autoimmunity in Antipoetry</i>. </p><p> Like all artistic expressions during the Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, Antipoetry was forced to negotiate what could be said with what the poet wanted to say. The necessary negotiation that Parra&rsquo;s poetry needed to undergo gave rise to many experiments with language, including systematic ambiguity, contestation of the authority of the author, and of his own authorial control over his poetry. The use of masks, the multiplication of referents, and the systematic use of contradiction name some of Antipoetry&rsquo;s tools for obstructing the univocal determination of meaning. </p><p> Antipoetry&rsquo;s systematic explorations toward the creation of a poetry that attempts to fight all forms of dogmatism nevertheless reaches a limit in its figuration of gender. Antipoetry&rsquo;s gender politics makes concessions to a type of gender dogmatism (sexism and homophobia) that contradicts the antipoetic program and reveals an inherent fear of gender contamination that jeopardizes Antipoetry&rsquo;s most fortunate aspects.</p><p>

This dissertation presents a study of the poetry of Jose Joaquin Perez. His writings formulate an aesthetic, national and social program. From this perspective, descriptive poetry and pro-Amerindian poetry are analyzed as poetic discourse which represents the founding of a nation and of a poetic art form for literature. These aspects are analyzed as a function of poetic agents which represent national themes and language. These themes and this language have been highlighted by critics as the factors which define these writings. At the same time, the progressive lyric of Perez is analyzed as a discourse which reflects a social program for a nation. This stems from the interpretations the poet makes of positivist doctrines of his time. The first chapter presents the literary enclaves which frame Jose Joaquin Perez's poetry. The study focuses on an analysis of Santo Domingo's Romantic lyric, paying close attention to its most recurrent themes. Here, the most representative writers of this type of discourse are also presented. In addition, the dissertation focuses on extant criticism on the poet's work and Perez's own literary criticism. Chapters two and three present the theoretical framework for analyzing the texts. Chapter two pays special attention to the tradition of foundational and programmatic characters of Romantic lyric of Spanish-America. Here, the concept of Romanticism, as it is used in this work, is defined. Also highlighted are the critics who have studied this tradition, followed by an explanation based on themes and ideas. This helps explain the foundational writing that descriptive and pro-Amerindian poets of this period have developed. Also in this chapter, the interpretations of the positivist doctrine in Spanish-America are presented, as well as the social character of Spanish-American Romanticism. The third chapter elaborates on the language factors that Angloamerican and Spanish-American criticism have determined to be agents in foundational writings. In chapter four, the poems of Jose Joaquin Perez are analyzed, based on that which has been proposed in this dissertation. Chapter five contains the conclusions of this work.

Maria Luisa Puga y Rosario Ferre como escritoras latinoamericanas comprometen su labor literaria como un vehiculo para articular un discurso descolonizador. Sus narrativas llevaran al lector por mundos y periodos tan diversos como similares, ya que parten de la misma hipotesis de trabajo, a decir, recordar que la realidad latinoamericana es una resultante de un proceso colonizador. Su narrativa utiliza estrategicamente la fragmentacion discursiva y la incorporacion del discurso testimonial para crear una apertura simbolica en el fenomeno de la colonizacion. Para el estudio de sus obras se han tomado en cuenta conceptos marxistas (Eagleton, Jameson) para establacer realciones entre lo politico/economico y el devenir social e individual, que se extienden hasta la polemica de los derechos humanos (Vidal). Puga en Las posibilidades del odio presenta una serie de personajes kenianos, cuyas vidas atestiguan los cambios que la colonizacion les trajera, asi como la desolacion en que se encuentran tras luchas internas por su determinacion nacional. De estos, la joven Nyambura ocupa un lugar predominate en la narrativa, y es a traves de su historia familiar y personal que se incurre en el acto simbolico de liberacion. Rosario Ferre en Maldito amor lleva al lector por un recorrido historico en la vida de Puerto Rico. La familia De la Valle personifica y establece el borde dentro del cual se circunscribe la experiencia colinizante del pais, siendo dos mujeres mulatas, Titina y Gloria, las que al final estan por quemar todo signo de traicion, de explotacion economica y de discriminacion racial. El discurso decolonizante femenino y de lo femenino que se desprende por la lectura es uno en que el Sujeto, al politizarse, se posesiona del lenguaje para describir el asombro, la violencia y la perplejidad de la fuerza colonizadora ante la lucha del Sujeto por su reinvindicacion social y por sus derechos humanos. Puga y Ferre, como escritoras latinoamericanas, se inscriben en la tradicion de un contra-discurso (Cunningham) que refiere a un cambio cualitativo de su insercion y participacion en la Historia. i

In the second half of the twentieth century Costa Rica has witnessed a resurgence of the performing arts. Motivated by political and social reforms, playwrights have searched for a national identity through the dramatic medium. Chapter I examines historical developments of the genre. Until the turning point of 1948, when a democratic administration established a ministry for the arts to expand and diversify audiences, theatre was primarily reserved for the bourgeoisie, dependent on European models and critiques. Chapter II examines dramaturgy by national playwrights of the generacion socialdemocrata: Samuel Rovinski, Alberto Canas, and Daniel Gallegos. They transformed a stagnating art form into a dynamic cultural phenomenon. Emerging playwrights such as Miguel Rojas, Ana Istaru, and Guillermo Arriaga connect audiences dramatically to social, economic, and political upheavals in Central America. The Teatro Joven in Chapter III is motivated by national and regional issues. Miguel Rojas focuses on historical drama linking the developing nation to the present. The independence movement, folklore, and the advent of industrialism are threads in the national fabric spun by his dramas. Ana Istaru is an accomplished poet as well as award-winning actress and playwright. She poignantly portrays the Costa Rican women's experience, characterizing memorable female figures who speak for the voiceless victims of injustice, social conventions, or neglect. Guillermo Arriaga addresses regional crises and social degeneration. He attacks political corruption, class and gender power struggles, and clashing value systems. These dramatists herald a new social consciousness. Chapter IV analyzes their plays through a semiotic approach. Correlating levels of meaning in the semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic dimensions of representative plays connect texts to their cultural context. Thematic and stylistic tendencies established by the generacion socialdemocrata are developed through structural and linguistic experimentation. Chapter V, the conclusion, relates textual messages to more critical and informed audiences who challenge playwrights to create original drama relevant to a new generation. In the continuum of socially conscious playwrights, the Teatro Joven develops the objectives of the "dramaturgos nacionales de la Social Democrata." Examining these objectives means observing the creators at work and their works in creation.

This dissertation examines the four novels published to date by Milton Hatoum, a contemporary Lebanese-Brazilian author from the Amazon region. There are a great number of critical readings of his work that foreground the postmodern dissolution and fragmentation of the self, of human relationships, and also of national identity. In contrast to such approaches, I propose what I call a reading of hope. I argue that Hatoum is at the forefront of a shift in sensibility in Brazilian literature, one that simultaneously demonstrates certain aspects of postmodernism, but also breaks with other elements of it. In order to illustrate this issue, I analyze how Hatoum’s characters forge personal identities, utilizing the mythological symbol of the uroboro (the snake that bites its own tail) as the organizing structure of my analysis. The uroboro has historically been used to represent circularity in the cycles of nature, communal and personal renewal, the return to origins, and self-reflection. In addition to circularity, the symbol has also been visually depicted as half black and half white, creating a duality that stresses interdependence rather than binary logic. With the above characteristics of circularity and duality in mind, the postmodern aspect that I analyze in Hatoum’s work is its break with binary logic. First, I identify a variety of dualities extant in the novels, from language and silence to myth and reality, that instead of canceling each other out complement one another and emphasize identity’s inherent ambiguity. Next, I analyze the rupture with postmodernism, which comes with Hatoum’s characters’ perpetual search for a more meaningful relationship with others, the environment, and themselves. As a consequence, the postmodern rootless and unstable characters give way to individuals that express more humane concerns (the recovery of the past as a value, self-reflection, and the search for familial bonds as well as for a connection with beauty and aesthetic pleasure through the arts). The symbol of the uroboro thus provides a graphic means of metaphorically representing not only the characters’ identity as ambiguous and self-reflective, but also Hatoum’s novels as simultaneously working within and breaking with postmodernism.

El tema de esta disertación, La poética del bolero en Cuba y Puerto Rico, es el resultado de nuestro interés por contestarnos algunas preguntas que por muchos años quisimos responder, aunque sus respuestas parecían evidentes para los estudios formales de la literatura cubana y la puertorriqueña. La pregunta generalizada era: ¿cuáles son los lazos culturales que unen las historias de Cuba y Puerto Rico? Las respuestas parecían encontrarse en la literatura y en la música. Es por esto que esta disertación resultó ser de carácter interdisciplinario al proponernos estudiar el género del “bolero” como fenómeno cultural poético-musical. El bolero resultó la excusa para asomarnos tanto a la historia de la literatura y la música cubana como puertorriqueña en busca de sus orígenes y desarrollo y con la intención de observar si de verdad exiten esos lazos culturales y cuáles son. Es por esto que el capítulo II pretende hacer un estudio minucioso sobre el Romanticismo en ambas islas. En éste establecemos cuáles son las poetas y músicos fundacionales en ambas naciones, sus estilos y sus propósitos. Sin pretender entrar en comparaciones vamos descubriendo los puntos de contacto que comienzan a enlazar culturalmente a ambas islas en los que el interés por definir “la nación” es el temas principal. La lucha por la definición, reafirmación y liberación nacional fue el motivo que generó muchos encuentros poéticos y musicales durante el siglo XIX. En el capítulo III repetimos la metodología del primero para estudiar el origen, desarrollo y culminación del movimiento Modernista en ambas naciones. Es en éste en el que desarrollamos el tema del bolero con más detalle porque es justo en este período de la historicidad de ambas naciones cuando el bolero alcanza su madurez. Con el objetivo de delinear los rasgos románticos o modernistas del bolero examinamos las letras de los boleros de los compositores más significativos, siguiendo el orden cronológico-historicista que la metodología de la investigación supone. El capítulo IV está dedicado a la aportación de las mujeres cubanas y puertorriqueñas tanto en el quehacer poético como musical-bolerístico. La mirada filosófica de este estudio intenta acercarse a los postulados que Gilles Deleuze asume en algunos de sus textos.

Previous research suggests that the efficacy of Ertapenem, a carbapenem antibiotic administered intravenously, is related to a patient’s body mass index. Using an existing physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) model for Ertapenem, we constructed a least squares inverse problem to determine an optimal dose for males with varying body weights and heights. The criteria for an optimal dose was based upon pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) parameters calculated for a male with a body height of 175 cm and a weight of 72 kg. We also adjusted dosing intervals to ensure that effective concentration of drug between doses was the same for all males regardless of BMI.

Testimonial literature is essential in order to understand the development of a Latin American Identity --it captures and manifests the epistemological and metaphysical difficulties that challenge the notion of identity and have complicated its development. It presents the perpetual debate between allowing the Other to speak and not to speak. Compelled to understand the densities of this debate, I analyze the testomonies of two women who struggle to define their beliefs and live according to their cultural values in twentieth century Cuba --as it proves difficult to escape the constraints constructed and imposed by patriarchal society. I study the strategies they adopt to resist the hegemonic order of their society; and intend to demonstrate how they construct their gender identity and assert their agency throughout the course of their testimonies. The texts used throughout my analysis are Daisy Rubiera Castillo's Reyita, sencillamente and Miguel Barnet's Canción de Rachel. Reyita, was an Afro-Cuban woman living an impoverished life in Cuba; and Rachel, was a vedette who performed in the renowned stage of Havana's Alhambra. Both narratives prove to be essential for their economic, cultural, historical, political and literary relevance. And, as argued by Raphael Dalleo in Caribbean Literature and the Public Sphere, these narratives can be used as true gauges of the country's social and political activities of the time (186). / A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 16, 2015. / Blackface Performance, Mimicry, Mulata, Santería, Testimonial Fiction, Testimonio / Includes bibliographical references. / José Gomariz, Professor Directing Thesis; Roberto Fernandez, Committee Member; Martin Munro, Committee Member.

The nature of this essay explores the changes in designing a space for aging clients through the end of their lives. Over the course of the essay, four major time periods, their respective design elements, and three floor plans are highlighted through a third person narrative of Jill and Don. These fictitious characters are created using research in the process of aging and personal interviews with loved ones whose experiences have been adapted or modified from their original candor to fit this storyline.