Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 39-06, Section: A, page: 3614. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1978.

<p> Day laborers in the United States have increasingly become a source of labor in the informal economy due to the pressure for businesses to reduce labor costs (Gonzalez 2007; Ord&oacute;&ntilde;ez 2016; Valenzuela 2001). Day laborers provide necessary labor yet are exempt from typical workplace regulations, making them an ideal source for inexpensive labor (Theodore, Valenzuela Jr., and Mel&eacute;ndez 2009). Though day laborers are a vulnerable population, they are also united and show strength as a collective. This project is an ethnography of a grassroots organization of day laborers in Southern California that I call the Day Labor Center (DLC). I argue that migrant day laborers, despite vulnerabilities and structural inequalities, demonstrate agency and flexibility in the workplace and in their everyday lives. </p><p> Through 22 months of fieldwork, including observations, interviews, and group discussions, I present the experiences of migrant day laborers to reveal the unique contradictions they face as they navigate employment alongside broader structural boundaries that add to their precarious existence. While migrant day laborers are economically marginal, they simultaneously control their own labor in ways that other workers cannot when they set their own schedules, negotiate wages, and choose their employment conditions. Furthermore, because most day laborers are undocumented, they are a marginalized workforce, yet openly visible as available workers and active participants of the community. My fieldwork reveals that migrant workers at the DLC demonstrate &ldquo;local citizenship&rdquo; (Villazor 2010, 574) as they have become embedded into the local community and may serve as a potential model for how local community members and policymakers can offer more inclusive spaces for migrants. This research highlights the central role of day labor centers as sources of empowerment for migrant workers as they provide services, encourage collaboration and resource-sharing, and foster community. Finally, although many migrant day laborers are isolated and far from family, labor centers can foster a sense of community and empower them to create new forms of kinship and belonging. Ultimately, this research contributes to current anthropological scholarship regarding migration and labor and informs our understanding of the varied experiences and responses to vulnerabilities that migrant workers confront. </p><p>

This study is concerned with the development of a basic art program to meet the special needs of the Latin-American senior-high-school student.

<p> Existing research illustrates that although Latinos make up the largest ethnic minority group in the country, Latinos continue to have the lowest college degree attainment rates (Ramirez, 2014). Despite the increasing rates of high school graduation rates, there remains a large educational achievement gap between Latinos and their white and Asian counterparts (P&eacute;rez Huber, Malagon, Ramirez, Camargo Gonzalez, Jimenez, &amp; V&eacute;lez, 2015). As we see the increase of the Latino population, it is important to highlight the disparities between Latina and Latino students. Although female students over exceed in enrollment and retention numbers across K-12 and higher education over their male counterparts, they continue to graduate and attain degrees at a lower rate (P&eacute;rez Huber, V&eacute;lez, &amp; Sol&oacute;rzano, 2014). </p><p> This study serves to highlight the experiences first-generation Chicanas/Latinas have within higher education, their navigation and negotiation within academia, their personal sectors as that of self-wellness and family, and the barriers they face within higher education and their personal identities. The research used a qualitative counter-narrative case study inquiry approach to interview, observe, and analyze the experiences of first-generation Chicanas/Latinas in higher education. Latino Critical Race (LaCrit) (Sol&oacute;rzano &amp; Yosso, 2001), Chicana Feminist Theory (Moraga &amp; Anzald&uacute;a, 1983; Delgado Bernal &amp; Elenes, 2011), and Critical Consciousness (Freire, 2007) guide the theoretical framework of this study. Therefore, this study will add to the existing literature by conducting counter-narrative <i>testimonios </i> of five <i>muxeres</i> who illustrated their pathways in higher education while maintaining their various identities.</p><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.

No description available.

No description available.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 33-03, Section: A, page: 1165. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1972.

In the 1920s a new generation of Cuban artists broke with the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro (Academy of San Alejandro) in Havana, and initiated a movement which adapted modern European art and theories to the artistic interpretation of their native land. This study focuses on the work of the so-called vanguardia (vanguard) artists and on their synthesis of modernism and nationalism to affirm a sense of personal and collective identity. / The first part of the dissertation introduces the artists, defines their period of activity (1920s-1940s), and reviews the state of research on early modern Cuban painting. A review of the literature reveals that critics and art historians have emphasized the influence of the School of Paris on the vanguardia painters' styles, and the impact of Cuba's natural and cultural environment on their subject matter. However, the all important relationship between modernism and nationalism in modern Cuban art has not been fully addressed. Moreover, recent interest in the vanguardia painters has concentrated on the work of the individual artists, at the expense of examining their collective contribution to Cuban art and culture. / The main body of the dissertation analyzes the relationship between the art of the vanguardia painters, European modernism, and Cuban nationalism in the second quarter of the twentieth-century. It explores such a relationship in the context of Cuban history and culture, generational ideology, and artists' biographies. The study concludes that the vanguardia painters consciously re-casted and/or invented lasting, if mythical, symbols of national ethos. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-03, Section: A, page: 0648. / Major Professor: Robert Hobbs. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.