acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

Armed conflicts have heavily impacted Latin American societies for centuries. Yet the numerous studies that have examined these armed conflicts have devoted little attention to the primary instrument of this violence: the firearm. This dissertation fills this gap by providing the first in-depth study of representations of weaponry in songs and literary texts from various armed conflicts, including the Mexican Revolution, the Sandinista Revolution, and postwar Central America. It examines the function of firearms in songs, photos and texts about revolutionaries, guerrilla fighters and demobilized soldiers. Taking the firearm as an artifact and trope, this dissertation analyzes the relationship between direct violence, politics and different projects of modernity. The first chapter examines corridos and literary texts about the Mexican Revolution such as El águila y la serpiente by Martín Luis Guzmán and Cartucho by Nellie Campobello. The second chapter analyzes a key but understudied expression of the Sandinista Revolution: the music of Carlos and Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy, in particular the albums Guitarra Armada, Amando en tiempos de guerra and Canto épico al FSLN. The last chapter deals with the figure of the demobilized combatant in Central American postwar literature: in the novel El arma en el hombre by Horacio Castellanos Moya and the short stories “La noche de los escritores asesinos” by Jacinta Escudos and De fronteras by Claudia Hernández. Incorporating theories about modernity, weapons technology, object-subject relations, affect, militarization and gender, this research shows that: 1) intellectuals are drawn to violence but try to position themselves outside of it; 2) often a female element is used to legitimize armed struggle and to soften its implications; 3) the use of a firearm can be deeply democratic in nature but lead to a profound militarization and traumatization of politics and society; and 4) precariousness lies at the core of many insurgent acts, since it is often precarité that leads to rising up in arms, which is itself a precarious political gesture. This examination of the relation between war technology and society testifies to the deep interconnectedness of modernity and violence and to the need for a more radical democracy

acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

I examined male endocrinology and social bonds in relation to dominance status in four groups of wild white-faced capuchin monkeys, Cebus capucinus, in the Santa Rosa Sector of the Área de Conservación Guanacaste, Costa Rica. I used noninvasive monitoring of male fecal androgen and glucocorticoid levels to examine the hormonal correlates of dominance and rank acquisition. In spite of low rates of aggression among coresident males, alpha males had higher androgen (testosterone and dihydrotestosterone) levels than subordinate males. Among subordinates, adult males had higher androgen levels than subadult males. During a non-aggressive rank increase, the new alpha male’s androgen levels increased immediately after attainment of the alpha position, and continued to increase for several months thereafter, while glucocorticoid increases lagged behind. In contrast, a subordinate adult male in the group had no change in androgen or glucocorticoid levels. Female white-faced capuchins do not display behavioral estrus, and ovulation is not associated with any changes detectable to the human observer. Therefore, I inferred female reproductive status by analyzing fecal progesterone and estradiol. Alpha and subordinate males experienced androgen and glucocorticoid increases in the presence of fertile females, a period likely associated with increased sexual activity and competition among coresident males. Androgens and glucocorticoids were also higher in the dry season, when intergroup encounters were more frequent. High competition between groups may facilitate low rates of intragroup aggression and the formation of social bonds within groups. I found that coresident males formed differentiated social bonds, and formed stronger social bonds when they had fewer coresident males and when group sex ratio was male-biased. Alpha males had the weakest and least equitable bonds, while relationships among subordinate males were characterized by relatively strong and somewhat reciprocal grooming. The importance of male bonds, particularly among subadult males, may reflect the importance of coalitions of immigrant males in the ability to takeover social groups and increase dominance status. A meta-analysis of parallel dispersal – when conspecifics emigrate together or immigrate into groups containing familiar individuals - indicates that in male primates, this behavior may be linked with the propensity of males to form coalitions and the need to retain coalition partners. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

This dissertation, "Camille Was No Lady But Katrina Was A Bitch: Gender, Hurricanes & Popular Culture," uses the history of the hurricane naming process to compare the shifting environmental, scientific, and cultural changes taking place throughout the world during the twentieth century. It argues four major points: first, once gender is assigned to an object and adopted publicly en mass, it cannot be removed. Second, hurricane names have segregated hurricanes from other natural disasters in public consciousness. From "witches" and "bitches" to "monsters" and "menaces," the hurricane in popular memory calls forward explicitly gendered imagery; earthquakes, typhoons, dust bowls, plagues of insects, and other natural disasters do not carry the same sort of gendered associations. Third, by tracing the development and acceptance of the U.S. state-implemented hurricane naming process, it is possible to trace the spread of American gendered terms throughout the world. As illustrated throughout, gendered American meteorological terms are also found in global references to storms proving that hurricane names and descriptions are a form of both ecological and soft-power cultural imperialism. Finally, and most importantly, the socio-political implications tied to name and descriptive choices used with hurricanes have had a profound impact on storm perception globally. Introduced in 1954 by the U.S. Weather Bureau as a female-only hurricane naming system, hurricane names were rapidly adopted by other countries under U.S. meteorological control in the post-World War II era. With fears over Cold War politics both abroad and at home, the feminized hurricane was not just a weapon of mass destruction to be harnessed but also a potential tool of cultural domination through descriptive means. By the 1970s, with a discussion of feminism worldwide, references to the female-named storms helped produce dualistic images of "stormy women" and the "Women's Lib Storm" that were politically useful to men and the state when they felt threatened by feminism. Meanwhile, today's references to Hurricane Katrina, and later Sandy, as a "bitch" on Twitter reappear in blogs around the world. Due to this, the feminization of hurricanes has created and sustained a misogynistic, pervasively American form of vilification of women in media portrayals that continues to this day. / acase@tulane.edu

In this dissertation I investigate the Huaura Valley sites of Caldera and El Carmen with the goal of increasing understanding of the Late Intermediate Period occupations in the valley. Though previous style based dating led researchers to assign the sites to the Middle Horizon, this study provides a new perspective on these sites as a result of a suite of AMS dates from excavated contexts that date the occupation to the Late Intermediate Period. The AMS dates from this study necessitate a revised interpretation of these sites and their relationship to other Late Intermediate Period settlements within and beyond the Huaura Valley. In the context of current and ongoing research at the fortified Late Intermediate Period occupations at Acaray and Cerro Colorado in the Huaura Valley as well as recently published evidence of defensive architecture in the area of El Carmen, these investigations help clarify understanding of interregional interaction and the effects of conflict on regional settlement patterns and societies and suggest a reassessment of the Late Intermediate Period in the Huaura Valley is in order. The pottery from Caldera and El Carmen exhibits a unique suite of characteristics that make the study of the material exciting but difficult given the general lack of secure dates on similar pottery from other sites in the valley. In addition to considering the occupants of Caldera and El Carmen in relation to their local peers within the valley and in the Chancay Valley just to the south, this research provides a chance to explore interactions between the Yschma to the south and Casma and Chimú to the north. / acase@tulane.edu