This dissertation, ""'Superior to all men': Violent Masculinity, Fascism, and American Identity in Depression-era American Literature,"" examines how American authors used modernist techniques and formal experimentation to recast the violent hero during the Great Depression. Using Richard Slotkin's work, I show how this revision of the hero contributed to a critique of frontier narratives, and the traditional, nineteenth-century socio-political ideals they maintained. The hard-boiled male was both a continuation of the hero's dedication to violent action and a subversion of the frontier as a narrative model for modern life. Despite his pulp origins, American modernists used the hard-boiled male prominently in literary critiques of American life throughout the thirties. With this figure, they expanded the experimentation of the twenties to a literary analysis of the national, economic, and political crises of the Depression, and in doing so their works questioned the roles of race and gender at the heart of American life and politics. The critique of heroic narratives gained particular focus with the rise of fascist politics abroad, and these authors increasingly suggested that such narratives produced and maintained proto-fascist discourses in American life. However, I argue that as the fascist threat grew prior to World War II, authors rehabilitated the frontier hero as a counter to fascism and in concert with democratic liberalism, the New Deal, and the Popular Front. I discuss texts by Ernest Hemingway, Dashiell Hammett, William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, John Steinbeck, and Richard Wright, as well as films directed by John Ford. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

CiTonga speakers in Malawi describe dominant use of the left hand as distasteful and offensive in face-to-face multimodal interactions, communicative exchanges involving both oral-auditory and visual-gestural actions. They observe a left hand taboo on religious and social grounds, linking the right hand to "good" and the left hand to "bad". Despite this widespread perception, ciTonga speakers were often observed using their left hand and eschewing the taboo even in serious situations where politeness is a social imperative. In this study, I aim to resolve this paradox by arguing that the significance of left hand taboo is domain specific. To do this, I collected 101 multimodal interactions--over 50 hours of recording--through participant observation in Cifila and Kavuzi, where ciTonga is spoken as a native language. I analyzed the gestures in two domains of interaction: everyday rituals and ordinary talks. For both domains, flexibility of handedness is determined by a ranking of four different contextual constraints. I proposed a decision matrix to describe how the type and scale of a constraint can explain the permissiveness of left hand use. CiTonga kinesic signs can elevate to taboo status when they violate the handedness convention for interlocutors with distant social relationships, but over-producing deferential signs can create a social imbalance between close affiliates. Selecting an interaction-appropriate hand preference is therefore an integral part of ciTonga communicative competence. A study on taboo in multimodality shows the ways in which domain structure and purpose shape the application of large sociocultural ideologies to spontaneous interactions in daily life. / acase@tulane.edu

The connection between the visual arts and revolutionary social change is the inspiration for this dissertation. In a 1953 interview, Aurora Reyes, Mexico's first female muralist, declared, 'Art is the medium with the greatest potential to penetrate human emotions, and therefore functions as a powerful weapon in the fight for the rights of the common man.' In the following chapters, I identify the ways in which the officially sanctioned visual narrative of Mexican history evolved during the transition from the Porfirian to the Revolutionary State. By tracing the artistic precursors of the revolution, I attempt to illuminate the role of cultural mestizaje and material culture in achieving sustainable social change in early twentieth century Mexico. The transition from Porfirian to revolutionary Mexico did not happen overnight. It required the committed efforts of several generations of artists and intellectuals. This creative cohort worked diligently to construct an alternative form of cultural nationalism that valued the nation's indigenous legacy. By simultaneously tracing the artistic and familial provenance of revolutionary artist Aurora Reyes, I provide a glimpse of the social balancing that defines revolutionary change. In addition to traditional archival sources, this interdisciplinary investigation required an analysis of 'alternative documents.' I consulted photographs, works of art, song lyrics, and poetry in an attempt to describe and explain the effects of cultural mestizaje as a formative influence on Reyes and her cohort. Their attraction to indigenous culture was not cultivated via written communications; therefore, my analysis of the process required a broad range of sources. I hope this work will inspire more historians to look to visual elements of the historic record to help explain social change. / acase@tulane.edu

When I was a young boy I played war with my friends. It was fun and exciting. We would pretend that we were out to fight the bad guys and ultimately win. Looking back at those childhood games after serving in the United States Army for three and a half years, including deployments to Iraq and Kosovo, I had no idea what I was really playing. Playing! It is anything but playing in real war. The things veterans have seen, have done and gone through in war is something that words cannot describe. How do those who have served express what they have experienced while millions back home go on with their normal day activities oblivious to those veteran’s sacrifices? This is the driving question behind my recent works and the impetus for the thesis exhibition title “Thank You.†With this body of work I am attempting to bring attention to the sacrifices of the men and women who have served in order to provide us with our basic freedoms every day. These freedoms are too often taken for granted. We need to have a better understanding of those individuals who have enabled us to enjoy our everyday lives. I want to encourage a better understanding between those who have served and those who have not. I hope to raise awareness about what these brave volunteers sacrifice for us every day. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

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