Esta tesis utiliza la interseccionalidad como lente para hacer un análisis de los textos culturales y activistas para explicar cómo se manifiestan las ideas feministas en estos dos períodos cruciales de avance del feminismo en España: el primer cuarto del siglo veinte y las primeras décadas del siglo veintiuno. La interseccionalidad sirve como una prisma de análisis que permite entender los sistemas hegemónicos de poder. Esta tesis analiza ejemplos de textos y demandas que ilustran las preocupaciones y aparatos ideológicos que sustentan diferentes aproximaciones al feminismo en estas dos épocas. Un interés específico, en especial en la segunda parte, es el diálogo teórico y político del feminismo interseccional con el feminismo blanco y hegemónico en términos de exclusión de las comunidades marginadas. El objetivo al hacerlo es elevar las voces de las identidades marginadas que de otro modo se silencian por el discurso contemporáneo que no contempla sus experiencias.

Throughout her two collections of novelas, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares and Desengaños amorosos, María de Zayas, as a noble woman writing in Golden Age Spain, strategically holds onto aspects of the patriarchal society under which she lives, and from which she benefits, while simultaneously deviating slightly from some of these aspects. This adherence to and deviation from the norms characterizes her style and allows her to support some of the expected codes of conduct in her society while, at the same time, pointing out flaws and questioning these codes to show how they should be altered to make life better for both the men and women of that society. Through various narrative voices and characters, Zayas creates a type of guidebook, or manual, for both the men and women of her society. Through cross dressing she establishes an essential equality between the abilities of the sexes and establishes that the actions of men and women are chosen activities, and are not related to innate ability or disability to perform a certain way. How individuals position themselves in regard to accepted or expected behavioral codes of conduct is a choice and, as individuals, men and women can choose to perform either negative or positive practices associated with their sex. This dissertation looks closely at the guide that is created and the practices which are highlighted as good and bad, thus identifying which manners of being should be emulated and which should be avoided, and therefore altered as societal expectations or norms, by men and women. Through negative and positive portrayals, Zayas shows men and women how they should and should not act in order to create a more ideal and, consequently, more equal society that differs in some ways from their present society while still retaining the overall structure and values of the patriarchy under which they already exist. It is not the creation of an entirely new society that the resulting guidebook suggests, rather it suggests an alteration to the perspectives and behavior, toward the positive, of both men and women as they exist in their current society.

El proposito principal de esta tesis es el de exponer los elernentos existencialistas que vernos en la trilogia La lucha por la vida, del escritor de la generaci6n de 1898, Pio Baroja. Esta la cornponen: La busca, Mala hierba, y Aurora roja. Partes de esta trilogia fueron escritas en 1904. Los existencialistas, nos hablan del incurable asilarniento del individuo, los absurdos rnecanisrnos de la sociedad que lo destruyen, el coraje del individuo al encarar la rnuerte pero a su vez aferrandose a la vida, la soledad, la agonia, la angustia, la incornunicabilidad de las almas, el peso y lo absurdo de la existencia. Baroja nunca se manifesto abiertamente corno un existencialista pero algunos estudiosos de la obra barojiana sefialan esta caracteristica del escritor vasco, entre ellos se destaca Gonzalez Lopez: "Su individualismo existencialista le hizo mirar con recelo las instituciones politicas existentes, comenzando por el estado, corno los partidos deseosos de reforrnarlas. 11 1 Entre muchos de los rasgos de Baroja destaca su actitud frente a la vida. Se ha dicho que Baroja ve la sociedad y la vida como una farsa, impidiendo que el hombre se exprese a su libre albedrio: "Su concepci6n de la vida es inseparable de su temperarnento. De sus paginas se desprenden incesantemente undas ideas sobre el hombre y el mundo que se inscriben a la perfecci6n en la linea del pesimismo existencial. 112 Baroja protesta abiertarnente contra lo que no permite que el hombre alcance SU maxima potencial. Baroja protesta contra todo: La iglesia, las universidades, y el gobierno. Y es aqui donde podemos ver esto rasgos existenciales.

En las paginas de esta tesis se encuentra un analisis deconstructivo de las tecnicas narrativas y el contenido tematico-ideol6gico de la primera novela de la escritora chilena Isabel Allende. Mediante el mismo, se ha tratado de descubrir en La casa de los espiritus una actitud de rebeldia en contra de las formas de poder que se manifiesta en diversos niveles de la vida social, y que, segun el critico uruguayo Angel Rama, caracteriza la obra de algunos escritores hipanoamericanos contemporaneos. Diferentes tecnicas narrativas, quedan analizadas, dando mayor enfasis al uso del realismo magico, el cual crea una oposici6n en la estructura del texto, que va a continuar en su contenido. Esta oposici6n, al igual que las expuestas por el contenido tematico-ideol6gico, queda disipada luego de ser estudiada mas a fondo. Ademas, se enumeraron y analizaron las distintas visiones de instituciones sociales, como la Iglesia, la familia y el gobierno, encontradas en el texto, que logran dar al lector un resumen del contenido ideol6gico que Allende trata de exponer en su obra. Dos perspectivas de la Iglesia, por ejemplo, son expuestas. La Iglesia defensora de ideologias derechistas y la Iglesia que aboga por ideales izquierdistas. Ambas quedan convertidas en una misma; una instituci6n defensora de ideologias basadas en la oposici6n binaria inicial rico/pobre establecida por el poder econ6mico. Ante la incapacidad de la Iglesia como instituci6n para resolverse hacia una forma de vida particular, surgen otras alternativas, otras perspectivas de vida. Estas tienen el efecto de mantener a las masas en un punta media donde sse disminuye la fuerza de cualquier oposici6n verdadera al poder econ6mico. De igual manera, quedan deconstruidas otras instituciones sociales en la novela. En el estudio se constata c6mo, tanto las oposiciones entre tecnicas narrativas, como las oposiciones entre ideologias quedan destruidas en esta obra. Con la destrucci6n de oposiciones binarias, la autora denuncia las injusticias de un sistema social, dominado por el poder econ6mico norteamericano que ha golpeado su patria cruelmente.

The historical distribution of power in Peru, characterized by segregation and oppression, changed drastically after its independence from Spain. Starting in the second half of the 19th century, the rigid social policies of the Colony gave way to ideas of tolerance, such as the indigenist movement of post-colonial Latin America. No longer considered enemies of the country, several minorities were gradually integrated in the Peruvian society, collaborating in the formation of a new national identity. This normalization was selective, however, and the new ideas of integration often involved a new and more pernicious control of the Peruvian nation. Central to this discourse is the one that the Peruvian mulatto writer Ricardo Palma presents in his Tradiciones (1864-1910), characterized by ambiguous representations of traditionally stigmatized individuals, such as Native Americans, African Americans, and women. Other groups, such as Creoles, Mestizos, or Mulattoes (like Palma), struggle to overcome their social boundaries in order to create a new set of identities built on idealized national models. The prevailing tendency in much of the research written about this situation has been to focus almost exclusively on the situation of minorities within society, neglecting the role played by these groups in the construction of the Peruvian national identity. Moreover, it has failed to address the 19th century social and psychological struggle among minorities to be recognized within the newly formed nation. My research addresses these issues in Peruvian studies using the examples of Palma’s Tradiciones, with the aim of exploring the particularities of the post-colonial new configuration of nation, identity, and power.

The significant cultural impact of HIV/AIDS has led to the production of an impressive amount of scholarship in the US and Northern Europe since the outbreak of the epidemic in 1980. In contrast, the study of the cultural representations of HIV/AIDS has been largely overlooked in the realm of Spanish literary criticism. The purpose of my dissertation is to address that void through the analysis of a representative corpus of texts and artistic works from different periods and genres that acknowledge the impact of the epidemic in Spain. More particularly, this dissertation analyzes Spanish literary and artistic representations of HIV/AIDS through a critical comparison with other written materials produced in the 16th and 17th centuries as a reaction to the syphilis epidemic that hit Europe at the time, also known as the Great Pox. The corpus of texts used in this dissertation includes Francisco Delicado’s La Lozana andaluza (1528); two short novels by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616); individual poems and collections of poetry by authors such as Francisco de Quevedo (1580-1645), Anastasio Pantaleón de Ribera (1600-1629), Aníbal Núñez (1944-1987), or Galician-language poet Lois Pereiro (1958-1996); as well as artistic works and performances by AIDS activist Pepe Espaliú (1955-1993). I explore this corpus through an interdisciplinary approach bringing into play, among others, historical and medical discourses, biopolitics, sociology of literature, semiology, as well as theories about violence and empathy. In my comparative examination of these authors’ representations of disease, I argue that contemporary writers approached HIV/AIDS using a framework inspired on the aesthetic and epistemic strategies developed in the 16th and 17th centuries in the context of the emergence of the Baroque. This framework allowed modern authors to confront the uncertainties caused by Post-Modernity and HIV/AIDS, and inspired them to depict the pandemic by means of metaphor and indirectness. The ultimate goal of my research is to uncover variables that will help to enlighten the well-documented historical trend to stigmatize sexual transmitted and infectious diseases. My work also sheds light on the reasons behind the slow emergence of epidemic diseases as objects of cultural debate in Spain, as well as on the social, political and ethical consequences of this slowness. Finally, I argue that there are some specifically artistic and literary responses to the Great Pox and HIV/AIDS that can help to understand the nature of these diseases and to distinguish discriminatory usages of these phenomena.

This thesis examines the account of the discovery of the Amazon River written by Gaspar de Carvajal in the sixteenth century. In his Relación del descubrimiento del famoso río grande que, desde su nacimiento hasta el mar descubrió el capitán Francisco de Orellana, Carvajal describes the nine-month journey in which Orellana and his men crossed South America from the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean. In makeshift boats, they traveled through the river that we now know as the Amazon. The fact that the river has kept the name of the mythical warriors of European classical culture shows how the Amazon region has been, for the past five centuries, a mixture of legends from the new and the old worlds. Therefore, I analyze how the myth of the Amazons came to be such an intrinsic part of the New World. In order to do so, I trace the origin of the myth in Ancient Greece and how the Amazons made it into the Spanish books of chivalry during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. These books were widely read by the conquistadors, who then thought they had found these mythical warriors in the heart of the unfathomable Amazon jungle. There are two other myths that were of particular importance in Orellana's expedition, the "Cinnamon Country" and "El Dorado," which I also analyze. Finally, I recount the history of the manuscript, which was not known until the nineteenth century, and how Carvajal used a large variety of sources, as well as an amalgam of American indigenous terms, to write his chronicle. In an appendix at the end of this study, I have included my transcription of the manuscript, which is the first semi-paleographic transcription of Carvajal's account.

This dissertation studies the politics of collective identity in the essays of Jesús Colón, Julia Álvarez and Richard Rodriguez. Through their essays I study the different configurations of collective identity (mainly those of Latino people, minorities, diasporic, transnational and national subjects) that these writes evaluate from their social position in the United States. A review of their works reveals important aspects about the problem of identity of a first and second generation of Latinos who try to understand themselves as part of the heterogeneous community in the United States. These three writers focus on the malleability of identity and use it to understand different ideologies and values. In his essays Colón highlights the reality of a subject that is economically marginalized by the historical process of capitalism. In addition, he advocates for the union of transnational workers of the Puerto Rican Diaspora in New York, who face stratification and social isolation. In contrast, Álvarez explores the construction of a diasporic identity that relies on history and on transnationalism. This author places emphasis on her writing as a nation, as a means to reflect and re-write the Dominican transnational identity. Rodriguez, the third essayist I study in this research, promotes the foundation of an American identity and evaluates the ways in which it is obstructed by the practices of communities that identify as minority. The objective of my research is to analyze the development of Latino identity using the models that these authors explore. I rely on their ideas and techniques to study the complicated and conflicting process of the evolution of a collective identity. Throughout the 20th century, these authors developed their own approach to the ideological fragmentation and mestizaje emphasized by postcolonial thought. This fragmentation influences their interpretation of history, ethnic/racial identity, family, language, education, cultural hybridity, representation and nationalism.

In this thesis I will discuss the influence of Sartrean themes found in Jean-Paul Sartre’s plays: No Exit (Huis clos), Les Mouches (The Flies), and Dirty Hands (Les Mains sales), on the theater of Alfonso Sastre, particularly in the plays: Death Squad (Escuadra hacia la muerte), and In the Net (En la red). In No Exit, the famous quote “Hell is other people,” sets the standard for what type of discussion Sartre initiates in his theater. I will compare the historical context and the Hells that Sartre and Sastre both experienced during their time as active playwrights and how this influences the Hellish environments the two playwrights create for their characters in each of their plays. Following this study of context, I will compare the diabolical atmospheres created in the plays, how they are created and their impacts on the characters and text.

This thesis discusses the female identity in the Franco era. It spans the years leading up to the formation of the Second Republic through the years immediately following Franco’s death. Using Carmen Martin Gaite’s novels Entre Visillos and El Cuarto de Atrás and Josefina Aldecoa’s trilogy Historia de una Maestra, Mujeres de Negro, and La Fuerza del Destino, I show how women were limited by society’s narrow idea of happiness for females in this time period. The ideals of the patriarchal order were so ingrained in the Spanish people that women themselves became promoters of the sexist ideology that was a part of Franco’s regime. Women who had goals for themselves in addition to or other than marrying and having children were viewed as strange. This thesis points out that perhaps those women were not so strange after all, and highlights the need for authentic communication in order for women to redefine themselves and their goals. Martin Gaite and Aldecoa not only use their novels to give women in this time period a voice, but also to point to the importance of remembering these years and all of their trauma as they were for individuals.