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

Caribbean authors, due to the unique geographical, social and historical contexts of their work, have long been preoccupied with the notion of authenticity. Yet the project of uncovering or inventing an "authentic" Caribbean discourse has repeatedly confronted difficulties resulting from the intrinsic hybridity and dynamism of the region. In particular, discourses of origin and belonging based on national boundaries or ethnic essentialism have proven inadequate for rendering the "essence" of the Caribbean experience. This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that such discourses are generally dependent on European literary forms to be their vehicle. For each of the three novelists studied in this dissertation, the discourse of the marvelous seemed to offer a path for creating a fictional identity quest which would be able to capture something of this unique but elusive Caribbean "essence". The dissertation argues that by tracing the transcultural route taken by Marvelous Realism and later Magic Realism through three novels by Jacques Stephen Alexis of Haiti, Alejo Carpentier of Cuba, and Simone Schwarz-Bart of Guadeloupe, one becomes aware of an evolution in the use of the marvelous which reflects different approaches to the dilemma faced by the Caribbean artist coping with the seemingly contradictory demands of a Parisian intellectual formation and an authentic "Caribbean" sensibility. This evolution reveals an emerging "postmodernist" consciousness in the quest for an authentic Caribbean discourse, suggesting a growing acceptance on the part of Caribbean writers of the hybrid nature of their intellectual and cultural heritage. Using analysis based on writings by Antonio Gramsci, Edouard Glissant, Gayatri Spivak, Regine Robin, Stephen Slemon and Paul Gilroy among others, the dissertation explores the ways in which these three novelists, poised uneasily between two continents, have through their fiction and essays struggled and/or come to terms with the "decentered" positionality which seems to be so "central" to the Caribbean experience.

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.

archives@tulane.edu / The stereoscopic 3D images of Puerto Rico produced and distributed between 1900-1910 by the Kansas-based photographic company Underwood & Underwood are notable visual documents of the first years of the American occupation of the archipelago. While these images rely on visual imperial discourses of 17th and 18th-Century travel books, sketches and paintings of the British West Indies, they reveal a shift in aesthetics and innovations in the representations of space, landscape, territory, and inhabitants. Understanding that Underwood & Underwood’s stereoviews of Puerto Rico operated as aesthetic objects and recognizing their cultural and historical specificity, I focus on how the company negotiated technological and artistic discourses of the time, endowing stereography a privileged space in the production of knowledge. I argue that Underwood & Underwood constructed a mode of vision which embodied progress and the modern scientific transformation of Puerto Rico’s natural world and people into available resources for the American empire. On the one hand, they marketed their products as “modern,” proclaiming not only new ways of seeing but also new ways of knowing. On the other hand, the tactile quality of the stereoscopic viewing experience opened the imaginative possibility of establishing virtual bodily presence in space—a specific quality of the medium that suggested to viewers that they were virtually inhabiting the scenes. Within the context of the nascent American empire, these images created an imagined sense of participation in America’s contested annexation: viewers of these Puerto Rican scenes act as both witnesses and supervisors in the process of colonization, and the stereoviews commodify the island’s people and nature even as they operate as commodities themselves. / 1 / Maria Alejandra Pautassi Restrepo

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During the latter part of the 19th century, the Peruvian writer Ricardo Palma's Tradiciones peruanas, and the Cuban writer Julian del Casal's literary criticism, were widely read by many Latin Americans. Yet, some one hundred years later, Palma's work would be generally ignored by literary critics, though it would continue to be read and enjoyed by the general public. Del Casal's literary criticism would be completely forgotten, and the author himself would come to be viewed as an apolitical, anti-Cuban, escapist who accepted his country's colonial status without protesting. The present work constitutes a reevaluation of Palma's work and of del Casal's literary criticism, as well as of the latter's political involvement. A reading of Palma's Tradiciones peruanas based on the reading of Francois Rabelais' work carried out by Mikhail Bakhtin in his book Rabelais and His World, demonstrates that literary critics have been unjust with Palma by judging his work according to the canons and esthetics of refined, written literature, when in fact that work was meant to be popular, oral literature, with totally different literary characteristics and a totally different esthetic. Thus, the "defects" perceived by literary critics in Palma's work are really qualities and characteristics of popular, orally-oriented literature. Likewise, a reading of del Casal's "lost" critical prose, finally reedited in 1963 by the Cuban National Culture Council, demonstrates that he was very proud of being Cuban, much more political than is generally thought, and a patriot who risked his welfare by protesting his country's colonial condition. It also shows the excellence of his incisive and prophetic, modernist, literary criticism which called attention to the works of many new Latin American authors and made known to Latin Americans some of the most important European writers of his day.

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In discussions about education in Aruba and Curaçao, questions about the use of the mother tongue in schools have become a critical topic. It is part of a larger discussion on the language rights of multilingual students in a colonial educational system that prefers Dutch. In this presentation, I demonstrate how the language ideologies, language use, and the construction of identity occurs through formal education in Aruba and Curaçao. Specifically, how by translanguaging, students and teachers can navigate a system that still holds on to part of its colonial history, by subverting antiquated norms of school language. By investigating how ideas about Papiamentu/o, the mother tongue, and other languages on the islands are used in teacher-to-student and peer-to-peer interactions inside and outside of the classroom, I analyze whether this influences how students perform in class and, most crucially, how they see themselves within education. Finally, this dissertation shows how discussions about mother tongue and multilingual education have implications for how language policies in education are created and maintained. Overall, I assess how ideology, language rights, education, and identity intersect through a postcolonial Caribbean society in an era of shifting educational models. / Anthropology

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The genera Spongia and Hippospongia include all of the commercially important bath sponges of the Caribbean fishery. This study examined the uniform presence of immense symbiotic bacterial populations of four of these species: Hippospongia lachne, Spongia barbara, S. cheiris and S. graminea. The nutritional characteristics and antibiotic sensitivities of bacteria isolated from the four species were also examined. A combined light and transmission electron microscopic investigation outlined the reproductive processes and larval development, behaviour, settlement and metamorphosis in these four species. / Symbiotic bacteria in these four sponge species are specific to the sponges and different from ambient seawater bacteria. Populations of intercellular bacteria within the tissues of these sponges are greater than those of ambient seawater. A variety of morphologically different types of sponge specific bacteria were observed. The symbionts are not fastidious organism but utilize a variety of amino acids, carbohydrates and tricarboxylic acid cycle intermediates as sole carbon and energy sources for growth. The bacteria showed sensitivities to a variety of antibiotics but were not susceptible to fluid from the sponges. / These sponges are viviparous and probably dioecious. Egg production and larval development are localized in patches or "nurseries" of endosomal tissue. Statistical analyses of specific morphological characteristics of female reproductive elements have identified four specific stages in the process of oogenesis. Umbilici connect young and maturing embryos to the maternal mesohyl and are the pathway for extracellular transfer of intercellular symbiotic bacteria and other mesohyl substances. These bacteria were observed in the embryos and larvae of all four species. Oocytes and embryos develop asynchronously within a given individual. Spermatogenesis occurs synchronously within cysts by transformation of entire choanocyte chambers. Cysts develop asynchronously within an individual. Male gametes exhibit a bright yellow-white autofluorescence when excited with blue light (460-485 nm). Spermatozoa do not possess intermediate segments or acrosomes. / The incubated parenchymella larvae of these four species are ovoid with dark grey pigmentation and enlarged posterior regions encircled by a black pigmented ring of cells bearing long cilia. Laboratory behavioural studies indicate that free-swimming larvae display directional swimming with constant rotation and negative phototaxis. Larval behaviour probably reflects the ecological situation of adult populations. Larval settlement occurs 26-56 hours after release and involves the rapid formation of a basal lamella between the larvae and substrate. There is no evidence of substrate selection or orientation by larvae. Precocious development of choanocytes does not occur in the larvae or post-larvae of these four species.