This study reveals the differences and similarities among U.S. Latino and Spanish American literatures. This is achieved through the juxtaposition and dialogue among Cristina Garcia's Dreaming in Cuban; Richard Rodriguez's Hunger of Memory and Days of Obligation ; Rosario Castellano's Balún Canán, and Reinaldo Arenas' Antes que anochezca. In choosing texts from Mexico and Cuba we are seeking to reveal contrasts and links with the Chicano and Cuban-American narratives. Similarly, by selecting said texts and authors, there is a balance between issues of sexual gender and orientation, as well as in regards to the original language in which the texts were conceived. In their quest for identity from a marginal starting point, all four authors aim to create a response to hegemony. We approach these texts from the theoretical parameters of the studies of autobiography, with a special emphasis on Bildungsroman, since their protagonists see their self-formation as a process that would enable them to behave in a functional manner in the communities they are immersed. It is from this marginal position that values such as family and education question the power of traditional hegemony. Another element that subverts the establishment is the treatment of gender and sexuality in the texts. Since the protagonists' identity is conceived from a women's or a homosexual standpoint, traditional values are questioned. Finally, the analysis of the texts deals with their relationship to the imagined national space. Castellanos and Rodriguez approach the concept of nation though the indigenous question. Garcia and Arenas relate to Cuba by way of their comment on the Castrist Revolution. The different narratives of the self that make up this study place their voices in the intestitial space of the periphery. It is from that space that they address the center in a variety of ways.

This dissertation explores the topic of migration focusing on science fiction works created by artists from Mexico, Puerto Rico, and the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. My analysis investigates the four most common science fiction themes used to represent migration: space exploration, alien invasions, dystopian states, and virtual reality. The dissertation is in part a recovery project, demonstrating the significance (and even existence) of science fiction works created by U.S. Latinas/os. The dissertation is also a work of genre historical analysis, locating these Latina/o and Latin American writers and artists in the history of science fiction. Science fiction emerged in its current form during European colonialism-- its exploration, invasion, and colonization of places already settled. In my dissertation I have found that Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Latina/o writers and artists work against the coloniality of science fiction. I argue in my dissertation that the dominant plot in mainstream science fiction arose out of a particular form of colonial literature, the "going native" narrative in which a colonizer adopts characteristics of or is identified with a colonized people. In science fiction, the "going native" narrative is translated into what I call the "going alien" narrative. One can "go alien" in regard to issues other than colonialism, for example, race, gender, or nationality. In my dissertation I explore how Latina/o and Latin American science fiction writers and artists respond to and work against the "going alien" narrative system that has long been the foundation of mainstream science fiction.

This dissertation explores contemporary literary representations of the Haitian Duvalier dictatorships (1957-1986), by authors Nadine Magloire, Kettly Mars, Evelyne Trouillot, and Marie-Célie Agnant. The questions that I explore through my dissertation research are: How do these authors represent the instrumentalization of sex during this time, both as a weapon of oppression and a means of resistance? How might Haitian women view their potential for agency in the context of this regime? The theoretical approach to this dissertation combines scholarship on postcolonial feminism and sexuality studies in a Haitian context in order to understand the implications and dynamics of power imbalance, agency, and heteronormative discourse in the works in question. Within the field of Haitian studies, I consider the work of little-studied authors and question a tendency to focus on the 2010 earthquake as the defining break between current and past literature. Rather, I suggest that cyclical trauma--of which the Duvalier dictatorships represent an important period--constantly informs the aesthetics of Haitian literature. More broadly, I respond to questions of agency and subjectivity, and demonstrate how these authors experiment with sexuality as a way to simultaneously reclaim agency and delineate the limits of such agency. Ultimately, I argue that these authors create a sort of literary dialogue between Haiti and the diaspora. These women imagine strategies involving feminine geolibertinism, homosexuality, self-sacrifice, prostitution, and abstinence as means of surviving and coping with the legacy of the Duvalier era. In fact, I argue that writing gender and sexuality outside of heteronormativity is one way in which 21st-century female Haitian novelists remember the Duvalier regime and create a space for potential resistance. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 27, 2015. / Duvalier, Gender, Haiti, Sexuality / Includes bibliographical references. / Martin Munro, Professor Directing Dissertation; Jerrilyn McGregory, University Representative; Lori Walters, Committee Member; Reinier Leushuis, Committee Member; José Gomariz, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study is to investigate historical and linguistic forces that interact to undermine school achievement in Haiti. From a sociocultural perspective, this study explores the social, political, and historical forces that mediate language ideology and practices in Haitian schools and how such ideology and practices influence students' academic achievement. This study analyzes the role of French and Creole in schools and investigates the linguistic tensions in the Haitian society where Creole, the home language of both students and teachers and the only language broadly used in the country, is relegated to secondary importance in education and other institutional settings. The study relies on ethnographic data collected in a third grade, a fourth grade, a fifth grade, and a sixth grade classroom in a private and a public school in a semi-urban area around the capital city of Haiti as well as data collected in different sectors of the society (e.g. state and private institutions). Building upon the literature regarding classroom discourses and the literature on sociocultural theory, coloniality, language ideology, and symbolic domination, this study problematizes language and educational practices in Haiti and offers recommendations for rebuilding Haiti's educational system in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake of January 12th 2010. Given the role of students' home language in their instruction, this study argues that any effort aiming the revitalization of the school system in Haiti needs to take into consideration issues related to language in the education system.

In this study we examine the development of the female poetic voice in the Puerto Rican context. Taking from the theoretical frameworks of Cultural Studies, Feminist Studies and New Historicism we re-read the political, cultural and literary history of Puerto Rico and its relation to the construction of the representations of Woman in texts written by women as well as those by men. In the first chapter we analyze the weight of gender and history in the elaboration of general discourse. We point out how all texts speak from a particular gendered perspective and respond to a historically determined moment which requires critical analysis that takes into consideration these contextual phenomena. From here we begin to re-examine the development of the female poetic creation from the end of the nineteenth century to the 1930s. We study the change of sovereignty and the political, social and cultural impact that this had on the literature of Puerto Rico. Mainly, we look into the gestation of a political-literary discourse created by Puerto Rican intellectuals, who were at the same time, responsible for the political and cultural events of the island. The second chapter explores the creation of a new political project for Puerto Rico which begins in 1940s and culminates with the Commonwealth. In addition, we review the political projects of the Commonwealth which required the active participation of literature since it was through literature that a cultural nationalism would be built, a nationalism that would compensate for the lack of an independent political state. Concluding this second chapter, we re-examine the decades of the sixties and seventies, viewing them as a period of change and of social and political struggle. We study the gradual separation of the literary and political spaces, which allowed a more transgressive discourse as well as a more authentic female voice. The third chapter is a critical analysis of the female poetic voice through the twentieth century. Among the selected poets are: Clara Lair, Haydee Ramirez de Arellano, Marigloria Palma, Angelamaria Davila, Olga Nolla, Manuel Ramos Otero and Mayra Santos Febres.

This project explores the military and political mobilization of rural and urban working sectors of Puerto Rican society as the Island transitioned from Spanish to U.S. imperial rule. In particular, my research is interested in examining how this shift occurs via patterns of inclusion-exclusion within the military and the various forms of citizenship that are subsequently transformed into socio-economic and political enfranchisement. Analyzing the armed forces as a culture-homogenizing agent helps to explain the formation and evolution of Puerto Rican national identities from 1868 to 1952, and how these evolving identities affected the political choices of the Island. This phenomenon, I argue, led to the creation of the Estado Libre Asociado in 1952. The role played by the tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans in the metropolitan military in the final creation of a populist project taking place under colonial rule in the Island was threefold. Firstly, these soldiers served as political leverage during WWII to speed up the decolonization process. Secondly, they incarnated the commonwealth ideology by fighting and dying in the Korean War. Finally, the Puerto Rican soldiers filled the ranks of the army of technicians and technocrats attempting to fulfill the promises of a modern industrial Puerto Rico after the returned from the wars. ^ In contrast to Puerto Rican popular national mythology and mainstream academic discourse that has marginalized the agency of subaltern groups; I argue that the Puerto Rican soldier was neither cannon fodder for the metropolis nor the pawn of the Creole political elites. Regaining their masculinity, upward mobility, and political enfranchisement were among some of the incentives enticing the Puerto Rican peasant into military service. The enfranchisement of subaltern sectors via military service ultimately created a very liberal, popular, and broad definition of Puerto Rico’s national identity. When the Puerto Rican peasant/soldier became the embodiment of the Commonwealth formula, the political leaders involved in its design were in fact responding to these soldiers’ complex identities, which among other things compelled them to defend the “American Nation” to show their Puertorriqueñidad . ^

My project explores the impact of the great Orishas (Yoruba: "deities") of the crossroads, Eshu-Elegguá, on the thriving literary and visual arts of the African diaspora. Eshu-Elegguá are multiple figures who work between physical and spiritual realms, open possibilities, and embody unpredictability and chance. In chapter one I explore the codes, spaces, and functions of these translating, intermediary deities through cultural anthropology, religious studies, and art history. Chapter two explores patterns in the artistic employment of Eshu-Elegguá by analyzing these figures' appearance in visual arts and then in four texts: Mumbo Jumbo (Ismael Reed, 1972), Sortilégio: Mistério Negro (Abdias do Nasicmento, 1951), Chago de Guisa (Gerardo Fulleda León, 1988), and Brown Girl in the Ring (Nalo Hopkinson, 1998). Chapter three explores how those patterns converge in Midnight Robber (Nalo Hopkinson, 2000) by looking closely at the novel's narrators and translators, Eshu and Elegguá. I argue that Midnight Robber, when read through the literary theories and poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, is a novel "possessed" by the Orishas and that they take on authorial roles. Chapter four analyzes the translation of Midnight Robber into Spanish ( Ladrona de medianoche, Isabel Merino Bode, 2002); presents a way of translating the novel's multiple languages; and puts contemporary translation theories in dialogue with Eshu-Elegguá's translative and interpretive functions. Chapter five argues for a way of reading Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966) through the figures of Eshu-Elegguá. ^ The objective is to explore the aesthetic codes and philosophies that the figures of Eshu-Elegguá carry into the texts; trace their voices across multiple forms of cultural expression; and navigate the dialogues that these intermediary figures open between a group of literary texts that have not yet been studied together. The dissertation extends the critical work on the selected literary texts; uses the arts to further understand the nature of these deities of communicability; and analyzes Afro-Atlantic texts through figures and interpretive systems from within the tradition. By surveying contemporary translation theories and based on my close reading of the translating capacities and metaphors that Eshu-Elegguá embody, I offer a new model for translation.^

Thesis advisor: Janet E. Helms / Black Caribbean Immigrants (BCIs) migrating to the US face the particularly difficult challenge of managing their racial and ethnic identities in relation to the subordinate African American (AA) culture and racial group as well as the dominant White American (WA) culture and racial group. Formal theories of acculturation have not focused on the adaptation of Black immigrants to both a low-status racial group (e.g., Blacks) and ethnic culture (e.g., African American) in the US. The acculturation literature usually has evaded the topic of race and the racial literature has not addressed Black immigration or ethnicity. Furthermore, when investigations of acculturation of BCIs have occurred, consumer habits, behaviors, and cultural expressions have been used as proxies for racial and ethnic identity. Moreover, virtually no research has investigated the BCI-AA acculturation experience from the perspective of BCIs. Hypotheses derived from an integration of Berry’s (1997) theory of acculturation and Ferguson et al.’s (2012) tridimensional model of minority-status ethnicity were that BCIs’ acculturation involves the intersection of two dimensions: (a) joining or not joining AA culture versus maintaining one’s own ethnic culture and (b) Black racial integration versus separation. When responses to each dimension are assessed, four possible acculturation outcomes were proposed: (a) Separation, (b) Integration, (c) Assimilation, and (d) Marginalization. The sample for the present study was Black Caribbean immigrants from the English and French speaking West Indies. I used narrative theory and analysis of participants’ interviews to assess the fit of participants’ stories about their ethnic/racial identity and acculturation process to the model. Findings indicated that maintenance of their ethnic culture rather than joining AA culture was more important for most of the interviewees than their Black racial identity (i.e., Separation). / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental and Educational Psychology.

No description available.

The dramaturgy written by Cuban American, Puerto Rican, and Dominican American women propels Hispanic-Caribbean theater beyond the geographical borders of their islands, thus creating and nurturing, transnational cultural enclaves that support it while also transforming the cultural theatrical environment of the United States. This dramaturgy, with its themes and arguments, puts into practice the feminist and LGBTQ critical theories with a focus on minority groups in US society. This work analyzes Hispanic-Caribbean theater traditions from their origins to the transformations they undergo in the United States given the influence of the various Caribbean diasporas. The essential characteristics of this drama, written by women, lead to the creation of a new theater characterized by its hybrid and bilingual roots. This dramatic cultural transformation reveals the diversity and inclusion of ethnic, racial, sexual identities, and the myriad intersectionalities found in the diasporic island communities from which it takes flight. / Includes bibliography. / Dissertation (PhD)--Florida Atlantic University, 2021. / FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection