<p>My dissertation, <&ldquo;>Transcending Borders: The Transnational Construction of Mexicanness, 1920-1935,<&rdquo;> examines the conflicting attitudes towards "Mexicanness" or <italic>mexicanidad</italic> both in Mexico and the United States, an area that, Jos<&eacute;> Lim<&oacute;>n, conceptualizes as "Greater Mexico." Beginning with an analysis of the Mexican postrevolutionary state's construction of nationalist culture, I argue that the transnational invention of Mexicanness through the circulation of the Aztec artifact reveals the possibilities for people of Mexican descent to reclaim public space and cultural citizenship on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. I examine the construction of Mexicanness through an analysis of the limitations of Mexican post-revolutionary literary production in generating a clear vision of Mexican nationhood as well as the possibilities for nation building offered by public spaces such as the museum and the monument (an outdoor museum). Tracing the cultural manifestations of Mexican nationhood as expressed by the state and by people of Mexican descent is essential to understanding how the nation is practiced and thus intimately intertwined with the practice of citizenship. Through an interdisciplinary analysis of the Aztec artifact's various incarnations as an archaeological artifact, created artifact, and spurious artifact, I contend that the artifact represents an alternative text for the study of nationalism in its ability to narrate a national identity ultimately shaped beyond Mexico's geographical borders.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis explores the discourse of Mexicanness and its relation to the moving image, pointing to the intellectual discussion it has been subject to since the beginning of the twentieth century. Further, it takes narcoculture as a relevant and recent phenomenon that has the capacity of confronting and reformulating Mexicanness by virtue of its hybridity. This dissertation draws from History, Latin American and Mexican studies to deconstruct and describe a thorough picture of the impact, popularity and pertinence of these narratives in Mexican exploitation and theatrical film, as well as soap operas, which act as cornerstones of the liminal discourse of drug-culture in this context. At the same time, it locates the melodramatic logics of narco film and music as vital for the construction of the modern notion of the Mexican drug dealer as an incarnation of contemporary and contradictory Mexicanness. This thesis points to the connection between Mexicanness, northern Mexican and transborder culture, highlighting the cross-cultural influences that meld in the border and northern states and comprise a rich landscape for theoretical analysis.

Music plays an important role in Mexican funeral ceremonies, acting as a vehicle for men to acceptably express emotions of bereavement. As an important symbol of mexicanidad (Mexicanness), mariachi music is often used in traditional Catholic funerals, ritualizing grief equally as a mourning of loss and a celebration of the life of a deceased person. Although a form of popular music, mariachi's secular songs go through a process of sacralization, becoming meaningful sites for experiencing grief. As a musical expression of Mexico's idealized gender norms mariachi opens an aesthetic sphere for masculine grief to be expressed, experienced, and socialized in an acceptable form. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the musical mediation of masculine grief, experienced and ritualized within funeral ceremonies, and observed through an ethnographic study of Mexican immigrant communities.