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No description available.

This dissertation examines the four novels published to date by Milton Hatoum, a contemporary Lebanese-Brazilian author from the Amazon region. There are a great number of critical readings of his work that foreground the postmodern dissolution and fragmentation of the self, of human relationships, and also of national identity. In contrast to such approaches, I propose what I call a reading of hope. I argue that Hatoum is at the forefront of a shift in sensibility in Brazilian literature, one that simultaneously demonstrates certain aspects of postmodernism, but also breaks with other elements of it. In order to illustrate this issue, I analyze how Hatoum's characters forge personal identities, utilizing the mythological symbol of the uroboro (the snake that bites its own tail) as the organizing structure of my analysis. The uroboro has historically been used to represent circularity in the cycles of nature, communal and personal renewal, the return to origins, and self-reflection. In addition to circularity, the symbol has also been visually depicted as half black and half white, creating a duality that stresses interdependence rather than binary logic. With the above characteristics of circularity and duality in mind, the postmodern aspect that I analyze in Hatoum's work is its break with binary logic. First, I identify a variety of dualities extant in the novels, from language and silence to myth and reality, that instead of canceling each other out complement one another and emphasize identity's inherent ambiguity. Next, I analyze the rupture with postmodernism, which comes with Hatoum's characters' perpetual search for a more meaningful relationship with others, the environment, and themselves. As a consequence, the postmodern rootless and unstable characters give way to individuals that express more humane concerns (the recovery of the past as a value, self-reflection, and the search for familial bonds as well as for a connection with beauty and aesthetic pleasure through the arts). The symbol of the uroboro thus provides a graphic means of metaphorically representing not only the characters' identity as ambiguous and self-reflective, but also Hatoum's novels as simultaneously working within and breaking with postmodernism.

Medicine is a field of science that is always changing and promoting new ideas and innovations. Throughout history, medicine has been an important factor in the lives of people around the world since the beginning of civilizations. This study focused on the literature of medicine as it relates to the Spanish Golden Age period. By looking at the history and critical studies in medicine during sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain as well as during the pre-colonial period in America, this thesis overviews the effects and influences in regards to health and illness in Spain and the Americas during the Spanish Golden Age era.

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This thesis consists of material for conversation in Spanish at the high school level.

This group of lessons is intended to help the child who does not speak Spanish to learn the language. The text is based on the interests of a child; in his dramatic attempts; in his love of the beautiful and the natural. It is not entirely complete, but the author hopes that it serves to give an idea how these materials can be used.

The author has developed a dictionary in Spanish for elementary school classroom use.

Transfer theory proposes that language learners rely on knowledge of a previous language to acquire a new language and that they base their learning on past experiences and information. The assumption is that there is transfer of knowledge from adult learners’ L1 to their L2 (Odlin 1989; Kecskes and Papp 2000; Koike and Flanzer 2004). This study analyses the transfer of pragmatic knowledge in request and apology situations from L1 or L2 to L3: here he L1 is English, the L2 is Hindi, the national language of India and the L3 is Spanish. There are three groups of participants in the study: high school students of Spanish in the U.S. who are heritage speakers of Hindi; high school students of Spanish whose L1 is English; and high school students in India whose L1 is Hindi. This study investigates language acquisition patterns of Hindi- and Englishspeaking bilingual students studying Spanish and compares them to those of native English-speaking students learning Spanish to determine if the students’ knowledge of Hindi affects their production of Spanish speech acts. It specifically targets the transfer of pragmatic knowledge in request and apology situations from L1 English or L2 Hindi to L3 Spanish. The results demonstrate that learners perceived a great degree of typological distance between Hindi and Spanish. This perceived distance might be the reason why only scant evidence of transfer of pragmatic knowledge from the L2 of the bilingual speakers to their L3 is evident. However, a greater degree of transfer from the learners’ L1 English to their L3 Spanish was demonstrated by the heritage Hindi speakers. The limited amount of transfer from L2 Hindi to L3 Spanish that is evidenced can be attributed to the fact that Hindi heritage speakers have lived in the US longer than they have lived (if ever) in India, which has led them to be affected by U.S. culture. A strong desire for assimilation, which is often expressed by high school students, could also be an important factor leading to more transfer from learner’s L1 English to their L3 Spanish as they would probably reject their heritage language Hindi in favor of their native or adopted language, English. / text