Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

This dissertation analyzes the construction of a pervasive social imaginary of unequal order in Central America between 1870 and 1900. This period was crucial in the region, which underwent a series of economic, political, and social reforms that would forever transform the natural and social landscapes of the isthmus. Although most of these structural changes have already been studied, it is still unclear how literary and cultural production intersected with the liberal elites' endeavors of social classification, economic modernization, and political institutionalization. This dissertation addresses that problem through theoretical elaborations on the social imaginary (Cornelius Castoriadis) and the distribution of the sensible (Jacques Ranciere). I specifically analyze three different types of cultural texts: household economy guides for girls and young women; cuadros costumbristas (sketches of manners); and sentimental novels and theater plays. Part 1 deals with the cultural measures that contributed to a symbolic and material division of public spaces and private spaces, both ruled by the rationale of capitalism. Chapters 1 through 3 study in detail the role of household economy manuals in the dissemination and implementation of the new capitalist logics of productivity, rationalization, and accumulation across the domestic or private spaces. Chapter 1 analyzes how these cultural texts created two opposing female archetypes: the "economic woman" or "productive housewife", figured as an agent of domestic modernization, and the "abject servant", a subaltern subject that would undergo a set of new domestic policies of surveillance, discipline, and exploitation. Chapter 2 addresses the role of the productive housewives in the implementation of new modes of regulation of time and desire within the urban households, while Chapter 3 covers the rearrangements in domestic spaces brought by the new concepts of comfort and hygiene. Part 2 deals with the simultaneous reo (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Abril Trigo (Advisor); Ana Del Sarto (Committee Member); Fernando Unzueta (Committee Member); Marta Elena Casaus Arzu (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies

BA, Oberlin College, 2018, Latin American Studies

This project offers a new perspective for understanding the country and culture of Chile by examining the messages embedded in sport competitions. I will first detail the success of distance runner Manuel Plaza in his second-place finish at the 1928 Amsterdam Olympic Games, and analyze how Plaza's success at an international competition was adopted and interpreted to represent the entrance of Chile into modern and Western society. I will then discuss the struggle between different sections of Chilean society to create and monopolize the master narrative of the events that took place following the military coup of 1973. This section will demonstrate how sporting symbols like the National Stadium, World Cup, and Chilean national futbol team were used as the battleground to propagate these conflicting narratives. This project aims to understand how definitions of chilenidad, or Chilean identity, have evolved over time, and explore the intersection of chilenidad and sport. Drawing upon historical, political, and literary frameworks, this project advocates for the continued study of sport within the field of area studies, in order to learn from the cultural significance that sport carries.

Committee: Yago Colás (Advisor); Claire Solomon (Committee Member); Patrick O'Connor (Committee Chair) Subjects: Latin American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2009, Spanish and Portuguese

As in other national cinemas, Mexican cinema has used the theme of the family as the basis for many of its films, though mainly as a way of developing the central conflict of the narrative. Unlike other national cinemas, the trope of the family was promoted by the state as a means through which it strove to give itself legitimacy. Because of the societal conflicts left behind by the Mexican Revolution, the State associated the nuclear family simile with the illusion of national unity that centered on the patriarchy. The media of the time willingly went along with the unwritten precept, and for decades the ideal of national unity was known as ‘la Gran Familia Mexicana', that is, The Great Mexican Family. Many of the films produced during the Mexican Golden Age – La Epoca de Oro – advanced images of the ideal family members: strict fathers, submissive mothers and obedient children that reflected an idealized prevailing dominant order. However, these archetypes were gradually contested by other models and arrangements of the Mexican family as depicted in film, overlapping with the socio economical process of the neoliberal governments (starting in 1982 to the present). The films Por la libre, Perfume de violetas, Amar te duele and Temporada de patos, produced between 2000 to 2004 reveal a new discourse in which the family is portrayed in crisis, highlighting the distressed father figure, which in many cases is absent. The paradigm serves as an allegory of the loss of legitimacy of the Mexican State in the last two decades. In the last twenty years, the neoliberal system has released the government of some of its responsibilities to society such as, providing a minimum infrastructure and an environment well-being for its citizens and their social progress. The neoliberal model has proven to be problematic; it has increased the levels of poverty and social inequality in Mexico. The corpus of films studied in this dissertation examine how the families in the stories mirro (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ignacio Corona PhD (Advisor); Richard A. Gordon PhD (Committee Member); Ulises Juan Zevallos-Aguilar PhD (Committee Member); Soledad Fernandez PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Motion Pictures

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This thesis essays to study and interpret a small body of poems from Southern Gaul which respond to the breach of the Rhine frontier and subsequent crises from 406-418 AD. After demonstrating contemporary literary conventions in both secular and Christian discourses, the paper will survey how the poems in question came to terms with recent catastrophe and thereby rearticulated differing ideas of empire and meta-history which drew upon the Latin Epic tradition but deployed them in a context that was increasingly Christian and destabilized. While this will shed limited light on the political events, it will primarily serve to situate the beginnings of the Fall of the Western Empire in their intellectual context and indicate how they served as agents of the transformation of the Classical World and the draining of the secular.

Committee: Jaclyn Maxwell (Committee Chair); Kevin Uhalde (Committee Member); Neil Bernstein (Committee Member) Subjects: Classical Studies; Education History; European History; History; Medieval History; Medieval Literature; Middle Ages; Religion; Religious History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

Origin Stories traces the emergence and political potential of a slow aesthetic in contemporary transnational cinemas of the hemispheric Americas in the new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. Starting from the vantage point of the global South, this dissertation examines five major filmmakers associated with slowness: Lucrecia Martel (Argentina), Alfonso Cuaron (Hollywood/Mexico), Natalia Almada (US/Mexico), Kelly Reichardt (US), and Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand). Slowness in cinema has popularly and academically been theorized from an aesthetic or national perspective since Matthew Flanagan first coined the term “slow cinema.” However, to theorize slowness as a global aesthetic flattens the political textures of cinemas that arise from marginalized markets with their own film histories. The recent steady growth in international co-production, as well as historical movement of film within and between markets, also indicate that national definitions are increasingly inapplicable to transnational cinemas. Latin American cinema is an example of historical and current transnational production as films circulate between nations in the home market and internationally on the film festival circuit, as well as cultivating a unique character outside Hollywood's cultural dominance. Looking at slow cinema from its geopolitical context reveals the critique of current and past global systems that contribute to iniquity including the erasure of Black and Indigenous peoples from Latinx histories and identities, entrenched racial hierarchies of coloniality, and how these structures inflect and reflect attitudes toward the natural world. Expanding the hemispheric Americas to the Asia Pacific, another site of conquest and US imperial ideation, experimental film translates the personal to the political in an intimate portraiture of human and natural ecologies. Bringing together cinema studies, decolonial, and Indigenous studies approaches, this dissertation charts the intersect (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jian Chen N (Advisor); Margaret Flinn C (Committee Member); Thomas Davis S (Committee Member) Subjects: Comparative; Ethnic Studies; Film Studies; Latin American Studies; Mass Media

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This is a feminist project that investigates the performative practices of contemporary female Colombian artists. It was guided by a main research question: Is there a particular kind of strength that comes from their specific situation as contemporary Colombian female artists? As such, this dissertation relies on fieldwork and critical theory in order to elucidate how such diverse individuals perform multiple art practices and what they do in and with their art practices. Two dozen women opened their doors, provided their time for video taped conversation and gave their archival material for the realization of this project. The main hypothesis this dissertation worked with relates to the existence of a possible double work or doubling of the work a woman artist executes in the need to undo what has been culturally assigned in order to then create her own images, ideas and concepts about being a woman in her society. Within the undoing and the doing, a liminal space allows the artists to realize how the cultural ideas of feminine essences evidence a conceptual void. Once the artistic work uncovers these supposed essences as false expectations, the strength that emanates from the vantage point of un-definition becomes the source of unbound creativity that produces artwork of political significance. The themes that emerged during fieldwork and writing show that in the same way these artists become others; multiplying possibilities of being while in their practices, they are able to influence their surroundings in minute, effective ways. Otherness is a central theme that has aided the understanding of the work these women realize. An important theoretical source is the seminal work of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex, even though in five chapters the artistic work of nine artists are thoroughly discussed through multiple theories that traverse the text. Some of the theorists that have aided the present text are: Gloria Anzaldua, Rosi Braidoti, Judith Butler, (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Marina Peterson Ph.D. (Committee Chair); Vladimiri Marchenkov Ph.D. (Committee Member); Jennie Klein Ph.D. (Committee Member); Louis-George Schwartz Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Aesthetics; Art Criticism; Art History; Cultural Anthropology; Dance; Fine Arts; Gender Studies; Latin American Studies; Literature; Performing Arts; Philosophy; Theater

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Art History

Luchita Hurtado is a Venezuelan painter who spent much of her life working between Central America and the United States. Though Hurtado developed an extensive portfolio over 80 years, her work was not widely recognized or exhibited until the late 2010s. Her work explores themes of the body's connections to nature, spirituality, identity, and motherhood through the lens of the female gaze. Her series titled I am, created in the 1970s, is unique because she paints a self-portrait by looking down at her body, forcing the viewer to take on her gaze, within a variety of natural and domestic spaces. This thesis project will be an analysis of what it means to thwart the male gaze in painting, with the example of Hurtado's series I am. This thesis engages with alternative practices of looking, the meaning of the gaze, the impacts of ecofeminist interpretations of the work, and the emphasis on the omniscience of the gaze in Western painting.

Committee: Jeannette Klein (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2024, Environmental Studies

Given the precarious state of the planet, countries have approached environmental protection uniquely by codifying environmental rights in their constitutions. Using the theoretical concept of legal consciousness, this manuscript investigates how Colombia, Ecuador, and the United States address the environment in their respective constitutions. I find that in the U.S., individual states establish environmental provisions, while Colombia and Ecuador take a more explicit approach enshrining environmental rights in their national constitutions. More specifically, Colombia frames environmental protection as a duty of the state, while Ecuador views it as necessity, in that the environment has inherent rights. The decision to include or exclude environmental provisions in constitutions presents possibilities for future legal work on environmental rights.

Committee: Stephen Scanlan Dr. (Advisor); Holly Ningard Dr. (Advisor) Subjects: Environmental Education; Environmental Law; Environmental Studies; Latin American Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2020, Anthropology

Lima, Peru is home to a complex history and current political climate. Out of this history and political atmosphere, various responses to government authority have been voiced via creative media. This thesis examines one such response: political, punk fanzines. This study aims to engage with how everyday, working class people in Lima express dissatisfaction with political structures that affect their lives on a day to day basis, including police violence, the exploitation of the market economy, government corruption, censorship, and economic and gender inequality. Through the medium of these politically self-aware fanzines, small photocopied booklets of 20-40 pages, we are able to see these responses as well as analyze them. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Lima during the summer of 2018. This study is in conversation with fields of ethnographic literature pertaining to the city as more than context, informal literature, DIY (do-it-yourself), and counterculture movements. The communal spirit of fanzine creation contests constraints imposed by the market economy and state authority, as participants seek spaces for collaboration and to express emotion and empower themselves through this self-expression. Participants may be using fanzines as a platform for their own voice, but also as a safe, shared space for their own spirit. Ultimately, my thesis will demonstrate how fanzines at once provide an extremely accessible platform for Limenos to express dissatisfaction and anger, and also, as a community of artists, provide liberation from the everyday constraints of an urban atmosphere.

Committee: Matthew Rosen PhD. (Advisor) Subjects: Cultural Anthropology

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Spanish and Portuguese

My dissertation examines representations of femicide as gender violence in legal, journalistic, literary, and online cultural production in contemporary post-war Nicaragua. I begin with the passing of Law 779, the Integral Law Against Violence Towards Women, approved by the Nicaraguan National Assembly in February 2012. The law fills a legal vacuum in the country by codifying femicide, as well as sexual, psychological, patrimonial, and labor abuse into Nicaraguan law as gender specific crimes. Prohibiting the long-standing practice of police and judicial mediation between accusers and aggressors, Law 779 set out to endow women with judicial agency in what had been largely hostile and re-victimizing institutional spaces. The focus of the project is cultural, examining representations of gender violence as part of a social dialogue about Law 779, covering a variety of textual realms. The goal of the project is to explain how different mediums and social actors explain gender violence by studying discourse and narrative modes. The debate centered on Law 779's re-balancing of power relations and its controversy stemmed from its challenge to existing family structures, which disguise masculine authority and impunity. The inertia of the status quo proved strong, with Law 779 being reformed and regulated between 2012 and 2014, reverting its original radical spirit. The chapters are divided into discursive mediums. In the first chapter I study the legal texts of Law 779: the legislative debates, the law's original text, the Reform of the law, and the Regulation of the law. I conclude that its eventual deformation resulted from conservative and religious sectors' anger over the prohibition of judicial mediation, and the reinstatement of mediation constituted a regressive reestablishment of masculine authority—a renewed politics of control over the feminine. The second chapter focuses on the Nota Roja crime section of the Nicaraguan newspaper, El Nuevo Diario, examining (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ileana Rodríguez Dr. (Advisor); Laura Podalsky Dr. (Committee Co-Chair); Ignacio Corona Dr. (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American Literature; Womens Studies

Bachelor of Arts (BA), Ohio University, 2014, English

In an attempt to use Catholicism to unify and nationalize nineteenth-century Ecuador, political leaders such as Gabriel Garcia Moreno and Ignacio de Veintemilla instituted rigid centralization measures that heightened the power of the clergy and divided liberals and conservatives. Amid this backdrop one leading liberal thinker, Juan Montalvo, attacked Ecuadorian tyrannical leaders and clergy in his numerous political pamphlets and journals and wrote prolifically about the importance of individual freedoms and regaining basic human rights. In 1895 Montalvo published an imitation of the popular Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes titled Los capitulos que se le olvidaron a Cervantes (The Chapters Cervantes Forgot), transforming the madman into a biblically virtuous figure to immortalize his anti-clerical humor and social commentary on religious and governmental institutions. By offering an analysis in English of his satirical comedy and political and religious themes, I bring a previously untranslated yet important work to a wider readership while offering another interpretation for its full comedic potential. I draw biographical and literary comparisons between Cervantes and Montalvo and demonstrate the power of Don Quixote and its eponymous character to become a transnational vehicle for meaningful religious and political expression.

Committee: David Burton (Advisor); Eric LeMay (Advisor) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Latin American History; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2013, Latin American Studies

For millions of people living in conditions of poverty, micro-credits represent a possible way out of their situation of exclusion. Although microfinance programs began with the objective of alleviating poverty, in recent decades the tendency has moved toward programs that are self-sufficient, resulting in a sort of neoliberal colonization of microfinance. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, Hogar de Cristso, a Jesuit foundation, is trying to overcome the existing tension between the need to be profitable and the desire to help the oppressed. This thesis, taking this initial premise of the neoliberal colonization of microfinance and a critical perspective on neoliberalism as a starting point, employs what Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Cesar Rodriguez call a “hermeneutics of the emergences” (“una hermeneutica de las emergencias”) in order to highlight the ways in which Hogar de Cristo promotes an alternative development. After describing the history and Ignatian principles of the organization, I present the voices of the women who receive loans from Hogar de Cristo. The interviews with them suggest that this institution is transforming the lives and realities of the women it serves. Moreover, they lead me to conclude that Hogar de Cristo moves us toward an alternative development, a development from the woman, and, perhaps, an exteriority to capitalism. In this sense, this project articulates with the idealist and intercultural proposals of the Ecuadorian State, especially the notion of sumak kawsay.

Committee: Cathy Rakowski (Advisor); Ileana Rodríguez (Committee Member); Katherine Borland (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Spanish and Portuguese

At the same time as globalization unfolded as a new cultural formation that engulfed Latin America in profound economic transformations that affected its social, political, and cultural fabric, Argentina witnessed the emergence of the so-called “New Argentine Cinema”: an outstanding production by a new generation of filmmakers characterized by a formal and thematic break with the country's filmic tradition. My project argues that this new trend in filmmaking, like a seismographic device, captures the unsettling consequences of cultural globalization: the emergence of new subjectivities, postmodern forms of individuation and modes of sociability and political intervention. These films, characterized by a minimalist aesthetics highlighting casual contact, chaotic moments, and erratic flows, portray a landscape where social bonds are a by-product of chance encounters, traditional institutions are deemed obsolete, and indifference permeates interpersonal relationships. Therefore, this project revolves around three interrelated issues: the social and psychological implications of globalization; the production of new social imaginaries; and the configuration of new subjectivities. In order to analyze these issues, I develop a critical-theoretical framework encompassing film studies and discourse analysis; cultural and globalization studies; and studies on subjectivity and citizenship. Focusing on the films' innovative aesthetics, I analyze them as primary cultural products which stage the rearticulation of new forms of subjectivity and new patterns of affect predominant in contemporary Argentinean society, primarily among its youth. Such an approach allows me to enquire into the refracting relationship between cultural products and the dynamics of a globalized society in the Third World; the shaping of new subjectivities in an atmosphere where nations are being increasingly replaced by global capital and transnational corporations; and the construction of new forms of so (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Abril Trigo Prof. (Advisor); Ana Del Sarto Prof. (Committee Member); Laura Podalky Prof (Committee Member); Vodovotz Yael (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2004, Educational Policy and Leadership

This study presents Puerto Rican Folk Healing Practices (PRFHP) as a cultural experience in an attempt to understand attitudes towards health from the healers' perspective and illuminate factors that resonate with the field of somatics studies, which regards individuals as whole (body-mind-spirit connection). Case studies were used to present the nature of six Puerto Rican folk healers and the practices they perform in the island of Puerto Rico. Qualitative research methods were used to gather the information. Semi-structured interviews, video observations, active participation, journals, and field notes were the tools used to capture the experiential approach of this research. Culturally grounded analysis was done in order to find common themes among six Puerto Rican folk healers and their practices. From the culturally grounded analysis, five major themes emerged. They are service, reverence to nature and natural cycles, the concept of medical mestizaje, physical and spiritual world as a continuum and the sense of embodiment. The second analysis explored how assumptions of the somatic framework relates to Puerto Rican Folk Healing Practices. The assumptions explored are a) perception of the world through the body. b) First person experience is privileged. c) Sarcal consciousness as a powerful guidance. d) reality as determined by the perception of the individual e) existence in the world as holistic f) The individuals as simultaneously interconnected with the world. g) The individual as a multi-dimensional being which transcends time and space. Findings from this inquiry present how the first three somatic assumptions, perception of the world through the body, first person experience as privileged and the concept of sarcal consciousness as a powerful guidance, gives discursive logic and a clearer explanation to the cultural theme of embodiment in PRFHP. However, culturally grounded research greatly expands the other four somatic assumptions, especially the last tw (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Seymour Kleinman (Advisor) Subjects: Education, Health

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2009, Latin American Studies (International Studies)

Despite challenges the movement is having and may continue to have, fair trade has proved itself a viable grassroots alternative to neoliberal free trade for farmers in the Global South and has gained legitimacy in both literature and consumer markets. Producers and consumers are becoming increasingly aware of fair trade as an economic and social alternative. While there exist set standards for fair trade agricultural products, no standards yet exist for fair trade garment manufacturing. Through a case study of COMAMNUVI (Cooperativa Maquiladora Mujeres de Nueva Vida) in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, this research analyzes the application of fair trade principles to the garment production industry. Claiming to be the first garment production cooperative in the world to operate within both the fair trade and free trade markets, COMAMNUVI has contributed an unprecedented prototype of how fair trade garment production may extend to other communities. However, the cooperative has yet to be considered a success and has encountered many problems that challenge the very goal they set out to achieve.

Committee: Yeong-Hyun Kim PhD (Committee Chair); Brad Jokisch PhD (Committee Member); Amado Láscar PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Economic History; Economic Theory; Geography; International Relations; Labor Economics; Labor Relations; Latin American History; Social Research; Sociology; Textile Research