MA, Kent State University, 2017, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

This research examines the circumstances of the omission of the letter m in word-final position in non-elite Latin texts, and proposes a morphosyntactic pattern to explain omission. Word-final m was not pronounced in non-elite Latin of the imperial period, and the letter is frequently absent in phonetically spelled texts, particularly as a grapheme. However, a number of texts remain in which the letter is both written and included. The authors of such texts demonstrate awareness that the letter should be written in final position (despite the lack of pronunciation), yet under certain circumstances they still choose to omit it. The paper suggests that the circumstances of the letter's omission and inclusion are pattern-based, and that authors are more likely to omit the letter in two morphosyntactic environments (which are not independent from one another). Firstly, omission takes place more often following the vowels a and e than after u. Inflected words ending in a or e were common to the non-elite Latin morphological system, whereas words ending in u were not. Omitting final -m after u would have thus produced a word which did not end in an acceptable word-final grapheme. Secondly, omission is more likely in prepositional phrases, and nominal phrases in which another grapheme marking the same function is present. Both types of phrase contain another form which marks the syntax, rendering the presence of the grapheme less valuable; the prepositions themselves govern their phrases, while the presence of at least one grapheme appears to sufficiently identify the syntactic role of the entire phrase. The greater willingness to omit after a and e continues to be operative within the phrases. Several types of non-elite texts are examined for their patterns of omission and inclusion of final -m, including business contracts, personal letters, graffiti, and votive offerings. The texts range from the first century BCE to the fourth century CE, with wide geographic distribut (open full item for complete abstract)

DMA, University of Cincinnati, 2013, College-Conservatory of Music: Conducting, Choral Emphasis

Latin is one of the most frequently encountered languages in Western music and the most important second language for the English-speaking choral conductor. People in each geographic region in Western Europe spoke and sang the language differently. These differences include not only the pronunciation of vowels and consonants, but also, in some cases, syllabic stress. While the Vatican attempted to unify the pronunciation of Latin in liturgical settings with the Moto Proprio, the regional dialects used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries continue to enhance the nationalistic characteristics of each countries Latin musical output and offer potential acoustic benefits. As modern performers, awareness of the sounds composers heard and had in mind for their compositions is an important aspect of accurate interpretation of vocal music. The Introduction is a brief overview of the role of Latin in the Christian Church, and its transformation up to 1800. In Chapter 1, sources of pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin are examined and compared using IPA transcriptions of sacred texts. Chapter 2 includes current American conductor's thoughts on the benefits, drawbacks, and challenges of using German, .French, or English Latin in performance. The texts examined in chapter 1 are transcribed in French, German, or English Latin, along with music examples of nineteenth and twentieth century composers' settings of those texts. By examining the history of Latin in the Church, the rules of the sources that codify pronunciation in the past two centuries, and the aesthetic and acoustic benefits of different sounds, I hope to bring a clear understanding of Latin diction to all choral conductors, informing them of the possibilities to enhance their musical performances.

MA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

In this paper I explore Vergil's depiction of his female figures in the light of the optimistic and pessimistic debate. I argue that Vergil depicts his female characters as controlled by furor, as juxtaposed to Aeneas' virtus, in order to use his female characters as a narrative and symbolic foil who work to prevent the success of Aeneas' mission. Specifically, I argue that Vergil uses elegiac and tragic conventions and adapts the depiction of females from his literary predecessors Homer, Apollonius, Callimachus, and Catullus (amongst others) to create a female figure that is representative of furor and the East, so that Aeneas' rejection of these figures symbolically represents the triumphs of Augustus and Rome. I further argue that any sympathy and ambiguities Vergil ascribes to these female characters, while they allow the reader to connect to these characters and the literary work on more than one level, still serve the political purpose of creating a more realistic connection between Aeneas and Augustus, who was facing the task of needing to reinvent himself to a Roman people he had recently disenfranchised from their land and whom he had fought in a violent civil war.

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)

Master of Science, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, Contemporary Music

The Festival Internacional de Flautistas en el Centro del Mundo has helped countless flute students across the globe to get an international education, increasing the development and knowledge of the next generations of musicians. This dissertation will explain how the Festival, through its abundance of rehearsals, performances, and masterclasses, has become an imperative resource for the growth of the international flute community. My intention with this document is to advocate for a more widespread dissemination of Latin American musical repertoire and educational opportunities and to build strong flute communities in every country, regardless of financial status or other limitations. This document also serves as a guide for flutists from any country who wish to benefit from the pedagogical ideas, repertoire selections, and historical performances from the Festival Internacional. Through historical and narrative methodologies, this research presents findings from over thirty years of festival performances and classes, including interviews with key guest artists and participants as well as a review of festival programs.

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2021, Philosophy

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz has yet to achieve her proper place in the early modern canon of philosophy. For the past century Sor Juana, the 17th century Mexican nun and scholar, has been examined through different lenses—literary, gender studies, and Latin American philosophy. In this thesis, I argue for the need to examine Sor Juana's works through the lens of philosophy of literature. In three chapters, I look at two of Sor Juana's works and how she used the genres of letter writing and poetry to advance her philosophical ideas about women and herself. The first is a poem known as Hombres Necios or Foolish Men, and the second is a letter known as La respuesta a Sor Filotea or The Reply to Sor Filotea. Poetry and letter writing were some of the only genres permitted to women at this time. Sor Juana took advantage of this restriction and exploited the natural attributes of these two genres so that her arguments were less vulnerable to censorship. The first chapter examines Hombres necios through a philosophy of poetry lens. In the poem, Sor Juana asserts that there are sexual double standards that women suffer; these double standards are placed on them by men. Many scholars like Octavio Paz, Frank Warnke, Alan Trueblood, Electa Arenal, and Amanda Powell examine Sor Juana's poetry through literary or feminist lenses. I add to their interpretations and contribute to the philosophical discussion the idea that Sor Juana's poem creates a space for her arguments. By using the structure of the redondilla, or “little round one”, Sor Juana emphasizes different words to create double meanings and give words to the anger that women feel. The poem allows men a slight reprieve of guilt, before they are confronted with her conclusion that all men are to blame. The second and third chapter focuses on the similarities that Sor Juana draws between her own persecution and self-defense to that of Socrates found in Plato's Apology. By comparing the two defenses, we see parallels betw (open full item for complete abstract)

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2020, Arts and Sciences: Classics

This dissertation examines the role of elegy in the Thebaid by Statius, from allusion at the level of words or phrases to broad thematic resonance. It argues that Statius attributes elegiac language and themes to characters throughout the epic, especially women. Statius thus activates certain women in the epic as disruptors, emphasizing the ideological conflict between the genres of Latin love elegy and epic poetry. While previous scholarship has emphasized the importance of Statius' epic predecessors, or the prominence of tragic allusion in the plot, my dissertation centers the role of elegy in this epic. First, I argue that Statius relies on allusion to the genre of elegy to signal the true divine agent of the civil war at Thebes: Vulcan. Vulcan's erotic jealousy over Venus' affair with Mars leads him to create the Necklace of Harmonia. Imbued with elegiac resonance, the necklace comes to Argia with corrupted elegiac imagery. Statius characterizes Argia within the dynamic of the elegiac relicta puella and uses this framework to explain Argia's gift of the necklace to Eriphyle and her advocacy for Argos' involvement in the war. By observing the full weight of the elegiac imagery in these scenes, I show that Argia mistakenly causes the death of Polynices and the devastation at Thebes as the result of Vulcan's elegiac curse. Next, I analyze Hypsipyle's elegiac role in the text in two distinct ways. I first argue that Statius uses elegiac vocabulary from multiple points of view to describe Hypsipyle and her narrative. Her depiction of the Lemnian massacre is indebted to the elegiac topos of militia amoris, and her experiences with Jason, leader of the Argonauts, is characterized by servitium amoris. Then, I examine this elegiac background via Julia Kristeva's theoretical perspective. Influenced by the association between the elegiac relicta puella and the Kristevan semiotic chora, I expand Hypsipyle's connection to this topos vis-a-vis Kristeva's feminine, counter- (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, Contemporary Music

In this document I examine Brazilian composer Marlos Nobre's ballet Rhythmetron, adding to the scholarly literature available on the contributions of Latin American composers to the percussion ensemble repertoire. Using archival, ethnographic, and text-based analyses, I inquire into the genres, instruments, and performance practices of the piece, as well as its critical reception. This history reveals that the colonial relationship with black sound has continuously been re-inscribed in Brazilian cultural artifacts, and that institutional biases are upheld when determining what constitutes Art music. Through its inclusion of the Afro-Brazilian genres of samba and maracatu, Rhythmetron invites us to consider the hierarchies of valuation that govern what constitutes Brazilian popular music, art music, and ballet, revealing racialized power dynamics. I utilize postcolonial theories of hybridity to demonstrate that Rhythmetron dialogues with the Dance Theatre of Harlem's intent to reimagine and break racial expectations in the realm of classical ballet. This research reveals that what is guarded in our cultural memories is power-laden, and shows that more inclusive canonization practices can challenge existing narratives and create new ones.

MA, Kent State University, 2019, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Modern and Classical Language Studies

By examining feminine speech within the corpus of love elegies composed throughout the Augustan period, especially those written by Tibullus, Sulpicia, Propertius, and Ovid, one can determine various stylistic uses of female characters within the entire corpus. In addition to this, while his writings were penned a generation before the others, the works of Catullus will be examined as well, due to the influence his works had on the Augustan Elegists. This examination will begin identifying and detailing every instance of speech within the elegies from a female source, and exploring when, how, and why they are used. The majority of the elegies in which these instances occur are briefer, more veristic in nature, although longer, more polished examples exist as well; both types are examined. Except for Sulpicia, these poets are male and present the majority of their elegies from a masculine point of view; this influence is also examined.

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.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1975, Graduate School

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2015, History (Arts and Sciences)

In January 1959 Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and soon proved to be a perplexing opponent for the United States. The island nation did not have to commit soldiers or weaponry to advance its revolutionary agenda in Latin America. The ideas and romanticism associated with the Cuban Revolution were enough to foster anti-U.S. and pro-Cuban sentiment in the region. Historian Thomas Wright wrote that the Cuban Revolution “embodied the aspirations and captured the imagination of Latin America's masses as no other political movement had ever done.” Castro declared during the “Second Declaration of Havana” in 1962 that “it is the duty of every revolutionary to make the revolution. In America and the world, it is known that the revolution will be victorious, but it is improper revolutionary behavior to sit at one's doorstep waiting for the corpse of imperialism to pass by.” For U.S. policymakers, confronting Castro and his revolutionary agenda became a top priority during the 1960s. Adolf Berle, a veteran U.S. foreign policymaker with experience dating back to the Franklin Roosevelt administration, headed John Kennedy's task force on Latin America and offered the president counsel on how best to confront the growing unrest in the region. While Berle noted the positive effects that a focus on democracy, economic development, and social reform could have, he also called on the administration to launch a “psychological offensive.” In an attempt to co-opt the energies of the Cuban revolution and impede Fidel Castro's influence in Latin America, the United States waged an extensive public diplomacy campaign against the revolutionary fervor emanating from Havana. This international history, based on research in the United States, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba, tells the story of Washington's attempt to discredit the Cuban Revolution, while simultaneously cultivating public opinion in Latin America during the 1960s. Central to (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Spanish and Portuguese

In the past decade, an impetus towards a more globalized field of Hispanic studies has emerged, critiquing the Peninsular/Latin America binary in academic departments and highlighting the need for significant studies of Hispanic Asian and African literatures. Various scholars have been contributing to this call, both in the study of Africa and in Asia, in order to move away from the centrality of the Spanish presence. My research is located in this emerging trend. This project highlights Filipino texts in order to continue building a transoceanic bridge to the Pacific by comparatively placing it alongside Cuban and Puerto Rican texts. This project carries out a transoceanic comparative study of Cuban, Puerto Rican and Filipino nationalist and revolution literatures written during the late nineteenth century, leading up to Spain's loss of its final colonies in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the first few years of U.S. neo-colonization. Using South Asian and Latin American Subaltern Studies as a point of departure, it addresses the gap in Iberian and Latin American studies that ignores the former Spanish colonies in the Pacific Ocean with a decolonial objective in mind. The works studied show the development of a new, regional and national consciousness and reveal the authors' responses to modernization, highlighting the political, cultural, and social tensions of that time period aesthetically and socio-culturally. By employing a transoceanic approach of the Filipino propagandista movement and the Latin American modernista movement, I aim to disrupt coloniality's focus on the Atlantic and allow for the emergence of decolonial thought that considers the inclusion of the formerly marginalized Pacific. Through an analysis of these parallel movements, my overall claim is that, by reading these texts through a transoceanic lens, we see not a mimicry of a European style, but rather an educated, elaborate response to the collapsing empire and to the internatio (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Spanish and Portuguese

Both Spain and Peru experienced protracted violent conflicts between insurgent groups and State forces during the second half of the twentieth century. In Spain, this involved Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), a radical Basque nationalist organization which sought Basque autonomy via armed struggle in a conflict which lasted from 1959 until 2011. In Peru, the insurgent threat was represented by Sendero Luminoso, a Maoist guerrilla insurgency based in the Peruvian highlands that sought drastic sociopolitical change within Peru. Sendero Luminoso launched what they deemed a people's war in 1980, and the bloody conflict that ensued continued until 1992. The damage caused by each of these conflicts was monumental, both in terms of the loss of human life and damage to infrastructure in both countries. In this dissertation I examine the depiction of these conflicts in a selection of Peruvian and Spanish novels and films. I argue that each work promotes a certain version of the conflict it describes, and that this can be revealed through an analysis of the humanizing and dehumanizing discourses at play in the representation of the actors in both of these conflicts. From Peru, I will examine Santiago Roncagliolo's novel Abril rojo (2006) and Fabrizio Aguilar's film Paloma de papel (2003). From Spain, I will analyze the novel Ojos que no ven (2010) by J.A. Gonzalez Sainz and the film Yoyes (2000) by Helena Taberna. In this work, I argue that these discourses of humanization and dehumanization affirm or deny, respectively, the humanity of subjects involved in these violent political conflicts. I assert that dehumanization is employed to legitimate systemic violence during a state of exception, while humanization serves to refute that legitimation by providing a more comprehensive image of the actors and their motivations. Furthermore, I signal the significance of the use of these discourses, as I consider these works to be part of a larger corpus from a number of disciplines that (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, Nuclear Engineering

Utilities operating nuclear power plants in the United States are required to demonstrate that their plants comply with the safety requirements set by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). How to show adherence to these limits through the use of computer code surrogates is not always straightforward, and different techniques have been proposed and approved by the regulator. The issue of compliance with regulatory limits is examined by rephrasing the problem in terms of hypothesis testing. By using this more rigorous framework, guidance is proposed to choose techniques to increase the probability of arriving at the correct conclusion of the analysis. The findings of this study show that the most straightforward way to achieve this goal is to reduce the variance of the output result of the computer code experiments. By analyzing different variance reduction techniques, and different methods of satisfying the NRC's requirements, recommendations can be made about the best-practices, that would result in a more accurate and precise result. This study began with an investigation into the point estimate of the 0.95-quantile using traditional sampling methods, and new orthogonal designs. From there, new work on how to establish confidence intervals for the outputs of experiments designed using variance reduction techniques was compared to current, regulator-approved methods. Lastly, a more direct interpretation of the regulator's probability requirement was used, and confidence intervals were established for the probability of exceeding a safety limit. From there, efforts were made at combining methods, in order to take advantage of positive aspects of different techniques. The results of this analysis show that these variance reduction techniques can provide a more accurate and precise result compared to current methods. This means an increased probability of arriving at the correct conclusion, and a more accurate characterization of the risk associated with even (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Spanish and Portuguese

Digital Aesthetic and Notions of Identity in Contemporary Bolivian Filmmaking examines two related issues: on one hand, the emergence of new aesthetic currents made possible by the specific properties of digital formats; on the other, the emergence of new forms of distribution and exhibition. By comparing two different groups of digital films (those made by a new generation of young globally-recognized directors that stand for an auteur cinema in Bolivia, and those made by marginal communities in collaboration with the collective group TAFA that works outside the limits of the official film industry), I explore how digital technologies have been the driving force behind the flowering of the Bolivian film industry (traditionally seen as a minor industry even across Latin America) and the means by which Bolivian filmmakers engage with local, national and international issues and dynamics in innovative ways. My study also examines larger theoretical questions about how digital technologies are helping to reformulate national identity within the context of the Evo Morales administration and enhance the performance of cultural citizenship. My work has also important implications for debates within the discipline of film studies– particularly in terms of the democratizing potential of digital technologies. In surveying the transformative effect of digital technologies on Bolivian filmmaking and community-based politics, my dissertation questions the hypothesis of some critics that the so-called “digital revolution” would remain circumscribed to a tiny sphere of more wealthy individuals and nations.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2011, African-American and African Studies

Anti-Black racism in Ecuador affects the everyday life experiences of Afro-Ecuadorians. The United Nations 2011 “Year of Afro-descendents” campaign against anti-Black racism globally provides an opportunity for the Ecuadorian state to address anti-Black racism in Ecuador. However, how has the Ecuadorian state historically produced meanings of race and nation that have contributed to contemporary anti-Black racism? Ultimately Other-ed: The Development of Transnational Racial Discourse in Ecuador and the Black Subject analyzes the early twentieth century development of Latin American racial discourse in a transnational context by analyzing the work of three public intellectuals. Through the works of Jose Vasconcelos, Benjamin Carrion and Fernando Ortiz, we can see the transnational operation of a regional racial ideology with different national articulations for the Black subject. The thesis draws upon racial formation theory in order to understand the impact of Ecuadorian public intellectual, Benjamin Carrion, on rearticulating the meanings of race and nation. The thesis also shows the impact U.S. racial discourse on Latin America as a result of U.S. imperial aggression throughout Latin America during the early twentieth century. Through a close examination of the foundations of anti-Black racism by the Ecuadorian state, a more critical understanding of contemporary efforts against anti-Black racism by the state can be reached.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2010, Greek and Latin

Arnulf of Orleans ca. 1170 produced a composite commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses. This multifaceted commentary, which includes philological and allegorical interpretations, has left behind a large amount of manuscript evidence from various geographical locations and different time periods. To date, no complete medieval commentary on the Metamorphoses has ever been critically edited in full. The purpose of this dissertation is to bring to the modern reader a critically edited version of one of the most influential commentaries on the Metamorphoses, which also happens to be one of the earliest full commentaries on the poem still extant. This study also analyzes fully the extant manuscript evidence paleographically and codicologically to make accessible to the reader the textual relationships of the manuscripts, and also to examine the ways in which their physical formats affected the use of the commentary throughout its long tradition. The commentary and its manuscript tradition shed valuable insight into both the medieval and humanistic classrooms, their pedagogy and styles of instruction, as well as various approaches to the study and teaching of Classical Latin poetry.

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)