LACS Senior Theses 2021

This thesis explores the politically charged topic of the representations of Algerian women in contemporary Franco-Algerian cinema. Yamina Benguigui’s Inch’allah Dimanche and Nadir Moknèche’s Viva Laldjérie were both released in the early 2000s, in the midst of debates around feminism, secularism (or laïcité) and the so-called Islamic “veil.” At a time when some white French feminists were speaking on behalf of Algerian women, claiming they were “oppressed” while glorifying French culture, these films highlight a plurality of Algerian women’s experiences in a postcolonial context. Inch’allah Dimanche depicts women’s immigration during France’s policy of regroupement familial in the early 1970s, whereas Viva Laldjérie takes place in Algeria in the wake of the “Black decade” and the Algerian Civil War. This project first explores how Benguigui and Moknèche, both of whom are French of Algerian descent, assert their “Frenchness” in their films by implementing Western norms and aesthetics while critiquing Algerian traditions through strong female characters. Then, the focus shifts to explore political debates in France during the early 2000s and looks at how each of these films also looks critically at certain forms of Western feminism. Ultimately, while these directors criticize Algerian traditions and patriarchy, they also provide a critique of white feminists’ perceptions of the Algerian woman’s situation.

Deconstructing Misconception:

A Decolonial Analysis of Islam in Contemporary French Film

Anibal Gomez-Contreras III

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: French

In contemporary France, Islam is often depicted as the enemy of the Republic. This thesis explores the complex relationship between France and its Muslim citizens in two contemporary films in which Islam plays a critical role: Abd Al Malik’s Qu’Allah bénisse la France (2014) and Nicolas Boukhrief’s Made in France (2015). Based on Abd Al Malik’s upbringing, the former provides a positive image of Islam by portraying it as a source of guidance for minority youths, while the latter subverts society’s misconceptions that Muslims are extremists by revealing that jihadist cells are above all the product of French Islamophobia. Although the films achieve this message through contrasting aesthetics, both directors ultimately suggest that Islam is compatible with the French Republic. By analyzing these films from a decolonial perspective, this project argues that the historic injustices of colonization must be addressed if France is to end the oppression of its Muslim population. These films make it clear that it is only by embracing difference instead of marginalizing its minority citizens that the French state can build a more cohesive society.

Vodou Spirits, Uncle Sam, and the Sacred Heart:

Damaging Western Relationships with Haiti in Bain de lune

Catherine S. Freeman

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: French

In her novel Bain de Lune, Haitian writer Yanick Lahens opens the doors of her native country to a Western readership that may be unfamiliar with its culture and history, in part because it has been mistreated by Western powers ever since gaining its independence in 1804. Readers are transported to the heart of a culture rich in Haitian Vodou traditions through the interwoven stories of the villagers of Anse Bleue, who struggle to survive the political instability of their country. Vodou is foregrounded through the narrative of the spirit of Cétoute, a young woman who is found dead on the beach at the beginning of the novel. This character ties the world of the living to the world of the dead and reveals parts of the story that no other characters can. Through Haitian Vodou, Lahens’ characters challenge traditional Western conceptions of time and death. The novel also exposes readers to the emotional and economic struggles of a Haitian community impacted by its colonial past, the American occupation, the dictatorship of François Duvalier, and the present-day forces of globalization. Through interwoven narratives that stage conflict between Western and Haitian cultures and religions, Lahens denounces the past and present destruction that has resulted from French colonization and the American occupation.

Systemic Complicity: Police Brutality and National Identity in Ladj Ly’s Les Misérables

Lucy Hainline

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: French

Inspired by his youth in the Parisian suburb of Montfermeil, Ladj Ly’s first feature film explores the often-violent presence of the police in the banlieue from the point of view of three officers in a special crime unit. Released in 2019 in the context of debates about racialized police brutality and surveillance in France, Les Misérables follows this trio of policemen through their day overseeing Montfermeil, where they are caught on camera severely injuring a teenager. This thesis analyzes the film’s nationalist imagery and character development in order to demonstrate the government’s complicity in the marginalization of the banlieue’s inhabitants. Despite their stark individual differences in terms of upbringing, personality, work ethic and ethnicity, these police officers all protect their team at the expense of the community’s wellbeing. Ultimately, Les Misérables demonstrates that it is not simply individual police officers who are responsible for the exclusion and abuse of the banlieue’s inhabitants, but rather the entire law enforcement system, shaped by French conceptions of nationalism, that is at fault.

Recapturing Memory: Resistance, Violence and the Algerian War in La Seine était rouge and Hors-la-loi

Granville Kaynor

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: French

The Algerian War of Independence (1954–62) was a brutally violent conflict between the French colonial state and the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN). The events of the war were censored—and continue to be suppressed—by French politicians and media outlets, thus limiting the official memory of the conflict. However, historians, authors, and filmmakers have attempted to restore this lost memory since Algerian independence. Leila Sebbar’s novel La Seine était rouge (1999) and Rachid Bouchareb’s film Hors-la-loi (2010) both focus on recovering the memory of the Algerian war, looking in particular at how it impacted those living in France during decolonization. Whereas Sebbar concentrates on uncovering French violence, Bouchareb accentuates internecine violence between Algerian liberation groups. This project first analyzes these works’ politicized interventions into the fraught representation of wartime violence. It then examines the portrayal of French anticolonial resistance, such as the efforts of the Jeanson Network and the ambitions of the younger generation. These works suggest that, in order to truly recapture such memories of the Algerian past, it is crucial to nuance binary understanding of colonial conflict.

GERMAN Studies

Fairy-tales and Flamethrowers: Melting Perspectives on the Role

Of Folklore in Cold Ware Propaganda

Kristian Emmons

Advisor: Julia Assaiante

Major: German Studies

When Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm first set out in 1806 to compile a collection of Kinder- und Hausmärchen (children and household tales), they had no idea their works would go on to become some of the most influential texts of all time. Everyone from small children to the elderly have read and reread the folklore of the Brothers Grimm all across the world, and variations and blockbuster adaptations have transformed fairy tales from the simple country stories of rural Germany into international standards of morality and justice. Yet despite their perceived altruistic and ingenuous impressions, fairy tales have had a far darker role throughout German history, often acting as an interpretable code of moral law that can be recontextualized at the whims of an insidious ideology. At its inception, the Brothers Grimm compiled their collection of household tales as a means of effacing heterogeneity amongst the German states pre unification, through an appeal to romantic nationalism and unified linguistic tradition. Later, these same nationalist undertones would be reappropriated under the National Socialists’ study and use of Volkskunde (German/European Ethnology or Mythology) in Nazi ideology and propaganda. Following the second World War, fairy tales were utilised yet again as means of indoctrination and ideological propaganda between the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) during the Cold War.

The Artifice of Socialist Realism in the German

Democratic Republic (East Germany)

Liam Krueger

Advisor: Jason Doerre

Major: German Studies

The idealized realist art style, socialist realism, played a pivotal role in the 1900s, especially in its attempts to create a model state of socialism in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In the aftermath of the Second World War, The German Democratic Republic was established in 1949 and was poised to be a prime exemplar of socialism. Creating socialism in East Germany following the nation’s complete destruction in WWII was a monumental task since the state lacked legitimization, infrastructure, and amenities. Looking to its ally the Soviet Union, the GDR adopted the model of socialist realism. The aesthetics of socialist realism were employed to overcome the difficulties of building a socialist German state. Such a socialist artistic style was intended to be a realist interpretation of life in a communist utopia with great emphasis on the future of an emancipated proletariat. While socialist realism was used as a weapon of control and legitimization of East German ideology, socialist realism was in its essence fallacious. The great irony is that it purported itself to represent reality without ever corresponding to a socialist reality. Despite the GDR’s economic success in relation to its eastern counterparts, there was a surplus of internal issues that all worked to undermine its efficacy. In taking a closer look at the aesthetics of socialist realism and the role of the GDR and the SED one can better understand the subterfuge behind socialist realism. While the socialist model along with its aesthetics endeavored to become real, it failed to ever actually exist. The GDR’s excessive use of coercion worked against the socialist project and generated a widespread sense of dissatisfaction among the East German populace. Socialist realism is seen as an image of a life in theory and not in practice. Socialism itself was designed to be an “end” for humanity, the final emancipation for the proletariat; however, for a number of reasons outlined in this thesis this never came to be and the aesthetics of social realism stands as a reminder of what never was.

Psychoanalysis and Germany’s Colonial Past

Devin Lore

Advisor: Johannes Evelein

Major: German Studies

Nationalist rhetoric used by the German Kaiserreich reveals a substantial social dimension within its four-decade long imperial rule (1880 – c. 1920) that led to an especially destructive expansionist policy, whose ideals were often based on pseudoscience and racist ideology. By tracking the development of Germany’s national character in recent centuries, this analysis seeks to undo the disembodiment of colonial history instigated by an “Othering” ideology upon non-Europeans. Despite its potentially Eurocentric universalism, psychoanalytic theory focuses on an equal “primitive” footing, which can more deeply explain the power dynamics and inconsistent opinions between the colonizers and the colonized. Internal incoherence within an individual’s psyche can be sublimated by way of maladaptive projections onto the environment, for example cognitive distortions and defense mechanisms, and on the same note, the colonial apparatus seems to have been a scapegoat for political, societal and economic insecurity in 19^th– and 20^th-century Germany. A spatiotemporal representation of the imperial entity develops from this phenomenological approach, and through the lens of a collective consciousness, can promote further constructive progress in post- and neocolonialist analysis.

Keywords: Colonialism, postcolonialism, phenomenology, psychoanalytic theory, imperialism

No One is Free from History: Politics, Memory, and Responsibility in the Federal Republic since the Second World War

Ben Salfeld

Advisor: Johannes Evelein

Major: German Studies

How and in what ways has the government and society of Germany dealt with the Nazi Past? Perhaps the most fundamental element of the modern Federal Republic of Germany is its particular relationship with recent German history, above all the enormous and unprecedented crimes of the National Socialist Regime of Adolf Hitler, and in particular the Holocaust against six million European Jews. Today, this relationship is seemingly ever-present in modern Germany, und still has impacts on almost all aspects of German Politics and Culture. But how has this particular relationship between Germany and the Nazi Past developed and changed since the end of the National Socialist Regime and the end of the Second World War? Indeed, as this history passes out of living memory, it is worth understanding how Memory of the Nazi Past even achieved its ever-present position in modern Germany, and what the future of German memory of the Nazi may be. In particular, this thesis concentrates on the historical development of three particular ways in which the Federal Republic of Germany has dealt with the Nazi past, Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit, targeted policies relating to the Nazi Past, such as judicial trials of perpetrators and financial restitution for victims, Erinnerungspolitik, how and in what ways German politicians and political parties speak about and express understandings of the Nazi past in political contexts, and Erinnerungskultur, how and in what ways Germans as a whole remember and understand the Nazi Past. As will be shown in the course of this thesis, none of these ways in which Germany has sought to deal with the Nazi Past were the same, or even extant in the early years of the Federal Republic, as they are today, and indeed the seemingly ever-present position of the Nazi Past in modern Germany is a fairly new development.

On the Way to Cyberpunk

Felix Yuzhou Sun

Advisor: Julia Assaiante

Major: German Studies

“Cyberpunk” is a word that is both familiar and unfamiliar to us. In some ways, it is familiar to us. As a subgenre of science fiction, Cyberpunk is a popular futuristic theme that greatly influenced pop culture in the 21^st century. We are fascinated by the bizarre but realistic fictional world, a dystopian society characteristic of “high tech and low life” for the majority population, it presents. In most works of this genre, an overwhelming technology company monopolies most social resources and dominates society like a “leviathan”. The majority population is alienated from the well-being brought by high technology. They are exploited by the social elites and forced to endure the scarcity of resources and terrible living standards.

On the other hand, it is unfamiliar to us. We believe that such a dystopian world can only exist in artworks or literature. Natural rights, social contracts, and “all men are created equal”—these concepts have been deeply embedded in our laws and culture. After the USSR fall, most of us believe that we have reached “the end of history.” In this democratic system we proud of, there will be no more oppressors benefiting from exploiting others with their social power. At least, the organization that most likely to become a “leviathan”, the government, has been tamed by the democratic system we built.

Naturally, people tend to believe in what they want to believe. A promise of a bright future is always more attractive than disturbing predictions. However, ignorance is always the outset of disaster.

In the 21st century, cyber technology advances at an unprecedented pace. The rocketing up Internet market produces thousands of tech entrepreneurs every year. We once believed that the Internet’s development could lead to diversity and transparency and facilitate the free dissemination of information. Nevertheless, tech giants, such as Google and Facebook, are gradually taking over the world of the Internet. They overwhelm, annex the smaller companies and monopolize the dissemination of information.

It is a dangerous sign. Once a group monopolizes information distribution, it can choose what people can know and control the minds. The church in the middle age dominated the era by fabricating information cocoons for the whole population. Being the judge of the truth and knowledge, they took away the people’s reason and forced them to follow its words blindly. With the power of faith, it became the “leviathan” of its time.

The Enlightenment freed people’s reason from the “leviathan” by breaking the information cocoon. However, today, with the help of AI-algorithm and user experience design, the tech giants who dominate the information are trying to build information cocoons for each of us. Sadly, immersed in the convenience of the services they brought us, this time, we voluntarily give them our reason. These rising “digital leviathans” are once again closing the window of reason for humanity and driving us towards the world of Cyberpunk.

This essay endeavors to demonstrate why our society in the 21st century is on the way to Cyberpunk. With Immanuel Kant and Karl Marx’s philosophical ideas, this essay will analyze the consequences that tech giants and their social media have on both individuals and society and why these consequences lead us towards the era of Cyberpunk.

Hispanic Studies

The Evolution of the Migrant Profile From the Northern Triangle

(Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala) and Mexico

Stephanie Bravo Lopez

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

The topic of immigration from Latin America to the United States has always been a point of contention within US politics. However, the migratory flow between Mexico and the United States has always existed. In 1848 the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded almost half of its territory to the United States, was signed. Since then, Mexicans did not cross the border but rather the border crossed them. The position of American politicians between the 1940s, when the Bracero program was presented, in which approximately five million Mexican men migrated in order to cultivate agricultural fields in the United States, and 1980, when the immigration amnesty granted almost three million undocumented immigrants legal immigration status, was one of greater tolerance towards immigration. During this time, most of the migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador were young men who came to work to financially help their families. However, as this was happening, throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century, the United States participated in and sponsored military coups (CIA). The military officials the U.S. sponsored held an extreme right-wing agenda and thus created political, economic, and social instability, unleashing a wave of violence in these countries. The U.S. did this for fear of the emergence of leftist governments that sought to put an end to US imperialism and the theft and extraction of natural resources from Central American countries. As a result of the intervention and instability in these countries, people made and continue to make the decision to emigrate to the United States to escape these situations. Today, the profile of the migrant who seeks to emigrate to the United States from these countries is completely different from that of the profile of the migrant of the twentieth century. There is an emergence of women traveling alone, with their children, or with their families, something that was rare to see just a few decades ago. On their journey, women face new challenges and migration policies that men rarely experienced when they traveled. Despite this, women continue to migrate with the desire to flee the violence and poverty of their native countries and fulfill the American dream.

The Role of Cultural Construction in Health: An Investigation of

Prescriptive Norms and Empirical Use of Alcohol and

Tobacco in the United States and Argentina

Gabriela Christensen

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

Science is often viewed simply as science, utilizing logic, reasoning, and clear-cut standards, even when applied to human health. However, that viewpoint may be missing a very key, dynamic component: culture. In looking at the authoritative health guidelines and societal factors influencing alcohol and tobacco use in the United States and Argentina, one can observe ways in which the health decisions made in these national cultural spaces may in fact be culturally constructed. While governmental health guidelines in both countries publicize similar warnings regarding alcohol and tobacco use, empirically there are differences in drinking and smoking habits and attitudes between the two countries, suggesting the role of culture in constructing these health identities. A vast range of factors including an economic crisis, widespread European ancestry, the typical living situations of college students, product placement in advertising and movies, and the attitudes of medical professionals all can play a contributing role in the norms for both alcohol and tobacco use in Argentina. Understanding the cultural context and construction of the health identities of the United States and Argentina can have lasting impacts on determining how to improve global health going forward.

The Manifestation of Bilingualism and Biculturalism Within

An Individual: An Investigation of Literary Works By

Bilingual and Bicultural Authors

Maggie Cassidy

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

Bilingual biculturals experience cultural interference on an individual level daily. The definitions of bilingualism and biculturalism are distinct from one another, yet intertwined and difficult to pinpoint. I am investigating how individuals manage the challenges of being bilingual and bicultural. Essentially bilingual bicultural individuals either try to synthesize the two languages and cultures through combining them or allowing them to exist, or they try to separate the two. However, their impacts on an individual and their identity can be elucidated through writing style and topic of literary works, especially the phenomenon of code switching or frame switching within a single text. Education is pivotal in shaping the impacts of bilingualism and biculturalism, as individuals internalize how to manage two distinct languages and cultures. The question arises as to whether two languages and cultures can truly coexist within an individual.

The Figure of Cesar Chaves: How It Helps and Hurts the Chicano Community

Stephanie Cerda-Ocampo

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

In this paper I intend to reconsider the figure of César Chávez for the Chicano community. The creation and propagation of a community’s identity involves different aspects. Considering Itamar Even-Zohar and Eugen Weber, I highlight the importance of how a community is created and then reinforced through education, organized religion, and governmental processes. César Chávez is a symbol, and idol for the Chicano community, and you cannot talk about the Chicano community without talking about César Chávez. César Chávez was an activist for the Chicano community and was one of the first leaders who paved the way for the future Chicano efforts. Throughout the years, Chávez’s figure became salient within the Chicano community, as schools and streets were named in his honor. Now, we read books, and watch movies written about him. However, little is known about his projects: “Illegals Campaign” and “Wet Lines.” While César Chávez was an iconic activist for Mexican American farm workers, he forcibly prevented undocumented Mexicans from crossing the border. In the 60s and 70s, was the start of Chicano movement, as efforts to resist and combat racism in the United States. Thus, I argue that Cesar Chavez glorification might have been necessary for the Chicano community in the 60s and 70s, however, in current times we are at a point where we can and should reconsider the problematic figure of César Chávez in the Chicano community.

The Creation and Persistence of (Inaccurate) Dominant Narratives: National and Sub-National Cultural Identities in Peru

Kyle Fields

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

While our identities may appear to be independently created, that is often not the case. In Peru, as in much of Latin America, cultural and national identities that formed under Spanish colonial rule continued into the post-independence years. Nineteenth century authors created narratives of cultural and national identity that used “otherness” to delineate who was a proper member of society, and the categorization of separate identities remained entrenched in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In the case of Peru, separate identities based on geographic regions (the coast, the mountains, and the rainforest) and ethnic background (indigenous, afro-Peruvian, European) have persisted despite enormous differences within these groups and significant harm caused by the dominant narrative that pits groups against each other. Although the dominant narratives have largely stayed the same, the critics and their methods of criticism have not. Despite these adjustments, this paper aims to display the lackluster nature of all dominant narratives examined. The thesis of this paper is that the dominant narratives regarding cultural identity in Peru were incapable of capturing the social reality of Peru, as the narratives presented by authors did not consider the intersections of marginalized identities and cultures in Peru.

In this work, I base my analysis on the theories of nation- and identity-building from Ninian Smart, David Kertzer, Benedict Anderson, and Itamar Even-Zohar. I then present the dominant narratives regarding Peruvian culture, as told by four of the country’s most famous and influential authors: Ricardo Palma (1833-1919), José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930), José María Arguedas (1911-1969), and Mario Vargas Llosa (1936-present). Each of these Peruvian authors had different perspectives on what it meant to be Peruvian, and many of them critiqued their predecessors’’ work. While I will trace the trends in the dominant narrative of identity in Peru, I will then use more modern sources to evaluate whether any of these authors truly captured the Peruvian reality in their works. Finally, I will conclude with proposed solutions for removing the disadvantages currently hampering the mountains and rainforest of Peru, which lag behind the dominant coastal region. Furthermore, I will extend the breadth of analysis as I describe the potential impacts that these geographic and/or geopolitical divides have on other countries and regions.

How Has Chile’s Implementation of Free Market Economics Affected Both the Economic Structure of Chile and Latin America But Also the Social Climate of the Country?

Charlie Olson

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

Since the beginning of the Pinochet regime in Chile, the country drastically changed both economically and socially. As a result, it is important to understand how this change in government control affected the country and neighboring countries. The shift from nationalist economic perspectives to a free market economy, implemented by the Chicago Boys, represented an important turning point for Chile. They were no longer a closed country. Instead, Chile opened its economy, not only to external operations, but also to external influences. An open economy now encouraged neoliberal ideologies to expand their economic reach. From Allende to Pinochet, government intervention decreased, and capital flows and markets were deregulated. This rapid shift to a new economic and social structure inevitably created support and opposition to Pinochet and the government. This document aims to understand how Pinochet implemented the Chicago Boys and how citizens reacted to the change. Furthermore, since Chile was the first country in Latin America to change its economic structure to a free market, it is important to understand what influence Chile had on other Latin American countries. I hypothesize two things: 1) the implementation of the free market economy in Chile positively impacted the economy not only of Chile but also of the surrounding countries, creating an effect of trade liberalization throughout Latin America, and 2) the sudden change in the economic structure and the government created two sides within the country, one that is eager to reap the benefits of free trade, and one that was negatively impacted by the Pinochet change.

To What Extend Do the Different National Culture Planning Projects in the Iberian Peninsula and Non-Iberian Sources Display Similar Culture Planning Tools in Search of Greater

National Unity?

Syndey Olstein

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

This expository paper aims to explain the transference of culture between the Iberian Peninsula and non-Iberian sources, specifically France. I hypothesize that in looking at the trajectory of language institutions in the European context, it is clear that there is a great deal of borrowing the tools of culture planning between the Iberian Peninsula and France. In the European context, there appears to be significant traffic of language planning models between distinct cultures. I will use theories such as culture planning, laws of cultural interference, and language purity to establish background regarding the actual phenomenon of language institutionalization and the importance of language as a cultural tool. This will then provide the proper insight for me to delve into the timeline of the transference of language academies between the Iberian Peninsula and France. In chronological order, the implementation of the Royal Academy systems in France, Spain, and peripheral Spanish regions will be discussed as a real-world case of cultural transference. Finally, the peripheral Spanish academies will be analyzed in their relation to the extreme marginalization faced by the regions by Castile, highlighting just how important language is to national identity.

Language Planning and the Case of Catalonia:

How Can Language Planning Revive a Suppressed

National Identity?

Olivia Painchaud

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

Language planning and the classification of languages as one with decreased cultural value relates to nationalism and the fight for national identity. Language has a significant influence over national identity, and when language is defined as useless or without importance, there are great consequences to national identity. Language planning is a very important process in the history or Catalonia. The repression of Catalonia at the hands of Franco, in order to create a national identity of Spain that was homogenous, presents great efforts to demonize and repress languages that are not Castilian. As a result, the Catalan language was persecuted and negatively classified as a dialect without national strength. However, the Catalonia region is now making a resurgence in its culture and national identity through language planning of Catalan in education policy. In this investigation, I argue two things, 1) that Franco used language planning to negatively define the national identity of Catalonia, and 2) that due to the desire to preserve culture and nationalism of Catalonia, the region is making a comeback through language planning of Catalan in education policy.

Resistance in Vieques and the Movement Towards

Puerto Rican Independence

Mateo Vazquez

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

The foundations of a nation are extremely important to understand how and why nations are in certain situations. Using the elements of cultural planning developed by Evan-Zohar and Renan this study seeks to explain this relationship within Puerto Rico and the resistance that they have demonstrated towards the United States with an emphasis on this relationship during the Vieques conflict. Within Puerto Rico there has been sentiment for decades on the idea of independence and separation from the United States. However, through the media relations, cultural relations and the interactions of the United States especially within Vieques during the 1990’s there is a cultural and political resistance that has existed and only grown throughout the years. This project seeks to identify and understand the elements of cultural planning that contributed to the resistance between the United States and Puerto Rico as a result of the Vieques incident. Lastly, demonstrate how this resistance has revitalized the movement for independence and become an important part of Puerto Rico’s transition, and how leaders of the push for independence have used Vieques as a vehicle in their cause.

To What Degree Were Mussolini’s Original Ideas of Fascism

Preserved in the Argentine Dirty War?

Cole Wells

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

This paper aims to address the often overlooked preservation of Mussolini’s fascist ideas in the ideology that drove The Dirty War in Argentina. I argue that through the ideas of the Transfer of Ideology, the ideas of fascism were successfully preserved and then exported. I argue the importance of the Gladio networks in the preservation of fascist ideology, allowing for an eventual export to Argentina, which both regionally and specifically was an ideal target for fascism. I will explore the modification of fascism in Peronism, and whether it reverted to its original unmodified ideas, or whether it remained in this new perception during The Dirty War.

A Reconstruction of the Construction of Honduran Identity

Cristhian Zaldivar

Advisor: Dr. Thomas Harrington

Major: Hispanic Studies

This paper will deal with my own search for knowledge of my own culture since I was born in Honduras but moved to the United States as a child. With this said, I have gaps in my Honduran history with my consciousness of wanting to know what I have forgotten and what I want to reclaim culturally. Therefore, in this paper, I am enacting a reconstruction of what I should have learned and furthermore what I have lost touch with by residing in the United States.

Cultural interference affects the development of people’s identity when they live in other countries not native to theirs. Cultural interference is strange but not uncommon in the lives of people within the United States. Cultural interference is an action and effect that interferes with a person’s culture. This cultural interference can be determined through customs, celebrations, languages, music, food, manners, etc. It should be noted that consciously or unconsciously one can face different cultural interferences, especially in the United States. Socially, politically and economically, cultural inference has been established in the United States not only by the migration of different people in the world. But through resources, foods, traditions, celebrations, sports, etc; that make this country rich in its development of identity and culture. That is why based on my experience I want to analyze how cultural interference through language, food, and celebrations has affected my identity with the passage of time consciously or unconsciously in the United States based on its socio-cultural style. What effect has this cultural interference had on my own origin of cultural identity? At a colonial level and a specialized place since there is a variety of influences such as geographically, sociocultural and migratory cultural history. On a personal level, is it positive or negative to have cultural interference?

Italian Studies

Map Away! Representing and Understanding Landscapes in Italian Literature and Culture

Tessa Endresen, Guy Junkins, & Madelene McNulty

Advisor: Professor Dario Del Puppo

Major: Italian Studies

Students in the combined seminar Italian 314/401 this semester have been studying Italian literature from the origins (13^th C) to the present. To better gather the threads of such a broad survey, students have been using StoryMap digital software to “map” narrative episodes, poems, and especially their own interpretations of some foundational texts of Italian literature and culture. Besides “mapping” literary works, students will write a concluding reflection paper on their experiences. Students will share some of their maps with others at the senior presentations and will discuss a few of their conclusions. What have we learned about the representation of landscapes in Italian literature; that is, how have Italian writers and poets throughout the ages used landscapes in their works to convey meaning? Does using StoryMap help us understand better the nature of narrative and poetic representation? By extension, how has this course affected our perceptions and understanding of the landscapes we inhabit? After explaining the differences between landscape, nature, environment, and territory, as well as other theoretical constructs, students will share a few of their StoryMaps of different texts and discuss their progress and learning experiences throughout the semester.

Plan B

French & Arabic

A Stranger in Exile: Land Expropriation and Identity

Struggle in L’Étranger

Henry Wu

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: Plan B – French and Arabic

While the pied-noir writer Albert Camus has usually been depicted as either a “French writer” or an “anticolonial critic,” there are few more nuanced readings of his ambivalent standpoint toward the colonized population and territory of French Algeria. This thesis explores one of his most famous novels, L’Étranger (The Stranger, 1942), in order to elucidate the ways in which the colonial regime affects the material features of the land and the mental state of its inhabitants. In particular, this thesis examines the alienation of Meursault, the pied-noir protagonist, by exploring how the pied-noir experience is impacted by two central facets of colonization: the appropriation of land and the loss of identity. Firstly, this project examines how the historical struggle over Algerian land relates to the psychological crisis of Meursault. Secondly, this thesis examines the link between the judicial system of colonialism and Meursault’s loss of humanity in his interactions with others. His isolation leads him to question his identity as part of the pied-noir community. Through natural imagery and Meursault’s interactions with other characters, this narrative reveals that the descendants of colonizing populations and indigenous Arabs are both victims of colonization in different ways, and yet are consistently pitted against each other as rivals.

Plan B

French & German

Universalizing the Women’s Voice: Gendered Understandings of French and German Romantic Poetry

Mimi MacKilligan

Advisor: Professor Blase Provitola

Major: Plan B – French and German

Contemporary French feminist literary critics have debated whether the category of woman is an empowering or limiting paradigm through which to analyze women writers. Hélène Cixous coined the term “feminine writing [écriture féminine]” in order to link femininity to a radical particularity, whereas Monique Wittig has asserted that this concept confines women writers to their minority identity rather than allowing them to be read universally. Such discussions serve as a useful lens through which to analyze women writers who grappled with their gendered position far before the advent of 20^th-century feminism.

Despite the abundance of woman romantic poets in the 19^th century, Marceline Desbordes-Valmore and Annette von Droste-Hülshoff are the only ones to be welcomed into the French and German literary canons, respectively. Far from universalizing women’s experiences, their canonization paradoxically marginalizes them: male poets characterize Desbordes-Valmore’s oeuvre as “feminine poetry” in such a way that sidelines her contemporaries, and Droste-Hülshoff’s writing never mentions women. However, their poems demonstrate an awareness of these issues, and their complex self-conceptions stand in contrast to the simplistic identity of “woman writer” that others assign to them. Desbordes-Valmore’s « À celles qui pleurent » (1843) and « Une lettre de femme » (1860) address an emerging community of women writers, and Droste-Hülshoff’s « Das Spiegelbild » (1844) expresses an androgynous individuality. Both resist their classification as “women writers” by asserting their individuality and universality in the male-dominated literary canon, thus contributing to a proto-feminist literary discourse.

World Literature & Culture Studies

The Spanish Absence and Italian Presence in the Porteño Fin-de Siècle Identity Myths

Martina De Robertis

Advisor: Professor Thomas Harrington

Major: World Literature and Culture Studies

In this project, I focus on identifying the reasoning behind the evident and persisting alienation from the Buenos Aires Argentinean to its motherland, Spain. Consequently, this Spanish absence makes room for the convenient idealizing of the Italian immigrant, the figure which the Porteño will decide identify with even until today. This dynamic takes place on the end of the nineteenth century, period in which Argentinean leaders proposed the redefinition of the identity of a modern nation. Under the leadership of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento and Juan Bautista Alberdi, the construction of the Argentine identity is made up of a colonial resentment that awakens a fanaticism for everything that comes from modern Europe – but non-Hispanic.

First, I will explore the theories of Anderson and Weber, on which Argentine leaders are based for the construction of their culture, and how they carry them out in the Argentine scenario at the end of the century. I will provide the reasoning that becomes the Buenos Aires character composed of anti-Spaniardism, and instead prioritize a great Italian influence. Famous figures such as Jorge Luis Borges illustrate and evaluate how these tendencies are fervently present in linguistic terms, leading to a conclusion of how this dichotomy still prevails today.

The Portrayal of the Struggle with Conservatism of Arabs

in Diaspora

James Roche

Advisor: Professor Rosario Hubert

Major: World Literature and Culture Studies

This project seeks to analyze and provide commentary on primary sources portraying Arabs in diaspora and their experiences with conservatism as well as contextualizing these representations using reputable secondary sources. The research conducted focused on Hanan al-Shaykh’s novel titled Only in London as well as Ramy Youssef’s television series titled Ramy. These fictional representations were dissected in tandem with several secondary sources in order to understand the impact that the struggle with conservative beliefs and expectations has on different aspects of the lives of Arabs in diaspora. Firstly, the project considers religion and the conservative obligations and stereotypes that accompany it in the selected works. The following sections address similar conservative expectations and biases for family life, romantic life, and language, respectively. Comparisons are made between these experiences for people in North America, Europe, and South America as well as before and after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. The project is not meant to comment on the veracity or realism of these works, but to analyze them alongside factual histories and qualitative and quantitative observations.

LACS Senior Thesis Writers 2021

French

German Studies

Hispanic Studies

Italian Studies

Plan B – French and Arabic

Plan B – French and German

World Literature & Culture Studies

French

GERMAN Studies

Hispanic Studies

Italian Studies

Plan B

French & Arabic

Plan B

French & German

World Literature & Culture Studies

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