Three women and an unmarked map: a literary journey through Argentina and Chile

This thesis interweaves the lives and works of three Latin American women writers – Victoria Ocampo, Alfonsina Storni and Gabriela Mistral – into a travel narrative undertaken as part of a research project. The journey begins in Glasgow, Scotland and takes the reader as far as Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Santiago, exploring the legacies left by Ocampo, Storni and Mistral. Through a variety of interviews, encounters and experiences, against the backdrop of political unrest of 2002/3, a colourful tapestry unravels to reveal why and how these three women made such a profound impact on their people and countries. The researcher/traveller was able to explore culture, custom and history through the generous hospitality of local artists China Zorrilla, Monica Ottino and Eduardo Paz Leston. The narrative recalls relationships shared between Victoria Ocampo and Virginia Woolf, Jorge Luis Borges and Graham Greene. Questions of class, society and the after effects of Argentina’s Dirty War are considered, and Chile’s past is investigated through the open testimonies of present day Chileans. The researcher/traveller learns 9sometimes the hard way) valuable lessons about how to survive as a twenty-something woman travelling on her own and reflects on the changes time has imposed, not only on south America but also on herself. The focus on the ‘inner journey’ is vital to the overall theme of women and the sense of self. By staying in youth hostels an element of the backpacker’s subculture is incorporated into the overall story, which in turn surfaces as a parallel theme. The narrative is broken up into forty-one chapters which are divided into two separate sections; one relating to Argentina and Uruguay, the other to Chile. The section on Argentina and Uruguay makes up the majority of the text, while the section on Chile can be interpreted as an extended epilogue. Both sections are completely unique in terms of circumstance and material but complement each other in their preoccupations with the troubled terrain of gender, writing and travel

Loss, memory and nostalgia in popular song :thematic aspects and theoretical approaches

PhD ThesisThe aim of this thesis is to study the ways loss is reflected in popular music and in the discourse surrounding popular music. The project attempts to create a dialogue between theorists of loss and memory working in various disciplines and those working in and around popular music (musicians, critics, academics). It also recognises the vital role of loss in revolution (and vice versa) and attends to revolutionary moments, or events, not least the `event' of rock 'n' roll. It proceeds from the idea that, while creativity is a crucial aspect of the production and reception (or receptive production) of popular music, creativity often takes the form of a response, or set of responses, to loss. While rooted in popular music studies, the project reflects a desire to look outside the Anglophone tradition and includes case studies of a few music genres - Portuguese fado, Cuban nueva trova, Chilean nueva canciön - that exist in a place between popular music studies and ethnomusicology. It also studies three areas more familiar to Anglophone popular music studies: rock 'n' roll, black protest music in America and punk/post-punk in Britain. Methodologically, the thesis draws on popular music studies, philosophy and cultural theory in an attempt to suggest ways that these disciplines can inform each other.Scholarship, Arts and Humanities Research Council

Utopian Dreams, National Realities: Intellectual Cooperation and the League of Nations

Utopian Dreams, National Realities: Intellectual Cooperation and the League of Nations chronicles the work of the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (CICI). This dissertation demonstrates how the CICI’s utopian vision of international peace was actively challenged by national tensions and agendas in the interwar period. It examines the idealistic goals of the movement by focusing on the narratives and motivations of key committee members as they worked toward their own ideas of peace. The challenge of nationalism is illustrated through an analysis of major disagreements between CICI members as well as through biographical case studies of lesser-known members. The pursuit of “moral disarmament,” or the process of changing mentalities towards war, was a central component of the CICI’s work. Both education and film were envisioned as ways to influence the public and engender anti-war sentiment. This work argues that the League of Nations’ conception of internationalism was Eurocentric and moral disarmament was formulated within an Anglo-American context. Both of these limitations narrowed the influence of the CICI’s peace work to certain geographical areas of influence and effectively marginalized less powerful nations and individuals within it

The Marquis de Cuevas : pushing the boundaries of self

textChilean dance impresario Marquis George de Cuevas was born Jorge Cuevas Bartholin (1885-1961) and is best remembered as a fashionable socialite of the 1940s and 50s who married heiress Margaret Rockefeller Strong and founded several ballet companies in Europe and America in the wake of the great Ballet Russes era. This dissertation examines how Cuevas cultivated his fictionalized public persona, an identity that is essentially queer on several levels.vCuevas participated, reflected and resisted the several labels that were imposed on him. As Spanish aristocrat, American citizen, international ballet patron, Parisian socialite, and heir to the Russian dance avant-gardes, Cuevas distanced himself from his Chilean origins. Proud of having achieved “real” success by triumphing abroad, however, Cuevas was always acutely aware of his shortcomings as a foreigner. Classed as an eccentric other, Cuevas participates in the larger discourse of cosmopolitanism, engaging with the issue of what it means to be foreign in the cities of Paris, New York and Santiago de Chile. The four chapters that comprise this dissertation explore the ways that boundaries of class, sexuality, gender, race, and citizenship are broken, or momentarily disrupted by Cuevas. I situate Cuevas’s foreign aspirations in the context of the South American obsession with Europe, and Paris in particular. I also examine how Cuevas inhabits the roles of dandy and flâneur in an attempt to fit in the modern urban context of Paris. Anxiety regarding the figure of the foreigner and social upstart is perceived in the arguable failure of Cuevas’s best-remembered social event, a grand costume ball that was to gather the most fashionable men and women of the international Café Society. Perhaps Cuevas’s most successful project was the making of his own chameleonic identity, which emerges in the letters addressed to French-Romanian author Princess Marthe Bibesco, who wrote the libretto for the ballet initially entitled The Bird Wounded by an Arrow, which also crucially establishes Cuevas’s artistic manifesto. An account of Cuevas’s life and works treads into the swampy terrain of fiction, and this dissertation offers a literary approach that considers Cuevas as a figure of legend.Comparative Literatur

Democracy on the Wall: Street Art of the Post-Dictatorship Era in Chile

This book is freely available in an open access edition thanks to TOME (Toward an Open Monograph Ecosystem)—a collaboration of the Association of American Universities, the Association of University Presses, and the Association of Research Libraries—and the generous support of The Ohio State University Libraries. Learn more at the TOME website, which can be found at the following web address: http://openmonographs.org.The return from clandestine anonymity: muralist brigades, revamped and renewed -- Open-sky museums and the decolonization of urban space -- Tagging the Chilean city: graffiti as individualized and collective praxis -- Public interventions and gender disruptions: graffiteras' urban transformations -- Conclusion: Transnational incursions in Chilean street art: globalizing the local and localizing the global

Politicizing the reader in the American lyric-epic: Walt Whitman\u27s Leaves of Grass and Pablo Neruda\u27s Canto general

Both Walt Whitman and Pablo Neruda wanted to create epic works that would distinguish American literature from the literary traditions of Europe, works that would grow organically from the native landscapes and peoples of the Americas. Part of their projects included creating works that would act as political sourcebooks for their cultures. Whitman wanted to foster a democratic culture in the United States through writing a grand poetic work, while Neruda wanted to create a communist culture in Latin America through an epic work. Soon into the project Whitman realized that the traditional epic was not a suitable form for his task, so in attempting to construct a new form, he created the lyric-epic in his Leaves of Grass. Since Neruda believed that Whitman was the first authentic literary voice of the Americas and that the lyric-epic was a native form, he used Leaves of Grass as a paradigm when writing his Canto general. In separate discussions of each work, this study examines the politics of both writers and why they wanted to write political sourcebooks; their use of camaraderie/fraternity to tie readers together for democratic or communist governments; their rewriting of history as redemption and as the progression of democracy or communism; and lastly, their endeavors to teach readers to read as democrats or communists. Ultimately, the study argues that Neruda and Whitman were the foundations and the peaks of their literary traditions and that studying Whitman\u27s and Neruda\u27s lyric-epics reveals a common form for poetic epic attempts in the Americas after Whitman; moreover, it argues that even while Neruda used Leaves of Grass as a paradigm, he wrote a work of equal standing to it in Canto general

DISTINCTION, CULTURE, AND POLITICS IN MEXICO CITY'S MIDDLE CLASS, 1890-1940.

This dissertation looks at Mexico City's middle class from 1890 to 1940. During the latter part of the Porfirio Díaz administration (1876-1910), the middle class grew as the city became a commercial and administrative center. Sociologists both criticized and praised the middle class and its role in the country's future. Members of the middle class distinguished themselves from the Porfirian elite and lower classes through bodily behaviors learned from urban conduct manuals and short stories. The Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) was a devastating blow to the middle class, which rallied around issues of housing, employment, and transportation. In the neighborhood of Santa María la Ribera, residents petitioned for urban services and infrastructure improvements. Continuing a long history of civic engagement, the city's middle class publicly organized in response to the anti-clerical policies of the Plutarco Calles administration (1924-1928). Economic and political difficulties hindered the efforts of post-revolutionary municipal and federal leaders to win state loyalty from Mexico City's public employees. At the same time, new mass media, fashions, and popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s challenged existing class distinctions and gender norms. Educational opportunities opened up wider prospects for the middle class, or those seeking middle-class status. Technical schools and the National Polytechnic School offered one set of possibilities. The National Preparatory School and the National University offered another. The Lázaro Cárdenas administration (1936-1940) aimed to unite the middle class and the working class. As the state bureaucracy grew in the 1930s, Cárdenas brought public employees into a close relationship with the National Revolutionary Party (PNR), which later became the Party of the Mexican Revolution (PRM). By the end of the Cárdenas era, many sectors of the middle class felt politically marginalized. In contrast, middle-class public employees became beneficiaries of the country's new corporate state