Research master thesis | Literary Studies (research) (MA)
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Valeria Luiselli, in her book-length essay, Los niños perdidos, uses an immigration questionnaire to structure her story of the refugee crisis taking place across the US-Mexico border. In Examen de...Show moreValeria Luiselli, in her book-length essay, Los niños perdidos, uses an immigration questionnaire to structure her story of the refugee crisis taking place across the US-Mexico border. In Examen de mi padre, Jorge Volpi uses the schema of his father’s body to structure his “autopsy”—not only of his father but also of the Mexican nation in the depth of an existential crisis. This thesis studies these two pieces of literary non-fiction through the lens of teaching and the interrogative mood in the “Ithaca” episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses. In “Ithaca,” a question and answer structure subverts the Roman Catholic catechism and its drive toward a single truth, as well as the scientific objectivism which the questions and answers themselves mimic stylistically. To what extent does the question and answer structure subvert the scientific and political discourse in Volpi’s essay in 10 lessons and Luiselli’s essay in 40 questions? I borrow from the methodology of secondary language teaching to explore and order the different types of questions and their linguistic relevance to literary style. How do Joyce’s experiences as a language teacher, using the interrogative mood as a teaching method, influence his literary use of interrogatives? The grammatical progression of the interrogative mood serves as an organizing principle for my own research questions. I argue that Luiselli’s use of the interrogative mood, like Joyce’s in “Ithaca” and Volpi’s in Examen de mi padre evades the determinacy and conclusion of an ending as well as any purely objectivist approach to its subject.Show less
This study investigates interactions between Argentine and Spanish anarchist educationalists at the beginning of the 20th century. Drawing on the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer,...Show moreThis study investigates interactions between Argentine and Spanish anarchist educationalists at the beginning of the 20th century. Drawing on the concepts of transnationalism and cultural transfer, this paper demonstrates that Argentine rationalist educationalism was a transnational phenomenon. Iberian mediators brought the teachings of the Catalan pedagogue Francisco Ferrer to the Southern Cone through physical migration or anarchist media. In Argentina, local anarchists received his alternative educational ideas and adapted them to local socio-political conditions.Show less
This thesis shall address the factors that influenced the development of Nicaragua’s revolutionary movement in order to assess whether the Nicaraguan case fell under the umbrella of the Domino...Show moreThis thesis shall address the factors that influenced the development of Nicaragua’s revolutionary movement in order to assess whether the Nicaraguan case fell under the umbrella of the Domino Theory, or whether it was a legitimate, autonomous national movement that sought national change. In order to best represent this, the National Nicaraguan Literacy Crusade of 1980 shall be employed as a case study, and the reasons behind its implementation and its political use shall be addressed in order to present that, despite foreign influence and the Cold War politics at the time, the revolutionary movement in Nicaragua was the result of an accumulation of national internal factors that resulted from the genuine revolutionary urge within the country.Show less
