DEFENDED DISSERTATIONS (from most recent to 2004)
NB. Though the university uses a binary Pass/Fail scale, the Hispanic Studies faculty have agreed to use the common descriptor “with special distinction” for particularly meritorious dissertations.
2022-2023
David Cortés
La nueva argumentación de Twitter: El cambio de paradigma retórico y la independencia de Catalunya en tuits.
Director: Dr. Yanira Paz
Kelly Ferguson
"Truth in Horror: Cinematic Representations of Social Violence in Spain, Latin America, and the Latinx US"
Director: Dr. Dierdra Reber
Adriana Rivera Vargas
"El exilio heredado de Jordi Soler: la narrativa de los descendientes de los refugiados republicanos españoles en México"
Directors: Dr's Rueda and Carvalho
Jakob Turner (with special distinction)
"Forum on 'Conquest': Past-Present Politics of Coloniality in Cinema on Latin America"
Director: Dr. Dierdra Reber
Ana Álvarez Guillén (with special distinction)
"Thinking Across Bodies: Percepción woolfiana y giro material en la cuentística de Rodoreda, Roig, Alós y Riera"
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Silvia Encinas (with special distinction)
"Mujeres en crisis: posturas divergentes frente al neoliberalismo."
Dir. Carmen Moreno-Nuño
Alley Santos-Martin (with special distinction)
"Queer(ing) Confessions: Representations of Female Non-(Hetero) Normativity in Texts of the Spanish Silver Age (1898-1939)"
Dir. Susan Larson
Stephanie Rae Beasley
"Mapping Memory: A Study of Locational Memory in the First-Person Narrative of Three U.S. Latino Writers"
Dir. Susan Carvalho
Brittany Frodge (with special distinction)
"Posthuman Ethics in the Science Fiction of Rosa Montero and Rita Indiana"
Dir. Ana Rueda
Marlee Northcutt
"First-Person Politics: Strategies of Latin/x American Women to Change the Neoliberal Requirements for Empowerment and Inclusion One Share, Like, Subscribe at a Time"
Dir. Dierdra Reber
Sandra Nava Nieto
"Sexualidad, afectos y sociedad: las no monogamías consensuadas (NMC) en la literatura y el cine español"
Dir. Ana Rueda
Álvaro Cuéllar (with special distinction)
"Propuestas de autoría y datación en el teatro de Lope de Vega a la luz de la Inteligencia Artificial"
Dir. Moisés Castillo and Mark Lauersdorf
2021-2022
Patricia María Gamboa
"Álvaro Cunqueiro: la existencia fabulada"
Dir. Ana Rueda
Nietzel Distinguished Visiting Faculty Award: Rexina Vega, University of Vigo
Morgan Stewart (with special distinction)
"The Fantastic Debate: Religion, Ideology, and National Identity in the Short Fiction of Nineteenth-Century Spain"
Dir. Ana Rueda
Daniel Fonfría Perera (with special distinction)
"La representación de la masculinidad en el personaje del policía: cine, televisión y novela española del siglo XXI"
Dir. Carmen Moreno-Nuño
2020-2021
Naiara Porras
"Híbridos, monstruos, cíborgs y posthumanos: la hibridez como herramienta ciberpunk para retomar el control de los cuerpos"
Dir: Susan Larson
Abraham Prades-Mengíbar
"Vidas precarias: crisis económica de 2008 en el cine y la literatura españolas"
Dir: Carmen Moreno-Nuño
Alicia Juncos Zori
"Estrategias populistas: un acercamiento al discurso político español desde la lingüística de corpus"
Dir: Yanira Paz & Mark Lauersdorf
Yorki Encalada Egúsquiza (with special distinction)
"El Bildungsroman femenino meXicano: nuevas perspectivas de la novela de formacion femenina fronteriza"
Dir: Susan Carvalho
Sharrah Lane
"Terminal Youth: The Failure Narrative of the Dysfunctional Family as the Non-Viability of Capitalist Economic Liberalism in Contemporary Latin American Film"
Dir: Dr. Dierdra Reber and Dr. Mónica Díaz
2019-2020
Juan Fernández Cantero
“De Alcalá de Henares a Ciudad de México: ciudades, universidades y preservación del patrimonio histórico”
Dir: Mónica Díaz
Kiersty Lemon
“Complex Ecologies and Unruly Bodies in Rosa Montero’s Speculative Fiction.”
Dir. Carmen Moreno-Nuño
2018-2019
Julia de León
“Encuentro con la precariedad: La reaparición del gitano en el cine documental español de la crisis de 2008.”
Dir: Susan Larson
Lucía Montás
"La ciudad de las letradas: Reescribiendo Santo Domingo en la narrativa femenina urbana dominicana del nuevo milenio"
Dir: Susan Larson
David Delgado López (with special distinction)
“Poéticas minimalistas de la ciudad contemporánea: Iribarren, Mínguez y Del Val.”
Dir. Ana Rueda.
Guillermo Rivas Prado
“De la literature a la danza: folklore, género e identidad nacional en Sab, El sombrero de tres picos, Bodas de sangre y El tango.”
Dir. Ana Rueda.
Jacob Neely (with special distinction)
“Intimate Indigeneities: Aspirational Affective Solidarity in 21st Century Indigenous Mexican Representation.”
Dir. Mónica Díaz.
Johana Pérez-Weisenberger
"El enclave bananero en las novelas centroamericanas de Miguel Angel Asturias, Ramón Amaya Amador y Carlos Luis Fallas."
Dir. Susan Carvalho.
Joshua Hoekstra
iTests: Techxtual Poetics, Authorship and Re-Wreaders in 21st Century Spanish Literature
Dir. Susan Larson
Martha Elena Granados
"Las islas en la literatura castellana de la Baja Edad Media"
Dir. Aníbal Biglieri.
2017
Kevin Sedeño Guillén
Modernidades contra-natura: Crítica ilustrada, prensa periódica y cultura manuscrita en el siglo XVIII americano
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Nietzel Distinguished Visiting Faculty Award: Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, University of Texas at Austin
Francesco Masala Martínez
The Representation of Ecuadorians in Spain: Discourse as the Expression of Power, Racism and Ideology
Directors: Dr. Susan Larson & Dr. Yanira Paz
Fabricio Ferreira Silva
Dictadura y literatura de resistencia: Brasil, Argentina y Cuba
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Joshua Martin (with special distinction)
(B)ordering Texas: The representation of Violence, Nationalism, and Masculine Archetypes in U.S.-Mexico Borderland Novels (1985-2012)
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Lee Kirven (with special distinction)
The Burden of the Past: Spectral History in the Works of Carlos Fuentes: 1962-1980
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Constantin Icleanu
A Case for Empathy: Immigration in Spanish Contemporary Media, Music, Film, and Novels
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
2016
José María Pérez Sánchez:
“Situational Whiteness and Empire in Spanish Film and Literature.”
Director: Dr. Susan Larson.
Angela Marie Postigo:
“Maybe She’s Born with It: Interplay of Beauty and Power in Representations of Latin Female Hierarchy.”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho.
Megan O’Neil:
“Indigenista Heroes and Femmes Fatales: Myth-Making in Latin American Literature and Film.”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
María Jesús López Soriano
"¿Pero tú qué te has creído, que la guerra es una broma?: La seriedad del humor en diferentes representaciones culturales de la Guerra Civil española”
Director: Prof. Carmen Moreno-Nuño.
2015
Matthew J. Wild
Eating Spain: Discourses of National Cuisine Since 1900
Director: Dr. Susan Larson
Brian Cole
Ekphrasis and Avant-Garde Prose in 1920s Spain
Director: Dr. Susan Larson
Gonzalo Hernández Baptista
“Largo viaje en breve: La minificción de Max Aub, María Luisa Elío y José de la Colina en el exilio”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
April JeNé New
“Questioning the Codes: The Novelas of María de Zayas y Sotomayor”
Director: Dr. Moisés Castillo
Ana Pociello Sampériz (with special distinction)
“El despertar de las voces dormidas: La memoria en cuatro novelas sobre mujeres en la guerra civil española y la posguerra”
Director: Dr. Carmen Moreno-Nuño
Grace Martín (with special distinction)
“For the Love of Robots: Latin American Posthuman Science Fiction Between 1960-1999”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Oswaldo Ortegón
“La Trinidad Vallejiana: Política, Religión y Lenguaje en Fernando Vallejo: 1994-2010”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
2014
Whitaker Jordan
“Staging Theseus: The Mythological Image of the Prince in the Comedia of the Spanish Golden Age”
Director: Dr. Moisés Castillo
Sarah Finley
“Acoustic Epistemologies and Aurality in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz”
Co-Directors: Drs. Moisés Castillo and Enrico Mario Santí
Carlos Zamora Zapata
“Crítica contextural: El corazón del instante de Alberto Blanco: ensayo de un método”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
2013
Marta M. Rímolo de Rienzi
“Simulacro, hiperrealidad y post-humanismo: La ciencia ficción de Argentina y España ante el 2000”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Lynn Celdrán
“Letters as Textual Mirrors: The Construction of ´Self´ in Epistolary Fiction by Spanish Women Writers, 1986-2006”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Silvia Roig-Martínez (with special distinction)
“La narrativa de Aurora Bertrana: Compromiso social y género”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Ruth Brown
“Así es la vida: Creative Narratives of Migration in the Post-Gatekeeper Period”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
2012
Elena Aldea
“Retóricas del imperio: El discurso falangista en torno a la guerra (1939-1943)”
Co- Directors: Drs. Ana Rueda and Susan Larson
Wm. Jarrod Brown
“Specters of the Unspeakable: The Rhetoric of Torture in Guatemalan Narrative”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Krissie Butler
“(De)Constructing an Icon: Fidel Castro and Revolutionary Masculinity”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Betsy Dahms
“The Life and Work of Gloria Anzaldúa: An Intellectual Biography”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Mahan Ellison
“Literary Africa: Spanish Reflections of Morocco, Western Sahara and Equatorial Guinea in the Contemporary Novel, 1990-2010”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Paul Roggendorf
“The Representation of Traumatic Realism in the Early Novels of Martín Caparrós”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
2011
Jeff Zamostny
“Faustian Figures: Modernity and Male (Homo)sexualities in Spanish Commercial Literature, 1900-1936”
Director: Dr. Susan Larson
Alice Driver
“Cultural Production and Ephemeral Art: Feminicide and the Geography of Cultural Memory in Ciudad Juárez, 1998-2008”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Matthew Feinberg (with special distinction)
“Lavapiés, Madrid as Twenty-First Century Urban Spectacle”
Co-Directors: Dr. Susan Larson and Dr. Ana Rueda
Adam Glover
“Poetics of Enchantment: Language, Sacramentality, and Meaning in
Twentieth-Century Argentine Poetry”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Diane Burke Moneypenny
“Gastronomy and Otherness in Alfonso X’s Works:
Food Identities in Cartography, Urbanity, Class and Religion”
Director: Dr. Aníbal Biglieri
Claudia Ospina
“Representación de la violencia en la novela del narcotráfico y el cine colombiano de fines del siglo XX”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Rebbecca Pittinger
“Memoryscapes:
Place, Mobility, and Memory in the Post-Dictatorial Southern Cone”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
2010
Carmen Arranz
“Modernity and Women Writers at the Turn of the Century”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Osvaldo Di Paolo (with special distinction)
“Cadáveres en el armario:
el policial palimpséstico en la literatura argentina contemporánea”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Sandra Martin
“Navigating the Crosscurrents of Gendered Migration in Spanish Narrative and Film”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Kristie Bulleit Niemeier
“Dueling, Honor and Sensibility
in Eighteenth-Century Spanish Sentimental Comedies”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Teresa Phillips
"Erotic (R)evolutions:
Corporeality and Subjectivity in the Poetry of Eunice Odio and Ana Istarú"
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
2009
Elizabeth Amaya
“Literatura del Triángulo Norte en la últimas décadas:
Expresión cultural y globalización, 1980-2000”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Ela Molina Morelock
“Miradas que desnudan: Lecturas femeninas de la Revolución Mexicana”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Nadina Olmedo
“Ecos góticos en la novela y el cine del cono sur”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Stephanie Saunders
“(Dis)closure: Unmasking the Tabooed Body in Chilean Literature and Popular Culture”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Ryan Spangler
“The Religion of Poetry: An Evaluation of Spiritual Crisis in the Poetry of José Martí”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Marcela Valencia
“Jorge Pimentel, Hora Cero y la renovación de la poesía peruana”
Co-Directors: Dr. Susan Carvalho and Dr. Dan Reedy
2008
Ismael Artiga
“La conquista de Asia: Profecías y aventuras coloniales del Siglo de Oro español”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda; Co-director Dr. Sherry Velasco
Luciano Cruz
“Imagen, expresión y sentido de lo mulato
en cuatro momentos de la literatura cubana”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Josefina López
“Oralidad, performance y recepción en Santa Teresa de Jesús”
Directors: Dr. Sherry Velasco and Dr. Aníbal Biglieri
J. Javier Puerto Benito
“Ovid's 'Heroides' in Alfonso X's 'General Estoria': Translation, Adaptation and Use of a Classical Work in a Thirteenth-
Century Iberian History of the World”
Director: Dr. Aníbal Biglieri
2007
Laura Hunt
“Exceptionalism and the Construction of Nature
in the Spanish American novela de la selva”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Nino Kebadze (with special distinction)
“Fictions of Surrender:
Romance and Exemplarity in Post-War Spanish Women’s Narratives”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Núria Sabaté-Llobera
“Cuba's Literary Geography in Contemporary Catalan Narrative”
Co-Directors: Dr. Susan Larson and Dr. Susan Carvalho
2006
David Bird
“Unrealized Speculative Models of Cultural Formation in Late 19th and Early 20th Century Spain”
Co-Directors: Dr. Ana Rueda and Dr. Susan Larson
Silvia Casini
“Patagonialismo y el espacio argentino”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Jorge González del Pozo
“Comprometiendo al arte: las drogas en la narrativa y en el cine hispano, 1985-2005”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
William James
“Dependence, Independence and Death: Toward a Psychobiography of Delmira Agustini”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Bryan Pearce-Gonzáles
“Hybridity and the Latino Identity”
Co-Directors: Dr. Susan Carvalho and Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Abbey Poffenberger
“The Boom of Mexican Indigenous Literature: Resistance, Reaffirmation and Revision”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
Inela Selimovic
“Lost and Found in the City: Women and Urban Spaces in the Fiction of Lispector, Eltit, Garro and Valenzuela”
Director: Dr. Dianna Niebylski
2005
Renata Fernández
“Micaela Bastidas en la historia, literatura y cultura peruana: Análisis de sus reconfiguraciones discursivas”
Director: Dr. Daniel Reedy
D. Gene Pace
“Unfettering Confession: Ritual and Performance in Spanish Literature”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda
Alicia Ramírez
“Early Women’s Theater of Spanish America”
Director: Dr. Susan Carvalho
2004
Genny Ballard
“The Implied Reader in the Hispanic Children's Literature of the "EnCuento" Series”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Jeremy Leeds Cass
“Fashioning AfroCuba: Fernando Ortiz and the Advent of Afrocuban Studies, 1906-1957”
Director: Dr. Enrico Mario Santí
Teresa Herrera
“La verbena de la Paloma y el mito popular”
Director: Dr. Ana Rueda