Award Date

12-1-2015

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

English

First Committee Member

Vincent Perez

Second Committee Member

Evelyn Gajowski

Third Committee Member

Julia Lee

Fourth Committee Member

Elspeth Whitney

Number of Pages

99

Abstract

In our current age of globalization, multiculturalism is a key component of human relations. Place, when thought of as a geographic concept is more than just coordinates on a map, it is a concentration of a set of social relations. Geographers use this information to see how places are relational to other places. Morrison and Allende are relational because of their consciousness of place especially exhibited in Song of Solomon and Eva Luna. This project examines the disparate histories, politics, and landscapes that both authors emerged from, and argue the complexity of their work stems from thinking geographically, their conscious attempt to imagine their links with the wider world, rather than boxing themselves into genre, or taking a subservient position beside a great canonical “father”. A common pitfall for scholars of the United States is to assume categories of difference or categories of dominance are universal across borders. This is demonstrated in scholarship that aims to compare writers from the United States and writers from Latin America based on the notion that they are marginalized.Scholarship that assumes “marginalization” is the same in North and South America is aiding in another construction of the “other”, by universalizing what Mohanty calls, “the third world difference.” Thinking of the components of a text within a constellation encourages analysis of the relationship between categories of both individual and place identities in their discursive setting. In their imagination of the inter-subjectivity between categories, Allende and Morrison portray power and weakness from all angles. Looking at literature geographically forces us to remove hierarchies and instead draws our attention to the subject’s struggle against their material conditions.

Keywords

gender; place; race; space

Disciplines

Comparative Literature | Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | Gender and Sexuality

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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