Author

Julia Luján

Date of Award

Fall 2020

Document Type

Open Access Dissertation

Department

Comparative Literature

First Advisor

Mercedes López

Second Advisor

Andrew Rajca

Abstract

In my dissertation project I intend to push the boundaries, by placing them in dialogue with each other, of both the Black Atlantic and the Hispanic Transatlantic Studies while exploring the cultural production of two groups that are generally excluded from the scholarly research done on the African Diaspora: U.S. Afro-Latinos and Afro-Argentines. While Black Atlantic Studies focuses on the Anglophone world and Hispanic Transatlantic Studies focuses on the Spanish-speaking world, they both ignore the two groups mentioned above as they complicate the boundaries of these fields by sitting at the intersections of race, language, and location.

Furthermore, I explore issues of racial and gendered identities as they are constructed at the individual, national, and transnational levels, teasing out their significance in the construction of national and transnational imaginaries perpetuated by the dominant social discourse and practices in the United States and Argentina.

My project seeks to make a new and innovative contribution by contending that these fields perpetuate a linguistic world division implemented in colonial times and, thus, demonstrate the lack of a paradigm shift after the independence of the Spanish and British colonies. Then, we cannot talk about a ‘postcolonial’ world but we must talk about a ‘coloniality of power’ within which the imaginary and material construction of the world system is kept in place by global hegemonic discourses on race and identity.

Rights

© 2020, Julia Luján

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