{"id":9299,"date":"2010-10-01T04:06:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-01T04:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=9299"},"modified":"2010-10-01T04:06:28","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T04:06:28","slug":"dangerous-crossroads-mestizaje-in-the-u-s-latinoa-imaginary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=9299","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous crossroads: Mestizaje in the U.S. Latino\/a imaginary"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dangerous crossroads: Mestizaje in the U.S. Latino\/a imaginary<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Rice University
\nDecember 2007
\n197 pages
\nPublication ID: 3309864<\/p>\n

John L. Escobedo<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of English
\nUniversity of Colorado, Boulder<\/em><\/p>\n

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy<\/em><\/p>\n

My dissertation interrogates mestizaje<\/a><\/em> and nationalism to rethink academic tendencies that construct resistant methodologies and singular national representations of hybrid theories and racial identities. To ground this argument, chapters one and two analyze how nationalism compromises current theoretical and feminist uses of mestizaje<\/em>. The introductory chapter traces the influence of Latin American cultural theorists such as Jos\u00e9 Vasconcelos<\/a> (1925) and Fernando Ortiz<\/a> (1940) on contemporary U.S. Latino\/a cultural critics. I argue that by selectively borrowing theoretical elements from Ortiz and Vasconcelos, U.S. Latino\/a scholars unintentionally consolidate divergent Latino\/a histories as well as ignore issues of nation building, class differences, and racial tensions to promote a unitary discourse of subversive mestizaje<\/em>. Likewise, my analysis of Jovita Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s<\/a> novel Caballero<\/em> (1930) reveals how Gonz\u00e1lez\u2019s feminist tactics counteract Mexico\u2019s<\/a> patriarchal oppression of women by going against traditional feminist themes esteemed in Chicano\/a Studies. For Gonz\u00e1lez, nationalist tropes of indigenous curanderismo<\/em> (spirituality) and magical realism insufficiently respond to the needs of oppressed Mexican American women.<\/p>\n

The final two chapters evaluate the ramifications of constructing unitary racial identities of whiteness and blackness. My final investigation uncovers the existence of ethnicities within North American racial categorizations of whiteness and blackness that provide new insights to mestizaje\u2019s<\/em> disruption of ordered classifications of race in the United States. Chapter three argues that the southeastern European immigrant experience of racial inclusion and exclusion from Anglo Saxon whiteness allowed Mar\u00eda Amparo Ruiz de Burton<\/a> to play off of new conceptions of whiteness in an evolving imaginary of white U.S. mestizaje<\/em> to write her novels The Squatter and the Don<\/a><\/em> (1885) and Who Would Have Thought It?<\/a><\/em> (1872). Chapter four examines the rise of the New Negro<\/a> Movement during the Harlem Renaissance<\/a> as a cultural event that required the erasure of individuals in the black community who did not mirror the collective identity of African Americans. This chapter specifically studies Puerto Rican archivist Arthur A. Schomburg<\/a> as a figure who broadened the conception of the New Negro to recognize the intellectual participation and contribution of Afro Caribbeans to the Harlem Renaissance.<\/p>\n

Read the entire dissertation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dangerous crossroads: Mestizaje in the U.S. Latino\/a imaginary Rice University December 2007 197 pages Publication ID: 3309864 John L. Escobedo, Assistant Professor of English University of Colorado, Boulder A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Doctor of Philosophy My dissertation interrogates mestizaje and nationalism to rethink academic tendencies that construct […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,838,1196,8,20],"tags":[55,3989,3988,3815],"class_list":["post-9299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latincarib","category-dissertations","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-harlem-renaissance","tag-john-escobedo","tag-john-l-escobedo","tag-rice-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}