UCSB Latin American and Iberian Studies Program

Theses

1980:

  • Helena C. Barreto . “The Life and Times of Fernão Carrilho: A Seventeenth- Century ‘Bandeirante’ of Northeastern Brazil.”
  • Elizabeth Sheldon Greider. “A Case Study of Two Urban Middle-Class Families of Oaxaca, Mexico.”

1984:

  • Suzane Avellano. “Social Conditions and Political Aspirations of the Black Community in Cuba’s Early Republican Period.”

1986:

  •  Daniel Anthony Smith. “Siku Ensemble Music in the Urban Environment: Tradition and Change in the ‘Turgurios” of Lima, Peru.”

1987:

  • Jeanine Anne Mendoza. “Membership in the Portuguese Military Order of Santiago, 1668-1706.”

1990:

  • Timothy Karsten Braatz. “Challenging the Myths: the Revisionist Movement in Mexican-American Historiography.”
  • Ilia Rodriguez. Qual Exam

1991:

  • Teresa Berenhauser Fernandes. “Literary Tradition and Translation: Cummings in Brazil.”
  • Sean S. Fromson. “The Andean Cocaine Trade: the Destabilizing Effects of a Criminal Industry in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia.”

1992:

  • Miguel Angel Reyes (qualifying exam).

1993:

  • Dongyang Hsieh. “Land Reform in Chile, 1965-1989.”
  • Michael Mcloughlin (qualifying exam).

1994:

  • Julianna Cecilia Krolak. “The Influence of American Oil Companies on the Mexican Revolution of 1910.”
  • Kristin Braun (qualifying exam).
  • Peter Haws (qualifying exam).

1995:

  • Douglas M. Goodner. “Of Women Seen But Not Heard”: The Spanish Women in Bernal Díaz del Castillo’s Chronicle of the Conquest of New Spain.”

1996:

  • Mark Hjerpe. “The Evolution of the Land Reform Movement in 20th Century Mexico.”

1997:

  • Lillian Flores. “The Paradox of Elite Coalition and Party Formation: A Comparative Study of the Argentine and Uruguayan Political Systems.”
  • Paul William Moncrief. “The Rise and Decline of the PRI: The Emergence of the PAN and its Impact on Democracy in Mexico.”
  • Adriene Pilon. “Chile: The Art of Mourning.”
  • Vasco Sena (qualifying exam).

1998:

  • Laura Suzanne Weingarten. “Writing for Self-Discovery: Two Mexican-Jewish Women Explore Their Complex Identities.”

1999:

  • Monica Landeros. “Las Cristeras: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Women in the Cristero Rebellion, Mexico 1926-1929.”
  • Michele Lipka. “Filmmaking and the Making of Revolution: Jorge Sanjines, the Ukamau Group, and the New Latin American Cinema.”
  • John Patrick Lyons. “Amaro Velho Cerqueira: A Life in the Service of the Portuguese Crown in the South Atlantic in the Seventeenth Century.”
  • Tina Marie Perez. “The Life and Times of Constantino Barradas; Fourth Bishop of Brazil (1603-1618).”
  • Maribel Roxana Roldán Pérez. “Narratives of Five Guatemalans Residing in Washington, D.C.: Uncovering Through Life Histories the Importance of Cultural and Religious Traditions of Immigrants in the United States.”
  • Anna Belinda Sandoval. “Anguish, Fear, and Motherhood: Madres Angustiadas in the Guatemalan Post Civil War.”

2000:

  • Rafaela Acevedo Field. “”Let the Dead Rest”: The Inquisition Case of Gaspar Mendez de Pineiro, Deceased Crypto-Jew in New Spain, 1642-1649.”
  • Edwin López. “Race and Revolution: Indigenous Peasants and Reform in Guatemala, 1944-1954.”
  • Gregorio Luna (qualifying exam).
  • Ana Rivadeneyra. “Poor Women’s Struggles Against Gender Inequality: A Case Study from Urban Venezuela.”
  • Claudia Terrill (qualifying exam).
  •  Amy Vogel. “Blaming Burnham for Guyana’s Decline.”
  •  Marcelo Warkentin. “The Nationalization of the GermanRussian Mennonite Schools in Brazil, 1930-1945.”
  • Vanessa Ziegler. “The Rise and Fall of Fulgencio Batista in Cuban Politics.”

2001:

  • Elena Olivera. “We Belong to the Land: Access and Ownership in Southern Colorado.”
  •  Yolanda Swoopes-Jiménez. “The Brazilian Popular Church and its Role in the Formation of Black Consciousness in Brazil.”

2002:

  • María Carmen Lozano Ibañez. “The Sounds of Immigration: Cultural and Legal Discourse in Spanish Pop Music and Las Leyes de Extranjería (Spanish Immigration Laws).”
  • Amelia Maureen Layne. “Communicative Competence in the University Language Classroom.”
  • Anil Mukerjee. “The Provedor-Mor da Fazenda in Colonial Brazil: Lourenco de Brito Correia (1659-1662).”
  • Graciela Reynosa. “The Corrido as a (Re)Interpretation of Mexican Society: Los Tigres del Norte as Socio-political Discourse.”

2003:

  •  Michael Efren Peyron. “Devotion or Dissatisfaction?: Lucas Alamán and the Catholic Church.”
  •  Mary Aileen Seliger. “El Exilio y sus Angeles Enigmáticos en la Narrativa de Cristina Peri Rossi y de Juan Goytisolo.”
  • Kevin P. Smith. “Here I Stand! Don Carlos of Texcoco, the Inquisition, and the End of Aztec Resistance, 1539.”
  •  Matthew A. Tompkins. “Evangelical Protestantism in a Highland Maya Community: Reshaping the Religious, Social, and Economic Landscape of Santa Clara La Laguna, Sololá, Guatemala.”

2004:

  • Ryan Alaniz. “Addiction to the Bean: Guatemala’s Historical Dependency and the Current Coffee Crisis.”
  • Jason Brian Ford. “Alternative Representations of Sexuality in Post-Franco Catalan Cinema.”
  • Flor Martinez. “The Testimonies that Bring to Light the Struggles of Activist Women in El Salvador: Nidia Diaz and Maria Teresa Tula.”
  •  Omideh Kathleen Sloan. “Barriers to Educating Deaf Students: The Roles of Culture and Stereotypes.”
  • Raul Reynoso. “Assisting Globalization: The Use of Foreign Aid for the Expansion of Capitalism in Latin America.”
  • Cari Williams.””Coisas de Negro” Alem do Pitoresco: The First Afro-Brazilian Congress of 1934.”

2005:

  • Ricardo Alvarez Jr. “Liberal Conservatism: Lucas Alaman’s Assessment of Agustin de Iturbide, Miguel Hidalgo, Jose Maria Morelos, and Vicente Guerrero.”
  • Elizabeth Gonzalez.”The “Maquiladora Murders” of Ciudad Juarez: The Truths of Being Employed in a Maquiladora.”
  • Craig Harmelin. “Parental Attitudes Toward a Southern California Spanish-English Two-Way Immersion Program.”
  • Fernando Magallon. “The Changing Landscape of Production and Labor Organization in Kings County Dairy Farms: From Family to Immigrant Labor.”
  • Rene Marchington. “Locating la Santera: Lucumi and Gender in Havana, Miami and Los Angeles.”
  • Heather Kiger. “Relationships between Socioeconomic Status and Disordered Eating in Latin American Women”
  •  Amy Alton. “Invisible Zapatistas: Women’s Work Outside the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.”

2006:

  • Karen Aburto. “Exiled in Los Angeles: An Oral History on the Chilean Family Experience.”
  • Brenna Avinelis. “Racism and Interracial Marriage: Case Studies in Santa Barbara and Hollywood.”
  • Luzmaria Cabral. “Mujer, Casos de la Vida Real: Educating Through the Pleasure of the Telenovela.”
  • Cristina Fuentes. “Ellas: Relaciones de poder entre personajes femeninos de cuentistas mexicanas del siglo XX.”
  • Anabel Gutiérrez. “Reconsidering Mexican Immigrant Entrepreneurship: A Case Study of the Eastside of Santa Barbara.”
  •  Alison Goodwin. “Eugenio Dittborn and the ‘Airmail Paintings’: Remembrance in Chile after Pinochet.”
  •  Andrew Leonard . “The Historical Transition of the FARC: From Marxist Insurgent Guerrillas to Bolivarian State Competitor.”
  •  Karen Luna. “Salvadoran Men’s and Women’s Testimonios: A Gender Analysis of Historical Claims of Truth.”
  • Orland Yates. “Black Gold and White Elephants: Energy Policy and Foreign Debt in Brazil and Mexico of the 1970s.”

2007:

  • Claudia Johnson. “From Colonial Hell to National Purgatory: Racial Exclusion in the Evolution of Cubanidad.”
  • Megan Lange. “U Ch’abal, Una Voz, Another Voice: Words, Education, and Identity in Guatemala.”
  • Nicole Pacino. “La Hormiga Contra El Elefante: Copper Mining in Ecuador and the Transformation of a Small Andean Community – The Case of Junin.”
  • Steven Pent. “Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide: Mobilization and Citizenship of a Peruvian Peasant Organization.”
  • Mario Valadez. “Em Macau a galinha fala com o pato: The Rise and Role of the Jurubacas (Sino-Portuguese Interpreters) in the Far East, 1524-1699.”
  • Larisa Veloz. “Nuestros Recuerdos: An Oral History Project about Mexican Migrant Women.”

2008:

  • Paul Bancroft. “Yo, si puedo: A Cuban Quest to Eradicate Global Illiteracy.”
  • Thomas Clark. “Taking the field: baseball hegemony in Latin America.”
  • Steven Lockwood. “Antonio Teles da Silva, Governor-General of Brazil 1642-1647: His Family, His Life, and Early Career.”
  • Amy Milner. “Community Development in Globalized El Salvador: A Case Study of Regalo de Dios.”
  • Zachary Mckiernan. “Making Memory Matter: The National Stadium of Chile and the Politics of Post-Dictatorship Memory.”
  • Yully Nieves. “Higher Education in Venezuela: From Conquest to 1900.”
  • Amy Rosner. “Hegemony, Culture, and Cinema: Fernando Solanas’ Documentary Films as a Lens for Examining Radical Social Change and Popular Struggle in Argentina, 1968 and 2001.”
  • Benjamin Ruiz. “An Attempt to Develop a Cultural Methodology Useful in Introductory and Early Intermediate Portuguese Instruction.”

2009:

  • Martín García. “Green Card Commuters: A Labor Dilemma for Mexican American Border Workers in the Early Post-War Years.”
  •  Natalie Marie Rogers. “Staging the Nation: The Political Context of Ballet Folklóricoin the Creation of Mexican National Identity.”

2010:

  • Linda Hall. “Confronting New Paradigms of Racism: Afro Communities in Plurinational/Intercultural Ecuador.”
  • Robin Hoffman. “Agua de Briga: Cachaca’s Role in Early Colonial Brazil.”
  • Justine Meyr. “Study Abroad: Maintenance of Spanish Oral Fluency.”
  • Leah Russell. “Anything you can do I can do better: cooptation and agency within the AfroReggae cultural groups.”
  • Lance Awbrey. “Chile: overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds to gain civilian control of the military.”
  • Miguel Becerra. “Stereotypes of Afro-Peruvians through the media : the case of the Peruvian blackface”
  • Jeremy Simer. “Los Migueletes: Catalan Soldiers and the Negotiation of Identities and Power in Eighteenth-Century Spain and New Spain.”

2011:

  • Mark Boelter. “Echo of Memory: Contentions of Reconciliation and Sites of Conscience in post-Pinochet Chile, 1990-2011.”
  • Jenae Jordan. “Modern Argentine soccer in mass media imagery : sexuality, nationalism, and the female body in historical context”

2012:

  • Cheryl Jimenez Frei. “Archetypes of the Veiled Other: Visual culture, travel literature, and the male gaze in the construction of the Spanish Morisca and the Peruvian Tapada, 1530-1900”
  • Jorge Gonzalez. “The (Re)construction of Blackness in Costa Chica, Oaxaca: NGOs and the Making of an Afro-Mexican Ethnic Group.”
  • William Alexander Yankes. “Chile, una nación resquebrajada desde su inicio: la incipiente novela “Cautiverio feliz del Mestre de Campo General Don Francisco Nunez de Pineda y Bascunan”
  • Martin Jacinto. “Confronting Capitalist Globalization and Polyarchy in Oaxaca: An Assessment of the APPO Movement and the Prospects for Social Movements in Mexico”
  • Jorge Cabrera. “Violent, Criminal, Illegal Immigrants” MS-13 – The Discursive Misrepresentation of a Global Gang.”

2013:

  • Brian Wiley. “The 2006 Penguin Revolution and the 2011 Chilean Winter: Chilean Students’ Fight for Education Reform”
  • Veronica Zavala Jacobo. “¡Venimos a Triunfar! A Discourse Analysis of Spanish Language Radio Piolin por la Mañana”

2014:

  • Ángel Rodríguez. “Angel Ricardo, Infectious Imperialism : Race, Syphilis, and Human Experimentation in Guatemala City, 1946-1948”
  • Marcus Cuellar. “Runners Left on Base: Cuban Baseball Defection Experience and a Reevaluation of Baseball Diplomacy”

2016:

  • Kirstin Brown. “Leaving the Bubble: Understanding the Transition to Independent Living for Honduran Women in Government Care.”
  • Alexander Scarlett. “Assessing the Law of Social Quotas: A qualitative approach to the perspectives of black university students in São Paulo.”
  • Salvador García Vigil. “The Institutional Imaginative of Revolutionary Land Nationalism as Mexico’s Historiography and Literature from the 1930s to the 1980s.”

2018:

  • Thelma Patnett. “Alternate Memories Revealed: Afro Nicaraguan Women’s Solidarity, Support, and Ambivalence to the Sandinista Revolution.”
  • Denny Álvarez. “Los Angeles Latinx Ska: Subaltern Rhythms, Co-optation of Sound, and New Cultural Visions from a Transnational Latin America.”

2019:

  • Allen Magaña. “Bichas à Rasca: Queer Social Movements of Portugal in an Age of Austerity”.
  • Christine Khrlobian. “El Negro Permitido: Representations of Black Bodies and Beings in the Colombian Press, 1970-1980”

2020:

  • Katie Rodriguez. “Guatemalan Mobility: Understanding Indigenous and Latino Migration Through a Critical Analysis of Key Literature.”

2021:

  • Rosa Elvira Rodriguez. “The Black Idiot and the Mountain Woman: Interpretations of Discrimination in Peruvian Media.”

2022:

  • Marlene Torres-Magana. “Constructing the Mexican White Mestizo Identity: Politics of Race, Culture, and Mexican Comics in Twentieth-Century Mexico.”

2023:

  • Emma Laura Zamora Garcia. “‘It’s Like the Border is in Your Head:’ Stories from the Transborder Students in the U.S.-Mexico Border.”
  • Carina Paredes-Rivera. “Contra la violencia sexista: estrategias artivistas en el movimiento ni una menos (2015) en Argentina y la perfromance ‘el violador eres tú’ (2019) en Chile.”