Hacia una poetica del Neobarroco: La vision de la historia en Jose Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas y Severo Sarduy

Most of the critical studies of Baroque novels written in Spanish America during the 1960s and 1970s are characterized by a limited examination of their formal and stylistic representations. This dissertation explored the way in which certain writers developed a new Baroque tendency, the so-called Neobarroco, that presented a particular vision of history. José Lezama Lima, Reinaldo Arenas and Severo Sarduy developed innovative fictional and historiographic perceptions as alternative discourses to understand and perceive the cultural intricacies of Cuba and the New World. Their novels posited an elaborated poetic theory of history that can be summarized by the principle of supratemporal analogies, interweaved by a "metaphoric subject" that makes possible the conception of "imaginary eras". Since this poetry arises from a network of metaphoric correspondences, the image is conceived as a cultural creation that acts upon reality. ^ Although this study traced the trajectory of their writings from the point of view of their own essays, our focus was on the act of recovering the past as reshaped forms that are present in the memory. Paradiso, El mundo alucinante and De donde son los cantantes exemplified the attempt to place Americanness within the realm of poetics and history as one single discourse constructed by a combination of self-consciousness and historiographic meditation. ^ Basing my thesis on postmodernist theory (Ihab Hassan, Brian McHale, Linda Hutcheon) and philosophies of history (Michel Foucault, Hayden White, Keith Jenkins, Dominick LaCapra), I argued that the antagonistic paradoxes faced by postmodernism were reconcilable tendencies of the Neobarroco prior to the actual debate on the postmodern condition. The aesthetic trend initiated by these writers and their reading of history confronted the official historiographic discourse, thus empowering a contemporary voice in the current debate on historical skepticism. ^

Red mangroves emit hydrocarbons

The objective of this study is to investigate hydrocarbon species and amounts released by red mangrove foliage and determine if these quantities warrant future research on atmospheric chemical processing of these compounds. The field investigation took place during July 2001 at Key Largo, Florida Bay, Florida. Foliage still attached to plants was enclosed in cuvettes while air of known flow rates circulated around leaves to study, hydrocarbon emissions. Cuvette air samples underwent gas chromatographic analyses to determine species and amounts of hydrocarbons released by mangrove foliage. Red mangrove foliage emits isoprene and trace amounts of the monoterpenes of alpha-pinene, beta-pinene, camphene, and d-limonene. The mangrove flowers released these latter compounds in amounts ranging from 0.5 to 10 mg (monoterpene) per gram of dry biomass per hour. These fluxes are normalized to, the foliage temperature of 30 degreesC. When normalized to the foliage temperature of 30 degreesC and light levels of 1000 mumol m(-2) s(-1), isoprene emission rates as high as 0.092 +/- 0.109 mug (isoprene) per gram of dry biomass per hour were measured. Compared to terrestrial forest ecosystems, red mangroves are low isoprene emitters. During peak flowering periods in the summertime, however, red mangroves may emit sufficient amounts of monoterpenes to alter ground-level ozone concentrations and contribute to biogenic aerosol formation.

Antipredator behavior and cue recognition by multiple Everglades prey to a novel cichlid predator

Novel predator introductions are thought to have a high impact on native prey, especially in freshwater systems. Prey may fail to recognize predators as a threat, or show inappropriate or ineffective responses. The ability of prey to recognize and respond appropriately to novel predators may depend on the prey’s use of general or specific cues to detect predation threats.We used laboratory experiments to examine the ability of three native Everglades prey species (Eastern mosquitofish, flagfish and riverine grass shrimp) to respond to the presence, as well as to the chemical and visual cues of a native predator (warmouth) and a recentlyintroduced non-native predator (African jewelfish). We used prey from populations that had not previously encountered jewelfish. Despite this novelty, the native warmouth and nonnative jewelfish had overall similar predatory effects, except on mosquitofish, which suffered higher warmouth predation. When predators were present, the three prey taxa showed consistent and strong responses to the non-native jewelfish, which were similar in magnitude to the responses exhibited to the native warmouth. When cues were presented, fish prey responded largely to chemical cues, while shrimp showed no response to either chemical or visual cues. Overall, responses by mosquitofish and flagfish to chemical cues indicated low differentiation among cue types, with similar responses to general and specific cues. The fact that antipredator behaviours were similar toward native and non-native predators suggests that the susceptibility to a novel fish predator may be similar to that of native fishes, and prey may overcome predator novelty, at least when predators are confamilial to other common and longer-established non-native threats.

Implementation of service -learning in higher education courses: Perceptions of faculty

This study examined the motivation of college and university faculty to implement service-learning into their traditional courses. The benefits derived by faculty, as well as those issues of maintenance, including supports and/or obstacles, were also investigated in relation to their impact on motivation. The focus was on generating theory from the emerging data. ^ Data were collected from interviews with 17 faculty teaching courses that included a component of service-learning. A maximum variation sampling of participants from six South Florida colleges and universities was utilized. Faculty participants represented a wide range of academic disciplines, faculty ranks, years of experience in teaching and using service-learning as well as gender and ethnic diversity. For data triangulation, a focus group with eight additional college faculty was conducted and documents, including course syllabi and institutional service-learning handbooks, collected during the interviews were examined. The interviews were transcribed and coded using traditional methods as well as with the assistance of the computerized assisted qualitative data analysis software, Atlas.ti. The data were organized into five major categories with themes and sub-themes emerging for each. ^ While intrinsic or personal factors along with extrinsic factors all serve to influence faculty motivation, the study's findings revealed that the primary factors influencing faculty motivation to adopt service-learning were those that were intrinsic or personal in nature. These factors included: (a) past experiences, (b) personal characteristics including the value of serving, (c) involvement with community service, (d) interactions and relationships with peers, (e) benefits to students, (f) benefits to teaching, and (g) perceived career benefits. Implications and recommendations from the study encompass suggestions for administrators in higher education institutions for supporting and encouraging faculty adoption of service-learning including a well developed infrastructure as well as incentives, particularly during the initial implementation period, rewards providing recognition for the academic nature of service-learning and support for the development of peer relationships among service-learning faculty. ^

Epistemologías culturales del Caribe: modelos conceptuales metafóricos en el ensayo caribeño del siglo XX

El Caribe ha sido reconocido por considerarse una pluralidad de espacios que simultáneamente son solo uno. Contrario al contexto de su fragmentada geografía, su segregada historia colonial y su diversidad racial y lingüística, los intelectuales caribeños han establecido puentes de unidad cultural con la intención de configurar una identidad pan-caribeña. Por consiguiente, los ensayistas del siglo XX se enfrentan a la necesidad de examinar críticamente los factores que formulan sus respectivas identidades, en contraste con aquellas tradicionalmente impuestas bajo el discurso colonial y metropolitano. Desde el tercer cuarto del siglo, pensadores como Aimé Césaire (1913-2008), Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969), Fidel Castro (1926-), George Lamming (1927-), Kamau Brathwaite (1930-), Juan I. Jiménes-Grullón (1903-1983), Hubert Devonish (1953-), Edouard Glissant (1928-2011), Antonio Benítez-Rojo (1931-2005), Arcadio Díaz Quiñones y Maryse Condé (1937-), entre otros, cuestionan el sistema colonial, los procesos étnicos y las propuestas lingüísticas, relacionándolos con conceptos tales como la hibridez, el sincretismo, la transculturación y la heterogeneidad. Estas teorías culturales, de alguna manera, reescriben ideas antecedentes en reacción a discursos hegemónicos previos como consecuencia de los cambios políticos que trajeron las guerras de independencia en América Latina durante el siglo XIX. En mi tesis demuestro que estos planteamientos delinean un mapa de modelos epistemológicos de la cultura del Caribe. Para indicar que estas propuestas constituyen metáforas que muestran una consciencia cultural, las proposiciones acerca de la cultura de Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) y Hayden White (1928-) sirven como marco teórico apropiado. Así, a través de las representaciones literarias ensayísticas de los modelos metafóricos de la cultura caribeña, este trabajo redefine algunos aspectos importantes de la identidad cultural vis a vis la mirada parcial que usualmente se utiliza para estudiar el archipiélago antillano. Igualmente, incluso aunque estos modelos proponen una representación metafórica de la cultura pan-caribeña, la construcción de un modelo del Caribe puede ser utilizado en otras regiones y espacios culturales en el contexto de la globalización, ya que elucida una gnoseología cultural que sirve para describir distintas realidades globales.

Double Fortune

Double Fortune is a novel relating events taking place in Miami, Central America, and The Bahama Bank in October and November, 1983. The main character, Michael Hayden, is a free-lance music producer who has become jaded and impotent. A chance encounter on the Bay with Marisol, a Salvadoran heiress, and Hector, her brother, propels him into a complex plot to expatriate money through U.S. government channels. Willy, a brooding Cuban bodyguard hired to protect and instruct the Salvadorans, emerges as both nemesis and key to the duplicities of the scheme. The final showdown involves the four of them on the water above the Cay Sal Bank, a part of the Bahamas equidistant to their disparate worlds.