"Jose Martí: Resisting Melancholia for the Image of the Cuban Hero", Lecture by Emilio Bejel

This flyer promotes the event ""Jose Martí: Resisting Melancholia for the Image of the Cuban Hero", Lecture by Emilio Bejel", cosponsored by the Department of Modern Languages at FIU.

Entre el terror y la irrealidad: La narrativa poetica postmoderna de Reinaldo Arenas

This study focuses on the works of Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas, one of the most prolific and controversial Latin American authors in the second half of the twentieth century. First, I propose Arenas as the creator of the Cuban revolutionary novel (a term coined by critics when referring to the narrative written after the revolution), within the scope of postmodern historiographic metafiction and against the trend of the official revolutionary novel promoted by the political establishment. Through the analysis of the five novels of the pentagony and other texts, my study follows the tragic journey of the antihero protagonist, from adolescence into adulthood, registering the correlation between his existential crisis and the narrative historical discourse. Contemporary Cuba from 1959 onwards—the historical-political circumstances that afflicted and overwhelmed him the most—becomes the point of reference to deconstruct reality and reaffirm the existence of a “self” threatened by the violence of a totalitarian discourse. Out of the fragments of this reality, Arenas undertook a radical reconstruction in which he inverted and questioned every inherited cultural value, as well as the power structures. Within this context, Arenas projects what I call “the Cuban hideous unreal”, an ontological and literary vision antagonistic to the carpentirean concept of the American “marvelous real”. ^ Despite the ostracism Reinaldo Arenas suffered for ten years, this study shows how he established through his work a meditative dialogue with himself and the common man. This perspective formulates a permanent literary and philosophic reflection with thinkers and writers of his country and the West, as the basis for a rejection of the Cuban reality. The resultant interdisciplinary and postmodern dialogue constitutes one of the most significant and distinctive contributions of his work. ^

Carmen de Burgos: La educacion de la mujer y la literatura de viajes como genero narrativo

This study analyzes Carmen de Burgos' European travel literature, and focuses on two themes: education and travel literature as a literary genre. An examination of her travel literature reveals two essential elements related to her view of education. The first is the influence that the European educational system had on her way of thinking, particularly with respect to the idea of tolerance, the practice of hygiene, and the important role of nature in education. The second is the development of her view of education as the foundation for the emancipation of women in Spain. Carmen de Burgos espoused the view that the reform of the Spanish educational system was the primary and foundational goal to further social, political and economic progress of women in Spain at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century. ^ In the second part of this dissertation I support the theory that her travel literature was her main source to convey to Spanish women the need for social change. I do this by analyzing four properties that are considered characteristic of women's travel literature: (1) the woman as a hero, (2) scientific authority of women, (3) feminine style, and (4) feminine content. I argue that Carmen de Burgos's travel literature uses these properties to facilitate her access to women audiences and to assure that this audience regarded her as an authoritative voice. ^

Autonomic and embedded wireless sensor protocols for critical infrastructures

The tragic events of September 11th ushered a new era of unprecedented challenges. Our nation has to be protected from the alarming threats of adversaries. These threats exploit the nation's critical infrastructures affecting all sectors of the economy. There is the need for pervasive monitoring and decentralized control of the nation's critical infrastructures. The communications needs of monitoring and control of critical infrastructures was traditionally catered for by wired communication systems. These technologies ensured high reliability and bandwidth but are however very expensive, inflexible and do not support mobility and pervasive monitoring. The communication protocols are Ethernet-based that used contention access protocols which results in high unsuccessful transmission and delay. An emerging class of wireless networks, named embedded wireless sensor and actuator networks has potential benefits for real-time monitoring and control of critical infrastructures. The use of embedded wireless networks for monitoring and control of critical infrastructures requires secure, reliable and timely exchange of information among controllers, distributed sensors and actuators. The exchange of information is over shared wireless media. However, wireless media is highly unpredictable due to path loss, shadow fading and ambient noise. Monitoring and control applications have stringent requirements on reliability, delay and security. The primary issue addressed in this dissertation is the impact of wireless media in harsh industrial environment on the reliable and timely delivery of critical data. In the first part of the dissertation, a combined networking and information theoretic approach was adopted to determine the transmit power required to maintain a minimum wireless channel capacity for reliable data transmission. The second part described a channel-aware scheduling scheme that ensured efficient utilization of the wireless link and guaranteed delay. Various analytical evaluations and simulations are used to evaluate and validate the feasibility of the methodologies and demonstrate that the protocols achieved reliable and real-time data delivery in wireless industrial networks.

Post-revolutionary post-modernism: Central American detective fiction by the turn of the 21st century

Contemporary Central American fiction has become a vital project of revision of the tragic events and the social conditions in the recent history of the countries from which they emerge. The literary projects of Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua), Dante Liano (Guatemala), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Ramon Fonseca Mora (Panama), are representative of the latest trends in Central American narrative. These trends conform to a new literary paradigm that consists of an amalgam of styles and discourses, which combine the testimonial, the historical, and the political with the mystery and suspense of noir thrillers. Contemporary Central American noir narrative depicts the persistent war against social injustice, violence, criminal activities, as well as the new technological advances and economic challenges of the post-war neo-liberal order that still prevails throughout the region. ^ Drawing on postmodernism theory proposed by Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon and Brian MacHale, I argued that the new Central American literary paradigm exemplified by Sergio Ramirez's El cielo llora por mí, Dante Liano's El hombre de Montserrat, Horacio Castellanos Moya's El arma en el hombre and La diabla en el espejo , and Ramon Fonseca Mora's El desenterrador, are highly structured novels that display the characteristic marks of postmodern cultural expression through their ambivalence, which results from the coexistence of multiple styles and conflicting ideologies and narrative trends. The novels analyzed in this dissertation make use of a noir sensitivity in which corruption, decay and disillusionment are at their core to portray the events that shaped the modern history of the countries from which they emerge. The revolutionary armed struggle, the state of terror imposed by military regimes and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, are among the major themes of these contemporary works of fiction, which I have categorized as perfect examples of the post-revolutionary post-modernism Central American detective fiction at the turn of the 21st century.^

The Fullness of time

THE FULLNESS OF TIME is a novel about the quest for identity that transcends the limitations of moral duty, social status, and cultural conventions. Set in Tarpon Springs, Florida, in 1969, it is the story of Victor Lucas, a young Greek immigrant forced to go to war in Vietnam in another man's place in order to save the woman he loves. He must survive the war to return and reclaim his love and his rightful place in society. Based on the archetypal hero's quest as articulated by Joseph Campbell, the narrative is told from the limited third-person perspective of the main character. Though the journey is particular to Tarpon Springs in the 1960s, it echoes the human struggle and triumph in the wanderings of Ulysses. The novel's influences include Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge, but is also thematically related to contemporary works exploring cultural turbulence and upheaval.

This was uncalled for : Dave Eggers' A heartbreaking work of staggering genius subverts the genre of traditional autobiography as an attempt at rendering his life

The purpose of this thesis was to explore why and how the author Dave Eggers subverts the genre of traditional autobiography in his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I compared Eggers' work to Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas and William S. Burroughs' Junky. I found that like Stein and Burroughs, Eggers utilized various rhetorical devices outside of traditional autobiography because he could not find the means to express himself within the genre. Eggers employed various rhetorical methods reserved for fictional texts, such as stream of consciousness, characterization, and irony, in order to reconcile his feelings towards his parents' deaths and render those feelings in his memoir. I established that Eggers concluded his memoir with impossibility of arriving at one Meaning that could summate his tragic experience. Thus, I proved that Eggers gave the reader the only authentic interpretation he could: the memoir as a small, incomplete glimpse into his life.

The Root of the Recycled: A Comparative Analysis of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and the Mythological "Ur-Hamlet"

The purpose of my thesis was to explore the problem surrounding the sources believed to constitute the Ur-Hamlet from which Shakespeare derived Hamlet. By utilization of close reading, analysis, and archetypical criticism, my thesis confirms Shakespeare’s usage of the “Hero as Fool” archetype present in the Danish legend of Amleth, translated by Saxo Grammaticus and Francois Belleforest, as the Ur-Hamlet. My study is significant because it further develops the notion that the earlier legend served as the originary source for Hamlet, while providing evidence that rejects the validity of other sources of the Ur-Hamlet. The evidence was corroborated by presenting analytical comparisons of the framework both works share. Focusing on the archetypal origins of Shakespeare’s plot, characters and their actions revealed a more complex understanding of the play. These findings indicate and substantiate the claim that the Ur-Hamlet can be no other source but the Danish legend of Amleth.

Post-Revolutionary Post-Modernism: Central American Detective Fiction by the Turn of the 21st Century

Contemporary Central American fiction has become a vital project of revision of the tragic events and the social conditions in the recent history of the countries from which they emerge. The literary projects of Sergio Ramirez (Nicaragua), Dante Liano (Guatemala), Horacio Castellanos Moya (El Salvador), and Ramon Fonseca Mora (Panama), are representative of the latest trends in Central American narrative. These trends conform to a new literary paradigm that consists of an amalgam of styles and discourses, which combine the testimonial, the historical, and the political with the mystery and suspense of noir thrillers. Contemporary Central American noir narrative depicts the persistent war against social injustice, violence, criminal activities, as well as the new technological advances and economic challenges of the post-war neo-liberal order that still prevails throughout the region. Drawing on postmodernism theory proposed by Ihab Hassan, Linda Hutcheon and Brian MacHale, I argued that the new Central American literary paradigm exemplified by Sergio Ramirez’s El cielo llora por mí, Dante Liano’s El hombre de Montserrat, Horacio Castellanos Moya’s El arma en el hombre and La diabla en el espejo, and Ramon Fonseca Mora’s El desenterrador, are highly structured novels that display the characteristic marks of postmodern cultural expression through their ambivalence, which results from the coexistence of multiple styles and conflicting ideologies and narrative trends. The novels analyzed in this dissertation make use of a noir sensitivity in which corruption, decay and disillusionment are at their core to portray the events that shaped the modern history of the countries from which they emerge. The revolutionary armed struggle, the state of terror imposed by military regimes and the fight against drug trafficking and organized crime, are among the major themes of these contemporary works of fiction, which I have categorized as perfect examples of the post-revolutionary post-modernism Central American detective fiction at the turn of the 21st century.