Understanding Suicidal Behavior Among Latin Adolescent Girls Living in the United States

Suicide in adolescents between the age of 10 and 24 years old is the second cause of death in the United States. This rate differentiates by ethnic and racial groups within the same country; Latino/Hispanic adolescent girls have the highest rate of suicide behavior. Considering that Latino/Hispanic is the fastest growing minority group in the nation, with an expected population of 30% by 2060, this issue should be a public health priority. This paper answers the following question: what are the conditions operating among Latin adolescent girls living in the United States that cause significantly higher suicidal behavior rates in the U.S. and compared with their peers in Latin American countries? And, how adequate are treatments such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy and prevention programs in tackling the specific risk factors affecting this population? The paper is divided into five chapters; the first four are based on a comprehensive literature review of statistics of suicide, risk and protective factors, treatment, and prevention programs. The last chapter offers an analysis of the sociological phenomenon of suicidal behavior in this population and three brief narratives of attempters and non-attempters. Studies show that subjective distress, familism and immigration issues are the key risk factors of suicidal behavior in Latina adolescent girls. Understanding the risk factors is key in order to design promotion and prevention programs that are culturally relevant and that can have a positive impact in the reduction of this alarming phenomenon.

On the Threshold of Paradise and Present: Memory in Contemporary Cuban – American Literature

The exile leaving his or her homeland for new and unknown territory travels with much more than just luggage and the clothes on his or her back. He or she carries a weighty collection of memories. Available for the exile in times when the harmony of the past is far removed from the difficult circumstances present during the process of cultural assimilation, these memories present an opportunity for the exile to fashion for him or herself an identity that mimics the realities of life in the home left behind. In this creative endeavor, I seek to examine the powerful potential of memory as it is exercised by a collection of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in different corners of the United States. Analyzing Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, Ana Menéndez’s In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Elías Miguel Muñoz’s Brand New Memory, I aim to trace the suggestive potential of memory as it is used by each of the characters in these works in an effort to reconcile their Cuban identities with the ones that are in the process of creation in the U.S. I will borrow from a collection of literature dealing with identity and exile, relevant graduate-level theses on Cuban-American literature, as well as theoretical perspectives on memory formation and nostalgia in order to trace the various ways in which memory is relied on in the process of cultural assimilation and emotional coping. Being presented in Miami, which hosts the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants, this thesis aims to present itself as a reflective tool for Cubans and Cuban-Americans who may find value in seeing their personal sentiments portrayed in literature, thus allowing for a potential reevaluation of identity. If the existing literature on my topic of analysis reveals anything, it is that the scope of my project is one that has not been inspected previously, thus making my analytical contribution a new one that will add a new interpretive set of lens through which readers of contemporary Cuban-American literature can examine the works.

On the Threshold of Paradise and Present: Memory in Contemporary Cuban‐American Literature

The exile leaving his or her homeland for new and unknown territory travels with much more than just luggage and the clothes on his or her back. He or she carries a weighty collection of memories. Available for the exile in times when the harmony of the past is far removed from the difficult circumstances present during the process of cultural assimilation, these memories present an opportunity for the exile to fashion for him or herself an identity that mimics the realities of life in the home left behind. In this creative endeavor, I seek to examine the powerful potential of memory as it is exercised by a collection of Cubans and Cuban-Americans in different corners of the United States. Analyzing Achy Obejas’ Memory Mambo, Cristina García’s Dreaming in Cuban, Ana Menéndez’s In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd, and Elías Miguel Muñoz’s Brand New Memory, I aim to trace the suggestive potential of memory as it is used by each of the characters in these works in an effort to reconcile their Cuban identities with the ones that are in the process of creation in the U.S. I will borrow from a collection of literature dealing with identity and exile, relevant graduate-level theses on Cuban-American literature, as well as theoretical perspectives on memory formation and nostalgia in order to trace the various ways in which memory is relied on in the process of cultural assimilation and emotional coping. Being presented in Miami, which hosts the largest concentration of Cuban immigrants, this thesis aims to present itself as a reflective tool for Cubans and Cuban-Americans who may find value in seeing their personal sentiments portrayed in literature, thus allowing for a potential reevaluation of identity. If the existing literature on my topic of analysis reveals anything, it is that the scope of my project is one that has not been inspected previously, thus making my analytical contribution a new one that will add a new interpretive set of lens through which readers of contemporary Cuban-American literature can examine the works.

The silent statue theme: complex imitation and Neo-Latin poetry

This paper analyses how the topic of the silent statue is dealt with in Neo-Latin literature. The subject matter comes from the epigrams about Pythagoras of the Palatine Anthology. There are numerous Neo-Latin imitations of this topic that are complex as various sources are used at the same time. The authors focus on an active reading of the epigrams of their predecessors, applying the traditional motive to new subjects and adapting it to the religious theme.

El carácter compilatorio del ms. 126 del Archivo Capitular de El Burgo de Osma

En este trabajo se aborda el estudio de aquellos aspectos que nos llevan a considerar al ms. 126 del Archivo Capitular de El Burgo de Osma un códice compilatorio: por una parte, la identificación de las fuentes de las que beben dos de sus glosas de contenido mitológico y, por otra, el análisis de la estructura del códice en su conjunto y de la relación entre las obras que lo componen.

Relationship marketing in Latin American context: Implications for small Finnish software companies in Latin American B2B partnerships

After a productivity decrease of established national export industries in Finland such as mobile and paper industries, innovative, smaller companies with the intentions to internationalize right from the start have been proliferating. For software companies early internationalization is an especially good opportunity, as Internet usage becomes increasingly homogeneous across borders and software products often do not need a physical distribution channel. Globalization also makes Finnish companies turn to unfamiliar export markets like Latin America, a very untraditional market for Finns. Relationships consisting of Finnish and Latin American business partners have therefore not been widely studied, especially from a new-age software company’s perspective. To study these partnerships, relationship marketing theory was taken into the core of the study, as its practice focuses mainly on establishing and maintaining relationships with stakeholders at a profit, so that the objectives of all parties are met, which is done by a mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises. The most important dimensions of relationship marketing were identified as trust, commitment and attraction, which were then focused on, as the study aims to understand the implications Latin American business culture has for the understanding, and hence, effective application of relationship marketing in the Latin American market. The question to be answered consecutively was how should the dimensions of trust, commitment and attraction be understood in business relationships in Latin America? The study was conducted by first joining insights given by Latin American business culture literature with overall theories on the three dimensions. Through pattern matching, these insights were compared to empirical evidence collected from business professionals of the Latin American market and from the experiences of Finnish software businesses that had recently expanded into the market. What was found was that previous literature on Latin American business culture had already named many implications for the relationship marketing dimensions that were relevant also for small Finnish software firms on the market. However, key findings also presented important new drivers for the three constructs. Local presence in the area where the Latin American partner is located was found to drive or enhance trust, commitment and attraction. High-frequency follow up procedures were in turn found to drive commitment and attraction. Both local presence and follow up were defined according to the respective evidence in the study. Also, in the context of Finnish software firms in relationships with Latin American partners, the national origins or the foreignness of the Finnish party was seen to enhance trust and attraction in the relationship

Writing disenchantment: British First World War Prose, 1914-30.

This book argues that disenchantment is not only a response to wartime experience, but a condition of modernity with a language that finds extreme expression in First World War literature. The objects of disenchantment are often the very same as the enchantments of scientific progress: bureaucracy, homogenisation and capitalism. Older beliefs such as religion, courage and honour are kept in view, and endure longer than often is realised. Social critics, theorists and commentators of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries provide a rich and previously unexplored context for wartime and post-war literature. The rise of the disenchanted narrative to its predominance in the War Books Boom of 1928 – 1930 is charted from the turn of the century in texts, archival material, sales and review data. Rarely-studied popular and middlebrow novels are analysed alongside well-known highbrow texts: D. H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, H. G. Wells and Rebecca West rub shoulders with forgotten figures such as Gilbert Frankau and Ernest Raymond. These sometimes jarring juxtapositions show the strained relationship between enchantment and disenchantment in the war and the post-war decade.

Pre-colonial institutions and long-run development in Latin America

The present doctoral thesis studies the association between pre-colonial institutions and long-run development in Latin America. The thesis is organised as follows: Chapter 1 places the motivation of the thesis by underlying relevant contributions in the literature on long-run development. I then set out the main objective of the thesis, followed by a brief outline of it. In Chapter 2, I study the effects of pre-colonial institutions on present-day socioeconomic outcomes for Latin America. The main thesis of this chapter is that more advanced pre-colonial institutions relate to better socioeconomic outcomes today - principally, but not only, through their effects on the Amerindian population. I test such hypothesis with a dataset of 324 sub-national administrative units covering all mainland Latin American countries. The extensive range of controls covers factors such as climate, location, natural resources, colonial activities and pre-colonial characteristics - plus country fixed effects. Results strongly support the main thesis. In Chapter 3, I further analyse the association between pre-colonial institutions and present-day economic development in Latin America by using the historical ethnic homelands as my main unit of analysis. The main hypothesis is that ethnic homelands inhabited by more advanced ethnic groups -as measured by their levels of institutional complexity- relate to better economic development today. To track these long-run effects, I construct a new dataset by digitising historiographical maps allowing me to pinpoint the geospatial location of ethnic homelands as of the XVI century. As a result, 375 ethnic homelands are created. I then capture the levels of economic development at the ethnic homeland level by making use of alternative economic measures --satellite light density data. After controlling for country-specific characteristics and applying a large battery of geographical, locational, and historical factors, I found that the effects of pre-colonial institutions relate to a higher light density --as a proxy for economic activity- in ethnic homelands where more advanced ethnic groups lived. In Chapter 4, I explore a mechanism linking the persistence of pre-colonial institutions in Latin America over the long-run: Colonial and post-colonial strategies along with the ethnic political capacity worked in tandem allowing larger Amerindian groups to "support" the new political systems in ways that would benefit their respective ethnic groups as well as the population at large. This mechanism may have allowed the effects of pre-colonial institutions to influence socioeconomic development outcomes up to today. To shed lights on this mechanism, I combine the index of pre-colonial institutions prepared for the second chapter of the present thesis with individual-level survey data on people's attitudes. By controlling for key observable and unobservable country-specific characteristics, the main empirical results show that areas with a history of more advanced pre-colonial institutions increase the probability of individuals supporting present-day political institutions. Finally, in Chapter 5, I summarise the main findings of the thesis, and emphasise the key weaknesses of the study as well as potential avenues for future research.

MEDIA IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION IN LATIN AMERICA

Terms like Internet, cyberspace, virtual reality, in short, globalization, have been frequently words for all of us, in recent years. This refers to the phenomenon that has shaken the people of this world. Are rapidly changing due to technological advances and complex levels reaching relations between countries, corporations, partnerships and people.The attempt to understand the phenomenon of globalization is compounded when we try to understand the term, coined by Marshall McLuhan.McLuhan was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and studied at the Universities of Manitoba and Cambridge, the latter of which he received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy specializing in English Literature. He taught at the universities of Wisconsin and St. Louis and University of the Assumption and Saint Michael's College, University of Toronto, where he was director of the Center for Culture and Technology.Marshall McLuhan and B. R. Powers, wrote the play, The Village Global1. The universe has become a village is the future predicted for them in the 60's. Today reality has overtaken the theory. However, this phenomenon is presented in this work, so whimsical style reminiscent of Jules Verne, but does not clarify the content of the term. While we believe that in the past there were attempts; globalize these attempts were very different from what we understand by globalization. 

Récits de croisade et digression : la conquête de Constantinople de Robert de Clari

Partant de la réputation naïve, colorée et digressive de La Conquête de Constantinople de Robert de Clari, ce mémoire propose une analyse méthodique de ce récit en prose vernaculaire de la quatrième croisade de façon à en circonscrire les moments de continuité et de rupture. En fonction de plusieurs facteurs, dont leurs formules d’introduction et de clôture, leur rapport au temps de la croisade, leur longueur relative ainsi que leur positionnement dans l’économie globale du texte, les épisodes divergents sont identifiés puis analysés en travaillant lestement avec trois caractéristiques fondamentales de la digression plutôt qu’avec une définition nucléaire du concept, ce qui permet de discerner des degrés de digressif et d’offrir un panorama nuancé de l’oeuvre. Afin d’adopter un regard plus large sur le phénomène de la digression, quatre autres récits de croisade sont étudiés, et tous, qu’ils soient écrits en prose ou en vers, en français ou en latin, sont à leur façon coupables de s’être laissés emporter par leur sujet dans des excursus qui trahissent la personnalité et les convictions de leur auteur. Tout comme Clari, Villehardouin, l’auteur de l’Estoire de la guerre sainte, Eudes de Deuil et Albert d’Aix laissent entrevoir leur propre histoire lorsque celle qu’ils mettent à l’écrit s’égare de la droite voie de sa narration. Les digressions contenues dans les récits de croisade constituent ainsi une fenêtre privilégiée sur l’histoire des mentalités du Moyen Âge central, une mine d’informations qui ne peut être adéquatement exploitée que par les efforts conjoints de l’histoire et de la littérature.

Cuban Literature in Exile

This flyer promotes a lecture by Zoe Valdes on recent literary trends, works, and authors of Cuban origin living outside the island. Valdes was born in Havana, Cuba and is the authors of 32 novels. This lecture was conducted in Spanish, held on October 28, 2015 at the Modesto A. Maidique Campus, Graham Center, Room 140.

Récits de croisade et digression : la conquête de Constantinople de Robert de Clari

Partant de la réputation naïve, colorée et digressive de La Conquête de Constantinople de Robert de Clari, ce mémoire propose une analyse méthodique de ce récit en prose vernaculaire de la quatrième croisade de façon à en circonscrire les moments de continuité et de rupture. En fonction de plusieurs facteurs, dont leurs formules d’introduction et de clôture, leur rapport au temps de la croisade, leur longueur relative ainsi que leur positionnement dans l’économie globale du texte, les épisodes divergents sont identifiés puis analysés en travaillant lestement avec trois caractéristiques fondamentales de la digression plutôt qu’avec une définition nucléaire du concept, ce qui permet de discerner des degrés de digressif et d’offrir un panorama nuancé de l’oeuvre. Afin d’adopter un regard plus large sur le phénomène de la digression, quatre autres récits de croisade sont étudiés, et tous, qu’ils soient écrits en prose ou en vers, en français ou en latin, sont à leur façon coupables de s’être laissés emporter par leur sujet dans des excursus qui trahissent la personnalité et les convictions de leur auteur. Tout comme Clari, Villehardouin, l’auteur de l’Estoire de la guerre sainte, Eudes de Deuil et Albert d’Aix laissent entrevoir leur propre histoire lorsque celle qu’ils mettent à l’écrit s’égare de la droite voie de sa narration. Les digressions contenues dans les récits de croisade constituent ainsi une fenêtre privilégiée sur l’histoire des mentalités du Moyen Âge central, une mine d’informations qui ne peut être adéquatement exploitée que par les efforts conjoints de l’histoire et de la littérature.

Retro-Neoliberalism: Elite Counter-Protest in Latin America, 1940-1975

This research challenges the origin story of neoliberalism in Latin America. Drawing on archival data from the Mont Pèlerin Society and the personal archives of leading but neglected figures in the post-war push to rebuild economic liberalism, I present a historical geography of elite counter-protest that both predates and broadens the generally accepted “birth” of neoliberalism in 1970s Chile. Beginning in the 1940s, Latin American elites found common cause with key figures from economic liberalism’s most radical wing: the Austrian School. While existing literature links the onset of neoliberalism in Chile to the Austrian School, particularly with respect to the School’s influence on the early Mont Pèlerin Society, this dissertation is the first comprehensive inquiry to place the Austrian tradition in the ideational and organizational landscape of Latin America. Embracing a new mission that promised to save the soul of Western civilization, Latin America’s retro-neoliberal leaders collaborated with transnational actors to build a network of Austrian-inspired think-tanks and institutes of higher learning in the region. These organizations, in turn, served as recruiting mechanisms to found the Hispanic quarter of the Mont Pèlerin Society, which was dominated not (as might be assumed) by Chileans, but rather by retro-neoliberal elites from Mexico, Argentina, Guatemala, and Venezuela. By 1975, when scholars began analyzing how a run-of-the-mill economics department had been transformed into a bastion of free-market thinking in Chile, an entire neoliberal university was up and running in Guatemala, exposing all students, regardless of discipline, to the Austrian tradition – the crowning achievement of Latin America’s retro-neoliberal network. Investigating, and accounting for, the development and impact of this initiative sheds new light on the neoliberal landscape in Latin America, and raises important questions for the study of neoliberalism more broadly.

School-time Extension: Are the School Structure’s Hard Components Modified? Literature Review on the Subject

For more than two decades we have witnessed in Latin America –in Argentina particularly– the development of policies to expand the school day. We understand that the implementation of such policies is an opportunity to observe the behavior of the school’s behavior faced with the attempt to modify one of its hardest components –school-time–; it becomes also a natural laboratory to analyze how much does the traditional organization of school-time can resist, how does it change and how do these changes (if implemented) impact the rest of the school components (spaces, groups, etc.). This paper shows the state of the art of the most significant studies in two research fields, in the context of primary education, on this matter: on the one hand, the studies related to organization and extension of school time and, on the other hand, research on the structural and structuring components of school-related aspects. The literature review indicates that studies on school-time and on the corresponding extension policies and programs do not report the difficulties found when trying to modify the hard components of the school system. Studies with the ‘school system’ as object of study have not approached the numerous school-time extension experiences, although time is one of the structural elements of the system.