dissertation research in spanish

Current and Recent Dissertations

The following Doctoral Dissertations, organized by graduation year, reflect the breadth and depth that characterize the research of our graduate students. Digital access is provided through the  University of California Digital Library , our institutional repository. Additionally, the abstracts of theses and dissertations worldwide are indexed by  ProQuest . 

For Dissertations since 2000, click here .

Dissertations In Progress

Recent dissertations – 2012 to 2024.

Gabriela Patricia Barrios,  Not Your Perfect Mexican Migrant: Analyzing the Depiction of Migrant Women’s Trauma in Chicanx and Mexican Cultural Production.  [Advisors: Maite Zubiaurre & Sara Poot-Herrera) (June 2024)

Eduardo Kolesov Díaz,   Memorias construidas, traumas colectivos y comunidades destruidas: La manifestación y mitificación de la Guerra Cristera (1926–1929) en Juan Rulfo, Agustín Yáñez y Jesús Goytortúa Santos .   [Advisor: Maarten van Delden] (June 2024)

Madison Raelene Dunlap,  Effect of Autistic-Like Traits on Novel Second Language Phonetic Trait Imitation Ability in Children with Varying Autism Quotient Scores.  [Advisor: Ji Young Kim] (June 2024)

Erin Mauffray,  On the Acquisition and Maintenance of Periphrastic and  Se- Passives in L2 and Heritage Spanish.  [Advisor: Victoria Mateu Martin] (June 2024)

Claudio Ramos,  Art in Motion: Uncovering the Transformative Potential of Social Impact Entertainment in the Brazilian Audiovisual Sector.  [Advisors: Adriana Bergero & Patricia Lino]  (June 2024)

Angelica Belen Waner,  From Roads to Iguanas: Tracing Contemporary Zapotec Literature.  [Advisor: Patricia Arroyo Calderón] (June 2024)

Madison Felman-Panagotacos,  Hagiographies of Maternal Bodies: Corporality, Abortion, and Citizenship  in Argentina. [ Advisor: Adriana Bergero] (June 2023)

Julia Gonzalez Calderon,  Negra memoria: la narrativa policial centroamericana en la era del neoliberalismo.  [Advisor: Patricia Arroyo-Calderon]  (June 2023)

Isaac Gimenez,  Crise autoral e apropriações textuais: Corpo e poesia performativa no Brasil, 1920-2020. [ Advisors: Patricia Lino & Jose Luiz Passos]   (June 2023)

Tania Varela,  Adapting Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso for Iberian Readerships: Jerónimo de Urrea’s Spanish Translation and its Sephardic Adaptation (Oxford, Bodleian Libraries, MS. Canon. Or. 6)  [Advisor: John Dagenais] (June 2023)

João Paulo Temporão Albuquerque, Postcolonial (Mock-)Epic Narratives: Reading Mário de Andrade with Jorge Luis Borges.   [Advisor: Jose Luiz Passos] (March 2022)

Esther Claudio, Historical Memory in Post-Francoist Spanish Graphic Narrative [Advisor: Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2022)

Roxana Colon-Cosm e, “Dezir quiero de Granada, todo quanto he visto en ella”: A Geocritical Approach to Sixteenth Century Iberian pliegos sueltos. [Advisor: John Dagenais] (June 2022)

Audrey Larkin, Lunar Wastelands to Fertile Fields: Representations of the Landscape in Mexican Novels, Illustrations, and Film Adaptations (1899-2019) [Advisor: Maarten van Delden] (June 2022)

Chak Han (Laura) Lee, Modernity in Transition: Roberto Arlt’s Aguafuertes porteñas.   [Advisor: Veronica Cortinez] (March 2022)

Adelmar Ramirez, Ficciones especulares: formas intermediadas de representación y exégesis de la violencia en la literatura contemporánea mexicana y argentina. [Advisors: Adriana Bergero and Jorge Marturano] (June 2022)

Gemma Repiso Puigdelliura, The Development of Cross-linguistic Transfer: The Case of  Word-External Repairs of Empty Onsets in Spanish Heritage Speakers. [Advisor: Ji Young Kim] (June 2022)

Jesus Jose Silveyra, An e-Learning Lesson on the First Commercial Spanish Theaters. A Non-Traditional Dissertation [Advisor: Barbara Fuchs] (Fall 2022)

Carolina Beltran,  Nature, Nation and Animality in the Discourse of Literary Indigenismo: Case Studies in Peru, Mexico & the American Southwest, 1920-1974   .  [Advisor: Efrain Kristal] (March 2021)

Juliana Espinal,  Representaciones de la violencia paramilitar en la Colombia del siglo XXI.  [Advisor: Veronica Cortinez] (June 2021)

Barbara Galindo,  Vidas Huérfanas, Ciudades Torturadas y Derechos Humanos Ecosociales: Representaciones Culturales del Terror Minero en los Andes.  [Advisor: Adriana Bergero] (June 2021)

Jesus Galleres,  Ira, humillación, Deseo De Venganza y Luchas De Prestigio: Un Acercamiento Al Papel De Las Pasiones En Las Novelas políticas De Mario Vargas Llosa y Alonso Cueto Que Tratan épocas Dictatoriales y De insurrección.  [Advisor: Efrain Kristal] (March 2021)

Laura Muñoz Franco,  Communities of Playmaking: Guillén de Castro in the Development of the Comedia.   [Advisor: Barbara Fuchs] (June 2021)

Paula Thomas,  El espacio público y el derecho a la ciudad en el Santiago de Alberto Fuguet.  [Advisor: Veronica Cortinez] (June 2021)

Benjamin Burt,  Cities of Dreams and Despair: Utopia and Dystopia in Contemporary Brazilian Film and Literature.  [Advisors: Randal Johnson and Jose Luiz Passos] (June 2020)

Veronica Garcia Moreno,  España transfigurada en el Magreb: Construcciones identitarias en la literatura sobre la guerra de África de 1859.  [Advisor: Prof. Jesus Torrecilla] (June 2020)

Natassia Hott,  Rethinking Sterotypes: Representations of Gender in Brazilian Comedies of the Post-Remotada.     [Advisor: Prof. Randal Johnson] (June 2020)

Alexandra Lawn,  The Varying Roles of Morphosyntax in Memory and Sentence Processing: Retrieval and Encoding Interference in Brazilian Portuguese.   [Advisors: Carlos Quicoli and Jesse Harris] (June 2020)

Maria Teresa Monroe,  Indocumentados en tránsito: Representaciones contemporáneas de precariedad, muerte y resistencia.  [Advisor: Marten van Delden] (June 2020)

Renee Rivera,  Masculinities at Work: Men, Masculinities, and Employment in the Spanish Popular Comedies of the Late-Francoist and Transition Eras.  [Advisor: Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2020)

Lourdes Arevalo,  Dos o tres cosas sobre la novela de la violencia y las violencias en Colombia.  [Advisor: Prof. Veronica Cortinez] (March 2019)

Maricela Becerra,  “2 de octubre no se olvida”: la (pos)memorialización de Tlatelolco 68  [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2019)

Kristal Bivona,  Transitional Justice in Post-Dictatorship South American Film.  [Advisors: Prof. Randal Johnson and Adriana Bergero] (June 2019)

Francesca Gambini,  La producción cultural del Perú ante la comisión de la verdad y reconciliación.  [Advisor: Prof. Veronica Cortinez] (June 2019)

Jennifer Monti,  Imagining Cuba: Emigration, Tourism, and Imperialist Nostalgia in the Work of Spanish Women Writers and Photographers (1992-2015).  [Advisor: Prof. Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2019)

Cristian Yanai Bermudez,  Black Mexico’s Sites of Struggles across Borders: The Problem of the Color Line . [Advisor: Prof. Hector Calderon] (June 2018)

Franny Brogan,  Signs of our Times: Language Contact and Attitudes in the Linguistic Landscape of Southeast Los Angeles  [Advisors: Carlos Quicoli and Norma Mendoza-Denton] (June 2018)

Paul Cella,  Contemporary Republicanism in Spain: Dialogues with Liberalism and the Left . [Advisor: Prof. Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2018)

Adrian Collado,  Caricaturas del otro: contra-representaciones satíricas de la inmigración en la literatura y la cultura visual Española contemporánea (1993-2017).  [Advisor: Prof. Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2018)

Daniel Cooper,  The Roots of Transformation: Octavio Paz and the Radical Americanist Awakening of Pablo Neruda.  [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2018)

Nitzaira Delgado-Garcia,  Historiografía y ficción: la construcción del discurso en la estoria de España (NS7586) de Alfonso X . [Advisor: Prof. John Dagenais] (June 2018)

Armando Guerrero,  The Mexican Diaspora: On constructing and Negotiating Mexicanidad in México City.  [Advisor: Prof. Carlos Quicoli] (June 2018)

Payton Phillips,  Imperial Occlusions: Mestizaje and Marian Mechanisms in Early Modern Andalucía and the Andes.  [Advisor: Prof. Barbara Fuchs] (June 2018)

Alejandro Ramirez-Mendez,  Trans-Urban Narratives: Literary Cartographies and Global Cities in the Urban Imagination of Mexico and the U.S. .  [Advisor: Prof. Hector Calderon] (June 2018)

Rafael Ramirez Mendoza,  Transformar el mundo, cambiar la vida: el surrealismo en el Perú y los proyectos de renovación sociocultural de Jose Carlos Mariategui, Xavier Abril, y Cesar Moro. .  [Advisor: Prof. Efrain Kristal] (August 2018)

Jyeun Son,  Acquisition of Spanish Intonation by Native Korean Speakers . [Advisors: Prof. Carlos Quicoli and Sun-Ah Jun] (June 2018)

Ezequiel Trautenberg,  A Porous Cinema: Cosmopolitanism and Cinephilia in Chilean Art Film (2005-2015).   [Advisor: Prof. Veronica Cortinez] (June 2018)

Elizabeth Warren,  The Aesthetic of the Grotesque in Post-Franco Spain .    [Advisor: Prof. Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2018)

Mariska Bolyanatz,  Plural Production and Perception in Santiago Spanish  [Advisors: Profs. Ji Young Kim and Norma Mendoza-Denton] (June 2017)

Isaura Contreras,  El diario de escritor en la literatura latinoamericana del siglo XX  [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2017)

Jhonni Carr,  Signs of Our Times: Language Contact and Attitudes in the Linguistic Landscape of Southeast Los Angeles  [Advisor: Prof. Carlos Quicoli] (June 2017)

Wendy Kurtz,  Mass Graves and Remembering through Ritual: Historical Memory in Contemporary Peninsular Literature, Documentary Film, and Digital Culture  [Advisor: Prof. Maite Zubiaurre] (June 2017)

Magdalena Matuskova,  Cuban Cinema in a Global Context: The Impact of Eastern European Cinema on the Cuban Film Industry in the 1960s  [Advisor: Prof. Jorge Marturano] (June 2017)

David Ramirez Prieto,  José Lezama Lima y las redes intelectuales antimodernas: escritores, revistas, editoriales  (1920-1956) [Advisor: Prof. Jorge Marturano] (June 2017)

Cheri Robinson,  Representations of Transnational Violence: Children in Contemporary Latin American Film, Literature, and Drawings  [Advisor: Prof. Adriana Bergero] (May 2017)

Maria Gabriela Venegas,  La novela del Ecuador desde el espacio anfibio de la ciudad portuaria y su relación con el liberalismo ecuatoriano: tres casos representativos entre 1855 y 1944  [Advisor: Prof. Efrain Kristal] (March 2017)

Daniel Whitesell,  Debates ideológicos y estilísticos en torno a la Revolución Cubana, 1963-1966  [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2017)

Inês Cordeiro da Silva Dias, Film and Politics in the Lusophone World (1960s— 1970s) [Advisor: Prof. Randal Johnson] (June 2016)

Julio P. García, Ignacio Padilla, México, y el legado de la tradición literaria latinoamericana (1985-2015). [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2016)

Willivaldo Delgadillo, Fabulando Juárez: Marcos de guerra, memoria y los foros por venir. [Advisor: Prof. Maarten van Delden] (June 2016)

Audrey A. Harris, De lo más lindo y de lo más pobre: Transnational Borges and Sandra Cisneros. [Advisor: Prof. Héctor Calderón] (June 2016)

Isabel Gomez,  Reciprocity in Literary Translation: Gift Exchange Theory and Translation Praxis in Brazil and Mexico (1968-2015) [Advisors: Profs. Efraín Kristal and José Luiz Passos]

Bryan Kirschen,  Judeo-Spanish Encounters Modern Spanish: Language Contact and Diglosia among the Sephardim of Los Angeles and New York City. [Advisors: Profs. Claudia Parodi and A. Carlos Quicoli] (June 2015)

Ian Romain,  A Phase Approach to Spanish Object Clitics . [Advisor: Profs. Claudia Parodi and A. Carlos Quicoli] (April 2015)

Juan Jesús Payán,  La magia postergada: género fantástico e identidad nacional en la España del XIX. [Advisor: Prof. Jesús Torrecilla] (May 2015)

Eilene Jamie Powell,  Hurts so good: representation of sadomasochism in Spnaish novels (1883-2012) [Advisors: Profs. Jesús Torrecilla and Silvia Bermudez] (May 2015)

Luiz Santos,  Literatura da Bagunça: a carnavalização nos romances da contracultura brasileira [Advisor: Prof. Randal Johnson] (March 2015)

Sandra Ruiz, Escrito con Tinta Roja: The Mexicana Feminist Detective in the Fiction of Maria Elvira Bermudez, Myriam Laurini, and Patricia Valladres. [Advisor: Prof. Héctor Calderón] (September 2014)

Armando Enrique Cerpa, Cifrado gótico en Santa Evita de Tomás Eloy Martínez y Una casa vacía de Carlos Cerda: espacios subterráneos, espectros e insepultos de las dictaduras. [Advisor: Prof. Adriana J. Bergero] (June 2014)

Carolyn González, Las Insometidas de la Ciudad de México: The Novel of Prostitution in Antonia Mora, Sara Sefchovich, and Cristina Rivera Garza. [Advisor: Prof. Héctor Calderón] (June 2014)

Belén MacGregor Villarreal, Dialect Contact among Spanish-Speaking Children in Los Angeles. [Advisor: Profs. Claudia Parodi] (June 2014)

Chase Wesley Raymond, On the Sequential Negotiation of Identity in Spanish-Language Discourse: Mobilizing Linguistic Resources in the Service of Social Action. [Advisor: Prof. Claudia Parodi and John Heritage] (Winter 2014)

Vanessa Marie Fernández, A Transatlantic Dialogue: Argentina, Mexico, Spain, and the Literary Magazines that Bridged the Atlantic (1920-1930). [Advisor: Profs. Maarten van Delden and Michelle Clayton] (Summer 2013)

Yeon Mi Lee, De milongas a la Casa Rosada: contribuciones y representaciones de la mujer en la industria del espectáculo popular argentino (1930-1950). [Advisor: Prof. Adriana J. Bergero] (Spring 2013)

Luis Francisco Cuesta Muniz, El estadio y la palabra: deporte y literatura en la Edad de Plata. [Advisor: Profs. Maite Zubiaurre and Roberta L. Johnson] (Spring 2013)

Bethany Renee Beyer, Performable Nations: Music and Literature in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Cuba, Brazil, and the United States. [Advisor: Prof. Elizabeth Marchant] (Spring 2013)

Eli Lee Carter, Luiz Fernando Carvalho: An Auteur of Brazilian Television. [Advisor: Prof. Randal Johnson] (Spring 2013) Brenda Liz Ortiz-Loyola, En busca de la solidaridad: feminismo y nación en el Caribe hispano, 1880-1940. [Advisor: Profs. Roberta L. Johnson and Jorge Marturano] (Spring 2013)

Polina Vasiliev, The Initial State for Californian English Learners of Spanish and Portuguese Vowels. [Advisor: Prof. A. Carlos Quicoli] (Spring 2013)

Joanna Dávila, Sexualidad, género y sociedad en la literatura del Caribe hispanohablante (1950-2000). [Advisor: Prof. Jorge Marturano] (Spring 2013)

Edward Chauca, El lugar de la locura: La construcción de la nación desde lo insano en la narrativa peruana. [Advisor: Prof. Efraín Kristal] (Fall 2012)

Alvaro Molina, Sacred, Epic and Picaresque: Violence and Genre in Cervantes. [Advisor: Profs. Efraín Kristal and Teófilo Ruiz] (Summer 2012)

Bryan David Green, Forging an Ascetic Planet: Jesuit Lives and Virtues on the Mission Frontier of Eighteenth-Century New Spain. [Advisor: Prof. Anna H. More] (Summer 2012)

Argelia Andrade, Segmental and Intonational Evidence for a Los Angeles Chicano Spanish Vernacular. [Advisor: Profs. Claudia Parodi and A. Carlos Quicoli] (Spring 2012)

Jamie Diane Fudacz, The Decadent City: Urban Space in Latin American Dirty Realist Fiction. [Advisor: Profs. Jorge Marturano and Maarten van Delden] (Spring 2012)

María Covadonga Lamar Prieto, El español de California en el XIX. [Advisor: Prof. Claudia Parodi] (Spring 2012)

Claudia Villegas-Silva, Tecnologías en escena: Del teatro multimedia al teatro cibernético en España y las Américas. [Advisor: Prof. Verónica Cortínez] (Spring 2012)

Oriel María Siu, Novelas de la diáspora centroamericana y la colonialidad del poder: Hacia una aproximación de-colonial al estudio de las literaturas centroamericanas. [Advisor: Prof. Héctor Calderón] (Spring 2012)

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Tesis doctorales: teseo.

A Spanish Ministry of Education database where you can retrieve doctoral theses written at Spanish universities. The website allows you to monitor and consult every thesis file since 1976.

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