Pathways: A Journal of Humanistic and Social Inquiry

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02/17/2021
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  • Publication
    The Shame Framework: Queer Faith in Ana Castillo’s So Far from God
    (2021-02-17) Montes, Isabella M
    This work focuses on queer faith and how queer persons who have struggled with traditional values, public opinion, and lingering violence due to their sexuality, can reclaim their space and voices within religious communities. By redefining purity, exploring an alternative belief system though hybrid spirituality, and understanding the connection between pride and shame, queer persons can establish a dynamic framework, that allows for queer faith to be employed as a method of agency. This is analyzed through a literary perspective, focusing on the work of Ana Castillo’s novel, So Far From God.
  • Publication
    Securitizing Immigrants: Applying Securitization Theory in German Politics
    (2021-02-17) Uranga, Aaron A
    This manuscript demonstrates how the use of securitization by the German political party the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has gained them votes in the German federal elections. The securitization focused on the refugee crisis and the effects that the refugees would have on Germany and its citizens. While mainstream German political parties adopted a neutral stance towards the crisis, the AfD separated themselves by adopting a strong anti-immigrant stance. The concept of securitization has not been fully applied to the German political parties. As a proxy for the political party, the paper analyzes the policy platforms and statements regarding immigration, designed to gain popularity and votes. In order to do this, the paper first defines securitization and then analyzes a variety of sources, including the political parties’ manifestos, in order to show how they have developed and changed their political agendas and beliefs between the years of 2013-2019. This paper compares voting polls and statistics to examine how the party’s use of securitization has garnered them popularity and votes and to find which groups tend to vote for them. The research showed that the party’s shift to securitizing the refugee crisis resulted in the increase of votes in the German federal elections. The AfD placed a sizable focus on their campaign towards immigration after the beginning of the crisis in 2015. For the AfD whose whole campaign focused on immigration, it saw a huge boost of votes during the 2017 German Federal election, managing to reach third place in the number of votes it received.
  • Publication
    Symbol, Signification, and Hashtags as Violence Against Black Bodies; A Comparative Analysis of Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen
    (2021-02-17) Edouard, Lynn S
    In Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American lyric the concept of Black subjectivity rendered as symbol is represented through the narratives of Harriet and Trayvon Martin. By using Harriet’s explanation of becoming symbolic in Cliff’s No Telephone To Heaven as a lens to examine Trayvon Martin’s life and death as narrated in Rankine’s Citizen, I expand the conversation of symbolic rendering. In Cliff’s work, symbolic rendering is achieved through sexual violence in the post-colonial Caribbean context. For Rankine, the post-colonial carceral state in U.S. society becomes the site for the symbolic rendering of policy brutality and racial profiling. Using Saussure’s General Linguistics, Foucault’s concept of the PanOpticon, and bell hooks’s Loving Blackness as Political Action, I argue that Cliff and Rankine’s works illuminate how symbolism becomes violence against Black bodies by rendering the lived experiences of the individual as an object.
  • Publication
    Establishing a Fixed Home: The Attempt at Identity Completion in Alvarez’s "Antojos" and Menéndez’s "Her Mother's House"
    (2021-02-17) Molina, Anaridia R
    Immigrant experiences are often characterized by identity anxiety and a corresponding longing to identify a single place to call “home.” In Julia Alvarez’s "Antojos" and Ana Menéndez’s "Her Mother's House," the main characters return to their native or ancestral land in search of a space to claim as home, and relatedly, a permanent location for a fixed identity in the Caribbean. This paper examines how in these works, typically unbeknownst to the protagonists themselves, establishing a home regularly takes the form of securing what they perceive to be “wholeness” and “completion.” I argue that the texts reveal that the protagonists’ search for a fixed and static place to call home, derived from desires of identity completion, cannot be found, and rather their place of arrival can solely exist in the ambiguity of language and memory. As such, eventually, the reader is prompted to understand that not having a traditional essentialized notion of home to guide the protagonists frees them and allows them to embrace rather than reject their linguistic and spatial multiplicities.
  • Publication
    No Estoy Sola (I Am Not Alone): Addressing Gender-Based Violence through Community-Based Theater
    (2021-02-17) Mena, Annel A
    In this article, I analyze how women at the border city of El Paso address the #MeToo movement and gender-based violence through community-based theatre. By using testimonios and performance ethnography, I analyze the power of storytelling to create awareness of gender-based violence on the border and ability to create solidarity. The theater has become an effective way of addressing such a stigmatized topic. The performance of the theater has inspired a workshop that is now used to help survivors heal their wounds by understanding that they are not alone.
  • Publication
    The Jewish Migration to Mexico during Nazi Germany
    (2021-02-17) Argote, Gisela A
    In response to antisemitic persecution from Nazi Germany and allied states, Jews from Central and Eastern Europe sought asylum, emigrated, applied for visas, and faced deportation. Mexico, under the leadership of President Lázaro Cardenas, a vocal opponent of Fascism who allowed tens of thousands of Spanish-Republican exiles to emigrate to the country, was one potential destination for Central and Eastern European Jews. In fact, the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, received thousands of applications from asylum seekers. This paper challenges the image of Mexico as a country offering hospitality to European refugees and evaluates the state’s reluctance to accept Jews during the presidencies of Cárdenas and his successor, Manuel Ávila Camacho. By highlighting the very different receptions given to Spaniards, on the one hand, and Central and Eastern European Jews on the other, I argue that Mexico’s immigration and refugee policy was influenced by racism rather than antifascism alone. Examining immigration policies of the 1930s and 1940s has possible implications for today’s immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers and how contemporary governments accept or exclude them.
  • Publication
    Traditional and Nontraditional Activism: Literary and Political Pedagogies of La Chicana
    (2021-02-17) Ponce, Anahi
    Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas and Felicia Luna Lemus’s Trace Elements of Random Tea Parties both grapple with themes relating to the impact of Malinchismo experienced by real-life Chicanas in both political and cultural discourses. Despite this parallel, these texts and their characters have not received critical attention in the field of Chicana Literature when compared with texts such as Sandra Cisneros’s The House on Mango Street. The womxn in these texts have similarly been stripped from narratives of activism because of their evocation of nontraditional forms of activism, which are often overlooked in comparison to more traditional ones, as a result of the application of respectability politics. While the womxn in these novels challenge the status quo through nontraditional activism and resistance, it is significant to consider how the systems of oppression that they are forced to navigate are intrinsic with those experienced by their real-life counterparts, as well as throughout the history and establishment of Chicana feminism and activism at large. This article is not meant to dichotomize Chicanas who partake in traditional versus nontraditional activism, but rather to provide insight as to how Chicanas have continuously acted as agents of change, in the face of colonization’s enduring legacies.
  • Publication
    Filipina Caregivers and the Colonial Construction of their Identities in the U.S.
    (2021-02-17) Monton, Ashlee
    Existing literature has noted how a disproportionate percentage of Filipina women are employed in personal care and service positions, especially within caregiving positions (Ezquerra, 2007). Their relative invisibility and lack of access to adequate economic and labor protections potentially feeds into a black market of caregiving positions (Ezquerra, 2007). Due to their precarious status, these women are vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and various types of harassment. While globalization certainly plays a role in Filipina women’s participation within this labor sector, this study explores the concept that colonial gender hierarchies are being reinforced through Philippine media, thus affecting how Filipina caregivers perceive their identities and their position in the caregiving work sector. Filipina women’s contributions to the economy of the Philippines is substantial given current remittances rates. In popular media representations, the recurring image of the maternal OFW (Overseas Filipino Worker) portrayed in TV campaigns and advertisements is testament to Filipina workers’ contributions. In this essay, I argue that these depictions may be amplified by a historical colonial mentality that has idealized life abroad, and simultaneously, idealized the role of caregivers. For this study, I conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with eight current or former Filipina caregivers born in the Philippines to examine to what extent colonial mindframes inform Filipina caregivers’ identity formation in the United States. Results from this qualitative study suggest that participants derive empowerment from their work and familial duties, which reframe capitalistic ideas of caregiving. Drawing from Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales’ concept of Pinayism, I suggest the importance of amplifying how Filipina caregivers account for experiences of newfound agency and independence within their context in the United States, regardless of the nature of their work.