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Abstract: This thesis examines the role of gender in three versions of Carme Riera’s short story “Te entrego, amor, la mar como una ofrenda” [I Leave You, My Love, the Sea as an Offering] – the Spanish-language source text, and my own translations into English and French. As romance languages such as Spanish and French exhibit grammatical gender in ways that English does not, texts written in these languages are able to play on the interaction between the gender of the words themselves and the themes of social gender in a way that an English-language text ostensibly cannot. This project explores the effect of the linguistic category of grammatical gender on the themes of social gender through the process of translation, with special attention paid to the ways in which this interaction can present obstacles in the transfer and adaptation of the text across languages.

This dissertation theorizes the nature of the cultural and political relationship between Cuba and Catalonia in the contemporary context. Rather than tracing a linear history, this project explores Catalan-Cuban connections in their multifaceted, fragmented, and shifting aspects from the 19th through the 21st centuries, across a broad range of expressions of culture. In my first chapter, "Modernisme Caribeny in Cuba as an Expression of Catalanitat," I show how Modernisme marked Catalan national space in Cuba and how 1898 begins a new Cuban-Catalan epoch, characterized by the development of political ideology and greater mutual influence. The second chapter, "Listening for the Revolution After the Revolution: Silence and Noise in Manuel Vázquez Montalbán's Y Dios entró en La Habana (1998)," examines Vázquez Montalbán's late piece, Y Dios entró en La Habana, in which he describes the visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba and presents unique commentary on revolution and contemporary Cuba. My third chapter, "(Re)Imagining a National Project: The Rise of Cuban Nationalism in Carme Riera's Cap al cel obert (2000)," scrutinizes mid-nineteenthcentury relations between Cuba and Catalonia and how Carme Riera (Palma, 1948) reworks this historical relationship in the context of the late twentieth century in her novel Cap al cel obert (2000). Her nuanced manipulation of the historical CatalanCuban connection reveals certain attitudes about contemporary Catalan national identity. The final chapter, "Locating the Catalan Nation in the Twenty-First Century: Immigration and Exile in Contemporary Barcelona," examines the photography of Enlloc (2005) by Juan Pablo Ballester. Ballester portrays identity in exile; however, his use of the Catalan term and his treatment of Catalan symbols depict the challenges of immigration to Catalonia in the twenty-first century. Ballester's establishment of a Catalan "Nowhere" re-enacts cultural and political conflict, even as it seeks to go beyond it. Overall, my research demonstrates how Cuba has affected Catalan identity and politics in the contemporary period in a greater capacity previously indicated by the scholarship, and moreover, that the importance to Catalonia that Cuba held in its colonial struggle against Spain has been re-imagined in literature and arts through the present day.

This study, which is dedicated to the analysis of three novels by Carme Riera: Una primavera para Domenico Guarini, Cuestión de amor propio, and La mitad del alma, investigates the disappointments and disconnections that the protagonists suffer in their relationships with other characters and the influence of culture on those relationships. This study demonstrates that the breakdown of the relationships between daughters and mothers and between friends is the result of the patriarchal society of Francoist Spain that is hostile towards women. The repression that Riera’s narrators, who are all women writers telling their stories in a personal, intimate first-person narration, suffer under such a society not only causes them emotional problems, such as depression, frustration, lack of self-esteem, feelings of unworthiness and inferiority, but also prevents them from having meaningful relationships with other women as friends and daughters.