College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item DOMINICAN GAGÁ FROM OUTSIDE AND WITHIN: DISCOURSES ABOUT GAGÁ, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC(2024) Hernandez-Sang, Victor; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the discourses that surround Gagá, an African-derived ritual tradition that entails processional music and dance performances to honor deities of Vodou, which is primarily practiced by Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian origin in the Dominican Republic. This study explores the characterization of Gagá from the perspective of outsiders (the media and public figures) and the viewpoint of insiders (the partakers of the tradition). In the analysis, I identify correlates between the characterization of Gagá in the media over time and major political and economic developments in the Dominican Republic. Additionally, I explore the work that community members of Gagá conduct to combat racism and harmful stereotypes about their music and religion. Based on fieldwork, archival research, and compilation of online media, this work provides a nuanced view of the perspective of gagaseros (practitioners of Gagá) regarding their tradition, self-identification, and racial discrimination.Item PALOS MUSIC AND FIESTAS DE MISTERIOS IN THE PROVINCE OF SANTIAGO, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC(2018) Hernandez Sang, Victor; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Musicians, religious leaders, and devotees of the Dominican religion Las Veintiunas Divisiones commonly assert that palos percussion music is performed in fiestas de misterios solely for religious purposes, namely, to facilitate spirit possession and entertain the misterios (deities). Based on fieldwork conducted in the Province of Santiago, this thesis demonstrates that palos music fulfills an additional important purpose in these occasions, that of attracting devotees and potential devotees. In Santiago, many practices in this religion and music are unconventional compared to other regions in country. Examining these unorthodox practices, I argue, reveals the extent to which palos musicians cater to the aesthetic preferences of the human spectators they wish to entice to attend these fiestas. Another interesting facet of the tradition that I examine is the participation of non-devotee drummers in religious ceremonies, a phenomenon that is not common in analogous Afro-Caribbean traditions such as Haitian Vodou and Cuban Santería.Item PROTEAN GODS: A RETELLING OF HISPANIOLA’S STORY THROUGH THE MAROON(2018) Rivera, Ines Pastora; Ontiveros, Randy; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation argues that an exploration of the maroon, or the runaway slave, in literature can be a means to acknowledging the too-often-repressed historical, political, and cultural connections between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and can also help us uncover more accurate and less restrictive versions of Hispaniola’s story. Hispaniola’s story is often told through the fatal-conflict narrative, reducing Haitian-Dominican relations to an unending cockfight. The fatal-conflict narrative paints the Dominican Republic and Haiti as two nations fated to regard one another as ultimate, foreign archenemies,destined to be in total conflict. It also paints the Dominican Republic and Haiti as two nations whose fight for Hispaniola and for the preservation of their respective cultures is fatal. The formation of the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti has bolstered the fatal-conflict narrative, silencing a shared history of resistance and cross-pollination. My work extends and contributes to existing scholarship by uncovering instances of cooperation and collaboration that suggest alternative views of a united island and that complicate contemporary political and social realities in the Dominican Republic. Rather than reaffirming a discourse of national difference through a focus on the border, I focus on the maroon as a protean figure who undoes the fatal-conflict narrative. I argue that these change agents, the maroons, anchor the island in what Cedric Robinson calls the Black Radical Tradition, the evolving resistance of African people to oppression. Maroon figures also reveal different angles to Hispaniola’s story through their forms of resistance and penchant for metamorphoses. I also examine twentieth and twenty-first century maroons found in Dominican and Dominican American literature. Like their counterparts from the past, modern-day maroons take flight, resist forms of enslavement and oppression, and undergo transformations that challenge conventional ways of thinking about Haitian-Dominican relations and the island of Hispaniola. Writers from the Dominican diaspora—among them Angie Cruz, Junot Díaz, and Nelly Rosario—have played a pivotal role in interrogating history, and more specifically, memories of violence and the repercussions associated with migration. Not only does this interrogation rewrite history, but it offers a means of forging a new, fuller story that erodes the border and expands the island’s boundaries, all the while magnifying the role of the Black Freedom struggle in the making of a whole Hispaniola.