Abstract
My dissertation “Género, clase, etnia y raza en la (re) presentación de la mujer inmigrante y extranjera en Argentina (1880 -1930),” studies the various ways in which the representation of immigrant and foreign women, who arrived to Argentina between 1880 and 1930, were shaped by the modalities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class in literary and visual texts. I approach this study with an understanding that the before-mentioned politics of difference are social constructions that reflect and perpetuate the prevailing distribution of power and privilege in a society. I look at novels, plays, travel literature and photography, re-envisioning canonical texts from a different critical direction. Thus, my dissertation casts new light on the representation of immigrant and foreign women by expanding the range of readings and exposing a patriarchal attitude towards the changing role of women in an unstable social structure. Drawing from theories such as gender, performance, ethnic studies, and visual culture, I emphasize the link that exists between the way the immigrant and foreign female bodies are seeing, and ways of structuring desire according to the logic of commodity capitalism.
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