WLC 400
1Course description: Students work with the instructor and WLC faculty advisors to research, synthesize, write and present their Capstone projects. Students will also complete a Graduation e-Portfolio reflecting how each MLO was met. This course is required for all Japanese Language and Culture, and Spanish Language and Hispanic Cultures majors.
Meets MLO 1, 5 & 6
Meets MLO 1, 5 & 6
Reflective Narrative
In WLC 400, I continued the preparation of my capstone project with my partner Fátima Andrade. Once we got the foundation to start from the SPAN 300 course, in addition to everything we learned during our academic journey on literature, culture and linguistics, our confidence increased as we worked together to develop our topic. Although, at first it was difficult to find an approach to the novels Hurricane Season (2017) and Paradais (2021) by Fernanda Melchor, we decided to take the most outstanding aspect of them, which in this case is the author's narration style, and use it to explain the violent attitude of the male characters who end up committing a femicide. Within this unique narration style full of "Mexicanismos" (Mexican vernacular), we find that in many of the Mexican expressions used by the characters, there is a certain degree of misogyny and machismo hidden within the meanings of those expressions. The expression that stands out the most within the vocabulary of the characters is the verb "chingar" and all its conjugations, because when the feminine conjugations are used, they tend to have a larger violent charge within their meaning than the masculine conjugations. Like this, there are many other examples. As it is a form of communication of values and ideals that affect society, especially women, we observe that language is part of a pillar that supports gender violence in Mexico. For this reason, in our capstone we talk about how language makes possible the flow of gender stereotypes that affects the perception of the male characters about themselves and their victims, which becomes a cycle of violence that is repeated generation after generation. Although our approach was literary, we had to resort to sociolinguistics to explain some concepts and how language interacts with our values and ideals, affecting our behavior and vice versa. Thanks to the support and feedback we received from our advisor, Dr. Carolyn González throughout the writing process, and Dr. Rebecca Pozzi for her guidance with the linguistics part, we were able to deliver a complete and well-supported project titled “Mexican Identity of the 21st Century Thought the Works of Fernanda Melchor.” Overall, this course taught me to work together with a group of people to carry out important projects. My communication with the people I work with has been greatly improved by receiving and offering feedback, which has made my experience doing this capstone a formidable one. In addition to the capstone, this course also helped me complete my e-portfolio by helping me with my MLO reflections, course narratives, among other documents needed for graduation.