Pride and prejuicio: Spanish heritage speakers translingual and transcultural identities
Claudia Pozzobon Potratz, PhD
Abstract: This study examines the exploration of language usage in relation to identities and ideologies among Spanish Heritage language (SHL) speakers. More specifically, the study analyzes whether these speakers’ alternate use of languages in the classroom or in their daily lives contributes to the construction of their own language and ethnic identities. This qualitative study was conducted with the aim of building an understanding of the linguistic profiles of speakers of Spanish as a heritage language, and how they use language to talk about themselves, their translingual and bicultural backgrounds, and their ethnic and linguistic identities. This is important because building an understanding of how these speakers portray and conceptualize their ethnic and linguistic identities will contribute to heritage language education at the college level. Additionally, it can provide information on how educational institutions can better serve heritage language speakers, not only of Spanish, but other heritage languages as well. The case studies of the three heritage speakers are presented as narrative portraits, and all three reveal interpretive themes that suggest the close connection between language and identity, the importance of representation, validity, and recognition for heritage languages and cultures, as well as the role of translanguaging in the reaffirmation of linguistic identity.

Representation and Identity in Early Modern Spain
Mackenzi McGowan
Abstract: In my dissertation I analyze the ways in which hegemonic discourse was challenged with performances done by Moriscos, Africans, women, and captives within theatrical plays of 17^th century Spain. The performances employed in these texts contest the definition of the exemplary Spanish subject as set forth by the Church and the Crown. I examine the ways in which gender, race, and religion are performatively used to not only enforce hegemonic discourse, but also to defy it. In all the works that I analyze, the possibility of agency is present through the construction of identities, suggesting that identity is unstable, and the authors of these texts consistently reconfigure the positions of their subjects. The varying elements of the texts at hand all demonstrate the possibility of agency as a mechanism that gives the perceived racial, religious, and gendered Other a voice and the possibility to challenge the hegemonic discourse.