American Studies Commons

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Recent Articles in American Studies

Caudill, Rebecca, 1899-1985 (Sc 991), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Caudill, Rebecca, 1899-1985 (Sc 991), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 991. Letters (2), written to Evelyn Thurman, Bowling Green, Kentucky, from Rebecca Caudill, Urbana, Illinois, discussing her and her husband’s writings and day-to-day activities and showing her friendship with Thurman, who later wrote a biography of Caudill.


The Mask Of The 'American Dream', Saraswathi Nookala '15 Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy

The Mask Of The 'American Dream', Saraswathi Nookala '15

2013 Spring Semester

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology are heralded as some of the greatest insights into human nature in American literature. Both authors ask the reader to scrutinize the actions and emotions of the characters in their books to understand the true meaning behind their double-sided statements. From analyzing the characters of Tom and Daisy Buchanan and Lambert Hutchins, the reader can conclude that although they have the inordinate amount of wealth everybody in America works toward, they are dissatisfied, and use their money and aristocratic position to project the exterior of contentment ...


Atticus Finch Looks At Fifty, Michael L. Boyer University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Atticus Finch Looks At Fifty, Michael L. Boyer

University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender and Class

No abstract provided.


Building A Taxonomy Of Player Types And The Effects On The Self And Interaction Between Players, Kyle Yim University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Building A Taxonomy Of Player Types And The Effects On The Self And Interaction Between Players, Kyle Yim

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA)

This paper conducted a literature review of current research examining fantasy football participants. Fantasy football has become popular in recent years due the attention from the media, most notably sports shows providing more coverage of fantasy football. Theories that have examined fantasy football include gambling theory, and uses and gratifications. Motivational types also provide categories to describe players. Additionally this theory also provides a method to measure these players called the Motivational Scale for Fantasy Football Participation (MSFFP). Thus the purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore the literature in fantasy sports; propose to build taxonomical categories for serious ...


Understanding The Civil War, Charles O. Boyd Kennesaw State University

Understanding The Civil War, Charles O. Boyd

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper examines why the American Civil War took place and what the modern significance of the conflict is. The paper demonstrates that slavery was indeed the main cause of Southern secession and debunks, one by one, the arguments against that view. It also argues that modern day tributes to the Confederacy are offensive and that the Civil War should be understood as part of a long struggle in the United States for equal rights.


Giles, Janice (Holt), 1905-1979 (Sc 988), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Giles, Janice (Holt), 1905-1979 (Sc 988), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 988. Wills of Janice (Holt) and Henry Giles, Knifley (Adair County), Kentucky, including rights to Janice's books, royalties, papers, etc.


Walking Box Ranch Custodianship Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending January 10, 2013, Margaret N. Rees University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Walking Box Ranch Custodianship Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending January 10, 2013, Margaret N. Rees

Walking Box Ranch

  • UNLV provides stewardship of Walking Box Ranch (WBR) by providing a caretaker who oversees the property, facilitating use of the property by researchers and educators, developing a use and research policy for the property, and coordinating these activities with BLM and in accordance with TNC restrictions.
  • UNLV currently addresses security issues for the property through the presence of the caretaker and two Metro Officers who reside on the property in two recreational vehicles.
  • UNLV continues to work with BLM, supplying content for interpretation at the future Walking Box Ranch museum.
  • BLM and UNLV visited the ranch on December 5th to ...


Walking Box Ranch Custodianship Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending July 10, 2012, Margaret N. Rees University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Walking Box Ranch Custodianship Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending July 10, 2012, Margaret N. Rees

Walking Box Ranch

  • UNLV provides stewardship of Walking Box Ranch (WBR) by providing a caretaker who oversees the property, facilitating use of the property by researchers and educators, developing a use and research policy for the property, and coordinating these activities with BLM and in accordance with TNC restrictions.
  • UNLV currently addresses security issues for the property through the presence of the caretaker and two Metro Officers who reside on the property in two recreational vehicles.
  • UNLV continues to work with BLM and Condit, supplying content for interpretation at the future Walking Box Ranch museum.
  • BLM visited the ranch on July 5 to ...


Eating Spaces And Places: Examining The Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, And Black Urban Space As Sites Of Collective And Social Imagination, Kathlynn E. Hinkfuss Macalester College

Eating Spaces And Places: Examining The Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, And Black Urban Space As Sites Of Collective And Social Imagination, Kathlynn E. Hinkfuss

Honors Projects

I focus on three specific neighborhood tropes that are commonly understood and accepted in the American social imagination: the Latin@ Barrio, Chinatown, and Black Urban Space. I examine how these three neighborhood tropes show up in and play out on physical examples of these spaces. I identify three currently existing neighborhoods in the Upper Midwest: the South Side of Milwaukee, Chinatown in Chicago, and North Minneapolis. To more specifically interrogate the connection between the abstract and concrete, I argue that specific sites of analysis in each neighborhood are symbolically and physically consumed: the Mexican restaurant “La Perla” in Milwaukee, the ...


Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 (Sc 959), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Roberts, Elizabeth Madox, 1881-1941 (Sc 959), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 959. Letter written by Elizabeth Madox Roberts, Springfield, Kentucky, to Marjorie, evidently a fellow student at the University of Chicago. Roberts mentions the Poetry Club, the problem of finding suitable housing, and comments about fellow students Janet Loxley Lewis and Maurice Lesemann.


Melville In Tahiti: A Gis Approach, Jessica Ewing Boise State University

Melville In Tahiti: A Gis Approach, Jessica Ewing

Student Research Initiatives

This presentation will focus on Melville's period in and around Tahiti in 1842, a part of the biographical record vexed by conflicting scholarly accounts of Melville's whereabouts and actions, and by inconsistencies—as well as outright falsehoods—among surviving documents and the author's own account of his experiences in his second book Omoo. Digitally expanding on methods of traditional scholarship, I will present the evidence in visual, electronic form by using ArcGIS software to map Melville’s movements, supplying relevant data and documentation and mapping alternate interpretations of the author's travels. The layered digital maps will ...


Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 943), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 943), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 943. Unsigned picture postcard, postmarked Cumberland, Maryland, and addressed to Rose Mehler, Lexington, Kentucky. The writer relates that their carnival was very successful and that their production of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch was quite a “unique feature.” Picture on postcard is of the cast and scenery of the play.


Murdoch, Louise Saunders, 1872-1918 - Letters To (Sc 937), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Murdoch, Louise Saunders, 1872-1918 - Letters To (Sc 937), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 937. Congratulatory letters, 1918 (3), written to Louise Saunders Murdoch, Buckhorn, Kentucky, concerning her recently published book, Almetta of Gabriel’s Run.


Awaiting The Seer: Emerson's Poetic Theory, Rachel Radford University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Awaiting The Seer: Emerson's Poetic Theory, Rachel Radford

University of Tennessee Honors Thesis Projects

No abstract provided.


Speed, John Orville, 1871-1970 (Sc 933), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Speed, John Orville, 1871-1970 (Sc 933), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 933. Two poems; excerpt from Who’s Who in Poetry that included one of John Orville Speed’s poems; 1970 newspaper clipping about Speed, all found in an autographed copy of his 1962 book Anecdotes and Tall Tale in Rhyme. Speed was originally from Madisonville, Hopkins County, Kentucky, and was called the “Pennyrile Poet Laureate.”


Interview Of Mary Butler, Mary Butler, Zach Bower La Salle University

Interview Of Mary Butler, Mary Butler, Zach Bower

All Oral Histories

Mary (King) Butler was born in 1942 in King and Queen County, Virginia. Her parents are Hayes and Blanche King. Her father’s parents were Archie King, Sr. and Rossie King. Her mother’s parents were Joshua and Peggie Whiting. Mary is the oldest of four children. Her two brothers were born in 1943 and 1951, and her sister was born in 1961. Her nuclear family lived close to her father’s parent’s farm in Plainview, VA. Her family was active in both Union Prospect Baptist Church and First Baptist Church.

Butler worked often on her grandparent’s farm ...


Middle Power Leadership And The Evolution Of The G20, Andrew Cooper, Jongryn Mo Global Summitry Journal

Middle Power Leadership And The Evolution Of The G20, Andrew Cooper, Jongryn Mo

Global Summitry Journal

Global power is becoming more diffuse, smarter, and more asymmetric. In developing this extended argument, we make four points. First, the G20 Seoul Summit in November 2010 showed that the G20 is becoming increasingly embedded as the hub of global economic governance. Second, a strong G20 has positive attributes for global governance. Third, a main driving force for the ascent of the G20 has been and will continue to be middle power leadership. This article, therefore, will concentrate in the following on the role of Canada, Australia and South Korea but, there is some considerable potential for this role to ...


Phoebe Snow: Odd, Rare And Sublime, Vincent L. Stephens Bucknell University

Phoebe Snow: Odd, Rare And Sublime, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

A draft from my work-in-progress essay collection on post-war American popular singing "Sound Love." The essay argues that Phoebe Snow is unique among her generation of singer-songwriters as she is more notable as an interpreter than as a writer. Her synthesis of elements from blues, jazz, pop, gospel and R&B defy category as does her artistry.


Vaudeville, Popular Entertainment And Cultural Division In The Inland Empire, 1880-1914, Mark Hauser Claremont Colleges

Hancock, Elizabeth Ann (Moore), B. 1924 (Sc 906), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives Western Kentucky University

Hancock, Elizabeth Ann (Moore), B. 1924 (Sc 906), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 906. New Year’s greeting, designed using family members’ photos, of Elizabeth Ann (Moore) Hancock, Albuquerque, New Mexico, to Constance Mills, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and data about each family member’s 1993 activities. Mrs. Hancock is the daughter of Kentucky author Janice Holt Giles.