American Popular Culture Commons^™

A Midwestern Culture Of Civility: Student Activism At The University Of Northern Iowa During The Maucker Years (1967-1970), Christopher J. Shackelford

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This project examines the changing social dynamic of those affiliated with the University of Northern Iowa during the latter half of the 1960s, with special emphasis on student activism and the changing attitudes of administrators and community members. This project intends to use the medium of alternative newspapers as a central component in the analysis of the time studied and as an unfiltered voice of student dissent. By narrowing the focus of this project to an individual university and community, an intimate narrative emerges that acts as a testament of the overwhelming atmosphere of change that engulfed American colleges throughout …

Inventing The Egghead: The Battle Over Brainpower In American Culture, Aaron Lecklider

Aaron S. Lecklider

Throughout the twentieth century, pop songs, magazine articles, plays, posters, and novels in the United States represented intelligence alternately as empowering or threatening. In Inventing the Egghead, cultural historian Aaron Lecklider offers a sharp, entertaining narrative of these sources to reveal how Americans who were not part of the traditional intellectual class negotiated the complicated politics of intelligence within an accelerating mass culture. Central to the book is the concept of brainpower—a term used by Lecklider to capture the ways in which journalists, writers, artists, and others invoked intelligence to embolden the majority of Americans who did not have access …

Time Cover Reflection, Hank J. Goldenberg

Hank J Goldenberg

A reflection on the media

Birth Of The American Zombie, Samantha Bloodworth

Samantha Murillo

This paper explains the concept of the "American zombie" as it is known in popular culture today and traces how it became the concept it is in American culture today.

Imagining Woman Otherwise, Or Nothing: Sexuation As Discourse In Lacanian Thought, Rahna Carusi

Rahna M Carusi

My dissertation looks at the connections between Lacan’s four discourses and the sexuation graph in order to claim that sexuation is discursive and that, as Lacan presents it with the phallus as its quilting point, the sexuation graph is a narrative based on patriarchal hegemony, which is one of many possible narratives. I argue that through the hysteric’s discourse and a removal of the phallus as the Symbolic-Imaginary quilting point, we can begin to formulate new narratives of sexuated subjectivities. The textual objects I use for this project are literary and filmic works where women are the central topic or …

Toni Morrison, Oprah Winfrey, And Postmodern Popular Audiences, John K. Young

John K. Young

In this essay the author examines the "Oprah Effect" on the career of Toni Morrison, who after three appearances on "Oprah's Book Club" has become the most dramatic example of postmodernism's merger between Morrison's canonical status and Winfrey's commercial power has superseded the publishing industry's field of normative whiteness, enabling Morrison to reach a broad, popular audience while being marketed as artistically important.

Soundscapes Of Disaster And Humanitarianism: Survival Singing, Relief Telethons, And The Haiti Earthquake, Elizabeth Mcalister

Elizabeth McAlister

This essay first listens, on one hand, to music made by Haitians, for Haitians, close to the epicenter, in the direct aftermath of the Haiti 2010 earthquake. On the other hand, it considers music made by (mostly) North Americans for (mostly) other Americans, in telethon performances far away in New York and Los Angeles and London, weeks after the event. I argue that Haitians used music, and particularly religious singing, self-reflexively, in a culturally patterned way, to orient themselves in time and space, and to construct a frame of meaning in which to understand and act in the devastated Haitian …

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

Walking Box Ranch

• UNLV provides stewardship of Walking Box Ranch (WBR) by employing 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 Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department officers who reside on the property in two recreational vehicles.
• UNLV continues to work with BLM, supplying content for interpretation at the future WBR museum.
• BLM visited the ranch on 7/05/12 and again …

Walking Box Ranch Planning And Design Quarterly Progress Report: Period Ending October 10, 2012, Margaret N. Rees

Walking Box Ranch

• BLM and UNLV met with AECOM on 7/12/12 to review Walking Box Ranch (WBR) project progress, timing of posting of project bid documents, and the anticipated project calendar through December 2012.
• BLM and UNLV met on 9/25/12 to update Mark Spencer, BLM’s new Field Manager for the Red Rock/Sloan Field Office, to brief him on UNLV participation at WBR, and to discuss the status of the operating agreement and major concerns that include timely completion of the operating agreement, which will allow completion of business plan and release of $500K for IT and security by UNLV’s president.
• UNLV is continuing …

Clark, Otis Vernon, Jr., 1926-2006 (Mss 428), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 428. Chiefly letters from Otis Vernon Clark, Jr., while studying in Lexington, Virginia, to his parents Otis and Susie, Bowling Green, Kentucky, detailing university social life. Also included in the collection are miscellaneous photos, postcards, and biographical information.

Social Learning Theory In The Frontline Documentary “The Merchants Of Cool”, Alixe A. Wiley

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

In the Frontline documentary The Merchants of Cool, the relationship between major media conglomerates and their hedonistic teenage customers is examined through exploring the different tactics industries use to discover and market the next “cool” thing. Industries maintain what the documentary refers to as a “feedback loop” with their customers, which is a cyclic, supply-and-demand relationship that blurs the line between fiction and reality. It has become impossible to tell which side is imitating the other: who do the products and trends that define popular youth culture belong to? What's more, are the sexual and aggressive hormone-fueled behaviors on …

Miller, Carl Haskell, 1889-1964 (Sc 2587), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2587. Daily diary and journal of Carl Haskell Miller, Tompkinsville, Kentucky. A manager on the Chautauqua circuit, Miller writes in a detailed but lighthearted way of his family, his life at home and of his travels in the United States and Mexico. He also reproduces some of his personal and professional correspondence, and writes of his mother’s death in 1927.

Tupac In The Classroom: From Cointelpro To Critical Consciousness, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

Spraggins, Cody (Fa 585), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding Aid only for Folklife Archives Project 585. Video by Cody Spraggins titled “The Community of Dungeons and Dragons Players as a Folk Group.” The video is a compilation of interviews with three individuals who participate in the role playing fantasy game. The focus of the video is the sentiment that the “gamers” have created distinct folk groups within their community of play. Typescript of abstract only. The project was submitted for the 2011 Folklife Archives Award competition at Western Kentucky University.

Hopkin, Rachel Claire (Fa 586), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding Aid and full text paper (Click on "Additional File" below) for Folklife Archives Project 586. Independent study project conducted by Rachel Hopkin on George R. Gibson, a banjo player from eastern Kentucky. The project, contained on two DVDs, includes photos, audio interviews and transcripts, a paper, bibliography, and field notes. Participating in the interview are Gibson and musicians John W. Haywood and Kevin C. Howard, who describe Gibson’s influence on them. This project was executed for the folk studies program at Western Kentucky University.

Whitaker, Francis J., 1916-1994 (Mss 406), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 406. Correspondence, research notes and manuscript articles of Frances J. “Thomas” Whitaker, a Benedictine monk who lived and worked at St. Maur’s Priory, formerly the South Union Shaker Village in Logan County, Kentucky, from 1954-1988. He amassed a large collection of photocopied research material on the South Union community as well as other Shaker villages and museums in the United States. Also includes his research on various Catholic topics.

Ferrell Family Papers (Mss 60), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 60. Correspondence of Thomas V. Ferrell, teacher and businessman, and of his wife, Winnie (58 items), and of their daughter Thelma (94 items), of Somerset, Kentucky; Ferrell family legal papers (7 items); notes of Thelma, who worked for the Somerset Journal for years; and miscellaneous receipts, clippings, etc.

Wizarding World Of Harry Potter And Medical Librarianship, Nancy A. Bianchi

UVM Libraries Conference Day

How are Harry Potter and medical librarianship related? Come answer the questions (all pulled from the various books of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series) that my poster poses, and I'll tell you!

Hines, Duncan, 1880-1959 (Mss 410), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 410. Materials relating to Duncan Hines and the marketing of the “Duncan Hines” brand of food products. Includes obituary notices for Duncan Hines, ice cream franchise agreement, stock certificate books for related companies, and a study on marketing the brand to consumers, especially women.

Chicago: A Movie Musical Mockery Of The Media's Razzle Dazzle Image Of Murder., Emily Sulock

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis closely examines the adaptation of Rob Marshall’s 2002 movie musical Chicago, specifically how the music and choreography support the mocking tone against the media and criminal justice system. With a storyline that has lasted almost a century, its themes still relate to our society today as it exposes the corrupt industries that hold an unhealthy amount of power over public opinion. By breaking down musical numbers, “Both Reached for the Gun” and “Razzle Dazzle,” I argue that Marshall’s unique concept connects to a modern generation immune to over-publicized and infamous murder trials.