Digital Commons Network^™

(Re)Mixing ‘School Spirit’: Spectacular Youth Subcultures As Resistance To Cultures Of Control, Evangeline L. Semark

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

This project examines the way in which the U.S. nation-state works through cultural institutions such as schools and the media to create ideological cultures of control. A main argument of this project is that control cultures (re)produce an essentialist framework of an “All-American” dominant culture rooted in the ideology of whiteness through which youth identity – and to a larger extent, American national identity – is to be conceptualized and created. Cultural analysis is used to show how the articulation of dominant ideology works through discursive formations to shape the racial identities and regulate the bodies of students, parents, and …