Digital Commons Network^™

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …

The Haunting Aesthetics Of Empire: Filipinx America, Us Empire, And Cultural Production, Alana J. Bock

American Studies ETDs

Throughout this dissertation, I argue that US imperial knowledge production affirms US exceptionalism by disavowing the imperial violence wrought on the Philippines and its people. This disavowal not only renders the Philippines and Filipinx bodies illegible, but also haunts the Filipinx American diaspora. I argue that the haunted logics of empire are a set of relations, rather than specters of specific times and places, in which knowledge and power work together to continually produce and reproduce a specific and limiting reality and sensorium through which to view the world. In my interrogation of empire’s haunted logics, I not only look …

International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …

American Fears: H.P. Lovecraft And The Paranoid Style, Bailey Marvel

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Why is H.P. Lovecraft still relevant? That is the one the questions put forward by this thesis. Lovecraft is known for his creation of Lovecraftian horror, also known as cosmic horror. However, his bigoted view on race and class muddies this legacy. What this thesis seeks to explore is how Lovecraft’s work demonstrates the fears and anxieties central to the America psyche. The paranoid style can be found in American discourse throughout history but it can also be found in the works of Lovecraft himself. Lovecraft was a prejudiced and paranoid man, and his prejudices and paranoia are a major …

Unended Middle Passage: The Exhausted Flesh Of A Resistant Enslaved Woman, Yipu Su

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

The supine position that characterized the existence of the captive Africans on the slave ship, “The Brookes,” haunted the two female autobiographers of the two mid-nineteenth-century slave narratives/autobiographies this essay discusses. Both Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs voluntarily adopted the supine position as their status of living when resisting sexual violence in slavery, which nevertheless exhausted their flesh. This essay draws on Hortense Spillers’ theory of flesh/body antithesis and Saidiya V. Hartman’s theory of gender construction in slavery to discuss the nature of intended exhaustion. This essay examines to what extent was the strategy of intended exhaustion efficient for both …

A Biomythography Of Mommy, Immanuel J. Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Defining African American Authorship, April Quattlebaum

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

James Weldon Johnson and Melvin B. Tolson are pivotal figures of the early 20th century. They represent a fundamental question that has been and is indeed still in the minds of African American authors: What is a Black author? African American authorship necessarily involves the challenge of forging a literary identity in the face of a society structurally and temperamentally predisposed to marginalize and dismiss them. In their creative and scholarly works, Johnson and Tolson methodically dissect Black authorship, looking both to the past and to their present situation as they strive to imagine a future for African American literary …

Oral Testimonies Of Female Emigrants From Northern Ireland: Finding The The Universal And Unique Stories Of Migration, Lisa Ahmed

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

The purpose of this paper is to add a nuanced understanding to the study of women and migration. By using oral testimonies to conduct this narrative research study I was able to add to growing body of knowledge on women and migration. This study focused on women who arrived in the United States from Northern Ireland, for family the migration process started in Germany. The terms migration, emigration and immigration are used in the paper to describe people in movement within and across national borders. This narrative illustrates some of the consequences when nation states use their power to facilitate …

The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith

Honors Theses

For my thesis, I focus on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the evolution of how its personnel—players, coaches, refs, owners, etc.—navigated racism, politics, social injustice, platform utilization, and other pressing topics from the mid-1900s to the present day. Monumental players that used their platform in the NBA to inspire change include Bill Russell (1960s), Kareem-Abdul Jabaar (1970s), Craig Hodges (1990s), and LeBron James (2010s). These men and many others risked their images, and in some cases, their NBA careers, in order to protest, march, boycott, and kneel for causes they believed in, such as the civil rights movement and …

The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith

Honors Theses

For my thesis, I focus on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the evolution of how its personnel—players, coaches, refs, owners, etc.—navigated racism, politics, social injustice, platform utilization, and other pressing topics from the mid-1900s to the present day. Monumental players that used their platform in the NBA to inspire change include Bill Russell (1960s), Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (1970s), Craig Hodges (1990s), and LeBron James (2010s). These men and many others risked their images, and in some cases, their NBA careers, in order to protest, march, boycott, and kneel for causes they believed in, such as the civil rights movement and …

Resurrecting An American Archive: A Mid-20th-Century Case Study Of Louise Amory (1892-1979), Barbara A. Marquis

Honors Undergraduate Theses

In 1950, Roger and Louise Amory founded the Johann Fust Community Library in Boca Grande, Florida. After the death of Louise's son John Austin Amory III in 2018, John's son ­– and Roger Amory's namesake – donated a collection of Louise Amory's papers to the Library Foundation. The archive consists of 140 pages, mostly handwritten. Louise wrote most of the material between 1949 and 1954. As Executive Director of the Foundation, I solicited the help of one of our docent volunteers, and we took on the challenge of transcribing her writing.

I was excited to undertake the resurrection of this …

"No Place In American History": Remembering And Forgetting The Sultana Disaster, Elias John Baker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the historical memory of the Sultana steamboat disaster of April 27, 1865. The Sultana, ferrying recently-released federal prisoners, exploded north of Memphis, killing over 1,700 in the nation’s worst maritime disaster. Contemporaries interpreted the disaster through a variety of lenses, finding evidence of recalcitrant rebels, the heroism of Union soldiers, and critiques of Republican emancipationist wartime policy. Steamboat safety advocates deployed the disaster’s memory to successfully press Radical Republicans for the 1871 Steamboat Act, establishing the nation’s first maritime safety code. The disaster’s survivors gathered at reunions and published personal narratives to secure the Sultana, and the …

The Meat Of The Gothic: Animality And Social Justice In United States Fiction And Film Of The Twenty-First Century, Amber Hodge

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Meat of the Gothic: Animality and Social Justice in United States Fiction and Film of the Twenty-First Century— situates twenty-first century US gothic narratives in relation to animal studies, even as it illuminates how these narratives interrogate the effects of historic and ongoing global systems of human oppression: slavery, imperialism, and capitalism. Instead of reacting to bias by asserting a claim to a humanity perpetually imbricated in divisions of class, race, and gender, present-day authors and filmmakers create characters who form communities that include nonhuman actors as a means of generating empowerment and critique. My approach to these narratives …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

Jewish Identity On American Television And Viewer Attitudes In An Era Of Rising Anti-Semitism, Jacqueline Winters-Allen

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Research in media and cultural studies have shown that viewers form opinions regarding Jewish identity based on how Jewish characters are presented on screen. American entertainment has struggled with accurate portrayals of Jewish culture and characters; negative Jewish stereotypes frequently appear and perpetuate these perceptions. Due to the current rise of anti-Semitism in the United States, it is important to consider how writers are defining Jewish identity by examining depictions of contemporary Jewish characters and assessing viewer attitudes toward those characters. Two long-running, popular American broadcast television shows that contain Jewish characters as part of the main cast – The …

Reactions To Gulf War I And Gulf War Ii In American And Iraqi Cinema And Theatre: The Quest For A Global Utopia, Tajaddin Salahaddin Noori

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Many American and Iraqi cultural reactions to Gulf War I and Gulf War II, including the texts selected for this story, expressed the dystopian consequences of these wars. However, this study focuses on exploring the utopian dimensions of the selected texts and investigates how these texts attempt to reconcile both sides of the conflict and produce visions toward a global utopia. Significantly, this study represents the visions toward a global utopia as a series of visions toward oneness. That is, oneness of human beings over otherness, oneness of different nation states under one global community, and oneness of cultural productions’ …

Envisioning Catholicism: Popular Practice Of A Traditional Faith In The Post-Wwii Us, Christy A. Bohl

Theses and Dissertations--History

Marian apparitions in the United States have occurred in ever-increasing numbers since World War Two, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. These apparitions occupy a unique space in religious life, as they provide opportunities for Catholics to practice their faith outside of the Church hierarchy while still maintaining their status as faithful Catholics, often placing women in prominent positions. Although apparitions are an important part of faith for thousands of American Catholics, most Americans and Catholics are unaware of how widespread this movement is. This dissertation takes a comparative approach to examine a selection of apparition events, illuminating the pilgrimage …

Galvanizing Germantown: The Politicization Of Louisville's German Community, 1848-1855, Ann Kathryn Fleming

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This project interprets the Revolutions of 1848 and their ideological legacy through a transnational and transcultural context, highlighting the role of radical forty-eighters who imparted their republican messages to “Little Germanies” within the United States. Karl Heinzen serves as the primary example of the transient group that shared their radical visions with local German communities populated with political and cultural organizations, an active press and a commitment to civic engagement demonstrated through their involvement anti-slavery groups, labor reform, and improved rights for the immigrant population.

The thesis traces the politicization of Karl Heinzen in the German Confederation and his involvement …

Whitewashing Who We Worship: Amelioration And Cultural Imperatives In Neil Gaiman’S American Gods, Samantha Bauer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods creates a penetrating and sharp commentary on the state of essentially, every aspect of contemporary American society by populating it with myths that arrives on American shores over countless generations. From the characters to the settings, Gaiman utilizes the often-overlooked fact that myths can be found in every aspect of life. In many ways, Gaiman is building, or perhaps evolving, Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces and Roland Barthes’ Mythologies to discuss the unique nature of contemporary myths and how ancient myths still play a role in our society. I contend that in …

Cuba Journals Volume I - Transcription, Laura Swarner

Undergraduate Theses

The document is a transcribed version of volume I of the digital copy of the Cuba Journals which can be found online at the New York Public Library Archives. The Cuba Journals were written by Sophia Peabody Hawthorne during her time abroad in Cuba recovering from illness.

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

The Meaning In The Music: Music And The Prose Of Chopin, Joyce, Baldwin And Egan, Colin Perry

Senior Theses

Kate Chopin, James Joyce, James Baldwin, and Jennifer Egan are collectively gifted in the art of prose, yet each author also experiments with music in their literary works. An analysis of Chopin's The Awakening, Joyce's "The Dead," Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues," and Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad reveals a trend of authors utilizing music to enrich their texts and convey major themes.

Just A Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy And Racialized Performance In Black Vaudeville, The Chop Suey Circuit, And Las Carpas, Michael Shane Breaux

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the practice of white musical variety clowns embodying stereotypes of African, Chinese, and Mexican Americans has been widely documented and theorized in scholarship on US American popular performance, it has been done largely in segregated studies that maintain the idea that racial impersonations in musical variety is a privilege of white performers. For instance, no study exists that focuses on more than one stereotype at a time, and the performer’s body is always either white or of the same “color” as the type being played. In addition, very little has been written about the tours and circuits run by …

Morris High School: A Biography, Naomi Sharlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morris High School was conceived and built in the Bronx with a lofty mission: to provide a comprehensive, world-class secondary education to the children of immigrant and working-class families, and in so doing to elevate the American public education system and America itself. Such a weighty mission for an institution would result, one could expect, in painstaking record keeping, the lionization of great leaders, consistent investment in the building, and attention given to problems encountered or created over the years. And yet, the life of Morris High School remains elusive. Key figures in its story are lost to obscurity like …

Limits Of The Black Radical Tradition And The Value-Form, Shemon Salam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Black Radical Tradition was supposed to be victorious against racial capitalism. Instead the tradition was defeated by the early 1970s never to return again. Surprisingly the scholarship still treats the tradition as if this world historic defeat never happened. Furthermore, geographers have not reckoned with this defeat. Limits of the Black Radical Tradition and the Value-formbegins the process of starting a debate, hoping to ignite radical rethinking around the nature of the Black Radical Tradition, racial capitalism, and the value-form.

A Lingua Franca Afloat And Ashore: Contact English In American Sea Fiction, 1824 To 1914, Fredrik Reidar Stark

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines how American sea writers between 1824 and 1914 promoted new perceptions of English as a various and expanding intercultural and international language. It argues that presentations of language contact form a critically underemphasized component of American nautical literature. It surveys how such presentations take shape in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) and The Crater (1847), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast (1840). It asserts that Herman Melville’s innovative presentations of contact between pidgins and native varieties of English in Typee (1846) and Omoo …

Stories Of Life And Other Such Happenings, Lynette R. Ellis

ETD Archive

Stories of Life and Other Such Happenings is a combination of three short stories, Breasts Before Brunch, Two Pink Lines, and Tooneressie. Breasts Before Brunch is a comedic romance telling a story of a young lady attempting to find love even despite a crazy family. When her flamboyant cousin insinuates herself into Natalie’s date with her new boyfriend, Natalie’s imagination of what she would like to do to her cousin runs wild. When her cousin decides to show Greg her new boobs, the situation goes from bad to worse for Natalie. Alternatively, Two Pink Lines tells a very different type …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Sean Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

But What Has Helga Crane To Do With The West Indies? Plantation Afterlives In The Black Atlantic, Rachel Mckenzie Carr

Theses and Dissertations--English

“But What Has Helga Crane to Do with the West Indies? Plantation Afterlives in the Black Atlantic” situates the emergence of the southern gothic in modernist American and Caribbean works as a response to the shifting cultural narrative of the plantation in the twentieth century. In this project, I argue that the plantation seeps out of its place and time to haunt landscapes it may never have touched and times in which slavery is long over. While the plantation system is broadly recognized as a literary, political, and cultural force in nineteenth-century literary studies, I conceive it is also a …