Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Divided They Fall: The Pacific Coast League’S Failed Attempt To Turn Major, Sean Beireis

History Undergraduate Theses

For over fifty years the Pacific Coast League was considered the highest level of organized baseball west of the Mississippi River. As the population of the West grew in the 1940s and 1950s the Coast League attempted to use their geographic isolation and large population base as assets in an attempt to join the American and National Leagues as a third Major League. This paper details how the Coast League members’ inability to agree on a strategy for League growth led to the collapse of the powerhouse that was the PCL.

A Flag Is Flipped And A Nation Flaps: The Politics And Patriotism Of The First International World Series, Todd J. Wiebe

Todd J Wiebe

No abstract provided.

Gen Ms 30 Thurston/Corthell Collection Finding Aid, Megan Hendrix

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

W.J. Corthell was the first principal of the Western State Normal School in Gorham, founded in 1878. The other collector may have been Marjorie Thurston, class of 1907. The Memorabilia consists of artifacts and photographs found in Special Collections.

Date Range:

1870s-1907

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Lg Ms 037 Penny Rich Collection Finding Aid, Katharine Renolds Thomas

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Records and artifacts documenting the Maine Lesbian Gay Film Festival and Women's Community Project of Portland

Date Range:

1980s-1990s

Size of Collection:

7 ft.

Fruitful Futility: Land, Body, And Fate In Ellen Glasgow's Barren Ground, Katelin R. Moquin

Culminating Projects in English

Through a Cultural Studies lens and with Formalist-inspired analysis, this thesis paper addresses the complexly interwoven elements of land, body, and fate in Ellen Glasgow’s Barren Ground. The introductory chapter is a survey of the critical attention, and lack thereof, Glasgow has received from various literary frameworks. Chapter II summarizes the historical foundations of the South into which Glasgow’s fictionalized South is rooted. Chapter III explains the connections between land and body, especially through Dorinda’s victimization. The concluding chapter ties together the preceding arguments into a more universal argument regarding Dorinda’s debatable victory as it relates to the novel’s …

Happily Ever After: Is Disney Setting Us Up? A Study On Disney Princesses And Their Influence On Young Women And Their Personal Love Narratives, Brittany Danielle Minor

Theses & Dissertations

This study discusses the issue of whether the influence of Disney films affects the girls who watch these films once they become adult women. Disney "princess" films are animated movies produced by Disney, featuring princess characters such as Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Pocahontas. The purpose of this study is to discover how watching Disney princess films as a child affects the decisions adult women aged 20-37 make when it comes to their love lives. A survey, completed by 40 females aged 20-37, was conducted and relating literature was explored for data collection. The surveys were analyzed …

"Tales" Of Text And Culture: Tropes Of Imperialism, Women's Roles, Technologies Of Representation, And Collaborative Meaning-Making In Rita Golden Gelman's Tales Of A Female Nomad, Female Nomad And Friends, And Personal Website, Michelle Lynne Van Wert Kosalka

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines contemporary travel writing specifically created for a popular reading culture, Rita Golden Gelman's Tales of a Female Nomad, Female Nomad and Friends, and personal website. The project is concerned with how culture is continuously represented and shaped through the dialogic interaction between writer and reader, and the subsequent liminal spaces which emerge in moments of meaning-making. Chapter 1 is a close reading of how Gelman's works reinforce and, in some cases, resist, tropes of imperialism. Chapter 2 examines patriarchal gender roles in Gelman's works and the ways in which recent advances in feminist psychiatry and psychology can …

December 2014, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Colby Professor Visits; From the Rabbi; Announcements; President's Message; Book Group; Community notices

Jeane Kirkpatrick And Neoconservatism: The Intellectual Evolution Of A Liberal, Bianca Joy Rowlett

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dr. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, a leading voice in the neoconservative movement, is best known for her articulation of the Kirkpatrick Doctrine, distinctions between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that served as the foundation for the Reagan Administration's Latin American policies. Her prominence within the neoconservative movement, her impact on foreign affairs, and her political accomplishments in a masculine environment make her an important historical figure in recent American domestic and diplomatic history. This work explores her transition from liberal democrat to neoconservative by examining her early life and educational background, her publications and critiques of American diplomacy in the 1970s, along …

The Relevance Of Culture In Politics: The Application Of Cultural Studies Using The Strategic Culture Method, Elizabeth G. Wilson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

American Studies scholars have long been aware that their interdisciplinary studies reach far beyond Americana. The fields of folklore, English, history, political science and anthropology have all been enveloped under the American Studies umbrella. Public perceptions tend to assume that scholars engaged in these fields are limited to work within academia.

The Post-Apocalyptic Turn: A Study Of Contemporary Apocalyptic And Post-Apocalyptic Narrative, Hyong-Jun Moon

Theses and Dissertations

Few periods have witnessed so strong a cultural fixation on apocalyptic calamity as the present. From fictions and comic books to Hollywood films, television shows, and video games, the end of the world is ubiquitous in the form of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives. Imagining world-changing catastrophes, contemporary apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives force us to face urgent socio-political questions such as danger of globalization, effect of neoliberal capitalist hegemony, ecological disasters, fragility of human civilization, and so on. J. G. Ballard's final fictions, though they do not directly deal with apocalyptic events but evoke apocalyptic mood, portray the bleak landscape of …

Introduction To New Work In Ecocriticism, Simon C. Estok, Murali Sivaramakrishnan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Rediscovering Local Environmentalism In Taiwan, Peter I-Min Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Rediscovering Local Environmentalism in Taiwan" Peter I-min Huang challenges the domination of "the global" and the marginalization of "the local." Huang argues that by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century globalism seemed to have toppled localism in ecocriticism debates. Ecocritics embraced enthusiastically such concepts as Ursula K. Heise's "eco-cosmopolitanism" and the arguments associated with it that spoke for global forms of environmental thinking and practice. Yet, arguments for "the local" persist in part because of Heise's constructive criticisms of it. Focusing on local environmental movements in Taiwan, Huang identifies and discusses scholarly work …

A Study Of The Symbolic Clothing Disposition Behaviors Of Generation Y, Patti A. Borrello

Masters Theses

This qualitative study explored symbolic clothing disposition behaviors of Generation Y. The disposition of their wedding gowns was investigated using material possession attachment concepts. The study explored the following research questions: (1) What did Generation Y wedding gown owners do with their wedding gowns after the wedding?, (2) What disposition method was used and why the disposition method was chosen?, and (3) How is attachment to a wedding gowns related to the disposition method selected? Subjects were recruited using a non-probability, chain referral or snowball purposive approach. Within the broad categories of keeping and disposing of, many of the specific …

Monsters In Common: Identity And Community In Postapocalyptic Science Fiction After 9/11, Jeremy J. Burns

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the aftermath 11 September, 2001, postapocalyptic science fiction has offered a way to make sense of the events of that day, as well as the years of social, cultural and political upheaval that have followed. In many ways, 9/11 began immediately to take on apocalyptic significance in the American national narrative, seemingly marking the end of one period and the beginning of another, entirely different one. To think of 9/11 as a kind of apocalyptic break with the past, however, does not tell the whole story. Moreover, such thinking denies key historical linkages between the American response to 9/11 …

Ecocriticism And Persian And Greek Myths About The Origin Of Fire, Massih Zekavat

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Ecocriticism and Persian and Greek Myths about the Origin of Fire" Massih Zekavat argues that some contemporary ecological biases are rooted in ancient thought. Further, Zekavat argues that the study of mythology is relevant to the understanding of culture and ecology thus assisting ecocriticism. The investigation of man/woman, culture/nature, and human/nature binary oppositions conveys that Greek and Persian myths are mostly anthropocentric and androcentric. Zekavat postulates that one way to revise contemporary ecological conceptions is to study myths to shed light on the mind and context of their creators and believers, their representation of natural phenomena, and …

Indigenous Taiwan As Location Of Native American And Indigenous Studies, Hsinya Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Indigenous Taiwan as Location of Native American and Indigenous Studies" Hsinya Huang uses Taiwan as a specific intellectual crossroads to examine, both pedagogically and theoretically, transnational/trans-Pacific flows, as well as transnational indigenous formations which take shape across national/international/local American Studies in this key moment of heightened U.S./Taiwan interaction in the Asia-Pacific security zone. Huang argues that Taiwanese scholarship has helped reorient understandings of environment and ecocriticism and that it has provided significant impulses, especially in the fields of Native American and comparative indigenous studies. Moreover, Taiwan has contributed both in its own positioning and in its academic …

Wu's The Man With The Compound Eyes And The Worlding Of Environmental Literature, Shiuhhuah Serena Chou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Wu's The Man with the Compound Eyes and the Worlding of Environmental Literature" Shiuhhuah Serena Chou discusses Mingyi Wu's novel in the context of ecocriticism's transcultural turn. Chou presents an overview of the cultural milieu in which Wu rises onto the world literary scene and proceeds by examining the problematics and potentials of ecocritical studies' transnationalization. Chou argues that while Wu's desire to understand the local through the vocabulary of the global, his readership reveals a sense of ecocosmopolitanism. The globalized local or localized global in Wu's novel reveals a cosmopolitan sense of the world and the …

The Urgency Of Ecocriticism And European Scholarship, Simon C. Estok

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Urgency of Ecocriticism and European Scholarship" Simon C. Estok argues that there continues to be unduly disproportionate attention within ecocriticism on US-based scholarship and proportionally less on ecocriticism from other parts of the world. Estok focuses on European ecocritical work written in English and published by Rodopi in recent years and argues that this work attests both to the urgency and resolve of European ecocritics. Estok looks at some of the primary contributions of twelve books published within the past ten years by Rodopi in order to show the importance of bending our ecocritical ears, to …

"The Falling Man" As Viewed In The Lens Of The "Public Sphere", Laura Reinacher

Communication Studies

No abstract provided.

The Triple Double: Racially Ambiguous Afro-Latino Identities In America, Yen Rodriguez

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Historically, racial identities in the United States of America have operated on a binary platform of ethno-racial consideration. In turn, this system has classified most racially ambiguous members of society into categories that fail to acknowledge the complexity of their ethnic and racial identities. These pre-determined classifications have lasting effects on the accessibility of opportunities and the social spaces available to ethno-racially unidentifiable members of society. These groups of racially ambiguous Americans, however, challenge the efficacy of an 'either/or' binary system. This piece outlines a learning community for first year students, exploring the ethno-racial ambiguity of Afro-Latino identities in America. …

Japanese Poetry And Nature In Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida, Shoshannah Ganz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Japanese Poetry and Nature in Borson's Short Journey Upriver Toward Ōishida" Shoshannah Ganz shows how the limited focus of research on Roo Borson oversimplifies the poetry and ignores the tradition that Borson is aligning her work with both in form and content: classical Chinese and Japanese poetry and their perspectives on nature. Further, Ganz explores the ways in which Borson's poetry overcomes intuitively the binaries of East/West, human/non-human, and the further binaries within the human/non-human created through representational language. Ganz contextualizes Borson's work within the master/disciple lineage of Chinese and Japanese tradition and explores how Borson …

The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, And Ecocide In Australia, Iris Ralph

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Systemic Approach, Biosemiotic Theory, and Ecocide in Australia" Iris Ralph summarizes an argument in defense of disciplinarity ("openness from closure") that Cary Wolfe makes in What is Posthumanism? She also comments on an implicit argument that Wendy Wheeler makes in The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. As Ralph argues, Wheeler's implicit claim is that biosemiotic language, which humans share with other biological beings, connects human animals and nonhuman animals on moral and affective grounds. Ralph summarizes Wolfe's defense of disciplinarity that literary and cultural studies scholars who engage with the "question …

No Prejudice Here: Racism, Resistance, And The Struggle For Equality In Denver, 1947-1994, Summer Marie Cherland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study chronicles a story of civil rights that has been left untold until now. Recent scholarship contributing to the history of the "long civil rights movement" has reframed our understanding of civil rights beyond the years of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In addition, it has also demonstrated that civil rights activity occurred in regions other than the South. However, most work on the long civil rights movement demonstrates that activism among blacks began much earlier than the Brown v. Board Supreme Court case and instead, was a part of a longer freedom struggle that, in many ways, …

"Wires And Lights In A Box": Fahrenheit 451 As A Product Of Postwar Anxiety About Television, Christine V. Shell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This project discusses the ways in which Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 functions as an indictment of media culture. While many analyses of the novel focus on the text’s sweeping themes of literary censorship, this study instead centers on Bradbury’s depiction of media—particularly television—culture and the ways in which Bradbury feared it could be harmful. Although Bradbury wrote about a future society a century beyond his own, his novel serves as a remarkable reflection of his contemporaneous culture’s media consumption and gendered divisions; this thesis discusses Bradbury’s novel alongside such forces, considering the effects such influences may have had on …

Trashed: The Myth Of The Southern Poor White, April Elizabeth Thompson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The fact of class has been a powerful tool in the process of identity formation, particularly in the American South, which has been viewed as a region apart from the national imaginary. To counter this exclusion, Southerners have often relied on stereotypes. One of the most prevalent and tragic of these is the stereotype of poor white trash, a construction that has been utilized to insist upon elite white Southerners' exceptionalism and innocence and to assert their rightful place in American historiography. While it is difficult to calculate their level of success, as perceptions of the region have varied through …

Ovid, Christians, And Celts In The Epilogue Of Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Emily A. Mcdermott

Emily A. McDermott

CHARLES FRAZIER HAS CAREFULLY SITUATED HIS NOVEL ABOUT AN American Civil War deserter within Greek and Latin classical literary traditions. Since its publication, Cold Mountain has all but universally been hailed as an “odyssey” by readers, critics, and scholars, in recognition of its structure as an adventure-laden homeward journey, with the end goal of reuniting two lovers; it is rich with Homeric allusions (even to the point of quotation) and typologies of both character and scene (Chitwood; McDermott, “Frazier Polymêtis.”; Vandiver). In the first chapter, the author further introduces two fragments of the pre-Socratic philosopher, Heraclitus (18), a thinker whose …

Resurrection: Representations Of The Black Church In Contemporary Popular Culture, Rachel J. Daniel

Doctoral Dissertations

From 1997 to 2013, there have been multiple representations of the black church in popular culture. African American artists have always explored spirituality within black communities; in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, however, the increasing fame of Tyler Perry, T.D. Jakes, Steve Harvey, and other prominent African American Christians has placed black church culture on the center stage of American mainstream media. This dissertation examines contemporary black Christian popular fiction, stage performances, black church films, and rap music. These representations demonstrate that black church culture is distinct from secular black popular culture and white evangelical Christian …

Understanding Don Delillo, Henry Veggian

Books

Henry Veggian introduces readers to one of the most influential American writers of the last half-century. Winner of the National Book Award, American Book Award, and the first Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction, Don DeLillo is the author of short stories, screenplays, and fifteen novels, including his breakthrough work White Noise (1985) and Pulitzer Prize finalists Mao II (1992) and Underworld (1998).

Veggian traces the evolution of DeLillo's work through the three phases of his career as a fiction writer, from the experimental early novels, through the critically acclaimed works of the mid-1980s and 1990s, into the smaller …

Navigating With Harriet Quimby, Rachael Peckham

Rachael Peckham

My maternal grandmother Ruth never missed an episode of the game show Jeopardy! One night in 2008, while I was working on my dissertation about a long-forgotten aviatrix with whom my family and I share connections, Grandma Ruth called to tell me about a Jeopardy! clue she had just heard: "The first woman to fly across the English Channel." My grandmother was reserved and soft-spoken, but I imagine her slapping the armrests of the recliner, disturbing the outstretched cat at her side, and beating all three contestants to the buzzer: "Who is Harriet Quimby?"--the subject of my dissertation.