Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Topographies And Counter-Topographies Of Social Reproduction At People’S Park, Sarah Weaver

Scripps Senior Theses

Created at a key moment in New Left political rebellion and organizing in 1969, the mythic People’s Park still stands today between Dwight and Haste St. in Berkeley as open multi-use green space made of and for community development on lawful University of California Regent property. Despite repeated attempts by UC to take back the land, the insurgent space continues to pull defense from various parts of the local community, students and not, have accessed forms of self-determined social reproduction and created material critiques of UC as a vehicle for capital. For 54 years, the park was maintained significance as …

Through The Heart Of The City: Interstates And Black Geographies In Urban America, Airic Hughes

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Federal urban renewal projects changed the landscape of numerous American cities throughoutthe twentieth century. Many of these projects worked cohesively in tandem with discriminatory urban planning policies such as redlining. The conclusions of this project demonstrate how U.S. Interstate 630 (I-630) intentionally re-segregated Arkansas' capital city, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 national desegregation order and the infamous desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. I further contend that I-630 was constructed using the racialized language and tactics of urban renewal and was fundamental to improving Little Rock’s national reputation by purging the city's social memory and legacy …

Norm And The People, Jacqueline N. Wade

Theses and Dissertations

Norm and the People is a 90-minute hybrid film about the Minister and activist Norman Eddy and the work he and other activists did in Spanish Harlem from the 1940s through his death in 2013. The film is told through interviews, archival photos and videos, reenactments, and puppets.

De Alcalá De Henares A Ciudad De México: Ciudades, Universidades Y Preservación Del Patrimono Histórico, Juan Fernandez Cantero

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores the relationship between the city of Alcalá de Henares, Spain and Mexico City, Mexico, in terms of the colonization-decolonization processes of the latter. First, Alcalá de Henares and a few years later, Mexico City, suffered profound urban transformations that led to the construction of the so-called City of God (Civitas Dei). The City of God was a utopia: an urban, philosophical and educational model conceived during the first stages of the early modern period. By following Saint Agustine’s precepts, in his book, The City of God Against the Pagans, cardinal Francisco Ximénez de Cisneros created …

Under The Paving Stones, The Beach, Amanda L. Katz

Theses and Dissertations

Under the paving stones, the beach investigates the human labor that goes into sustaining life inside of a luxury condominium on Brooklyn’s newly redeveloped East River waterfront. The rhythms of labor and leisure occasionally synchronize as we sense the physical, psychological and environmental limits of our current way of life.

Re-Mapping Tacoma's Pre-War Japantown: Living On The Tideflats, Lisa Hoffman, Mary Hanneman, Sarah Pyle

Conflux

This article, drawing on oral histories with Nisei, addresses the dearth of publications about pre-WWII Japanese life in the urban U.S. and provides evidence of Japanese immigrants’ active presence in the lumber industry and on Tacoma’s tideflats. This is important not only for Tacoma’s history and a fuller accounting of the major industries that shaped the south Puget Sound region, but also because Japanese contributions to early industrial development are often overlooked. The oral history narratives also stretch the boundaries of what has been depicted as a densely-connected and lively Japanese community in the downtown core. Also, stories of moving …

Constitutive Memories Of City Space: Rhetorics Of Civil Rights Memory In Detroit’S Urban Landscape, Scott Mitchell

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation examines public memories of civil rights injustice and resistance as constitutive rhetorics of urban culture and spatiality for the city of Detroit. By studying the city of Detroit as it navigates an ongoing period of dramatic change and redevelopment, this study demonstrates how material manifestations of memory become the constitutive forces that define what many describe as “Detroit’s heart and soul.” This project illustrates the embedded cultural logics produced from sites of public memory, thereby arguing city spaces as locations bound to their legacies and beholden to material and symbolic consequences of their past. This dissertation proceeds through …

Imagining The Unimagined Metropolis: Privilege, Liminality, And Peripheral Communities In The Contemporary Urban Situation, Colton R. Sherman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Various works of psychogeographic literature explore privileged and non-privileged communities and spaces through narrative and character development. Novels of this sort—specifically those by China Miéville, Neil Gaiman, and J.G. Ballard—feature narratives where their respective protagonists undergo a liminal metamorphosis and transform from a monotonous, albeit privileged urbanite into a free-associating inhabitant of the urban periphery: the unimagined, non-privileged space of urban detritus. By engaging with these authors’ novels alongside the works of the Situationists, Walter Benjamin, Rob Nixon and others, the goal of this thesis is to explore how the dominant urban epistemologies are subverted—whether or not they should be …

The Price Of Cosmopolitanism: Globalization, Class Structure, And Language Endangerment In Shanghai, Fang Xu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the last two decades, Shanghai has experienced an unprecedented transformation, as China’s economic globalization and urban expansion have increased rapidly. Looking beyond statistics and architectural spectacles, I examine a seemingly personal choice in Shanghai, speaking Putonghua Mandarin, the official language, or the Shanghai dialect. This study contextualizes the contested urban linguistic space, and illustrates the political, social, and cultural conditions in this China’s globalizing city.

Through archival research, fifty in-depth interviews, two hundred and fifty survey questionnaires, and ethnographic fieldwork in Shanghai in the fall and winter of 2013, I document the impact of three sets of state policies …

Milwaukee's Ethnic Festivals: Creating Ethnic-American Heritage For Urban Ethnic Tourism, Joy Neilson

Theses and Dissertations

Ethnic identity is dynamic social construction. Ethnic groups define and display their heritage to meet the social, economic, and political interests of the group. Tourism is one outlet for ethnic groups to express their identity while stimulating local economies. Ethnic tourism is becoming more popular in urban settings, as municipal governments attempt to compete for tourism income and establish a unique brand. Placing ethnic tourism within an urban setting creates additional layers of complexity that have the potential to alter the way ethnic groups interact and are perceived by locals and visitors. Tourism involves the construction of expectations through deliberate …

"There Were Streets": Urban Renewal And The Early Troubles In London/Derry, Northern Ireland, Margo Shea

Margo Shea

News - Georgia State University - Gsu Library Receives $210,000 Neh Grant, Christian J. Steinmetz

Georgia Library Quarterly

Georgia State University Library recently received a $210,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for “Planning Atlanta: A New City in the Making, 1930s – 1990s”, submitted by librarian Joe Hurley (Principal Investigator) and history professor Kate Wilson (co-PI).

Dirty Pictures—Not For Sale: Re-Reading Bellocq’S Storyville Portraits, Mollie S. Le Veque

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In this paper, I examine E.J. Bellocq's "Storyville Portraits" within art historical and feminist historiographies. One of the most infamously alluring parts of New Orleans at the turn of the century, the Storyville red light district is hardly part of contemporary American consciousness today. Part of my work involves an evaluation of what a lack of archival resources does to perceptions of Storyville and more broadly, the stereotypical late Victorian “fallen women” that has been read into history - both by historians and popular culture. However, my focal point is indeed the portraits and how they might be re-read and …

Performing Survival In The Global City: Theatre Isôko’S The Monument”, Kim Solga, Jennifer Capraru

Kim Solga

No abstract provided.

Building Utopia: Performance And The Fantasy Of Urban Renewal In Contemporary Toronto, Laura Levin, Kim Solga

Kim Solga

Toronto markets itself as a city in renewal, a “creative city” of the future full of arts and culture. Alongside the official pitch, a number of street-level underground initiatives reimagine Toronto's utopic future in a different way by means of site-specific performances. But do these grassroots performance schemes necessarily create a more inclusive, more equitable city?

Performance And The City, Kim Solga, D.J. Hopkins, Shelley Orr

Kim Solga

Urban Studies has long understood the city as a 'text'. What would it mean now to rethink that metaphor? In answer to that question, Performance and the City, now in paperback and with a new preface by Susan Bennett, imagines civic spaces built on, and through, theatre and performance of all kinds. Featuring essays by Marla Carlson, Jen Harvie, D.J. Hopkins and Shelley Orr, Ric Knowles, Laura Levin, Michael McKinnie, Rebecca Rugg, Rebecca Schneider, Marlis Schweitzer, Kim Solga, Joanne Tompkins, and Klaus van den Berg, as well as an Afterword by Barbara Hodgdon, Performance and the City explores an interdisciplinary …

Dress Suits To Hire And The Landscape Of Queer Urbanity, Kim Solga

Kim Solga

As the story goes, the only good queer is an urban queer. But does the LGBTQ population of America really want to cede all that wide open space to straight-laced (and often violent) ideologies? The work of Peggy Shaw and Lois Weaver has consistently challenged the perceived boundaries of lesbian experience; in this paper, I theorize the queer geography of their OBIE-winning hit, Dress Suits to Hire, via its 2005 anniversary revival in Austin, Texas.

The Paradox Of Ethnic Minority Development In Beijing, Reza Hasmath

Reza Hasmath

A National Issue: Segregation In The District Of Columbia And The Civil Rights Movement At Mid-Century, Wendell E. Pritchett

All Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Recent Polish-American Fiction, John A. Merchant

Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article examines the development of a Polish American voice in American literature through an analysis of works by Stuart Dybek, Anthony Bukoski, Susan Strempek Shea, and Denise Dee.