American Studies Commons^™

Pre-Service Teachers’ Perspectives On How The Use Of Toon Comic Books During Guided Reading Influenced Learning By Struggling Readers, Ewa Mcgrail, Alicja Rieger, Gina M. Doepker, Samantha Mcgeorge

Gina Doepker

The study presented in this article examines the use of comic books, specifically the TOON comic books during guided reading instruction. The instruction was provided to struggling readers by the Literacy Center at a comprehensive university in southeastern United States. What most pre-service teachers in this study agreed upon was that comic books served as an effective tool for getting their students interested in reading. Reading comic books with tutors as partners in conversation with the struggling readers in this study was also a powerful medium for facilitating students’ literacy skills development, particularly in the areas of reading fluency and …

Pop Culture, Politics, And America's Favorite Animated Family: Partisan Bias In The Simpsons?, Kenneth Michael White, Mirya Holman

Kenneth White

An essay is presented on the impact of the political content of the television program "The Simpsons" on the politics, pop culture and viewers in the U.S. It offers an overview of the creation of the show and explores the different aspects of the show, particularly the debate over its so-called partisan bias. It also discusses the criticism from Republicans including former President George H. W. Bush that the show favors the left.

Hip-Hop Librarianship For Scholarly Communication: An Approach To Introducing Topics, Arthur J. Boston

Arthur J. Boston

Feed: State Transparency Amidst Informational Surplus, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

11_18_2018 The Nexus Of Northwest Arkansas - Thesis By Chuck Davis.Pdf, Chuck Davis

Chuck Davis

Canal Boy To President 1881 Miller Ed.Pdf, Jon Miller

Jon Miller

No abstract provided.

Beyond Greed Is Good: Pop Culture In The Business Law Classroom, Felice Batlan, Joshua Bass

Felice J Batlan

No abstract provided.

Polymediated Narrative: The Case Of The Supernatural Episode "Fan Fiction", Art Herbig, Andrew F. Herrmann

Andrew F. Herrmann

Modern stories are the product of a recursive process influenced by elements of genre, outside content, medium, and more. These stories exist in a multitude of forms and are transmitted across multiple media. This article examines how those stories function as pieces of a broader narrative, as well as how that narrative acts as a world for the creation of stories. Through an examination of the polymediated nature of modern narratives, we explore the complicated nature of modern storytelling.

"C-Can We Rest Now?": Foucault And The Multiple Discursive Subjectivities Of Spike, Andrew F. Herrmann

Andrew F. Herrmann

Excerpt: Besides the lead character herself, the leather-clad vampire Spike -- introduced as the "Big Bad" in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (BtVS) Season 2 -- the most analyzed character in the Buffyverse.

Who Exactly Is Living La Vida Loca: The Legal And Political Consequences Of Latino-Latina Ethnic And Racial Stereotypes In Film And Other Media, Ediberto Román

Ediberto Roman

This piece, however, will not simply expose the insidious stereotypes of Latinas and Latinos. It will undertake the more involved task of drawing a nexus between the societal prejudice which leads to the stereotyping and the legal and political consequences that result from it. Specifically, I argue that these media images, myths, metaphors, and stereotypes play a critical role in establishing society's vision of Latinas and Latinos. In other words, these stereotypes serve to reinforce both the characterizations of Latinas and Latinos from the perspectives of both the dominant and the dominated. These stereotypes, in turn, foster and perpetuate two …

The Tourist Experience In Boston, 1848-1910: American History, Middle-Class Leisure And The Development Of Urban Tourism, Hillary Corbett

Hillary Corbett

This project analyzes a selection of representative guidebooks produced between 1848 and 1910, to illustrate the development of a tourist industry in Boston and to indicate how the changing nature of the city influenced a similar change in the tourist experience. It also provides the necessary context in which to place this narrative. Part I introduces two key elements essential to understanding the relevance of urban tourism in Boston: the city’s experiences with the national phenomena of electrification and urban planning in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, and Boston’s distinctive role in nineteenth-century America’s developing national identity and history. In …

Review: 'Fighting Traffic: The Dawn Of The Motor Age In The American City', John Alfred Heitmann

John A. Heitmann

During the early 1960s, as the Golden Age of the automobile in America began to wane, several commentators, including Lewis Mumford, raised the critical question of whether the automobile existed for the modern city or the city for the automobile. How and when the automobile became central to urban life is deftly addressed in Peter Norton’s Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. This study is certainly one of the most important monographs focusing on the place of the automobile in American society within a historical context to appear in recent times; it interestingly supplements …

Review: 'Storied Independent Automakers: Nash, Hudson, And American Motors', John Alfred Heitmann

John A. Heitmann

Nash, Hudson, and now even American Motors are automobile brands that have largely disappeared from the American memory. Yet, despite riding the twentieth-century economic roller coaster and operating in the shadow of the Big Three, these firms made sustained, significant technological and economic contributions. Charles K. Hyde’s Storied Independent Automakers is the author’s latest foray into the area of automotive business history, following work on the Chrysler Corporation and the Dodge brothers. A professor of History at Wayne State University, Hyde has written a needed critical business history on an important topic that complements the vast amount of “buff” and …

Resume Of Joel Drotts Juris Doctorate, Joel M. Drotts Esq.

Joel M. Drotts Esq.

This is the resume of the author Joel Drotts.

The Akron Offering: A Ladies' Literary Magazine, 1849-1850, Jon Miller

Jon Miller

FREE FULL-TEXT PDF DOWNLOAD From 1849 to 1850, Calista Cummings edited and published Akron's first literary magazine, The Akron Offering. At the time, Akron was a booming canal town on the verge of even greater prosperity. By turns religious, comic, romantic, and political, this extraordinary collection of early midwestern creative literature expresses a wide range of sometimes contradictory opinions on both the important questions of its day and the important questions of today: historical events such as the California Gold Rush of 1849 and the 1848 revolutions in Europe are considered alongside more timeless contemplations on truth, justice, and beauty. …

Melus: A Community Of Intellectuals Scholars, And Teachers.Pdf, A Yęmisi Jimoh, Phd

A Yęmisi Jimoh

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The Monster Of Wall Street, Michael A. Stanley

Michael A Stanley

The scathing social satire that is Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho uses a unique stream-of consciousness narrative that draws the reader into the text by way of a fascination with the narrator. Patrick Bateman, a wealthy and powerful Wall Street elite who divides his time between giving fashion advice and frequenting New York’s trendiest restaurants and clubs, also happens to be a delusional psychotic and ostensibly a serial killer. Shifting between a narrative that sounds like a schizophrenic’s journal of descent into madness and occasionally addressing the reader directly, Ellis has created a voice for the main character that is …

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Actors, J. Michael Hunter

J Michael Hunter

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Actors” provides brief profiles of over 80 Mormon actors and actresses, including some biographical information and career highlights. This chapter appears in the first volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Athletes In Professional Sports, J. Michael Hunter

J Michael Hunter

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Athletes in Professional Sports” provides profiles with career highlights of over 200 Mormon athletes in professional sports, including baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, football, golf, hockey, racing, running, volleyball, and wrestling. This chapter appears in the second volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

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.

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.

We Are Cowboys In The Boat Of Ra: Sonny Rollins And Ishmael Reed's Black Cowboy, Brian Flota

Brian Flota

No abstract provided.

From Here To InFinnerty: Tony Soprano And The American Way, Terri Carney

Terri M. Carney

As fellow critics have pointed out in a myriad of published studies on the series, The Sopranos challenges the traditional gangster genre formula and brings the mob closer to all of us: Tony and his gang inhabit a recognizable world of Starbucks, suburbia, and SUVs. They discuss issues of the day, the same ones we discuss when we turn off the TV after the episode. In short, they inhabit a quotidian reality that is continuous with our own, and we are prevented from drawing the neat lines that allow us a comfortable remove from the horror of the “criminal world,” …

Sacagawea: A Uniquely American Legend, Donna Jean Kessler

Donna J Barbie

In an examination of American texts produced from 1804 to 1989, this dissertation delineates that Sacagawea became a legendary figure because she has exemplified critical elements of narrative traditions recounting the nation's sacred beginnings. As a plethora of works have portrayed Sacagawea as the Indian princess of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, she became an important emblem of manifest destiny. Flexible within its mythic framework, the Sacagawea legend has additionally enabled proponents to confront timely cultural issues, such as women suffrage, taboos against miscegenation, and modern feminism.

Chapter one provides a review of American frontier myths, concepts of sacred mission …

Blackbirds And Growing Pains: A Conversation With Rutherford Chang, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

History: The Birth Of "America" In 1882, Robert H.I. Dale

Robert H. I. Dale

This article concerns a New York Times story about the birth of the female Asian elephant calf, named America, at the winter headquarters of the "Greatest Show on Earth" in Bridgeport, Connecticut on February 2, 1882. Phineas T. Barnum, one of the owners of the show, and one prone to self-aggrandizing bluster, claimed that America was the second elephant ever born in captivity. America was born only to months before the arrival in New York of the most famous circus elephant of all time, Jumbo, on Easter Sunday, 1882, and only two years before the origin of a small wagon …

Rave Reviews The History Of Akron's Tuesday Musical, Thomas Bacher, Cynthia Harrison, Sharon Cebula

Thomas Bacher

The Tuesday Musical Club was founded in 1887 by thirteen young Akron women who had an overwhelming desire to share their love of music. With further support of Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, the wife of industrialist Frank Seiberling, the organization grew like many other musical organizations across the country. Unlike similar clubs, the Akron-based entity continued to expand and is one of a very few that have survived. Among the artists who have appeared as a part of the rich history of Akron's Tuesday Musical Organization are Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Yascha Heifetz, Glenn Gould, Van Cliburn, Isaac Stern, …

Blues People Final Curriculum Guide.Pdf, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

Where Have All The Good Men Gone? A Psychoanalytic Reading Of The Absent Fathers & Bad Dads On Abc's Lost, Melissa R. Ames

Melissa A. Ames

Fictional fathers in narratives are often allegorical in nature and contemporary television is not immune from this. ABC’s groundbreaking television drama, Lost, offers a multitude of father figures that suggests not only a crisis concerning the role of the father in the 21st century but also the crisis of national security experienced by Americans after the attacks. In particular, the program showcases three specific types of troubled father/child relationships: those in which the father is absent and/or dead, those where the father is portrayed as abusive and/or evil, and those where the father and child are estranged and/or their relationship …

Send In The Mouse, How American Politicians Used Walt Disney Productions To Safeguard The American Home Front In Wwii, Jordan M. Winters

Jordan M Winters

Despite the success of Disney’s first full length featured film Snow White in 1937 , the animator’s strike of the late 1930s and the war in Europe cutting of international profits, by 1941 the Walt Disney Company was near bankruptcy. Walt Disney was faced with the possibility of closing down his studio. However, the entrance of the United States into WWII and the rising threat of the spread of Nazism became the saving grace to the Walt Disney Studio. This essay explores the collaborations between Disney, businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s. Through …