American Studies Commons^™

Frederick Douglass And The Patriotic Imperative, Kaitlyn Stoddard

English Class Publications

In today's post-Civil Rights era, I believe that America has lost sight of what patriotism is and where it belongs. Patriotism, as it is understood today, has become mistakenly merged with nationalism. In the minds of the public and media, patriots are supposed to exhibit undying loyalty and dedication to their country. This sentiment is better aligned with nationalism, a concept that I would argue should ideally be distinct from patriotism. While the execution of the two concepts may ultimately seem similar from the outside, the foundation of each concept is different, leading to varied execution thereof. To regrasp true …

The Accessibility Of The American Dream To Racial Minorities In America, Kimberly Wong

English Class Publications

For centuries, people have had the American Dream. It has permeated the media in various forms: Martin Luther King Jr’s “I Have a Dream” speech, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby,” and even the movie “An American Tail,” where animated Russian mice sing, “There are no cats in America and the streets are full of cheese!” The term “the American Dream” was first made popular in 1931 by James Truslow Adams in his book The Epic of America. Adams believed the American Dream was a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller …

Purely American: How Art From Harlem And Broadway Shaped American Culture, Emily Knocke

English Class Publications

The United States of America is a relatively young country, if you consider its foundations established in the late eighteenth century. For this reason, the art forms of visual art, theatre, and literature were already well-developed by the time America had established a unique voice. Although their beginnings were segregated by race, socioeconomic status, popularity, and a couple of streets in New York City (see Figure 1), two musical styles stick out as entirely American art forms: the Broadway musical and jazz. While Harlem Renaissance writers and artists argued for a separate but valued black culture, the unique American art …

It's Reigning Men: American Masculinity Portrayed Through Stanley Kowalski, Nina Hefner

English Class Publications

“Be a man!” Popular culture shouts this seemingly innocent command at males of all ages. Throughout the twentieth century, both men and women experienced shocking changes to society’s expectations of their gender norms. With the rise of the feminist movement during the twentieth century, women were able to leave the home and embrace the workforce. More opportunities opened up for women, such as factory jobs and secretary positions, making America’s society more egalitarian between the sexes. On the other hand, after the trauma of WWII and the onset of the Cold War, men experienced a twist in society’s expectations during …

Southern Families, Jennifer Burkett Pittman

Articles

The emphasis on family unity that is characteristic of the southern family has its roots in the traditional values of the agrarian upper class. The English, Scottish-Irish, and African immigrants to the south, who arrived in the 1600 and 1700s, instituted the basics of southern culture, though these patterns continued to develop and progress, as they do today. The basis of the southern lifestyle was farming and rural living, which lingered well into the 20th century, at least in certain parts of the south. Even today, agrarian traditions continue to influence southern culture. Because of the influential governing classes, family …

Reassessing The Army-Mccarthy Hearings: Live Television's Impact On The Fate Of Senator Joseph R. Mccarthy, David Ozmun

Articles

Many broadcast historians customarily credit television with the public's eventual renunciation of Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and his Communist-hunting tactics. Normally cited are the ABC and Dumont networks' live coverage of the Army-McCarthy Hearings and Edward R. Murrow's See It Now broadcasts during the Spring of 1954. Utilizing literature review and secondary analysis of polling and census data from 1950 through 1954, this paper suggests the live broadcasts did not necessarily achieve the results credited them by many broadcast history textbooks.

Findings suggest it is doubtful that the ABC network reached a national audience, that the audience size was …