American Studies Commons^™

“Did Emmett Till Die In Vain? Organized Labor Says No!”: The United Packinghouse Workers And Civil Rights Unionism In The Mid-1950s, Matthew Nichter

Faculty Publications

Emmett Till’s mangled face is seared into our collective memory, a tragic epitome of the brutal violence that upheld white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. But Till's murder was more than just a tragedy: it also inspired an outpouring of determined protest, in which labor unions played a prominent role. The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) campaigned energetically on behalf of Emmett Till, from the stockyards of Chicago to the sugar refineries of Louisiana. Packinghouse workers petitioned, marched, and rallied to demand justice; the UPWA organized the first mass meeting addressed by Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley; and an …

Colonized Loyalty: Asian American Anti-Blackness And Complicity, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstad argues that solidarity between and within communities of color remains our only chance to fight against the brutal and insidious forces of racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism.

The Mixed Reception Of The Hamilton Premiere In Puerto Rico, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this article originally published in The Atlantic, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wonders about the challenges of premiering the famed Broadway musical, Hamilton, during a time of political discord in the aftermath of 2017's Hurricane Maria, in Puerto Rico.

Usc South Campus: A Last Look At Modernism, Lydia M. Brandt, Paul Haynes, Andrew Nester, Robert Wertz, Ana Gibson, Margaret Mcelveen, John Benton, Adam Bradway, Hatara Tyson, Caley Pennington, Carly Simendinger

Faculty Publications

This is a class project from ARTH 542: American Architecture taught at the University of South Carolina by Lydia Mattice Brandt in Spring 2016.

With more Americans attending college than ever before; urban renewal; racial integration; the expansion of coeducation; and the architecture community’s advocacy for holistic relationship between planning, architecture, and landscape architecture, the American college campus developed rapidly and dramatically in the mid twentieth century. Using the University of South Carolina’s Columbia Campus as a case study, this project explores the history of American architecture in the mid-twentieth century.

The Plymouth Lutheran Cemetery, Lindina Township, Juneau County, Wisconsin;, Lawrence Onsager

Faculty Publications

Cemeteries have been called outdoor museums, cultural artifacts, and written and visual records of communities. I am attempting to produce a geographically local biographical or cultural landscape study. In some cases cemeteries are the only identifiable remains of a community. The Plymouth Cemetery records that I have enhanced are just a part of the rich history of the Suldal Norwegian American Community in Juneau County, Wisconsin. It was estimated in 1908 that there were about 1,200 Norwegians from Suldal and about 500 from Upper Telemark in the settlement. Suldal is a rural district in Rogaland County in western Norway. Originally, …

Hilda Mueller: The Queen Of Speed, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Hilda Mueller: The Queen of Speed concerns the life of Hilda Mueller Wuepper, a life-long resident of Bay City, Michigan who who won many races and set several world records from 1929-1933 within the sport of hydroplane racing.

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

Faculty Publications

“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.

Florida: The Mediated State, Julian C. Chambliss, Denise K. Cummings

Faculty Publications

"The Mediated State" addresses the perceived and the real experience linked to Florida and demonstrates the state acts as a bellwether for understanding postwar America in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Examining historical shifts linked to perceptions of the state, Chambliss and Cummings argue contemporary observers, like their historical antecedents, look to Florida to glean some greater understanding of the broader national experience.

Reasonable Conversions: Susanna Rowan's Mentoria And Conversion Narratives For Young Readers, Karen Roggenkamp

Faculty Publications

Though not well known, Rowson's Mentoria-a curious conglomeration of thematically-related pieces from multiple genres, including the essay, epistolary novel, conduct book, and fairy tale-offers particularly fertile ground for thinking about the nexus between eighteenth-century didactic books and earlier works for young readers.2 At the heart of Mentoria is a series of letters describing girls who yield, with dire and frequently deadly consequences, to the passionate pleas of male suitors.3 Fallen women populate Rowson's world, and scholars have traditionally read Mentoria within the familiar bounds of the eighteenth-century seduction novel.4 However, Rowson's creation transforms the older tradition of didactic, child-centered conversion …

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

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Lakewood Farm: The Private Zoo That The Public Loved, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Lakewood Farm: The Private Zoo That the Public Loved is an article concerning the private zoo in Holland, Michigan, that was owned by Chicago coal merchant George Fulmer Getz and helped form the Illionois based Brookfiekd Zoo and John Ball Zoo of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Review Of From Colony To Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776, Michael F. Russo

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Innovating National Sovereignty And The Just War Tradition, Gary M. Simpson

Faculty Publications

The two-thousand-year-old just war tradition is now read anew in light of the more recent Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Responsibility to Protect document. Eleanor Roosevelt played no small part in moving things in this new direction.

Built Along The Shores Of Macatawa: The History Of Boat Building In Holland, Michigan, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Built Along the Shores of Macatawa: The History of Boat Building in Holland, Michigan is an article concerning the history of ship and boat building in the Holland, Michigan area from 1836-2004.

100 Years Of Saving Lives, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

100 Years of Saving Lives is an article that concerns the history of the United States Life-Saving Service and United States Coast Guard station at Charlevoix, Michigan, 1898-2004.

Nautical Namesakes Of A.C. Van Raalte, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Maritime Namesakes of A.C. Van Raalte is an article that concerns the history of the great lakes ships that bore his name for over eighty years.

Maritime Namesakes Of A.C. Van Raalte, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Maritime Namesakes of A.C. Van Raalte is an article that concerns the history of the great lakes ships that bore his name for over eighty years.