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Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Hollywood Imagines Revolutionary Haiti: The Forgotten Film Lydia Bailey (1952), Judith E. Smith Jan 2021

Hollywood Imagines Revolutionary Haiti: The Forgotten Film Lydia Bailey (1952), Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This essay explores the history of Lydia Bailey, the only US studio-made film to depict the Haitian Revolutionary period. It asks why, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, such an unlikely project might have seemed commercially promising enough to justify a significant production budget. The essay draws on private studio memos as well as public press discussions to shed light on the high stakes in debates over racial representation and colonialism/decolonization in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and to illuminate everyday assumptions of white supremacy as these shaped the making of the film and its promotion. Production files …


Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas Jan 2017

Civil Rights Gone Wrong: Racial Nostalgia, Historical Memory, And The Boston Busing Crisis In Contemporary Children’S Literature, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

On May 14, 2014, three white Boston city councilors refused to vote to approve a resolution honoring the sixtieth anniversary of Brown v. the Board of Education because, as one remarked, “I didn’t want to get into a debate regarding forced busing in Boston.” Against the recent national proliferation of celebrations of civil rights milestones and legislation, the controversy surrounding the fortieth anniversary of the court decision that mandated busing to desegregate Boston public schools speaks volumes about the historical memory of Boston’s civil rights movement. Two highly acclaimed contemporary works of children’s literature set during or inspired by Boston’s …


Archaeological Investigation Of The Drive Circle And West Hyphen At Gore Place Waltham, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Alexandra Crowder Apr 2016

Archaeological Investigation Of The Drive Circle And West Hyphen At Gore Place Waltham, Massachusetts, Christa M. Beranek, Alexandra Crowder

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

In July of 2015, the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at UMass Boston conducted test excavations at Gore Place, the 1806 mansion house of Christopher and Rebecca Gore in Waltham, Massachusetts, to answer questions about changes in the landscape on the north side of the house. The excavations focused on areas of interest within the drive circle and against the west hyphen of the house. The project was carried out under State Archaeologist Permit #3559. The main results in the oval were the discovery of a Gore-period driveway under the grassy oval, indicating that the driveway was broader in front …


Literary Radicals In Radio’S Public Sphere, Judith E. Smith Jan 2016

Literary Radicals In Radio’S Public Sphere, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Radio was THE emerging medium in the middle decades of the twentieth century, and radio historians have helped us understand some of the myriad ways it influenced the public sphere and created new forms of cultural consciousness and multivocal formulations of national community. Michele Hilmes has argued that radio was “significantly different from any preceding or subsequent medium in its ability to transcend spatial boundaries, blur the private and public spheres, and escape visual determinations while still retaining the strong element of ‘realism’ that sound—rather than written words--supplies.” Jason Loviglio has analyzed the techniques and implications of radio’s creation of …


Makers: Women Who Make America [Film Review], Judith E. Smith Jan 2013

Makers: Women Who Make America [Film Review], Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

The three-hour documentary MAKERS: WOMEN WHO MADE AMERICA, promises to tell “how women have helped shape America over the last fifty years…in pursuit of their rights to a full and fair share of political power, economic opportunity, and personal autonomy.” However, rather than provide a historical analysis of the reemergence of feminism as produced by social movements and social change, MAKERS, according to the film’s press release, focuses on “unforgettable moments in history” told through stories of “exceptional women whose pioneering contributions continue to shape the world in which we live… stories of women who led the fight, those who …


'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas Sep 2009

'Roots Run Deep Here': The Construction Of Black New Orleans In Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This article explores the emergent post-Katrina tourism narrative and its ambivalent racialization of the city. Tourism officials are compelled to acknowledge a New Orleans outside the traditional tourist boundaries – primarily black, often poor, and still largely neglected by the city and national governments. On the other hand, tourism promoters do not relinquish (and do not allow tourists to relinquish) the myths of racial exoticism and white supremacist desire for a construction of blacks as artistically talented but socially inferior.


The Tourist Experience In Boston, 1848-1910: American History, Middle-Class Leisure And The Development Of Urban Tourism, Hillary Corbett May 2003

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

American Studies Graduate Final Projects

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 …