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Full-Text Articles in American Studies
Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi
Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi
American Studies Honors Projects
My project re-examines dominant historical narratives of Christopher Columbus and assimilation of southern Italian immigrants to the United States. Arguing that such narratives partly result from historic anxiety surrounding southern Italians’ unstable whiteness, I challenge masculinist, white-washed histories by centering and contextualizing a history of Italian immigrant garment worker and labor leader Angela Bambace (1898-1975). By weaving my own exploration of my Italian immigrant ancestors’ pasts throughout, I ultimately encourage other white descendants of European immigrants to explore their histories in a critical and loving way that "resurrects" histories without sanctifying historical figures or their white descendants to racial innocence.
Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick
Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick
American Studies Honors Projects
This Honors project is a site of intersection of my academic and activist interests in interrogating Whiteness, my social identity as a cultural Jewish American, and my creative passions in comedy performance. The tragicomic films The Graduate, Goodbye, Columbus, and Annie Hall of the 1960s and 1970s articulate the painful process of Jewish self- and group-definition in relation to dominant culture amidst fractures amongst Jews and external hostility and invitation. The collision of Jews’ long history of humor as a cultural practice and the turbulence and ambivalence of the post-World War II moment facilitated a space for Jewish …