American Studies Commons^™

Appropriating Balance: Reversing The Imbalance For Indigenous Women Through Spirituality, Candra Krisch

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

"It's No Life Being A Steer": Violence, Masculinity, And Gender Performance In The Sun Also Rises And In Our Time, Brock J. Thibodaux

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Nearly all discussions of Hemingway and his work touch on the theme of masculinity, a recurrent theme in all of his works. Examinations of Hemingway and his relationship to masculinity have almost unanimously treated the author as a misogynist and a champion of violent masculinity. However, since the posthumous publication of The Garden of Eden in 1986, there has been much discussion of Hemingway’s uncharacteristic use of androgynous characters in the novel. Critics have taken this as a clue that Hemingway possessed a complex attitude regarding gender fluidity, but have failed to examine the constructions of gender and identity in …

Remembering Vietnam War Veterans: Interpreting History Through New Orleans Monuments And Memorials, Catherine Bourg Haws

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This thesis is concerned with the question of how America’s citizen soldiers are remembered and how their services can be interpreted through monuments and memorials. The paper discusses the concept of memory and the functions of memorialization. It explores whether and how monuments and memorials portray the difficulties, hardships, horror, costs, and consequences of armed combat. The political motivations behind the design, formation and establishment of the edifices are also probed. The paper considers the Vietnam War monuments and memorials erected by Americans and Vietnam expatriates in New Orleans, Louisiana, and examines their illustrative and educational usefulness. Results reflect …

The Meadow: A Novel, Scott Albert Winkler

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

THE MEADOW: A NOVEL

by

Scott A. Winkler

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor George Clark

The Meadow considers the question of how all Americans, both civilians and military personnel alike, are affected by the United States’ military actions. Set during the Vietnam era, The Meadow tells the story of Walt Neumann, who is torn between his dream of going to college and his father’s insistence that his sons serve their nation as he did in World War II. Circumstance unexpectedly enables Walt to pursue his dream, but he also comes to realize the source …

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Annual Report, 2015, Michael S. Nassaney

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

This year the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project (hereafter the “Project”) established new standards in research, teaching, and public outreach in the study of the fur trade and colonialism in southwest Michigan. The Project continues to collaborate in the generation and dissemination of knowledge under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Advisory Committee (FSJAAC), Western Michigan University (WMU) faculty and students, interested stakeholders, supporters, members, and community volunteers. Highlights of 2015 include:

• Fort St. Joseph was featured in the exhibit “Evidence Found” at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in 2015, enjoyed by some 60,000 visitors.
• The Register of Professional …

Back To The Future: Student Time Period Analyses, Jordan Barge, Sarah Ebert, Anna Gaskin, Renay Gladish, Quinn Hamilton, Morgan Hanson, Hannah Markham, Mark Mclean, Callie Smith, Bertha Vega, Shelby Watkins, Jamie Weihe, Jillian Whitney

Student Publications

This newsletter began with the Fall 2015 Honors English class. These students were challenged to initiate research over a topic they thought was interesting and show how it related to our campus, Stephen F. Austin State University. It is our hope that this cumulative research will help readers look at SFA a little differently.

Building Within Our Borders: Black Women Reformers In The South From 1890 To 1920, Tonya D. Blair

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the reform work of four unsung black women reformers in Virginia from the post-Reconstruction period into the early twentieth century. The four women all spearheaded social reformist institutions and organizations such as industrial training schools, a settlement house, an orphanage, a home for the elderly, a girl’s reformatory/industrial school and a state federation of black women’s clubs. One of the selected women includes Jennie Dean, a former slave from northern Virginia, who founded an industrial training school for African-Americans in post-Civil War Manassas. Dean’s industrial school resulted from her tenacious drive to imbue former slaves with literacy …

December 2015, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Boo Group; Community Notices

Lg Ms 040 Harbor Masters Archives Finding Aid, Natalie Hill

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Harbor Masters of Portland, Maine, Inc. is a private nonprofit organization whose members share an interest in the leather/levi lifestyle. The organization was originally incorporated in Maine in 1984 to serve as a social club for like-minded gay males. However, members of any sex are allowed to join Harbor Masters. The club was founded with the goals of promoting fellowship among and tolerance for individuals interested in the leather lifestyle and continues to work toward those goals.

Over time, the Harbor Masters took on a more active role in New England’s LGBT community. The organization has regularly participated in charitable …

All Play And No Work: The Protestant Work Ethic And The Comic Plays Of The Federal Theatre Project, Paul Gagliardi

Theses and Dissertations

Given the massive unemployment of the era, the subject of work dominated the politics and culture of the Great Depression. In particular, most government programs of the New Deal sought to provide jobs or reinforce long-standing American views of working. These aims were reflected by the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), which was charged with providing jobs to unemployed theatre workers and uplifting the spirits of audiences. But the FTP also strove to challenge its audiences by staging overtly political theatre. In this context, many comic plays -which have long been ignored by scholars of the FTP - actually challenged work …

The Legends Of Bigfoot: Or How I Regained My Manhood, Blaine Mccarty

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

Masculinity is a culturally defined identity that exists with no single way to express it. However, the cultural politics police masculinity to appear natural and non-changing, but masculinity changes over history influenced by events and the culture from which it gets its definition. Because of this twofold influence on the identity, there is a constant struggle of the appropriate ways to express masculinity in its attempt to normalize itself by defining what is and is not masculine. This work examines how Bigfoot, the hairy fabled monster, embodies conversations about masculinity during a shift in the masculine identity in a constantly …

Imagining Boston: The City As Image And Experience (1986), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

I want to discuss community and imagery, social division and literary unity, Boston poetry and prose. In most issues of NEJPP I will focus upon those recent books that fire our imaginations and help us shape our sense of local and regional place. In this issue, however, I want to look back at the tradition of imagery that resonates in Boston's history. Old ideas of Boston are quickly being buried under layers of architectural and cultural renewal. While the suburbs become more urbanized and the commuter roads more clogged, downtown Boston is in the midst of the greatest building boom …

Boston And New York: The City Upon A Hill And Gotham (2006), Shaun O’Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is about the author's experience with visiting New York during it's rebirth after 9/11. He speaks about the history of both cities and how they have each grown into their own to become places of future enterprise and cultural cohesiveness.

Reprinted from New England Journal of Public Policy 21, no. 1 (2006), article 9.

Suffering Sisters, Silent Majorities, And Societal Oppression: Comparing The Anti-War Themes And Strategies Of Kurt Vonnegut’S Slaughterhouse-Five And Katherine Anne Porter’S “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”, Melissa N. Miller

Senior Honors Theses

Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five and Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” are quite dissimilar in style, but these two works convey overall anti-war themes. The works were written in different eras, portray different wars, and are strongly influenced by the lives of the authors themselves; however, these unique factors work together in both works to convey similar messages regarding war’s oppressive nature and corruption of mankind. Vonnegut and Porter employ various methods to communicate these messages, some unique to the respective works and some shared by the two. The characters of Montana Wildhack and Miranda Gay—two oppressed female characters imprisoned …

Une Amérique Française, 1760-1860: Dynamiques Du Corridor Créole, Guillaume Teasdale, Tangi Villerbu

Guillaume Teasdale

Race Patriots: Black Poets, Transnational Identity, And Diasporic Versification In The United States Before The New Negro, Jason T. Hendrickson

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the contributions of black poets in the United States before the New Negro / Harlem Renaissance Movement. Specifically, it focuses on their role in creating and maintaining a tradition of regional transnationalism in their verses that celebrates their African ancestry. I contend that these poets are best understood as “race patriots”; that is, they at once sought inclusion within the nation-state in the form of full citizenship, yet recognized allegiances beyond the nation-state on account of race through a recognition of shared African ancestry across borders. Their verses point to a shared kinship – be it through …

The Half-Life & After-Life Of New Media, Nancy Austin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

It is fitting to think of the half-life of new media using the time-based metaphor of radioactive decay. As a metaphor, an object’s half-life can be a useful way to talk about the potent technological modernity of new media and, like Walter Benjamin’s well-known notion of the aura, call attention to an object’s performativity. However, Benjamin’s aura remains a constant reminder of irrevocable originality whereas remarking on half-life references a quality that changes over time. But what happens after the rhetorical impact of being new has run its course? What is the life expectancy of once-new media and what of …

When Narrative Fails: Context And Physical Evidence As Means Of Understanding The Northwest Boundary Survey Photographs Of 1857–1862, James A. Eason

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

The photographs of the Northwest Boundary Survey, taken chiefly in 1860–1861, present many of the problems commonly encountered in the study of nineteenth-century photography. These views documenting the international border between modern British Columbia and the American Pacific Northwest provide a useful case study in the close reading of physical attributes of photographs. They afford an opportunity to compare imagery and evidence across known sets, and to draw conclusions from sequencing, variant captioning, and other physical evidence. These details will help archivists and other collection managers make good decisions about depth of cataloging, digital imaging choices, and interfaces for online …

Turning Seventy, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

The author's ruminations on the occasion of him reaching the age of 70 years old.

November 2015, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Sing my Soul; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Holocaust Survivor Speaks at Temple Shalom; Book Group; Bissel of Jewish Maine; Announcements; The L-A Musuem

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …

2016 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast Celebration, University Of Maine Student Life

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

Alison Beyea is the Executive Director of the ACLU of Maine, where she oversees the organization's legal, legislative, public education and development activities. With 3,000 members, the ACLU of Maine is the state's oldest and largest civil liberties organization.

The state of the union from the Citizen's Perspective delivered by Alison Beyea will be the focus of a keynote address at the 20th annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast on Jan. 18, 2016 sponsored by the Greater Bangor Area NAACP and the University of Maine. Keynote Speaker Alison Beyea will speak on current national affairs and trends, education, …

A Critical Analysis Of The Killer Angels, Andrea Nicholson

Student Writing

No abstract provided.

Bayard Vs. Drusilla: The Burden Of War And Legacy, Kate Shillingford

Student Writing

No abstract provided.

Archeological Investigation At Yanaguana Garden In Hemisfair Park, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, Ross C. Fields, Aaron R. Norment, Amy E. Dase

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

This report describes archeological efforts done under six work orders for the development of Yanaguana Garden at HemisFair Park in downtown San Antonio, Texas. All of the projects were done by Prewitt and Associates, Inc. (PAI), for Adams Environmental, Inc. (AEI), and the City of San Antonio, Transportation and Capital Improvements (CoSA-TCI), under Texas Antiquities Permit No. 6846 (issued April 14, 2014). As described below, the Yanaguana Garden project is the first phase of a planned redevelopment of HemisFair Park for mixed-use purposes. Planning for how to deal with cultural resources during this redevelopment began in 2012 when PAI prepared …

October 2015, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Shabbat Dinner and Musical Shabbat Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Announcements

Changing Roles In William Faulkner’S The Unvanquished, Bailey George

Student Writing

No abstract provided.

‘Reclamation Road’: A Microhistory Of Massacre Memory In Clear Lake, California, Jeremiah J. Garsha

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article is a microhistory of not only the massacre of the indigenous Pomo people in Clear Lake, California, but also the memorialization of this event. It is an examination of two plaques marking the site of the Bloody Island massacre, exploring how memorial representations produce and silence historical memory of genocide under emerging and shifting historical narratives. A 1942 plaque is contextualized to show the co-option of the Pomo and massacre memory by an Anglo-American organization dedicated to settler memory. A 2005 plaque is read as a decentering of this narrative, guiding the viewer through a new hierarchy of …

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

September 2015, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: High Holiday Schedule; From the Rabbi; Presidents Message; Book Group; Announcements