American Studies Commons^™

Black Lives, White Kids: White Parenting Practices Following Black-Led Protests, Allison P. Anoll, Andrew M. Engelhardt, Mackenzie Israel-Trummel

Arts & Sciences Articles

Summer 2020 saw widespread protests under the banner Black Lives Matter. Coupled with the global pandemic that kept America’s children in the predominant care of their parents, we argue that the latter half of 2020 offers a unique moment to consider whites’ race-focused parenting practices. We use Google Trends data and posts on public parenting Facebook pages to show that the remarkable levels of protest activity in summer 2020 served as a focusing event that not only directed Americans’ attention to racial concepts but connected those concepts to parenting. Using a national survey of non-Hispanic white parents with white school-age …

Behind The Brick Walls: On “Hearth” And Slavery At The William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "The William & Mary was the second university in the U.S. after Brown University to establish a funded, institutional examination of its dark history of complicity with slavery and Jim Crow segregation. After resolutions from the Student Assembly and Faculty Assembly, the Board of Visitors in 2009 established the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, named after Lemon, a man enslaved by the College..."

The “Peculiar Institution” In And Near Williamsburg, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "Slavery in Williamsburg and nearby—what was it like? Depends on who you ask..."

Disappearing Smoke: Why Black Pitmasters Are Being Left Behind By Commercialization Within North Carolina Whole Hog Barbecue, Charlotte Lucas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In North Carolina, there is only one Eastern whole hog establishment left that is owned by black pitmasters. As a result of historical context, black pitmasters have been left behind by the recent trend of commercialization within North Carolina whole hog barbecue. This exclusion can be explained by examining the history of whole hog barbecue, the struggles black entrepreneurs face in the restaurant industry, and the role that the media has played in ignoring black pitmasters. Historical background dives into the history of the whole hog from the plantation era to the Civil Rights movement and beyond in North Carolina …

Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The practice of spatializing culture, or “examining space through theories of embodiment, discourse translocality, and effect,” localizes the global and separates hegemonic narratives of space from how it is actually utilized by the people who interact with it. Setha Low argues that this perspective is especially useful to the anthropologist committed to challenging the discipline’s historically eurocentric approach to studying culture. She writes that a spatial focus “[draws] on the strengths of studying people in situ, producing rich and nuanced sociospatial understandings.” This project began with an interest in theorists such as Edward Soja, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre, …

The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.

"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …

On Joe And The Burial Place(S) Of The Enslaved At William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"It is possible that in the 17th or 18th century W&M opened a burial ground on its 330 acre campus and that it buried there those it enslaved over some 172 years. We have no documentation of that, although we have several references to the College’s providing coffins.1 Since those record no further expenses such as transport to the grave or digging the grave, I presume there would have been no such expenses--other of our enslaved would undertake such tasks as part of their job..."

Fandom, Racism, And The Myth Of Diversity In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ashley S. Richardson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently one of the most commercially successful entertainment brands in American popular culture, with a range of film franchises and television series under its banner. Although the brand maintains its popularity with various demographics, the casting choices in Doctor Strange (2017) generated controversy among Marvel fans and critics alike for excluding people of color or reducing them to villains and sidekicks. This thesis examines the online commentary surrounding the casting and marketing of Doctor Strange to evaluate how social media users on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter come to understand race and gender through the Marvel …

Writing At The Williamsburg Bray School?, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"I’ve become interested recently in whether writing was taught to the pupils in the Williamsburg Bray School. I had assumed all along that it was, and that the discovery of 40 some slate pencils at the Bray School Dig was confirmation of that.

I’d not been alone in my assumption about the teaching of writing, for the great majority of those interested in the Bray School have affirmed that the curriculum included writing..."

African American Civil Rights Museums: A Study Of The R.R Moton Museum In Farmville, Virginia, Christina S. Draper

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Life And Legacy Of Marie Couvent: Social Networks, Property Ownership, And The Making Of A Free People Of Color Community In New Orleans., Elizabeth Clark Neidenbach

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation recovers the life of Marie Justine Sirnir Couvent and the Atlantic World she inhabited. Born in Africa around 1757, she was enslaved as a child and shipped to Saint-Domingue through the Bight of Benin in the 1760s. In the tumult of the Haitian Revolution, Couvent fled the island, along with tens of thousands of Saint-Domingue inhabitants. She resettled in New Orleans where she eventually died a free and wealthy slaveholder in 1837. Although illiterate, Couvent left property to establish a free black school in her will. L'Institution Catholique des Orphelins Indigents was founded on her land in 1847 …

Race, Childhood, And Native American Boarding Schools: A Case Study Of The Hampton Normal And Agricultural Institute, Tyler Norris

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Thoroughly Modern: African American Women's Dress And The Culture Of Consumption In Cleveland, Ohio 1890-1940, Deanda Marie Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

African American women have been absent from much of the writing on consumption and the making of modernity. This dissertation responds to these absences, using dress, a highly visible form of consumption, to examine how African American women in Cleveland, Ohio experienced modernity through the culture of consumption from 1890-1940, in the context of urbanization, migration, and the Great Depression.;In looking at African American women's dress during this period, this dissertation will explore the clothed body not simply as a theoretical abstraction, but part of a lived experience in which production and consumption are not mutually exclusive. This will help …

Seeing (For) Miles: Jazz, Race, And Objects Of Performance, Benjamin Park Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Using jazz trumpeter Miles Davis (1926-1991) as its primary example, "Seeing (for) Miles" attempts to build on a growing discourse related to the intersection of jazz, race, and visual / material culture that has heretofore largely ignored the role of consumption. Davis' numerous decisions to spend money on expensive things and/or have them custom made, insisting these things be seen by others, and overseeing his image in advertisements are a reminder that famous musicians often found themselves straddling the line between being consumers and objects of consumption. Following Davis on both sides of that line also necessitates following him on …

'I Get A Kick Out Of You': Cinematic Revisions Of The History Of The African American Cowboy In The American West, Stephanie Anne Maguire

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Pamunkey Indian Museum: Collaboration, Display, And The Creation Of A Tribal Museum, Rachel Elaine Bowen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"History Written With Lightning": Religion, White Supremacy, And The Rise And Fall Of Thomas Dixon, Jr, David Michael Kidd

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Baptist minister and author of novels, plays, sermons, and essays, Thomas Dixon, Jr. today remains most known as the storyteller behind the 1915 D. W. Griffith Film The Birth of a Nation. I argue that Thomas Dixon crafted a white supremacist rhetoric and narrative of modern whiteness indebted to the structures of Fundamentalist Christianity. With varying degrees of success, later writers struggled with the legacy the Dixonian cultural narrative bequeathed them.;Fundamentalist theology offered a whole host of tropes, metaphors, and arguments to its users. In short, Fundamentalism presented a rhetorical stance that was, in the hands of an ambitious and …

Southern Orientation: Reimagining Asian American Identity And Place In The Global South, Frank Sung Cha

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Asians have been part of the American South's physical, cultural, and economic landscape since Reconstruction when plantation owners introduced Chinese immigrants to replace newly freed African Americans as their primary labor source. Nearly a century later, sweeping immigration reform led to the influx of thousands of Asian immigrants who transformed the region's social, economic, and physical landscapes. Southern Orientation: Reimagining Asian American Identity and Place in the Global South utilizes twentieth- and twenty-first-century literature, film, and oral histories to investigate how the socio-spatial practices of Asians produce new iterations of place-bound identities that unsettle traditional notions of southern community. Drawing …

Introduction To "The Americans Are Coming! Dreams Of African American Liberation In Segregationist South Africa", Robert T. Vinson

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

For more than half a century before World War II, black South Africans and “American Negroes”—a group that included African Americans and black West Indians—established close institutional and personal relationships that laid the necessary groundwork for the successful South African and American antiapartheid movements. Though African Americans suffered under Jim Crow racial discrimination, oppressed Africans saw African Americans as free people who had risen from slavery to success and were role models and potential liberators.

Many African Americans, regarded initially by the South African government as “honorary whites” exempt from segregation, also saw their activities in South Africa as a …

Real Talk: Blackness And Whiteness In The Works Of Jefferson Pinder, Dave Chappelle, And Aaron Mcgruder, Jeffreen M. Hayes

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

"Real Talk: Blackness and Whiteness in the Works of Jefferson Pinder, Dave Chappelle, and Aaron McGruder" will examine twenty-first century constructions of race by African Americans. I am interested in how visual artist Jefferson Pinder, comedian Dave Chappelle, and comic artist Aaron McGruder interrogate and incorporate race, particularly whiteness, into their respective works. Each artist challenges hegemonic constructions of race, utilizing technology and taking full advantage of our visualized culture to present their examinations of race. I selected the artists because of their intimate knowledge of their respective crafts, their use of popular culture, and their diverse perspectives on race …

Strange Fruit: Images Of African Americans In Advertising Cards And Postcards, 1860-1930, Meghan Brooke Holder

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Fine Art And Clandestine Identity: American Indian Artists In The Contemporary Art Market, Jaclyn Kuizon

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Determining Reliability In Indian Captivity Narratives, Heather Nicole Diangelis

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Introduction To "Terror In The Heart Of Freedom: Citizenship, Sexual Violence, And The Meaning Of Race In The Postemancipation South, Hannah Rosen

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

The meaning of race in the antebellum southern United States was anchored in the racial exclusivity of slavery (coded as black) and full citizenship (coded as white as well as male). These traditional definitions of race were radically disrupted after emancipation, when citizenship was granted to all persons born in the United States and suffrage was extended to all men. Hannah Rosen persuasively argues that in this critical moment of Reconstruction, contests over the future meaning of race were often fought on the terrain of gender.

Sexual violence--specifically, white-on-black rape--emerged as a critical arena in postemancipation struggles over African American …

Bottomless Pits: The Decline Of Subfloor Pits And Rise Of African American Consumerism In Virginia, Danny Brad Hatch

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Voters In A Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage And Citizenship In The United States, 1704-1926, Alan Kennedy-Shaffer

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

"The Brownies' Book": An Open Window To Early Twentieth-Century African American Childhood, Regina Ann Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Performances Of Black Female Sexuality In A Hip Hop Magazine, Tova Joanna Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Re-Taking It To The Streets: Investigating Hip-Hop's Emergence In The Spaces Of Late Capitalism, Kevin Waide Kosanovich

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.