American Studies Commons^™

The Perils Of Desire In Roth's Early Fiction, Victoria Aarons

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Perils of Desire in Roth's Early Fiction" Victoria Aarons posits that Philip Roth's first collection of stories Goodbye, Columbus is the prototype for a host of characters who emerge throughout his oeuvre: characters who are engaged as the inveterate Nathan Zuckerman insists, in "an exchange of existences" abandoning willingly "the artificial fiction" of an inherent, essential self." From the stories in Goodbye, Columbus to the "final" novels comprising the Nemesis tetralogy, Roth's characters perform a spectacle of selves engaged in the making of character. The making of character in Roth's fiction appears in two ways: 1) …

Literary Adaptations Of James In Roth's, Ozick's, And Franzen's Work, John Carlos Rowe

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literary Adaptations of James in Roth's, Ozick's, and Franzen's Work" John Carlos Rowe posits that Henry James continues to exert a powerful influence on contemporary writers. Given the dramatic social, economic, and political changes from modern to postmodern eras, his continuing influence requires explanation. Rowe considers three US-American novelists—Philip Roth, Cynthia Ozick, and Jonathan Franzen—who are influenced by James and presents an interpretation of James's continuing impact. Despite James's reputation as a cosmopolitan modern who influenced global literature in significant ways, US-American writers attempt to "Americanize" him. Their effort expresses the problem of contemporary US-American literary practice …

Roth’S Humorous Art Of Ghost Writing, Paule Levy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Roth's Humorous Art of Ghost Writing" Paule Lévy analyses Philip Roth's Exit Ghost, the last novel featuring Nathan Zuckerman, in which Roth reassesses his favorite alter ego's itinerary while exploring the troubled relation between writing and aging. Lévy considers Exit Ghost as an ironic sequel to The Ghost Writer and posits that in the light of Derrida's theories of writing and "hauntology" the central motifs of ghosts and "spectrality" in the novel are a means for Roth to reflect anew on the ambiguous relation between autobiography and fiction. Lévy asks whether Exit Ghost should be …

Bibliography For The Study Of Phillip Roth's Works, Gustavo Sánchez-Canales, Victoria Aarons

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

New Leviathan: How I Implemented The Aas’S Periodicals Database In My Traditional American Literature Survey Class, And Lived To Tell The Tale, Joshua Matthews

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

This past summer, our small college’s library purchased a permanent subscription to the American Antiquarian Society’s new Historical Periodicals Collection (series 1-5). In northwest Iowa, where there is no such database for hundreds of miles, this purchase is a research boon for local scholars. The catch, though? I needed to implement the database thoroughly in the college’s only early American literature class, a traditional survey spanning 1492 to 1865. Beyond all of the topics, authors, and agendas that could be covered—and the typical dilemma between coverage and depth in a survey class—now I needed to incorporate the teaching of periodical …

Opening Remarks To Outing Lorraine At The Schomburg Center, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Publications and Research

This article is an edit of the opening remarks for the event held on May 22nd, 2014 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture as part of the In The Life Series supplying Black LGBT programming coordinated by Steven Fullwood. Outing Lorraine included panelists: Alexis DeVeaux, Joi Gresham, and Steven Fullwood and was moderated by Shawn(ta) Smith-Cruz. Opening remarks provide a biographical description of Lorraine Hansberry's life, prepare the audience for a conversation on the implications for "outing" a black iconic figure, details the purpose for use of primary and secondary sources when, and provides a bibliography for …

Redefining Blackness In The Age Of Whiteness: Mimicry, Ancestry, Gender Performance, And Self-Identity In Afro-Caribbean And Afro-American Literature, Brandon Marcell Erby

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The elements associated with mimicry and colonialism are found in Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter (2006), as the novel reveals how colonized subjects use mimicry to survive their colonized spaces. Keeping in mind the ideologies of Homi Bhabha and Wumi Raji, the novel also suggests how a subject’s pre-existing condition before being colonized develops agency. Comparably, while Elizabeth Nunez’s novel illustrates how imitation is used by black and native Caribbeans, Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) and Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1958) contextualize and exhibit W.E.B. Du Bois’s double-consciousness theory and the struggles that black Americans experience while mimicking …

Don’T Bow Down, Andrew B. Gibbs

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Perpetuating African ancestral customs, Mardi Gras Indians in New Orleans avoid the African American identity crises illuminated by the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. The poetry of Langston Hughes, Claude McKay and Waring Cuney incorporate W.E.B. DuBois’ double-consciousness theory to reveal the identity issues and ancestral alienation plaguing African Americans at the turn of the twentieth-century. In comparison, unique political and social circumstances in New Orleans allowed enslaved Africans to practice their ancestral customs weekly. The preservation of this heritage fostered a black community in New Orleans rich in traditions, pride and self-conviction. The development of Mardi Gras Indian culture …

Radical Housewife Activism: Subverting The Toxic Public/Private Binary, Emma Foehringer Merchant

Pomona Senior Theses

Since the 1960s, the modern environmental movement, though generally liberal in nature, has historically excluded a variety of serious and influential groups. This thesis concentrates on the movement of working-class housewives who emerged into popular American consciousness in the seventies and eighties with their increasingly radical campaigns against toxic contamination in their respective communities. These women represent a group who exhibited the convergence of cultural influences where domesticity and environmentalism met in the middle of American society, and the increasing focus on public health in the environmental movement framed the fight undertaken by women who identified as “housewives.” These women, …

"Women In The House Y'All:" She Should Run, Post-Feminism, And Women's Representation In Politics, Amy Gooch

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project investigates “She Should Run,” a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in public leadership by attempting to eliminate barriers to success. The project argues “She Should Run” addresses the lack of women’s representation in government, but does so by mobilizing problematic essentialist rhetoric and post-feminist constructions. Drawing on second wave feminist scholarship, this rhetorical analysis examines the cultural conditions that mediate women’s role in politics as well as their willingness to participate. This project claims that the organization ultimately reestablishes existing essentialist notions of women’s identities and uses post-feminist rhetoric to delegitimize the aims of …

Whovians And Directioners: Challenging The Fangirl Identity, Brianna Vancant

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Using notions from fan blogs and fan theory, this project analyzes the inconsistencies surrounding the phenomenon of so-called fangirls in the Doctor Who and One Direction worlds. The term fangirl is usually defined as an irrational adolescent female who is only a fan of very specific types of entertainment because of factors that are perceived by other fans as superficial and irrelevant. In contemporary music and television fandom, these fangirls are often criticized and policed by other fans, many times disregarded as not ‘true’ fans. The project studies this distorted perception and how it leads to misconceptions about the wider …

A Divine Inequality: Contextualizing Gender And Authority In Contemporary Mormon Feminism, Taylee Robinson Pardi

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project traces the decline of authority for Mormon women coupled with the rise of defined gender roles within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in order to contextualize contemporary Mormon feminism. Using a radical feminist analysis, this project will explore how contemporary Mormon women relate to their early Mormon sisters and the ways in which the culture and doctrine of Mormonism often converge, lending itself to a unique feminist perspective. This project argues that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, as currently practiced, is not just inherently patriarchal, but un-egalitarian, and that contemporary …

The Queer Blogger: Interrogating The Commodification Of Identities, Anne Lacy

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Using Queer blogs found throughout American blogging networks, while drawing upon Marxism, Michel Foucault’s notions of confession and coming out, and Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, this project is a materialist analysis that unveils how Queer identities are being consumed and commodified. In contemporary American society a phenomenon is occurring online: Queer blogs are acting as a platform where subjectivities are attempting to resist hegemonic notions of identity while they are simultaneously being incorporated into a capitalistic agenda of subject formation. This project ultimately calls upon an act of resistance, as these Queer blogs are in fact a negotiable space for …

Reused Refuse: Freeganism And The Shifting Hegemonies Of Consumption And Waste, Jamie Corliss

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Freeganism is a counter-culture practice, lifestyle, and philosophy that resists the waste and exploitation inherent to capitalism. By examining freegan practices and philosophies, specifically dumpster diving, this project reveals how these actions help make apparent and shift dominant ideologies about waste and consumption by re-injecting value into wasted items. The project argues that the waste that freegans live on has the semiotic power to shift dominant attitudes about waste and gives freegans the means to survive with limited participation in the economy, but this waste is a byproduct of capitalist production, not a cause of it. Freegans are conceptually paving …

Take Off Your Masc: The Hegemonic Gay Male's Gender Performance On Grindr, Duncan Shuckerow

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The hegemonic Grindr clone is a gay male Grindr user who enforces the privileging of traditional masculine gender performance and condemns effeminacy. Through this project’s own field work along with the website “douchebagsofgrindr,” the hegemonic Grindr clone is here within analyzed. Drawing upon the theory ofhegemony articulated by Gramsci, a historical analysis of the 1970s urban gay male clone, and contemporary analysis and research, the project argues that the hegemonic Grindr clones, while only a minority group of Grindr users, rules over the cyberspace as sexual gatekeepers. Hegemonic Grindr clones maintain their privileged status on the application through depicting and …

When Ana Becomes The Protagonist: Eating Disorder Narratives, The Pursuit Of Thinness And Social Resistance On The Internet, Nadezh Mulholland

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

There is media concern that books about eating disorders are harmful to young readers. However, there is little research on how readers interpret the content of novels and memoirs featuring characters with eating disorders. This project considers the thinspiration images used as motivation to lose weight on so-called pro-ana and pro-mia social networks for people with eating disorders, and draws parallels between thinspiration and images used on the covers of eating disorder books. This paper uses a Gramscian lens to dismantle media claims by analyzing the interactions between members of eating disorder social networks, showing that website users tum to …

In Between The Dots And Dashes: Telegrams And The Mediation Of Intimacy In The Golden Bowl, Sean Jemison

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Using a poststructural and reader-response theoretical framework, the author explores competing ideas of interpretation, epistemology, and the problematic nature of truth and meaning in Henry James’s novel, The Golden Bowl. The author analyzes the ways in which emergent nineteenth century communication technologies, specifically how telegraphy both mediates and facilitates intimacy in a modern landscape. James anticipates modern forms of social media by exploring the nuances and the potential erotic nature of mediated communication and knowledge.

University Of Southern Maine Commencement Program 2014, University Of Southern Maine

Commencement Programs

University of Southern Maine commencement program, 2014

Saturday, May Tenth, Two Thousand and Fourteen

Address by David Shaw , founder of IDEXX Laboratories

Genocidal Silences: The Politics Of Cambodian Memory In A United States Context, David Rao

American Studies Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

Aa Ms 08 N. T. Swezey's Son & Co. Tin Sign Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

N. T. Swezey (Noah Terry) (1814-1888) was a flour merchant in New York City. He ran a successful business for over forty years at 176 South St., and was one of the founders of the New York Produce Exchange. This collection contains a reproduction of a sign advertising Northwest Consolidated Milling Company flour. The sign depicts the figure of a black child standing behind and slightly below the figure of a white child. The white figure is sitting on a container of the Northwestern Consolidated Milling Company’s flour and is holding a slice of white bread. Both children have …

Communities Of Abundance: Sociality, Sustainability, And The Solidarity Economies Of Local Food-Related Business Networks In Knoxville, Tennessee, Tony Nathan Vanwinkle

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the socio-economic and eco-political dimensions of contemporary localist food movements in Knoxville, Tennessee. More specifically, it explores the implications of the mutualistic and networked socio-economies (solidarity and/or community economies) of such movement expressions as they are experienced, embodied, and understood among the small-scale, independent food-related business owners who often serve as the interpellators of such movements. This study is likewise concerned with ways in which movement actors are actively shaping/creating place (via the processes of emplacement), and relatedly, the way place—as an entity possessive of its own accretions of environmental, historical, cultural, economic, and political identities—shapes actors, …

The "Vast And Terrible" Trauma: American Literary Naturalism, Ethics, And Levinas, Tyler Joseph Efird

Doctoral Dissertations

In an 1896 essay, Frank Norris wrote that the reading world should abandon those “teacup tragedies” to which it had grown accustomed and embrace a new literature that would depict a “vast and terrible drama.” Realism, Norris claimed, could not be used to achieve an earnest portrait of the conditions that mark individual lives under capitalism. Instead, the world needed a romantic wrestling with the forces of existential inscrutability. Also, the perceived need for literature to depict a clear ethical system needed revising from the perspective of American literary naturalism, a school long denigrated for apparent moral vacuity. Through excruciating …

Don’T You Be Telling Me How Tah Talk: Education, Ebonics, And Code-Switching, Laquita N. Gresham

Honors Theses

Ebonics, currently referred to as African-American English (AAE), is a highly-controversial topic inside and outside of the classroom. Many educators, scholars, and legislators debate how teachers should approach students who speak AAE and how they can fill the gap between African-American English and Standard English in a way that disbands the dialectal prejudices that may exist. This thesis focuses on code-switching as a pedagogical tool to help teachers instruct Black students in mastering Standard English on a proficient level, particularly Black students who speak AAE. This study explores current problems and practices in the way that English teachers approach AAE …

Traducción Y Subversión: Traduciendo La Voz Femenina. Una Nueva Interpretación De La Poesía Traducida De Adrienne Rich, Leticia De La Paz De Dios

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis intends to prove how close politics and poetics are in Adrienne Rich's works, to the point that they often become indistinguishable. When this overlap occurs, while the author makes the intentions of her work and her language explicit within her works, essays or public speeches/declarations in English (as she defends her creation of a language for women), some of the translations of her work into Spanish find problematic to follow the intentions present in the English. This thesis explores the reasons for that and concludes that, due to some characteristics of Spanish morphology, such as genderization, the translation …

Black Lazarus: Conjure Book, Melissa Anne Morrow

Theses and Dissertations

Black Lazarus: Conjure Book is a hybrid-genre collection of poems (including lyric, narrative, graphic, prose, and combinations of these four forms) uttered in the voices of fictitious personas based on the participants pictured in, the historical circumstances surrounding, and one inscribed artifact of a postcard depicting the lynching of Allen Brooks in Dallas, Texas on March 3, 1910. The theoretical scaffold for the manuscript is "triangulation," a method used by qualitative researchers to validate their studies by exploring research issues from multiple perspectives. Triangulation is also a mapmaking method used to verify the position of waypoints by measuring them against …

Testing And Data Recovery Excavations At 11 Native American Archeological Sites Along The U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant Relief Route, Titus County, Texas Volume Ii, Ross C. Fields, Virginia L. Hatfield, Damon Burden, Eloise Frances Gadus, Michael C. Wilder, Karl W. Kibler

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

Register of Historic Places and State Antiquities Landmark testing of 11 prehistoric sites that will be impacted by construction of the proposed U.S. Highway 271 relief route around Mount Pleasant in Titus County, Texas. The work was done in 2005 for the Texas Department of Transportation’s Environmental Affairs Division under Contract No. 575XXSA006, Work Authorization No. 57501SA006. This research design provides support for a scope of work for testing, prepared as a separate document. The primary relevant historic context for future work on this project is The Development of Agriculture in Northeast Texas Before a.d. 1600 (Kenmotsu and Perttula 1993). …

Testing And Data Recovery Excavations At 11 Native American Archeological Sites Along The U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant Relief Route, Titus County, Texas Volume I, Ross C. Fields, Virginia L. Hatfield, Damon Burden, Eloise Frances Gadus, Michael C. Wilder, Karl W. Kibler

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

This report deals with three episodes of archeological work that began in 2005 and concluded in 2010 for the proposed U.S. Highway 271 Mount Pleasant relief route in Titus County, Texas. The early part of the work was done for the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT), Environmental Affairs Division. The later part was done for PTP, LP, acting on behalf of Titus County. The work was done to address the requirements of Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act and the Texas Antiquities Code and was governed by the terms of Texas Antiquities Permit Nos. 3786, 4303, and 5495. …

Send In The Mouse, How American Politicians Used Walt Disney Productions To Safeguard The American Home Front In Wwii, Jordan M. Winters

Jordan M Winters

Despite the success of Disney’s first full length featured film Snow White in 1937 , the animator’s strike of the late 1930s and the war in Europe cutting of international profits, by 1941 the Walt Disney Company was near bankruptcy. Walt Disney was faced with the possibility of closing down his studio. However, the entrance of the United States into WWII and the rising threat of the spread of Nazism became the saving grace to the Walt Disney Studio. This essay explores the collaborations between Disney, businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s. Through …

La Ciudad Como Museo En Sí Misma: Una Propuesta De Dinamización Turística Del Patrimonio Cultural Urbano., Pablo Rosser, Seila Aixa Soler

pablo rosser

No abstract provided.

Black-Authored Lynching Drama’S Challenge To Theater History, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

This essay argues that U.S. theater history is incomplete without considering the theatricality of lynching. Thomas Dixon Jr. was as important as a playwright as the early stage realists William Gillette and William Moody. The essay also demonstrates that African Americans living at the height of mob violence understood that there was a "theater/lynching alliance" that created important parallels between "lynchcraft" and "stagecraft."