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Full-Text Articles in American Studies

In The Shadow Of The Atomic Cloud: Masculinity, Modernity, And The ‘Bomb’ In The Electoral Politics Of Canada And The United States, 1949-1963, Allen G. Priest Oct 2021

In The Shadow Of The Atomic Cloud: Masculinity, Modernity, And The ‘Bomb’ In The Electoral Politics Of Canada And The United States, 1949-1963, Allen G. Priest

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the impact of hegemonic masculinity, in the early Cold War era, on the electoral politics of Canada and the United States. It situates itself in the years between 1949 and 1963, arguably the height of nuclear fear, at a time when masculine ideals were adjusting to an uncertain postwar reality. Previous scholarship has established that the Cold War brought with it a retreat into domesticity, followed by an emergent “crisis” of masculinity. This monograph contributes to the historiography by demonstrating that the masculine architypes of the early Cold War are frequently reflected in electoral discourse. It also …


The 1980 Moscow Olympic Boycott As A Tool Of American Foreign Policy, Andrew Rice Aug 2021

The 1980 Moscow Olympic Boycott As A Tool Of American Foreign Policy, Andrew Rice

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the United States’ boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics as a tool of American foreign policy. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979 which prompted US President Jimmy Carter to impose sanctions on the Soviets, including a boycott of the Moscow Games. The purpose of the paper is to explore why the boycott failed to achieve Carter’s objectives and evaluate what the President may have considered to substantially increase its success. Carter’s dealings with essential groups within the Olympic movement, such as the United States Olympic Committee (USOC), International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the Olympic athletes, as …


Addictive Potential: Regimes, Transformations, Circulations, Kayleigh E. Shield Feb 2021

Addictive Potential: Regimes, Transformations, Circulations, Kayleigh E. Shield

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis employs a poststructuralist framework to consider the possibilities for agency and resistance in consumer capitalism. The argument begins with an examination of figures who emerged in nineteenth century psychiatric discourses, and the roles that those figures play in poststructural and postmodern critiques of psychoanalysis and psychiatry, specifically in the work of Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. I then argue that David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest presents us with a new figure—the addict. My reading of Wallace is informed by poststructuralist critiques of psychiatric power and by Wallace’s own affinity for the fiction of Franz Kafka. I …