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Articles 1 - 30 of 117
Full-Text Articles in American Studies
Little Cricket On The Hearth: The Quiet Feminism Of _Little Women_, Caroline Anderson Klein
Little Cricket On The Hearth: The Quiet Feminism Of _Little Women_, Caroline Anderson Klein
Honors Theses
Since the advent of the cult of domesticity, the stakes for female characters in domestic literature have been notoriously high. There was no room for flaws, rebellious decisions, and certainly no room for mistakes—whether of the woman’s own accord, or simply as collateral damage of a male character’s immorality. In this shallowly Calvinist domain, women were never more than one broken guardrail away from social ruin or death. In writing Little Women, Louisa May Alcott breaks these molds through unflinching kindness to her female characters from childhood to adulthood, even unto death. Alcott achieves this quietly feminist feat by …
Indigenous Storytelling As Decolonial Praxis, Ceremony And At Colby, Georgia Goodman
Indigenous Storytelling As Decolonial Praxis, Ceremony And At Colby, Georgia Goodman
Honors Theses
This thesis seeks to amplify Indigenous lifeways, diplomacies, sciences, diplomatic relations, and the power of storytelling. This is not a piece analyzing Indigenous culture. Rather, this thesis returns the gaze to the settler colonial state, specifically its storytelling ideologies, to show that systemic practices of inequity in storytelling can be disrupted and decolonized through a recentering of Indigenous ideologies. For example, reciprocity with lands and animals, reflection on positionality and decentering colonial understandings of time and place.
"Emerson Remained My Master": The Influence Of Ralph Waldo Emerson On Louisa May Alcott's Thought And Writing In Little Women, Emma Wilburn
"Emerson Remained My Master": The Influence Of Ralph Waldo Emerson On Louisa May Alcott's Thought And Writing In Little Women, Emma Wilburn
Honors Theses
In this thesis, I will argue that Little Women was heavily influenced by Alcott’s mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson’s influence impacted Alcott’s life and writing in two main ways. First, growing up in Concord, surrounded by the influence of well-known Transcendentalist writers and under the mentorship of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alcott was heavily influenced by his work and the ideals of the transcendentalist movement. The ideas of Transcendentalism that Emerson made popular and wrote about in his pieces such as “Nature” and speeches like “Women” and “The American Scholar” appear in Little Women. Second, Alcott was also heavily influenced …
Fight Like A Ya Girl: Fourth Wave Feminism, Defense, And Weaponization Through The Lens Of Object Relations, Amanda Blakeman
Fight Like A Ya Girl: Fourth Wave Feminism, Defense, And Weaponization Through The Lens Of Object Relations, Amanda Blakeman
Honors Theses
This thesis will discuss how the genre of Young Adult (YA) fiction, more specifically Fantasy YA fiction, reflects the major goals and objectives of fourth wave feminism, ultimately arguing for the need for more intersectional representation in heroine characters. YA Fantasy fiction consistently features a strong heroine in both spirit and body, one who uses weapons to take on systems of injustice in their respective worlds, from systematic child murder to modern slavery. What and how, then, are these books teaching the next generation about feminism? I attempt to answer this question with this thesis, looking at three YA female …
Preservation And Public History In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Walker Bray
Preservation And Public History In Mound Bayou, Mississippi, Walker Bray
Honors Theses
This paper is an exploration of the history of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, an all Black community in the Mississippi Delta formed by freedmen in the wake of Reconstruction. This paper also discusses the ways in which Mound Bayou citizens are working to preserve their history and make it known to a wider audience. In particular, this work discusses the recently opened Mound Bayou Museum of African American Culture and History and related efforts to restore and preserve historic structures in Mound Bayou. In addition, this work also seeks to explore ways in which the University of Mississippi can effectively supplement …
Women Without Bodies: Autonomy, Empowerment, And Embodiment In Southern Women, Martha Peyton Ford
Women Without Bodies: Autonomy, Empowerment, And Embodiment In Southern Women, Martha Peyton Ford
Honors Theses
This thesis explores the relationship between rural, upper-class, Southern, white women and their bodies. In my attempts to understand this relationship, I analyze sources from the fields of gender studies, philosophy, and psychology, utilizing concepts such as the Cult of True Womanhood, the newly-emerging field of body memoirs, and the long-lasting but elusive idea of Southern ladyhood to make sense of cultural expectations of Southern women and their bodies. This research, alongside my use of autoethnography and oral history, serve as an anchor for my analysis of women’s relationships to their bodies, in which I use myself, my mother, and …
Challenging White Fragility Through Black Feminist Political Poetry, Langley Leverett
Challenging White Fragility Through Black Feminist Political Poetry, Langley Leverett
Honors Theses
Due to overwhelming patriarchal hegemonies that women – white women, rich women, young women, and cis women – continue to uphold, feminism struggles to serve all women justly. To combat this negligence in feminism’s fourth-wave movement, I will use this thesis to highlight ways that Black feminist poets have not only shaped feminist theory through their own contributions, but also have prolonged and saved the livelihood of both gender and racial equality. With a strong emphasis on Intersectional Feminism, I will explore the ways in which women can be united against tokenistic power, beginning with the inspiration from three voices: …
"Freedmen Not Freemen": The Freedmen's Bureau And Black Land Ownership In Arkansas, Eric Johnson
"Freedmen Not Freemen": The Freedmen's Bureau And Black Land Ownership In Arkansas, Eric Johnson
Honors Theses
When slavery ended at the close of the Civil War, there was no universal answer for where former slaves were to live. The type and quality of freedom Black Southerners would experience during Reconstruction would be largely determined by where they lived. Many freedpeople and Republicans desired for widespread Black land ownership across the South. “Forty acres and a mule” was a common phrase that spread throughout the South and represented the hope that the United States government would ensure that all former slaves would be given land to own and live on. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which was created under …
Examining Katniss Everdeen's Gender Ambiguity In The Hunger Games : How Suzanne Collins Utilizes The Ya Genre To Resist Feminine Stereotypes, Moriah K. Mcdonald
Examining Katniss Everdeen's Gender Ambiguity In The Hunger Games : How Suzanne Collins Utilizes The Ya Genre To Resist Feminine Stereotypes, Moriah K. Mcdonald
Honors Theses
Even those who passively engage with modern media are likely to notice a binary frequently imposed on young adult women—that of the kind, reputable and trustworthy “good girl” or the mean, scandalous and deceitful “bad girl.” Such themes remain significantly featured in young adult (YA) literature, a genre specifically aimed at teenagers. Thus, in analyzing The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins, I undertake a twofold analysis. I illustrate how Collins’s works tackle the specific issue of binary representation of women in the media, thereby validating the usefulness of the YA genre in commenting on current day issues facing teens.
Analyzing The Mutability Of Oral And Digital Media, Bennett Bowden
Analyzing The Mutability Of Oral And Digital Media, Bennett Bowden
Honors Theses
This project takes the analyses of Walter Ong and synthesizes conclusions about the likelihood of different mediums to encourage change in artifacts over time. The mediums explored ar et eh oral and the digital, with two heavily studied works being examined as representatives of each. This study found much higher mutability of artifacts within digital media due to its likelihood to encourage cooperative creative behavior, and further study would be extremely helpful to the field.
Ethnicity And “Women Religious”: How Irish-American And Other Ethnic Nuns Were Presented In American Newspapers From 1865 To 1915, Lydia Hursh
Honors Theses
While Catholicism in America has had a turbulent history of mixed rejection and acceptance, the American Catholic Church prior to World War One was not considered a monolithic institution by the American clergy or in certain contexts by the American press. Women religious, such as nuns, were considered unnatural and malevolent at the worst, although this characterization in popular opinion declined after the Civil War, to unusual but benevolent at the best. Moreover, ethnicity was a determining factor among male authors for where on the sliding-scale of social alienation a nun or her convent might fall, although the degree of …
The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith
The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith
Honors Theses
For my thesis, I focus on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the evolution of how its personnel—players, coaches, refs, owners, etc.—navigated racism, politics, social injustice, platform utilization, and other pressing topics from the mid-1900s to the present day. Monumental players that used their platform in the NBA to inspire change include Bill Russell (1960s), Kareem-Abdul Jabaar (1970s), Craig Hodges (1990s), and LeBron James (2010s). These men and many others risked their images, and in some cases, their NBA careers, in order to protest, march, boycott, and kneel for causes they believed in, such as the civil rights movement and …
The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith
The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith
Honors Theses
For my thesis, I focus on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the evolution of how its personnel—players, coaches, refs, owners, etc.—navigated racism, politics, social injustice, platform utilization, and other pressing topics from the mid-1900s to the present day. Monumental players that used their platform in the NBA to inspire change include Bill Russell (1960s), Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (1970s), Craig Hodges (1990s), and LeBron James (2010s). These men and many others risked their images, and in some cases, their NBA careers, in order to protest, march, boycott, and kneel for causes they believed in, such as the civil rights movement and …
Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner
Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner
Honors Theses
Brain drain is the out-migration of educated individuals from an area. It is a problem with which Mississippi is overly familiar. This thesis uses data gathered from a survey of 965 respondents to identify who is leaving the state and for what reasons. The data gathered suggest confirmation that brain drain is an issue for the state, with roughly two-thirds of respondents having left the state or seriously considering doing so. The impetus for this varies with each individual, but respondents underscore economic and societal factors within Mississippi as pushing them away from the state. Quality of life factors are …
The Iran Hostage Crisis: A Media Narrative, Catherine Claire Hausman
The Iran Hostage Crisis: A Media Narrative, Catherine Claire Hausman
Honors Theses
The Iran Hostage Crisis, from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, was a defining moment in American foreign policy and US – Iranian relations. The news media – local and national newspapers and television – was saturated with coverage of the situation in Tehran and the subsequent US reaction. Americans watched the news over the 444 days, feeling sympathy and forging a collective national bond with the hostages; the international conflict was deeply personal for many Americans. The media played a central role in the establishment of the narrative of the hostage crisis, developing specific roles and personas of …
Reading On The Home Front: The Evolution Of U.S. Children’S Literature And American Values During Wartime Conflicts, Sophie Barton
Reading On The Home Front: The Evolution Of U.S. Children’S Literature And American Values During Wartime Conflicts, Sophie Barton
Honors Theses
Children’s print culture is an understudied dimension of American history. It is well established that children’s history is vital to understanding the role of the child in American history and how modern childhood has developed. This study aims to uncover how children’s print culture plays a vital role in understanding how children’s perspectives changed and the varied messages adults imposed on children during the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two. In this Honors Thesis, I study various types of print productions including short stories, comics, and school textbooks in order to understand the various ways adults attempted …
Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow
Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow
Honors Theses
“Art & AIDS: Viral Strategies for Visibility” examines the complex relationships between social stigma, healthcare, homophobia, and mortality, and how these impacted the lives of Western artists and manifested in their works. Most of the art discussed in this thesis was produced during the height of the AIDS crisis (late-1980s to mid-1990s). During this period, gay artists and their allies employed new strategies in their work to inspire activism, and convey intense emotions –– predominantly frustration, grief, and anxiety –– associated with HIV/AIDS. In the U.S., the inaction of the Reagan administration was largely due to widespread homophobia kindled by …
The Museum As A Mirror: Reinterpreting And Delinking American Landscape Art From Colonial Narratives, Blythe C. Romano
The Museum As A Mirror: Reinterpreting And Delinking American Landscape Art From Colonial Narratives, Blythe C. Romano
Honors Theses
Art museums have recently been looking at their existing collections with heightened scrutiny, revisiting their decision to display colonial works uncritically in their gallery spaces, and reconsidering the idea that there is such a thing as a unified art historical canon. These conversations regarding reinterpretation are necessary for all museums that choose to display art with problematic histories, as this information is owed to visitors -- especially within the settler colonial context. The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine is one site where such collection and gallery “reinterpretation” has begun to be implemented and discussed. For example, in …
Country Fun: A Cultural History Of Opryland Usa, Nashville, And The Suburban South, William C. Nieman
Country Fun: A Cultural History Of Opryland Usa, Nashville, And The Suburban South, William C. Nieman
Honors Theses
This thesis centers around the history of Opryland USA, a theme park and “musical showplace” that existed from 1972 to 1997 in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. Using a variety of primary sources including park ephemera, newspaper articles, and songs, I show how, over its twenty-five years, Opryland became a country music theme park after initially presenting a seemingly diverse picture of American popular music. I reveal that, despite local businessowners’ and musicians’ reluctance to embrace Opryland at first, the park was accepted by many Nashvillians to the point where it is now nostalgically mourned. Then, putting those primary materials …
Who Has A Voice: Issues Of Free Speech At The University Of Mississippi From 1955-1970, Neale Grisham
Who Has A Voice: Issues Of Free Speech At The University Of Mississippi From 1955-1970, Neale Grisham
Honors Theses
Amidst the upheaval of American society in the 1960s, the University of Mississippi’s administration found itself in a precarious position. A long-standing institution that prided itself on its ties to the Old South, the university was being challenged by integrationists and liberal notions of equality and social justice. The university was forced to decide between abetting the alumni that padded university pockets and the tides of change that were rippling through the university campus. Their main way of combatting this was through the surveilling of students and the vetting of potential guest speakers who may spread “controversial ideas.” While students …
“We Got More Yesterday Than Anybody”: Child Ghosts And The National Trauma Of Anti-Black Racism In American Literature, Megan Swartzfager
“We Got More Yesterday Than Anybody”: Child Ghosts And The National Trauma Of Anti-Black Racism In American Literature, Megan Swartzfager
Honors Theses
This thesis examines the roles of haunting in the context of racial violence in three texts: Beloved by Toni Morrison, Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward, and Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan. In each of these texts, a parent is responsible for the death of a child. In the former two texts, both by Black authors, a Black parent kills a Black child in what they believe to be a protective act in the face of violence by white people. Wolf Whistle, however, written by a white author, is animated by the ghost of a character based on Emmett Till. …
Pecking The Hands That Feed Them: How Society And Government Have Allowed The Poultry Industry To Exploit Labor And The Environment In The American South, Sophie M. Kline
Pecking The Hands That Feed Them: How Society And Government Have Allowed The Poultry Industry To Exploit Labor And The Environment In The American South, Sophie M. Kline
Honors Theses
Americans eat an average of ninety pounds of chicken in one year, but where does that chicken come from? Immigrants and African Americans are the majority of the labor population in poultry processing plants located in the American South. In an effort to highlight the racism, sexism, insecurity, and environmental degradation in the poultry industry, I analyze a variety of ethnographies, articles, and science journals as well as U.S Supreme Court decisions and policies enacted by the U.S federal government in this thesis. Upon examination, I answer why society is pecking the hands that feed them. The analysis concludes that …
Cultivating Spaces For American Citizenship In Pauline Hopkins’S Contending Forces, Jonathan Puckett
Cultivating Spaces For American Citizenship In Pauline Hopkins’S Contending Forces, Jonathan Puckett
Honors Theses
Rediscovered through archival recovery in the late 1970s, Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) was an African American author, journalist, and activist at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900), Hopkins’s African American characters craft spaces, both sacred and secular, where they can freely exercise their citizenship in the Jim Crow era. As Hopkins utilizes the sentimentalist genre to portray realistically life at the turn of the century, my thesis highlights the historical and literary significance of sacred spaces like Boston’s black Baptist churches. I also review two minor characters …
Give Me A Choice: Perceptions Of Freedom And The Anti-Vax Movement In Maine, Louisa Goldman
Give Me A Choice: Perceptions Of Freedom And The Anti-Vax Movement In Maine, Louisa Goldman
Honors Theses
While vaccination has proven to be an incredibly effective method of disease prevention, the growing ‘anti-vax’ movement threatens the population-level benefits conferred by widespread immunization. Recent findings indicate that anti-vax beliefs are not, as had been previously assumed, necessarily the result of scientific illiteracy but rather, are likely produced by intertwining social and situational contexts. With these considerations in mind, the goal of this study was to identify potential motivations underlying anti-vax behavior by performing a deep examination of anti-vax rhetoric, coupled with demographic and situational analyses. I focused specifically on the anti-vax community in Maine, with a special interest …
Where Was I Going? What Was The Point? Archetypes, Frame, And Social Transgressions In Ovid And Twain, Jessica Bates
Where Was I Going? What Was The Point? Archetypes, Frame, And Social Transgressions In Ovid And Twain, Jessica Bates
Honors Theses
The sound of a narrator telling a story can be difficult to depict in written prose, and yet both Ovid and Twain capture the effect of an old man telling a story; Ovid through Nestor's Story in The Metamorphoses and Twain in "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County." They both use this framework to discuss the theme of social transgressions. I maintain that both Twain and Ovid use a variation on the wise-mentor archetype as a frame to discuss, through the use of satire, social transgressions which neither of their narrators condemn. I aim to explore Ovid and Twain's …
The Influence Of The Law In American Literature And Culture, Emily Johnson, Steven Hamelman
The Influence Of The Law In American Literature And Culture, Emily Johnson, Steven Hamelman
Honors Theses
This piece explores the relationship between law and its influence within American literature and the overall culture. Themes of discrimination, corruption, greed, advocacy, and incriminating evidence, present in the analyzed texts and films, greatly plays into the American public’s perception of their judicial system. Is it truly the law influencing American literature and culture, or is it the sentiments of the masses influencing the legal field itself? This work aims at analyzing this question, while also making a point to explain what American citizens can do with such influence and knowledge.
Cartel Practices And Policies In The World War Ii Era, Caleb Yoken
Cartel Practices And Policies In The World War Ii Era, Caleb Yoken
Honors Theses
The goal of this thesis is to examine cartels in the World War II era: how and why they operated, why they existed, and any assistance they may or may not have received from their respective governments. This thesis, in particular, will focus on three countries, the United States, Germany, and Britain. Cartels are typically defined through the lens of monopolized business activity that can deal with anything from petroleum and steel to pharmaceuticals, and take actions to restrict output and raise prices to eliminate their competition. The research finds that cartels that operated in Europe during this era were …
What Do Women Want? The Feminist Pursuit Of Happiness, Hannah Ruth Ellen
What Do Women Want? The Feminist Pursuit Of Happiness, Hannah Ruth Ellen
Honors Theses
“What do Women Want?” My thesis asks whether women can genuinely seek freedom while also hoping for happiness. I look closely at how male theorists define happiness and liberty for themselves and for others, and in particular for feminized others. My two central chapters focus on theories of individual happiness, happiness sought through another or others, and the ways feminist thinkers reimagine happiness in relationship to women’s freedom. I apply feminist critiques to the concept of psychodynamic therapy as an anti-revolutionary tool designed to isolate and silence women into believing that coping with oppression is equivalent to genuine happiness. I …
Lions, And Dragons, And Wolves (Oh My): A Study Of The Series "Game Of Thrones" And Political Theory, Emily Manus
Lions, And Dragons, And Wolves (Oh My): A Study Of The Series "Game Of Thrones" And Political Theory, Emily Manus
Honors Theses
Game of Thrones has a reputation for being unpredictable. Fans watch in anticipation as their beloved characters face dangerous situations, not knowing if they will make it our alive or not. No character is safe. While this reputation, may lead one to think that there is no way to know what characters will do and how they will react to certain circumstances, if one looks at them through the sphere of political theory and ethics, one can possibly piece together what actions characters will take and what outcome these actions could possibly have. Looking at the characters through these lenses …
The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley
The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley
Honors Theses
As Frantz Fanon demonstrates in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, Sartrean existentialism fails to account for differences in racialized existence. Quite simply, the notion that “existence precedes essence” is reversed in the case of the black subject; he/she is living in a world that has rendered the black subject subservient to a predetermined essence. Ultimately, the fact that the white subject exists and may freely determine his/her essence while the black subject may not further demonstrates this gap or a chasm between black and white subjects that calls for further examination. In the first chapter, I will use …