American Studies Commons^™

Shut Up And Dribble: The Political Contradictions Of Black Masculinity In Sports, Isaiah Rogers

Master's Theses

"Shut Up and Dribble: The Political Contradictions of Black Masculinity in Sports" is a comprehensive analysis of literature and case studies that explore the regulation and representation of the black masculine body within sports. This thesis investigates three primary themes—sport, protest, and black masculinity—and seeks to uncover the evolution of various black masculine figures and their endeavors toward racial inclusivity. By analyzing sports literature, this work examines the experiences of five significant black athletes, including Jack Johnson, Ron Artest, and Colin Kaepernick, to illustrate how sports environments police the black body. Additionally, this thesis emphasizes two archetypes of black masculinity: …

See Me Show Me: Black Women Representation In Television Sitcoms, Lauryn Jennings

Master's Theses

Television is a commonplace item within the households of America. It brings the family together as well teaching people about other people. With this Black women have been shown in one-dimensional images that are harmful. Although these stereotypes are old they are still present within modern television sitcoms.

Back To Black: Analyzing The Presence Of White Control Over Black Representations In Media And The Responses Of Black Creators, Serena Smith

Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis largely discusses the perceptions held by White people of Black people and the Black community, and how these discriminatory perceptions have been presented in various forms of consumable media and other societal aspects throughout American history. These racially biased misrepresentations have also negatively affected the progression and internalization of the concept of Black cultural identities for Black people throughout history and how they are able to relate to the rest of American society. I am arguing that contemporary media and films produced by Black creators, such as Cord Jefferson’s 2023 film American Fiction, tend …

Reproductive (In)Justice In Contemporary Dystopian Fiction: A Critical White Feminist Analysis Of The Handmaid’S Tale (2017–) And Future Home Of The Living God (2017), Kaelyn Ireland

Master's Theses

This thesis employs a critical white feminist lens to analyze themes of human migration in two contemporary feminist dystopian texts: the TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale and Louise Erdrich’s 2017 novel Future Home of the Living God. This work draws from fields and frameworks such as reproductive justice, migration studies, and Indigenous studies to create a nuanced critique of both texts and interrogate the ways whiteness impacts the feminist dystopian heroine’s story and, potentially, audience reception. I assert that HMT and FH can best be understood as a mirror for the current state of …

Abolition Ecologies And The Making Of Freedom As A Place In Bayview-Hunters Point, Spencer Daniel O'Hara

Master's Theses

In this paper, I critically explore the subjectivities of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), part of the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco since 1906. Applying an abolition ecologies framework, I ask what explains the duplicity of the Shipyard as a site of radioactive contamination and capital accumulation, and in the same time-space one that creates the conditions for radical place-making. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is a former commercial and military shipyard located on a peninsula in southeastern San Francisco. Motivated by its desire for a major shipbuilding and repair facility to project maritime power in the Pacific, the Navy …

I’Ll Be Goldenrod And You’Ll Be Aster: The Case For Revolutionizing Western Methods Of Teaching Using Indigenous Ontologies, Joanna Logerfo

Master's Theses

An interesting facet of living as a human in the 21st century is contending with the end of the world. It’s been imagined in a thousand ways over the past twenty years. Will it be zombies? Aliens? An AI revolution? Or will it perhaps be something more mundane, more “down-to-Earth”? The floods, the droughts, the famines, and all the rest of the cataclysmic global events that occur every year have taken center stage in the world-ending debate, parading under a name as threatening and expansive as the Boogeyman: climate change. A recent article from NPR covered the United Nations’ 2022 …

F. Scott Fitzgerald’S Homme Épuisé: Usurping The “Madwoman” In Tender Is The Night (1934) [2022], Emma Hill

Master's Theses

Nineteenth-century women writers commonly use themes of entrapment and madness in what are now classified as gothic novels. In texts such as Jane Eyre, Frankenstein, and The Yellow Wallpaper, confinement and madness are synchronous in developing the figure of “the madwoman.” These texts were written during a time when it was uncommon for female writers to seek publication, and many used pseudonyms to get their works published or to be taken seriously by critics. The “madwoman” emerged as a powerful trope to articulate what writing under a patriarchal system feels like. That is to say, confinement scenarios resulting from female …

A Pandemic Of Greed And A Disease Of Poverty In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque Of The Red Death", Benjamin Herrick

Master's Theses

The breakers tripped. Again. The breakers, a mandatory halt to trading on the floor of the stock exchange in response to the S&P falling more than 7% from the previous close. This was instituted after the Crash of 1987 to calm the markets before trading is allowed to resume. They are supposed to mitigate a drastic crash. They have only ever triggered once before, in 1997. Not for the tech bubble. Not even in the crash of 2008. All trading stops for fifteen minutes when the Level One breaker trips. If it drops further in the same day, the Level …

Emotions In Work And War: Comparisons Of Emotional-Cultures Of New Deal Ccc Enrollees And Wwii U.S. Army Enlistees, 1933-1945, Maeve Losen

Master's Theses

Though the Great Depression and Second World War were consecutive eras and overlapped in numerous aspects, scholarship often overlooks the commonalities between these periods. To demonstrate these eras’ shared qualities, this thesis examines the relationship in emotional-cultures—the cultural norms that dictated how individuals felt and demonstrated their emotions—among Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) enrollees and U.S. Army enlistees during WWII.

The broad intent of this undertaking is to place the cultural history of the Great Depression and WWII in conversation and to show the advantage of inter- and multidisciplinary work by applying anthropological and historical theories of emotion. Though the historical …

'Disembodied Bones': Recovering The Poetry And Prose Of Elinor Wylie 2021, Sarah R. Bullock

Master's Theses

Picking a book to read is like diving for a pearl, writes Elinor Wylie, a 20th Century American poet, novelist, essayist and prominent magazine literary editor. In her essay "The Pearl Diver", she writes that it is the diver that risks the unknown- unaided by diving equipment in the form of library indexes-who gains the greatest joy, Wylie states (Fugitive Prose, 869). Wylie explains:

I venture to perceive an analogy between the rebellious pearl diver and myself, in my slight experience with public libraries...how much more delightful, how much more stimulating, to abandon the paraphernalia of card indexes and mahogany …

Found Media: Interactivity And Community In Online Horror Media 2021, Jax Mello

Master's Theses

Being isolated is a common fear. The fear can take many forms, from the fear of being the last one alive in a horrific situation to being completely deserted by everyone you love. This is a fear that has been showcased many different times in movies, novels, and every other piece of media imaginable. Although not always tied to the horror genre, the fear of being isolated is tightly intertwined with many horror stories. Therefore, it is interesting when a horror production goes out of their way to encourage interactivity within its audience. This goes beyond an artist’s desire for …

Remembering The Experience Of War: A Sensory Study Of The Vietnam War And Collective Memory, Jacob Randolph

Master's Theses

The Vietnam War is remembered in a variety of ways. It is remembered as a war against communism, yet one that was also against American ideals of freedom. It is remembered as a war of patriotism, yet one that was also against the numerous military members who fought in it. It is remembered as a war for integration and unity among black and white, yet many African-Americans remember the time period as a war being fought abroad and at home. Memory of the war is obviously contradicting, but then again the 1960s and 1970s oftentimes were.

This thesis examines how …

Posthuman And Alien Breeding: The Implications Of Cybersex In Octavia Butler’S Dawn 2019., Elizabeth Rutkowski

Master's Theses

Speculative science fiction affords new ways for authors to represent social problems of the modern day in an apocalyptic manner. Authors such as Octavia Butler use science fiction to analyze social injustices revolving around race, gender, and sexuality. Throughout her novel Dawn, Butler uses the posthuman to represent minority groups in the late twentieth century. The posthuman represents those who have moved from humanity towards a new opportunity that is mixed with the potential for struggle. 1 As demonstrated through Butler’s work posthumanism blurs the lines between binaries such as male / female, straight / gay, and consensual / nonconsensual …

“Flowing Along The Wall”: Anarcha-Feminist Bioethics And Resistance In Octavia E. Butler’S Dawn 2019., Theresa Mendez

Master's Theses

Science fiction (sf) texts conversant with the temporal play between past, present, and future push readers to imagine the extremes of human and environmental existence, interaction, and potential. Simultaneously, despite the sf genre’s tendency to traffic in extremes, these texts provoke readers to consider the ways in which these imagined worlds are grounded in history as well as in the contemporary social moment. As Donna Haraway has argued, “the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical illusion” (306). This illusory boundary must continue to be traversed in order to consider how sf literatures, particularly those which imagine …

An Exploratory Study Of Acculturation Experiences Of Graduate Student Immigrants At The University Of San Francisco, Courtney Lamar

Master's Theses

This study explores the shared challenges during the acculturation process of graduate student immigrants pursuing higher education in the United States. 13 graduate student immigrants at the University of San Francisco discuss their experiences of cultural adjustment into U.S. culture. Through qualitative interviews and thematic analysis, this study seeks to understand the acculturation experiences of graduate student immigrants in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. This analysis is based on the individual-level experience examining attitudes and acculturation strategies in the dominant society. Analysis, possibly policy implication for institutions of higher education, and possible directions for future research …

The Return Of The Dead: Resurrecting Chappell's Family Gathering, Jonathan Moore

Master's Theses

This thesis examines Fred Chappell’s virtually overlooked collection of poetry Family Gathering (2000), and how the poems operate within the mode of the grotesque. I argue that the poems illuminate both the southern grotesque and Roland Barthes’s theory of photography’s Operator, Spectator, and Spectrum. I address Family Gathering as a family photo album full of still shots, snapshots, and even selfies, which illumines how Chappell’s use of the grotesque in this collection derives more from its original association with visual arts rather than only depicting the grotesque typically associated with characteristics deemed explicitly shocking or terrifying. I argue that …

“Unwanted In My Own Country”: Testimonies Of Identity And Belonging-Negotiations In A Post-Trump America, Nadia Naghedi Baradaran Hajjar

Master's Theses

This research investigates the impact of Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential elections and the so-called, “Muslim” Travel Ban presidential executive orders, on communities of first and second-generation Middle Eastern, Muslim immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, and it is framed within the context of post 9/11-biases and racial discrimination. The ethnographic-like methodology for this research has been conducted with the use of 11 semi-structured in-depth interviews from 2017 that have been transcribed and coded. Findings from the interview data shows that there is a varied amount of responses from the 2016 Presidential Elections and travel ban, however, …

Decolonizing The Ya North: Environmental Injustice In Sherri L. Smith’S Orleans, Micah-Jade M. Coleman

Master's Theses

Young Adult (YA) dystopias, in recent years, have imagined a future world fueled by the overuse and misuse of technology, the advancement of science for human gain, as well as societies ruled by governments that govern based on their own self-interests and economic gain. Such novels have opened the door for discussion about how the present-day actions of societies can impact the future of the environment; yet many only focus their attention on societies in the North— regions considered “developed” by the western world. In her YA novel, Orleans (2014), Sherri L. Smith focuses attention on the aftermath of Hurricane …

"Black And White Together, We Shall Win": Southern White Activists In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Olivia Bethany Moore

Master's Theses

During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi has often been characterized as a simple battle of white racists against black activists. Drawing heavily on oral histories, personal publications, and Mississippi Sovereignty Commission reports, this thesis examines the unconventional stories of white southerners who transcended the segregationist environments in which they were born. As southern white activism took many forms, this work offers biographical insights to three individuals who have received little scholarly attention: journalist P.D East, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activist Buford Posey, and William Carey president Ralph Noonkester. While their contributions between 1950-1971 differed, being …

"Do Not Fashion The Other": Representing Contemporary Haudenosaunee Literature 2016, Michael Patrick Brewster

Master's Theses

Historically, the issue of representation in postcolonial studies is one of some contention. While scholarship might recognize the necessity for highlighting the plights and struggles attendant to postcolonial societies, the primary literature being studied is most often written by natives of those societies themselves. This gap is especially evident with Indigenous cultures, because there are relatively few Indigenous scholars working in the academy. We are at the point now when we have a multiplicity (but not a plurality) of Indigenous voices writing literature (poetry, memoir, fiction, film, etc.) and academic criticism. However, there is value in non-Natives reading and writing …

"Carried Away": Love, Bly, And Secrecy In Henry James' The Turn Of The Screw 2015, Natalie G. El-Eid

Master's Theses

The function of the prologue in Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw is decidedly ambiguous, as the characters in the prologue, much like the uncle of the main text, are seemingly never seen again. For this reason, the purpose of this prologue is much debated.1 As Rolf Lundén states in his article “‘Not in any literal, vulgar way’: The Encoded Love Story of Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw,” “The openness of Henry James' The Turn of the Screw has invited more analytical attempts, and more critical controversy, than most literary texts” (30). Lundén summarizes four schools of …

"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 …

Daisy And Frederick: An Exploration Of Innocence And Its Consequences In Henry James' Daisy Miller: A Study 2015, Mark Andrew Meyer Ii

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

A Poetic Poioumenon: Coterie And Ekphrasis In David Lehman's "The Breeders' Cup", Anna Beth Rowe

Master's Theses

David Lehman’s poem “The Breeders’ Cup” uses cross-generational coterie and ekphrasis to create a poetic poioumenon. When read in terms of art criticism, Lehman’s “The Breeders’ Cup” models creative processes from the past and calls for a rehabilitative ethic in postmodern poetics. Lehman follows the ekphrastic form, which associates a poem with a work of visual art, from his New York School predecessor Frank O’Hara. “The Breeders’ Cup” addresses Édouard Manet’s 1865 painting Olympia through ekphrasis, and the painting of a prostitute becomes a patron saint of parody for postmodern poetics. The poem introduces lust as a metaphor for creative …

Gender And Self-Representation In Maya Angelou's Autobiography I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings 2014, Jay-Nel Steitz

Master's Theses

A voice that has been silenced for so long has much to say. Whether still confined or set free, the statement applies equally to both. The silenced voice wants not only to tell his or her story, but to share the life experiences which in turn reveal the identities of these individuals. These silenced voices then are not those of the oppressors, but the oppressed; and when an oppressor wants to share his or her story, the oppressed wants to tell their side of it as well. How can those labeled the marginalized outcasts of society express their feelings and …

Minor Characters With Major Impacts : Examining Giovanelli’S Role In Henry James’ Daisy Miller 2014, Zachary Lang

Master's Theses

Henry James’s first journey into the world of the American girl came in the form of one of his most read novellas, Daisy Miller. Through the eyes of Frederick Winterbourne, the reader begins a study of Daisy Miller, a character whom James uses to showcase many of the issues that were prevalent at the time including the role of women, societal standards, and class mobility. Winterbourne and Daisy are the principal characters, and as such they are given the most attention from readers and critics alike. The minor character Giovanelli, however, has received little critical attention. Despite being a minor …

American Made: Ansel Adams And The Bishop National Bank's "The Islands Of Hawaii", Lauren Walton

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

The Diplomatic Mission Of Yancey, Rost And Mann: The Inadequacies Of Confederate Foreign Policy, 1861, Paul Zingg

Master's Theses

During the secession movement of January- February 1861, which culminated in the Montgomery Constitutional Convention, the young Confederate government established well-defined policy objectives for the purpose of securing European allies and material assistance. Basically these aims were three-fold: to secure recognition of the sovereign status of the Confederate states; to induce intervention by the European powers on the side of the Confederacy; and, after April, 1861, to gain a repudiation of the Union blockade from these same powers. Relying predominantly on the coercive power of cotton, the South began its quest for these objectives with diplomatic efforts directed at the …

James Barron Hope : Virginia's Poet-Laureate, Cullen S. Pitt

Master's Theses

Previous to the Civil War comparatively little literary work had been done in the south. Of course if we take into consideration all kinds of composition, such as narratives of adventure, diaries, histories, speeches, sermons and the like, we are forced to admit that the total amount was very large. But when we speak of literature in the higher and more restricted sense, we mean that which stimulates the imagination, awakens thought and aims to please as well as to instruct. And, using the word in this narrow and more restricted sense, it is quite evident that there had been …