American Studies Commons^™

Performative Commemoratives, The Personal, And The Public: Spontaneous Shrines, Emergent Ritual, And The Field Of Folklore, Jack Santino

Popular Culture Faculty Publications

AFS Presidential Plenary Address, 2004

Review Of Wild Heart: A Life. Natalie Clifford Barney's Journey From Victorian America To The Literary Salons Of Paris By Suzanne Rodriguez, Tama L. Engelking

World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Innovating National Sovereignty And The Just War Tradition, Gary M. Simpson

Faculty Publications

The two-thousand-year-old just war tradition is now read anew in light of the more recent Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Responsibility to Protect document. Eleanor Roosevelt played no small part in moving things in this new direction.

Mel Gibson's The Passion Of The Christ: Market Segmentation, Mass Marketing And Promotion, And The Internet, Peter A. Maresco

WCBT Faculty Publications

The pre-release publicity surrounding the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ, warrants an in-depth look at the role that market segmentation and marketing promotion, including use of the Internet, have played in the overall success of the film. As background, films commonly classified as biblical epics are referenced in order to construct a framework that will demonstrate how the promotion of this genre of film, with the exception of the Internet, has essentially changed very little over time. This paper is not a review of the film nor is it intended to be a brief course in marketing. …

Ridington, Amber Flower, B. 1969 (Fa 200), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 200. Transcriptions and cassette tapes (14) of interviews that Amber Ridington, Western Kentucky University student, had with Joe Marshall, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and other individuals who were knowledgeable about the operations of the Quonset, 1946-1959, a music and recreational venue in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

The American College Novel: An Annotated Bibliography, Priscilla Finley

Library Faculty Publications

Kramer's revision of his 1981 bibliography (CH, Dec'81) of novels set at American colleges adds 209 citations with annotations for novels published 1981-2002 and condenses annotations for novels carried over from the first edition for a total of 648.

Built Along The Shores Of Macatawa: The History Of Boat Building In Holland, Michigan, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

Built Along the Shores of Macatawa: The History of Boat Building in Holland, Michigan is an article concerning the history of ship and boat building in the Holland, Michigan area from 1836-2004.

In Focus: The Media And The New Cold War, Dennis Broe, Louise Spence

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Introduces several essays that explores the role of mass media on the transformation of the U.S. foreign policy after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Alliance of the media with globalization and permanent war; Invasion of the concept of endless war on media culture.

The Nuts And Bolts Of College Writing, Priscilla Finley

Library Faculty Publications

Unusual for a style handbook, Nuts and Bolts embeds writing advice in essays that identify rhetorical structures as tools for "shaping your ideas, questions and convictions to share with others." While it offers suggestions that will help writers fine-tune their sentences and paragraphs, it has a lot to say about the machinery of college writing on a grander scale--the switches, transformers, and fans which must function well before a unit can be bolted together.

Tracing The Las Vegas Landscape Through Maps: A Cartographic Journey Through Las Vegas History, Katherine Rankin

Library Faculty Presentations

Starting with the 1844 Fremont Map, and going through the present day, each era of Las Vegas history is described.

Book Reviews: Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Book Reviews: Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

Review Of Place, Language, And Identity In Afro-Costa Rican Literature, By Dorothy E. Mosby, And The Fugitive Race: Minority Writers Resisting Whiteness, By Stephen P. Knadler, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

No abstract provided.

The Rise Of The Golden City: Los Angeles In The Twentieth Century, Leslie Wilson

Department of History Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

At the turn of the twentieth century, Los Angeles was poised to become the premier city on the West Coast.Within thirty years, the boosters, businessmen, and politicians made it a reality. These people believed that the twentieth century belonged to the city of Los Angeles, and they propelled the city into the forefront. They did so by constructing a massive aqueduct system; annexing lands to the east, west, and south of its original borders; developing a harbor; building a massive infrastructure including roads and rail lines; instituting the nation’s first zoning laws; and fostering financial investment. By 1930, the city …

Toni Morrison: Playing In The Dark, A Yemisi Jimoh, Phd

Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

Angling For Repose: Wallace Stegner And The De-Mythologizing Of The American West, Jennie A. Harrop

Faculty Publications - Department of Professional Studies

When Wallace Stegner published his first book in 1937, a stereotypical Western novel invariably included a gun-slinging cowboy hero, a near-mythical gunfight at dusk, and a formulaic, predictable plot that rarely left readers unsure of who would prevail in the end. Stegner recognized the limitations of such archetypal assumptions and sought to achieve something different with his work. In this paper, I argue that Wallace Stegner asked the nuanced questions necessary to further this nation’s understanding of western archetypes and, as a result, to begin to debunk the misleading mythologies of the American West.

In this study, I look first …

The Bible And Popular Culture: Engaging Sacred Text In The World Of "Others", Mary E. Hess

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Frazier Polymetis: Cold Mountain And The Odyssey, Emily A. Mcdermott

Classics Faculty Publication Series

Ever since its appearance in 1997, Charles Frazier’s novel, Cold Mountain, has been billed as a latter-day Odyssey. Separate unattributed book notes on the world wide web speak of its protagonist’s “dangerous odyssey” and his “odyssey through the devastated landscape of the soon-to-be-defeated South.” One reviewer styles the novel "a Confederate deserter's homeward odyssey"; another characterizes it as having “reset much of the 'Odyssey' in 19th-century America.” While such assertion of parallelism between the novel and Homer’s epic is widespread, it also tends to remain general and relatively unadorned. It evidently rests on such typically odyssean plot elements …

Black Indians, Zulus And Congos; Transformation And Transference Of Community Traditions In New Orleans And Panama, Elizabeth Rhodes

Textual Resources

This paper is a comparative study of three traditions that reflect the African diaspora: the Zulus of New Orleans, the black Indians of New Orleans and the Congo ritual of Panama. In all practices, the participant is transformed from citizen/worker/family member into an empowered being whose role is intricately connected to the reinforcement of cultural and community ties. In addition to presenting an overview of each tradition, I will discuss shared themes, parallel characterization, approaches to masking and comment on the interest of established practitioners to transfer their talents and histories to younger members of the community.

Bringing Books To A "Book-Hungry Land": Print Culture On The Dakota Prairie, Lisa Lindell

Hilton M. Briggs Library Faculty Publications

The dearth of reading material was a recurring lament in the writings and memoirs of Dakota settlers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. “I was born with a desire to read, . . . and I have never gotten over it,” declared Henry Theodore Washburn, recalling his Minnesota boyhood and homesteading years in Dakota Territory, “but there was no way in those days to gratify that desire to any great extent.”1 This lack was indeed of consequence. In the pre-electronic era, print was a primary means of obtaining information, insight, and pleasure. High rates of literacy, sharp increases …

Review Of The Book Adirondack Tragedy: The Gillette Murder Case Of 1906, 3rd Ed., Kathryn M. Plank

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Cultural-Studies Criticism, Peter Lurie

English Faculty Publications

Faulkner’s “career” within cultural studies began, within the history of the cultural-studies movement itself, comparatively late. This is not an especially remarkable point about Faulkner or any one particular writers; as a critical movement, cultural studies was never concerned more with any one figure than another, and was always concerned with an interdisciplinary and interdiscursive focus rather than a writer’s singularity. It is a point worth noting, however, because of the specific ways in which Faulkner’s work seems hospitable to cultural studies’ concerns. From his earliest stages of writing, Faulkner was aware of his work’s position within a field of …

Querying The Modernist Canon: Historical Consciousness And The Sexuality Of Suffering In Faulkner And Hart Crane, Peter Lurie

English Faculty Publications

The extended historical “moments” that Crane and Faulkner both seek to offer readers may then be defined by their affinities with pain. In the context of American history, that painfulness refers to the experience of historical subjects such as the American Indian as well as marginalized populations like Southern blacks and, as with young Thomas Sutpen, rural poor whites. What both Faulkner and Crane signal in key sections of their work is the way that historical awareness, on the part of either characters or readers, is activated by and necessitates a textual effect of suffering. It is the different valence …

A Certain Comfort: Betty Ford As First Lady, Nichola D. Gutgold, Linda B. Hobgood

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

Her White House stay was short-lived, but the lessons of Betty Ford's experience remain vividly instructive. By accident of a national political crisis which catapulted her to the rank of the first lady in 1974, Mrs. Ford's tenure lasted a brief two years until her husband, Gerald R. Ford lost his bid for reelection. During that time, she developed a relationship of candor with the press and public. She spoke her mind on social and moral issues that were at the forefront of public debate. The positions she took were not always popular with the majority of Americans, many of …

100 Years Of Saving Lives, Geoffrey D. Reynolds

Faculty Publications

100 Years of Saving Lives is an article that concerns the history of the United States Life-Saving Service and United States Coast Guard station at Charlevoix, Michigan, 1898-2004.

The Shanachie Volume 16, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

Paul Laurence Who? Invisibility And Misrepresentation In Children's Literature And Language Arts Textbooks, Mary Jackson Scroggins, Jane M. Gangi

Education Faculty Publications

This article is a call-and-response-type conversation between two women—educators, mothers, lovers of words—on the representation of books about children of color in literature and language arts textbooks for preservice teachers. Scroggins shares anecdotes on the experience and real-life effects of invisibility, misrepresentation, and underrepresentation; her comments are italicized. Gangi reviews select textbooks and booklists. Both comment on the state of multiculturalism in children's literature.

Parts of this article were presented at the conference "Color, Hair, and Bone: The Persistence of Race into the 21st Century," held at Bucknell University on September 27, 2002. Other parts are adapted from Encountering Children's …

Representing The Juvenile Delinquent: Reform, Social Science, And Teenage Troubles In Postwar Texas, William S. Bush

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Political Economy Of The Indie Blockbuster: Fandom, Intermediality, And The Blair Witch Project, James Castonguay

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

The primary focus of this chapter is on what could be broadly described as The Blair Witch Project's political economy. This includes a consideration of the film's relationship to patterns of ownership and the economic structures of film production, distribution, and marketing within the structure of the entertainment industry and in the context of its critical and popular reception. The second half of the essay historicizes BWP in relation to film production and exhibition in the 1890s, and concludes with an examination of its mythic status as an independent film that threatened to undermine Hollywood's blockbuster paradigm. By placing …

Orson Welles: Interviews (Book Review), Sidney Gottlieb

Communication, Media & The Arts Faculty Publications

Book review by Sid Gottlieb.

Estrin, Mark W. "Orson Welles: Interviews." Jackson, MI: University Press of Mississippi, 2002. ISBN 9781578062089