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American Studies Commons

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Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

South Asia In The Margins Of Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Missionaries, Transcendentalists, And Indian Travelers In America, Brian Yothers Dec 2011

South Asia In The Margins Of Nineteenth-Century American Literature: Missionaries, Transcendentalists, And Indian Travelers In America, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

This essay discusses the broad presence of representations of South Asia in nineteenth-century American literature, from little-known missionary narratives to canonical work by Melville, Thoreau, Emerson, and Fuller.


The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh Nov 2011

The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh

Michael D Sharbaugh

Water sources in the United States' New England region are laden with arsenic. Particularly during North America's colonial period--prior to modern filtration processes--arsenic would make it into the colonists' drinking water. In this article, which evokes the biocultural evolution paradigm, it is argued that colonists offset health risks from the contaminant (arsenic poisoning) by ingesting copious amounts of seven spices--cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, vanilla, and ginger. The inclusion of these spices in fall and winter recipes that hail from New England would therefore explain why many Americans associate them not only with the region, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas, …


Writing With Paint, Harvey Young Dec 2010

Writing With Paint, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

No abstract provided.


Tax The Rich, Michael I. Niman Ph.D. Dec 2010

Tax The Rich, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

No abstract provided.


The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss Dec 2010

The Epistemology Of Ethnography: Method In Queer Anthropology, Margot D. Weiss

Margot Weiss

This essay explores methodological dilemmas in queer anthropology by reviewing three recent queer ethnographies: Mary Gray's Out in the Country: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America; Mark Padilla's Caribbean Pleasure Industry: Tourism, Sexuality, and AIDS in the Dominican Republic; and Gloria Wekker's The Politics of Passion: Women's Sexual Culture in the Afro-Surinamese Diaspora. The essay aims to illuminate the epistemology of queer studies more broadly by focusing on a key paradox of ethnographic method: the binary of theory and data that is simultaneously made and unmade in ethnographic research and writing. In a newly transnational queer studies, ethnography …