American Studies Commons^™

Akron Poetry Catalog And Reader September 2019, University Of Akron Press

University of Akron Press Publications

In our mobile-sized poetry catalog and reader, you can read poems from new books by Oliver de la Paz, Joshua Harmon, Brittany Cavallaro, Krystal Languell, Tyler Mills, Caryl Pagel, Emily Rosko, Emilia Phillips, Aimée Baker, Anne Barngrover, Matthew Guenette, Leslie Harrison, Sandra Simonds, Philip Metres, and Jennifer Moore.

The Making And Silencing Of “Axé-Ocracy” In Brazil: Black Women Writers’ Spiritual, Political And Literary Movement In São Paulo, Sarah S. Ohmer

Publications and Research

In this article, I will focus on two influential writers from the south of Brazil, Cristiane Sobral who currently lives in Brasília, from Rio de Janeiro, and Conceição Evaristo who currently lives in Rio de Janeiro state, from Minas Gerais. I got to know them in São Paulo in 2015 at a public event: the “Afroétnica Flink! Sampa Festival of Black Thought, Literature and Culture.” I will include references to some of their younger contemporaries such as Raquel Almeida, Jenyffer Nascimento, and Elizandra Souza, all of whom reside in São Paulo, in order to illustrate the Black Brazilian women writers’ …

Through The Mouth: An Essay On Appetite And Ecocide, Iemanja Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an exploration of mourning and resilient joy in the midst of ecocide. Resisting the pervasive classification of the human as inherently destructive, I look to appetite as an aesthetic procedure that includes a material desire for intimacy with the more-than-human. My study considers the intersections of aesthetic production (primarily twentieth-century poetry and visual art), climate science, geology, cultural studies, theory within the contemporary nonhuman turn, and Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism. I employ an interdisciplinary approach, which helps me explore the various ways that literal and figurative appetite can be a way of sensing and exploring …

Sadewasser, Judith K. "Judi" (Fa 1308), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 1308. Student folk studies project titled “The Folkways of Walter D. Logsdon: Basketmaker,” which includes an interview with Walter Logsdon about the traditional basket making process in Edmonson County, Kentucky. Project includes interview transcriptions along with sheets with a brief description of each traditional practice, tool, and photo.

Shale Play: Poems And Photographs From The Fracking Fields By Julia Spicher Kasdorf And Steven Rubin, Kelly Shepherd

The Goose

Review of Julia Spicher Kasdorf and Steven Rubin's Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields

Universe Of Things: A Human Presentation Of Food-For-Thought., Madeline Halpern

Bachelor of Fine Arts Senior Papers

I present this statement under three loose categories: People, Objects and their Environment. I consider People as human, Objects as art objects, domestic objects, and food, and Environment as the shared space of the former groups. Food directs this statement as I present each concept and creative process as a metaphorical dish. Material exploration carried me from a direct practice of reorienting acrylic paint and questioning object functionality through personified sculptures into theoretical thesis work in which I use interpersonal relations and the idea of consumption to translate tactile, gustatory and olfactory sensations into digital film. In this meal I …

Carleton, William Mckendree, 1845-1912 (Sc 3432), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3432. Typescripted excerpt from Will Carleton’s narrative poem, “First Settler’s Story,” first published in 1881, as recited in March 1895 by Berta M. Morton.

Cox, Hal Z., 1883-1952 (Sc 3414), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3414. Poem, “Old Kentucky,” written by Hodgenville, Kentucky native Hal Z. Cox in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Kentucky statehood. Includes a 2011 newspaper article about Cox.

Boyd, John Allen, 1938?-2017 (Sc 3394), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3394. Poems written by John Allen Boyd, a WKU graduate, teacher, and resident of Louisville, Kentucky. One collection is bound in pamphlet form and inscribed to WKU faculty member Frances Richards; others are included, with commentary, in a graduate project entitled “Experiments in Verse and Poetry” and written for an advanced composition class at WKU.

Spottswood, Henry Mercer, Iii,B. 1940 (Mss 665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 665. Correspondence with poet and author Jim Wayne Miller, Bowling Green, Kentucky. Chiefly letters to Spottswood which contain numerous attachments about Miller’s writing and speaking engagements. Also includes a small amount of correspondence from Miller’s wife, Mary Ellen Miller, and an unpublished book of poems by WKU students.

Noe, James Thomas Cotton, 1864-1953 (Sc 3379), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3379. Christmas cards and letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from Cotton Noe, first Poet Laureate of Kentucky. Each includes a poem by Noe, but in his 1950 letter he advises Richards that he will be discontinuing this forty-year-long custom. He describes his activities with a poetry guild in Los Angeles, California, and recalls their friendship. Includes Noe’s obituary from the Louisville Courier-Journal and a 1969 clipping from the same paper about Noe.

Walton, Laura S. (Sc 3378), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3378. “The Prentice Poets,” an English paper by WKU student Laura Walton with sketches of the careers of four female poets who contributed to Kentucky’s Louisville Journal under the editorship of George D. Prentice.

Plunging Down Under, Ian Smith

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Plunging Down Under

Litsey, Edwin Carlile, 1874-1970 (Sc 3362), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3362. Letter, 19 July 1950, to “Mary Virginia” from Edwin Carlile Litsey, Lebanon, Kentucky. He thanks her for a recent request for biographical data and relates information about his daughter Sarah and her family. He also reports that both of them are working on books. Includes a typescript of Sarah’s poem “The Roads,” published in Scribner’s Magazine, December 1935, and a typescript of Litsey’s poem “King Solomon of Kentucky.”

Davis, Anne Pence, 1901-1983 (Sc 3357), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3357. Letters and cards to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from author and alumna Anne Pence Davis, Wichita Falls, Texas. She writes of her enjoyment of a 1962 visit to WKU, and in 1976 recounts recent activities and asks Richards’ help in preparing a program on Kentucky poets for the Kentucky Club of Dallas. After the program, she writes to thank Richards, encloses the club invitation, and relates news about her inclusion in volume 3 of the anthology Kentucky in American Letters by Dorothy E. Townsend, and about her gardening.

Obenchain, Lida (Calvert), 1856-1935 (Sc 3352), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3352. Handwritten narrative of Lida (Calvert) Obenchain (pen name Eliza Calvert Hall) about the writing and publication of her short story “Sally Ann’s Experience” and her books Aunt Jane of Kentucky, The Land of Long Ago, To Love and to Cherish, Clover and Blue Grass, and A Book of Hand-Woven Coverlets. Also includes a typescript of her poem “Macmonnies’ Bacchante” and a hand-bound volume of other typescripted poems written by her.

Ogilvie, Frances, 1902-1942 - Relating To (Sc 3351), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3351. Information about the life and writings of Frances Ogilvie, a Princeton, Kentucky native and author of the novel Green Bondage. The information is contained in a clipping, a letter from a Princeton librarian, and a letter from Ogilvie’s husband, Earle M. Nichols, who recalls the Kentucky “tobacco wars” that provided the inspiration for the novel. Includes a poem of Ogilvie’s titled “Spring Day.”

Barmann, Dolly Reed (Gilmore), 1902-1963 (Sc 3350), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3350. Two letters to WKU faculty member Frances Richards from author and poet Dolly Barmann, an Allen County, Kentucky native residing in Fort Worth, Texas, regarding her writing and her book of poems, Trammel Fork Creek. Includes clippings about Barmann’s work and two of her poems, “Goin to the Grist Mill” and “Moonshiners.”

Davison, Peter Hubert, 1928-2004 (Sc 3346), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3346. Letter written by poet Peter Davison, undated, to Robert Penn Warren in which he thanks Warren for the day which inspired the enclosed poem, “Swimming, 1935,” which he dedicated to Warren on 10 March 1981. It also includes a touching poem by Davison about the death of his mother Natalie (Weiner) Davison. The printed poem was sent to Warren and his wife Eleanor “with regards, Peter Davison, 11/15/[19]61.” The originals of these documents are located in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Cawein, Madison Julius, 1865-1914 - Relating To (Sc 3341), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 3341. Letter, 7 May 1969, to Frances Richards, Franklin, Kentucky, enclosing photocopy of a handwritten poem by Madison Cawein dated 7 April 1887. The letter writer explains that the poem, titled “Rondeau to You,” was written for and presented to the aunt of a coworker.

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the intellectual capacity of spoken word and performance poetry, and poets as intellectuals, where poets produce and disseminate knowledge, ideas, and data, in the form of narratives, that contribute to critical consciousness. The effectiveness of the series lay in the consistent blurring of entertainment, knowledge, anti-capitalism, and capitalism. This research demonstrates how Def Poetry Jam provided …

"Bachelor Buttons": Feminist And Womanist Essays And Poems, Billy E. Clem Jr.

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In this critical and creative dissertation, I sketch a brief study of selected multicultural hybrid texts in contemporary US Anglophone literary studies; discuss their implications for reading, writing, and teaching; and present my own hybrid text.

Second-wave feminist and womanist theories and practices opened literary and cultural studies to new and exciting ideas and methods for reading, teaching, and writing both canonical and non-canonical Anglophone texts. One genre emerging anew by these theories, practices, and practitioners is the literary hybrid text, a multi-genre form composed of a variety of prose genres, poetry, drama, and/or visual imagery. Hybrid texts ask readers …

A Matter Of Life And Def: Poetic Knowledge And The Organic Intellectuals In Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry, Anthony Sean Blacksher

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In December of 2001, Russell Simmons Presents Def Poetry (Def Poetry Jam) turned HBO viewers into audience members of a televised poetry reading, featuring spoken word and performance poetry. Over six seasons, actors, rappers, comedians, and the host, Mos Def, joined poets in a unique representation of counter-public open mic poetry readings and poetry slams. This dissertation unpacks the poetry, performances, and the production of Def Poetry Jam to explore how a performative art embodied and confronted racial discourses, including stereotypes and also, addressed the racism, patriotism, and imperialist discourses that circulated after 9/11. Def Poetry Jam contributes to the …