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Articles 1 - 30 of 44
Full-Text Articles in History
Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.
Lay It On The Line: The Life And Music Of Gladys Bentley, Bianki Torres, J.
Doctoral Dissertations
This work is a historical biography of Gladys Bentley and her blues music. She was a cross-dressing entertainer from the Harlem Renaissance and performed popular songs with added, sometimes improvised sexual innuendo. This study considers the performances of her recorded and written material as trans music, meaning, that black music provided a platform to determine racial, gendered, and sexual cultural expressions changing over time, however, always rooted in black vernacular culture. Using showbills, promotional material, studio recordings and short autobiography, this study follows Bentley’s career as “male impersonator” and the effects lesbian/gay (queer) culture had on her blues. Also, I …
Revenge Of The Nerds: Tech Masculinity And Digital Hegemony, Benjamin M. Latini
Revenge Of The Nerds: Tech Masculinity And Digital Hegemony, Benjamin M. Latini
Doctoral Dissertations
Revenge of the Nerds provides a cultural history of the evolution of white nerd masculinities in American culture through interpretations of a wide variety of texts and representations using the methods of literary studies and American studies. The dissertation is organized around four overlapping stages of nerd masculinity based on changes in technology and their effects on culture, as well as white male nerds’ efforts to remain culturally relevant and gain the benefits of being close to hegemonic masculinity. The four nerd types are the computer nerd, the gamer, the gatekeeper nerd, and the maladaptive nerd which reflect the following …
Memories Of Hope And Loss: “Kerhi Maa Ne Bhagat Singh Jameya”, Sheher Bano
Memories Of Hope And Loss: “Kerhi Maa Ne Bhagat Singh Jameya”, Sheher Bano
Masters Theses
My Masters thesis focuses on socialist Indian freedom fighter Bhagat Singh’s memory in contemporary Pakistani Punjab. I use the analytical category of memory to argue that Bhagat Singh is invoked by various groups and individuals, specifically those who identify as leftists or Marxists, in contemporary Pakistan to serve a range of political purposes. My analysis particularly sheds light on how activists and writers use the figure of Bhagat Singh to highlight the erasure of regional and lingual identities in Pakistan. Their remembrances underline a perceived historical injustice; the imposition of a national identity based on Urdu language and Sunni Muslim-ness, …
Stranger Compass Of The Stage: Difference And Desire In Early Modern City Comedy, Catherine Tisdale
Stranger Compass Of The Stage: Difference And Desire In Early Modern City Comedy, Catherine Tisdale
Doctoral Dissertations
In periods of social and political upheaval like ours, it is more important than ever to interrogate constructions of identity and difference and to understand the histories of alterity that separate us from one another. Stranger Compass of the Stage: Difference and Desire in Early Modern City Drama reimagines the cultural and social effect of alien, foreign, and stranger characters on the early modern stage and re-envisions how these characters contribute to, alter, and imaginatively build new epistemologies for understanding difference in early modern London. Resisting the field’s current critical inclination toward English identity formation, this project works intersectionally to …
Women's Stories, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers Data, Blake Spitz
Women's Stories, W. E. B. Du Bois Papers Data, Blake Spitz
University Libraries Presentations Series
The UMass Amherst department of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) collects original materials that document the histories and experiences of social change in America and the organizational, intellectual, and individual ties that unite disparate struggles for social justice, human dignity, and equality. SCUA’s decision to adopt social change as a collecting focus emerged from our holding of the W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, and one of Du Bois’s most profound insights: that the most fundamental issues in social justice are so deeply interconnected that no movement — and no solution to social ills — can succeed in isolation. I …
“Æthelthryth”: Shaping A Religious Woman In Tenth-Century Winchester, Victoria Kent Worth
“Æthelthryth”: Shaping A Religious Woman In Tenth-Century Winchester, Victoria Kent Worth
Doctoral Dissertations
It is well established that Anglo-Saxon writers were concerned with a specific set of principles (chastity, wisdom and piety) articulated in monastic life. However, the representation of women’s religious lives and the exemplification of their values influencing male saint’s Lives and their authors have to date been largely overlooked. To rectify this omission, I focus on Wulfstan’s tenth-century Vita St. Æthelwoldi, in which Æthelthryth’s character plays a far more significant role than we have heretofore noticed. Apart from the traditional figurae the author uses to depict her virtuous devotion, Wulfstan’s account of Æthelthryth is a testimony of a particular …
Golden Palimpsests: America, Cervantes, And The Invention Of Modernity/Coloniality, Antonia Carcelen-Estrada
Golden Palimpsests: America, Cervantes, And The Invention Of Modernity/Coloniality, Antonia Carcelen-Estrada
Doctoral Dissertations
While many theories of colonial discourse emphasize an imperial power imposing its way of thinking and modes of expression onto colonial cultures and peoples, in this dissertation I consider that this imposition affects members of the colonies and the metropolis in different but related ways. In core and periphery alike, the subjects of Spanish colonialism produced documents in which we recognize overlapping, conflicting narratives. I call this strategy for narrative resistance “golden palimpsests” because, as the epigraph suggests, they appear to tell the story of donkeys covered in gold, while in fact they hide the true story of noble horses …
Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster
Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster
Doctoral Dissertations
Notions of childhood as a distinct developmental period of life were concretized during the nineteenth century. Features of children’s lives including innocence, play, and exclusion from labor became markers of ideal childhoods as part of the racialized modernization of childhood. This dissertation uncovers the ways in which modern constructions of childhood attempted to subjugate northern African American children throughout the nineteenth century and highlights the means by which black children and conceptualizations of black childhood became agents and sites of resistance. In doing so, it demonstrates both how African American children experienced age-based forms of subjugation as well as their …
Stories Written On Concrete: Understanding And (Re)Imagining Street Lit And Culture, 1990-2007, Jacinta Saffold
Stories Written On Concrete: Understanding And (Re)Imagining Street Lit And Culture, 1990-2007, Jacinta Saffold
Doctoral Dissertations
“Stories Written on Concrete: Understanding and Re-imagining Street Lit and Culture, 1990-2007,” coalesces around stories of urbanity and coming of age at the turn of the twenty-first century. As the Hip Hop generation reflected on the social, economic, and cultural shifts of the 1980s and 1990s, they took up paper and pen to immortalize the conflicting duality of the gritty and glamorous experience of growing up on a concrete cityscape in America. I interrogate how street lit disrupts normative literary representations of black life in print. Specifically, I consider how urban fiction writes against the African American literary canon in …
The Afroethnic Impulse And Renewal: African American Transculturations In Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 To 2013, Trent Masiki
The Afroethnic Impulse And Renewal: African American Transculturations In Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 To 2013, Trent Masiki
Doctoral Dissertations
Until now, there has been little sustained critical attention to the way African American literature, history, culture, and politics influence transculturation and ethnoracial identity formation in Afro-Latino bildung narratives. This dissertation addresses that oversight. The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal: African American Transculturations in Afro-Latino Bildung Narratives, 1961 to 2013, examines a long, but often neglected, history of intercultural affinities and literary encounters between African Americans and Afro-Latinos from the twentieth to the twenty-first century. In The Afroethnic Impulse and Renewal, I explore African American literary and cultural influences in the personal essays, memoirs, and autobiographically inspired fiction of …
Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo
Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines literary representations of the black female body in selected poetry by U.S. African American writer Audre Lorde and Afro-Brazilian writer Miriam Alves, focusing on how their literary projects construct and defy notions of black womanhood and black female sexualities in dialogue with national narratives and contexts. Within an historical, intersectional and transnational theoretical framework, this study analyses how the racial, gender and sexual politics of representation are articulated and negotiated within and outside the political and literary movements in the U.S. and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. As a theoretical framework, this research elaborates and uses …
Protest Lyrics At Work: Labor Resistance Poetry Of Depression-Era Autoworkers, Rebecca S. Griffin
Protest Lyrics At Work: Labor Resistance Poetry Of Depression-Era Autoworkers, Rebecca S. Griffin
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation argues that scholarly inquiry into American poetry of the Great Depression is incomplete without a critical understanding of poems produced within the labor movement. Through archival research and methodologies drawn from American studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and labor history, this dissertation demonstrates that autoworkers from 1935-1941 developed a rich poetic discourse that championed their cause. Autoworker poets—including autoworker song lyricists—used humor and borrowed extensively from popular, religious, and “folk” cultures to craft their own poetic styles and trope sets. They wrote about a diverse range of topics from their hopes for the unionization movement, to scab conversions, …
“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal
“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal
Doctoral Dissertations
Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity's forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. …
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Masters Theses
This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …
A List Of Racialized Black Dolls: 1850-1940, Anthony F. Martin
A List Of Racialized Black Dolls: 1850-1940, Anthony F. Martin
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
Between 1850 and 1940 Black racialized dolls made in Europe and the northern United States saturated the marketplace with the peak years in the 1920s. These dolls were advertised with pejorative names and descriptions that typed cast African Americans as domestics and labors on mythical antebellum landscapes assisted White children in shaping Black people as inferior to Whites. Data mining doll encyclopedias, websites, and catalogs, I have compiled a list of Black racialized dolls. Additionally, I have provided advertisements of positive imagine Black dolls from The Crisis and The Negro World that provided a counterweight to the stereotyped dolls.
Terracotta Pipes With Triangular Engravings, Flavia Zorzi, Daniel G. Schávelzon
Terracotta Pipes With Triangular Engravings, Flavia Zorzi, Daniel G. Schávelzon
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
The discovery of two smoking pipes from seventeenth-century contexts in Buenos Aires, Argentina, is used to suggest the presence in colonial times of a new set of stylistic norms derived from African traditions that are expressed at a regional scale not only in smoking pipes, but in a variety of items of material culture. These terracotta pipes, recovered at Bolívar 373 and the Liniers House sites, are characterized by their particular geometric decorative pattern, achieved by engravings and incisions. Similar specimens were found elsewhere in Buenos Aires, as well as in Cayastá (province of Santa Fe, Argentina) and Brazil.
Imaging Her Selves: Black Women Artists, Resistance, Image And Representation, 1938-1956, Heather Zahra Caldwell
Imaging Her Selves: Black Women Artists, Resistance, Image And Representation, 1938-1956, Heather Zahra Caldwell
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation focuses specifically on dancer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006), pianist Hazel Scott (1920-1981), cartoonist Jackie Ormes (1911-1985), singer Lena Horne (1917-2010), and graphic artist, painter, and sculptor Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012). It explores the artistic, performative, and political resistance deployed by these five African-American women activists, artists, and performers in the period between 1937 and 1957. The principal form of resistance employed by these women was cultural resistance. Using a mixture of archival research, first person interview, biography, as well as other primary and secondary sources, I explore how these women constructed personas, representations, and media images of African-American women to …
Historic Black Lives Matter: Archaeology As Activism In The 21st Century, Kelley F. Deetz, Ellen Chapman, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto
Historic Black Lives Matter: Archaeology As Activism In The 21st Century, Kelley F. Deetz, Ellen Chapman, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
May 19, 2015 would have been Malcolm X’s 90th birthday, and fifty years after his assassination we are still dealing with the ghosts of slavery, Jim Crow, and the manifestations of institutionalized racism. While much progress was made from the Civil Rights Movement, we still have far to go. This past year brought the topics of slavery, civil rights, and racism back into the mainstream. These stories are not new for those of us who work tirelessly to chronicle these historical and contemporary narratives in an attempt to educate the public about Black history. The “New Civil Rights Movement” launched …
Richmond’S Archaeology Of The African Diaspora: Unseen Knowledge, Untapped Potential, Ellen Chapman
Richmond’S Archaeology Of The African Diaspora: Unseen Knowledge, Untapped Potential, Ellen Chapman
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Don’T Call It A Comeback, We’Ve Been Here For Years: Reintroducing The African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, Kelley Deetz
Don’T Call It A Comeback, We’Ve Been Here For Years: Reintroducing The African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter, Kelley Deetz
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Related Media And Additional Reading
Related Media And Additional Reading
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
The Significance Of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why It's The Wrong Place For A Baseball Stadium, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto
The Significance Of Richmond's Shockoe Bottom: Why It's The Wrong Place For A Baseball Stadium, Ana Edwards, Phil Wilayto
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
The Thread: Reflections On #Blacklivesmatter And 21st Century Racial Dynamics, Kelley Deetz
The Thread: Reflections On #Blacklivesmatter And 21st Century Racial Dynamics, Kelley Deetz
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti
Transnational Gestures: Rethinking Trauma In U.S. War Fiction, Ruth A.H. Lahti
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation addresses the need to "world" our literary histories of U.S. war fiction, arguing that a transnational approach to this genre remaps on an enlarged scale the ethical implications of 20th and 21st century war writing. This study turns to representations of the human body to differently apprehend the ethical struggles of war fiction, thereby rethinking psychological and nationalist models of war trauma and developing a new method of reading the literature of war. To lay the ground for this analysis, I argue that the dominance of trauma theory in critical work on U.S. war fiction privileges the "authentic" …
The Cable Network In An Era Of Digital Media: Bravo And The Constraints Of Consumer Citizenship, Alison D. Brzenchek
The Cable Network In An Era Of Digital Media: Bravo And The Constraints Of Consumer Citizenship, Alison D. Brzenchek
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation takes a historiographical approach to the evolution of cable television over thirty years. Case analysis of archival data is used to trace the trajectory of the Bravo cable network from 1980 through 2010. My dissertation is a vital contribution to critical cultural studies, feminist studies, citizenship studies, and media history because it historicizes the role branding, commodification, and convergence played in Bravo’s evolution from a highbrow arts programmer guided by bourgeois consumer citizenship, to a affluent lifestyle network guided by nouveau riche consumer citizenship. My combination of production studies and political economic analysis gives visibility to the interpenetrating …
Eugenothenics: The Literary Connection Between Domesticity And Eugenics, Caleb J. True
Eugenothenics: The Literary Connection Between Domesticity And Eugenics, Caleb J. True
Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014
This is an analysis of the connection between the domestic science and eugenics. While it is made clear by historians such as Megan Elias and Kathy Cooke that there is ample connection between eugenics and euthenics, there has not been as comprehensive an analysis of the direct connections between domestic science and eugenics. Close examination of literature from the domestic science movement reveals the shared goals of domestic science and eugenics. The domestic science movement was also a necessary precursor to the euthenics movement, not simply a “re-envisioning” of home economics by Ellen Richards. When Richards died, her euthenic ideals …
Diggin' Uncle Ben And Aunt Jemima: Battling Myth Through Archaeology, Kelley Deetz
Diggin' Uncle Ben And Aunt Jemima: Battling Myth Through Archaeology, Kelley Deetz
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel
Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel
Open Access Dissertations
This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested …
After Abolition: Britain And The Slave Trade Since 1807, Marika Sherwood, Christian Hogsbjerg
After Abolition: Britain And The Slave Trade Since 1807, Marika Sherwood, Christian Hogsbjerg
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.
Archaeology, Language, And The African Past, Roger Blench
Archaeology, Language, And The African Past, Roger Blench
African Diaspora Archaeology Newsletter
No abstract provided.