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2013

American Studies

William & Mary

Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in History

"To Draw Pleasure And Instruction": Robert Gilmor, Jr And Collecting The Early Republic, Janine M. Yorimoto Jan 2013

"To Draw Pleasure And Instruction": Robert Gilmor, Jr And Collecting The Early Republic, Janine M. Yorimoto

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Deviants Of Great Potential: Images Of The Leopold-Loeb Case, John Carl Fiorini Jan 2013

Deviants Of Great Potential: Images Of The Leopold-Loeb Case, John Carl Fiorini

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Deviants of Great Potential analyzes the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case as a cultural narrative with important effects on the marginalization of same-sex sexuality in men throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. After Chicago teenagers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb were arrested for the United States' first nationally recognized "thrill killing," the apparently motiveless murder of fourteen-year-old Robert Franks, the Leopold-Loeb case became an instant cause celebre. The popular fixation on the case continued in the decades after 1924, as journalists and behavioral scientists treated it as a precedent for understanding a certain type of crime and criminal. Meanwhile---especially after …


"History Written With Lightning": Religion, White Supremacy, And The Rise And Fall Of Thomas Dixon, Jr, David Michael Kidd Jan 2013

"History Written With Lightning": Religion, White Supremacy, And The Rise And Fall Of Thomas Dixon, Jr, David Michael Kidd

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Baptist minister and author of novels, plays, sermons, and essays, Thomas Dixon, Jr. today remains most known as the storyteller behind the 1915 D. W. Griffith Film The Birth of a Nation. I argue that Thomas Dixon crafted a white supremacist rhetoric and narrative of modern whiteness indebted to the structures of Fundamentalist Christianity. With varying degrees of success, later writers struggled with the legacy the Dixonian cultural narrative bequeathed them.;Fundamentalist theology offered a whole host of tropes, metaphors, and arguments to its users. In short, Fundamentalism presented a rhetorical stance that was, in the hands of an ambitious and …


"You Can't Say 'No' To A Soldier": Sexual Violence In The United States During World War Ii, Michaele Katherine Smith Jan 2013

"You Can't Say 'No' To A Soldier": Sexual Violence In The United States During World War Ii, Michaele Katherine Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Between 1939 and 1946 the number of rapes in the United States increased approximately 45 percent. This project strives to explain the cultural factors the fueled this increase. Existing societal beliefs and the legal system of this period held rape victims responsible for their own victimization. Additionally, the wartime mobilization of the 1940s liberated millions of young men from community and family moral surveillance. Some men experienced this liberation as license to coerce sex from women. Popular culture accepted and even praised sexual aggressiveness in men, especially military men, and linked women's sexuality to their patriotism. The combination of all …