"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing,
2019
Louisiana State University
"If They Don't Tell You, The Hair Will": Hair Narrative In Contemporary Women's Writing, Darina Pugacheva
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
The history of colonial and racial oppression made hair stories and testimonials fundamental to understanding hair as a unifying element particular for women of African descent in the post-slavery era. Seen as such, their hair narrations provide the first-person perspective of their life experiences while at the same time inviting a critical investigation of colonial and racial oppression. Contemporary women writers develop these types of narrations into a special language of hair that helps them tell a story that is not apparent or straightforward. This literary device that uses hair to uncover deeper social and political issues is bound up …
Why The Covenant Worked: On The Institutional Foundations Of The American Civil Religion,
2019
Chapman University
Why The Covenant Worked: On The Institutional Foundations Of The American Civil Religion, John W. Compton
Political Science Faculty Articles and Research
Scholars of American civil religion (ACR) have paid insufficient attention to the micro-level processes through which civil religious ideas have historically influenced beliefs and behavior. We know little about what makes such appeals meaningful to average Americans (assuming they are meaningful); nor do we know much about the mechanisms through which abstract religious themes and imagery come to be associated with specific policy aims, or what Robert Bellah called “national goals.” This article argues that a renewed focus on the relationship between civil religion and organized religion can help fill this gap in the literature. More specifically, I draw attention …
Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting,
2019
Michigan State University
Dramatizing The Void: Crime Fiction's Journey To Forgetting, Kylene N. Cave
Andrews Research Conference
Scholars often cite the transition from the golden age to the hardboiled tradition in the 1920s and 1930s as the most radical shift in crime fiction. By 1945, crime stories regularly exhibited destabilized language, increased interest in psychology of the mind, and a blatant rejection of conclusive endings as a means of exploring the unreliable nature of memory and eye-witness testimony. Whereas the crime fiction narratives preceding 1945 embodied a clear sense of logic and order, and established hermeneutics and signifying practices as the keys to unlocking the mysteries behind human behavior; post-45 crime fiction not only rejects these notions, …
Superhero Movies And Politics: The Moral Obligations Of Film Makers According To Virtue Ethics,
2019
Linfield College
Superhero Movies And Politics: The Moral Obligations Of Film Makers According To Virtue Ethics, Russell Hendrickson
Senior Theses
The theory of virtue ethics implies that filmmakers have a moral obligation to explore political themes within superhero films. My thesis is comprised of four main sections. I begin by discussing the general theory of virtue ethics and what moral obligations are placed upon someone who subscribes to this moral theory. From there, I establish my argument for why film can be used as a tool of moral education, and I outline a framework for how artists can work to cultivate virtue in themselves through the use of Arnold Berleant’s Artists and Morality: Toward an Ethics of Art as a …
“An’ No Place To Lead ‘Em”: The Grapes Of Wrath And The Breakdown Of Myth,
2019
University of New Orleans
“An’ No Place To Lead ‘Em”: The Grapes Of Wrath And The Breakdown Of Myth, Nicholas F. Comeaux
LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
In spite of its common designation as an outmoded classic of sentimental middlebrow literature, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath remains relevant as a milestone in an extended liminal stage between the failing cultural myths of the past and the founding of newly relevant shared stories. This stage begins with the Enlightenment and continues to present-day conflicts over identity, labor, migrants, notions of truth itself, the function and responsibilities of government, and our shared ecological destiny. Arriving near the end of the Depression and its concurrent economic and environmental disasters, The Grapes of Wrath reflects a particularly chaotic stage in …
The Psychos,
2019
Washington University in St. Louis
The Psychos, Paula N. Stevenson
Graduate School of Art Theses
My current body of work is a series of drawings that juxtapose characters of fiction and reality in an attempt to explore the relationship between horror film and contemporary social issues. I strive to render an accurate portrayal of the face to draw the viewer into questioning the troubling narrative these characters illuminate. I focus on retelling stories of fear and horror, and crime and infamy. I want my work to convey ethical dilemmas as they are present within the relationship between horror movie antagonists and the audience (all of us). It is these concerns I attempt to visualize in, …
Supernatural Pilgrims: A Journey To A New Apostolic Reformation Congregation In The Ozarks,
2019
Missouri State University
Supernatural Pilgrims: A Journey To A New Apostolic Reformation Congregation In The Ozarks, Samuel Wayne Gingerich
Graduate Theses/Dissertations
Birthed out of the revival events of the 1990s, the New Apostolic Reformation is known for its charismatic leaders and provocative theology. As an emerging third wave Pentecostal movement, the New Apostolic Reformation is redefining the edifices of American Pentecostalism. While academics and journalists are currently focused on exposing the influence of some of its leaders such as C. Peter Wagner, Bill Johnson, Randy Clark, and Heidi Baker, there is little scholarship regarding the congregations and communities of believers who find themselves a part of this dynamic movement. This thesis takes a step towards understanding the larger story of the …
Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us,
2019
Chapman University
Does Money Indeed Buy Happiness? “The Forms Of Capital” In Fitzgerald’S Gatsby And Watts’ No One Is Coming To Save Us, Allie Harrison Vernon
English (MA) Theses
Looking primarily at two critically acclaimed texts that concern themselves with American citizenship—F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Stephanie Powell Watts’ No One is Coming to Save Us—I analyze the claims made about citizenship identities, rights, and consequential access to said rights. I ask, how do these narratives about citizenship sustain, create, or re-envision American myth? Similarly, how do the narratives interact with the dominant culture at large? Do any of these texts achieve oppositional value, and/or modify the complex hegemonic structure? I use Pierre Bourdieu’s “The Forms of Capital” to investigate the ways in which economic, cultural, …
Queer History Through A Hollywood Lens,
2019
University of Washington
Queer History Through A Hollywood Lens, Long Tran
Augsburg Honors Review
Film festivals have been important platforms for promoting independent films that bring to the forefront issues of marginalized communities, especially the struggle for queer justice and visibility. This paper pursues a hypothetical opportunity for programming a film festival screening centered on queer stories. The direction of this paper will take the form of a film festival curator’s statement that links three films with common themes and issues. The overarching, common thread holding the proposed films together is the mainstream Hollywood influence behind the exhibition and consumption of the films—The Academy Awards (otherwise known as The Oscars). Three major Academy Award-winning …
Diaspora: Bay Area Edition,
2019
California State University, Monterey Bay
Diaspora: Bay Area Edition, Alexander Zarate
Capstone Projects and Master's Theses
The diaspora in the Bay Area and it's effect on the past, present, and future.
Coming To Terms With Gonzo Journalism : An Analysis In Russian Formalism.,
2019
University of Louisville
Coming To Terms With Gonzo Journalism : An Analysis In Russian Formalism., Beau Kilpatrick
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Gonzo journalism is notoriously difficult to define because of its ambiguous nature. To date, scholarly definitions focus on historical interpretations of Gonzo’s content, its connection to social and political contexts, or the biography of Hunter S. Thompson. These definitional attempts neglect the formal devices of the composition. This thesis aims to redefine Gonzo as its own genre by using the nearly forgotten methods of Russian formalism—specifically the works of Victor Shklovsky, Vladimir Propp, and Boris Tomashevsky—to analyze the formal devices and components of its form. The results are twofold; first, it acts to rejuvenate an unpopular literary theory by illustrating …
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature,
2019
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Non/Human: (Re)Seeing The “Animal” In Nineteenth-Century American Literature, Matthew Guzman
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
Non/human: (Re)seeing the “Animal” in Nineteenth-Century American Literature uses canonical literary texts as specific anchor points for charting the unstable relations between human and nonhuman animals throughout the century. I argue that throughout the nineteenth century, there are distinct shifts in the way(s) humans think about, discuss, and represent nonhuman animals, and understanding these shifts can change the way we interpret the literature and the culture(s). Moreover, I supplement and integrate those literary anchors, when appropriate, with texts from contemporaneous science, law, art, and other primary and secondary source materials. For example, the first chapter, “Cooper’s Animal Movements: Across Land, …
Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre,
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
Embodied Nostalgia: Early Twentieth Century Social Dance And U.S. Musical Theatre, Phoebe Rumsey
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In this dissertation, I claim the collective emotional connections and historical explorations characteristic of musical theatre constitute a nostalgic impulse dramaturgically inherent in the form. In my intervention in the link between nostalgia and musical theatre, I look to an area underrepresented in musical theatre scholarship: social dance. Through case studies that focus specifically on how social dance in musical theatre brings forth the dancer on stage as a site of embodied history, cultural memory, and nostalgia, I ask what social dance is doing in musical theatre and how the dancing body functions as a catalyst for nostalgic thinking for …
Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, And Difference In Broadway Musicals Since "A Chorus Line" (1975),
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, And Difference In Broadway Musicals Since "A Chorus Line" (1975), Ryan Donovan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation explores how embodied identities facing social stigmatization are represented in Broadway musicals and provides histories of casting specific kinds of embodied difference. Broadway Bodies: Casting, Stigma, and Difference in Broadway Musicals since “A Chorus Line” considers the politics of representation and makes clear that casting is always a political act, situated within a power structure favoring certain bodies. Previous scholarship on casting largely centers on race and ethnicity as the central issues; this research reframes the study of casting to focus on bodies, inclusive of race and ethnicity but especially relative to ability, gender, sexuality, and size. Though …
Just A Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy And Racialized Performance In Black Vaudeville, The Chop Suey Circuit, And Las Carpas,
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
Just A Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy And Racialized Performance In Black Vaudeville, The Chop Suey Circuit, And Las Carpas, Michael Shane Breaux
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
While the practice of white musical variety clowns embodying stereotypes of African, Chinese, and Mexican Americans has been widely documented and theorized in scholarship on US American popular performance, it has been done largely in segregated studies that maintain the idea that racial impersonations in musical variety is a privilege of white performers. For instance, no study exists that focuses on more than one stereotype at a time, and the performer’s body is always either white or of the same “color” as the type being played. In addition, very little has been written about the tours and circuits run by …
The Musical World Of Joseph Rumshinsky’S Mamele,
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
The Musical World Of Joseph Rumshinsky’S Mamele, D. A. Geller
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
“The Musical World of Joseph Rumshinsky’s Mamele” consists of a set of three cases studies that demonstrate the enormous need and potential for further Yiddish theater music scholarship. There exists little Yiddish theater scholarship that addresses music in any meaningful way: scholars like David Lifson, Nahma Sandrow, and Joel Berkowitz tend to view Yiddish theater’s rich musical traditions as a footnote in the larger history of Yiddish theater’s dramatic development. Yet Yiddish theater music developed independently from Yiddish drama, and therefore needs to be studied from a primarily musical perspective. I connect scholarship across the fields of Jewish studies …
Reclaiming The Musical Burlesque: A Reconstruction Of The 1855 Musical Score To John Brougham’S Po-Ca-Hon-Tas: Or, The Gentle Savage,
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
Reclaiming The Musical Burlesque: A Reconstruction Of The 1855 Musical Score To John Brougham’S Po-Ca-Hon-Tas: Or, The Gentle Savage, Christopher Drobny
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Most historians begin their musical theatre chronologies with the 1866 premiere of The Black Crook. However, a few respected scholars cite Po-Ca-Hon-Tas: or, The Gentle Savage, John Brougham’s 1855 musical burlesque, as an important development in the art form’s earlier evolution. The neglect of Brougham’s work is often justified for two reasons. First, his practice of creating lyrics to pre-existing melodies reduces his work to second-tier status. Second, because none of Brougham’s musical scores are extant, it is impossible to recreate a performance of his work and access its qualities. I offer two responses. First, as our contemporary musical …
Transfigurations Of The News: True Fictions, Strange Thresholds,
2019
CUNY Graduate Center
Transfigurations Of The News: True Fictions, Strange Thresholds, Jeffrey Peer
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
This dissertation compares twentieth-century literary journalism from the U.S. and Mexico, with a focus on the nonfiction novel and the Mexican chronicle. The dissertation considers the two genres both historically and theoretically, in order to distinguish the borders between literature and unscrupulous journalism. North American journalism is at the heart of a crisis over the epistemological status of facts and their place in our political discourse. Some have argued that works of literary nonfiction can damage social norms like journalistic objectivity. Others argue that forms like the chronicle and the nonfiction novel can describe experience better than news reports. This …
Unraveling Ethos: The Commodification Of Ethical Clothing,
2019
Columbia College Chicago
Unraveling Ethos: The Commodification Of Ethical Clothing, Oliva Hanson
Cultural Studies Capstone Papers
In the last decade there has been a noticeable attempt to subvert traditional modes of clothing production. The recent emergence of “ethical consumption” in the fashion industry is a case in point. This project argues that these new formations and practices around ethical consumption are mere appropriations of anti-corporate politics and sentiments for consumers in the West. Signification of ethical consumption through language and cultural capital give more value to individual articles of clothing and branded entities. This reformation of the clothing industry towards an ethical attitude is a rebranding tactic that avoids the source-issue altogether. Through advertising and normalization …
Collective Political Action And Activism On Twitter: The Merits And Limitations Of The Framing Tactics And Strategies Of The 2018 National Prison Strike,
2019
Columbia College Chicago
Collective Political Action And Activism On Twitter: The Merits And Limitations Of The Framing Tactics And Strategies Of The 2018 National Prison Strike, Philip Wasserburg
Cultural Studies Capstone Papers
The success of any collective political action relies heavily on public opinion. The leaders of these actions use framing techniques to optimize the reach of their message and convince broader portions of the population to sympathize with their cause. Today, most political conversations and debates about pressing social issues takes on social media platforms such as Twitter, which could be conceptualized as a virtual public sphere, where different individuals meet and discuss political events and issues as equally empowered citizens and active members of society. However, in practice, some individuals remain unable to participate in these discourses and conversations. Philip …
