American Popular Culture Commons^™

Review Of John James Audubon: The Nature Of The American Woodsman, By Gregory Nobles, Matthew Guzman

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

When we think about American ornithology, John James Audubon is often the first name that comes to mind. As evidence to Audubon’s lasting ability to enrapture readers, it bears repeating that an original Double Elephant Folio of Birds of America sold for an astounding $11.5 million in 2010 (2). Yet, for a man who produced such stunning and memorable visual and literary work on the avifauna of North America, some of the important details of his life and origins have remained highly contested. Even though Gregory Nobles’s new biography is not explicitly tied to the study of the Great Plains, …

Female Cyclists: Two Essays From The 1869 Hancock Jeffersonian, Paige Zenovic

Nineteenth-Century Ohio Literature

Paige Zenovic introduces and explains two nineteenth-century essays from the Findley, Ohio Hancock Jeffersonian on the subject of women riding bicycles from the time when they were first being introduced to Ohio.

“Well, Don’T Walk Around Naked... Unless You’Re A Girl”: Gender, Sexuality, And Risk In Jamtronica Festival Subcultural Scenes, Kaitlyne A. Motl

Theses and Dissertations--Sociology

The purpose of this study was to explore emerging issues surrounding gendered fear, threat, and violence perpetration at music festivals – particularly events that feature a synthesis of jam band and electronic dance music acts – a genre termed jamtronica by its fans. Though gendered violence perpetration and prevention have been widely studied within other party-oriented settings (i.e., sexual violence perpetration on college campuses), very little research exists to address how wider disparities of gender and sexuality permeate a community whose members frequently claim the scene’s immunity from external inequalities.

In this three-year multi-sited ethnography, I incorporate participant observations, group …

Comedian Hosts And The Demotic Turn, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Podcasting is a showcase for what cultural studies scholar Graeme Turner coined “the demotic turn” or the increasing visibility of the "ordinary person" in the today’s media landscape. Collins argues that the emergence of a particular breed of podcasts – comedian-hosted interviews with celebrities – function in an “off-label” manner as a form of self-help or vicarious therapy. The emergence and rapid growth of this genre can attributed to three main factors: a confessional culture, the triumph of experience over expertise, and the democratization allowed by the form’s technology. She explores the link between emotional intimacy and comedy, and analyzes …

Tom And Jerry: Performative Queerness In Action, Cade M. Olmstead

Undergraduate Student Work

This presentation’s theoretical focus is a return to the performative dimension of identities and social life. Its vehicle for doing such is Tom and Jerry, a series of animation shorts. This American “cat chases mouse” series produced hundreds of shorts and has become a classic in American media memory. Drawing upon Judith Butler’s queer theoretical work and a justification from Eve Sedgwick, a selection of episodes has been subject to analysis. This analysis lays out basic descriptions of performative gender identity in the series while making a normative assessment of their effects. Ultimately, I claim that through ironic detachment, the …

Review: A River Of Stars By Vanessa Hua, Olivia Lee

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A review of Vanessa Hua's 2018 novel, A River of Stars.

I Am An Author: Performing Authorship In Literary Culture, Justin R. Greene

Theses and Dissertations

Authorship is not merely an act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard; it is a social identity performance that includes the use of multiple media. Authors must be hyper- visible to cut through the dearth of information, entertainment options, and personae vying for attention in our supersaturated media environment. As they enter the literary world, writers consciously create characters and narratives around themselves, and through the consistent and believable enactment of these features, authors are born. In this dissertation, I analyze the performance of authorship in U.S. literary culture through an interdisciplinary framework. My work pulls from …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

On Vinyl: Revival & Survival, Thom Leavy

Capstones

As a record collector and journalist, I take stock of what they mean to me while searching to better understand the “Vinyl Revival” of the past decade. I meet and pick at people who’ve worked with the medium at its height, its demise, and today. We talk about what digitization has done and will do to music, and what vinyl means to them.

https://readymag.com/u29439050/onvinyl/

Springsteen: In The American Tradition, Alex Mcdonough

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Springsteen’s music serves as a platform for not only the working poor, but also the pariahs of American society. Like other classic American singer-songwriters, Springsteen uses his music to explore tragedy in the American life, imbuing each song with a quiet, sometimes darkly humorous humanity. Through his songs, Springsteen has defined an altogether different type of American story, one that weaves tragedy, comedy, and the tedious minutiae of daily life. Springsteen considers each element of every story he tells to be distinct and important in its own way, creating a sense of purpose for even the lowest of the low.

With Great Power: Examining The Representation And Empowerment Of Women In Dc And Marvel Comics, Kylee Kilbourne

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout history, comic books and the media they inspire have reflected modern society as it changes and grows. But women’s roles in comics have often been diminished as they become victims, damsels in distress, and sidekicks. This thesis explores the problems that female characters often face in comic books, but it also shows the positive representation that new creators have introduced over the years. This project is a genealogy, in which the development of the empowered superwoman is traced in modern age comic books. This discussion includes the characters of Kamala Khan, Harley Quinn, Gwen Stacy, and Barbara Gordon and …

Bohemians: Greenwich Village And The Masses, Joanna Levin

English Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"This chapter traces the convergence of 'the revolt against puritanism' and 'the revolt against capitalism' in the 1910s, focusing on the most celebrated American bohemia Greenwich Village - and on The Masses, the Village periodical that provided the most influential expression of the double-edged bohemian revolt. The effort to combine the personal and the political, the artistic and the social helped fuel a host of interconnected movements and alliances within the bohemian milieu, and the bohemians called upon both Marx and Freud in the effort to promote revolutionary change. Often riddled with internal contradictions and susceptible to forces of …

Spirituality Among Black Americans: A Hierarchical Classification Of The Family Strengths Model, Genese Clark

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is a need for disaggregate data pertaining to the perceived strengths of Black American families. This study identified which traits are salient and dominant among African-American families according to the Family Strengths Model. Utilizing this model, a mixed methods study was conducted among Black Americans living in Connecticut who identify with belonging to a family (N=59) to investigate the importance of six family strength domains. Results found the hierarchical rank (from most important to least important) to be commitment, spirituality/ spiritual wellbeing, appreciation and affection, positive communication, time together, and the ability to manage stress and crisis effectively. Additionally, …

Transnational Uses Of Mafia Imagery In Zadie Smith’S White Teeth, Andrea Ciribuco

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Transnational Uses of Mafia Imagery in Zadie Smith's White Teeth" Andrea Ciribuco discusses the literary representation of multiculturalism in Zadie Smith's first novel, White Teeth (2000). The novel focuses on multicultural encounters in Great Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. This article focuses on one site for these encounters: the character of Millat Iqbal, who joins a gang of teenagers and subsequently a radical Islamic group in his problematic search for identity and belonging. This search is characterized by Millat's tendency to define himself by reference to well-known pop-cultural Mafia figures, whom he …

Collins, Gary & Tammy Pickering (Fa 346), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 346. Paper titled "Hog Killing in Western Kentucky" in which Gary Collins and Tammie Pickering discuss the cultural significance of farm-raising hogs and the foodways traditions that result from the slaughtering process. Using slides and interviews, Collins and Pickering document a hog killing that took place in January 1986 on a farm in Trigg County, Kentucky.

Pickering, Tammie & Gary Collins (Fa 348), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 348. Student paper titled “Trees in Folk Crafts” in which Tammie Pickering and Gary Collins explore the connection between trees and traditional folkways. Paper details the medicinal properties of sassafras tea, which is made from tree roots, the production of maple syrup, and the expressive crafts of wood-carving and carpentry. Data collected from three working-class residents of Caldwell County. Paper also includes field journals, recorded interviews, and transcripts.

Hensley, Jennifer Lynn (Fa 351), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 351. Paper titled "The Music Barn" in which Lynn Hensley discusses the founding of The Music Barn, a local music venue in Warren County, Kentucky. Hensley's main informant is Joe Marshall, a country music artist, community organizer, and owner of The Music Barn.

Fox, Randy (Fa 350), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

FFinding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 350. Paper titled "Fiddle About: Ed Carnes-Contest Fiddler" in which Randy Fox charts the history of fiddle playing and the rise of "contest fiddling" during the traditional music revival in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Fox's main informant is Ed Carnes, an old-time fiddler who won the Kentucky State Fiddle Championship in 1981. Carnes details his beginnings as a fiddler, the recording of his fiddle-tunes album, and his travels across the country to different fiddling contests.

Review: Swimming In Hong Kong, Stephanie Chan

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A review of Swimming in Hong Kong (2016), a short story collection by Stephanie Han.