Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

American Studies Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

27,334 Full-Text Articles 16,621 Authors 30,390,308 Downloads 273 Institutions

All Articles in American Studies

Faceted Search

27,334 full-text articles. Page 204 of 726.

The “Age Of Rock” Versus The “Rock Of Ages”: Naturalism, Social Darwinism, And Fundamentalism In The Scopes Monkey Trial, Bessie Blackburn 2021 Liberty University

The “Age Of Rock” Versus The “Rock Of Ages”: Naturalism, Social Darwinism, And Fundamentalism In The Scopes Monkey Trial, Bessie Blackburn

Helm's School of Government Conference - 2021-2024

Greek mythology once predominated the highest forms of culture known to man. Myths of how fire came to be in the hands of humans, or how the peacock got its spotted feathers were beloved cultural tales of origins.[1] With the decline of the ancient cultures, new ones blossomed in their place. However, the question of origin has remained a pertinent, central question of each culture, no matter how modern. The question of origin dictates who a person believes himself to be, where he believes himself to be going, and what he believes himself to be doing. The question of …


Building Asian American And Black Solidarity For Racial Justice In Today’S America, Vinay Harpalani, Sunu P. Chandy, Sholanna Lewis, Frank H. Wu 2021 University of New Mexico - School of Law

Building Asian American And Black Solidarity For Racial Justice In Today’S America, Vinay Harpalani, Sunu P. Chandy, Sholanna Lewis, Frank H. Wu

Faculty Scholarship

About the Panel: Although there have been tensions, including those tied to colorism, between the Asian American and Pacific Islander and Black communities in America, there has been an equally long history of mutual support and collaboration between these two communities. How does anti-Blackness in the AAPI community impact the work of building solidarity with Black activists? In this conversation, we highlight our common ground so that Asian American and Black social justice communities can push forward our collective needs to fight racial injustice and other forms of discrimination in this country.


Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography With Pseudonyms And Some Tall Tales, Marc DiPaolo 2021 Southwestern Oklahoma State University

Fake Italian: An 83% True Autobiography With Pseudonyms And Some Tall Tales, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

In a city torn apart by racial tension, Damien Cavalieri is an adolescent without a tribe. His mother -who pines for the 1950s Brooklyn Italian community she grew up in- fears he lacks commitment to his heritage. Damien’s fellow Staten Islanders agree, dubbing him a “fake Italian” and bullying him for being artistic. Complicating matters, his efforts to make friends and date girls outside of the Italian community are thwarted time and again by circumstances beyond his control. When a tragic accident shakes Damien to his core, he begins a journey of self-discovery that will lead him to Italy, where …


Edgar Allan Poe: Addressing The Haunting Legacy Of American Exceptionalism, Kaitlyn Quinn 2021 Seton Hall University

Edgar Allan Poe: Addressing The Haunting Legacy Of American Exceptionalism, Kaitlyn Quinn

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The term “American exceptionalism” is synonymous with the American identity, yet it can prove to be a dangerous association. Donald E. Pease in “American Exceptionalism” states, “Despite [John] Winthrop’s ‘A Model of Christian Charity’ (1630) fostering a tendency to view America in religious terms…American exceptionalism was more decisively shaped by the ideals of the European Enlightenment” (Pease). Puritan leader John Winthrop first introduced “American exceptionalism” in his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity.” Winthrop proclaimed, “For wee must consider that wee shall be as a city upon a hill” (Winthrop 2). Certainly, Winthrop’s words resonated with the Puritans as they …


Time Decay: Assets, Authoritarianism, And Anxiety About The Future, Jack Davies 2021 University of California, Santa Cruz

Time Decay: Assets, Authoritarianism, And Anxiety About The Future, Jack Davies

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article identifies a basic formula in the Freudo-Marxist take on twentieth-century authoritarianism. This is the incommensurability of inherited past development with the pace and demands of industrial social life, damming up a tremendous excess that seeks reactionary outlet. Authoritarianism, here, breeds in the contradiction between the symptoms of the Oedipal drama and the commodity form. The implicit “repressive hypothesis” for sexuality and developmentalist teleology make this theorization of authoritarian formations untenable today. This article, however, identifies moments of promise in this literature, and turns to materials available to these thinkers—specifically interwar psychoanalytic theory on anxiety and economic theory on …


Defending “Western” Values: Reactionary Neoliberalism In The Americas, Gabriela Segura-Ballar 2021 University of California, Santa Cruz

Defending “Western” Values: Reactionary Neoliberalism In The Americas, Gabriela Segura-Ballar

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Right-wing populism and authoritarianism are on the rise globally after the financial crisis of 2008. This reactionary trend has widely channeled anxieties created by neoliberal insecurities into cultural and nationalistic backlash against the ostensible enemies of “Western” values (e.g., immigrants, racial and sexual minorities, feminists, and leftists). President Jair Bolsonaro’s “Brazil above everything, God above everyone” and President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” are the most conspicuous examples of the resurgence of a populist reactionary right in the Americas. This continental trend promotes ultra-nationalism and more coercive neoliberalization processes combined with a reactionary authoritarianism that celebrates essentialized “Western” values, …


Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives, Alberto Toscano 2021 Goldsmiths, University of London

Incipient Fascism: Black Radical Perspectives, Alberto Toscano

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The sordid twilight of the Trump presidency raised the stakes of the debate on fascism. While much of the discussion has been magnetised by the legitimacy of analogies with the 1930s, this article argues that a rich and complex tradition of Black radical critique of right-wing authoritarianism provides a vital resource for thinking through the problem of US fascism beyond analogy – beginning with the DuBoisian insight that a racial fascism forged by chattel slavery and settler-colonialism anticipated the ascendancy of European fascisms. The article homes in on Black radical theories of fascism developed in the wake of the movements …


Neo-Authoritarianism And The Contestation Of White Identification In The Us, Justin Gilmore 2021 University of California, Santa Cruz

Neo-Authoritarianism And The Contestation Of White Identification In The Us, Justin Gilmore

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Justin Gilmore’s article "Neo-Authoritarianism and the Contestation of White Identification in the US" examines how the political forces around Donald Trump are often interpreted as an external attack on American democracy, and how the dynamism of these attacks is thought to emanate from various sites of white chauvinism. This article argues that such an interpretation is partial. The upsurge associated with “Trumpism” represents a distinctive contestation of an alternative type of white identity, one that has been elemental for a progressive form of neoliberalism. Although the neoliberal construction of white identification is distinctive, and indeed kinder, its material basis rests …


Neo-Authoritarianism Without Authority, Massimiliano Tomba 2021 University of California, Santa Cruz

Neo-Authoritarianism Without Authority, Massimiliano Tomba

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines two aspects of neo-authoritarianism. The first is mainly diagnostic and concerns the nature of authoritarianism as a phenomenon of transition. The article investigates tensions and conflicts between temporalities. It pays attention to the asynchronous nature of change which, alongside the social structural level of changes, also the psycho-social level, intervene politically in different forms. There are social strata that are strangers in their own country and do not share the same present with others. For them, looking to the past is the only way to imagine a different future. If they are looking for values and authority, …


A Trumpian Mechanism, Emmett Peixoto 2021 University of California, Santa Cruz

A Trumpian Mechanism, Emmett Peixoto

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In 2016, a liar made a hypocrite appear worse and thereby won the US presidency. How did a liar, which is traditionally deemed something worse than a hypocrite, manage to do this? This article offers an answer. It does so by uncovering a peculiar mechanism, a Trumpian mechanism, at the heart of Trump’s relations with his critics. The mechanism explains how Trump benefited from wrong-footing his critics and is thus essential for understanding Trump’s success. The article offers a few key examples of this mechanism working against Trump’s political opponents, e.g., Trump’s (first) impeachment. It then shows how the mechanism …


Authoritarianism And Ideology, Asad Haider 2021 Purdue University

Authoritarianism And Ideology, Asad Haider

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In “Authoritarianism and Ideology,” Asad Haider approaches the problem of authoritarianism by considering the classical question of tyranny, as framed by Spinoza, and how this can be traced to the Marxist theory of ideology. A fundamental axis of the debate over ideology in twentieth century Marxism was the phenomenon of fascism, theorized in highly influential but also markedly different ways by figures like Wilhelm Reich and Theodor Adorno. A close reading of two major texts—Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism and Adorno's contributions to The Authoritarian Personality—provides a basis for conceptually elaborating different directions that can be taken in the study …


Introduction: New Faces Of Authoritarianism, Asad Haider, Massimiliano Tomba 2021 Viewpoint Magazine

Introduction: New Faces Of Authoritarianism, Asad Haider, Massimiliano Tomba

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.


Irradiated Playground: The Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory And The Legacy Of The United States Nuclear Project, Austin Wilson 2021 Kennesaw State University

Irradiated Playground: The Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory And The Legacy Of The United States Nuclear Project, Austin Wilson

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

The former Georgia Nuclear Aircraft Laboratory (GNAL) is a historic site located outside of Dawsonville, Georgia that is now engaged with as a place of exploration, learning, and an unofficial memorial to the past. Over the course of my research I utilized archival documents, photographs I took during site visits, and internet discussions to analyze the way that modern visitors interact with the site and complicate the perceptions of public memory and history.


Within The Shadow Of The Cowboy: Myths And Realities Of The Old American West, Katherine Lamb 2021 Bellarmine University

Within The Shadow Of The Cowboy: Myths And Realities Of The Old American West, Katherine Lamb

Undergraduate Theses

It has been argued that the American cowboy is the most widely misunderstood and misinterpreted figure in American history. This mythic figure does not look like the real ranch hands who littered the American West throughout the nineteenth century, nor does he act like them. Instead, he is set apart, as a figurehead of masculinity and American ideals, determined to roam the frontier as a guardian of justice and stability. This version of the cowboy, however, is not bound within the pages of novels or within limitations of film. Instead, the cowboy’s ideals, persona, look, and code remain a vivid …


Contributors, Florida Historical Society 2021 University of Central Florida

Contributors, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Contributors to this issue


Director's Meeting, December 7, 1968, Florida Historical Society 2021 University of Central Florida

Director's Meeting, December 7, 1968, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Minutes of the directors' meeting


Historical News, Florida Historical Society 2021 University of Central Florida

Historical News, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Notice of the annual meeting, manuscript acquisitions


Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society 2021 University of Central Florida

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Reviews of Rudloe, The Sea Brings Forth, by Marian Murray; deHolguin, Tales of Palm Beach, by James R. Knott and George L. Hern, Jr.; Ferris (ed.), Explorers and Settlers: Historic Places Commemorating the Early Exploration and Settlement of the United States, by Earle W. Newton; Jones (ed.) and Lacher (trans.), Detailed Reports on the Salzburger Emigrants Who Settled in America . . . Edited by Samuel Urlsperger, Volume 1, 1733-1734, by Jerry L. Surratt; Rose, Prologue to Democracy: The Federalists in the South, 1789-1800, by Walker Blanton; Nasatir, Spanish War Vessels on the Mississippi, 1792-1796, by Robert L. Gold; Ernst, …


The Southern Limit Of Timucua Territory, Ripley P. Bullen 2021 University of Central Florida

The Southern Limit Of Timucua Territory, Ripley P. Bullen

Florida Historical Quarterly

According to a popular belief the area south of Tampa Bay was the domicile of the Calusa Indians. Whatever the origin of this dogma, it is likely connected with the fact that Narvaez and De Soto supposedly landed in Timucua Indian territory. How far south of Shaw’s Point this territory may have extended has never been delineated. Historically, north Florida east of the Aucilla River was inhabited by Timucua, and south Florida, south and west of Lake Okeechobee, by Calusa Indians. Archaeological evidence suggests that regional differences in material culture had existed for about 1,500 years before the coming of …


Bemrose's Medical Case Notes From The Second Seminole War, E. A. Hammond 2021 University of Central Florida

Bemrose's Medical Case Notes From The Second Seminole War, E. A. Hammond

Florida Historical Quarterly

John Bemrose, a young pharmacist’s apprentice from Lincolnshire, England, began his long sea journey to the United States in August 1831. He disembarked in New York harbor in late September, and shortly afterwards, on November 1, he appeared at an army recruiting post in Philadelphia and accepted a five-year enlistment in the United States army. He was eighteen years old at the time. His slight acquaintance with the field of medicine was sufficient to obtain for him an assignment as hospital steward and surgeon’s aide and an early transfer to garrison duty in St. Augustine. As hostilities between the United …


Digital Commons powered by bepress