American Studies Commons^™

Old Industries, Old Conflicts: The Significance Of American Epic Novels, Arturo Alcazar

Honors Projects

This essay focuses on three American epic novels: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy, and Underworld by Don DeLillo. More specifically, the essay examines the themes of ambiguity, redemption, good and evil, isolation, and violence as they are depicted in these three novels and what they indicate about America and its people and society.

University Of Southern Maine Commencement Program 2021, University Of Southern Maine

Commencement Programs

University of Southern Maine Commencement Program 2021

Beauty And Lifestyle Subscription Services: A Modern Retailing Format For The Vigilante Collaborative Consumption Consumer, Melisa Spilinek

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Advancements in technology and ease of use of online shopping via phone applications (apps) and subscription services have fundamentally changed how consumers shop. Now more than ever, consumers are turning to time-saving technological tools that are subscription services. Subscription services provide a multitude of benefits to consumers and contribute to collaborative consumption in nearly every product and service category from coffee to apparel. To investigate beauty and lifestyle subscription services and collaborative consumption this study will utilize a mixed methods convergent design to analyze user experience including price sensitivity, subscription service apps and ease of use. Anticipated contributions to the …

A Film Of Many Colors : Neoliberalism, Capitalism, And Climate Change In Rango, Sierra Javras

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Although largely ignored by ecocritics, Gore Verbinski’s Rango is undeniably a valuable film in the debates about climate change. It follows the story of a chameleon who accidentally falls out of his owner’s car and travels to Dirt, a town populated by anthropomorphized animals in the Mojave Desert suffering from a drought caused by neoliberal water privatization. Through various filmmaking techniques, such as the use of mise-en-scene, character design, and narrative style, Verbinski exposes the detrimental impacts the artificial water shortage and various other capitalist endeavors have caused to the desert environment. In doing so, I argue that he not …

Julia Morgan: Forgotten, Omitted, Overlooked, Or Celebrated, Renee Meyer

Masters in Architecture Program: Theses

Julia Morgan (1872-1957) was the first female registered architect in the state of California (1902). Despite her prolific independent practice, recognition for her work came late even for her most known project, Hearst’s Castle in San Simeon, California.

Throughout history, women have been repeatedly left out of the history of architecture and design, often being overshadowed by their male partners. This paper will seek to clarify reasons to decipher why this particular architect was left out of history and the media during her lifetime and will show that her omissions were not solely due to the fact that she was …

Hip Hop Urbanist Reconstructions: Strategies & Tactics For Spatial Reparations, Isaac Howland

Architecture Senior Theses

No abstract provided.

Extreme Far-Right Murder-Suicide Attacks In The U.S. And Germany: A Comparative Storyline Analysis, Hayden Lucas

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite increasing empirical research on suicide terrorism since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, prior studies have focused primarily on radical Islamic terrorism in non-Western contexts. As a result, less is known about how murder-suicide attacks committed by other ideological movements unfold, particularly the extreme far-right in North America and Europe. Researchers have begun to theorize the social and psychological processes believed to play a role in the radicalization of suicide terrorists. However, the observable, situational processes shaping radicalized individuals when planning, preparing for, and executing suicide terrorism remain underexplored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify intervention points by …

The Perceived Effectiveness Of The Scaled Agile Framework® In Software Development Organizations, James F. Carilli

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Software development projects experience very high failure rates. Due to the high cost of project failure, coupled with studies that found failure rates are closely tied to the software development method used, the purpose of this mixed methods exploratory case study was to examine the extent of perceived effectiveness of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) in software development organizations using Complex Adaptive Systems as a lens to guide the study. This research focused on the extent of perceived effectiveness of the Scaled Agile Framework® on organizational outcomes, team management, stakeholder and customer management, management of emerging requirements and overall organizational …

A World Of Infinite Possibilities: Recoding Popular Culture In Modern U.S. Ethnic Fiction, Todd Martinez

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This project examines how the U.S. ethnic authors Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston and Junot Díaz reflect the dynamic, reciprocal process of transculturation by decoding popular cultural forms. Using strategies made available by cultural studies, hemispheric theory and neoMarxism, critical attention will be directed to each author’s major literary work: Ellison’s Invisible Man, Kingston’s Tripmaster Monkey, and Díaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This dissertation further analyzes a hitherto overlooked area of U.S. multiethnic literary studies: the ethnic subject’s relationship to encoded popular culture forms and how they impact dentity formation. Recent scholarship has focused on the ethnic …

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

Reading On The Home Front: The Evolution Of U.S. Children’S Literature And American Values During Wartime Conflicts, Sophie Barton

Honors Theses

Children’s print culture is an understudied dimension of American history. It is well established that children’s history is vital to understanding the role of the child in American history and how modern childhood has developed. This study aims to uncover how children’s print culture plays a vital role in understanding how children’s perspectives changed and the varied messages adults imposed on children during the Civil War, World War One, and World War Two. In this Honors Thesis, I study various types of print productions including short stories, comics, and school textbooks in order to understand the various ways adults attempted …

Brain Drain In Mississippi, Clifford Adam Conner

Honors Theses

Brain drain is the out-migration of educated individuals from an area. It is a problem with which Mississippi is overly familiar. This thesis uses data gathered from a survey of 965 respondents to identify who is leaving the state and for what reasons. The data gathered suggest confirmation that brain drain is an issue for the state, with roughly two-thirds of respondents having left the state or seriously considering doing so. The impetus for this varies with each individual, but respondents underscore economic and societal factors within Mississippi as pushing them away from the state. Quality of life factors are …

The Iran Hostage Crisis: A Media Narrative, Catherine Claire Hausman

Honors Theses

The Iran Hostage Crisis, from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, was a defining moment in American foreign policy and US – Iranian relations. The news media – local and national newspapers and television – was saturated with coverage of the situation in Tehran and the subsequent US reaction. Americans watched the news over the 444 days, feeling sympathy and forging a collective national bond with the hostages; the international conflict was deeply personal for many Americans. The media played a central role in the establishment of the narrative of the hostage crisis, developing specific roles and personas of …

Impression, Storm, Victoria Rego, Victoria Anne Rego

All NMU Master's Theses

This novel, set in a cypress swamp near Charleston, South Carolina, explores issues in gender, sexuality, the body, and place. An experiment in form, the novel is structured to replicate the passing of a hurricane over land. This model allows the narrative to expand its scope to encompass the swamp as a larger entity amidst the ecosystem of the coastal south. By weaving together the narratives of the plant, animal, human, ghost, and mythic members of the swamp, the narrative seeks to interrogate the ways that these different levels of an ecosystem intercede upon, assist, and redirect each other in …

The Frontier Of The Labor Movement: Latinas And The Longest Strike In Twentieth-Century Las Vegas, Maribel Estrada Calderón

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After the mid-twentieth century, the American labor movement began to decline. Across the U.S., Union memberships and the rate of work stoppages decreased. In the hospitality-industry-driven city of Las Vegas, Nevada, however, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 more than doubled its membership. In 1989, the Elardi family purchased the Frontier Hotel and Casino and began to eliminate workers’ benefits. Led by the Culinary Union, workers went on strike on September 21, 1991, beginning one of the longest strikes in twentieth-century Las Vegas. Latina workers played critical roles in organizing and maintaining this successful, six-year-long battle against the Elardis. Positioning …

Colonization Of The Philippines: An Analysis Of U.S. Justificatory Rhetoric, Johansen Christopher Pico

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The term “Filipino” offers more than a call to nationality; it also recalls the genesis of colonization in the Philippines. This thesis explores the colonial interventions of the United States in the Philippines at the turn of the 20th century, homing in on the Filipino education system as the United States’ primary method of colonizing the Filipino mind. Drawing from texts by Senator Alfred Beveridge, President William McKinley, the Philippine Commission, David Barrows, and Dr. Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, I offer an ideological criticism that demonstrates a cyclical nature between both justificatory rhetoric and ideology. Working with “ideological clusters,” this …

Ethnic Irony In Melvin B. Tolson's "Dark Symphony", Elizabeth Newton

Publications and Research

This article historicizes musical symbolism in Melvin B. Tolson’s poem “Dark Symphony” (1941). In a time when Black writers and musicians alike were encouraged to aspire to European standards of greatness, Tolson’s Afro-modernist poem establishes an ambivalent critical stance toward the genre in its title. In pursuit of a richer understanding of the poet’s attitude, this article situates the poem within histories of Black music, racial uplift, and white supremacy, exploring the poem’s relation to other media from the Harlem Renaissance. It analyzes the changing language across the poem’s sections and, informed by Houston A. Baker Jr.’s study of “mastery …

The Infinite Crisis: How The American Comic Book Has Been Shaped By War, Winston Andrus

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that war has been the greatest catalyst for the American comic book medium to become a socio-political change agent within western society. Comic books have become one of the most pervasive influences to global popular culture, with superheroes dominating nearly every popular art form. Yet, the academic world has often ignored the comic book medium as a niche market instead of integrated into the broader discussions on cultural production and conflict studies. This paper intends to bridge the gap between what has been classified as comic book studies and the greater academic world to demonstrate the …

A Marvelous Work And A Trauma: An Examination Of Narratives Among Latter-Day Saint Sister Missionaries, Maygan Barker

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

In LDS folk culture narratives are often required to be uplifting or faith affirming in some dimension. This focus marginalizes traumatic or painful experiences. Further pushed into the sidelines are Sister missionary narratives, with Sister’s trauma narratives being doubly stigmatized. This thesis takes a two pronged approach in exploring Sister missionaries’ trauma narratives: first it examines the beliefs Sisters’ stories embody, with special consideration to the intersection of genre and worldview. I propose that trauma narratives expose four units of worldview, namely: 1) The righteous are blessed and the wicked are punished. 2) If you are suffering it is because …

Personal Identity And The Influence Of Outlaw Folklore, William "Bacon" Nivison

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Folklore being a relatively new science there is still debate going on about what Folklore actually is. Most of what one reads is relative to who the “folk” are, where the “lore” comes from and how it is inspired. This thesis looks at folkore from a viewpoint which observes folklore from the other direction. Not how do the folk create the lore, rather how does the lore create the folk?

Folklore is well shown to be a product, or at least an abstract of one’s personal identity, but, is it not also a tool used by the individual in the …