American Studies Commons^™

“Every Mother A Missionary”?: The Vlogs Of Mormon Mothers, Celia Golden

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) places high expectations on mothers because their role in the church is to rear children into godly adults. When their lives are made public through social media, Mormon mothers online avoid religious expectations by withholding information about their Mormon faith and scarcely showing their husbands on-camera. Mormon husbands are expected to be the providers for the family, but as demonstrated through mothers’ vlogs on Instagram, husbands’ erasure allows for mothers to market their expertise to others as a paid product to earn their own revenue. Through descriptive coding, this study …

"It's Not Your Job To Save The World, Young Women": Evangelical Women On Social Media, Ilaria P. Johnson

Master's Theses

Masters research thesis on the role of evangelical influencers on social media in spreading their beliefs on conservative politics, Christian motherhood, and Christian womanhood. Five Instagram accounts are analyzed and profiled.

I Have Some Reservations: Examining Whether Federal Rules Of Evidence 413 And 414 Serve Legitimate Purposes Of Punishment For Native American Defendants, Cameryn Gonnella

Advanced Issues in Criminal Law: Sex Offenses

This essay will analyze the legitimacy of Federal Rules 413 and 414 as applied to Native American defendants through the lens of the purposes of punishment: rehabilitation, deterrence, retribution, incapacitation, and restitution.

Through The Looking Glass : Diversity Through The Eyes Of A Dress Form, Amara Copeland

LSU Master's Theses

This article aims to look into educational institutions and how they address diversity using curatorial displays. Does fashion and costume curation add to the seclusion of luxury? Looking into this correlation, this study aims to answer these next couple of questions. How does museum curation add to fashion social norms? Is it a subconscious or conscious decision when deciding on a mannequin or dress form? How do museum and fashion curations add to the exclusion of minorities in the world of luxury? What is costume luxury, and who do we say can obtain it?

This research aims to understand the …

Thompson’S Rifle Battalion: The Original Unit Of The Army Of The United Colonies (Now The United States Regular Army), John A. Bonin

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

©2025 John A. Bonin

Although 1775 is indisputably the birth year of the US Army, two events occurred on June 14 of that year to which the Army can credit its birthday. One is the adoption by the Continental Congress of the collective militia forces from several colonies outside Boston to form a Continental Army, of which Congress appointed George Washington the commander in chief on June 15, 1775. In addition, the US Regular Army officially dates its beginning to June 14, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress directed 10 companies of expert riflemen to be raised immediately in Pennsylvania, …

Content Worth Consuming, Mark Volkers

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"Could it be that a workplace (or film set) that actively pursues shalom in the way people and creation are treated, is honoring to God who seeks the restoration of all things?"

Posting about ­­­­­­­­defining Christian film from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

Content Worth Consuming

Is Love A “Pathological Condition Of The Soul”? Joyce Carol Oates's Beasts And Rape: A Love Story, Nicolas P. Boileau

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This paper seeks to address the question of Oates’s relation to feminist and gender theories by looking at two novellas published consecutively, Beasts and Rape: A Love Story in the beginning of the 2000s. The short texts share a common storyline based on rape, which is far from uncommon in Oates’s fiction. However, I argue that there is something very specific in these two novellas in the way Oates chooses to handle the testimony of the rape, both overtly and covertly, both in graphic details and in repressed forms of expression, giving way to a reflection on women’s vulnerable position …

The Formation Of The American League In Baseball; Changes In American Society And Culture That Contributed To The Demand For More Baseball In The Late 19th Century, Shawn M. Smith

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The second professional major league (the American League) in baseball came about in response to the demand for more baseball entertainment due to the increased amount of leisure time Americans had in the late-19th century as society started the shift from an agricultural based lifestyle to a culture who worked predominantly in factory work.

The culture and society of the day changed drastically due to changing economic conditions of the time period. Due to monumental changes in industry, the vast majority of the population had shifted from working in an agrarian society to working in factories as a result of …

Southern Rambles: Seeking A Place, Finding A Self, John Hayes

Study the South

"So, we set out from Atlanta in August 1997 on the older US Highway 19, heading south. We were seeking a South and we didn’t have a consciousness of being southern, but in a very elemental way, our consciousness had been deeply shaped by forces we were unaware of."

Magic, Magicians And Detective Fiction: Essays On Intersecting Modes Of Mystery, Edited By Rebecca Josephy, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Magic, Magicians and Detective Fiction edited by Rebecca Josephy considers how magic appears in detective stories, from the seemingly miraculous exploits of Arsene Lupin to the moral dilemmas of occult detective Elvis Infante.

What Will We Do With The Christmas Pudding?: Joy Davidman, William Lindsay Gresham, And "Christmas In The Workhouse", Gabriel C. Salter, Clark Sheldon

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

The poem "Christmas in the Workhouse" archived in William Lindsay Gresham's papers at first appears to be a random transcript in his files. Exploring the work's publication history and Gresham's contributions to War Poems of the United Nations, a book edited by his second wife Joy Davidman, suggests that in fact "Christmas in the Workhouse" is part of the larger story of how they informed each other's work in the 1940s.

An Empire In A City: Foundations Of Washington, D.C., 1776 To 1861, Ronni Desjardins

Madison Historical Review

This research project will examine the foundations of Washington, D.C., and how the city’s map and construction identify imperial inspirations that influenced its design and use. It will also examine how these imperial frameworks were intentionally created to sustain historical narratives about the American people and their government. Using correspondence from James Madison and other Founding Fathers, the intention behind the construction of the national capital city becomes significant to our understanding of the political and national philosophy that exists in the current national atmosphere. By placing the capital at the geographic and economic center of the empire, the government …

La Vida Es Sueno's Segismundo, A Case Study On Isolation, Kiel Garrett

Undergraduate Research Conference

No abstract provided.

Sharp Knives, Dark Hearts: Class, Colonialism, And Rebellion On Anthony Bourdain's Bookshelf, Carl Cactus Warmuth

American Studies ETDs

Though often characterized as a celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain achieved stardom from his lively writing rather than skills in the kitchen. As such, the sociopolitical importance of his life and work is greatly illuminated by his compulsive literary references. Through George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris, Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the personas of William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson, the tensions central to Bourdain’s legacy are unveiled. This thesis offers a portrait of Bourdain as a complicated figure of …

The Curse Of El Dorado: How The Californnia Gold Rush Shaped The History Of Hawai'i, Ernesto Coronado

Theses and Dissertations

In the discourse of Western historiography, we fail to account for the importance of the Hawai’ian Islands. American imperialism did not stop with the occupation of the Pacific Coast but continued into the Pacific. In the mid-nineteenth century, Hawai’i and its monarch, King Kamehameha III, stood at the center of a dispute between Britain, France, and the United States. King Kamehameha III used the California Gold Rush and Hawai’i’s location to his advantage to garner capital and prevent the imperial powers from annexing his kingdom. However, even he knew he could not stop the mass wave of Hawai’ians leaving the …

Queering The Mean Girl: Spectating The Post-Feminist Melodrama, Anne Gregg '25

Honor Scholar Theses

Ultimately this thesis will examine how Mean Girls melodramas moralize gender and sexuality. The Mean Girl is not an embodiment of moral hegemony. She may look like the perfect subject, but she is imperfect, because she tries to be perfect. She is a failure of femininity, because her attempts to be feminine reveal the masquerade. Womaniliness is not inherent; it is not real. The Mean Girl is attractive to the sapphic spectator because she exposes the alienation and artifice of gender and heterosexuality. The stereotypical image of the Mean Girl is plastic perfection, but she is not.

What’S Behind A Number? An Analysis Of Maternal Healthcare In Cuba And The Impact Of Policy On Women’S Autonomy, Brynn Urban '25

Honor Scholar Theses

The primary aim of this research is to contrast personal testimonies from birthing women in Cuba with the frequently boasted Cuban health statistics in order to illuminate important discrepancies existing between what is reported by the state versus the reality of individual experiences. Investigation into women’s personal testimonies of mistreatment within maternity homes and hospitals in Cuba will reveal significant disparities that exist within the socialist healthcare system that have otherwise gone unconsidered. In order to contextualize these lived experiences as products of problematic post-revolutionary ideologies, the political, economic, and social stakeholders in the Cuban healthcare system will be outlined. …

"Taking" Photographs: Settler Aesthetics In 20th Century Hawaiian Postcards, Elena Lee, Rebecca Koerselman

Celebration of Research

Due to colonization, Hawaii’s economic, political, and societal structure were changed to fit the white American standard. Colonization also caused a shift in their aesthetics, including the exclusion from participation in the creation of art, and poor visual representations of Hawaiian culture in settler art, which is known as “settler aesthetics.” Settler Aesthetics is a term and theory that seeks to define how a culture’s art and beauty has been influenced by settler colonialism. Many historians have analyzed this theory in Hawaiian literature, music, and visual art, but have left untouched the field of deltiology; the study of postcards. Though …

Ashes Of Power, Bailey Huffman

FUSION

The objective of this project was to write a creative work using a theme found in an American writer's literary text studied throughout the course and create a visual and/or auditory piece. By doing this, students can further interpret the literary texts, themes, and genres found in American Literature. For my short story, “Ashes of Power,” I chose to focus on the theme of “powerlessness” found in the 1985 play Fences written by August Wilson. The story is told through the point of view of a young and strong woman, Xena, and is set in a fantasy world that is …

How We Survive: A Poem Analyzing Life, Death And Necessity, Pierce H. Dornink

FUSION

This poem is an analysis of the short story "Living Like Weasels" by Annie Dillard. It focuses on life and death, as well as how life is fleeting, and draws on themes expressed in the source work.

This poem was created as part of a multimodal project for an American Literature class in the Fall of 2024 using the following prompt:

You are responding to literature using creative techniques in two phases. In the first phase, you will compose a 2-4 page piece of creative writing that includes a theme we’ve studied in the class that has significance to you. …