American Studies Commons^™

Folk Contra Lore, Antonio Barrera

Scholarly Horizons: University of Minnesota, Morris Undergraduate Journal

“Authentic” is a concept that is commonly evoked in everyday life. We talk about authentic restaurants, authentic performance practices, authentic culture, and even the idea of an authentic self. Authenticity is also, more subtly, a quality statement about what is being talked about. That which is authentic is in some way superior to other “imitators.” In the context of academic folklore studies, authenticity is an almost necessary criteria. That which is not authentic is not worth academic study. It is this (at times inconsistent) demand for authenticity that shaped the act of collecting folklore, as well as impacted the image …

Creation In Isolation: Marleen S. Barr, The Editors Of Quail Bell Magazine, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

This is an interview with science fiction scholar Marleen S. Barr in which she discusses the post-truth world, political disaster, and her short story collection WHEN TRUMP CHANGED: THE FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION JUSTICE LEAGUE QUASHES THE ORANGE OUTRAGE PUSSY GRABBER.

Poe Teaching Readers To Solve It Themselves, Grace Cosby

Student Works

Edgar Allan Poe wrote many stories that featured different types of unreliable narrators. These narrators were essential to Poe’s goal of teaching his audience to take more active roles in the stories. Insanity, ulterior motives, and lack of knowledge all contribute to making a narrator unreliable. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Tell Tale Heart,” and “The Cask of Amontillado” are all short stories in which Poe implemented a different unreliable narrator to show readers how to pay more attention to a story. With little guidance from Poe or the narrator, readers must put together what is true and …

Hooper Schultz, Hooper Schultz, Andrea Morales

Portraits of Southern Studies Graduates

After getting heavily involved in the LGBTQ community in Oxford, Hooper helped to found OUTGrads, the LGBTQ graduate & professional student organization on campus. His work has focused mainly on LGBTQ oral histories in the South, the Carolina Gay Association, and the Southeastern Gay Conferences of 1976-1978. Thesis project: “The Southern Front: Gay Liberation Activists in the U.S. South and Public History Through Audiovisual Exhibition”

Zaire Love, Zaire Love, Andrea Morales

Portraits of Southern Studies Graduates

Her work is an ode to being black and Southern in America. Many of her works aim to honor and amplify the voices of southern black women because they have always had “cornbread” to share. Zaire is a graduate of Spelman college [B.A. in Theatre] and Houston Baptist University [M. Ed in Curriculum and Education]. Thesis project, “The Black Men I Know”

Hilary Word, Hilary Word, Andrea Morales

Portraits of Southern Studies Graduates

Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, Hilary earned her undergraduate degree in history from Tougaloo College. As a life-long fan of speculative fiction, mythology, and folklore, Word has always been fascinated with the concept of the real versus the “unreal” and the supernatural. Thesis project: “Post-Soul Speculation: An Exploration of Afro-Southern Speculative Fiction”

Olivia Terenzio, Olivia Terenzio, Andrea Morales

Portraits of Southern Studies Graduates

A Mississippi native, Olivia returned to her home state to pursue an M.A. in Southern Studies. She previously earned a B.S. from Northwestern's Medill school of journalism and spent a decade in San Francisco, where she worked on the editorial team at Williams-Sonoma and led restaurant content at OpenTable. She has also written about food and travel for national publications covering grape and olive harvests int Tuscany and the Brazilian coffee industry. Thesis project: “Feijoada and Hoppin John: Foodways, Collective Identity and Belonging in Brazil and the American South”

June, July 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Temple Shalom Strong; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; A Boy and His Blintzes; Community Notices

Amjambo Africa! (July 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Publisher’s Editorial ....................p. 4

Translations French ...................................... p.5

Swahili...................................... p.6

Somali ....................................... p.7

Kinyarwanda ..........................p.18

Portuguese .............................p.19

News from Africa ........................p. 8

Business, Economics & Financial Literacy...................p. 10

World Market Basket ..........p. 12/13

Legislative Update ......p 17/20/21/9

Community News......................p. 16

Columns..............................................

About hair .................................p. 20

Hope House ..............................p. 19

Safe Healthcare .........................p. 21

James G. Thomas, James G. Thomas, Andrea Morales

Portraits of Southern Studies Graduates

James began work at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture as managing editor of the twenty-four-volume New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture in 2003, and he has been the Center’s Associate Director for Publications since 2011. Thomas is also the director of the Center’s annual Oxford Conference for the Book and the editor of Study the South the Center’s online journal, and the Southern Register, the Center’s newsmagazine. Thesis project: “The Lebanese in Mississippi: An Oral History”

Far-Right Extremism In America: A Geospatial Analysis Of Incident Distribution, Meredith Leann Lerma

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There has been little empirical research on the spatial relationship of violent far-right extremism. Previous studies have only focused on portions of far-right violent incidents, such as homicides, or amalgamated all far-right extremist activity, including legal incidents. This study uses data from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) and Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in a temporal frame of 2000 to 2018 to test the relationship of violent incidents against geographic and social factors. The goal is to explore the relationships between macro-level factors and violent far-right extremist incident. The research determines that the presence of hate groups, higher immigrant populations, …

Election Day — Documentary, John Thomas Tarpley

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Election Day is a three-channel documentary chronicling the places, personalities, and tone of Little Rock, Arkansas, during its titular midterm Election Day in November 2018. Throughout the course of the day, the film branches across the city, capturing mini-narratives, bits of conversation, and tableau of civic activity in the public sphere. It is less concerned with the quantitative facts of the day as it is with conveying the transitory social expressions and moods of a modern, southern city on a uniquely American day. This project represents my continued documentary interest in creating inclusive, contemporary local portraits and counter-historical chronicles of …

The Impacts Of Incarceration On The Wellbeing Of Family Members Of African American Males Who Experience The U.S Prison System: A Phenomenological Study, Tremaine N. Leslie

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans encounter a high rate of imprisonment, and the social, economic, mental and other effects of imprisonment are extended to their families and communities (Roberts, 2004). In addition to separating individuals from their families and communities, incarceration maximizes the probability for fractured relationships, fragmented communities, and encumbers the public service systems (DeHart, Shapiro & Clone, 2018).Therefore, the purpose of this phenomenological inquiry was to explore the mental health effects of incarceration on the family members of African American males who experience the U.S prison system.

The theoretical framework utilized for this study was the critical race theory (CRT) immersed …

Jeffrey Sachs, A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018), Jonas Ecke

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Hitchcock And Humor: Modes Of Comedy In Twelve Defining Films. Gehring, Wes D., Mcfarland And Company, 2019, James Altman

Executive Vice President & Provost Faculty Research

In Hitchcock and Humor: Modes of Comedy in Twelve Defining Films , distinguished film scholar Wes D. Gehring seeks to fill in what he sees as a gaping hole in Hitchcock criticism. That is the need for an in‐depth analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's love of many types of humor, and how, and why, he felt them essential to his filmmaking. Gehring sees humor as central to Hitchcock's artistic vision, not as an afterthought, as he contends most other scholars do. Gehring emphasizes that his mission is not to denigrate any critic, or critical approach. Instead, he seeks to bring attention …

Toward Freedom: A Reading Of The National Memorial For Peace And Justice, Margaret Pless

Study the South

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama in 2018 to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States. The memorial’s monuments are unique because they resist the static, status quo understandings of history that so many of our monuments perpetuate. The memorial invites visitors to face disturbing truths in the hope of fostering reconciliation. Will it help us remember and reconcile as a nation? Montgomery is home to other monuments that undermine the history the memorial presents.

“What For Is Democracy?”: The German American Bund In The American Press, 1936-1941, Minna Thrall

Voces Novae

Between 1936 and 1941, an American pro-Nazi organization called the German American Bund stirred outrage and controversy among Americans. The American perception of the Bund was largely influenced by newspapers, which portrayed some of the Bund’s issues as more important than others. These portrayals reveal American attitudes and anxieties toward the state of racism, nationalism, fascism, and democracy within the United States at the brink of WWII.

Desegregation Through Entertainment: Rodgers And Hammerstein’S South Pacific As An Instrument Of Military Policy, Leana Sottile

Voces Novae

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific became a staple of mainstream popular culture. However, the musical also served a specific function within the American military where its usage by the United Service Organizations and Department of Defense was widespread. This case study examines how South Pacific arguably served a way to ease the blow of desegregation on the military by other means, in this case, entertainment. This was achieved by combining the show’s progressive views on racial tolerance with the prevalent wartime nostalgia and romanticism in the piece. All of …

Colonized Loyalty: Asian American Anti-Blackness And Complicity, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstad argues that solidarity between and within communities of color remains our only chance to fight against the brutal and insidious forces of racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism.

A South Florida Ethnography Of Mobile Home Park Residents Organizing Against Neoliberal Crony Capitalist Displacement, Juan Guillermo Ruiz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The cyclical inflations of real estate values right before the 2008 housing crisis in the United States enticed mobile home park landowners, especially in California and Florida, to sell their land in the search for spectacular profits displacing many low-income residents. This thesis uses an engaged anthropological ethnographic approach to explore the struggle in organizing against neoliberal crony capitalist displacement in the South Florida metropolitan area. The study focuses on Davie, a suburb of Fort Lauderdale, where at the time of fieldwork a third of residents lived in mobile homes. In 2007, the Davie town council attempted to soften the …