American Studies Commons^™

Harbison, Kay (Fa 874), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 874. Paper titled: “Uncle Bozo Carver: World’s Oldest Living Country Musician and Entertainer.” Project details the life of Noble “Uncle Bozo” Carver as an entertainer. Project includes lengthy interview, lists of songs, and some stanzas.

Lingua Di Carta, Lingua Di Carne: A Translated Interview With Amara Lakhous, Amara Lakhous, Simone Puleo, Fabiana Viglione

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Novelist and professor Amara Lakhous lives in the United States, where he has begun his third life—a new phase after his Algerian beginnings and subsequent Italian “adoption,” as he says. After having completed a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers, Lakhous immigrated to Italy as a political refugee. In Italy, Lakhous would earn a doctorate in anthropology from La Sapienza, Rome. These days, Amara Lakhous lives in New York City and has been a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut. He is often invited by prestigious universities in the United States to discuss social and political …

What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert

President's Research and Writings

Last fall, shortly after it was published, I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, and this summer I reread her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy around Watchman intrigued me. I saw the differences in the books mainly as the change between the perspectives of the young Scout and the adult Scout (aka Jean Louise). Unlike some, I saw the Watchman as an honest book reflecting the complicated reality of white America in the Jim Crow era.

Tinder: True Love Or A Nightmare?, Anthony Kao

Pop Culture Intersections

The computer first played matchmaker in the late 1950s. Data would have been fed into the system, and after some data crunching, it would spit out a match based on common interests. Today’s dating sites, such as eHarmony.com, PlentyOfFish, and Match.com are reminiscent of the earliest days of online dating - they rely on algorithms to pair potential matches based on shared interests. With the advent of mobile dating apps such as Tinder, of which I will examine in-depth in my paper, the ability for geo-location, which allows users to “see” other users that are nearby their location, has opened …

Green Religion: Manipulation Transcending Ideology, Miranda Wittmond

Pop Culture Intersections

As more Americans become aware of the environmental consequences of their actions and decisions, corporations have moved to profit off of rising environmental consciousness. However, instead of changing their practices to actually become environmentally conscious, many corporations often instead present a false front to make our society perceive them as green when they are not, an action commonly referred to as greenwashing. This allows them to gain advantage over their competitors, some of which might actually be sustainable, by taking advantage of consumers’ environmental consciousness. Despite legal action taken to stop this and federal laws putting restrictions on green advertising, …

September 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Selichot Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Women of Achievement Award; Community Notices

How Civility Works, Keith Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and trolls. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a …

The Problem Of Obviousness, Benjamin Goldberg

Sophia and Philosophia

1. The Problem of Obviousness
There’s no such thing as obviousness.

This isn’t, of course, itself obvious; nor is it clear why it should be a problem. So let me start elsewhere, with the anti-vaccine movement. A friend of mine laid out the ‘obvious’ position: there are facts and rationality on one side, unenlightened ignorance and bigotry on the other. Scientists versus fools, and the fools don’t even know what game is being played.

America Abandoned: German-Jewish Visions Of American Poverty In Serialized Novels By Joseph Roth, Sholem Asch, And Michael Gold, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In 1930, Hungarian- born Jewish author Arthur Holitscher’s book Wiedersehn mit Amerika: Die Verwandlung der U.S.A. (Reunion with America: The Trans-formation of the U.S.A.) was reviewed by one J. Raphael in the German- Jewish Orthodox weekly newspaper, Der Israelit. This reviewer concluded: “Despite its good reputation, America is a strange country. And Holitscher, whose relationship to Judaism is not explicit, but direct, has determined that to be the case for American Jews as well.” The reviewer’s use of the word “strange” (komisch) offers powerful insight into the complex perceptions of America held by many …

Loving The Unlovable Body In Yamanaka's Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by expicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …

Family Affairs Newsletter 2016-09-01, Zack Paakkonen

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Geographies Of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, And The Militarization Of Hawai'i, Laurel Turbin Mei-Singh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Geographies of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, and the Militarization of Hawai‘i develops a genealogy of military fences and their relationship to Hawaiian struggles for self-determination and national liberation. Military occupation has transformed entire ways of life on the islands by altering Hawaiian land tenure systems through displacement, disruption of subsistence practices, and environmental degradation. Hawaiian mo‘olelo (stories, history) also structure life in a highly militarized place, centering interconnectivity between human and nonhuman realms while impelling grassroots efforts that shape its landscape.

This dissertation develops in-depth case studies of militarized sites on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu, where military bases occupy 34% …

Delillo's Falling Man And The Trouble With Sympathy In Narratives Of Terrorism, Jessica Mcdonald

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "DeLillo's Falling Man and the Trouble with Sympathy in Narratives of Terrorism" Jessica McDonald discusses the ways Don DeLillo's characterization of a 9/11 terrorist elicits reader sympathy in his 2007 novel Falling Man. McDonald argues that introducing sympathy into narratives of terrorism undermines attempts to understand the contextual issues out of which terrorism arises even if the rhetoric of sympathy may seem to foster a sense of "fellow-feeling" that makes acts of political protest and resistance more accessible to broader publics.

Circus As Idée Fixe And Hunger, Anna-Sophie Jürgens

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Circus as idée fixe and Hunger" Anna-Sophie Jürgens discusses circus fiction in which characters often display extreme, intense psychological traits. They are for example irascible, pyromaniac, sadistic, or megalomaniac. Particularly striking are protagonists with alternative psychological attitudes in fictional circus texts of the twentieth century such as Franz Kafka's hunger artist, Michael Raleigh's ringmaster Lewis Tully or Richard Schmitt's aerialist Garry, who can be seen as incubators of circus-related idées fixes. These literary circus characters develop fixations on circus that manifest themselves as a physical sensation of desiring circus like food, in other words: in circus …

Genre Categorization In Contemporary British And Us-American Novels, Carlos Ceia

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Genre Categorization in Contemporary British and US-American Novels" Carlos Ceia discusses a certain type of resistance to genre categorization in many novels in contemporary literature. Many British and US-American contemporary novels show patterns in narrative creativity where novel-writing techniques are sometimes more important than the traditional subject matter driven work of fiction. Ceia reviews experimental/metafictional novels which do not show intent to fulfil an aesthetic role pre-determined in a certain moment in history. Not having this kind of burden before them, many contemporary British and US-American novelists devote their artistic imagination more to the "potential" of the …

Capitalism And Control: An Examination Of Capitalist Trends Against Consumers, Sravan Ramaswamy

Pop Culture Intersections

This article will be covering a number of debates over years. A number of studies have been done on the nature of privacy and its place in the modern world as we move forward in the digital age. One study called "The Privacy-Innovation Conundrum" by Ted Zarsky argues for the existence of a tradeoff that policy makers have to make between favoring innovation and hurting privacy or favoring privacy, but reducing the incentive to create new ideas[1]. This argument makes a great deal of sense if we view information as not dissimilar to money. However, it leaves open interpretation for …

Influence Of Mass Media On Medical Screening, Specifically Breast Cancer Screening, Yashvi Siddhapura

Pop Culture Intersections

Mass Media has influenced various aspects of our culture, from how we wake up to how we sleep. Over the years, popular media has expanded in our society due to the technological advancements; we are now able to access these various mass media mediums through one tap. One of the most influential topics in our culture is health and mass media has played a huge role in impacting a healthy lifestyle. Through this medium, people are also informed about medical advancements which can be very helpful in maintaining a healthy lifestyle if they are at a risk for a disease. …

Aggression And Driving: Separating Ourselves From The Games, Jennifer Yin

Pop Culture Intersections

In 2015 on a busy street in Los Angeles, California, two cars were driving next to each other. One decided to cut in front of the other, angering the first driver, who decided not to let the second into his lane. The frustrated second driver eventually managed to get into the other lane, when both decided to get out of their vehicles. The drivers ended up getting into a fist fight in the middle of the road, and one driver was almost struck by the passing vehicles. Unfortunately, both returned to their vehicles and were not caught by the police …

The Underlying Consequences Of Social Media, Hannah Baz

Pop Culture Intersections

Since childhood, we, as human beings, are taught to look to others for signals and indications about how to live our lives. It is an innate human desire to evaluate, assess, and improve our skills based on what everyone else leads us to perceive is right or ideal. Such comparison is a necessary facet to social order- we compare political leaders, stocks, investments, property, ect. in order to determine what choice will lead to the best outcome. However, leaping into the abyss of comparison is not always one worth taking. With the recent exponential growth of technology, social comparison is …

A Seemingly Fatal Attraction Between Sad Souls, Taylor Kay Gustafson

Pop Culture Intersections

“Even the darkness has arms,” sings the band Barr Brothers.^[1] Depression is a mental disorder defined as persistent feelings of sadness that result in decreased energy and lack of interest in activities. Depression affects about 6.7% of people in the U.S.^[2] One of the most difficult aspects of depression is figuring out how to cope with it. Therapy is one step, but what can a depressed person do when they are alone to feel better? Depression necessitates a healthy outlet that allows the individual to purge intrusive feelings. Listening to sad music can help ease the intensity of …