American Studies Commons^™

A New Canon: Dismantling Racist Exclusion In Opera And Paving The Way For Inclusive Representation, Kourtney J. Holmes

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document examines the exclusion of African American opera from the traditional Western operatic canon and standard performance practices within educational institutions and professional organizations. The narrow conception of opera as a European art form has obscured the contributions and cultural significance of works by pioneering African American composers. This study addresses this gap and elevates neglected histories by arguing for African American opera's artistic merit and contemporary relevance within the American operatic tradition.

Through musical and historical analysis of representative works from the late 19th/early 20th centuries onwards, I aim to illuminate the genre's unheard tales of struggle, identity, …

Voices From The Field: Black Women Who Have Successfully Transcended The Leadership Pipeline Into Superintendency, Brione A. Minor-Mitchell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Black women have a distinct journey within the realm of education, one that can only be fully comprehended and articulated by Black women themselves. However, even with their insights, not all readers will grasp the intense scrutiny Black women face when they strive for leadership roles, particularly in superintendency. This study aims to delve into the experiences of Black women who have risen to superintendency, examining the challenges they've encountered. It seeks to address four key questions through the lenses of Critical Race Feminism and Black Feminist Thought: What barriers do Black aspiring women leaders confront as they ascend to …

Adapting Traditional Flamenco Music For The Modern Marimba Artist, Gabriela Ordoñez Villalobos

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This document is a compilation of information and exercises for the percussionist to learn how to play Traditional Flamenco on marimba. The document contains a brief history of flamenco and the explanation of the elements of four different palos flamencos (subgenres) to introduce the marimbist to the basic musical elements and structure of each palos flamencos. It also includes musical exercises written specifically for marimba. These exercises are traditional components of authentic Flamenco music and can be used in performances as a soloist or as part of a Flamenco ensamble.

Flamenco music has three main elements: El cante, el toque, …

“Everyone’S Favorite Dead Girl”: Historical Crime Fiction And Postwar Policing In James Ellroy’S The Black Dahlia, Mauricio Ortiz Zaragoza

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis argues for the importance of crime fiction as a major literary genre with global reach. Taken as a whole, crime fiction acts as a vehicle for exploring macro-level questions of social structures, political-economic processes and power relations. Within that genre, I claim that James Ellroy is a key figure who writes at the intersection of the historical novel and literary noir. As the first work in his L.A. Quartet (1987-1992), The Black Dahlia fictionalizes the investigation of the city’s most famous unsolved homicide—the gruesome murder and mutilation of Elizabeth Short. The novel, however, uses the investigation as a …

The Extreme Rise Of The Fast Fashion Industry From Country To Country: Does Consumer Behavior Differ Cross Culturally Regarding Fast Fashion Between The United States And European Countries?, Madison R. Feuerbacher

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The apparel industry has various categories of fashion. One of these categories known more readily today as fast fashion. Fast fashion has gained immense global popularity over the past decade. The concept of fast fashion apparel involves producing vast amounts of product as quick as possible to sell to the consumer at an aggressively low price. It is important to understand this current phenomenon of the global rise of fast fashion as well as understand the devastating effects our environment is facing because of it. As the vocalization of the harmful effects of fast fashion have become more prevalent …

Gertrude Stein: Autobiography And Play, Ryleigh Thornton

Honors Theses

By using Gertrude Stein’s two autobiographies, this thesis attempts to examine the use and evolution of play in writing. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, play stands within the language and games that Stein invites her readers to engage in. By using Roger Caillois’ characteristics of play, Stein’s writing can be seen as different from the high, serious modernism at the time with writers like William Faulkner and T.S. Eliot. After the publication of Toklas, Stein reverted into a crippling writer’s block because she could no longer find interest in the world to think and write about. However, after …

“Caroline”: Deviance In Southern Women’S Poetry, Sage Aspyn Short

All Theses

Deviance in Southern women’s poetry can be characterized by uncertainty, religious images, and through the telling of stories often unheard of, forgotten, or erased, like racial and gendered violence. Glenis Redmond’s poetry in The Listening Skin and What My Hand Say both explore Southern womanhood alongside race, history, violence, illness, and legacy, among other themes and topics. In Caroline: Poems some deviances include religious metaphors alongside obsessive compulsive disorder, excessive cursing from a woman speaker, and historical graveyard musings. Critical texts about lyric theory and voice provide some background and historical significance to be used in this contemporary study and …

Numerical Variations In The Thoracic And Lumbar Vertebrae Within The John A. Williams Skeletal Collection, Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, Nc (Usa), Leanna Annette Sanford

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

This research is on how human variation can lead to the identification of remains based on skeletal variation. The data were collected by performing a morphoscopic trait study of the John A. Williams (J.A.W.) Documented Human Skeletal Collection at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, NC (USA). Morphoscopic traits are nonmetric traits, visually identified using the knowledge of osteology. The study was performed to study variation of the vertebral column, specifically focusing on morphoscopic traits of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae. The focus of this research is centralized on the presence of numerical variations in the vertebral column such as eleven …

The Black Press And Late Imperial Russia, Benjamin Pierce

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

For centuries, western observers had looked to Russia and seen a place fundamentally different from their home countries. In their accounts, Russia was distinctly oppressive, a state characterized by tyranny, barbarism, and Mongolian influence. But these accounts were faulty. They were written by merchants, diplomats, and explorers, wealthy white men who had never experienced the kind of repression they witnessed in Russia. When Black Americans looked to Russia, however, they saw a place fundamentally similar to the United States. Both countries were large, multiethnic empires driven by territorial acquisition and fueled by forced labor. By tracing the coverage of Russia …

“A Book Of Many Rooms”: Joshua Bennett As Personal Tour Guide Through Decades Of Spoken Word Poetry, Michael Baumann

Journal of Creative Writing Studies

Review of Joshua Bennett, Spoken Word: A Cultural History. Knopf, 2023. 304 pages.

Georgia Ghosts: History, Folklore, And The Roots Of The Southern Gothic, Katherine M. Mcdowell

Master's Projects

There is something quintessentially human about ghost stories, yet particular regions tend to be more powerfully associated with haunted folktales than others. One of the regions is the southeastern United States. In fact, these oral traditions appear to have influenced the area's best-known literary subgenre: the Southern Gothic.

Why is the South considered haunted? Are there particular qualities in historical events that make them more likely to engender ghost stories? What makes the South's folkloric spirits so powerful that they appear even in modern literature? Most of all, what connects the region's history and folklore with the Southern Gothic? By …

The Symbolic Capital Of The Neoliberal University, Chad Lavin

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The paper examines the concerns about the enduring value of liberal education in the broader context of a shift from a liberal to a neoliberal society. While so much literature on “the neoliberal university” tends to characterize neoliberalism as a hostile force invading the sacred space of the university, the knowledge comprising neoliberalism is in large part the product of research coming out of universities. Using the concept of symbolic capital to explore the role of university researchers in developing and consecrating neoliberal ideas, the paper argues that even in this era of heightened skepticism toward experts and expertise, university …

Charge The Cockpit Or Die: An Anatomy Of Fear-Driven Political Rhetoric In American Conservatism, Daniel Hostetter

Senior Honors Theses

Subthreshold negative emotions have superseded conscious reason as the initial and strongest motivators of political behavior. Political neuroscience uses the concepts of negativity bias and terror management theory to explore why fear-driven rhetoric plays such an outsized role in determining human political actions. These mechanisms of human anthropology are explored by competing explanations from biblical and evolutionary scholars who attempt to understand their contribution to human vulnerabilities to fear. When these mechanisms are observed in fear-driven political rhetoric, three common characteristics emerge: exaggerated threat, tribal combat, and religious apocalypse, which provide a new framework for explaining how modern populist leaders …

This Town Ain’T Big Enough For The Two Of Us: Western Genre Cinema Rhetoric Of The Twentieth Century And The Modern Alt-Right Movement, Lauren Samantha Bailey

Online Theses and Dissertations

This work uses Western genre cinema as a springboard for evaluating how alt-right political ideologies are absorbed by common, everyday people. Using the exploratory work of political journalist Andrew Marantz and employing his research of the alt-right movement as supporting material, it explores the dissemination of alt-right rhetoric in contemporary settings. Evaluating instances of hegemonic masculinity in John Farrow’s 1953 film Hondo and John Huston’s 1960 film The Unforgiven, alongside John Ford’s The Searchers, this work explores how filmic versions of masculinity have shaped characters to mimic and enforce social and societal systems that coincidentally adhere to alt-right ideologies. Hegemonic …

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

The Pop Culture Classroom: Advocating Education For The Digital Adolescent, T'Khiyah Trice-Wilford

Honors College Theses

The purpose of this research is to analyze visual mass media and its effects on adolescents' identity and their psychological, cognitive, socio-emotional, and moral development within educational settings. A particular emphasis is on how mass media has influenced adolescents since the turn of the century. Emphasis will also be placed on how ethnicity, sexual orientation, and gender identification are represented in these types of media. Furthermore, strategies and recommendations will be proposed as a response to this critical need during these formative years of adolescent development.

Georgia's Deportation Of Creeks And Cherokees: A Prelude To The Trail Of Tears, Sean Ahearn '24

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Sean Ahearn ’24, History major
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Edward Andrews, History and Classics

Navigating Global Capitalism: Identity, Ambivalence, And Resistance In Cultural Productions, Ahmad Bilal

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

I have navigated global capitalism in cultural productions that include selected short fiction of Rohinton Mistry, Michelangelo Antonioni's L'Avventura, Boots Riley's Sorry to Bother You , and Benedict Andrews' Seberg. In these works, I have explored resistance, marginality, mobility, and identity to reflect how capitalism transcends local boundaries to become a pervasive social system worldwide.

Two Worlds And In Between: Becoming Goth In The Virtual Spaces Of Tiktok, Marlie Unger

Honors Projects

This research explores how the initiation processes of goth subculture have changed with the introduction and implementation of social media. Using a textual analysis of social media content from TikTok, this research identifies themes present in the virtual community that provide greater insight about how someone becomes goth and the factors which influence the transformation. I highlight the importance of subcultural capital in its creation of a social hierarchy and the goth status of members which fall under the categories of "elder goth," "seasoned goth," and "baby bat." Furthermore, this research examines how commodification, education, and gatekeeping influence the lines …

American Absurd, Kelly Stolle

Theses

There is perhaps one line that separates the American mindset from all others in the world. That is the fascination with the American Dream. This dream, having existed since the creation of this nation, has guided almost all developments we have seen it undertake. The question that lingers, however, is what this “American Dream” actually is. How does one interpret freedom? Further, what is one to do with it? This work suggests that what fuels the American Dream is an absurdist philosophy that ripples through every aspect of American life. Utilizing the modernist literary movement, I will analyze 6 key …