American Studies Commons^™

Under The Shadow Of The Awful Gallows-Tree: The Murder Trials Of Thomas Dula And Ann Melton As A Case Study In Gender And Power In Reconstruction Era Western North Carolina, Heather L. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a micro-history that explores everyday life on a small scale by tracing the common, if elusive lives of Thomas Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster, and the communities they lived in, to explore the culture in which they lived—and died. Reactions to the murder unleashed an outpouring of discourse embedded in broader, national debates concerning gender roles. The dominant cultural theme that emerged from the murder trials as reflected in middle-class newspapers maintained that true women did not kill and real men acted as gentlemen and defenders of women’s honor. The project mines a wealth of primary source …

The Pleasantly Problematic Nature Of J.D. Salinger's Glass Family Stories, Ceasare Joseph Filipelli

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The following thesis analyzes the problematic nature of J.D. Salinger’s principal Glass family stories (“A Perfect Day for Bananafish,” “Franny,” “Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,” “Zooey,” “Seymour: an Introduction,” and “Hapworth 16, 1924”) primarily by means of examining errors in narrative structure, complications in constructing a clearly defined sense of spirituality, and a lack of a functional organization between stories. I argue that although these components of Salinger’s Glass family stories ultimately prove to be problematic and account for inconsistencies within the overarching narrative, they are a product of experimentation with form and, as such, should be viewed positively …

Encounters With The American Prairie: Realism, Idealism, And The Search For The Authentic Plains In The Nineteenth Century, Jacob L. Vines

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Plains are prevalent among the literature of the nineteenth century, but receive hardly a single representation among the landscapes of the Hudson River School. This is certainly surprising; the public was teeming with interest in the Midwest and yet the principal landscape painters who aimed to represent and idealize a burgeoning America offered hardly a glance past the Mississippi River. This geographical silence is the result of a tension between idealistic and empirical representations of the land, one echoed in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie, Washington Irving’s A Tour on the Prairies, and Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the …

Big Game Cats And Defining Football’S Value: College Football’S Popularity, Controversies, And Expansion, Matthew T. Himel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis directly approaches intercollegiate football from a cultural perspective. The football’s popularity exploded during the Twentieth-Century. Television, merchandizing, and a national sporting culture are associated with this development. However, controversies often muddied the waters of that popularity. Football’s brutality, athletic scholarships, and controversies within athletics departments overshadowed the immense popularity of intercollegiate football. During the Twenty-First Century, several universities started new football programs. Two of which being Georgia State University and Southeastern Louisiana University. Given the context balancing popularity and controversy, the administrators demonstrated how the image of intercollegiate football has changed over the course of the past century. …

Las Vegas Paperboy, Matthew O'Brien

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

I’m an author and journalist who has lived in Las Vegas since 1997. My first book, Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas, chronicles my adventures in the city’s underground flood channels. My second book, My Week at the Blue Angel: And Other Stories from the Storm Drains, Strip Clubs, and Trailer Parks of Las Vegas, is a creative-nonfiction collection set in off-the-beaten-path Vegas. These two books grew out of my eight years as a writer and editor for Las Vegas CityLife alternative-weekly paper.

I enrolled in UNLV’s MFA creative-writing program in the fall of …

Claiming The Best Of Both Worlds: Mixed Heritage Children Of The Pacific Northwest Fur Trade And The Formation Of Identity, Alanna Cameron Beason

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The fur trade in the Pacific Northwest, a region encompassing Oregon, Washington, Idaho, the western half of Montana, and British Columbia, supplied the needed ingredients for the formation of a distinctive identity to form among the mixed heritage children born to indigenous women and men of the fur trade. This thesis examined how this identity formed in some the leading families of the time. The MacDonald’s, McKay’s, and the Tolmie’s all embraced both sides of their parental cultures and used them to create and defend their own sense of identity and community. Language was an important aspect of this new …

Transplants, Denise Weber

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

transplants is a body of poetry that joys in migration and grafting; in change and self-destruction; in cycles of survival and death; in resurrection and reincarnation. In this collection, I write of saints and prophets as regular people, faulted and accessible, transposed into the landscapes I’ve inhabited: from the deserts of Las Vegas and Mesa Verde in the U.S. to the coasts and jungles of Belize and Costa Rica in Central America. Through their eyes, one may find the profound within things overlooked, and the vulnerability of our mortal condition. transplants draws on not only stolen and transformed identities, but …

Understanding Myth And Myth As Understanding: An Interdisciplinary Approach To Mytho-Logic Narration, Sandra Bartlett Atwood

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

I wanted to see if there were points of overlap between the various accounts of creation found in folklore, philosophy and physics. In order to justify such a project, I initially considered literature from each of these disciplines regarding the necessity of interdisciplinary dialogue generally and specifically the need for both intuition and logic when considering how anything actually exists. Through my research and casual observation, I hypothesized that opposition seemed to be a universal characteristic of nature. I then looked at how each discipline has described fundamentally opposing pairs and created a list of primary features that those accounts …

The Lover's Cup, Kimberlee Relyea Guin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This documentary film, The Lover's Cup is the story of a former Naval Officer from World War II, Dr. Phillip Trapp, who took Marines into the battle of Iwo Jima and lived to see the flag being raised on Mt. Suribachi. This 55-minute film explores his life experiences before, during and following World War II. His first-hand experiences are used to illustrate the Social and psychological impact of the Great Depression and World War II and his journey to overcome his adversity and create positive changes in the world through his subsequent education and service at the University of Arkansas …

Intersectionality In Jane Eyre And Its Adaptations, Laurel Loh

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

During the almost 170 years since Jane Eyre was published, there have been numerous adaptations in many different mediums and genres, such as plays, films, musicals, graphic novels, spin-off novels, and parodies. The novel has been read in many different critical traditions: liberal humanist, historicist, feminist, and postcolonial approaches dealing with topics such as the problem of female authorship and consciousness. In addition, it has been read in terms of an ideological struggle based on race, class, and gender; xenophobia and imperialism; female labor politics; and genre issues, to just name a few. As literary critics have explored numerous themes …

Immigrant Labor In Contemporary Southern Literature, 1980-2010, Huseyin Altindis

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation project emerges from an interest in immigrant labor, the globalization of southern literature, and the ways in which laboring bodies, specifically those of food processing workers, casino workers and motel workers, are represented in contemporary literary and cultural productions. Literary and cultural productions about immigrants and immigrant labor aim to problematize and challenge the dominant perception of immigration and narratives of immigration that continue to perpetuate ideas of exploitation and alterity. In doing so, these texts contribute to the reconstruction of the U.S. South as a global region and to the liberation of southern literature from traditional conceptual …

Futures Of Football, Katherine Parsons, Brian Levinson, Kayla Turner

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

No abstract provided.

Reworking Status In Nfl Football Stadiums, Kyle Mcbrierty, Robbi Melvin, Kellie Walsh

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

No abstract provided.

Futures Of Football, Catherine Powell, Kalu Kalu, Meg Fortier

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

No abstract provided.

Futures Of Football, Kylie Vanburen, Bradley Gaffin, Cameron Price

CLAS: Colby Liberal Arts Symposium

No abstract provided.

Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi

American Studies Honors Projects

My project re-examines dominant historical narratives of Christopher Columbus and assimilation of southern Italian immigrants to the United States. Arguing that such narratives partly result from historic anxiety surrounding southern Italians’ unstable whiteness, I challenge masculinist, white-washed histories by centering and contextualizing a history of Italian immigrant garment worker and labor leader Angela Bambace (1898-1975). By weaving my own exploration of my Italian immigrant ancestors’ pasts throughout, I ultimately encourage other white descendants of European immigrants to explore their histories in a critical and loving way that "resurrects" histories without sanctifying historical figures or their white descendants to racial innocence.

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's...Cultural Anxiety? Using Detective Comics' Three Biggest Heroes To Identify And Explore Cultural Anxieties As Depicted Through Television, Jonathan Vander Lugt

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

This collection of essays uses the mythic nature of superheroes to examine and discuss specific cultural anxieties as they’re navigated and alleviated in superhero television texts. First, I examine the way that anxiety over feminism and the women’s rights movement manifested itself in Wonder Woman, the 70s television series starring Lynda Carter. Next, I use Smallville and its depictions of a teenaged Superman to explore its handling of anxieties over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Finally, I performed a content analysis of six different series of Batman cartoons to examine the way they respond to national concerns over …

Love, Sex, And Feminism: A Critique Of Fifty Shades Of Grey, Katherine Argo

Student Work

The Fifty Shades trilogy has captivated over 100 million consumers. What makes these books stand out among others is not the literary style but the underlying aspects. Readers discover that the plot and characters of Fifty Shades of Grey are altogether intriguing, familiar, and dynamic. It is at its core a story of deception, love, revenge, and redemption. However, there are negative aspects to the book that we as Christians need to push back against, and there are positive aspects that we need to reclaim.

Chinese, Russian, And U.S. Space Warfare And Defense Developments, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Creative Materials

Provides information on the historical development and evolution of Chinese, Russian, and U.S. military space programs from 1985-2015. Places particular emphasis on the multiple U.S. Government agencies involved in military space programs.

Citizenship Without Borders: Understanding Empathy And Domestic Direct Service As Powerful Approaches To Making Global Connections That Matter, Courtney Tielking

Honors College Theses

By unraveling a case study on Georgia Southern University's Alternative Break program, this research examines the relationship between empathy and globalization. Alternative Breaks are week-long trips, during University holidays, which facilitate and encourage direct service, immersion in a specific social issue, and guided reflection sessions. Four active Alternative Break participants and advisors were interviewed to outline accurately and depict their experience with culture-based Alternative Break trips. Their stories demonstrate an alternative to traveling abroad in order to achieve a sense of global citizenship. The research suggests that through empathy and direct service, one can become a global citizen without ever …