American Studies Commons^™

Writing White Women: White (Supremacist) Feminism In American Literature And Culture, Post Suffrage To Post Hillary (1920–2020s), Jannell C. Mcconnell Parsons

Theses and Dissertations--English

Recent critical texts by Jessie Daniels, Mikki Kendall, and more frame the histories of mainstream white feminism in ways that highlight its ongoing complicity with white supremacy and its maintenance of racist structures and systems. In conversation with these current scholarly as well as mainstream cultural conversations about white feminism that have been happening with more frequency since 2016, this project turns to post-suffrage narratives of white womanhood to historicize the modern narratives we tell about feminism’s history. Each chapter of this project considers a 1920s or 1930s literary narrative alongside current literary and cultural narratives as I explore the …

The New Straightjackets: How Prisons Have Come To Be The Mental Illness Solution, Parker A. Wolfe

Soaring: A Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper examines the current mental health resources that are available in prisons, as well as the correlation between deinstitutionalization and the rise of individuals struggling with mental illness within prison walls.

Positioning Paperback Books As Americana: Cultural And Historical Impacts Of The Wadle Pocket Book Collection, Jake Volk

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The first book in the form of a codex was bound around 300 BCE, but the earliest material used to record writing appeared around 3000 BCE. From these documents recording proto-writing of human history, people have sought to analyze and preserve writing, which continues as a contemporary work of scholars across multiple disciplines to form the field of the history of the book. As the book changed physical form from illuminated manuscripts on vellum to cheaply produced, paperback books, which appeared in the early 1800s, historians have documented these changes; however, more analysis is needed to categorize and interpret how …

Fugitive And Sumud Encounters: Geographies Of Black-Palestinian Transnational Refusal, Anna Babboni

Scripps Senior Theses

“Fugitive and Sumud Encounters: Geographies of Black-Palestinian Transnational Refusal” explores the parallel practices of Palestinian sumud, a “political-psycho-affective subjectivity” or philosophy of refusal that roughly translates to “steadfastness” from Arabic, and Black fugitivity, the practice by which Black folk find freedom and escape from the continual construction of Blackness as fungible object, rooted in histories of maroonage. Both practices of refusal are historically and spatially contingent, responding to conditions of settler colonial and anti-Black enclosure. However, when put into conversion, sumud and fugitivity are strikingly familiar in their methods of refusing liberal enclosure. In their overlap, sumud and fugitivity lay …

Rainbow-Washing The Occupation: A Critical Examination Of Israeli Claims To Feminist And Gay-Friendly Modernity, Melia Oliver

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I employ a queer analytic to uncover how Israel weaponizes claims to feminist and gay-friendly modernity—referred to as pink- and purple washing, respectively—as forms of propaganda to justify their occupation of Palestine. Pink- and purplewasing narratives rely on racist and Orientalist conceptions of Palestinian “barbarism” which Israel reproduces in order to bolster their settler colonial project. I analyze pink- and purplewashing propaganda as symptoms of larger homo- and femonationalist formations which stem from and further reinforce settler colonialism. I address allegations of “weaponized rape” during and after the events of October 7th and argue that this form …

Weavers And Deceivers: Spiders In Le Guin’S Writings, Kris Swank

UKL: The Journal of Ursula K. Le Guin Studies

The spider was one of Le Guin’s principal symbols which she used in her novels, short stories, poems and essays. Unlike Tolkien’s spiders—which are uniformly huge, black, predatory, devouring and feminized— Le Guin’s various spiders, rather, exhibit an interplay of male and female, dark and light. Le Guin’s male spider figures largely derive their characteristics from negative medieval European perceptions, while her female spider figures are largely derived from positive Native American legends of Spider Woman, the mother and nurturer of humankind. Among her multiple interpretations of the spider is also a naturalistic one of the web-spinner and innate artist, …

Power Dynamics And Oppression: Analyzing Structural Control In Suzanne Collins’S The Hunger Games, Hannah Micciolo

Capstone Showcase

The Hunger Games is a popular novel universe that describes a totalitarian dictatorship through the lens of the oppressed. Through the book, the viewer is given insight into how Panem operates the way it does even though the majority of its citizens are oppressed by the minority in a much more obvious manner. However, within modern society, the tactics used by the oppressors are much more ambiguous and distorted. This essay will explore the structures put in place by the Capitol in tandem with modern examples to mirror each other and increase awareness of the the tactics governments use both …

Ix Jornadas Internacionales De Textiles Precolombinos Y Amerindianos / 9th International Conference On Pre-Columbian And Amerindian Textiles, Carolina Orsini , Editora, Federica Villa , Editora

Zea E-Books Collection

Milan, 19-22 octubre de 2022: Textiles arqueológicos de los Andes centrales – Archaeological textiles from the Central Andes / Textiles arqueológicos de los Andes sur - Archaeological textiles from the Southern Andes / Iconografía y simbolismo - Iconography and Symbolism / Estudios de colecciones - Collection Studies/ Conservación – Conservation / Textiles etnográficos - Ethnographic Textiles

Marina Pugliese / Carolina Orsini / Federica Villa / Daniela Biermann / Amy Oakland / Lizbeth Pariona, Carlos Rengifo y Moisés Tufinio / Rommel Angeles Falcón / Lourdes Chocano Mena / Rommel Ángeles, Susana Abad y Janet Oshiro / Lucrezia Milillo / Sabine Hyland …

Uncoverings: The Research Papers Of The American Quilt Study Group - Volume 45 (2024), Joanna E. Evans, Sarah L. Schameloh, Michelle M. Marciniak, Kristin Barrus, Cathy Erickson, Mary Fons, Sharon Fulton Pinka, Kathleen L. Moore, Terry Tickhill Terrell, Nancy Curry Bavor

Uncoverings Journal

Contents

Preface

Lapis Prints: A Forgotten Beauty, Sara L. Schamerloh and Michelle M. Marciniak

Ways of Seeing the Rotary Cutter: An Interdisciplinary Examination of Technology’s Impact on Quiltmaking, Kristin Barrus

Southeast Pennsylvania Papercut Quilts: Mary Worrall Parry’s Quilt and Related Appliqué Quilts, 1844 to 1852, Cathy Erickson

Who’s That Girl? The Shifting Identity of Use-Quilts in the Fine Art System, 1900–2024, Mary Fons

William Pinch and the Rainbow Quilt Block Company (An Update), Sharon Fulton Pinka

The Mystery of the Harlequin Star Quilts: Finding and Naming a Previously Unidentified Regional Design (An Update), Kathleen L. Moore

Peacock among the Ruins …

The Aesthetics Of Environmental Risk In Paolo Bacigalupi’S The Windup Girl And The Water Knife, David Schwartz

Theses and Dissertations--English

Any work of environmentally oriented fiction that seeks to represent the wide-reaching effects of climate change is faced with the problem of scale. These texts must render visible change which is at once ubiquitous and microscopic, along with the cascade of side-effects generated in the wake of rising temperature, rising sea levels, and winnowing biodiversity. In short order, these texts must fully imagine what it means to live within the modern global risk society. Borrowing this sociological model from the late Ulrich Beck, I analyze the literary work of Paolo Bacigalupi, one of the foremost authors in the growing genre …

The New American Conspiracism: The Conspiracy Mentality And The Consequences For American Democracy, Jennifer M. Seech Seramur

Wayne State University Dissertations

This research is at the forefront of a developing field of inquiry into the psychological impacts of an American media environment plagued with mis- and disinformation. Many have suggested that we have entered a "post-truth" era and this phenomenon will have disastrous consequences for the stability of American democracy. However, few have empirically tested these notions. This research seeks to fill part of this gap in knowledge by analyzing a survey with over 8,000 participants to bring empirical evidence to bear on these assertions. Through an assessment of the effects of a conspiracy mentality (or one’s proclivity to endorse and …

Shades Of Justice: Exploring Colorism In The Hispanic Community And Its Legal Battle For Equity, Christel A. Infante

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis focuses on the racial disparity within the Hispanic and Latinx communities as injustices exist within the community and the workplace. Racial disparities in the United States have been a persistent and deeply rooted issue that has plagued the nation for centuries. Despite significant progress in civil rights and anti-discrimination legislation, disparities in areas such as education, employment, and criminal justice persist. Understanding the factors contributing to these disparities is essential for addressing systemic inequalities and fostering a more just society. The analysis of this thesis primarily focuses on the cases and ramifications of Hispanic persons within the workplace, …

Religious Iconography, Expressionist Lighting, And The Antihero's Spiritual Journey In Marvel's Daredevil, Savannah L. Pruett

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In Marvel’s Daredevil (2015), Matthew Murdock undergoes different phases of an antiheroic spiritual journey as his faith in the judicial system and his Maker is tested by evil in Hell’s Kitchen, New York City. This thesis will dig deeper to reveal how the Daredevil series uses purposefully designed religious iconography and expressionist lighting to tell the story of Matthew Murdock’s antiheroic spiritual journey across three seasons. This thesis aims to prove that Daredevil is a complex and thought-provoking franchise that analyzes what it means to be an antihero, including the moral and ethical lines one is willing to cross to …

So Much Courage: Hemingway, War, And Rape, Tracie Nicolai

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Weaving together Ernest Hemingway’s biography and literature with her own life, Tracie Nicolai analyzes the impact of Hemingway’s life and literature in the classroom and outside of it. War trauma is analyzed in relation to rape and its lasting effects, paralleling the impacts and the traumas that shape our philosophies and our lives. Nicolai explores how Hemingway wrote of war and his own injuries, and she discusses the distance evident between his own life experiences and his subsequent fiction writings. In separate vignettes in each chapter, Nicolai writes of her experience as a rape survivor and the lasting impact on …

“I Know What Nothing Means”: Nostalgia, Hope, And The Postmodern Search For The Sublime, Kathryn L. Donati

Theses and Dissertations

Amid simultaneous crises of self, nation, digital citizenship, global health, climate change, and socio-political polarization, to name but a few of the catastrophes that seem to define life in the global West in the twenty-first century, where do we find hope? Do we find it at all? Is there any hope to be found? These are the questions that serve as the genesis for this undertaking in which I locate the origin of these crises far before the events of the 2016 and 2020 elections, far before even the panic of Y2K. I begin my examination of hope in contemporary …

There Is No Substitute For A Lifetime: A Study Of Metaphor And Linguistic Autonomy In The Lives And Works Of Selected American Poets, Richard Tony Thompson

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Metaphor is not only figurative language, but also a way of understanding reality and creating truth. This study describes how selected American poets, including Tom Andrews, Patti Smith, and Natasha Trethewey, engage the concept of creation through metaphor in their poetic and autobiographical writing. Theories of signification, symbolism, and metaphor as defined by philosophers of language, including George Lakoff, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Roman Jakobson, are combined with complementary theories from philosophers of poetry, including Wallace Stevens, Jorie Graham, and Federico García Lorca, and used as a lens through which to view the agency of the language user as a …

There And Back Again: Nick Adams' Masculine Journey From 'Indian Camp' To 'Fathers And Sons.', Michael F. Basista

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

In the following paper, I discuss how Ernest Hemingway’s hyper-masculine persona influences how his male characters are interpreted by some readers. More specifically, I take the character of Nick Adams and look at him as being a representation of one of Hemingway’s male characters that diverges from the hyper-masculine persona that Hemingway had created for himself. To do so, I focus on eight of Hemingway’s short stories, with those being “Indian Camp,” “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “Ten Indians,” “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Battler,” “Cross-Country Snow,” and “Fathers and Sons.” The development of Nick Adams …

Song Analysis - Final Project For The American Musical Experience, Agustina Checa

Open Educational Resources

Assignment designed as a final project for the undergraduate course MSH245: The American Musical Experience at Lehman College. This course surveys different musical expressions that emerged in the United States as well as the historical, social and technological contexts framing their popularization.This assignment asks students to analyze a song of their choosing performed by an American artist and to follow specific requirements in their study of this piece which include: historical and social contextualization, analysis of style, influences and lyrics, as well as the elaboration of a "listening guide" to fully appreciate the composition. Students are given the …

Listening To The Voices Of America, Kathryn J. Edin, Corey D. Fields, David B. Grusky, Jure Leskovec, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Kristen M. Olson, Charles Varner

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

We make the case for building a permanent public-use platform for conducting and analyzing immersive interviews on the everyday lives of Americans. The American Voices Project (AVP)—a widely watched experiment with this new platform—provides important early evidence on its promise. The articles in this issue reveal that, although public-use interview datasets obviously cannot meet all research needs, they do provide new opportunities to study small or hidden populations, new or emerging social problems, reactions to ongoing social crises, submerged values and attitudes, and many other aspects of American life. We conclude that a permanent AVP platform would help build an …

The Regenarrative: How To Change The Story In Order To Change The Future, S. Rose Bigheart O'Leary

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Abstract

In the era of Climate Change, many are concerned that the end of the Anthropocene, or the end of the era of human life on Earth, is upon us. Western European colonialism and its subsequent systems (settler-colonialism, colonial-capitalism, and globalization - sometimes termed “neocolonialism”) have all been implicated in contributing to unsustainable behaviors linked to accelerating climate change. In searching for possible solutions, some have called for listening to Indigenous Peoples, citing ethics of sustainability found among many Indigenous cultures. However, the cultural products of settler-colonialism are still dominant in ways that do not allow for Indigenous worldviews to …