Neighborhood Blogging: How Localized Websites Are Redefining Community,
2011
Fordham University
Neighborhood Blogging: How Localized Websites Are Redefining Community, Maryanne Engelbrecht
American Studies Senior Theses
In the last ten years, blogs have become an extremely popular and influential outlet for writing. Even more recently, there has been an influx in the creation of local, community blogs. These blogs focus on a particular area or neighborhood and serve as an interactive local newspaper for the community’s residents. These websites are unique in that those who frequently read and comment on them are not just members on an Internet community, but (in most cases) are also residents of a physical community as well. In his book, Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson determines that communities are social constructs, …
Beauty And The Barbie Doll: When Life Imitates Plastic,
2011
Fordham University
Beauty And The Barbie Doll: When Life Imitates Plastic, Alexandra Gaudio
American Studies Senior Theses
My project will consist of three major parts. I want to take a brief look at how the hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty in the United States have evolved over the past fifty years, since Barbie was introduced in 1959. Also, I will go through a history of Mattel’s Barbie doll, including the development of the doll and some of its many different manifestations over the years. Then I will use these two components to investigate the relationship between exposure to the doll and young women’s perception of beauty, as well as other potentially subconscious ideals they may internalize from …
Peter The Nurse And Teresa The Politician: Exploring Gender Norms And Discrimination In The Workplace,
2011
Fordham University
Peter The Nurse And Teresa The Politician: Exploring Gender Norms And Discrimination In The Workplace, Alex Filippo
American Studies Senior Theses
Due to gender socialization, people of today’s society expect males and females to be intrinsically different. Thus, many careers are dominated by a single gender. In my thesis I explore the consequences that those who are employed in professions that defy gender expectations, i.e. a male nurse and a female politician, deal with. It is common for a man in a female dominated profession to face discrimination. The converse is also true. However, the discrimination each person suffers differs according to his or her gender. The negative discrimination that for instance, a male secretary experiences is most strongly generated by …
Performing Femininity: Rae Bourbon And Christine Jorgensen Onstage,
2011
Fordham University
Performing Femininity: Rae Bourbon And Christine Jorgensen Onstage, Taylor Riccio
American Studies Senior Theses
Drag performers and transexuals exist on the margins of the two gender binary. By existing on these margins these performers use both their physical bodies and humor to lampoon and subvert the gender binary and broaden the understanding of how gender is performed. Two performers, Rae Bourbon, a female impersonator, and Christine Jorgensen, a transexual who became a performer, placed their marginalized bodies on the stage and by doing so they heighten the subversion and critique of gender inherent in their performances.Gender is a normalizing force that dominates human interactions. Kessler and McKenna open their work on gender with the …
There’S No Crying In Baseball: Feminization, Sport, And Spectacle In The All American Girls’ Professional Baseball League,
2011
Fordham University
There’S No Crying In Baseball: Feminization, Sport, And Spectacle In The All American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, Dan Murphy
American Studies Senior Theses
My thesis focuses on the All American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL). Specifically, I explore aspects of femininity within the league and why Phillip Wrigley, the league’s first owner, and other league owners chose to accentuate femininity. In my research, I focus on certain features of the league, such as the league’s beauty school, player’s uniforms, sexuality, and race. I believe these and other factors played a role in how the league decided to market itself to Americans. Additionally I focus on how different members of the media wrote about the league. In writing about the AAGPBL, journalists from local …
Early Black Migration And The Post-Emancipation Black Community In Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865-1871,
2011
Marshall University
Early Black Migration And The Post-Emancipation Black Community In Cabell County, West Virginia, 1865-1871, Cicero Fain
History Faculty Research
West Virginia’s formation divided many groups within the new state. Grievances born of secession inflamed questions of taxation, political representation, and constitutional change, and greatly complicated black aspirations during the state’s formative years. Moreover, long-standing attitudes on race and slavery held great sway throughout Appalachia. Thus, the quest by the state’s black residents to achieve the full measure of freedom in the immediate post-Civil War years faced formidable challenges. To meet the mandates for statehood recognition established by President Lincoln, the state’s legislators were forced to rectify a particularly troublesome conundrum: how to grant citizenship to the state’s black residents …
Violence, Statecraft, And Statehood In The Early Republic : The State Of Franklin, 1784–1788,
2011
Marshall University
Violence, Statecraft, And Statehood In The Early Republic : The State Of Franklin, 1784–1788, Kevin T. Barksdale
History Faculty Research
In December 1784, a small contingent of upper Tennessee Valley political leaders met in Washington County, North Carolina's rustic courthouse to discuss the uncertain postrevolutionary political climate that they believed threatened their regional political hegemony, prosperity and families. The Jonesboro delegates fatefully decided that their backcountry communities could no longer remain part of their parent state and that North Carolina's westernmost counties (at the time Washington, Sullivan and Greene counties) must unite and form America's fourteenth state.
Persistence: "My Grandmother's Eyes" And Other Memories,
2011
Marshall University
Persistence: "My Grandmother's Eyes" And Other Memories, Christine Fede Williams
Theses, Dissertations and Capstones
Persistence: “My Grandmother’s Eyes” and Other Memories is a collection of five essays based on the author’s life. “My Grandmother’s Eyes” depicts the difficult, but loving, communication between the author and her grandmother, who speaks Italian as a first language. “Christmas: A Journey” compares and contrasts the celebration of Christmas in the author’s Italian-American family and her celebration of Christmas as an adult. “Room in My Heart” describes the events leading up to a decision to adopt a child. “Renaming Oriental Avenue” follows three threads: the author’s relationship to the Monopoly game; the author’s study of the Japanese language and …
Sectarianism And Citizenship: Church And State Debates In Nineteenth Century New York,
2011
Fordham University
Sectarianism And Citizenship: Church And State Debates In Nineteenth Century New York, Sean Mcgonigle
American Studies Senior Theses
My senior thesis for American Studies, entitled “Sectarianism and Citizenship: Church and State Debates in Nineteenth Century New York,” examines the origins of Catholic integration into mainstream American Society, particularly by looking into the changing landscape in New York during the mid-1800’s. American citizenship was defined in terms of Protestant nationalism, and, as such, American institutions also had strains of American Protestantism. I contend that this American Protestant hegemony was challenged in New York by the growing presence of Catholics in the city. Through natural birth rates and immigration, the Catholic population in New York dramatically increased, and forced the …
Engendering Injustice: Drug Laws, Drug Economies, And The Marginalization Of Women In New York State,
2011
Fordham University
Engendering Injustice: Drug Laws, Drug Economies, And The Marginalization Of Women In New York State, Kate Mcgee
American Studies Senior Theses
On November 8, 1983, Elaine Bartlett left her apartment in Harlem, and headed to Grand Central Station. There, she met her boyfriend, Nate. They were headed to the Monte Mario Hotel in Albany. To any bystander, they may have looked like any other couple. But Elaine Bartlett knew different. That’s because she had a four-ounce bag of cocaine stuffed down the front of her pants. In 1983, Bartlett was a twenty-six year old woman with four children. A male friend, George Deets—although she knew him as Chris at the time—told her that if she delivered the drugs, she could earn …
From American Bandstand To Total Request Live: Teen Culture And Identity On Music Television,
2011
Fordham University
From American Bandstand To Total Request Live: Teen Culture And Identity On Music Television, Kaylyn Toale
American Studies Senior Theses
Because television succeeds or fails based on its ability to attract an audience large enough to entice advertisers, this project will operate under the assumption that popular television conveys some important cultural attributes of both its creators and its audience. American Bandstand and Total Request Live (TRL) each presented the most popular music of the day in ways that drew massive audiences from America’s youth, between 1952-1989 (Bandstand) and 1998-2008 (TRL.) I will treat these and related shows as venues through which to view American youth culture. The music itself adds an exciting component to the project: as music changed, …
Download This: Artist Development And Interconnectivity In The Internet Age,
2011
Fordham University
Download This: Artist Development And Interconnectivity In The Internet Age, Geoffrey Johnson
American Studies Senior Theses
The advent of internet media distribution has profoundly changed the way most people consume music and experience artists. Outlets such as Myspace, YouTube, Twitter, and peer-to-peer downloading networks have made music and artists more accessible than ever before. These changes have come largely at the expense of the traditional music industry model of distribution. My thesis proposes that these new media have radically redefined what it means to be a developing artist. Specifically, these media empower artists with the ability to circumvent music industry oversight while providing them with tools of self-promotion to autonomously construct a fan-base. My thesis will …
So You Think You Know Dance?: Popular Dance And Cultural Identity On Television,
2011
Fordham University
So You Think You Know Dance?: Popular Dance And Cultural Identity On Television, Eleni Koutroumanis
American Studies Senior Theses
Dancing has reached new levels of popularity in America due to its publicity in new television shows over the past seven years. These shows have changed the image and ways of dance world, but more importantly the shows have brought dance into the Public Sphere and allowed the excluded to comment on, and in a way join, the dance world. Furthermore, these shows are bringing forward commentary on subaltern counterparts of two levels. One is dance culture, and those who make dance what it is today, being acknowledged in a greater public. The other refers to subaltern counterparts of a …
Beyond The Storefronts,
2011
Fordham University
Beyond The Storefronts, Justin Wright
American Studies Senior Theses
In recent years, gentrification has had the ability to radically change the landscape of Spanish Harlem due to an increase in both public and private sector attempts to revitalize the aging and long ignored area. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the positive and negative effects of gentrification as they apply to El Barrio. To do this several key questions must be asked. Who are the gentrifiers? Who are the winners and the losers? What promises were made to East Harlem residents? Were these promises fulfilled? What do the ‘native’ residents fear most? What do residents enjoy …
Willa Cather [From Blackwell Encyclopedia Of Twentieth-Century American Fiction],
2011
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Willa Cather [From Blackwell Encyclopedia Of Twentieth-Century American Fiction], Melissa J. Homestead
Department of English: Faculty Publications
Willa Cather is known primarily for her novels representing the experiences of women immigrants on the Nebraska prairies in the late nineteenth century, but Cather’s 10 novels and scores of short stories’ produced over a career spanning 50 years actually range widely over space and time, from seventeenth-century Quebec to twentieth century New York. A social conservative who proudly identified herself as one of the backward-looking, her experiments with fictional form and her approach to culture nevertheless ally her with modernism. It is, perhaps, the depth and diversity of Cather’s body of work and the impossibility of reducing her achievement …
Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973,
2011
Macalester College
Can We Laugh? Jewish American Comedy's Expression Of Anxiety In A Time Of Change, 1965-1973, Emily Schorr Lesnick
American Studies Honors Projects
This Honors project is a site of intersection of my academic and activist interests in interrogating Whiteness, my social identity as a cultural Jewish American, and my creative passions in comedy performance. The tragicomic films The Graduate, Goodbye, Columbus, and Annie Hall of the 1960s and 1970s articulate the painful process of Jewish self- and group-definition in relation to dominant culture amidst fractures amongst Jews and external hostility and invitation. The collision of Jews’ long history of humor as a cultural practice and the turbulence and ambivalence of the post-World War II moment facilitated a space for Jewish …
Reading From The Heart Out: Chief Bromden Through Indigenous Eyes,
2011
University of San Francisco
Reading From The Heart Out: Chief Bromden Through Indigenous Eyes, Kimberly R. Connor
Public and Nonprofit Administration
This essay offers a re-reading of an American classic—Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest—that rejects the conventional interpretation, one which positions the white protagonist McMurphy as the secular iconoclastic hero bravely enacting an existential drama. Instead, this reading pursues an interpretation that explores the implications and ironies of Kesey’s choice to narrate his novel from the perspective of the Native American Chief Bromden. By choosing a traditionally marginalized member of society to offer a social critique, Kesey is able to redirect our attention away from an interpretation that focuses on the incoherent ramblings of a presumed schizophrenic and …
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 2,
2011
Sacred Heart University
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 2, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society
The Shanachie (CTIAHS)
No abstract provided.
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 1,
2011
Sacred Heart University
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 1, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society
The Shanachie (CTIAHS)
No abstract provided.
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 3,
2011
Sacred Heart University
The Shanachie, Volume 23, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society
The Shanachie (CTIAHS)
No abstract provided.
