Digital Commons Network^™

An Axe To The Funny Bone: Curated Instability And Horror-Comedy Intersections In American Storytelling, Samantha Box

Masters Theses

Funny. Terrifying. Subversive.

Horror-Comedy twists and bites at the intersection of two incredibly reactive genres— with both Horror and Comedy being well known for the political and social discourses they embody and reinvent through story. While prevalent in American popular culture, scholarly analysis of this hybrid space barely exists beyond a small number of Film Studies investigations. Despite this lack, Horror-Comedy works continue to be successfully produced. This thesis unpacks the vibrant relationship between fear and laughter in contemporary American storytelling through Horror-Comedy, maintaining a focus on structural dynamics and the audience-disarming results of simultaneously applying horror and humor to …

The Reception Of Neurodiversity Represented Within Netflix’S Wednesday, Anna Stevens

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This paper explores how neurodiversity is represented through popular media - particularly Netflix's show Wednesday - and aims to discuss the effects this representation could have in regards to how it's received by the public, as well as those who are neurodiverse.

Transpacific Rhizomatic Migration In Kyoung H. Park’S Mina: Settler Desire And Identity Formation In Korean-Latin American Literature In The U.S., Chase Kim

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

The Korean diaspora to the United States is a phenomenon that has long been analyzed for its sociocultural, political, and economic implications. However, generally ignored by scholarship of frameworks such as the transpacific is Korean-Latin American remigration to the United States. Korean migration to Latin America and this group’s subsequent migration to the US was motivated largely by economic factors such as the availability of Latin American agricultural labor in the mid-1960s and the growth of Korean-American professional communities during the 1980s. Situating this migration in a transpacific framework improves our understanding of settler colonial desire and identity formation. I …

The Power A Generation Holds: A Study On Students Generating Change In American Social Movements, Caroline E. Koziol

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

Social activism ebbs and flows throughout American history. In the contemporary period, high visual coverage of activism has contributed to frustrations over the apparent decrease in change despite perceptions of increased participation. Young activists in the classroom ask questions to learn from their predecessors. This paper focuses on answering, “How can students create sustained change through social activism?” The present work recenters activism in the role of students and higher education institutions, noting their potential for creating change through a formula for future activists to engage with. The proposed formula targets methods and theories to bolster success towards the cause …

“Wild Things Belong Outside”: An Ecofeminist Analysis Of Amy Greene’S Bloodroot, Karrah N. Davidson

Critical Humanities

Appalachian Literature has a canon of its own, one of which I believe Amy Greene’s groundbreaking novel, Bloodroot should be a more prominent part. The novel brings up important cultural as well as universal issues. Situating this work among relevant theory and scholarship allows us to think seriously about the themes that Green explores in the novel in a way that has not been done before. Additionally, I believe that there is important scholarly work to be done with the role of Appalachian Folk Magic in a world where some of these traditions and customs are dying out. Individuals within …

What Is Lost When Time Is Saved: Drawing In Collaboration With The Urban Periphery, Carmen Ribaudo

MFA in Visual Art

I pay attention to the overlooked spaces where land and industry meet, prompting me to wonder what can be gleaned in the oily and cracked urban periphery. With a focus on my hometown St. Louis, this industrial city is my subject matter. And so, I draw in a neighborhood bisected by a highway. I animate with sand near the river confluence on land preserved after a historic flood. I make my own bricks in this Brick City, setting up in locations of former terra cotta clay mines. I sit in the tension of what author Michael Martone calls the “midwestern …

Elizabeth Female Academy: A Historical Case Study Revealing Antebellum Mississippi's Role In Shaping The Southern Belle, Summer Cutrer Tierno

Dissertations

Historians and educational scholars have extensively examined the subject of women's education, resulting in a rich body of literature that traces its evolution over the centuries. Moreover, this body of work encompasses significant movements advocating for women's rights to education and the establishment of colleges specifically for women. Scholars have also analyzed the challenges women encounter in accessing educational opportunities, including societal norms, economic barriers, and institutional discrimination. Notable works highlight the contributions of key figures, such as Mary Wollstonecraft, who advocated for women's education in both historical and contemporary contexts. Overall, this comprehensive scholarship not only documents the advancement …

Race And Nation In Three Canonic Texts Of Puerto Rican Literature: Luis Palés Matos’S Tom-Tom Of Kinky Hair And Black Things, José Luis González’S La Llegada, And Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’S Cortijo’S Wake, Luis R. Galanes

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In this essay we propose a critical reading of three politically-charged canonic texts of Puerto Rican literature that uphold and vindicate an African heritage for Puerto Rican culture, highlighting their role in moving discussions about blackness at the center stage of debates about national identity and culture, and assessing their contribution to the emergence and development of an Afro-Puerto Rican identity and literature. These texts are: Luis Palés Matos’s Tom-Tom of Kinky Hair and Black Things, José Luis González’s La llegada; and Edgardo Rodríguez Juliá’s Cortijo’s Wake. Moreover, a debate about the racial background of the authors …

Haunting Pasts, Cancelled Futures: Polish And Argentinian Experiences Of Postdependency, Ewa Kobyłecka-Piwońska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The aim of this article is to compare Polish and Argentinian experience of democratic transitions of the 1980s and 1990s. Establishing new political and economic orders in both countries did not entail a change in their citizens’ post-dependent mentality. In the first part of the paper, a connection is drawn between Polish and Argentinian collective memories in line with the methodology of transcultural memory studies (Erll, Rothberg). The post-dependent condition is articulated twofold: through the remembrance of the disappearance (of the Jews, the victims of the Argentina’s state terrorism, the indigenous peoples), and through the confusion in grasping the sense …

Ghost Highway: De-Touring Albuquerque's Route 66, Madison A. Garay

Art & Art History ETDs

Route 66 was a U.S. Numbered Highway stretching from Chicago, IL to Santa Monica, CA, rising to fame through music and popular culture. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, Route 66 has a troublesome twin life as Central Avenue, a highly politicized space where bodies are contested. In this thesis, the function of public arts and architecture of Albuquerque’s main street thoroughfare, Central Avenue, will be analyzed as visual devices of U.S. Highway 66, or known in popular culture as “Route 66.” I employ a critical Derridean framework through Mark Fisher’s theorization of hauntology and Gerald Vizenor (White Earth Ojibwe)’s theory of …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

Our Relentless Objectification Of Native Americans: As Exemplified By Louise Erdrich And Cherie Dimaline, Lena Kozubek

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

Indigenous communities relentlessly challenge the normalized commodification of their culture and beliefs. One way they actively address these oppressions is through storytelling. Their accounts educate readers and encourage them to re-frame modern perspectives and how stereotypes affect Native communities. Their stories are not a simple myth; instead, they serve as an active participant to combat actions that treat Indigenous people as an anomaly. We should treat Native Americans as human beings who invariably struggle with present-day degradations, commodification, and continual displacement. Indigenous authors reclaim their narrative by using their historical context and storytelling skills to dissect the parallels between fact …

Considering The Ethics Of Conserving American Art: White Nationalism And The Evolving Meanings Of Nineteenth-Century Genre And Landscape Painting, Evan M. Crocker

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the stylistic and conceptual qualities of American genre and landscape painting from the antebellum period and how these qualities acted in service to establishing white nationalism before the Civil War. The intricate and calculated system of typing in genre painting presented carefully crafted idealizations of quintessential Americans, defined by their whiteness and maleness. Landscape painters of the early- to mid-nineteenth century endowed their compositions with a sense of wondrous opportunity which justified and upheld westward expansion under Manifest Destiny. At the intersection of genre and landscape practices sits plantation paintings—specifically house portraits—in which the plantation serves as …

“To Prepare The Mind For Wonder”: Popular Science And Mass Media In The 1920s, Alexander Olson

Journal of 20th Century Media History

This article examines the creation and development of the Science Service, a 1920s initiative aimed at popularizing science through mass media. Founded by biologist William Ritter and newspaper magnate Edward Scripps, the wire service sought to disseminate accurate scientific information to the American public via newspapers, radio, and other popular media. While Scripps favored a commercially viable, accessible style that used entertainment to hook readers, Ritter envisioned science journalism as a tool for democratic education and intellectual empowerment. These conflicting philosophies created lasting tensions within the organization around how to address challenges such as sensationalism, editorial independence, and public skepticism. …

Belly Dance In Nebraska: Identity, Social Acceptance, And Perseverance, Alex R. Mohr

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

Belly dance is an art form as well as an often-contested practice due to tensions over dress, terminology and cultural practices within the belly dance community because the dance originated outside the United States. Additionally, there is often a need to prove the legitimacy of the dance to those outside its sphere because it is often stigmatized due to the early association with exotic dancing. Belly dance is inherently geographic, as seen through its places of origin, music and movement styles, global spread, practitioners, and spaces of practice. However, it has not been well-represented in geography, and there is also …

Not Just A Good Ole Boys Club: Studying The Personal, Performance, And Professional Roles Of Women In Bluegrass, Lydia Hamby

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates gender disparities in professional bluegrass music. Through a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative data from festival lineups and qualitative interviews with six professional female bluegrass musicians, this research provides a comprehensive view of gender dynamics in the industry. The quantitative analysis of eight major festivals in the Appalachian region reveals that women comprise on 8.87% of performers on average, indicating systemic exclusion. Qualitative data from interviews and participant observations at Blue Highway Fest explores the social and institutional practices that sustain these disparities, revealing roles such as the “singer girl” sex appeal, manager, and token female. This …

Beyond Just The Negros’ Art: Langston Hughes And The Poetic Renewal Of Black Musical Tradition, Samuel Adewumi

All Theses

Where do we begin the study of Black music in America? Is there even a beginning to it? As a poet, how does Langston Hughes contribute to its continuance during the Harlem Renaissance? These are some of the questions that shape the trajectory of this research. In it, I set a precedent for African orature in future studies of Black music in America. Essentially, I trace the survival of African orature and Langston Hughes’s role in the sustenance and utility of its style and themes in the early 20th century. Through it, I argue that Hughes’s poetry serves not as …

American Letters: Loren Eiseley

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

Except from: The Bird and the Machine, The Immense Journey (1957)

Sharp Knives, Dark Hearts: Class, Colonialism, And Rebellion On Anthony Bourdain's Bookshelf, Carl Cactus Warmuth

American Studies ETDs

Though often characterized as a celebrity chef, Anthony Bourdain achieved stardom from his lively writing rather than skills in the kitchen. As such, the sociopolitical importance of his life and work is greatly illuminated by his compulsive literary references. Through George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Émile Zola’s The Belly of Paris, Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and the personas of William S. Burroughs and Hunter S. Thompson, the tensions central to Bourdain’s legacy are unveiled. This thesis offers a portrait of Bourdain as a complicated figure of …

"Taking" Photographs: Settler Aesthetics In 20th Century Hawaiian Postcards, Elena Lee, Rebecca Koerselman

Celebration of Research

Due to colonization, Hawaii’s economic, political, and societal structure were changed to fit the white American standard. Colonization also caused a shift in their aesthetics, including the exclusion from participation in the creation of art, and poor visual representations of Hawaiian culture in settler art, which is known as “settler aesthetics.” Settler Aesthetics is a term and theory that seeks to define how a culture’s art and beauty has been influenced by settler colonialism. Many historians have analyzed this theory in Hawaiian literature, music, and visual art, but have left untouched the field of deltiology; the study of postcards. Though …

Freedom Lyrics, Lily Allan

The Civil Rights Movement (HIS/BLS 347) Zine Project

No abstract provided.

Controlling The Narrative: How The United Daughters Of The Confederacy Shaped Collective Memory Through Romance Novels, Karie L. Cobb

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While existing scholarship on the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reveals the immense influence the organization wielded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I assert that their legacy has had a broader and more insidious reach than previously believed. Through close analysis of two foundational romance novelists’ works published during the rapid escalation of the genre’s popularity, I contend that the rhetoric of the UDC shaped generations of Southerners as demonstrated through repetitions and parallels of the Lost Cause ideology found in UDC publications and sponsored materials within romance novels written by white Southern women who came of age …

Comic Book Superheroes Are No Modern Mythology, But They Are In A Vital Way Ancient Greek, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

Comic book superheroes have been widely discussed as modern mythology: in other words, as a modem version of what religious mythology was for cultures in which it was alive. I shall argue, first, that comic book superhero stories are not remotely an analogue to religious myths. As it happens, however, cultures for which religious mythology is alive do offer us other conceptual resources that we lack for fully understanding our own comic book superheroes. These resources belong to a different part of the general conceptual package which goes with cultural engineering of a living mythology. On the positive side, then, …

"Insanity" As An American Empire: The Canton Insane Asylum For American Indians, 1902-1934, Thanh Chi Nguyen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This graduate thesis involves a retelling of the history of the now defunct Canton Insane Asylum, built in the early 20th century located in Canton, South Dakota. It was America’s first federal psychiatric facility dedicated exclusively for American Indians. The Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians is a touchstone whose microhistory reflects larger political and economic sentiments in both the state of South Dakota and in the United States writ large. Conceiving South Dakota, as first and foremost a white settler society erected on land forcibly wrested from American Indian people, the asylum played an important economic development role and …

Hold Fast The Rope Of God: Space, Authority, And Speech In Muslim Prison Narratives, Basit Kareem Iqbal, Walaa Quisay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Scholarship about Muslims in prison has been overwhelmingly dominated by security studies’ radicalization thesis and by a superficial reading of incarcerated Muslims’ “religious resilience.” Such approaches caricature the force of Islam in prison and indeed in Muslim prison narratives. This essay draws on interviews with survivors of prisons in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Syria in order to develop other terms for analysis. Across our textual and ethnographic engagements, we read for varied permutations of carceral space, formations of religious authority, and an intimate (witnessing) relation between speech and violence. Muslim prison narratives see a broad emphasis on the …

Terrorists, Spies, And Diplomatic Crises: The Birth Of Morocco’S Multimedia Prison Literature, Brahim El Guabli

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article captures the literary shift that accompanied the transformation of the nature of political imprisonment in Morocco in the last twenty years. Focusing on the new victims of state violence, who fall within two categories: prisoners accused of terrorism and those accused of heinous sexual crimes, this article argues that the emergence of these new criminal profiles has led to the establishment of a transnational “Multimedia Prison Literature” (MPL). Drawing on the cases of Ali Arras, a Belgian-Moroccan whom Spain delivered to Morocco for terrorist charges, and Mohamed Hajib, a German-Moroccan citizen whom Germany extradited to his country of …

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Winter 2025, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the Down The Bay Project.

Recognizing Speculative Literature: Conceiving Identity In The Archives Of Enslavement, Gabriella Greco

Theses and Dissertations

One of the key problems of the archive of enslavement, borne out of the violent erasure of enslaved identities, is the struggle to reconstruct and honor those lost identities. Recognizing Speculative Literature: Conceiving Identity in the Archives of Enslavement investigates postcolonial archival processes and the resulting documents to identify a spectrum of speculative literary genres that can be used to supplement traumatic archival erasures, often of female voices and identities, to further understand the power dynamics. To clarify, I use the term ‘speculative literature’ here to refer to a mode of literature that relies on the few fragments that may …

Folklore And Region In Actual Play Podcasting: An Interview With Clint And Griffin Mcelroy, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth

Art Faculty Publications

The article focuses on the rise of "actual play" podcasts like The Adventure Zone, which use tabletop roleplaying games as a medium for storytelling. Topics include the show's engagement with Appalachian folklore, the emotional depth of its narrative themes such as memory and loss, and its representation of West Virginia's cultural landscape.

Introduction: Beyond Hollow Materialism, Jasper Waugh-Quasebarth, Zada Komara

Art Faculty Publications

This introduction to the special issue, “Transformative Approaches to Materiality in Appalachian Studies,” provides theoretical background and examples that demonstrate applications of new material culture and materiality theory to key Appalachian studies themes. It offers new directions for the study of material entanglement in social relationships by reviewing the history of material culture studies in the Appalachian context, fundamental theoretical propositions emerging from the “material turn” in social theory, and examples drawn from ethnographic and archaeological research into the patterns of use of material culture in the timber country of West Virginia and coalfields of eastern Kentucky. Finally, this introduction …