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Make America(N Cinema) Great Again: The Rhetoric Of Nostalgia In Trump Era Cinematic Multiplicities, Courtney J. Dreyer

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation investigates the rhetoric of nostalgia in politics and popular Hollywood cinema during the Trump era. I argue that MAGA Cinema, the contemporary trend of reboots, remakes, and sequels related to properties from the late 1970s to early 1990s, both respond to and strengthen attachments to an imagined version of the 1980s. However, this illusory golden age more closely reflects the world as depicted in the cinema of the 1980s rather than the reality of American in the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Through a close analysis of David Gordon Green’s Halloween Reboot series, Top Gun: Maverick, and …

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 …

The Lying Woman: Avant-Garde Collaboration In Jo Harvey Allen's Alt-Country, Caitlin C. Grann

American Studies ETDs

Jo Harvey Allen is an artist, writer, and actress whose work is cited as transforming performance art in the 1980s. In this dissertation, I analyze the nature of Jo Harvey’s collaborative process, which spans over five decades, to better understand her positionality in avant-garde and alt-country genres. I argue that Jo Harvey’s collaboration is familial, gendered, and emplaced. My goal with this project is to intervene with literature on musicians and artists from West Texas, specifically Lubbock, through an expansion of the contributions of women. This dissertation is a product of my own collaborative efforts with Jo Harvey, as I …

Best Integrated Writing Spring 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. This is the first issue after a 5 year hiatus.

Book Reviews & Book Notes, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Foster, John T and Sarah Whitmer Foster, Calling Yankees to Florida: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Forgotten Tourist Articles; Foster, John T. Jr, At the Dawn of Tourism in Florida: Abolitionists, Print Media, and Images for Early Vacationers. by Jerald T. Milanich; Mcinnis, Tatiana D., To Tell A Black Story of Miami. by Porsha Dossie; Henderson, Clay, Forces of Nature: A History ofRorida Land Conservation. by Douglas Ponticos; Noll, Steven, ed., Writing for the Public Good: Essays from David R. Colburn and Senator Bob Graham. by Terri Fine; Book Notes: Martel, Heather, Deadly Virtue: Fort Caroline and the Early Protestant Roots of …

Paradise Is Dynamic: Florida's Changing Landscape, Thomas Chesnes

Florida Historical Quarterly

The following interview was conducted in the summer of 2020. Thomas Chesnes, the interviewee, is long-time professor of biology at Palm Beach Atlantic University in West Palm Beach, Florida. A native Floridian, Chesnes completed all of his degrees at the University of Florida in Gainesville (Ph.D., environmental engineering sciences/systems ecology/wetlands; M.S., environmental engineering sciences/estuarine systems; B.S., zoology). His research has focused on seagrasses, soil salinity, the Gulf killifish, the mangrove saltmarsh snake, the Atlantic red snapper, and all matters pertaining to wetlands, coastal habitats, and aquatic environments. For over a quarter of century, with numerous grants awarded (including a $50,000 …

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Who Are We?: Exploring American Identities, Nolan Weil

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

Framed as a question—Who Are We?—the book focuses on telling the stories of a handful of ethnic/national/racial groups that contributed significantly to the formation of the United States. In particular, the book revolves around the social, economic, legal, and historical contradictions that have confronted and continue to confront the American attempt to construct a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy, including a consideration of the forces arrayed against the American experiment. While the book does not tackle head-on the immediate cultural and political rifts currently on display in the United States today, it does take a hard look at many …

Negro Cloth: African American Textile Design History, Karen Baker

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

Negro cloth is American history. Filled with the contributions to free and enslaved African Americans, this history has gone untold. Even within the narratives and historical archives on African Americans' history with cotton, this conversation goes beyond suffering, pain, and separation. The research reveals how African Americans contributed to indigo and cotton agriculture, weaving, and manufacturing from 1745 to 1865. The historical and narrative research has revealed the buried history of African American textile history, the American Civil War in Federal Writers' Project: Slave Narrative Project. The narratives reveal that enslaved African Americans were weavers who carded, spun, dyed, and …

The Power Of Polish: Exploring The Impact Of Nail Adornments On Perceptions Of Attraction, Sara Demichele

Honors Theses

Understanding the significance of nail adornments in shaping perceptions of attractiveness and mate value provides insights into human behavior and preferences. In the current investigation, participants rated human nail length and color on physical attractiveness and partner desirability measures. Results revealed significant effects of nail length and color across different demographic groups. Medium-length nails consistently received higher ratings for physical attractiveness, cuteness, and partner desirability compared to short and long nails. White-colored nails were generally rated most attractive, while blue and black nails received the lowest ratings. Additionally, participants reported a moderate association between having manicured nails and feelings of …

Montana As Place Of (Un)Belonging: Landscape, Identity, And The American West In Bella Vista (2014), Najmeh Moradiyan-Rizi

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

The American West is not just a geographical terrain but a mythical construct that occupies a powerful place in the popular imagination thanks to myriad literary and artistic works that have presented the region through specific archetypes emphasizing its vast ruggedness, white masculinity, and unique Americanness. In recent decades, revisionist scholarly and artistic works, however, have attempted to offer more nuanced perspectives on the region challenging its assumed homogenous history and fixed and stable identity. In particular, women filmmakers have recast the region through multifaceted representations underlining its complexity, diversity, and transnational dimensions. This article analyzes Vera Brunner-Sung’s film Bella …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Course Design As Critical Creativity: Intersectional, Regional, And Demographic Approaches To Teaching Asian American Literatures, Thomas X. Sarmiento

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay offers a theoretical and reflective exploration of critically informed acts of creativity expressed in my course design for and teaching of Asian American literatures at a predominantly white, public land-grant, Midwestern university. I argue that teaching is both a creative and critical activity as it generates new ways of knowing and being through an assessment and curation of extant literary texts and scholarly discourses. Given my geographic, scholarly, and personal orientations, my course features intersectional, regional, and ethnically diverse perspectives that aim to queer what “Asian America/n” signifies. I hope my situated pedagogical insights inspire other scholar-teachers to …

David Henry Hwang’S Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography And Parody On Racial Stereotypes, Quan Manh Ha, Jacob Christiansen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization.

Geopolitics In Recent U.S. Professional Military Reading Lists, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Professional military reading lists have existed for a long time in the U.S. military and in other national militaries. They are frequently updated and intended to enhance the professional knowledge of military professionals in areas ranging from cultural awareness, ethics, leadership, international relations, military history and military operations, and areas of expertise considered essential to successfully executing the operations of their military service branch. These lists are prepared by the leadership organizations of these armed services such as the Air Force Chief of Staff, U.S. Army’s Chief of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations, and Marine Corps Commandant. Such readings are …

The Crusading Days Of Jackie Stewart: Evaluating The Development Of Safety In Motor Racing During The 1960s., Alex Twitchen

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

This article critically evaluates the contribution of Jackie Stewart in making motor racing a safer sport for competitors. It challenges the validity of the popular assumption that Jackie Stewart by himself developed a ‘culture of safety’ that transformed the sport. Instead, the role of other individuals are identified alongside the importance of three social processes. These processes are identified as the changing balance of power between different masculine identities, the development of commercial sponsorship and a growth in the coverage of the sport on television.

The development of motor racing from the 1960s onwards as a safer sport in which …

Book Review- Racing With Rich Energy: How A Rogue Sponsor Took Formula One For A Ride., James Miller

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Book Review: I Was A Nascar Redneck: Recollections Of The Transformation Of A Yankee Farm Boy To A Southern Redneck In The Golden Era Of Nascar And Beyond., Quinn Beekwilder, Daniel Dean

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …

Topological Tropology Of V.S. Naipaul’S Islamic Travelogues And Daniel Pipes’ Islamic History: Ahistorical Historicism, Md. Habibullah

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul’s (1932-2018) first Islamic travelogue Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1981) contains his experience of a visit from August 1979 to February 1980 to the four non-Arab Muslim-majority countries – Iran, Pakistan, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Similarly, his last Islamic travelogue Beyond Belief: Islamic Excursions among the Converted Peoples (1998) has a description of another visit to the same countries for five-month in 1995. Concurrently, Daniel Pipes (1949-), an American historian, published his doctoral dissertation, Slave Soldiers and Islam: The Genesis of a Military System (1981), which represents Islamic culture as the first instigator of …

Translating Diversity From Ralph Ellison To Kenzaburō Ōe, Raphaël Lambert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The purpose of this article is twofold: first, it endeavors to understand the vagaries of the notion of diversity as it travels from one national and political context to the next; and second, it shows how two major fiction writers and essayists have used that notion in their work and to what ends. The first part focuses on the work of Ralph Ellison, who put diversity at the heart of his reflection on what a truly democratic American society should be. Kenzaburō Ōe initially borrowed the notion of diversity from Ellison himself, but as the second part demonstrates, Ōe did …

Zora Neale Hurston: Claiming A Space, Judith E. Smith

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

No abstract provided.

This Sounds Like An Episode Of The X-Files: Analyzing How Twitter Users Interpreted The Covid-19 Pandemic Through The Lens Of Sci-Fi Television, Nicole Neece

Proceedings from the Document Academy

While science fiction has a long-standing habit of predicting future technologies, The X-Files’ focus on anatomical manipulations as a means of control resulted in a plotline that inadvertently mirrored the COVID-19 pandemic which occurred a few years later. The proximity to such a similar, real-world situation resulted in some audiences interpreting their own experiences through the framework of sci-fi television, demonstrating that the discursive environment crafted through the text of The X-Files is continually applicable to contemporary anxieties and paranoia even after the show finished airing. In this article, I argue that The X-Files’ critiques of real-world abuses of …

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Genres Of Labor: Wageless Work And The Aesthetics Of Stagnation, Martin A. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Genres of Labor identifies and explores a little-acknowledged fact about labor—that it appears to us in highly conventionalized forms that are subject to evaluation, appraisal, and interpretation. I call this appearance the “aesthetic” dimension of labor, and I show how it increasingly comes into view in the period since 1973, as a contracting economy pushes off work onto unwaged realms of human activity. In chapters on Andy Warhol’s The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days (2001), I demonstrate that literary texts participate in …