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Troubled Past, Golden Opportunity: Public Memory And Memorialization At The University Of Southern Mississippi, Hannah E. Arnold
Troubled Past, Golden Opportunity: Public Memory And Memorialization At The University Of Southern Mississippi, Hannah E. Arnold
Honors Theses
This thesis argues that The University of Southern Mississippi (USM) consciously chooses to present historical narratives in its history in ways that best enhance the university’s image. Examining the narratives of M.M. Roberts and Oseola McCarty using the theoretical frameworks of public memory and collective memory study reveals that the way they are memorialized within university history include both conscious and subconscious silences that impact how they are remembered by the public. This thesis identifies gaps within these two historical narratives and shows how these gaps were influenced by factors designed to enhance the university’s public image. Overall, the public …
Embattled Learning: Education And Emancipation In The Post-Civil War Upper South, Lucas Somers
Embattled Learning: Education And Emancipation In The Post-Civil War Upper South, Lucas Somers
Dissertations
This dissertation examines the establishment of schools for and by formerly enslaved African Americans in Kentucky and Tennessee in the decade after the Civil War, analyzing the different individuals and organizations that supported or opposed those efforts. Members of Black communities strove to secure an education for children and adults while doing everything in their power to maintain control of those schools. Widespread poverty, racism, and uncertain political status necessitated that African Americans accept help from outsiders, especially from teachers and agents sent by the federal government and northern benevolent associations. The central argument is that the ultimate failure to …
Higher Command: An Examination Of African American Leadership In The Vietnam Era, Amanda Abulawi
Higher Command: An Examination Of African American Leadership In The Vietnam Era, Amanda Abulawi
Master's Theses
Since the founding of the United States, African Americans have sacrificed their lives to uphold the nation’s democratic ideals, all while being denied equal access to voting, education, employment, and housing rights at home. Military service appealed to many African Americans who hoped it would lead to social and economic advancement for themselves and their race. Despite African American military participation throughout the nation’s history, these soldiers were treated as outsiders through segregated units and often relegated to non-combative duties, until the Vietnam War. This was the first major conflict in which African Americans had been deployed in large numbers …
Recognizing Race: The Impact Of Twentieth-Century Feminist Movements On Race Relations In West Germany, Lindsey Stobaugh
Recognizing Race: The Impact Of Twentieth-Century Feminist Movements On Race Relations In West Germany, Lindsey Stobaugh
Master's Theses
After World War II, many West German women had a difficult time coming to terms with the atrocities that the National Socialist leadership committed during that war, as well as their own participation in the Party. Discussions of the roles of women within twentieth-century society began to grow in West Germany as the new women’s movement (die Neue Fraenbewegung) emerged from 1960s student protests. This movement included primarily middle-class white German women. They often dismissed their participation in Party racism by framing themselves as victims of a patriarchal regime. As German women discussed these matters, they ignored the …
Cultivating Spaces For American Citizenship In Pauline Hopkins’S Contending Forces, Jonathan Puckett
Cultivating Spaces For American Citizenship In Pauline Hopkins’S Contending Forces, Jonathan Puckett
Honors Theses
Rediscovered through archival recovery in the late 1970s, Pauline E. Hopkins (1859-1930) was an African American author, journalist, and activist at the beginning of the twentieth century. In Contending Forces: A Romance Illustrative of Negro Life North and South (1900), Hopkins’s African American characters craft spaces, both sacred and secular, where they can freely exercise their citizenship in the Jim Crow era. As Hopkins utilizes the sentimentalist genre to portray realistically life at the turn of the century, my thesis highlights the historical and literary significance of sacred spaces like Boston’s black Baptist churches. I also review two minor characters …
A Historical Analysis Of Non-Normative Embodiment Through The Lens Of Frankenstein’S Creature, Ashley H. Hobson
A Historical Analysis Of Non-Normative Embodiment Through The Lens Of Frankenstein’S Creature, Ashley H. Hobson
Honors Theses
A trend to historicize the field of Disability Studies has emerged in recent years. However, little research has been done to place different societies and generations in conversation with one another. This thesis will utilize various adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein in order to explore shifting anxieties concerning non-normative embodiment through the vessel of the Creature. I examine the Creature’s changing physical form next to scientific and medical literature of the period to explore connotations of disability and otherness within that society. I consider the manifestation of anxieties towards non-normative embodiment through Mary Shelley’s 1831 Frankenstein, James Whale’s 1931 …
The Rebel Made Me Do It: Mascots, Race, And The Lost Cause, Patrick Smith
The Rebel Made Me Do It: Mascots, Race, And The Lost Cause, Patrick Smith
Dissertations
Public memory is commonly tied to street names, toponyms, and monuments because they are interacted with daily and are often directly associated with race, class, and regimes of power. Mascots are not thought of in the same manner although they are present as part of everyday life. The childish or sometimes comedic nature of the mascot discounts it from many considerations of its influence, symbolism and history. Nonetheless this research focuses on the term “Rebel” as a secondary school mascot. The term possesses the trappings of race because the American vernacular ties the word to the Confederate States of America …
Nick Fury, Will Smith, And Other Black Authority Figures Breaking The Racial Contract In Popular Films Of 2000-2015, Solai N. Wyman
Nick Fury, Will Smith, And Other Black Authority Figures Breaking The Racial Contract In Popular Films Of 2000-2015, Solai N. Wyman
Master's Theses
Film is arguably a model of reflection and reinforcement of cultural, social, and political values of audience members. Therefore, the images and messages displayed in films are of importance. In this study, film is analyzed in order to determine if Charles Mills’ racial contract is depicted in popular films of 2000-2015. The Racial Contract (1997) suggests that only some people, specifically white people, agree to form a state in which their absolute privileges in the political, economic, and social arenas are guaranteed by virtue of being white. This theory was used to understand the role of black people in American …
Cacophony: Stories, Michael J. Goodwin
Cacophony: Stories, Michael J. Goodwin
Dissertations
Cacophony: Stories was written over three years in the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. The collection depicts middle-class characters disconnected from relationships, careers, and family. Each story explores disillusioned characters forced to confront a major moment in their lives from a bleak setting. Characters find varying degrees of success in forging an identity in the face of flawed existence. This existence lingers, producing an apathetic lifestyle where characters must act. These characters act passively through the narrative and the collection sees them forced to break away from their malaise. The collection aims to explore austere suburban …
The Secret Identity Of Race: Exploring Ethnic And Racial Portrayals In Superhero Comic Books, Lowery Anderson Woodall Iii
The Secret Identity Of Race: Exploring Ethnic And Racial Portrayals In Superhero Comic Books, Lowery Anderson Woodall Iii
Dissertations
Does race exist in comics? And if so, what do those characters tell us about how one of the largest fiction producing industries in the country has explained minority relationships to its millions of readers? This study took a close look at three of the most successful comic book characters of all time (Batman, Superman, and The Black Panther) and examines how each exemplifies a position that the comic book industry has taken on race over the years. Using a counter-narrative analysis informed by the strategies of Critical Race Theory and post-modernist thought, the racial messages lying beneath the surface …