American Studies Commons^™

Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Book Review: The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy

“The Contributing Cultures Of Ancient Peoples At The Muscle Shoals”, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Writings

An article that addresses the ancient history of Muscle Shoals, Alabama with particular attention to the early cultures of influence, including indigenous tribes, such as the Cherokee and Chickasaws, and eventual European settlers of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic descent.

Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates

Graduate Masters Theses

The cultural and social history of America in the 90s is examined in this thesis by looking at the Disney Renaissance, a period of ten films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). This thesis illustrates how the animators were able to seamlessly incorporate important societal trends of the 90s into their films, portraying a changing world within their films. As they were creating a new style of the animated movie musical, they were creating works that connected to the audiences watching in new ways, by putting up a reflection of society within their films. The way that the …

Beyond A Little Italy: Italian Community Formation In Washington, D.C., Kathleen P C Millander

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the development of the Italian immigrant community in Washington, DC, from the early nineteenth century through the beginning of the Second World War. Unlike the dense ethnic enclaves that characterized Italian settlement in many American industrial and port cities, Washington never developed a recognizable Little Italy. Nevertheless, Italians in the nation's capital constructed a cohesive community through social, religious, familial, and economic networks that connected a geographically dispersed population.

Drawing on extensive original archival research, including oral histories, personal memoirs, parish records, newspapers, and manuscript collections, this thesis reconstructs the experiences of Washington's Italian immigrants and their …

Civilian Sustenance: Parcel Exchange, Household Provisioning, And Soldier Foodways In The American Civil War, Kathleen Migneault

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines parcel exchange between Civil War soldiers and the households and communities that continued to sustain them after military service removed them from ordinary domestic provision. Drawing on forty published collections of Civil War correspondence and diaries, it follows references to boxes, parcels, food, clothing, money, medicine, and useful goods across camps, hospitals, prisons, and home front networks. It argues that parcels from home were neither incidental sentimental tokens nor simple supplements to the ration, but a recurring practice of civilian sustenance shaped by affection, scarcity, infrastructure, and loss. The chapters trace the routes through which parcels moved, …

How Philip K. Dick Used The Unreliable Narrator To Transport Unwitting Acolytes, Michael Barros, Jordi Smith

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the use of the unreliable narrator to transport the reader into narrative worlds, specifically in Philip K. Dick's fiction. By exploring the phenomenon of narrative transportation and the role of emotions in engagement with fiction, we argue that Dick's use of the unreliable narrator significantly engages and transports readers into his narrative worlds. Subsequently, we contend that his belief in the fundamental reality of those worlds is effectively positioning himself as a gatekeeper and mediator between the narrative world and the real world, which sets him, in his mind, as a prophet, using fiction as a tool …

Ai And The Music Industry: Its Current Status And A Speculative Projection Of Its Evolutionary Trajectory, Rhett D. Morris, Clayton Rosati, Stefan Fritsch

Honors Projects

Music serves as one of society's biggest cultural outlets, allowing millions to share in what used to be a uniquely human form of expression. The commodification of music has built a huge industry full of companies and platforms that have used technology and property laws to shape music's relationship with the public. This study aims to look into the future to see how AI and its implementation could affect the structure of the music industry. To look into the future, this piece establishes two of the most pressing kinds of AI technology for the music industry and looks to contextualize …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Book Review: Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History Of The American South, Will Jones

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Ethics Under Siege: The Conflict In Tigray Through The Lens Of Just War Theory, Daniela Widya Purba

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

This research article explains the ethical principles of the conflict in Tigray based on the Just War Theory. By using the descriptive qualitative methodology, this research article draws data from secondary sources which includes; academic journals, news reports, as well as international legal instruments to analyze the moral trajectory of the conflict. This research begins with jus ad bellum, to assess Ethiopia’s government justification in declaring conflict within Tigray. While the government fulfilled the criteria of just cause and legitimate authority, the question stands on the ambiguous political intentions and the failure to enact peaceful alternatives before resulting in waging …

Presidential Visits As Foreign Policy Instruments: U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy In Trump’S Second Term, Atar Thaung Htet

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Through an analysis of President Donald Trump's October 2025 travel to Asia, this study investigates the consequences of U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy under his second-term diplomacy. The paper examines three significant diplomatic encounters—the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia, bilateral meetings in Japan, and the APEC Summit in South Korea—using a qualitative case study methodology based on role theory and foreign policy analysis. The results show that alliance-centered security cooperation, strategic balancing toward China, and selective economic engagement were U.S. Indo-Pacific goals. Through extremely transactional and bilateralized relations, presidential diplomacy allowed the United States to fulfill a number of foreign policy responsibilities, such …

West Coast Workshop To Southwest Institute, Hannah Marie Cerne

Art & Art History ETDs

This thesis considers Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico (originally established as Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, CA), and its contributions to collaborative printmaking. Originally founded in 1960 by June Wayne with Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian, Tamarind Lithography Workshop (the precursor to Tamarind Institute) revitalized lithography through structured collaboration between artists and master printers, alongside rigorous training programs. This thesis provides an institutional history of the workshop during its relocation to the University of New Mexico, highlighting its transformation into a university-based institute that integrated education and professional production. Using social and labor-based methodologies, this study analyzes how …

Review Of Supernatural: A History Of Television’S Unearthly Road Trip By Erin Giannini, Duane Ebesu

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

No abstract (book review)

Remaking The Red Death: An Interactive Fiction Post-Mortem, Kenton T. Howard

ELO (un)supervised 2026

This individual talk provides a post-mortem discussion of an interactive fiction game the author created, ReMasque of the Red Death, for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 5. The game is a web-based interactive fiction recreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Masque of the Red Death” built using ink and Inky, an interactive fiction scripting engine, with 2D art assets created in Sketchpad, a mobile-based digital drawing app. The game was produced entirely without the usage of AI tools. This talk will cover the initial ideation for the game, creating a basic prototype of the game’s core systems, …

Liberation Landscapes: Writing Freedom In A Black Geographies Classroom, Cornel Grey, Muna-Udbi A. Ali

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

On Culpability: When Ai Goes Wrong, Who Is At Fault?, David J. Mulder

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"I found the book so engrossing precisely because it forced me to sit in the discomfort of distributed blame, especially as someone who uses AI regularly."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­the novel Culpability from In All Things, an online hub that offers insight into maintaining and faithful and orthodox  Reformed Christian worldview while fearlessly engaging in  every aspect of contemporary life – until all is made new.

On Culpability

“His Huge Opponent Became Helpless”: Jiu-Jitsu In The American Press, 1900-1906, Jeff Shaw, Betsy O’Donovan

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Jiu-jitsu came to America at the turn of the 20th century, just as the Russo-Japanese war was focusing  world interest on Japanese culture and martial training. An analysis of more than 2,400 articles and  illustrations about the art from American newspapers during jiu-jitsu’s first years in the United States demonstrates the ways media framed jiu-jitsu in militaristic, political, racial, and gendered terms for an enthusiastic and curious public.

The Pope, American Politics, And The Battle For Tolkien’S Soul In The Twenty-First Century, Kelsey A. Fuller-Shafer

Journal of Tolkien Research

This essay considers the contemporary ramifications of the use of Tolkien’s works and personhood in the political and cultural dialogues of the United States. Tolkien’s fiction was recently cited by Pope Leo XIV, the first pope from the United States, in his encyclical letter in May of 2026 reacting to artificial intelligence, in the same era that tech billionaires are selecting names for their AI companies from Tolkien’s legendarium. These actors find themselves not just in a dispute about ethical usage of AI, but also as commentators on and subjects to the growing political divide in the United States, and …

Ethos: A Computational Framework For Material Culture Research, Chelsea L. Grafe

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Museum catalog records make large collections searchable, but they do not always preserve the reasoning behind the claims they contain. A record may present a quilt's identity as settled while leaving the reasoning behind that claim invisible, making it difficult for later researchers to check, question, or reuse. This project asks whether museum catalog data can be analyzed in a way that keeps each analytical claim connected to the evidence that supports it. To test this question, the project applies a material-first computational framework named Ethos. Ethos formalizes an object-centered inquiry sequence in which material dependencies establish where analysis begins …

Regarding World(S): A Review Of Elisha Cohn’S Milieu: A Creaturely Theory Of The Contemporary Novel (2025) And Daniel Wright’S The Grounds Of The Novel (2024), Katarzyna Bartoszyńska

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

World Literature According To Its Poster Children, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Some of the most influential pronouncements on world literature have been made by the kind of authors who are most likely to emerge as representatives of world literature once we agree on a definition, including Goethe, the young Marx, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and the distinguished signatories of the manifesto for a world-literature in French. Breaking out of this vicious circle by referring to the authority of pure theorists of world literature is not the solution, as this would only pull us into a new vicious circle where most of these theorists would mostly remind us of the names that …

A Crisis For Utopia: Jameson, The Collective, And The Future Of World Literature, Trevor Jackson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Working with Fredric Jameson’s influential discussions of utopia and world literature, the essay suggests that the prospect of utopia is frightening and also possibly boring insofar as it threatens to drain away the already waning possibility of experience in a postmodern, globalized world. In this world, resentment of the present seems to go hand in hand with a nostalgia for a fictitious past, underscoring the difficulty of conceptualizing new social, cultural, and economic arrangements. Viewing world literature as a possible source of a new utopian thought, a utopia unlimited to its contemporary dystopian guises, the essay retraces Jameson’s pronouncements on …

The Proletarian Moment In World Literature, Anna Björk Einarsdóttir

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

During the interwar period (1918–1939), an international literary movement emerged in relation to internationalist and socialist politics and political struggles. Writers around the world saw themselves as contributors to a new proletarian moment within the historical unfolding of world literature. This movement was international, and writers situated on the peripheries of both the capitalist core and the emerging socialist world looked toward revolutionary Russia and other centers of the socialist world. This paper focuses on three such authors, the American Richard Wright, the Argentinian Roberto Arlt, and the Icelander Halldór Laxness. During the interwar period, all three were involved in …

An Arc Stretched Between East And West: World (Or Universal?) Literature In Maxim Gorky’S Publishing Utopias, Francesca Lazzarin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The Vsemirnaia Literatura publishing house was founded in Petrograd by Maxim Gorky less than a year after the October Revolution. Aligned with the objectives of the new regime, its mission was to translate and publish a substantial body of European and Asian poetry and prose, thereby contributing to the broad cultural education of the emerging Soviet generations. These ambitions clearly reflect a key element of Gorky’s conception of culture as well: for Gorky, culture in its broadest sense (encompassing literature, art, music, and science) had the potential to unite humanity under the ideals of peace and harmony. Within this new …

Introduction: World Literature As World Crisis, Jernej Habjan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Marble Bodies: Sculpture, Gender, Race, And Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature, Madeline Olley

Dissertations - ALL

Marble Bodies reads across both literary texts and sculptures to ask how sculptural logic operates across forms to reveal what sculptors and sculpture offer the field of nineteenth-century U.S. literary studies—formally, theoretically, and methodologically. It argues that sculpture functions not merely as subject matter within nineteenth-century American literature but as an interpretive framework that reveals how bodies are objectified, valued, and assigned cultural meaning. With attention to the formal and material properties of sculpture—stillness, smoothness, and duration—and to the questions of ideality, valuation, and preservation that sculpture generates, this dissertation shows how nineteenth-century writers and artists found in those properties …

Framing Tragedy: Discourse And Influence In Us Media Coverage Of The 1994 Rwanda Genocide, Andrew P. Young

Journal of 20th Century Media History

There is little doubt as to the mark left by the 1994 Rwandan genocide on historical discourse and perhaps even the American cultural consciousness. U.S. evening news broadcasts carried images of suffering and death into homes across the US, and in the process made Rwanda the site of one of the most recognized traumas in human history. While cultural proximity in mass media coverage played a role, the characterization of media coverage of the genocide, often defined in the press as explicit and constant, requires analysis. This project analyzes US evening network news broadcasts to address the actualities and implications …

[De]Constructing Jimmy's Grin: Doing Cultural Studies Through The Lens Of Boston Globe Editorial Cartoonist Paul Szep's Showcase Of Carter's White House Campaign, Lori Amber Roessner

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Heeding journalism historians Hanno Hardt and Bonnie Brennan’s call for inquiries that provide a new understanding of historical working conditions, this study explored the production of a sample of Szep’s editorial cartoons that surrounded Jimmy Carter’s campaign and presidency from 1976 to 1980. In particular, the manuscript considered the historical conditions and personal circumstances that influenced the cultural production of Szep’s body of work surrounding Jimmy Carter’s presidency; representations of Carter and his White House campaign in the sample of 20 editorial cartoons produced by Szep; moments of consumption by active Boston Globe audiences; the practice of identity [de]construction related …

Book Review: Yamin Hu, The Contemporary Construction Of The Chinese Form Of Marxist Literary Criticism , Paul R. Patton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Worldbuilding, Brent Ryan Bellamy

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Entry for special issue, 'Keywords for Value and Culture'