American Studies Commons^™

Fighting Over The Founders: How We Remember The American Revolution, Andrew Schocket

Andrew M Schocket

The American Revolution is all around us. It is pictured as big as billboards and as small as postage stamps, evoked in political campaigns and car advertising campaigns, relived in museums and revised in computer games. As the nation’s founding moment, the American Revolution serves as a source of powerful founding myths, and remains the most accessible and most contested event in U.S. history: more than any other, it stands as a proxy for how Americans perceive the nation’s aspirations. Americans’ increased fascination with the Revolution over the past two decades represents more than interest in the past. It’s also …

Blue Bloods, Movie Queens, And Jane Does: Or How Princess Culture, American Film, And Girl Fandom Came Together In The 1910s, Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

This article explores the complex relationship established between young film actresses and their adolescent female fans during the second decade of the twentieth century. In the 1910s, popular press often promoted movie stars in their teens—such as Mary Pickford, Shirley Mason, Mae Marsh, and Lila Lee—as rag-to-riches Cinderellas released from urban squalor due to employment in the motion pictures. Fan magazines also presented these girl stars as blue-blooded princesses, whose royal bloodline enriched American stardom. Such press pageantry invited girl fans to identify with girl stars’ mythologized biographies.

However, the depiction of female movie stars as manufactured blue bloods also …

Bringing Liturgical Dance Into The Twenty-First Century, Trisha Holmes, Lisa Smith

Trisha Holmes

Dance Is a very powerful and ever changing form of communication found in virtually every civilization on earth. Because it is developing, new forms like Liturgical dance can often go unnoticed by the dance community as a whole. Liturgical dance can be traced back to the early slave churches of the 1700’s where it began as free form worship. Slaves and free “Blacks” gathered in large groups to worship, during these gatherings persons felt compelled by the “spirit of God” to move in wild abandon, like the “ring shout”, a tradition brought to America by the slave trade.(Allen ,“Slave Ships …

Nancy Drew And The Hardy Boys: The Secrets Of Our Favorite Teenage Sleuths, Patricia Bravender

Patricia Bravender

If the words ‘mystery’ and ‘clue’ still give you a shiver of excitement, you were probably a fan of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. These books, read by millions, were the target of teachers and librarians who were largely successful in keeping them out of libraries for over 50 years. Nancy Drew and Frank and Joe Hardy had a secret that was too much for the times and certainly bigger than they ever encountered in River Heights and Bayport. Patricia Bravender will reveal the secret of these series books and talk about why these books were (and still are) …

Framing Farming: Communication Strategies For Animal Rights, Carrie P. Freeman

Carrie P. Freeman

Myriad Mirrors: Doppelgangers And Doubling In The Vampire Diaries, Kimberley Mcmahon-Coleman

Kimberley McMahon-Coleman

Mirroring is of fundamental importance in Gothic literature and filmic texts generally, and is a prevalent trope in the CW network teen drama, The Vampire Diaries. The television series is itself a “doubling” in that it is an adaptation of a series of novels by L.J. Smith, creating a situation wherein the same central characters inhabit the parallel townships of the novels’ Fells Church and television’s Mystic Falls, and thus have histories which are, at times, contradictory. The television version also explicitly explores the concept of the doppelganger, and thus the idea of reflection, even as it manipulates the historical …

Phoebe Snow: Odd, Rare And Sublime, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

A draft from my work-in-progress essay collection on post-war American popular singing "Sound Love." The essay argues that Phoebe Snow is unique among her generation of singer-songwriters as she is more notable as an interpreter than as a writer. Her synthesis of elements from blues, jazz, pop, gospel and R&B defy category as does her artistry.

Romancing The Fan-Girl: Early Film Fan Magazines And American Girls’ Longing For Stardom., Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

Diana Anselmo-Sequeira

No abstract provided.

Rahna Mckey Carusi Cv, Rahna M. Carusi

Rahna M Carusi

No abstract provided.

Time Cover Reflection, Hank J. Goldenberg

Hank J Goldenberg

A reflection on the media

Tupac In The Classroom: From Cointelpro To Critical Consciousness, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

The Cambridge Companion To African American Theatre, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of African American theatre, from the early nineteenth century to the present day. Along the way, it chronicles the evolution of African American theatre and its engagement with the wider community, including discussions of slave rebellions on the national stage, African Americans on Broadway, the Harlem Renaissance, African American women dramatists, and the 'New Negro' and 'Black Arts' movements. Leading scholars spotlight the producers, directors, playwrights and actors whose efforts helped to fashion a more accurate appearance of Black life on stage, and reveal the impact of African American theatre both within the United …

Reimaging A Raisin In The Sun: Four New Plays, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

n 1959, Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun energized the conversation about how Americans live together across lines of race and difference. In Reimagining “A Raisin in the Sun,” Rebecca Ann Rugg and Harvey Young bring together four contemporary plays—including 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama winner Clybourne Park—that, in their engagement with Hansberry’s play, illuminate the tensions and anxieties that still surround neighborhood integration. Although the plays—Robert O’Hara’s Etiquette of Vigilance, Gloria Bond Clunie’s Living Green, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Neighbors, and Bruce Norris’s Clybourne Park—are distinct from one another in terms of style and perspective on their predecessor, they commonly …

The Influence Of Lloyd Richards, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

No abstract provided.

The Seven Spices: Pumpkins, Puritans, And Pathogens In Colonial New England, Michael Sharbaugh

Michael D Sharbaugh

Water sources in the United States' New England region are laden with arsenic. Particularly during North America's colonial period--prior to modern filtration processes--arsenic would make it into the colonists' drinking water. In this article, which evokes the biocultural evolution paradigm, it is argued that colonists offset health risks from the contaminant (arsenic poisoning) by ingesting copious amounts of seven spices--cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, allspice, vanilla, and ginger. The inclusion of these spices in fall and winter recipes that hail from New England would therefore explain why many Americans associate them not only with the region, but with Thanksgiving and Christmas, …

Writing With Paint, Harvey Young

Harvey Young

No abstract provided.

Teaching The American West Through Film, Literature, And History. Panel, Mike Pierce, Kay Reeve, Dorothy Graham, Linda Niemann

Linda G. Niemann

No abstract provided.

Resisting Subjects: The Politics Of Spectacular Style In Women's Subcultural Production”, Doreen Piano

Doreen M Piano

No abstract provided.

Bonds And Biopower In The 1920 French Peace Bond Posters, Maureen Shanahan

Maureen G. Shanahan

No abstract provided.