American Studies Commons^™

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Actors, J. Michael Hunter

J Michael Hunter

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Actors” provides brief profiles of over 80 Mormon actors and actresses, including some biographical information and career highlights. This chapter appears in the first volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

Profiles Of Selected Mormon Athletes In Professional Sports, J. Michael Hunter

J Michael Hunter

“Profiles of Selected Mormon Athletes in Professional Sports” provides profiles with career highlights of over 200 Mormon athletes in professional sports, including baseball, basketball, bodybuilding, boxing, football, golf, hockey, racing, running, volleyball, and wrestling. This chapter appears in the second volume of Mormons and Popular Culture: The Global Influence of an American Phenomenon (Praeger 2013), a comprehensive treatment of Mormons and popular culture, providing an introduction and wide-ranging overview of the topic.

A Flag Is Flipped And A Nation Flaps: The Politics And Patriotism Of The First International World Series, Todd J. Wiebe

Todd J Wiebe

No abstract provided.

Women And Death In Film, Television And News: Dead But Not Gone, Joanne Clarke Dillman

Joanne Clarke Dillman

Navigating With Harriet Quimby, Rachael Peckham

Rachael Peckham

My maternal grandmother Ruth never missed an episode of the game show Jeopardy! One night in 2008, while I was working on my dissertation about a long-forgotten aviatrix with whom my family and I share connections, Grandma Ruth called to tell me about a Jeopardy! clue she had just heard: "The first woman to fly across the English Channel." My grandmother was reserved and soft-spoken, but I imagine her slapping the armrests of the recliner, disturbing the outstretched cat at her side, and beating all three contestants to the buzzer: "Who is Harriet Quimby?"--the subject of my dissertation.

We Are Cowboys In The Boat Of Ra: Sonny Rollins And Ishmael Reed's Black Cowboy, Brian Flota

Brian Flota

No abstract provided.

From Here To InFinnerty: Tony Soprano And The American Way, Terri Carney

Terri M. Carney

As fellow critics have pointed out in a myriad of published studies on the series, The Sopranos challenges the traditional gangster genre formula and brings the mob closer to all of us: Tony and his gang inhabit a recognizable world of Starbucks, suburbia, and SUVs. They discuss issues of the day, the same ones we discuss when we turn off the TV after the episode. In short, they inhabit a quotidian reality that is continuous with our own, and we are prevented from drawing the neat lines that allow us a comfortable remove from the horror of the “criminal world,” …

Sacagawea: A Uniquely American Legend, Donna Jean Kessler

Donna J Barbie

In an examination of American texts produced from 1804 to 1989, this dissertation delineates that Sacagawea became a legendary figure because she has exemplified critical elements of narrative traditions recounting the nation's sacred beginnings. As a plethora of works have portrayed Sacagawea as the Indian princess of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, she became an important emblem of manifest destiny. Flexible within its mythic framework, the Sacagawea legend has additionally enabled proponents to confront timely cultural issues, such as women suffrage, taboos against miscegenation, and modern feminism.

Chapter one provides a review of American frontier myths, concepts of sacred mission …

Desire And Disaster In New Orleans: Tourism, Race, And Historical Memory, Lynnell Thomas

Lynnell Thomas

Most of the narratives packaged for New Orleans's many tourists cultivate a desire for black culture—jazz, cuisine, dance—while simultaneously targeting black people and their communities as sources and sites of political, social, and natural disaster. In this timely book, the Americanist and New Orleans native Lynnell L. Thomas delves into the relationship between tourism, cultural production, and racial politics. She carefully interprets the racial narratives embedded in tourist websites, travel guides, business periodicals, and newspapers; the thoughts of tour guides and owners; and the stories told on bus and walking tours as they were conducted both before and after Katrina. …

Blackbirds And Growing Pains: A Conversation With Rutherford Chang, Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

Matthew Ryan Smith, Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

History: The Birth Of "America" In 1882, Robert H.I. Dale

Robert H. I. Dale

This article concerns a New York Times story about the birth of the female Asian elephant calf, named America, at the winter headquarters of the "Greatest Show on Earth" in Bridgeport, Connecticut on February 2, 1882. Phineas T. Barnum, one of the owners of the show, and one prone to self-aggrandizing bluster, claimed that America was the second elephant ever born in captivity. America was born only to months before the arrival in New York of the most famous circus elephant of all time, Jumbo, on Easter Sunday, 1882, and only two years before the origin of a small wagon …

Rave Reviews The History Of Akron's Tuesday Musical, Thomas Bacher, Cynthia Harrison, Sharon Cebula

Thomas Bacher

The Tuesday Musical Club was founded in 1887 by thirteen young Akron women who had an overwhelming desire to share their love of music. With further support of Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, the wife of industrialist Frank Seiberling, the organization grew like many other musical organizations across the country. Unlike similar clubs, the Akron-based entity continued to expand and is one of a very few that have survived. Among the artists who have appeared as a part of the rich history of Akron's Tuesday Musical Organization are Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Yascha Heifetz, Glenn Gould, Van Cliburn, Isaac Stern, …

Blues People Final Curriculum Guide.Pdf, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

Where Have All The Good Men Gone? A Psychoanalytic Reading Of The Absent Fathers & Bad Dads On Abc's Lost, Melissa R. Ames

Melissa A. Ames

Fictional fathers in narratives are often allegorical in nature and contemporary television is not immune from this. ABC’s groundbreaking television drama, Lost, offers a multitude of father figures that suggests not only a crisis concerning the role of the father in the 21st century but also the crisis of national security experienced by Americans after the attacks. In particular, the program showcases three specific types of troubled father/child relationships: those in which the father is absent and/or dead, those where the father is portrayed as abusive and/or evil, and those where the father and child are estranged and/or their relationship …

Send In The Mouse, How American Politicians Used Walt Disney Productions To Safeguard The American Home Front In Wwii, Jordan M. Winters

Jordan M Winters

Despite the success of Disney’s first full length featured film Snow White in 1937 , the animator’s strike of the late 1930s and the war in Europe cutting of international profits, by 1941 the Walt Disney Company was near bankruptcy. Walt Disney was faced with the possibility of closing down his studio. However, the entrance of the United States into WWII and the rising threat of the spread of Nazism became the saving grace to the Walt Disney Studio. This essay explores the collaborations between Disney, businessman and politician Nelson Rockefeller, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the 1940s. Through …

Pulp In The Ivory Tower: One University Library's Development Of A Pulp Magazine Collection, Brian Flota, Mark Peterson

Brian Flota

No abstract provided.

"Take It And Like It": Violence In The Pulp Magazines, Brian Flota

Brian Flota

No abstract provided.

Facebook, Made In Harvard: Youth, Stereotypes, And Exclusivity In The Information Age, Ying-Bei Wang

Ying-bei Wang

In the paper, I conduct a film analysis of The Social Network and examine its portrayal of Facebook’s founders and collaborators. I argue that the film, while providing a new image of geek culture and youth’s role in digital culture, has incorporated the debasing views against women and people of color that is very common in the culture. The enormous popularity of the film indicates how this stereotype is widely accepted. Meanwhile, consulting literature that analyzes culture of the Information Age, I look at the power hierarchies within the culture, where young and white men are more visible and their …

The Young White Faces Of Slavery, Mary Niall Mitchell

Mary Niall Mitchell

No abstract provided.

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) …

Monkee Business: The Musical And Commercial Revolution Of The 1960s, Andrew T. Murphree

Andrew T Murphree

Very few bands in the history of American popular music possess a more captivating story of rapid ascension to commercial acclaim than that of The Monkees, an American rock band that was brought together in 1966 by executives at Screen Gems, a division of Columbia Pictures. Originally conceived for the purpose of a television show that followed the everyday life of four young musicians aspiring to become the next Beatles, their artificial construction as a band represented their primary purpose as a commercial venture as opposed to a traditional artistic endeavor. While The Monkees rose to success as a merchandising …

Leonard Cohen, Buddhist, Steven Marx

Steven Marx

No abstract provided.

Review Of Encyclopedia Of Great Popular Song Recordings, Nevin Mayer

Nevin J Mayer

No abstract provided.

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

Carrie P. Freeman

A Curriculum Guide To Teaching And Discussing: Stomping The Blues (1976) By Albert Murray, Vincent L. Stephens

Vincent L Stephens

The Curriculum Guide is a comprehensive resource for educators seeking to use Albert Murray’s classic reflection on blues and jazz, Stomping the Blues in a classroom setting. The Guide includes summaries of each individual chapter and a listing of critical themes embedded in the chapter, a list of discussion questions, and a supplemental bibliography featuring reviews and essays on Stomping the Blues, and a resource for Murray’s additional writing on the blues genre. The Guide was funded by a grant awarded to scholar Vincent Stephens by Bucknell University's Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender (CSREG) in the …