American Studies Commons^™

Amjambo Africa! (July 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Publisher’s Editorial ....................p. 4

Translations French ...................................... p.5

Swahili...................................... p.6

Somali ....................................... p.7

Kinyarwanda ..........................p.18

Portuguese .............................p.19

News from Africa ........................p. 8

Business, Economics & Financial Literacy...................p. 10

World Market Basket ..........p. 12/13

Legislative Update ......p 17/20/21/9

Community News......................p. 16

Columns..............................................

About hair .................................p. 20

Hope House ..............................p. 19

Safe Healthcare .........................p. 21

“What For Is Democracy?”: The German American Bund In The American Press, 1936-1941, Minna Thrall

Voces Novae

Between 1936 and 1941, an American pro-Nazi organization called the German American Bund stirred outrage and controversy among Americans. The American perception of the Bund was largely influenced by newspapers, which portrayed some of the Bund’s issues as more important than others. These portrayals reveal American attitudes and anxieties toward the state of racism, nationalism, fascism, and democracy within the United States at the brink of WWII.

Desegregation Through Entertainment: Rodgers And Hammerstein’S South Pacific As An Instrument Of Military Policy, Leana Sottile

Voces Novae

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical South Pacific became a staple of mainstream popular culture. However, the musical also served a specific function within the American military where its usage by the United Service Organizations and Department of Defense was widespread. This case study examines how South Pacific arguably served a way to ease the blow of desegregation on the military by other means, in this case, entertainment. This was achieved by combining the show’s progressive views on racial tolerance with the prevalent wartime nostalgia and romanticism in the piece. All of …

Colonized Loyalty: Asian American Anti-Blackness And Complicity, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstad argues that solidarity between and within communities of color remains our only chance to fight against the brutal and insidious forces of racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism.

African American Women In The Domestic Service Industry During Reconstruction. An Intersectional Analysis, Kathryn Small

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

African American Women in the Domestic Service Industry during Reconstruction. An Intersectional Analysis.

My paper focuses on the experiences of African American women, within the workplace, during Reconstruction. Whilst the Civil War resulted in the emancipation of the African American population, the day-to-day attainment of freedom posed a very different reality, most notably in respect of limited opportunities for economic advancement. All working women of this time were subjected to discrimination. However, black women were especially discriminated against due to their race. Most markedly, this can be seen in the fact that work opportunities available to black women were restricted …

Amjambo Africa! (June 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Ramadan 2020.............................p. 2

Introducing Africa News editor.p. 5

Pious Ali .......................................p. 6

Banyamulenge .............................p. 8

L/A Food needs ...........................p. 9

Original Gangsters: Genre, Crime, And The Violences Of Settler Democracy, Sean M. Kennedy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Building upon examinations of genericity, subalternity, and carcerality by Black, Indigenous, and women-of-color feminist scholars, my dissertation offers an account of how truth claims are produced and sustained to limit social change in representatively governed societies. Taking the gangster genre as my lens, I first resituate the form, assumed to depict white-ethnic conflict in the U.S. and Europe, as a type of resistance to race-based political economic policies imposed by imperial regimes. After linking the subaltern classes of pre-20th-century southern Europe, southern Africa, South Asia, and the U.S. South—all subjected to criminalization as a mode of colonial and capitalist control—I …

“The Amazing Iroquois”: Haudenosaunee History In Myth And Memory, 1776–1955, John C. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a history and memory study of Iroquois exceptionalism. This is an idea that shaped our understanding of the Iroquois as the “most studied” Indian nation and that they, as the debunked Iroquois Influence Thesis claimed, influenced the structure and scope of the U.S. Constitution. My study examines the lives of four related (by blood and by claim) Seneca leaders: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. These four stand out because each was one of the most famous Native Americans of their generation who worked within and against American colonial society and …

Promoting The Consumer Citizen: Seals, Spectacles, And The Gendered Consumer In Depression-Era America, Danielle B. Wetmore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will argue that New Deal legislation accounted for increased importance placed on consumers and the articulation of consumer citizenship as female during the Great Depression. Once New Deal programs and legislation determined and legitimized the consumer citizen, the consumer citizen exercised influence though purchasing power. Analyzing the ways the federal government defined women as consumer citizens through programs like the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle Campaign offers important insight into who was considered to have a voice. Notions of citizenship define groups by who has the necessary attributes and qualifications—in this case the means to purchase goods—to be …

Fair World 64: A Text-Based Game Of The 1964–1965 World's Fair, Christofer R. Gass

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The project is a text-based game of a typical day during the first season of the 1964 World’s Fair in what is now Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The 1964-1965 World’s Fair, that Robert Moses presided over as president, was one of the largest and most expensive fairs ever created, but only days after the last fairgoer left through the turnstile most of the many pavilions that brought education, entertainment, and joy to so many people were destroyed to leave a vast open space that is relatively empty to this day. Although most of the pavilions were either relocated or demolished, there …

"The Jeep Is Here To Stay!" Projections Of America And Franco-American Relations During World War Ii, Connie L. Gentry

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

During World War II, the Office of War Information produced American and Allied propaganda that was used at home and abroad. Robert Riskin, head of the Bureau of Motion Pictures Overseas Branch, was responsible for creating Projections of America, a documentary film series made to introduce foreigners to America whilst combating negative impressions of Americans that arose in the interwar years. Films from Projections of America contained themes of American culture, ideology, industry and technology, and democracy. In France, these films were used to sway French opinion of Americans while promoting friendship and appreciation for American culture. Ultimately, the …

Country Fun: A Cultural History Of Opryland Usa, Nashville, And The Suburban South, William C. Nieman

Honors Theses

This thesis centers around the history of Opryland USA, a theme park and “musical showplace” that existed from 1972 to 1997 in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. Using a variety of primary sources including park ephemera, newspaper articles, and songs, I show how, over its twenty-five years, Opryland became a country music theme park after initially presenting a seemingly diverse picture of American popular music. I reveal that, despite local businessowners’ and musicians’ reluctance to embrace Opryland at first, the park was accepted by many Nashvillians to the point where it is now nostalgically mourned. Then, putting those primary materials …

Who Has A Voice: Issues Of Free Speech At The University Of Mississippi From 1955-1970, Neale Grisham

Honors Theses

Amidst the upheaval of American society in the 1960s, the University of Mississippi’s administration found itself in a precarious position. A long-standing institution that prided itself on its ties to the Old South, the university was being challenged by integrationists and liberal notions of equality and social justice. The university was forced to decide between abetting the alumni that padded university pockets and the tides of change that were rippling through the university campus. Their main way of combatting this was through the surveilling of students and the vetting of potential guest speakers who may spread “controversial ideas.” While students …

Reconciling With Slavery In The United States: An Evolving Narrative, Jamie Phlegar

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This project addresses two strands of inquiry that spring from this issue of evolving race relations in the U.S. First, I examine how Americans talk about the history of slavery in the U.S. What rhetorical strategies are employed when slavery is discussed and/or debated in public history contexts and beyond? Second, I examine talk about the future of race relations in the context of the legacy of slavery. Specifically, I am interested in exploring what rhetorical strategies are employed when discussing the potential for reparations in mainstream arenas.

Amjambo Africa! (May 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Legacy of artist & scholar David Driskell...........................p. 2

Navigating COVID-19.................p. 3

US/Canada Border Crossing.......p. 5

Evictions & Rental Assistance.....p. 6

Virtual commemoration .............p. 8

COVID-19 and youth..................p. 9

Unemployment Insurance..........p. 9

Legislation: Stimulus.................p. 11

Preventing a second spike .......p. 19

Food resource listing...........p. 20/21

University Of Southern Maine Commencement Program 2020, University Of Southern Maine

Commencement Programs

University of Southern Maine Commencement Program 2020

Dixieland Crusaders: Mass Media, The Ku Klux Klan, And The Optics Of Populism, 1970-1979., Olivia E. Raymond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The 1970s in the United States of America ushered in transformative policies that reshaped the nation. In her landmark essay, “The Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past” (2005), Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall reveals how Black activists inspired “a long movement of movements.” However, often forgotten in narratives of new activism from this era is the resurgence of white reactionary social movements. This thesis argues that mass media is central to mainstreaming radical far-right ideology to a national audience. It explores the political ramifications of sensationalist coverage of the Ku Klux Klan in mass media, specifically …

Japanese American Internment During The Second World War Through The Preconditioning Of Anti-Japanese Rhetoric Emphasizing Military Threat Between 1898 And 1941 And Examination Of Military Necessity, Charlie Dewitt

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

During the Second World War, over 120,000 Japanese American citizens were held in intern- ment for much of the conflict. The United States government supported this action by claiming military necessity required removal of all West Coast Japanese Americans as a national security threat. However, this process had little to do with military necessity and was set in motion dec- ades before by the rhetoric of the anti-Japanese movement, which through numerous works out- lined Japanese Americans as a military threat. This thesis, through review of significant pub- lished documents, argues that a multitude of writers representing a wide array …

Black Delilahs: Black Female Sexuality And Resistance In Progressive Era New York City, Kayla J. Smith

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Black Delilahs traces a history of policing and criminalizing of black women’s sexuality in Progressive Era New York City. By analyzing vaudeville posters, joke books, blues music, newspapers, vice committee records, and reformatory records, this project provides a historiography of respectability politics and the sociocultural norms and practices that limited American society’s freedom of sexual expression. It subsequently explores how working-class black women engaged with commercial, public, and private urban spaces normatively associated with vice, deviancy, and disreputability in ways that subverted these expectations of respectability and empowered them. These women used creative ways to express their sexuality within the …

The First Cut Is The Deepest: George H.W. Bush And Chirep At The U.N. 1970-1971, James W. Weber Jr.

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Scholarship on George H.W. Bush tends to regard his career with the State Department in the context of traditional presidential biography. His tenure as Ambassador to the United Nations thus becomes a line-item on a presidential resume with little significance beyond its usefulness as a political credential. This paper situates Bush’s voice as it appears in his personal diary into one of the widescreen events of Sino-American rapprochement, the conclusion in 1971 of the long-simmering conflict over Chinese representation at the U.N. (CHIREP) between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the American-backed Republic of China (ROC). As chief of …

Hello Girls On Strike: Telephone Operators, The Fort Smith General Strike And The Struggle For Democracy In Great War Arkansas, Kyra Schmidt

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In September 1917, Fort Smith telephone operators formed a local of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Soon after, company leaders dismissed two of the women who were instrumental in the formation of the union. After many attempts to meet and negotiate with the company leaders, the remaining operators walked out and began striking on September 19. This strike lasted almost four months and brought chaos into the city including the indictments, trials, and convictions of the mayor, J. H. Wright, and chief of police, Jim Fernandez. The election after Wright’s conviction saw the first female votes in Arkansas history. …

An Actor's Process In Bridging The Gap Between First-Generation And Multi-Generational African-American Identities., Mutiyat Ade-Salu

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects my process assimilating into the role of Chelle in the production of Detroit '67 at the University of Louisville. Although there have been instances of actors crossing lines of gender, nationality, race, and even sexuality, to perform roles in contemporary theatre, discussion about generational differences is almost non-existent. Through historical research, first-hand interviews, and conventional acting methods, I explore the world of my role, searching for spirituality, authenticity, and identity. Additionally, I explain my use of The WAY Method ®, a process I began creating in 2014 to help actors be clear with who they are before …

Curating Digital Pedagogy In The Humanities, Katherine Harris, Matthew Gold, Rebecca Frost Davis

Faculty Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activity

This is the published introduction to the born-digital, open-access, peer-reviewed *Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities*. More a rationale and scholarly study of both Digital Pedagogy and DPiH in general, this introduces articulates the uses, theory, rationale about digital pedagogy as it has been shaped in U.S. institutions since the explosion of Digital Humanities in 2009. As a separate field now, Digital Pedagogy is built on the generosity of its practitioners, but saving the *stuff* of teaching and pedagogy is difficult. The introduction historicizes this now-published project, its open peer review process, and its development in the early years (starting in …

Arkansas Aprons: Food Power And Women In Arkansas, 1857 To 1891, Robyn Shahan Spears

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Arkansas foodways in the late nineteenth century were defined by times of plenty and scarcity, need and connection, traditions and innovations. These components created a unique culture in which women through food exchange, were able to improve their standard of living. The years of plenty established in the antebellum era lay in stark contrast to the scarcity during the Civil War. What followed during the Progressive Era are fascinating histories of women employing their agency to empower and improve not only their lives but also future generations. I argue that these women utilized their agency to engage in “food power,” …

Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, Lauren Paljusaj, Anne Savage

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Creative Works Winner

Most of us know Nevada beyond the Strip. It’s a place of houses, of shopping plazas, of movie theaters, and grocery stores. A place of hotels that are also places of work. A place of basins, ranges, vistas, and nature. A place of personal history. For Intimate Nevada: Artists Respond, curators Lauren Paljusaj (ENG BA ‘20) and Anne Savage (CFA BA ‘22), draw on photographs found in UNLV Special Collections to uncover the intimate visuality of a Nevada of past centuries. The exhibition focuses on how the imaged built landscape of early 20th century Southern Nevada …

Pilgrimage To The Virgin Of Juquila: The Negotiation Of Catholic Institutional Power In Colonial Oaxaca, Paloma Barraza

Art & Art History ETDs

Despite the contemporary popularity of the pilgrimage site of the Sanctuary of Santa Catarina of Juquila, the statuette of Oaxaca’s Virgin of Juquila is often eclipsed by the more well-known tilma image of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The limited art historical scholarship has failed to address the statuette of the Virgin of Juquila as an icon that signifies both Indigenous and Catholic power dating back to the seventeenth century. Dominican missionaries used the statuette as a mediator for religious conversion practices in the local Chatino community. Furthermore, the moment the Virgin of Juquila gained significant Indigenous popularity …

Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future, Marcella Alexis Ernest

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing the master narratives. The project tracks how film and photography—historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism—are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. The project shows how multidisciplinary artists use technology to remix audiovisual archives from a specific time in American history: portrait photography and ethnographic filmmaking at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood’s frontier representations of Indianness in twentieth-century motion pictures, social guidance classroom films from the 1950s, and digital …

Undocumented Youth Challenging Borders: Detentions, Deportations, And Family Separations In The 21st Century, Rafael A. Martínez

American Studies ETDs

My dissertation project explores the rise of undocumented youth social movements in the U.S. in the early 21st century. Undocumented youth have increasingly drawn on their own social capital to produce forms of activism that highlight and critique increasingly repressive forms of state control and violence. This inquiry is particularly generative in relation to how immigrant bodies are erased, contained and imagined as ‘aliens’ or ‘illegal’. I argue that undocumented youth and their activism represent a disruption to the social imaginary of the U.S. nation-state and rigid nationalist formations.

Red Hill Cemetery Project: Creating A Cultural Heritage Database, Franciso Mendoz, Laura Bullard, Andrew Pemberton, David Sheffler

Showcase of Osprey Advancements in Research and Scholarship (SOARS)

This age of booming technological advancement has brought a breadth of new opportunities for understanding and documenting history, from digital mapping to database-building capabilities unrivaled in past historical efforts, opportunities which the research team behind the Red Hill Cemetery Project are utilizing in the effort to develop a virtual cemetery. The research team, in cooperation with the Okefenokee Heritage Center and the community of Waycross, seek to develop a scholarly understanding, grounded in consideration of the community and its history, of the oldest African-American cemetery in Waycross, Georgia. The physical cemetery, now overgrown and suffering from decades-long neglect and vandalism, …

Don’T Act So Innocent, Midwest: A Midwestern Lynching Narrative, Lauren Hall

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

No abstract provided.