American Studies Commons^™

Behind The Brick Walls: On “Hearth” And Slavery At The William & Mary, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "The William & Mary was the second university in the U.S. after Brown University to establish a funded, institutional examination of its dark history of complicity with slavery and Jim Crow segregation. After resolutions from the Student Assembly and Faculty Assembly, the Board of Visitors in 2009 established the Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, named after Lemon, a man enslaved by the College..."

Asking For Forgiveness: Negotiating The Creation Of Memory Through Public Memorialization, Alyssa Castronuovo

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The practice of spatializing culture, or “examining space through theories of embodiment, discourse translocality, and effect,” localizes the global and separates hegemonic narratives of space from how it is actually utilized by the people who interact with it. Setha Low argues that this perspective is especially useful to the anthropologist committed to challenging the discipline’s historically eurocentric approach to studying culture. She writes that a spatial focus “[draws] on the strengths of studying people in situ, producing rich and nuanced sociospatial understandings.” This project began with an interest in theorists such as Edward Soja, Michel de Certeau, and Henri Lefebvre, …

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …

"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …

W&M’S Memorials To Benjamin S. Ewell, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"As far as I can tell, Benjamin S. Ewell, the College’s sixteenth president (1854-1888), has been memorialized at William and Mary more than any other person. That is not surprising given his long tenure as president, his dedication to the College, and his titanic efforts on its behalf, especially in the decades after the Civil War..."

Speculations On Structures Once Near The Site Of Lemon Hall, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"One of the most intriguing views of Williamsburg in antebellum days depicts a series of large and small structures along Jamestown Road, roughly between where Barrett Hall and Lemon Hall stand today.

Made between 1859 and 1862 by James Austin Graham (1814/15-1878), the panorama presents Williamsburg as viewed roughly from where the law school is today and sweeps along the entire southern edge of town, from the Capitol on the east to, on the west, about the site of the College’s Lemon Hall..."

Building The Brafferton: The Founding, Funding And Legacy Of America’S Indian School, Danielle Moretti-Langholtz, Buck Woodard

Arts & Sciences Books

Excerpt from the publication: "Cloaked in the academic regalia of the early history of the College of William & Mary, the story of the founding of Virginia’s Indian school is replete with ecclesiastical and political intrigue as well as financial opacity. Embedded within the seventeenth and eighteenth-century trans-Atlantic colonial encounter, the 1723 Brafferton Indian School building is an artifact with a pedigree worthy of heritage status. However, its origins remain murky; its history is buried in the faded and fragmentary ledger books, legislative acts and church correspondence of the era. One of three structures on William & Mary’s historic campus, …

Writing At The Williamsburg Bray School?, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

"I’ve become interested recently in whether writing was taught to the pupils in the Williamsburg Bray School. I had assumed all along that it was, and that the discovery of 40 some slate pencils at the Bray School Dig was confirmation of that.

I’d not been alone in my assumption about the teaching of writing, for the great majority of those interested in the Bray School have affirmed that the curriculum included writing..."

Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family And Cold War America, Julia Kaziewicz

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

My dissertation, "Artful Manipulation: The Rockefeller Family and Cold War America," examines how the Rockefeller family used the Museum of Modern Art, Colonial Williamsburg, and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection to shape opinions about America, both at home and abroad, during the early years of the Cold War. The work done at Colonial Williamsburg tied the Rockefeller name to the foundations of American society and, later, to the spread of global democracy in the Cold War world. The establishment of a new museum for the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art collection in 1957 renewed the narrative that American …

The Alan Lomax Photographs And The Music Of Williamsburg (1959-1960), Peggy Finley Aarlien

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Flying Under The Radar With The Royal Chicano Air Force: The Ongoing Politics Of Space And Ethnic Identity, Ella Maria Diaz

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation explores the Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a Chicano/a arts collective that produced numerous murals in Sacramento, CA, for over forty years. Grounded in Mexican and US aesthetic traditions, their murals reflect cultural hybridity and re-imagine US history through a Chicano/a perspective. Many of their works were and are located in Sacramento's Chicano/a barrios, while others occupy interethnic, public space in the vicinity of the State Capitol. By encoding hidden Chicano/a iconographies within each mural, the RCAF offers what scholar Alicia Gaspar de Alba calls "alter-Native" narratives of American history because they posit "Other" views of local history, …

Medicating Slavery: Motherhood, Health Care, And Cultural Practices In The African Diaspora, Ywone Edwards-Ingram

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

A sophisticated exploration of the intricacies of motherhood and health care practices of people of African descent, especially the enslaved population of Virginia, can shed light on their notions of a well-lived life and the factors preventing or contributing to these principles. I situate my dissertation within this ideal as I examine how the health and well-being of enslaved people were linked to broader issues of economic exploitation, domination, resistance, accommodation, and cultural interactions. Historical and archaeological studies have shown that the living and working conditions of enslaved people were detrimental to their health. Building on these findings, I explore …

Facing Independence: American Revolutionary Portraits Within The Context Of British Identity, Susan Jensen Rawles

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This paper examines the content of eighteenth-century American and British portraits within the ideologically-expanding context of eighteenth-century British identity. It explores the ways in which Britons and Americans negotiated who they were and, consequently, their claims on society, in the era preceding and including the American Revolution. It does so for three reasons: to advance a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of American portraiture; to motivate further dialogue on the relationship between American and British portraits; and to invoke the potential for American portraits as documentary evidence of social history.;Through historical examination of philosophical influences informing the development of …

Nathaniel Jocelyn: In The Service Of Art And Abolition, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Through my dissertation, I embark on a biographical, cultural and historical study of artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), primarily known as a nineteenth-century portrait painter and engraver in New Haven, Connecticut. Although Jocelyn received little formal training, he sought to become a preeminent portrait painter. Together with his younger brother, Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879), he established a successful engraving firm designing banknotes, maps, atlases, and book illustrations.;Jocelyn lived in an age of evangelical revivalism commonly called the Second Great Awakening. He was a devout Congregationalist and saw the various aspects of his life embedded in his religious convictions. Jocelyn's …

Picturing Home: Domestic Painting And The Ideologies Of Art, Mark E. Sprinkle

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation describes domestic painting in Atlanta, Georgia between 1995 and 2004 as a market defined by its intentional connection of the ideologies and spaces of art with those of bourgeois domesticity. The first half of the work seeks to contextualize the market's various objects and texts within public and academic discourses on culture that commonly posit an antithesis between the practices of bourgeois women (especially decoration) and "high" or avant-garde art, as suggested by the sentiment, "GOOD ART WON'T MATCH YOUR SOFA." Thus, Chapter 1 addresses the promises and pitfalls of sociological approaches to understanding art in general, Chapter …

Domestic Brick Architecture In Williamsburg: A Comparative Study Of Eighteenth-Century Brick Houses In Williamsburg, Annapolis, And Charleston, Andrew Craig Barry

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Satisfying Williamsburg's "Meat Tooth": Butchers And Bones In Inter-Bellum Williamsburg, Virginia, Carrie Alblinger

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Still Life: Domesticity, Subjectivity, And The Bachelor In Nineteenth-Century America, Matthew Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

"The Still Life" explores debates over single manhood in the culture of the nineteenth-century United States. Until recently, the "bachelor" was less an identifiable social type than a battleground for discourses of privacy and intimacy, sympathy and sentiment, and labor and leisure. Representations of the bachelor tended to excite readers' concerns about the relationships among emotion, public behavior, and intellectual prowess. Concentrating on constructions of the bachelor within specific discursive arenas, this dissertation examines "bachelorhood" as a way culture organized a wide range of ideologies and experiences. Though the bachelor's particular significance faded in the twentieth century, a conceptual roadblock …

The Domestication Of History In American Art: 1848-1876, Jochen Wierich

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation traces the decline of history painting and its domestication in Other artistic forms in the United States. In the three decades between the Mexican-American War and the Centennial, the market for historical art went through a major transformation. Artists shifted from historical to contemporary subjects or represented historical themes in everyday-domestic settings. Monumental history painting, which was supported by art unions and private patrons during the antebellum period, came under critical attack and lost its status as a form of high art. Critical opinion turned especially against paintings of historical struggle and heroic sacrifice which seemed to be …

Going Nowhere Fast: The Car, The Highway And American Identity In Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita" And Robert Frank's "The Americans", Scott Patrick Moyers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Fort Hill: A Representative Of The Structural And Social Hierarchy And Harmony Of Greek Revival Architecture, Beth Ann Spiryson Mcpherson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Facing Philadelphia: The Social Functions Of Silhouettes, Miniatures, And Daguerreotypes, 1760-1860, Anne Ayer Verplanck

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

In 1807, Charles Fraser lauded fellow miniature artist Edward Greene Malbone's ability to produce "such striking resemblances, that they will never fail to perpetuate the tenderness of friendship, to divert the cares of absence, and to aid affection in dwelling on those features and that image which death has forever wrested from it." The explanations traditionally given for the commissioning of portraits--the perpetuation of family or institutional memory--correspond with Fraser's comments. Yet these explanations rarely incorporate the social context: the communities in which images were produced and the individual, familial, or group meanings of portraits.;"Facing Philadelphia: The Social Functions of …

"The Road To Ruins And Restoration": Roland W Robbins And The Professionalization Of Historical Archaeology, Donald Walter Linebaugh

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Roland W. Robbins helped to pioneer the profession of historical archaeology. as the discipline professionalized, he found himself increasingly excluded. This study analyzes Robbins's career within the context of the disciplines of archaeology and historic preservation and considers the professionalization process, current cultural resource management practice, the value of early data, and the importance of public archaeology.;The study also explores archaeology as Robbins's solution to his long personal crisis of vocation. He reacted to his coming of age during the Depression by searching for personal foundations and also responded to larger cultural needs, including a quest for the roots of …

Joshua Johnson Revisited: Filling The Lacunae, Toby Maria Chieffo-Reidway

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Framing The Woman Artist: Gender And Art In Howells And Sargent, Matthew Cohen

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

A Toast To The Tavern: An Archaeological Study Of A 17th And 18th Century Tavern In Charlestown, Massachusetts, Christy Cathleen Vogt

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Kids Are (All) Right: Baby-Boomers And The Rhetoric Of Childhood In The Picture Books Of Chris Van Allsburg, Mark. Sprinkle

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Rituals, Roots, And Rectangles: The Classical Tradition In Early American Portraiture, Lauren Jessica Brown Suber

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Craft Of Portraiture In Eighteenth-Century America, Anne Mary Fuhrman

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

The Quaker Influence On Nantucket Architecture: A Case Study, Anne Elizabeth Gaeta

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.