American Studies Commons^™

Distribution Struggle: Assembling A Media History Of J. Brian’S Enterprises With Court Proceedings And Public Records, Finley Freibert

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces the concept of “distribution struggle”—the panoply of cultural and industrial conflicts that must be traced and accounted for in distribution histories—to sequence a primary-sourced media history of J. Brian’s gay media enterprises. In tracing this history, primary sources are surprisingly accessible, and provide new insights into J. Brian’s industrial operations. By triangulating archival records with secondary accounts, this article provides a more nuanced cultural and industrial portrait of J. Brian. It argues that media industry historiography must frame historical narratives by accounting for the cultural and industrial struggles that culminated in the available archival sources, in this …

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces From Parlor To Battlefield, Erika Pazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S.-Mexican War[1] (1846-1848) was a watershed event that transformed the North American continent politically, socially, and ideologically. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost approximately half of its national territory in the north, and the United States acquired the modern states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Both nations were plagued by internal conflicts after the war, and each was plunged into civil war within fifteen years of its conclusion.

During this time of turmoil, Mexican and U.S. artists created and recreated myriad images …

"Never Forget": Embodied Absence And Extended Relations Of Care After 9/11, Sophie L. Riemenschneider

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a reflection on how loss was articulated in the wake of 9/11. The terror attacks engendered a memorial style that sought to give shape to grief, acknowledging it without filling it in or erasing it. This new style, which I term embodied absence, exists across a range of mediums, from literature to architecture. It is such a potent memorial form because it also captures the traumatic process, which is prolonged, layered, and potentially open-ended. However, despite their ability to mirror the nature of trauma, instances of embodied absence never verbalize the attacks’ root trauma—the disconnect between our …

Mammy And Aunt Jemima: Keeping The Old South Alive In Popular Visual Culture, Angela G. Athnasios

Honors College Theses

Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth century, American popular visual culture produced racist portrayals of Black Americans. Literature, illustrations, minstrelsy, film, and television are notorious for promoting such unflattering images. Each of these media typified African Americans as exaggerated caricatures with dark skin, bulging eyes, bright-red lips, and goofy smiles. The creators of these stereotypes project their racist beliefs into popular culture. This in turn heavily influences the way other races view people of African descent, as well as how Black people view themselves. From mammies, to Jezebels, to pickaninnies, and everything in between, the message ultimately conveyed in these …

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Victim Impact: The Manson Murders And The Rise Of The Victims’ Rights Movement, Merrill W. Steeg

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry

Theses and Dissertations

Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

The Infinite Crisis: How The American Comic Book Has Been Shaped By War, Winston Andrus

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that war has been the greatest catalyst for the American comic book medium to become a socio-political change agent within western society. Comic books have become one of the most pervasive influences to global popular culture, with superheroes dominating nearly every popular art form. Yet, the academic world has often ignored the comic book medium as a niche market instead of integrated into the broader discussions on cultural production and conflict studies. This paper intends to bridge the gap between what has been classified as comic book studies and the greater academic world to demonstrate the …

“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 …

Art And Aids: Viral Strategies For Visibility, Stephen Baylor Pillow

Honors Theses

“Art & AIDS: Viral Strategies for Visibility” examines the complex relationships between social stigma, healthcare, homophobia, and mortality, and how these impacted the lives of Western artists and manifested in their works. Most of the art discussed in this thesis was produced during the height of the AIDS crisis (late-1980s to mid-1990s). During this period, gay artists and their allies employed new strategies in their work to inspire activism, and convey intense emotions –– predominantly frustration, grief, and anxiety –– associated with HIV/AIDS. In the U.S., the inaction of the Reagan administration was largely due to widespread homophobia kindled by …

Intersections: Art And The Museum As Sites For Civic Dialogue, Nenette Luarca-Shoaf

Art History Pedagogy & Practice

This essay describes the structure, pedagogy, and intent behind “Intersections,” a gallery program at the Art Institute of Chicago that occurred monthly between November 2016 and March 2020. The program, which continues less frequently and in a virtual format today, positions artworks as catalysts for helping people make sense of current events and timely issues. In doing so, it reframes adult learning in the museum as collaborative, dialogic, and open-ended, rather than setting up an experience that is primarily expert-driven and informational. Art historical methods such as visual analysis and consideration of primary source texts, along with collaborative learning activities …

These Are My People: An Ethnography Of Quiltcon, Kristin Barrus

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

This thesis presents the first ethnography of QuiltCon, the annual fan and artist convention for quiltmakers who identify with and participate in a social phenomenon called the Modern Quilt Movement (MQM) within the 21st century quilt world. QuiltCon (QC) is one product of this movement. This study considers the following questions: What kinds of people attend QC, and what types of experiences and encounters do they expect at the convention? What needs are met at QC for this subset of quiltmakers who attend and for the greater community of Modern quiltmakers? What role does QC play in cementing the identity …

Art After Dark: Economies Of Performance, New York City 1978–1988, Meredith Mowder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Art After Dark: Economies of Performance, New York City 1978-1988 examines the interwoven social and economic histories of New York City and performance in the late 1970s and 1980s. The dissertation traces the growth and visibility of performance art, moving from the recession of the 1970s and early years of public funding for the arts, to the downtown nightclub scene of the 1980s, the history of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, and artistic experiments with television in the 1980s.Looking closely at the economic conditions under which performance occurred during the late 1970s and early 1980s, this dissertation …

Eggs, Hair, Seeds, Milk, Patrick West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Short story

Looking For Marianne North, John Charles Ryan

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This poem reflects on the life of peripatetic botanical illustrator Marianne North (1830-1890) who travelled to Southwest Australia in 1880.

Critically Imagining A Decolonised Vision In Australian Poetry, Cassandra Julie O'Loughlin

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Postmodern ecocriticism, given its broad range of perspectives, offers an agreeable platform for articulating a new, advanced and inclusive framework for a decolonising theorisation of literature and the environment. This article seeks to identify Australian Western decolonising poetry that sits in harmony with Indigenous aural and literary versions of communicative engagement with Country. The concept of human embeddedness in ecological relationships and biological processes as part of a complex matrix of interdependent things is embraced. In particular this article focuses on inclusivity and interconnectedness of all life forms to illustrate aesthetic and conceptual interfaces between Aboriginal Australia and Western poetics. …

Issue Introduction Volume 10, David Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Issue Introduction and Editorial for Volume 10, Issue 1.

Complete Issue 1, Volume 10, David Gray

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

Complete Issue 1, Volume 10

Introduction To Game Design, Development, And Criticism (Game 201t), Kevin Moberly, Richard E. Ferdig (Ed.), Emily Baumgartner (Ed.), Enrico Gandolfi (Ed.)

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Museum As A Mirror: Reinterpreting And Delinking American Landscape Art From Colonial Narratives, Blythe C. Romano

Honors Theses

Art museums have recently been looking at their existing collections with heightened scrutiny, revisiting their decision to display colonial works uncritically in their gallery spaces, and reconsidering the idea that there is such a thing as a unified art historical canon. These conversations regarding reinterpretation are necessary for all museums that choose to display art with problematic histories, as this information is owed to visitors -- especially within the settler colonial context. The Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine is one site where such collection and gallery “reinterpretation” has begun to be implemented and discussed. For example, in …

Cultural Resources Investigation Report Of The Proposed City Of Jefferson 48-Inch Rcp (Pipeline) Drainage Improvements Along Valve Street In Marion County, Texas, James S. Belew, Michael Ryan

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Sphere 3 Environmental, Inc. (Sphere 3) conducted an intensive pedestrian cultural resources survey of approximately 0.12 hectares (0.29 acres) of land designated as the Project Area/Area of Potential Effects on September 16 and 17, 2020, in response to the proposed pipeline replacement in Jefferson, Texas. The City of Jefferson retained Sphere 3 to conduct a cultural resources survey of the proposed pipeline replacement location. The cultural resources survey was conducted to identify properties eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) or worthy of listing as a State Antiquities Landmark (SAL). A total of 12 shovel tests …

Cultural Resources Survey For The Proposed Dam No. 101 Project Within The Upper Brushy Creek Wcid, Williamson County, Texas, Steve Ahr, Patricia Hutchins, Tanya Mcdougall, Beth Reed

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

AECOM was contracted by the Upper Brushy Creek Water Control and Improvement District (UBCWCID) to conduct a cultural resources survey for the proposed Dam No. 101 project, located in Williamson County, Texas. AECOM evaluated a 189-acre area of potential effects (APE), which includes the conceptual dam footprint plus a 150-foot (ft) buffer, the inundation area, and any additional areas that could be potentially affected by key construction activities. The project is bisected by O’Conner Drive on the north side of State Highway 45 and partially overlaps the existing Dam No. 9. AECOM conducted an intensive cultural resources survey within the …

The Intensive Cultural Resources Survey For The Tceq Npdes Permitted Location On The Canyon Ranch Tract Comal County, Texas, James J. Hill

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Gram Vikas Partners, Inc. (Sponsor) is proposing the development of the approximate 400-acre Canyon Ranch Tract (Project) in northwest Comal County, Texas. The Project would occur approximately eight miles northeast of Spring Branch, Texas along Farm to Market Road (FM) 306. The Project will consist of a mix of both residential and commercial properties, associated roads, utilities and a wastewater treatment facility. As part of the development, an approximate six-acre wastewater treatment facility will be constructed in the west-central portion of the Project area, approximately 0.9-mi northwest of FM 306 and County Road (CR) 401 intersection.

Under the Memorandum of …

Archaeological Monitoring For The Buena Vista Corridor Project, San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas, Leonard Kemp

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Between July 11, 2018, and February 28, 2020, The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Center for Archaeological Research (CAR), in response to a request from the City of San Antonio (COSA), intermittently conducted archaeological monitoring for the Buena Vista (BV) Corridor project in San Antonio, Bexar County, Texas. The project goal was to foster pedestrian traffic by sidewalk, lighting, and aesthetic improvements on Buena Vista Street between S. Leona and S. Santa Rosa streets. The COSA department of Transportation and Capital Improvements (TCI; now Public Works Department) administered the BV Corridor project with the COSA Office of Historic …

Intensive Archaeological Survey For Asphalt Package 2020-2 (Upin 21103n3045-30001), Harris County, Texas, Tiffany M. Lindley

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Raba Kistner, Inc. (RKI) was contracted by Harris County Engineering Department (CLIENT) to conduct archaeological investigations in support of road improvements along 5.35 miles (8.6 kilometer [km]) of existing road along House Road, Bauer Hockley Road, Becker Road, Kickapoo Road, and Badtke Road, located in northwestern Harris County, Texas. The purpose of this investigation was to identify any surface-exposed or shallowly buried cultural deposits within the limits of the proposed undertaking and, if possible, assess their significance and eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and for formal designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SALs). As the …

Intensive Archaeological Survey For Asphalt Package 4, Precinct 3 (Upin: 21103n3044-30001), Hockley, Harris County, Texas, Adam T. Birge

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Raba Kistner, Inc. (RKI) was contracted by Harris County Engineering Department (CLIENT), to conduct archaeological investigations in support of road improvements along 7 miles of existing road along Botkins, Roberts, AJ Foyt, Nichols, and Becker Roads, located in northwest Harris County, Texas. The purpose of this investigation was to identify any surface-exposed or shallowly buried cultural deposits within the limits of the proposed undertaking and, if possible, assess their significance and eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and for formal designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SALs). As the project will be conducted on publicly-owned land …

Analysis Of The Hatchel Site (41bw3) Platform Mound Ceramic Vessels, Vessel Sections, Sherds, Pipes, And Other Clay Artifacts, Timothy K. Perttula

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

The Hatchel site (41BW3) is a major ancestral Nasoni Caddo village and mound center on a natural levee deposit in the floodplain of the Red River in Bowie County, Texas, just a few kilometers west of the Arkansas state line. The site was occupied by the Caddo from at least A.D. 1040 to the late 17th century; the latest temporal estimate is based primarily on the association of the Hatchel platform mound with a mound and templo illustrated on a 1691 map drawn of the site during the Teran expedition, and selected decorated sherds and vessels in the uppermost mound …

Intensive Archaeological Survey For Asphalt Package 2020-1 (Upin 21103n304101), Harris County, Texas, Adam T. Birge

Index of Texas Archaeology: Open Access Gray Literature from the Lone Star State

Raba Kistner, Inc. (RKI) was contracted by Harris County Engineering Department (CLIENT), to conduct archaeological investigations in support of a road improvements along 8.09 miles (13 km) of existing road along Old Washington County Road and Binford Roads, located in northwestern Harris County, Texas. The purpose of this investigation was to identify any surface-exposed or shallowly buried cultural deposits within the limits of the proposed undertaking and, if possible, assess their significance and eligibility for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) and for formal designation as State Antiquities Landmarks (SALs). As the project will be conducted on …