American Studies Commons^™

“Where Is The Essence That Was So Divine?”: The Nostalgia Of Moore’S Minutemen, Amanda Piazza

Undergraduate Research

The research seeks to identify the purpose of nostalgia within Alan Moore’s Watchmen. The characters Laurie Juspeczyk and Adrian Veidt look to the past for truth and inspiration, whereas Dr. Manhattan stands as a figure rejecting the past as humans perceive it. Laurie and Adrian seek to regain the feelings held by the past, but are met with the grim state of the present. Each of these characters has a specific relationship with the past that shapes their perceptions on life as they know it. To figure out why Laurie and Adrian hold onto nostalgia and why Dr. Manhattan …

Diasporadical: In Ryan Coogler's 'Black Panther,' Family Secrets, Cultural Alienation And Black Love, Terri P. Bowles

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This is a review of the film Black Panther (2018) by Ryan Coogler, which traces the arc of the comic book hero as he faces an unanticipated challenge to his power by a man who threatens not just his throne but also the future of his nation. The review explores the ways in which the legacy of slavery and colonialism inform the distinct political and philosophical ideologies of the two main characters, and how inequality drives political thought.

The Rise And Fall Of Gilmore Girls' Feminist Legacy, Mckenna Ahlgren

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the feminist legacy that the television series Gilmore Girls (2000-2007, 2016) built during its original airtime and how its later revival diminished that legacy. Gilmore Girls’ main characters are three generations of women within the Gilmore family, providing a unique opportunity to analyze their feminist identities and characterizations relative to different iterations of feminism. This paper examines how the youngest Gilmore, Rory, is influenced by her mother’s and grandmother’s embodiments of feminism. Their expressions of femininity and sexuality, their approaches to motherhood, and their behaviors in their romantic relationships throughout the series correlate with the predominate feminism …

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

Built Ford Tough: Masculinity, Gerald Ford's Presidential Museum, And The Macho Presidential Style, Dustin Jones

Major Papers

In Cold War America, spanning roughly from 1945-1991, masculinity was in crisis. The rise of Communism and the Soviet Union had led to a fear of spies, infiltrators, and defectors known most commonly as the Red Scare. Americans were encouraged to be hyper vigilant in sussing out deviant behaviour. Alongside this scare came the Lavender Scare. It was suggested that homosexuals were deviant peoples and were therefore more susceptible to being turned Communist than their heterosexual counterparts. This led to a crisis of masculinity where even the smallest suggestion of femininity could lead to accusations of potential compromise, an effect …

Where Woman Is Her Center: Interrogating Morality And Spatiality In The Works Of Joan Didion, Hannah Nicole Martin

Honors Projects

This project outlines new and expansive critical categories for discussing Joan Didion’s work through an interrogation of Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking and earlier personal essays using an interplay of close reading and affect theory. This paper seeks to help move the critical conversation in new directions by shifting the focus towards an analysis of Didion’s unique spatialization of memory, articulated through her use of particular details. Divided in two parts, the first section of this paper discusses The Year of Magical Thinking while the second engages in a dialogue with the critical voices surrounding Didion, as well as …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Insurgent Knowledge: The Poetics And Pedagogy Of Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, And Adrienne Rich In The Era Of Open Admissions, Danica B. Savonick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Insurgent Knowledge analyzes the reciprocal relations between teaching and literature in the work of Audre Lorde, June Jordan, Toni Cade Bambara, and Adrienne Rich, all of whom taught in the Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge (SEEK) educational opportunity program at the City University of New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on archival research and analysis of their published work, I show how feminist aesthetics have shaped U.S. education (especially student-centered pedagogical practices) and how classroom encounters with students had a lasting impact on our postwar literary landscape and theories of difference. My project demonstrates how, …

Lg Ms 045 Howard Solomon Collection, Anthony Marvullo

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

The Howard Solomon Collection documents the art, activism, and scholarship of Howard Solomon, spanning the late 1960s to 2017.

Because Howard was the scholar-in-residence from 2002 to 2008, much of the material acts as a survey of the larger LGBTQ+ Collection. See Appendix C for a full list of cross-referenced papers, archives, and collections.

The Bird That Flew Backwards, Robin Gow

English Honors Papers

The Bird that Flew Backwards examines women poets from literary Modernism in the 1910s and Beat culture in the 1950s. Analyzing these eras in tandem reveals contrasting historical constructions of American womanhood and how sociocultural trends influenced how the “poetess” constructed herself and her work and illustrates the retrograde nature of women’s rights in the 1950s. Through close reading, digital mapping, and historical background, The Bird that Flew Backwards establishes a new critical perspective by linking the more well-known Modernists with lesser-known women in 1910s Greenwich Village Bohemia. This linkage between eras branches off to explore themes of formation of …

Placing Caster Semenya Within And Outside Of Discourse On Sex And Gender In The Space Of International Professional Athletics, Joanna Line

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

World Champion and Olympic Gold Medalist Caster Semenya’s body has caused a rupture within the space of international professional athletics, which is structured according to a binary conceptualization of sex and gender. This rupture created a space for international discourse about alternative ways in which sex and gender can be defined, and to reimagine the space of international professional athletics, and other binary-bound non-sport spaces, to be more inclusive. Cultural geographer Denis Cosgrove's concept of landscapes and Stuart Hall’s concept of coding and decoding provide a framework for exploring how Caster Semenya’s body has been read and interpreted like a …

Adding Fuel To The Fire: Sexual Harassment And Male Chauvinism On Tinder, Sarah E. Irby

Student Scholar Showcase

Abstract

Since its inception in 2012, the dating app Tinder has become notorious for its hookup culture. It has also garnered much attention for instances of sexual harassment and inappropriate male behavior toward women, with the rise of Instagram pages that exploit this behavior. With an increasing number of people using this platform to meet potential partners, it is important to understand why people communicate in the ways they do. This paper explores patterns among male interactions with women on Tinder in regard to sexual harassment and male chauvinism. To conduct this study, I examined screenshots of Tinder conversations that …

Lg Ms 035 Ryan Conrad Collection Finding Aid, Katharine Renolds Thomas

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Description:

Ryan Conrad is a radical queer activist. He is co-founder of Naughty North, an inter-generational radical queer/trans direct action collective in Maine. He participates as a volunteer, board member, and/or advisor for a number of community organizing groups, including EquityFund (board member 2008-present), Outright Lewiston/Auburn (Special Projects Coordinator and volunteer advisor, 2006-present), Maine HIV Prevention Community Planning Group (2009-present), and Maine Video Activist Network (co-founder and volunteer, 2006-present), among others. Conrad curated the June 2009 exhibition "Future of the Past: Reviving the Queer Archives" at Maine College of Art. The Collection contains materials related to radical queers in Maine …

Lg Ms 013 Equalitymaine Archives Finding Aid, Karin A. France

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Description:

The Maine Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance (MLGPA) was formed in 1984 to advocate for LGBT issues and to educate the public, media, and politicians about them. Now known as EqualityMaine, over the last twenty-five years, the organization has worked to secure civil rights legislation, pass hate crimes protection laws, promote workplace equality and ensure responsible HIV/AIDS policies. The Archives contains organizational records of MLGPA and EqualityMaine, and other materials.

Date Range:

1984-2009

Size of Collection:

14.5 ft.

The Manner Of Your Scramble, Henry D. Goldkamp

Toyon: Multilingual Literary Magazine

N/A

Motherhood Makes A Matriarchy, Lily Mann

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Projects

This analysis will discuss the topic of matriarchies, how they created, and how they are sustained. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Coven are used as examples of matriarchies, wherein Hawthorne’s matriarchy is at its start, whereas Murphy’s matriarchy is coming to a potential end. This will be examined through a comparative analysis between the characters in Hawthorne’s early American work with the characters in Murphy’s contemporary work. Ultimately, Hawthorne’s matriarchy is much more insidious and potentially damaging to a patriarchal norm than Murphy’s reclusive patriarchy. Hawthorne’s matriarchy has the option to disrupt a patriarchal …

Lg Ms 024 Lgbt Rights Legislation Collection Finding Aid, Julie Cismoski

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Description:

The Collection contains materials related to LGBT rights legislation from 1978 to 1995, gathered by Prof. Erica Rand of Bates College. The bulk of the Collection is copies of press articles, with a press kit and campaign materials from Equal Protection Lewiston. The legislation covered includes Proposition 6, also known as The Briggs Initiative, in California in 1978; the 1992 Human Rights Ordinance in Portland, Maine; the Lewiston Anti-Discrimination Ordinance in 1993; and the statewide referendum, Question 1, in 1995. Some articles on LGBT issues other than rights legislation are included.

Date Range:

1978-1995

Size of Collection:

0.5 ft.

Lg Ms 023 Roland Blais Papers Finding Aid, Julie Cismoski

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Description:

Roland Blais was born in Rumford, Maine in 1939, and knew by the time he was in high school that he was "different". He saved money and moved to Los Angeles in 1958, where he got a job with Broadway Department Store, and went to gay bars for the first time. He joined the Navy and served from 1959 to 1963, leaving with an honorable discharge. He then enlisted in the Army, serving 1963-1966, stationed at Walsrode, Germany, working with missiles. He returned to the United States, retrieving the car he bought in Germany from Newark Port, New Jersey, …

#Representationmatters: A Study Of Masculinity In The Avengers Movies, Lauren F. Cooke

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Tracing Writer/Reader Identity In, And In Response To, Queer Latinx Autohistoria-Teorìa, Corrina Wells

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines how diverse representation changes the discourse around queer latinx identities. This project extends theories of representation that show how a text changes the imaginary of the reader through a two-part methodology. First, through explicating Spit & Passion and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, this project examines how these texts construct a readers’ imaginary. Then, through a corresponding qualitative assessment on readers’ responses to the texts, this project identifies the extent to which the texts change the beliefs and understandings of a small group of students. Articulating an ecology of identity using the texts under examination, …

Black Lives Examined: Black Nonfiction And The Praxis Of Survival In The Post-Civil Rights Era, Ariel D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The subject of my thesis project is black nonfiction, namely the essay, memoir, and autobiography, written by black authors about and during the Post-Civil Rights Era. The central goals of this work are to briefly investigate the role of genre analysis within the various subsets of nonfiction and also to exemplify the ways that black writers have taken key genre models and evolved them. Secondly, I aim to understand the historical, political, and cultural contributions of the Post-Civil Rights Era, which I mark as hitting its stride in 1968. It is not my desire to create a definitive historical framework …

Disarming “Nature” As A Weapon: A Queer Ecosemiotic Reimagining Of Futurity And Environmental Ethics Through Memoir, Sam Lauer

Master’s Theses

In this thesis, I posit that the need for an active, conscious, and radical queering of ecocriticism as a literary and cultural theory has arisen in light of the postmodern problematization of “nature” and the “natural,” along with the queerness of society, culture, and science. The way we understand “nature” (in life and in texts), whether of physical environments, inherent selfhood, or normalcy, begs to be appropriately informed by discourses and realities of queerness in order for both social and environmental healing to take place. I have analyzed three works of queer creative nonfiction—memoirs—to illuminate the ways in which the …