American Studies Commons^™

Is Sexyy Red Minstrelsy, Or Are We Overreacting?, Malik Brizan-Reed

Capstones

This criticism piece explores the controversial female rapper Sexyy Red. It challenges negative perspectives about her persona, primarily based on respectability politics. It highlights Sexyy Red's ability to capitalize on a moment and business savviness. The article has themes of racial double standards and classism. Sexyy Red is more than the "ghetto Black girl," aesthetic. She's a mother and entrepreneur who is authentic to herself.

Eleven Are The Stars Of Joseph’S Dream; His Coat, Many Colors, Alexander B. Bloom

Capstones

At the Conservative synagogue where I attended Saturday school for part of my childhood in the 90s I recall the teachers’ reimagination of the popular Michael Jackson song “We Are the World,” taught to the seven and eight year-olds who were made to sing it in chorus at some holiday celebration that year.

“We are the Jews,” we bleated out, in concert, “We are the Chosen.”

From my place among them I remember the unsettled feeling I had, to consider my non-Jewish friends at school, teachers and babysitters who knew not of tefillin, my maternal grandparents in the pews of …

How Misogyny In Gaming Affects Black Women/Poc, Niccarri Allen

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research query explores the gaming industry and how its misogynistic issues affect the Black community in its forums. Research has shown that there has been a suppressed issue of prejudice against women of color in many gaming spaces in the last 20 years. Video games, created for healing and interactive spaces for communities seemingly have normalized its harming nature to minority groups. My research will look into aspects of how gender bias and racism mix into the gaming industry and cause distress among its players. I will research how misrepresentation in the character personas in video games lead to …

Cultural Memory And The Search For Identity In Victorian Fantasy Fiction, Sadie Boggs

Honors College Theses

Fantasy literature's origins can be traced through myths and folktales, medieval romances, enlightenment fairy tale fantasy, and Romanticism, before finally taking firmer root in the Victorian period and blooming into its own genre in 20th century modern fantasy. Victorian thinkers reacted to the Enlightenment’s realism and technological innovation by “rediscovering” the Middle Ages as a time of beauty, simplicity, and moral virtue. Simultaneously, Psychology developed as a recognized field of study, and theories emerged about the psychological process of memory formation and retrieval, as well as its reliability and relation to identity.

Considering these psychological theories, Victorian fantasy's cultural memory …

Victory Gardens: Helping On The Home Front, A Curriculum Outreach Project, Kelly Hoomes

Master's Theses

The Victory Garden: Helping on the Homefront traveling trunk outreach project links past, present, and future by introducing students to the historical significance of World War II victory gardens and emphasizing the continued relevance today. Partnering with Kennesaw State University’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education (MHHE), the traveling trunk focuses on a fifth-grade audience, aligning with Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies, Health, and Science. The traveling trunk designed as a “museum-in-a-box" includes primary sources, artifacts, and a practical gardening activity that fosters critical thinking and analysis. By encouraging an understanding of the past and the connections to …

Casar Public Lecture: The Results Are Out! Implications Of The Us 2024 Elections On Egypt & The World: Looking At A Broader Perspective’, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

DONALD TRUMP WON THE 2024 US ELECTIONS!

CASAR Public Panel Discussion: The results are out! Implications of the US 2024 Elections on Egypt & the World: Looking at a Broader Perspective."

Speakers: From AUC: Amb. Karim Haggag - Dr. Manar El-Shorbagi , and from the University of Central Florida Mr.David Dumke.

The panel was moderated by CASAR Director Dr.Mark Deets.

The panelists deliberated about the possible implications of this election round from several perspectives, analyzing the impact on Egypt, the region & the world.

Learn more about CASAR and follow us: CASAR website: https://gapp.aucegypt.edu/academics/c...

Facebook: / casar-auc-egypt-461110727349183

Instagram: https://instagram.com/casar2003?igshi.. …

Casar Auc Community Lecture: ‘Gender-Based Violence,Women And The Law In Egypt And The Us’, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

This engaging - AUC community only - special topics lecture discussed the social challenges and legal obstacles women face when discussing gender based violence crimes in Egypt shedding a comparative light on the US given the recent election results.

This event hosted Counselor Mohamed Samir Ahmed, Spokesperson of the Administrative Prosecution Authority (APA) in Egypt, Independent Lecturer in Political Science & Gender Based Violence Crimes.

The event was moderated by CASAR Assistant to Director & Adjunct Faculty Yasmeen El-Ghazaly.

This lecture was a collaboration between The Prince Alwaleed Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR AUC EGYPT ) and the …

Hans Holbein's Portrait Of Henry Viii: England's Own Personal Jesus, Amy Pitsor

Best Integrated Writing

Pitsor explores the possibility that Holbein’s late-stage change in the composition of the portrait from a three-quarter view of Henry to a frontal view held a motive to present Henry as the head of the newly established Church of England and as equal to the pope, and possibly to Christ himself.

La Falta De Los Supermercados En El Oeste De Dayton: Cómo Obtienen Los Estudiantes Comida Fresca En Los Desiertos Alimentarios (Un Ensayo Expositivo-Argumentativo, Catherine Iacobacci

Best Integrated Writing

After having learned about how poverty can affect children’s educational outcomes in one of her classes, Iacobacci wanted to learn more about how the issue affected the area where she lived and went to school. What she found out was incredibly shocking, and only furthered the idea that students are struggling with opportunity gaps, not achievement ones. Unfortunately, due to discriminatory loan practices from long ago, children from the 21st century are suffering physically, emotionally, and academically.

The Journey Within: My Travel Journel, Devonique Jones

Best Integrated Writing

This project is a multigenre research exploration that delves into Jones's personal journey of self discovery and growth during her first solo trip.

Investigation Of Ndv In Southern African Waterfowl Reveal Insightful Geographic And Biodiversity Trends To Help Contain The Virus, Lauren Goodwill

Best Integrated Writing

This study assesses the infection rates and trends of Newcastle disease in southern African waterfowl, a project carried out by Emily Murphy in Dr. Jeffrey Peters’ laboratory

Analysis Of The Integration Of Race And Cultural Concordant Doulas Into The Birth Experience Of African American Women, Cherissa Garcia

Best Integrated Writing

Garcia's study looks at how integrating race and cultural-concordant doulas into the birth experience of African American women would impact outcomes. She found similar studies that provided strong evidence to support doula integration. However, most did not select study populations that appropriately reflected the African American women at increased risk of poor outcomes. As a result, Garcia designed a study that looked at race and cultural concordance between doulas and patients from a wide range of SES backgrounds and varying degrees of pregnancy risk.

The Foreigner In Our Midst: Jewish Rights Debates In Revolutionary France, William Evans

Best Integrated Writing

The debates surrounding Jewish rights during the French Revolution concerned many of the same subjects that divide the Western world today. The fear of the other, immigration as a political tool, and the disagreements over assimilation are all subjects which feature prominently today. In this essay Evans sets out to explore these debates while fairly assessing the historical informants.

Junebug In January: A Novel Excerpt, Hannah Carson

Best Integrated Writing

This section of Junebug in January is the beginning of a much longer story that follows eighteen-year-old June and her small family as she attempts to survive the harsh reality of living in the era of the Great Depression and her attempts to survive her Papa’s tasks for her. This story challenges the boundaries of family loyalty, investigates the concept of “saving yourself,” and explores the limits of redemption.

Best Integrated Writing Fall 2024 - Complete Edition, Wright State University School Of Humanities And Cultural Studies, Kristie Mckiernan, Tracy Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University.

Classics And Contemporary Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)], Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014)] (Online only)

Editorial

Moving Popular Culture Studies Scholarship into the Future, Lynnea Chapman King and Anna S. CohenMiller

Guest Editorial

“καλὸν ἀνθρωπίνου βίου κάτοπτρον”: Popular Culture as a Pedagogical Lens on Greco-Roman Antiquity, Kirsten Day and Benjamin Haller

Part I: Epic Reconsiderations

Wounds that Will Not Heal: Heroism and Innocence in Shane and the Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching the Iliad and the Odyssey through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

The Odyssey and its Odyssey …

Video Game Review — Final Fantasy Xiv: Level Up Forever, Brian Cowlishaw

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of the video game Final Fantasy XIV: Level Up Forever.

Graphic Novel Review — The Adventures Of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’Ll Ever Need, Robert G. Weiner

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Review of Daniel H. Pink and Rob Ten Pas's book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You’ll Ever Need, New York: Penguin, 2008.

Experiments In Love: Longus’ Daphnis & Chloe And Henry De Vere Stacpoole’S The Blue Lagoon, L. Kirsten Day

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Despite a chronological gulf of nearly two thousand years, the second century C. E. Greek romance writer Longus and the early twentieth century Irish novelist Henry de Vere Stacpoole were prompted to produce their best works by a similar motive: an urge to explore the world, and particularly the phenomenon of love and desire, from a standpoint of complete innocence. Although the resulting novels, Daphnis & Chloe and The Blue Lagoon respectively, have no evident direct connection, they exhibit surprising similarities not only in plot, setting, and characterization, but also in the values, perspectives, and worldviews they advance. The striking …

Ovid And Mel Gibson: Power, Vulnerability, And What Women Want, Geoff Bakewell

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Knowledge of Ovid is invaluable for analyzing Nancy Meyers’s film What Women Want (2000). Advertising executive Nick Marshall (Mel Gibson) is a sexist, chauvinistic ladies’ man who acquires the ability to hear what women are thinking. He is in effect a second Tiresias, and this article examines him in light of the gender-bending seer from the Metamorphoses. Meyers links Nick’s miraculous transformation to his attempt to listen to women while simultaneously cross-dressing. He subsequently becomes an intermediary between the genders, especially on sexual matters. The article further examines the Nick/Tiresias parallel in light of Ovid’s treatment of other Theban …

The Labyrinth Of Memory: Iphigeneia, Simonides, And Classical Models Of Architecture As Mind In Chris Nolan’S Inception (2010), Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Chris Nolan’s 2010 film Inception uses architecture as a language whereby to comment upon the relationship of the protagonist, Dom Cobb, with his deceased wife, Mal. This paper argues that three classical models – Homer’s tomb of Myrhine described in the Iliad, Iphigeneia’s dream of the collapse of the house of Agamemnon in Euripides’s Iphigeneia Among the Taurians, and Simonides’ Memory Palace mnemonic technique – manifest parallel uses of architecture as a metaphor for mind.

The film identifies each of its main characters – Dom, Mal, and Ariadne – with different architectures and with different modes of cognition. The …

300 And Fellini-Satyricon: Film Theory In The Tertiary Classroom, Leanne Glass

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Pedagogical practices in Reception-based courses on ancient Greece and Rome in film often focus on an individual film’s connections to its historical themes and meta-narrative. In contrast, courses based on Film Studies often focus pedagogical discourses on filmic techniques or the filmmaking process per se. Regularly, the two approaches remain discrete and discipline-based.

In view of this disjuncture in teaching approaches and foci, the intention of this paper is to explore the benefits of film theory, including its consideration of film technique, within Classical Reception courses. Therefore, the suggestion offered herein is that more emphasis on the pedagogies of Film …

Theseus Loses His Way: Viktor Pelevin’S Helmet Of Horror And The Old Labyrinth For The New World, Alison Traweek

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This article explores the relationship between the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur, and Viktor Pelevin’s 2006 adaptation of it, The Helmet of Horror, particularly how it can serve as a case study for the nature and significance of adaptation. It examines the idea of memory, a central theme of the novel, and considers how three aspects of the original myth – the Minotaur, Ariadne’s thread, and the labyrinth itself – shape and inform Pelevin’s retelling. Each of these is unique to this myth in antiquity, and together, they structure the story. Each is also fundamentally connected to the …

The Odyssey And Its Odyssey In Contemporary Texts: Re-Visions In Star Trek, The Time Traveler’S Wife, And The Penelopiad, Mary Economou Bailey Green

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Homer’s The Odyssey is the archetypal quest story. The dialogue began with Homer, and contemporary texts and popular culture media have continued the tradition of deconstructing and recreating stories, addressing issues related to the human psyche. As Hardwick and Stray note, the relationship between ancient and modern is “not merely inherited but constantly made and remade,” one that we see in the following varied genres and versions that retell the Odyssean myth, relating re-visions of characters, relationships, structures, and themes. The original Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais” is an allegory of the Odyssean quest for human knowledge, while …

O Homer, Where Art Thou?: Teaching The Iliad And The Odyssey Through Popular Culture, Mallory Young

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Like so many of my academic colleagues, I spend an inordinate amount of time lamenting our students’ lack of engagement, discipline, and preparation. The problems are naturally exacerbated when the subject is literature and the literature in question is, by its nature, far removed in time and place from students’ daily lives. At the same time, requirements to study literature have become compressed, if not eliminated entirely. Ancient Greek works, in particular, seem to pose special problems for unmotivated or unprepared students. As our students become less likely to have a prior context from which to approach ancient texts, the …

Wounds That Will Not Heal: Heroism And Innocence In Shane And The Iliad, Carl A. Rubino

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

George Stevens’ film Shane, which dates from 1953, remains an especially successful version of the heroic paradigm that is established in Homer’s Iliad. Just as Achilles, the hero of Homer’s poem, considers abandoning the war at Troy in favor of a long and uneventful life at home, the film’s mysterious hero makes a futile attempt to abandon his violent past for a “normal life” as an ordinary farmer in the American west. In the end, however, the threatened status of the domestic world Shane is trying to enter makes it impossible for him to renounce his heroic nature and violent …

Guest Editorial: “Καλὸν Ἀνθρωπίνου Βίου Κάτοπτρον”: Popular Culture As A Pedagogical Lens On Greco-Roman Antiquity (Essays In Honor Of Kirsten Day), L. Kirsten Day, Benjamin Haller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Guest editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014), Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture.

Editorial: Moving Popular Culture Studies Scholarship Into The Future, Lynnea Chapman King, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Editorial for Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 1, Issue 1 (Spring 2014), Classics and Contemporary Popular Culture.

On Confronting Identity And Global Challenges Through Popular Culture And Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal Of Popular Culture And Pedagogy, Volume 11, Issue 2 (August 2024)], Tyler Robert Sheldon, Anna S. Cohenmiller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

On Confronting Identity And Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy [Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Volume 11, Issue 2 (August 2024)]

Editorial

On Confronting Identity and Global Challenges through Popular Culture and Pedagogy, Tyler Robert Sheldon and Anna CohenMiller

Articles

Revisiting Paradise Lost through K-Pop: A Global Approach to Teaching Writing, Nayoung Bishoff

Examining Adolescence and Agency in the Midst of International Crisis: Pandemics, Pandemonium, and Zombie Young Adult Literature, T. Hunter Strickland

Ways of Decoloniality by the Painted Lady: Avatar: The Last Airbender’s Katara Demonstrates How to Revive a Community in Ecological …

Three Characters And Me(Me): Positioning Popular Culture To Unpack Emerging Teacher Identity, Gillian E. Mertens, Henry (Cody) C. Miller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In this article we narrate an instructional practice we implemented in two different teacher education courses that facilitated conversations about teacher identity through the use of fictional characters who were educators. This practice served two purposes in our course work: firstly, this activity presents students with an opportunity to demonstrate their media interests and career goals; secondly, this activity provides a quick, baseline assessment of how aspiring teachers view their profession and future practice. We detail student responses to this activity and consider how their choices of fictional educators fit into broader patterns we see in popular culture, specifically depictions …