American Studies Commons^™

Casar Public Lecture: The Gaza War: Implications For The United States And Egypt, The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar

Performances, Events, and Presentations

Director of CASAR Professor Mark W. Deets, also a current member of the History department of AUC specialist in African Studies acted as moderator for this Event. CASARs two guest panelists in this discussion were visiting scholar Professor David Dumke and Professor Karim Hagag. Dumke is the Executive Director of the Office of Global Perspectives & International Initiatives at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He teaches Middle East history, U.S. foreign policy, and American politics, and “has written extensively on these subjects.” He also is host and executive producer of WUCF-TV’s award-winning Global Perspectives (Public Broadcasting Service). Dumke spent …

The Crusading Days Of Jackie Stewart: Evaluating The Development Of Safety In Motor Racing During The 1960s., Alex Twitchen

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

This article critically evaluates the contribution of Jackie Stewart in making motor racing a safer sport for competitors. It challenges the validity of the popular assumption that Jackie Stewart by himself developed a ‘culture of safety’ that transformed the sport. Instead, the role of other individuals are identified alongside the importance of three social processes. These processes are identified as the changing balance of power between different masculine identities, the development of commercial sponsorship and a growth in the coverage of the sport on television.

The development of motor racing from the 1960s onwards as a safer sport in which …

Book Review: I Was A Nascar Redneck: Recollections Of The Transformation Of A Yankee Farm Boy To A Southern Redneck In The Golden Era Of Nascar And Beyond., Quinn Beekwilder, Daniel Dean

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

One Crisis Or Two Problems? Disentangling Rural Access To Justice And The Rural Attorney Shortage, Daria F. Page, Brian R. Farrell

Washington Law Review

We have all seen the headlines: No Lawyer for Miles or Legal Deserts Threaten Justice for All in Rural America. There is a substantial body of literature, across disciplines and for diverse audiences, that looks at access to justice in rural communities and geographies. However, in both the popular and scholarly imaginations, the access to justice crisis has been largely conflated with the shortage of local attorneys in rural areas: When bar associations, lawyers, and legal academics define the problem as not enough lawyers, more lawyers become the obvious solution. Consequently, programs aimed at building pipelines from law schools …

From "Our Poor" To "Personal Responsibility": Changing Welfare Rhetoric In Political Party Platforms Of The Carolinas And The Nation, 1950-2005, Felicity N. Ropp

Senior Theses

In this thesis, I track political rhetoric surrounding poverty and welfare from 1950-2005. I first provide thorough context on the history of welfare policy in the United States and the way these issues were framed by politicians leading up to the period my data covers. My analysis centers on 108 political party platforms from the national Republican and Democratic parties and from state parties in North and South Carolina, ranging from 1950 to 2005 (31 of which I located in archives and manually digitized for the first time ever). I explain the significance of party platforms and review the literature …

‘Following The Line Of Least Resistance’: African American Women In Domestic Work, 1899–1940, Taylor Simsovic

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This paper examines the challenges faced by African American women employed in domestic service between 1899 and 1940, with a focus on how race, class, and gender intersected to shape their experiences. Specifically, the study investigates how these women continued to perform reproductive labor as they migrated from the South to Northern states during the Great Migration. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis argues that Black women's persistent employment in undervalued labor within white American homes was driven by the mutually constitutive systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These systems channeled Black women into …

Situating The Child’S Voice Within Children’S Fashion: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of The Child’S Engagement With The Clothing They Wear, Melinda Byam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the child’s relationship with children’s fashion, the clothing they wear, and their fashion consumption practices. Using a wardrobe approach to fashion, and an understanding of the child as the expert in their own lives, the author questions how the child engages, interacts, and experiences children’s fashion considering that how they use, think, and speak about their clothing is minimally consulted. Situating this research within a theoretical foundation set by Goffman and Simmel (social behavior), Featherstone (consumer culture), and Merleau-Ponty and Entwistle (embodiment), this text examines fashion from the point of view of the child, hypothesizing how future …

The Life Of An American Catholic Radical: Review Of Christian Anarchist, Ammon Hennacy, A Life On The Catholic Left, William L. Portier

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

“Handicap Removed”: An Alternative Path To The Social Model, Craig M. Rustici

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article identifies an expression of a social model of disability in a 1966 film promoting Hofstra University’s Program for the Higher Education of the Handicapped and traces that model back to books published by the pioneering rehabilitation physician Henry H. Kessler in 1935 and 1947, decades before the UPIAS (Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation) Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976). In light of Kessler’s articulation of social and minority models, identification of contrasting religious, charity and medical models, and discussion of disability stigma, this article reassesses Ruth O’Brien’s critique, in Crippled Justice (2001), of Kessler and the twentieth-century …

Citing Seeds, Citing People: Bibliography And Indigenous Memory, Relations, And Living Knowledge-Keepers, Megan Peiser Choctaw Nation Of Oklahoma

Criticism

By turning the page or reading further, you are accepting a responsibility to this story, its storyteller, its ancestors, and its future ancestors. You are accepting a relationship of reciprocity where you treat this knowledge as sacred for how it nourished you, share it only as it has been instructed to share, and to ensure it remains unviolated for future generations.

This story is told by myself, Megan Peiser, Chahta Ohoyo. I share knowledge entrusted to me by Anishinaabe women I call friends and sisters, by seed-keepers of many peoples Indigenous to Turtle Island, and knowledge come to me from …

A Guide For The Everyday Woman Surfer: How Surf Culture's Patriarchy Marginalizes Ocean Lovers, Alexis S. Di Stefano

Women's, Gender and Queer Studies

Humans are naturally drawn to the water by wind and tide. It is a place of solace that we have a desire to know deeply, yet we have kept one another from experiencing it through biases that perpetuate inequality. White-supremacist hegemony has historically kept communities of color from coastlines, women from lineups, and queer communities from participating in surf culture. As more people from all social groups return to the water through surfing in the 20th century, surf culture needs to adapt to become more inclusive. This paper outlines surf culture's historical transition into whiteness and how female beauty standards …

Desire, Difference, And Productivity: Reflections On “The Perverse Child” And Its Continued Relevance, Christopher Hewlett

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article is concerned with the relationships through which children have been born, raised, and made into Amahuaca people over the past 75 years, and within contemporary Native Communities on the Inuya River since their formation beginning in the 1980s. The process of making children into kin among Amahuaca people is similar to that described throughout much of lowland South America. The production, preparation, and sharing of proper food (manioc, plantains, fish, and game) as well as manioc beer are central aspects of sociality and the formation of specific kinds of bodies. While the processes of sharing substances, demonstrating care, …

'I Don’T Fit That Stereotype': Participant Photography And The Visual (Re)Positioning Of Black Men, Quaylan Allen

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This paper examines how Black men use a participant photography project as a tool for meaning making during the current political and social context of anti-Black racism, Black activism, and intersectional politics. Using a critical visual methodology in the analysis of the images, this paper will examine how Black men make meaning of current social issues through the types of images they produced, how they make meaning of the types of audiences they are speaking to through the project, and how these meanings are reflected through their repositioning practices in the visual project. Specific attention is paid to how they …

Dance/Movement Therapy Used As An Intervention To Heal Racial Trauma Within The Black Community: A Literature Review, Jennifer Noboise

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The history of dance within the black community has served an important role while living through a racist and discriminatory society. Dance has been used to express anger, grief, and joy during hardships and moments of rejoicing from the black experience. African American people have endured years of trauma and abuse from oppressive systems. Research has been conducted to demonstrate that dance/movement therapy has been effective in treating those who have experienced a form of trauma since the trauma is stored in the body. Examining trauma symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and substance use, the research found these symptoms diminished …

Abolition Ecologies And The Making Of Freedom As A Place In Bayview-Hunters Point, Spencer Daniel O'Hara

Master's Theses

In this paper, I critically explore the subjectivities of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard (HPNS), part of the largest redevelopment project in San Francisco since 1906. Applying an abolition ecologies framework, I ask what explains the duplicity of the Shipyard as a site of radioactive contamination and capital accumulation, and in the same time-space one that creates the conditions for radical place-making. Hunters Point Naval Shipyard is a former commercial and military shipyard located on a peninsula in southeastern San Francisco. Motivated by its desire for a major shipbuilding and repair facility to project maritime power in the Pacific, the Navy …

Post-Racism As Ideology: Character Construction And Placement, & Narrative Structure In Dear White People, Mphatso Kaufulu

Dissertations

My project looks at post-racism as ideology. Through my chosen text – the Netflix streamed television series called Dear White People – I examine the ways in which post-racism is persists through representational abstractions which reformulate race as largely sets of interpersonal and intercultural, person-to-person social problems rather that a more general condition rooted in institutional or structural social, political and economic arrangements which organize society and produce its cultural dispensation.

To do this, I applied some of Stuart Hall’s ideas – on identity, ideology and commodification – and Bonilla-Silva – specifically in the area of obfuscations or abstractions of …

Black Girl Magic: History, Identity, And Spirituality In Contemporary Fantasy And Science-Fiction, Taylore Fox

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 2013, activist and social media influencer CaShawn Thompson composed a Tweet claiming, “Black Girls Are Magic,” which shortened to the hashtag “#BlackGirlMagic.” As the hashtag began to circulate social media, the phrase birthed a digital movement that celebrated the beauty, accomplishments, and mere presence of Black women and girls. This project argues that Black Girl Magic, operating as a social and literary framework, combats the injustice, inequality, and lack of respect and representation that Black women and girls faced in the past and continue to face today. In Black Girl Magic literature, Black women characters perform literal and figurative …

Muslim Enough? Egyptian Enough? American Enough?, Essraa Nawar

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Born in Alexandria, Egypt, Essraa has studied, lived and worked in many places, including the Gulf area (Qatar), Washington D.C., where she worked for The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia, and Alexandria, Egypt where she worked for Bibliotheca Alexandrina. In 2002, she moved with her husband and family to the United States where they have been studying, working, and living for 20 plus years. In this vulnerable presentation, Essraa will share for the first time her journey navigating motherhood as an immigrant, Muslim women while thousands of miles away from her family in Egypt. Everyday Essraa will ask herself: Is …

The Creation Of Political Survival Strategies By Black Collegiate Women On Virginia’S Predominantly White Campuses, Maya Jenkins

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

The University of Mary Washington is a liberal arts institution founded in 1908 as a normal and industrial school for women (Our History - About UMW, 2015). Because of its small size, Mary Washington was historically known as Virginia’s “undiscovered gem” (Boyer, 2011). Mary Washington is described as a place built to support the “innovative, passionate, intellectual, and genuine” (Boyer, 2011). However, in 2020, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and Tony McDade and a racial protest that took place near the college’s campus caused many Black collegiate women at Mary Washington to question if their university was built to support …

Purposefully Feminizing Masculinity: Femininity In Male Rock And Metal Stars 1950s - 1980s, Maria Myer

The Compass

Traditionally in Western culture, men have had the privilege of promoting rebellion while women have had to be submissive and socially desirable. This expectation applied to all women but especially women in the rock ‘n’ roll scene. The overwhelming loudness of rock and the typical message of rebellion was connected to the power that men held within society.¹ The combination of loud and fast paced music with the electronic nature of the instruments is what sets rock ‘n’ roll and metal apart from other genres. The attention that rock ‘n’ roll music demands, both from the challenging nature of …

A New Atticus Is Afoot: The Portrayal Of Lawyers In Popular Culture, Anna Thrush

Senior Theses

This project analyzes the stereotypical image of lawyers in popular culture, focusing on either overly demonic or unrealistically heroic. Both stereotypes that are common portrayals of attorneys in popular culture are unrealistic and deny society a true comprehension of the profession. Popular culture has molded the image of lawyers to the characteristics that sell, rather than focusing on a realistic portrayal. Therefore, popular culture creates a falsely dramatized image of attorneys to generate revenue, putting the reputation and future of the profession as risk. These stereotypes are exemplified in this project through a close literary analysis of lawyer characters from …

‘Reading The Cultural Landscape’ In The ‘Birthplace’ Of Modern Race/Racism: Using Hooks To Invite Students In As Critical Knowledge Producers & Co-Conspirators, Danielle Docka-Filipek

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Children And The Cold War: Race & Hypocrisy Amid Fear Of Nuclear War, Richard D. Mctaggart Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

During the Cold War, American propaganda centered the wellbeing of the child in its messaging warning of atomic attack at the hands of the Soviet Union. However, despite American claims that all children were valued by the United States, this was proven untrue by its unequal treatment of Black children.

Anthology On Racism, The Black Experience, And Privilege, Marshall University Society Of Black Scholars, Marshall University Office Of Intercultural Affairs

Marshall Books

RACISM IN YOUR LIFE

The depth, impact, and experience of “racism” in our personal lives is a story that we do not often tell. These are predominantly private matters, only occasionally shared and with only certain people in our lives. Unfortunately, many people in our world are unaware of its full existence and do not know the truth about the experiences of racism in our daily lives. Without knowledge of these truths, society, including university leadership, cannot make adequate advancements to address these demoralizing experiences of people of color. In this anthology, writings on this subject will bring clarity, truth, …

Reverberations Of Boarding School Trauma In Upstate New York, Grace A. Miller

Comparative Woman

The legacy of boarding schools in Upstate New York is one that non-Natives seem to have forgotten. This historical amnesia compounds other acts of genocide, including cultural genocide, of the Haudenosaunee people throughout US history. Established in 1855 at the Cattaraugus Reservation (Seneca), the Thomas Indian School would serve as an institution of forced assimilation and displacement, much like the other Native American boarding schools. While the larger US population has grown to forget these schools' existence, the shadowed legacy of institutions, like the Thomas Indian School, Haskell, and Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the rippling effects of these schools’ practices …

An Arbitrary Aesthetic: Cultural Reproduction And Hegemonic Canonical Formations In The Western Theatrical Academy, Sim C. Rivers

Theses and Dissertations

Theatre as an artistic practice has often been celebrated as an art of and for the people, being a modality that in theory the common person has access to learn, explore and experience. In recent years I have become preoccupied with the growing rarification and privileging of this art form, particularly in how it is cognized and taught in the academic world. As such, I set out to investigate the mechanisms at work at levels structural, artistic, and personal that determine how theatre is taught and understood within the western academy.

This thesis seeks to examine and unpack the perceived …

A Black Prometheus Among The Gods: Illuminating African American Literary Tradition In Sam Greenlee's The Spook Who Sat By The Door, Kenneth L. Rainey Iii

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In his hard-hitting novel The Spook Who Sat by the Door Sam Greenlee aims to help his target African American audience to succeed and thrive as their true selves with the novel functioning as a guide to resisting the ever-present physical and spiritual threat faced daily. On the one hand the novel functions as a manual for civil uprising, but underneath that surface, Greenlee argues that true African American resistance comes through nurturing self-determination, self-love, and self-esteem. This project also argues that Spook ought to be located closer to the center of the African American literary canon and provides comparisons …

K-5 Elementary Alternative Program: A Case Study, William E. Scheuer Iv

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this case study was to examine how the K-5 elementary alternative program All Students Can Thrive (ASCT) used student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. There is a lack of research on K-5 elementary alternative programs, such as ASCT, and specifically those that integrate student-centered learning practices to influence the whole child. Literature does not contain universally accepted interventions that are effective in the elementary alternative setting to help students return to the mainstream classroom setting better prepared to display appropriate behaviors when a student is removed from a mainstream classroom setting due to disruptive behaviors. …

The Model Minority Myth And The Mental Well-Being Of Academically Struggling Asian Americans, Jan Michael Roa Ballesteros

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation investigates relationships between pressures Asian Americans experience to be academically successful and their feelings of depression and stress. The model minority myth (MMM) stereotype characterizes Asian Americans as industrious, intellectually-gifted, assimilating to U.S. values of meritocracy, and achieving higher academic and employment success levels compared to other racial groups in the general population. While many consider MMM a positive stereotype, it also comes with a cost. Prior research demonstrates the tensions that exist among Asian Americans who do not uphold the MMM stereotype and its corollary, the Asian Academic Success Frame. Those unable to meet academic success standards …