American Studies Commons^™

Burnt Offerings: How The City Of Angels Engulfed Any And All Involved In The Rodney King Affair And Los Angeles Riots, Michael P. Mcnamara

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis analyses the first modern case of police brutality and race relations - the beating of Rodney King and the 1992 Riots that followed. The roots of the gravity of this situation can be found in the the leadership of the city during that time. The thesis tells the story of the juxtaposition of the black, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles (Tom Bradley) and the white, Republican Los Angeles Police Chief (Daryl Gates). Though both have a very mixed legacy, both men were highly effective in their respective fields and goals. It is their inability to work together and …

Racial Integration In One Cumberland Presbyterian Congregation: Intentionality And Reflection In Small Group, Carolyn Smith Goings

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Negative attitudes toward racial minorities and consequent maltreatment of non-Whites continue to be a crisis in America. The crisis of racism is still realized in phenomena such as residential segregation (Bonilla-Silva, 2014), health disparities (Chae, Nuru-Jeter, & Adler, 2012; Chae, Nuru-Jeter, Francis, & Lincoln, 2011), and in the not-so-uncommon unjust arrests and imprisonment of persons of color (Alexander, 2012). Improvement in race relations through the development of meaningful cross racial relationships in racially integrated settings is one avenue that may lead to reduction of racism (E. Anderson, 2010; Fischer, 2011; Massey & Denton, 1993). Christian congregations are common settings in …

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

‘Tell Your Own Story’: Manhood, Masculinity And Racial Socialization Among Black Fathers And Their Sons, Quaylan Allen

Education Faculty Articles and Research

This study examines how black fathers and sons in the U.S. conceptualize manhood and masculinity and the racial socializing practices of black men. Drawing upon data from an ethnography on Black male schooling, this paper uses the interviews with fathers and sons to explore how race and gender intersect in how Black males make meaning of their gendered performances. Common notions of manhood are articulated including independence, responsibility and providership. However, race and gender intersect in particular ways for black men. The fathers engaged in particular racial socializing practices preparing their sons for encounters with racism. Both fathers and sons …

Back To The Future: Student Time Period Analyses, Jordan Barge, Sarah Ebert, Anna Gaskin, Renay Gladish, Quinn Hamilton, Morgan Hanson, Hannah Markham, Mark Mclean, Callie Smith, Bertha Vega, Shelby Watkins, Jamie Weihe, Jillian Whitney

Student Publications

This newsletter began with the Fall 2015 Honors English class. These students were challenged to initiate research over a topic they thought was interesting and show how it related to our campus, Stephen F. Austin State University. It is our hope that this cumulative research will help readers look at SFA a little differently.

The Role Of Adaptive Capacity On The Subjective Career Success Of Former D-I African-American Male Athletes: A Mixed-Method Study, Leon Antonio Jackson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

African-American male student-athletes who played a revenue-generating sport enter the labor market having relatively poor social networks, low grade point averages, few marketable skills outside of sports, restricted work experiences, and marginal subject matter knowledge; most of which are the result of their participation in sports (Singer, 2008). Therefore making the transition more difficult than even the average African-American male (Edwards, 1980). The purpose of this study was to: (1) Determine the factors that predict subjective career success for former D-I African-American male athletes who played a revenue-generating sport, and (2) Explore how former D-I African-American male athletes, who played …

Panic At The Drive-In: Affordance, Moral Panic, And Drive-In Theatres, Maria Chatzifilalithis

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

"Casting Aside That Ficticious Self.": Deciphering Female Identity In The Awakening 2015, Anne L. Dicosimo

Master's Theses

Kate Chopin’s female protagonists have long since fascinated literary critics, raising serious questions concerning the influence of nineteenth-century female gender roles in her writing. Published in 1899, The Awakening demonstrates the changeability of the various representations of woman. In the nineteenth century, the subject of women may be divided into two categories: the True Woman and the New Woman. The former were expected to “cherish and maintain the four cardinal virtues of piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity” (Khoshnood et al.), while the latter sought to move away from hearth and home in order to focus on education, professions, and political …

First Report Of The National Evaluation Of Rsvp Volunteers, Annie Georges, Susan Gabbard, Ashley Wendell Kranjac

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

"In 2013, the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) initiated a national evaluation of the Retired and Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP). The national evaluation was intended to collect the necessary information to better guide the RSVP program and to address three objectives: 1) describe the characteristics of RSVP volunteers, including how volunteers are distributed across CNCS’s performance measure categories, and how volunteers allocated their time to different service activities across the performance measure categories; 2) measure the relationship between volunteer characteristics, service activities, and volunteers’ psychosocial health; and 3) measure the impact of RSVP national service participation on volunteers’ …

Book Review: Native America And The Question Of Genocide, Amy Fagin

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Visualizing Abolition: Two Graphic Novels And A Critical Approach To Mass Incarceration For The Composition Classroom, Michael Sutcliffe

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

This article outlines two graphic novels and an accompanying activity designed to unpack complicated intersections between racism, poverty, and (d)evolving criminal-legal policy. Over 2 million adults are held in U.S. prison facilities, and several million more are under custodial supervision, and it has become clearly unsustainable. In the last decade, there has been a shift in media conversations about criminality, yet only a few suggest decreasing our reliance upon incarceration. In meaningfully different ways, the two novels trace the development of incarceration from its roots in slavery to its contemporary anti-democratic iteration and offer an underpublicized alternative.

Critical and community …

Creating The Black California Dream: Virna Canson And The Black Freedom Struggle In The Golden State’S Capital, 1940-1988, Kendra M. Gage

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines the black struggle for racial equality in the Golden State’s capital from 1940-1988 and an integral leader of the movement, Virna Canson. Canson fought for nearly fifty years to dismantle discriminatory practices in housing, education, employment and worked to protect consumers. Her lifetime of activism reveals a different set of key issues people focused on at the grassroots level and shows how the fight for freedom in California differed from the South because the state’s discriminatory practices were harder to pinpoint. Her work and the larger black community’s activism in Sacramento also reveals how the black freedom …

New Orleans Revisited: Notes Of A Native Daughter, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

“Best Culinary Destination.” “Best City for Night Owls.” “Best NFL City to Party In.“ “Best City for Girlfriend Getaways.” “Top National Halloween Destination.” “Best Destination in the US and World for Nightlife.” “America's Favorite City.” And on. And on. The list of tourist destination rankings and accolades have mounted in the 10 years since Hurricane Katrina threatened to decimate New Orleans's tourism industry and, quite possibly—as some predicted and others hoped for—New Orleans itself. Things are different now. Recently, the New York Times proclaimed that New Orleans was “resilient and renewed, a decade after Katrina.” Listing New Orleans as one …

There Is No I In Team: A Look At Gender Equality In Collegiate Athletic Attendance, Emmie Trull

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

As a former student-athlete, every part of my collegiate career was perfect. As a softball player, I dealt with stereotypes my entire life from not being taken seriously on the field or not considered a real athlete because I was female. As I was growing up, women were becoming more well-known and accepted in athletics which made things easier, but still difficult. One aspect that was always lacking at games I competed in was the atmosphere. Our parents always supported us by attending, but very few students or other fans attended. It was extremely evident that people would rather attend …

Cooking And Eating The Other: Contemporary Representations Of Domestic Workers In Popular Media, Ashley Mcfarland

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

The mass media governs relations among social groups, manufactures political sentiment and shapes opinions on economic relations between individuals to reproduce a self-perpetuating system of power for a minute elite. The construction and organized distribution of manipulated cultural images that communicate embellished or patently false messages about a social group is central to the success of a capitalist economic system. This thesis reveals how media production negatively influences public perception of housework and the women who perform the labor and thwarts efforts to obtain and enforce legislation to protect native and immigrant domestic workers. Using contemporary representations from The Help …

The Ville: Cops And Kids In Urban America, Updated Edition [Table Of Contents, Foreword, Preface], Greg Donaldson

American Studies

In Brownsville’s twenty-one housing projects, the young cops and the teenagers who stand solemnly on the street corners are bitter and familiar enemies. The Ville, as the Brownsville–East New York section of Brooklyn is called by the locals, is one of the most dangerous places on earth—a place where homicide is a daily occurrence. Now, Greg Donaldson, a veteran urban reporter and a longtime teacher in Brooklyn’s toughest schools, evokes this landscape with stunning and frightening accuracy.

The Ville follows a year in the life of two urban black males from opposite sides of the street. Gary Lemite, an enthusiastic …

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions To Hunger In The Era Of Neoliberalism, Elizabeth Perry Bullock

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Leveraging Capacity: Technical Solutions to Hunger in the Era of Neoliberalism takes the Global Seed Vault and the value of "global crop diversity" as a point of departure for raising questions about the influence of digital technology on the seed and about the solution to hunger known as "global food security." Discussions about food security among food studies scholars highlight either the failures of global public health advocates to regulate the food and beverage industry or they view food security, like earlier campaigns against global hunger, as an instrument for U.S. foreign policy. On either side of this debate, the …

Ruin Porn And Urban Representation In Photography: The Aesthetic And Politics Of Appropriation In "The Ruins Of Detroit", Elyse Remenapp

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project examines the politics of representation in The Ruins of Detroit, a book of photography by Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre in order to understand Detroit as a privileged site of ruins photography, critically referred to as ruin porn. Examining the book as a representation of Detroit's decay reveals an implicit power dynamic which neglects Detroit's complex history and the lived experience of its residents. Paying particular attention to the dialectic of race and labor under capitalism, this project traces the urban history of Detroit in order to contextualize and reframe the state of ruin presented in the …

Wandering, Idleness, And The Nineteenth-Century Tales Novel, 1836-1895, Molly C. O'Donnell

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In "The Late-Victorian Romance Revival" (2008) Anna Vaninskaya questions if "one [can] even speak of the mixing or hybridization of genres in a particular work if the genres themselves had not yet been conclusively defined" (60). This question serves as a warning to genre studies scholars seeking to tease out new observations from history. This dissertation, however, seeks to do just that. Employing multiple theoretical approaches, my study of what I dub the tales novel finds links between diverse Victorian works. Bearing a resemblance to a collection of stories, with seemingly disparate narratives, the tales novels also demonstrate plot interdependence. …

"Cause I'M Young And I'M Black And My Hat's Real Low": Race, Hip-Hop, And Transformations In The Nba During The Late 1990s And Early 2000s, Christine Debord

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Race and racial tensions have long been pressing concerns in professional athletics in the United States. Issues of race have been of particular importance to the National Basketball Association (NBA) since African Americans compromise 77 percent of the league's players. As such, this work examines the ways in which the media and the NBA responded to and managed the new generation of black players during the late 1990s and early 2000s while marketing to primarily white audiences. This time period is important in that it was unapologetically coined the 'thug era' by sports media and basketball fans alike, and the …

Woodrow Wilson’S Ideological War: American Intervention In Russia, 1918-1920, Shane Hapner

Best Integrated Writing

Shane Hapner analyzes the effects of Woodrow Wilson’s principle of self-determination on American intervention in Russia from 1918-1920 in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course HST 4220: Soviet Union, taught by Dr. Seam Pollock at Wright State University.

Circular Thinking: An Original Analysis Of Lord Of The Flies, John Callon

Best Integrated Writing

John Callon examines traits of circular thinking and imagery in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 4560: Capstone in Integrated Language Arts Curriculum, taught by Dr. Nancy Mack at Wright State University.

Are The Main Institutional Changes That Created The “Business Man” Still Relevant?, Hayden Joblin

Best Integrated Writing

Hayden Joblin examines the forces driving the evolution of the modern business man and whether those still have relevance in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course EC 3190: Institutional Economics, taught by Dr. Hee Young Shin at Wright State University.

Identifying Genes Involved In Suppression Of Tumor Formation In The Planarian Schmidtea Mediterranea, Erin Dorsten

Best Integrated Writing

Erin Dorsten makes a proposal for a scientific study of experiments to identify genes involved in protecting an organism with negligible senescence from tumor formation in this piece written for the Integrated Writing course BIO 4020: Current Literature: Biology of Regeneration, taught by Labib Rouhana at Wright State University.

The Barb Report, Elizabeth Schoppelrei

Best Integrated Writing

Elizabeth Schoppelrei explores issues of sexuality, kindness, masculinity, discrimination, and respect in this short story written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 4830: Advanced Fiction Writing Seminar, taught by Dr. Erin Flanagan at Wright State University.

How To Recover From The Great Recession And Reduce The Government Debt, Hunter Cregger

Best Integrated Writing

Hunter Cregger proposes how to recover from the Great Recession of the 2000s and reduce government debt in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course EC 2050: Principles of Macroeconomics, taught by Dr. Hee Young Shin at Wright State University.

Inter-Tribal Disunity: An Analysis Of Inter-Tribal Conflict During The Black Hawk War Of 1832, Megan Bailey

Best Integrated Writing

Megan Bailey explores the effects of inter-tribal disunity and conflict on the Black Hawk War of 1832 in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course HST 3000: Introduction to Historical Analysis, taught by Dr. Noeleen McIlvenna at Wright State University.

Effects Of Caffeine And Vitamin E On Wisconsin Fast Plant, Sarah Ferguson

Best Integrated Writing

Sarah Ferguson examines the effects of caffeine and vitamin E on the growth of Wisconsin Fast Plant in this piece written for the Integrated Writing course BIO 3450: Concepts of Biology I for Early and Middle Childhood Education, taught by Mr. Len Kenyon at Wright State University.

Best Integrated Writing 2015 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

The Algorithmic Self, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.