American Studies Commons^™

Health Program Planning/Evaluation 2012-2013 Grant Application, Tyler Begley

Best Integrated Writing

Tyler Begley proposes a plan to get junior high and high school students to eat more fruits and vegetables in this essay written for HED 4430: Health Program Planning and Evaluation, taught by Dr. Mary Chace at Wright State University.

Successful Strategies: Marketing For Tomorrow, Benjamin Banning, John Breyer, Candice Turner

Best Integrated Writing

Benjamin Banning, John Breyer, and Candice Turner generate a marketing campaign for a tricycle using three different aspects of psychology in this essay written for PSY 4100: Applied Psychology Capstone, taught by Dr. Gina F. Thomas at Wright State University.

End Of Life Ethical Dilemma, Gregory Heiser

Best Integrated Writing

Gregory Heiser explores the options and dilemmas involved in deciding on care for a 93-year-old female patient with Alzheimer’s disease in this essay written for NUR 4800: Transition to the Role of the Professional Nurse, taught by Dr. Ann M. Stalter at Wright State University.

Classicism And Humanist Ideology In Donatello’S Gattamelata And David, Shayla Wheat

Best Integrated Writing

Shayla Wheat traces Classical and Humanist influences on Donatello and his works Gattamelata and David in this essay written for ART 3130: Early Italian Renaissance, taught by Dr. Caroline Hillard at Wright State University.

Chandara’S Power, Amy Kasten

Best Integrated Writing

Amy Kasten analyzes the struggles of women against oppression in Rabindranath Tagore’s short story “Punishment” in this essay written for ENG 2040: Great Books: Literature, taught by Ms. Carolyn Stoermer at Wright State University.

Reflection On Pema Chödrön’S When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice For Difficult Times, Carol Jones

Best Integrated Writing

Carol Jones reflects on suffering, self-knowledge, and enlightenment as presented in Pema Chödrön’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times in this essay written for CST 2320: Non-Western Religions, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

Reflection On Michael Coogan’S God And Sex, Sierra Garwood

Best Integrated Writing

Sierra Garwood reflects on themes of love, sex, and the bible in Michael Coogan’s God and Sex in this essay written for REL 2040: Great Books: Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Sharon A. Showman at Wright State University’s Lake campus.

The Conflict Of Time: Tradition Vs. Modernity In Love In The Time Of Cholera, Rachel Smith

Best Integrated Writing

Rachel Smith analyzes themes of time, tradition, and modernity in Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course CST 2310: Non-Western Cultures, taught by Dr. Alpana Sharma at Wright State University.

Trends Of The Portrayal Of Yahweh In The Hebrew Bible, Kenneth Price

Best Integrated Writing

Kenneth Price explores trends of the portrayal of Yahweh in the Hebrew bible in this essay written for the Integrated Writing course ENG 2040: Great Books, Bible and Western Culture, taught by Dr. Heidi Wendt at Wright State University.

Contents And Acknowledgements

Best Integrated Writing

Table of Contents and acknowledgements for Best Integrated Writing: Journal of Excellence in Integrated Writing Courses at Wright State. Fall 2014. 1st Edition. Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

"The Struggle For The Supremacy Of The Coast": Baseball And Identity In Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Christopher G.F. Hoffman Ma

All Student Scholarship

During the summer months of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Boothbay Harbor region was invigorated with baseball fever. By 1900, Americans had come to understand baseball as its national game, and Boothbay Harbor discovered and nourished the game in the final decades of the nineteenth century. But as the twentieth century began, baseball became more than a game: it was a business, a spectacle, and an opportunity for inhabitants of the region to define themselves based upon the team they supported.

[Introduction To] More Than Shelter: Activism And Community In San Francisco Public Housing, Amy L. Howard

Bookshelf

In the popular imagination, public housing tenants are considered, at best, victims of intractable poverty and, at worst, criminals. More Than Shelter makes clear that such limited perspectives do not capture the rich reality of tenants’ active engagement in shaping public housing into communities. By looking closely at three public housing projects in San Francisco, Amy L. Howard brings to light the dramatic measures tenants have taken to create—and sustain and strengthen—communities that mattered to them.

More Than Shelter opens with the tumultuous institutional history of the San Francisco Housing Authority, from its inception during the New Deal era, through …

In The Thicke Of It, Jessie M. Pierce

SURGE

If you’ve been anywhere near your Facebook newsfeed in the last few days, you’re probably familiar with the most recent images of Miley Cyrus at her less-than-graceful VMA performance. From CNN’s front page headline, “What Was Miley Thinking?” to Buzzfeed’s gifset of a cartoon Cyrus twerking on famous paintings, her antics have, for better or for worse, become a hyper-inflated mega-sensation that I, frankly, don’t care about at all. I’m not going to talk about Miley anymore. Instead, let’s talk about her co-performer, Robin Thicke. [excerpt]

Telling Their Own Story: How Student Newspapers Reported Campus Unrest, 1962-1970, Kaylene Dial Armstrong

Dissertations

The work of student journalists often appears as a source in the footnotes when researchers tell the story of perhaps the most significant period in the history of higher education in the United States – the student protest era throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet researchers and historians have ignored the student press itself during this same time period. This dissertation considers how the student reporters and editors did their job during major protests that occurred between 1962 and 1970, and tells not only the story of reporting protest but the individual stories of the student journalists.

The key …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

In Defense Of Feminists Who Like Fashion, Margarita C. Delgado

SURGE

I’m sitting on the downtown R train one night in Manhattan, a copy of Vogue resting on my crossed legs. It is late and I am clearly unwinding peacefully as I thumb through page after glamorous page of my magazine. The train stops at Prince Street and there’s the usual flux of people in and out. Those left inside settle as the train pulls out of the station.

“Ugh. Fashion is stupid,” remarks one young man to another, both of whom are sitting diagonally from me and well within earshot. He’s watching me ignore him as I continue enjoying my …

Unaffiliated Parents And The Religious Training Of Their Children, Christel Manning

Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications

This article examines how parents who are religiously unaffiliated make decisions about the religious upbringing of their children. Drawing on qualitative data, this study explores the diverse worldviews that are included within the term "None” and how those beliefs are reflected or not reflected in the way parents raise their children. The article identifies four distinct worldviews among unaffiliated parents and identifies five different strategies that parents use to incorporate religion in the lives of their children. The article then analyzes the relationship between parent worldviews and actions, with particular attention to secular unaffiliated parents who incorporate religion in the …

Rape Culture Ruined My Favorite 80s Movie, Stephanie K. Adamczak

SURGE

I will admit that I wish my best friend was Duckie, I want to attend just one Saturday detention with Emilio Estevez, and I listen to an unhealthy amount of music from the Smiths and the Psychedelic Furs. Yes, I am a child of the nineties, but I spent many high school nights watching John Hughes films and attempting to dye my hair the perfect shade of Molly Ringwald red. [excerpt]

"Listen To The Wild Discord": Jazz In The Chicago Defender And The Louisiana Weekly, 1925-1929, Sarah A. Waits

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This essay will use the views of two African American newspaper columnists, E. Belfield Spriggins of the Louisiana Weekly and Dave Peyton of the Chicago Defender, to argue that though New Orleans and Chicago both occupied a primary place in the history of jazz, in many ways jazz was initially met with ambivalence and suspicion. The struggle between the desire to highlight black achievement in music and the effort to adhere to tenets of middle class respectability play out in their columns. Despite historiographical writings to the contrary, these issues of the influence of jazz music on society were …

Cracking The Tax Codes: How State Tax Laws Influence The Number Of Manufacturing Jobs Within Their Borders, Nick Lorenson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

With the recent economic downturn, jobs have been at the forefront of people’s concerns. Policy makers in every state have promised their constituents new jobs. Of particular importance are high paying jobs. Manufacturing jobs tend to be a well-paying and highly sought after form of employment. However, in recent decades, the percentage of manufacturing jobs has been declining in the United States. Also, manufacturing facilities have shown an increased likelihood of relocating to different states. I theorize that manufacturing facilities relocating and expanding in different states is primarily due to state tax policies. This phenomenon has increased within recent years …

African American Teachers And State Licensing Examinations In Metropolitan Atlanta: A Case Study, Michael Leroy Taylor

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The 2001 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act legislation has had a profound effect on teacher rolls, especially African-American teachers. More than any other racial or ethnic group, African-American teachers disproportionately fail state teacher licensure examinations. This results in removing them from the classroom, while simultaneously preventing new teachers from entering it. The problem shows no signs of relenting under the current mandates, so as the diversity of the nation's study body continues to increase, the diversity of the teaching staff continues to shrink. This combined, multi-case study addressed the unexplained reduction in the numbers of African-American teachers due to …

Black Teachers, White Schools: A Qualitative Multiple Case Study On Their Experiences Of Racial Tokenism And Development Of Professional Black Identities, Abigail Kathleen Hasberry

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

An emerging body of research shows that retention of minority independent school teachers creates a positive multicultural climate and increases the likelihood that minority families will enroll their children in the schools as well as preparing all students for a pluralistic society (Brosnan 2001b, AIMS 2010, Katz & Wishine 2001). However, retaining minority teachers in predominantly White and affluent independent schools has proved challenging (Brosnan 2001, 2001b, 2009). This qualitative multiple case study extends the current literature on Black private school teachers by not only examining the experiences, but also the coping strategies and professional identity development processes of nine …

Building A Taxonomy Of Player Types And The Effects On The Self And Interaction Between Players, Kyle Yim

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This paper conducted a literature review of current research examining fantasy football participants. Fantasy football has become popular in recent years due the attention from the media, most notably sports shows providing more coverage of fantasy football. Theories that have examined fantasy football include gambling theory, and uses and gratifications. Motivational types also provide categories to describe players. Additionally this theory also provides a method to measure these players called the Motivational Scale for Fantasy Football Participation (MSFFP). Thus the purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore the literature in fantasy sports; propose to build taxonomical categories for serious …

Prisoners Of War Camps In Rochester - Were They Humane?, Ryan Mckelvie

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

In lieu of an abstract, below is the first paragraph of the paper.

After the American involvement in the Second World War, labor issues became more prevalent because so many workers from Rochester either enlisted or were drafted into the ranks of the US Army. Also, many farmers realized they could make more money off of high wage paying industrial jobs in the cities. In order to provide a sufficient amount of produce and other harvested good, prisoners of war were used for the first time as laborers to help the war effort. It was a bitter irony, being a …

Style Watch: Blackface Edition, Rashida Aluko-Roberts

SURGE

The above quote is from a statement/apology offered by Sebastian Kim, a photographer, whose recent editorial, “African Queen,” which featured a 16-year-old white female made to appear black, was marred with controversy. According to the photographer, dousing a young white female in deep bronze, accessorizing her in elaborate head wraps and heavy jewels (symbols that are often associated with Africa), was in no way an attempt to depict what an “African queen” looks like. Rather, his spread was attempting to showcase “the beauty aesthetic of his shoot” by using a “tanned or golden skin” model. [excerpt]

Gathering, Buying, And Growing Sweetgrass (Muhlenbergia Sericea): Urbanization And Social Networking In The Sweetgrass Basket-Making Industry Of Lowcountry South Carolina, Patrick T. Hurley, Brian Grabbatin, Cari Goetcheus, Angela Halfacre

Environment and Sustainability Faculty Publications

Despite the visibility of natural resource use and access for indigenous and rural peoples elsewhere, less attention is paid to the ways that development patterns interrupt nontimber forest products (NTFPs) and gathering practices by people living in urbanizing landscapes of the United States. Using a case study from Lowcountry South Carolina, we examine how urbanization has altered the political-ecological relationships that characterize gathering practices in greater Mt. Pleasant, a rapidly urbanizing area within the Charleston-North Charleston Metropolitan area. We draw on grounded visualization—an analytical method that integrates qualitative and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data—to examine the ways that residential and …

Gastrophilanthropy: Utopian Aspiration And Aspirational Consumption As Political Retreat, Patricia Mooney Nickel, Angela M. Eikenberry

Public Administration Faculty Publications

In this paper we inquire into the practice of gastrophilanthropy—the individualized consumption of food products under the aegis of philanthropic action. In particular, we examine the case of the philanthropic cupcake. By positioning gastrophilanthropy within the complex of consumption and social relations of power we attempt to shed light on why it has become so well accepted in society today and how the impulse to consume and the impulse to be philanthropic relate to each other and to the contemporary political moment. We question the transformative impact of gastrophilanthropy on those who practice it and on those for whom it …

North Dakota’S Oil Boom And Its Effect On North Dakota Politics, Nick "Nick" Nelson

Political Science Theses and Capstones

North Dakota’s oil boom is causing some of its countries to experience significant population increases. I study the effect this is having on the politics of North Dakota. To assess the effect of increased oil production on the population of counties and its effect on the politics of those counties I gathered statistics at the county level in the areas of oil production, populations including total, black, Hispanic, white, and male populations, and voting behavior (Republican or Democrat) from the United State Census, the North Dakota Secretary of State, and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, Department of Natural Resources. My …

Latino Party Id: Inherited Or Learned?, Dylan Davison

Political Science Theses and Capstones

The purpose of this research is to find out whether political party identification is learned or inherited in Latino voters in the United States. Latino voters are the largest growing minority group in the United States. Understanding this growing block of voters will yield dividends in elections to come. I utilized a 2008 dataset from a post‐election survey by Pew Research group on Latino voters. I hypothesize that recent immigrants learn their party identification while more established Latino voters are more likely to have inherited their political views. If Latino party identification is learned it is more likely that they …

Mormonism And The Family (Forum), Terryl Givens

English Faculty Publications

When we speak of the family in Mormonism, the term can mean many things. There is an idealized Mormon family, the one described in church magazines, General Conference talks, and Mormon public service commercials. There is the family of the Mormon theological tradition, stretching endlessly off into the eternities, bound together with temple ordinances, the forever family of Mormon bumper stickers. There is another family, product of a more speculative bent in Mormon theology, which comes of an eschatological reading of the Abrahamic covenant, and which imputes to a temple-sealed Mormon couple the right to an endless seed, a posterity …