American Studies Commons^™

Southern Rambles: Seeking A Place, Finding A Self, John Hayes

Study the South

"So, we set out from Atlanta in August 1997 on the older US Highway 19, heading south. We were seeking a South and we didn’t have a consciousness of being southern, but in a very elemental way, our consciousness had been deeply shaped by forces we were unaware of."

Interpersonal Activism: How Local Black Residents Shaped The University Of Mississippi And Oxford In The Mid-Twentieth Century, Anna F. Kaplan

Study the South

"It is difficult to measure the direct impact—and sometimes even the existence—of daily personal interactions on individuals’ thoughts about race and desegregation. Rather than attempting to parse between change stemming from interpersonal relationships versus change as a result of federal intervention, I examine interracial and intraracial interactions across the town/gown divide in Oxford as spheres of influence. Black challenges to White supremacy at UM brought systemic racism into question even though those systems of oppression remained in place."

Flannery O'Connor And Storytelling Unit Of Study, Caroline Lacksen, Natalie Puckett, Keith Pruett, Erin Smith, Nathan Pearson, Lashonda Hurst, Jessica Mcquain, Timothy Connors

Writing for Success

The Writing for Success grant sponsored by the federal Department of Education pioneered the creation of a standards-based fifth grade unit of study focused on Flannery O’Connor and the theme of local storytelling. This project utilizes an author study, digital humanities, and intensive writing instruction to engage students with an important Georgia writer and boost their interest and engagement with various forms of written and oral expression.

Through exposure to a variety of communication forms, including narrative, informational, and opinion writing in addition to oral history, poetry, song, and podcasting, students gain confidence in evaluating the context and audience of …

Mercy Buckets: Country Music, Southern Fiction, And The Limits Of Rewriting The South, Andy Oler

Study the South

"During World War II, GIs began saying “mercy buckets” as an intentional, joking mispronunciation of the French “merci beaucoup.”1 In the 2011 song “Mercy Buckets,” the southern rock and alt-country band Drive-By Truckers rewrite the phrase’s origin by treating it as an idiom of the American South. As might be expected, however, DBT do not reinforce stereotypical notions of the ignorant southern redneck. Instead, songwriter and lead singer Patterson Hood takes the phrase seriously, explaining just what it would mean if bringing someone “buckets of mercy” were a recognized part of southern culture. . . . In this article, I …

An Architectural Riddle: Billy Tripp's Minefield, Frédéric Allamel

Study the South

"The Mindfield, the sculptural environment created by self-taught builder Billy Tripp, is an alternative to architecture, or at least a countermodel that brings a novel perspective to the discipline. Challenging present architectural principles, such as functionality, cost-effectiveness, building techniques, and materials, the Mindfield opens the way to new possibilities. An ever-evolving edifice not designed to be inhabitable, and whose raison d’être emerged late in the building process, the Mindfield positions itself at the antipodes of mainstream architecture, thus enriching the architectural discourse with its innovative experiments. In building the Mindfield, Tripp inaugurates a holistic art where architecture, sculpture, and literature …

By Way Of Remembrance: Rural Cemeteries Of North Mississippi, David Wharton

Study the South

"My habit was to drive back roads, explore, and not worry about getting anywhere quickly or about getting lost. With my wife, Marianne, often accompanying me, we would stick to county roads, always on the lookout for places of visual interest. Among the places we frequently stopped were small towns—in both business and residential areas—and, especially, rural churches and cemeteries. Many of the churches, whether still active or not, had burial grounds close by, and even long-abandoned churches sometimes had cemeteries that showed signs of recent use. A few cemeteries were off by themselves, however, apparently forgotten by any church …

The South In Review, Adam Gussow, Peter Lurie, David Wharton

Study the South

The following books are reviewed in this issue:

• I Am a Man: Photographs of the Civil Rights Movement, 1960-1970 / William R. Ferris and Lonnie G. Burch, III. University Press of Mississippi. Reviewed by David Wharton
• William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity / Jay Watson. University Press of Mississippi. Reviewed by Peter Lurie.
• New York City Blues: Postwar Portraits from Harlem to the Village and Beyond / Edited by Larry Simon and John Broven. Photos by Robert Schaffer. Reviewed by Adam Gussow.
• Road Through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial / Jessica Ingram. University of North Carolina Press. Reviewed by …

What Has Been Will Be Again: Photographic Meditations On Social Isolation In Alabama, Jared Ragland, Catherine Wilkins

Study the South

"Social isolation is both a phrase and an experience that has defined the past year in the wake of the global Covid-19 pandemic. Jared Ragland’s ongoing photographic travelogue, What Has Been Will Be Again: Photographic Meditations on Social Isolation in Alabama, expressly evokes the loneliness that has characterized this period; solitary subjects inhabit these frames, and many images in the series are devoid of people altogether. One can imagine the photographer, alone, navigating deserted landscapes with only a camera as his companion, documenting the recent ravaging of the public sphere. Yet, while the theme is certainly au courant, What …

The Neon Bible, From Page To Screen: John Kennedy Toole’S Portrait Of Small-Town Southern Life, Heather Duerre Humann

Study the South

Louisiana-born writer John Kennedy Toole (1937–1969) represents the South in such a way that stereotypes about the region are brought to bear, he also uses his novels -- his short novel, The Neon Bible (1989), and in his better-known tragicomic novel, A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) -- to question the culture of the South. In this manner, Toole offers a multifaceted portrait of the region while also raising questions about the nature of representation.

Stuart Hall & Theory Of Representation In The Media: Exploring Get Out And Candyman, Lashanna Bryant

Capstone Showcase

Media representation has aided in creating a toxic manifestation of what it means to be Black in America. More specifically, the exploration of Black characters in horror films has opened many doors to hidden racism, discrimination, and oversimplification of their culture and their value in society. In looking into the films Candyman and Get Out there is a clear progression throughout the early 1990s to the mid 2010s that detail a very rapid change from taking a Black character from a background role to the main character.

Students Find More Than Gaming In Depaul Esports, University Marketing And Communications, Courtney James

DePaul Download

The Esports market, or competitive video gaming, is anticipated to surpass $1.5 billion by 2023. At DePaul, Esports is even a BIG EAST-sanctioned program. DePaul’s director of Student Involvement, Courtney James, talks about DePaul’s unique Esports community, which draws hundreds of student gamers. Through their participation, the students find connection, an inclusive environment and even inspiration for career paths. James also discusses some of DePaul’s upcoming Esports events and the pandemic’s impact on the industry.

Vanishing Acts: Civil Rights Reform And Dramatic Inversion In Douglas Turner Ward's Day Of Absence, Gershun Avilez

Study the South

Dramatist Douglas Turner Ward's innovative play Day of Absence first premiered in November 1965 in New York City and has seen a recent national revival, having been staged by theatre companies in Berkeley, New York, Washington, D. C., Omaha, and Chicago, as well as the Maitisong Festival in Gaborone, Botswana. It stands as a creative response to the African American civil rights situation after the 1964 act. Ward explores questions of Black labor and mobility and, in doing so, creates opportunities to invert the dynamics that have historically characterized U. S. society.

Toward Freedom: A Reading Of The National Memorial For Peace And Justice, Margaret Pless

Study the South

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama in 2018 to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States. The memorial’s monuments are unique because they resist the static, status quo understandings of history that so many of our monuments perpetuate. The memorial invites visitors to face disturbing truths in the hope of fostering reconciliation. Will it help us remember and reconcile as a nation? Montgomery is home to other monuments that undermine the history the memorial presents.

More Pricks Than Kicks: The Southern Economy In The Long Twentieth Century, Peter A. Coclanis

Study the South

Most scholars and journalists working on the South would likely agree that over the past fifty or sixty years southern states on balance benefitted from a diverse, but generally reasonable and reasonably successful portfolio of policies and programs in the “economic development” space. The fact that the region is still the poorest, the unhealthiest, and the least educated in the United States, a half century or more after the beginning of the “Sunbelt boom” says a lot about the difficulty of extricating a region once it is headed down a pernicious economic path.

Forgiveness, Freedom And The Inmate Issue, Taylor Smith

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

Forgiveness Freedom and the Inmate Issue:

It is no secret that the United States has a mass incarceration problem. The war on drugs, traffic violations, and the Three Strikes Law, are just pieces of the systems being used to repeatedly place people behind bars. What we are facing now as a society is the repercussions of reintegrating under educated, digitally literate, mentally abandoned individuals back into society. In addition to post jail operatives like parole fees, fines and probation scheduling are re-sentencing these individuals into a society they no longer relate to, that socially struggle to adapt to and that …

All Are Welcome? Southern Hospitality And The Politics Of Belonging, Betsie Garner, Andrew Harvard

Study the South

The elective affinity between southern hospitality and Christian hospitality functions as a moral framework for negotiating change and debating identity politics. An ethnographic community study conducted in Rockdale County, Georgia between 2014 and 2017 focused on the discourse and practice of southern hospitality.

Illustrations by Andrew Harvard.

Through The Words Of Those Who Have Experienced It: Reading The Whitney Plantation Along Neoslave Narratives, Sarah Payne

Study the South

Recent representations of slavery, however well intentioned, have provoked discussions about who should represent black pain and oppression and what purpose such representations serve. Also evoking such questions are contemporary plantation tours, most of which are white-centered, “moonlight and magnolia” recreations. There have been efforts to represent slavery more accurately at plantations such as Oak Alley, and most notably, the Whitney Plantation, which opened in 2014 in Wallace, Louisiana.

This essay asks how our understanding of the Whitney Plantation, as a representation of slavery, a public history project, and an example of dark tourism, might be affected by reading the …

Hollywood, Hashtags, And Cultural Disharmony: A Comparative Framing Analysis Of How American Newspapers Have Framed The Me Too Movement, Julia M. Fechter

Honors College Theses

This project explored how The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the New York Post covered the Me Too movement by studying the frames and framing techniques embedded in the newspapers’ articles. As one of the initial studies to analyze how American newspapers covered the movement, this study investigated how such content might be formative to subsequent narratives published about the Me Too movement. The articles were analyzed using a codebook adapted from Kowalewski (2006). Elements coded included but were not limited to the articles’ political affiliations, article tones, main news angles and main frames in order …

Multicultural Women Writers, Nashieli Marcano, Jennifer Jacobs

Research Guides & Subject Bibliographies

No abstract provided.

Post Colonial Studies, Nashieli Marcano, Kyle Brooks

Research Guides & Subject Bibliographies

No abstract provided.

The Influence Of Individualistic Ideas On American Mobility, Markus Magiera

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

In this paper I showcase the influence of individualistic thinking ranging back as far as Age of Enlightenment on the development of mobility in America since the eighteenth century. My goal is to identify the factors that shaped the evolution of travel. In order to do so I start by analyzing texts from the early nineteenth century, where travel by foot was the common thing. Next I focus on new means of mobility; first the bicycle, and later on the automobile. I aim to convince that modernity's main instigator was the change in thinking brought forth in the Age of …

From Swing King To Swing Kids: The Jazz Era Of ‘Big Band Orchestras’ In World War Ii, Katie Victoria Burnopp

Student Scholar Showcase

Known as the ‘King of Swing’, clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (1909-1986) threatened the Nazi cause during WWII. With intent of improving music pedagogy, the purpose of this research was to investigate swing music during World War II. The particular problems of this study were to: (1) identify how the swing music of Benny Goodman (1909-1986) influenced adolescents in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Germany; (2) explore the Nazi party view on ‘swing’ music of the era; (3) examine how the music of Charlie and his Orchestra became used as a tool for Nazi propaganda; and …

Fading Landscapes: The Culture Of Exile And The Open Road, Marc T. Rentschler

English Department: Traveling American Modernism (ENG 366, Fall 2018)

This article seeks to analyze the complex relationship between material culture and hegemonic constructions of ideology along with their tendency to make their way into larger institutional apparatuses of society. For this study this interaction is explored through the symbolic construction of the american roadways and a selective. Drawing on Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, Baudrillard’s America, and William Least Heat Moon’s Blue Highways, this work attempts to combine critical perspectives on the formation of public space with the events of these works in order to formulate how the ideological values which are subsumed by the representational space of ‘The …

Springsteen: In The American Tradition, Alex Mcdonough

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Springsteen’s music serves as a platform for not only the working poor, but also the pariahs of American society. Like other classic American singer-songwriters, Springsteen uses his music to explore tragedy in the American life, imbuing each song with a quiet, sometimes darkly humorous humanity. Through his songs, Springsteen has defined an altogether different type of American story, one that weaves tragedy, comedy, and the tedious minutiae of daily life. Springsteen considers each element of every story he tells to be distinct and important in its own way, creating a sense of purpose for even the lowest of the low.

Travels On The St. Johns River., Thomas Hallock, John Bartram, William Bartram, Richard Franz

Faculty Books

In 1765 father and son naturalists John and William Bartram explored the St. Johns River Valley in Florida, a newly designated British territory and subtropical wonderland. They collected specimens and recorded extensive observations of the plants, animals, geography, ecology, and native cultures of an essentially uncharted region. The chronicle of their adventures provided the world with an intimate look at La Florida. Travels on the St. Johns River includes writings from the Bartrams' journey in a flat-bottomed boat from St. Augustine to the river's swampy headwaters near Lake Loughman, just west of today's Cape Canaveral. Vivid entries from John's Diary …

Sister Act: Margaret Walker And Eudora Welty, Carolyn J. Brown

Study the South

At the end of their lives, in the 1980s and ’90s, both Margaret Walker and Eudora Welty were recognized several times by their hometown and state for their long careers and bodies of work. The paths they traveled to reach this intersection of common recognition were quite different, however. Almost exact contemporaries -— Welty lived from 1909-2001 and Walker from 1915-1998 -— they share similar timelines and histories, both having lived through the Depression, World War II, and the civil rights movement. But as one was white and one was black, their stories are very different, as are their paths …

Heyward-Saunders, Lucretia, Lucretia Heyward-Saunders, Ishmael Lewis, Audra Kuby, Deborah Oden

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Pastor Chisholm, Hope Harrod, Damien Johnson, David Kachadourian, Daston Henry Chisholm

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Developing A Community Of Learners: A Multi-Level Integrated Curriculum In The Foreign Language Classroom, Cheryl Matthews

Honors Thesis and Capstone Projects

No abstract provided.

The Simms Initiatives - University Of South Carolina, Todd Hagstette

Digital Projects

In the mid-nineteenth century, William Gilmore Simms did more than any other writer and editor to frame white southern self-identity, nationalism, and historical consciousness. He also did more to foster the South’s literary life and place in America’s imagination.

The Simms Initiatives, generously funded by the Watson-Brown Foundation and the University of South Carolina Libraries, offers full access to this prolific author’s work. That comes through both digital and Print-on-Demand editions. Our digital holdings represent three categories of works: Printed Materials, Scrapbooks, and Scholarship.

We strive to enhance the value of these materials and grow the study of Simms and …