American Studies Commons^™

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Initial Type Craft, Micah Angelus

Theses and Dissertations

What kinds of objects can still think when the self-contained aesthetic object can no longer be taken for granted? The historical ruptures that have placed painting under crisis have also brought into view the fallacy of artistic autonomy, raising questions about how value, contemplation, and meaning persist under conditions of deconstruction.

Cannibalizing The American Dream: Memory, Materials, And Manifesting, Juan Hinojosa

Theses and Dissertations

Juan Hinojosa’s thesis explores collage and assemblage through discarded materials, pop culture, and personal history. He transforms found objects into layered works that reflect consumption, memory, and American identity. Moving between sculpture, painting, and installation, his practice examines excess, nostalgia, and the tension between what is consumed and what consumes him.

5010, Clare Hu

Theses and Dissertations

Working with the structure of a table top, Clare Hu churns through digital image and woven cloth, asking how much each medium can bear.

The Ghosts Of Times Square: A Zine Exploring Representations Of Times Square Through Film, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

My zines are often an extension of my research—either a jumping off point or a way to create a more visual project (or both). They are in their own way a form of excess - they are often too scandalous, too smutty, too much — everything that is spilling out of the margins.

My zines and research focus on lesser known queer histories, trying to highlight them and bring them to a new audience and new generations.

Using zines as a creative form of research, I am able to reach a broader audience both inside and outside of academia. I …

Cecil Taylor, 1950–1976: Theory & Practice In His Own Words, Michelle A. Yom

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cecil Taylor (1929–2018) was a poet, composer, pianist, and dancer who is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of Free Jazz. Despite this historical significance, Taylor has not been a subject of substantial archival research. Some scholars have written his name into music scholarship through explicitly or implicitly reiterating the notion of “freedom” that circulated among contemporary jazz critics of the late 1950s and the 1960s. Others have focused on analyzing Taylor’s solo piano music, often reducing Taylor’s musical theories and practices into the formal structures of the music itself. To date, the scholarship has simplified Taylor’s work …

The Constant Cause Of Friction: Maud Mosher And Gendered Authority In The Indian Service And At Ellis Island, Ella Morton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis focuses on the federal career of Maud Mosher, who, from 1893 to 1907, worked as an Indian Service boarding-school teacher, then a matron at Ellis Island. By analyzing Mosher’s extensive, complaint-driven correspondence and personnel files, as well as an unpublished memoir, I claim that her grievances represent a rare form of agency available to women in maternalist roles at Progressive Era federal agencies. Though Mosher’s superiors branded her complaints trivial, the substance of them reveals gendered hypocrisy and institutional contradictions inside two federal institutions dealing with racialized populations.

In both the Indian Service and the Immigration Service, Mosher …

Capturing The Spirit Of Childhood: An Analysis Of Robert Henri’S Portraits Of Children, Alex C. Maccaro

Theses and Dissertations

Robert Henri (1865-1929) is perhaps best known as the prominent leader of the turn-of-the century American movement The Eight, commonly known as “the Ashcan School,” and as a leading teacher in the United States during the early twentieth century. However, his artistic output as a portrait painter, particularly of children, is also significant. Beginning in 1904 and throughout his career as an artist, Henri painted hundreds of images of children in the various foreign or remote locales to which he traveled, often depicting the same subject in multiple instances. These portraits range from the roughly painted, rosy-cheeked Dutch youth of …

Inside The Gen Z Vote Across Gender And Race, Juliet La Sala

Capstones

This capstone examines how two people from two different Gen Z groups are navigating the 2024 U.S. election. One story revolves around a young woman adopting a U.S. version of South Korea’s 4B Movement and another reflects on a Gen Z Arab American responding to the Israel–Hamas war. Through reported stories and interviews, it explores how personal experience, gender and ethnic violence, and political disillusionment shaped these young voters’ choices and activism. Sierra Bee's story is in light of Trump's election and Liam's is right before the 2024 election took place. Together, the pieces highlight how global events and identity-based …

Herejías En La Ciudad Global: Legados De Tercermundismo, Asimilación Y Desplazamiento Urbano En Las Narrativas Literarias Contemporáneas Latinx Y Afroportuguesa (2000-2022)., Ricardo Martín Coloma

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Esta tesis examina de manera comparativa dos corpus de novelas contemporáneas que interrogan los múltiples espacios de poder y vulnerabilidad que experimentan las diásporas latinx y africanas que logran movilidad social a través del trabajo en las ciudades globales de Nueva York y Lisboa. Mediante el análisis de autores tan diversos como la mexicano-puertorriqueña Xochitl González, la dominicana Cleyvis Natera, el puertorriqueño-ecuatoriano Ernesto Quiñonez, la angoleña-portuguesa Telma Tvon, la angoleña-portuguesa Djamilia Pereira y el angoleño Kalaf Epalanga, establezco un diálogo entre las narrativas literarias de autores caribeños de la diáspora sobre la ciudad de Nueva York y las diásporas africanas …

Stolen Moments: Jazz And The Opportunity To Capture Hip Hop Fans, Fahiym Abdul-Wasi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the intricate relationship between jazz and hip-hop, examining how these two influential genres intersect culturally and musically. Jazz, with its rich history and expressive improvisation, laid the groundwork for hip-hop, a genre that emerged as a powerful voice for Black Americans and other disenfranchised communities. The thesis highlights the impact of sampling, a fundamental technique in hip-hop that allows artists to repurpose jazz recordings and thereby preserve their legacy while infusing contemporary narratives. By analyzing key albums and the contributions of notable artists, this study underscores the potential for reintroducing jazz to new audiences through hip-hop. As …

Speaking From The Underground: Notes On Lois Elaine Griffith & The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Aesthetic, Joseph Anthony Cáceres

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Speaking from the Underground explores the work of Lois Elaine Griffith, an Afro-Caribbean diasporic visual and literary artist of Barbadian descent and one of the last surviving founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a Puerto Rican cultural institution grounded in Afro-Caribbean traditions located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. In the common, cultural parlance, the Cafe has become synonymous with spoken word and slam poetry. Since 1973 it has been the place where artists of mostly African, Caribbean, Latinx descent gather to craft works centered around lived experiences to shape a language to counter a conventional understanding of history and a …

Kimball Hall, 1970: Collective Organizing Through Print Production, Jen Hoyer

Publications and Research

This article examines the May 1970 occupation of Kimball Hall, a university administrative building at New York University, and specifically of its basement printshop. The group that came together in this space referred to itself as the Kimball Commune; they used university equipment and resources to print material in support of the strike and related movements, and they invited students, activists, and the general public to come into the printshop and produce material with them. I demonstrate how the Kimball Commune provides a concrete example of how a collaborative radical printing project isn’t just about creating alternative media. It also …

Queer Ga(Y)Ze And Desire In Flesh And Pink Narcissus, Kel R. Karpinski

Publications and Research

Through their portrayals of gay-for-pay hustlers, the films Flesh and Pink Narcissus, offer an expansive view of queerness and illuminate the queer history of Times Square.

Spirometry: For The Winds In Us, Kendall Allison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirometers are devices used to measure lung capacity. This capstone is a creative study of what restores our breathing aptitude as a response to the suffocating and alienating consequences of whiteness for people racialized as white. The project is a sequence of lyric essays. The first lyric essay frames whiteness as a condition of exile and examines the cultural and emotional currents that shore it up. I use exile as a frame to emphasize the intensity of the spiritual and cultural alienation that people racialized as white experience. I also contextualize the dis-ease of suicide in my own lineage, and …

The Incubus: Bourgeois Social Control And The White Racial Identity Theodore W. Allen’S Ontological Critique And Epistemological Breakthrough 1965-1975, Sean I. Ahern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Theodore W. Allen (1919-2004) was a proletarian autodidact, former coal miner, and member of the Communist Party from 1939-1958. Deeply influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements and his reading of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in the early 1960s, Allen developed a critique of what he termed the “White Blindspot” in the eyes of most U. S. labor historians who had omitted the Black chattel laborers from the proletariat. This omission on the part of both Marxist and non-Marxists constituted, in Allen’s view, the original sin of U. S. labor historiography, which had inadvertently inhibited …

Love And Power: Narrative Resistance In The Contemporary Literature And Film Of The Americas, Tania Nicolaou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project analyzes the ways in which narratives of love, care, and intimacy support sociocultural change through cinema, literary fiction, and memoir in Indigenous, immigrant, and diasporic communities in the United States, Haiti, and Cuba. The project’s intervention revolves around how we compare and examine narratives of the marginalized, underrepresented, and misremembered in a way that does not focus primarily on pain and trauma, but on experiences that embody radical change, healing, and a shift in the colonial matrix of power. The chapters consider love as constructed through family, identity, memory, and nationhood, all in relationship to what love looks …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

Counter-Hegemony In The Captive State: Recasting Katrina’S Carceral Legacy Through Conjuncture, Joseph S. Muratore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the historical development and contemporary manifestations of carceral power in Louisiana, arguing that racialized systems of control—from slavery and convict leasing to mass incarceration—have been sustained through shifting alliances of political and economic elites. Using The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) and its exhibit Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration as a foundational timeline, this study demonstrates how Bourbonism forged a regional bloc that institutionalized racial domination through incarceration and labor exploitation, later reconstituted through neoliberal policies of abandonment, privatization, and militarization. I chose to focus on Hurricane Katrina because its aftermath reflects many …

Podcast: One To Grow On – Why Black Studies Matter When Working And Living In Black Communities, Celia E. Ceballos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the transformative potential of Black Studies in enhancing community work within Black and Brown communities in New York City. The research is driven by the author's firsthand experiences and the realization of the importance of Black Studies, which was largely absent from earlier education. Through the interdisciplinary approach of the Graduate Center’s MALS program, the author has gained a deeper understanding of key topics such as the legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movements, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice. This journey inspired the creation of a capstone project, …

American Utopia: The Evolution Of David Byrne’S Viewpoint Of America From 1977 To Present, Morgan A. Prince

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

David Byrne is a multimedia artist known primarily as the lead singer and main songwriter for the new wave band Talking Heads. Throughout Byrne’s career he has continually written about America and Americans. This thesis traces his writings about America from the beginning of Talking Heads to his most recent projects. In doing so, the thesis puts forward that Byrne’s opinion on America has changed from one that is centered on the American people to one that is instead focused on American institutions. Additionally, the thesis traces how Byrne’s work has evolved from idealization to realism, as his early work …

Cuentos De Barro, Daniel Anthony Vasquez

Theses and Dissertations

Cuentos de Barros addresses the complexities of creating art and processing indigenous heritage and personal history as a Salvadoran immigrant within a neo-colonial society. Centering ritual, care, and healing, the artist imbues sculptures with tenderness using abstract forms and the tactile manipulation of unfired clay and graphite.

Stitch Theory, Brittany Adeline Adama King

Theses and Dissertations

This paper weaves personal history together using “stitched” citational text, supporting the concept that an archive can function as support, as worn; as garment.

Textual Transformations: An Introduction To Ai For Composition 101, J. Elizabeth Clark

Open Educational Resources

This curriculum unit is a critical literacy unit about AI designed for first-year writing. The introductory composition course prepares students for academic writing with a heavy emphasis on writing-as-process, critical reading, gathering information, inquiry-based writing, and taking research notes. This curriculum unit pairs the writing portion of the course with an AI critical literacy framework for students.

This is a 20-hour, 9 lesson unit designed for an introductory composition course:

• Prepwork: Preliminary Assessment and AI Policies

• Lesson 1: What is AI?

• Lesson 2: The History of AI

• Lesson 3: How Does AI Work?

• Lesson 4: AI in Action

• Lesson 5: …

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Deuce Redemption: Grindhouse Cinema, Moral Panic, And Urban Renewal, Robert Brenner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

If you consult standard histories of the “redevelopment” of 42^nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenue, AKA “the Deuce,” you will read that it was filled with nothing but criminals and pornographers, that decent people avoided it at all costs, and the only way the block could be “saved” was by seizing it via eminent domain, evicting all the current tenants, and replacing them with Disney and its fellow entertainment corporations.

The purpose of this thesis is to offer a more nuanced alternative to these standard histories. I will argue that the Deuce was a lower-class, multiracial, queer entertainment …

Visualizing The Rise Of American Women's Soccer, Hoi Wah Tang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rise of American women’s soccer is a compelling narrative of determination, talent, and triumph on the global stage. From the inaugural FIFA Women’s World Cup in 1991 to the ongoing dominance of the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), this journey encapsulates not only athletic excellence but also the broader struggles for equality, representation, and respect in sports.

This project aims to bring this story to life by presenting a rich tapestry of data visualizations, timelines, and multimedia elements that showcase key moments, players, and milestones. Through engaging graphics and interactive features, users will explore how the sport evolved, the …

Creating School: Writing And Reading Texts For Children, Carlyn Kolker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Children can come to understand themselves and their lived experience through fiction. Yet writing, reading, and interpreting fiction for children are all projects that challenge society’s commonly-understood beliefs about childhood, literature, and even the category of children’s literature itself.

This capstone project uses a cross-disciplinary approach to examine the notion of what it means to write fictional texts directed at children, and in particular, how fiction presents the deeply-contested American institution of school and the school environment. This project consists of two parts. The first is a critical consideration of how contemporary literary texts directed at children portray conditions of …

Cather, Silko, Hunt: Rethinking Prosperity Twentieth-Century Explorations Of Interiority, Materiality, And Transcendence, Aileen Montoya

Dissertations and Theses

• Interiority
• Materiality
• Transcendence
• Prosperity
• Modernism
• Subjectivity
• Narrative Identity
• Spiritual Landscapes

Creating An Ofrenda, Sara Hinojos

Open Educational Resources

You do not need to be Mexican to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). What you need however is a deep and thoughtful cultural understanding of the practice. This lesson plan teaches students what Dia de los Muertos is, the influence of colonialism (past and present), how mainstream media understands the celebration in the U.S., and how local communities honor the celebration. This approach is from a media studies perspective and a particular focus on art, specifically altar making or making an ofrenda. Writer, philosopher, tejana Gloria E. Anzaldúa details that altars are “‘the sanctuary of the …