American Studies Commons^™

Citizen Bunker: Archie Bunker As Working-Class Icon., Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

Archie Bunker, the central character and patriarch of Norman Lear’s “All in the Family,” (1971-1979) has been referred to as an “everyman” and an “angry-man prototype” with “hard had prejudice.” The name Archie Bunker itself has become synonymous with a blue-collar, racially chauvinistic mentality. The title of the show’s pilot and theme song, “Those Were the Days,” emphasized Archie’s dream of a simpler (though idealized) time, a world that he could understand and upon which he could exert some control. In 1970s America, Archie seemed to feel that the world was against him – economically, socially, politically and culturally – …

Television, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This past October, CLAGS hosted a historic conference to commemorate, celebrate, and evaluate the diverse contributions of lesbians over the course of the 1970s. The conference culminated a semester-long series of events that unfurled over the Spring 2010 term. In planning for the conference, the organizing committee (made up of Melissa Gasparotto, Andrea Freud Loewenstein, Roberta Sklar, Urvashi Vaid, and myself) imagined this conference as embracing as broad a field of lesbian lives as it could.

Marriage Apartheid And The Tyranny Of American Morality, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

An essay on implications of marriage equality debates in the Unites States.

American Manpower: Work And Masculinity In The 1970s, Victoria Ludas

All Open Access Legacy Dissertations and Capstone Projects

This paper is about three things, as examined over the course of the 1970s: the changes in the state and dependability of work, the pressures of masculinity as felt by heterosexual white men over the age of 20 in the working and middle classes, and what occurred because of the relationship between work and that masculinity. To understand 3 the third, it is necessary to understand the first two, and what happened in both cases during the decade. Even disregarding the male-female dynamic in the increase in women at work, the state of employment changed in massive and permanent ways. …

Chitto Harjo (Wilson Jones, Crazy Snake) 1846-1912 Creek Leader, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

Chitto Harjo (1846-1912) was a leader of the Crazy Snakes, a traditionalist faction of the Creek Indians. He opposed federal incursions on reservation land, Indian lifestyles and governance structures; and fought against Allotment (individual distribution) of communal tribal lands and the loss of Creek sovereignty.

Lesbians In The 1970s, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

The 1970s was a period of intense excitement, change, activism, and activity for lesbians. As lesbian feminism redefined what qualified as a "political issue" and challenged every assumption about gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and any number of other social categories, lesbians of all kinds created cultural, social, political, economic, and regional organizations and networks.

Black Lesbians In The 70s, Shawn(Ta) Smith-Cruz

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

During the initial planning session for In Amerika They Call Us Dykes: Lesbian Lives in the 70s Spring Series, there was lack of clarity about the activity of Black Lesbians in the early part of the 1970s. The aim for Black Lesbian Herstory in the 70s: An At Home Tour and Guide to the Black Lesbian Herstory of the Collection was to present information to the lesbian community and increase Black Lesbian invisibility.

The Trouble With Archie: Locating And Accessing Primary Sources For The Study Of The 1970s Us Sitcom, All In The Family, Kathleen Collins

Publications and Research

The US television sitcom, All in the Family was groundbreaking in its social relevance with regard to contemporary issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation and politics, among others. The interest in All in the Family continues into the 21st century, and television historians and fans continue to seek out elusive historical video of the show. The author addresses the challenges in discovering, locating and accessing primary source visual material for its study and speculates on the future of accessibility of historical broadcasts, the impact on television studies and potential solutions. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Forget Burial: Illness, Narrative, And The Reclamation Of Disease, Marty Melissa Fink

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Through a theoretical and archival analysis of HIV/AIDS literature, this dissertation argues that the AIDS crisis is not an isolated incident that is now "over," but a striking culmination of a long history of understanding illness through narratives of queer sexual decline and national outsiderhood. Literary representations of HIV/AIDS can be read as a means of resistance to the stigmatization of people of color, women, immigrants, and queers, debunking the narratives that vilify these subjects as threats to national security and health. In drawing connections between illness, history, and the African diaspora, my work adopts a queer theoretical approach to …

My Name And My Face, Stuart Ewen

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Reclamation: The Value Of Black Gay Writing Lgbtq Studies Panel, Lisa C. Moore

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

How gratifying to see a packed house on October 14, 2008 for a discussion of Reclamation: The Value of Black Gay Writing! Co-sponsored by CLAGS and Freedom Train Productions (www.freedomtrainproductions.org), the panel of scholars—Terry Rowden, Professor of African-American Literature, College of Staten Island (CUNY), Jafari Sinclaire Allen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African-American Studies/American Studies, Yale University, La Marr Jurelle Bruce, Ph.D. student, African-American/American Studies, Yale University—and me, publisher Lisa C. Moore (Redbone Press) came to discuss the impact of black gay writers on the community and academia... and to bear witness, reclaim and critique the work within the first …

Brown, James, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Encyclopedia article on James Brown focusing on his impact on African American history and the Civil Rights movement as well as, to a lesser degree, his impact on the history of music.

Dystopian Surface, Utopian Dream: Wittman Ah Sing Foresees Postethnic Humanity, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

"Dystopian Surface, Utopian Dream" examines the postethnic and the posthuman in fiction by Maxine Hong Kingston, Octavia Butler, and Isaac Asimov.

Grizzly Gidget Goes To The White House?, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

This is an article about Sarah Palin.

Allan Bérubé: A Visionary Historian, John D'Emilio

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I first met Allan in the spring of 1979. In the two preceding years, in the time he carved out from the odd jobs that kept him afloat, he had systematically pursued leads from Jonathan Ned Katz's Gay American History, in the process amassing his own trove of queer historical documents. One thick line of research especially delighted him. To his surprise, 19th-century San Francisco newspapers ran extended stories, amounting at times to almost mini-biographies, of "women who passed as men."

Scholarly Monographs On Rock Music: A Bibliographic Essay, Monica Berger

Publications and Research

Purpose This article is an overview of scholarly monographs on rock music from 1980 to the present. It provides an overview to the literature for practical purposes of collections development as well as giving the reader insight into key issues and trends related to a interdisciplinary topic that attracts scholars from many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences.

Design/methodology/approach This bibliographic essay, focusing on works related to American culture and of a general nature, includes an overview and historical background; a discussion of how music and ethnomusiciological scholars approach the topic; geographic approaches; literature on four key icons (Elvis, …

Claiming Equality: Puerto Rican Farmworkers In Western New York, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

n July of 1966, a group of Puerto Rican migrant workers protested against police brutality and discrimination in North Collins, a small farm community of western NewYork. Puerto Rican farmworkers made up a substantial part of the population, and had transformed the ethnic, racial, and gender landscape of the town. Local officials and residents produced and reproduced images of Puerto Ricans as inferior subjects within US racial and ethnic hierarchies. Those negative images of Puerto Ricans shaped the way in which local authorities elaborated policies of social control against these farmworkers in North Collins. At the same time, Puerto Rican …

Visual Aid: Teaching H.D.'S Imagist Poetry With The Assistance Of Henri Matisse, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Introduction: The Sexual Body, Shelly J. Eversley, Jennifer L. Morgan

Publications and Research

Introduction to the special issue, "The Sexual Body," edited by Shelly Eversley and Jennifer L. Morgan.

"Unrighteous Compact": Louisa May Alcott's Resistance To Contracts And Promises In Moods, Nina Bannett

Publications and Research

Alcott’s first adult novel, Moods, initially published in 1864, presents oral promises between women as extralegal alternatives to standard legal contracts between men and women. In the 1864 edition of Moods, Alcott's protagonist, Sylvia Yule, fails to understand the constraints of marriage as a type of contract, and the results are dramatic. In fact, Alcott undermines the idealized marriage plot so crucial to her later, wildly popular works like Little Women (1868-69). In the 1864 Moods, Alcott boldly questions both legal contracts and oral promises characteristic of nineteenth-century conceptions of romantic love and heterosexual friendship.

Cuban Femininity And National Unity In Louisa May Alcott's Moods And Elizabeth Stoddard's "Eros And Anteros", Nina Bannett

Publications and Research

This book chapter compares the depictions of Cuban women in Louisa May Alcott's first adult novel Moods (1864) and Elizabeth Stoddard's short story "Eros and Anteros" (1862). Both writers configure a love triangle between an Anglo man and two women, one Anglo and one Cuban. In both texts, the Cuban woman is rejected as an unsuitable choice for an Anglo man. Alcott’s and Stoddard’s decision to re-value the Anglo woman as the more appropriate choice can be read as a rejection of the popular nineteenth-century political doctrine of manifest destiny and, at least with Alcott, of the United States’s dependence …

Engaging The Eighties: Ethics, Objects, Periods, Kevin L. Ferguson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines a recent decade in American history whose unique notion of self-periodization generated important questions of ethical engagement and withdrawal. Situated during a time of an increasingly complex relationship between literature and theory, thinkers in the 80s self-consciously shifted towards making claims about their present moment which were based on the logic of rupture, and which thus created an either-or logic of pessimism or optimism in response to this rupture. These kinds of self-periodizing notions generally are collected under the rubric "postmodernism" and the first chapter deals with a transatlantic movement between theorists such as Fredric Jameson and …

The Bloomberg Way: Development Politics, Urban Ideology, And Class Transformation In Contemporary New York City, Julian Brash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores the links between a development project, a particular urban ideology, and processes of class transformation in contemporary New York City. The city's postindustrial transformation, especially since the 1970s fiscal crisis, has created a newly dominant corporate elite consisting of executives and high-level professionals. This ruling class alliance has begun to supersede the city's older, real estate-centered traditional growth coalition, as emblematized by the political rise of billionaire ex-CEO Michael Bloomberg. Mayor Bloomberg, along with other ex-corporate executives in his administration, implemented a private-sector inspired corporate, technocratic, and antipolitical approach to governance in general and urban and economic …

Papas' Baby: Impossible Paternity In Going To Meet The Man, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

"Papas' Baby: Impossible Paternity in Going to Meet the Man" employs the conceit of “impossible” fatherhood to critique mutually reinforcing racist and heteronormative constructions of reproduction. It argues, first, that the white paternal fantasy of creating “pure” white sons is undermined by the homoerotic necessity of bring the phantasmatic black eunuch, castrated yet powerfully potent, into the procreative white bed. The “fact” of the “white” child produced in that marital bed, however, not only cloaks the failure of racial reproduction in the living proof of success but also occludes the male/male union that subtends the heteronormative fantasy of reproduction. …

Documenting Queer Community Histories: Whose History Is It?, Jessica Stern, Nicholas Ray

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

What does it mean to be a member of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer (LGBTQ) community? When did LGBTQ community history begin? Where do queer communities differ? How do we broach these questions to document communities' experiences? And significantly, why is it important to document the histories of those who are defined as LGBTQ?

Lost And Found: The Imagined Geographies Of American Studies, Cindi Katz

Publications and Research

In the days after September 11th, 2001, and continuing until now, the national guard and other military personnel fanned out around New York City. Automatic rifles slung over their camouflaged shoulders, they "guarded" New York City's transportation stations, vital corners and thoroughfares, marquee buildings, and each and every bridge and tunnel entrance. Their comportment was usually cordial and rarely vigilant. Exuding the antithesis of an urban sensibility, they complemented the beefy boredom of the police who usually stood nearby, with an almost surreal sense of incredulity; not just "Why am I here?" but a sort of bafflement that anyone would …

Female Iconography In Invisible Man, Shelly J. Eversley

Publications and Research

Argument concerning female visuality in Ralph Ellison's novel, Invisible Man.

Sacco And Vanzetti: The Italian American Legacy, Fred L. Gardaphé

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Re-Inventing Sicily In Italian-American Writing And Film, Fred L. Gardaphé

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.