American Studies Commons^™

Elite Polarization And Gender Effects On Ideology: How This Shapes The Supreme Court On Women’S Rights Cases, Reggie Lynn Semanko

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

The study of ideological polarization continues to be an important topic for scholars of behavioral research to scholars of institutional politics. Polarization has not received as much attention in the context of the Supreme Court, yet polarization has begun to play a role in how the Supreme Court is shaped through the nomination process and is likely to continue in its practice. Compared to past Courts, the justices on the Court today are through party and ideology. This paper seeks to answer the question: has the voting behavior of Supreme Court justices over time in abortion and sex discrimination cases …

"Bachelor Buttons": Feminist And Womanist Essays And Poems, Billy E. Clem Jr.

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In this critical and creative dissertation, I sketch a brief study of selected multicultural hybrid texts in contemporary US Anglophone literary studies; discuss their implications for reading, writing, and teaching; and present my own hybrid text.

Second-wave feminist and womanist theories and practices opened literary and cultural studies to new and exciting ideas and methods for reading, teaching, and writing both canonical and non-canonical Anglophone texts. One genre emerging anew by these theories, practices, and practitioners is the literary hybrid text, a multi-genre form composed of a variety of prose genres, poetry, drama, and/or visual imagery. Hybrid texts ask readers …

The Downfall Of Colonial And Dark Romantic Masculinity In The Witch: A New England Folktale, David Miles Harrington

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis discusses the film The Witch (2015), directed by Robert Eggers, specifically, the character of William and his failures as a Puritan man. Puritan masculinity is a surprisingly understudied area of American literature and, to enter into the field, I use William and The Witch as a portal into various historical and literary interpretations of seventeenth-century Puritan maleness. The project takes a palimpsestic approach to these layers of influence on Eggers’s film. From Hawthorne’s Reverend Hooper in “The Minister’s Black Veil” and Young Goodman Brown in “Young Goodman Brown” to real-world Puritans Roger Williams and Samuel Sewall. This thesis …

Exceptionalism And Transatlanticism In Early American Literature (1760-1860) And Classic Hollywood Cinema (1930-1960), John M. Price

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation explores the seemingly contradictory characteristics of two distinct art forms in two distinct eras. When exploring the period 1760 to 1860, scholars of transatlanticism argue that the literature of Great Britain and the young United States are of one unified cultural identity, and yet this period is also one in which American writers sought to establish a unique national voice. To understand this dichotomy, this dissertation examines the parallels between Early American Literature, or EAL, and classic Hollywood cinema (1930-1960). This exercise in intertextuality demonstrates how both mediums in both periods absorbed influences from other countries and other …

A Lingua Franca Afloat And Ashore: Contact English In American Sea Fiction, 1824 To 1914, Fredrik Reidar Stark

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines how American sea writers between 1824 and 1914 promoted new perceptions of English as a various and expanding intercultural and international language. It argues that presentations of language contact form a critically underemphasized component of American nautical literature. It surveys how such presentations take shape in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Pilot (1824) and The Crater (1847), Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years before the Mast (1840). It asserts that Herman Melville’s innovative presentations of contact between pidgins and native varieties of English in Typee (1846) and Omoo …