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Articles 31 - 60 of 158

Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Web Archives At The Nexus Of Good Fakes And Flawed Originals, Michael L. Nelson Jan 2019

Web Archives At The Nexus Of Good Fakes And Flawed Originals, Michael L. Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

[Summary] The authenticity, integrity, and provenance of resources we encounter on the web are increasingly in question. While many people are inured to the possibility of altered images, the easy accessibility of powerful software tools that synthesize audio and video will unleash a torrent of convincing “deepfakes” into our social discourse. Archives will no longer be monopolized by a countable number of institutions such as governments and publishers, but will become a competitive space filled with social engineers, propagandists, conspiracy theorists, and aspiring Hollywood directors. While the historical record has never been singular nor unmalleable, current technologies empower an unprecedented …


"Saying 'I Do' All Over Again": The Throwaway Ornamentalism Of Promises Weddings Vow To Break, Marc A. Ouellette Jan 2018

"Saying 'I Do' All Over Again": The Throwaway Ornamentalism Of Promises Weddings Vow To Break, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This article details a project that involved collecting the necessary items to produce a set of wedding pictures. While photographs have long been understood as indexical signs, the process of collecting the items via trips to thrift stores reveals a host of additional indexical signs through the set of underlying contextual cultural constraints surrounding the difference between the rituals of the marriage rite and the wedding as a public, performative practice. Indeed, the second hand items leave indexical and material traces of the excess and the disposability of weddings, while the pictures offer the material connection to the ostentation of …


Narratives Of Miami In Dexter And Burn Notice, Myles Mcnutt Apr 2017

Narratives Of Miami In Dexter And Burn Notice, Myles Mcnutt

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In popular discourse around television, a series’ relationship with place is often marked through the suggestion its setting is “like a character in the show”, but this article argues against adopting this as a framework for analyzing television’s relationship with space and place. It articulates the relationship between this discourse of “spatial capital” and hierarchies of cultural capital within the television industry, limiting the types of series that are deemed to warrant closer investigation regarding issues of space and place and lacking nuanced engagement with place’s relationship with television narrative in particular. After breaking down the logic under which these …


"If You Want To Be The Man, You've Got To Beat The Man": Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990'S, Marc Ouellette Jan 2017

"If You Want To Be The Man, You've Got To Beat The Man": Masculinity And The Rise Of Professional Wrestling In The 1990'S, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

This paper traces the relationship between the shifting representations of masculinity in professional wrestling programs of the 1990s and the contemporaneous shifts in conceptions of masculinity, examining the ways each of these shifts impacted the other. Most important among these was a growing sense that the biggest enemy in wrestling and in day-to-day life is one’s boss. Moreover, the corporate corruption theme continues to underscore the WWE’s on-screen and off-screen coverage, well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus, the paper provides a template for considering a widely consumed popular cultural form in ways that challenge the determinism …


[Review Of The Book Brown Girl Dreaming, By J. Woodson], Kaavonia Hinton Jan 2017

[Review Of The Book Brown Girl Dreaming, By J. Woodson], Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Jacqueline Woodson is an award-winning children's literature author, who, early in her career, was touted by renowned children's literature sholar Rudine Sims Bishop as one of the most promising children's literature authors of her generation. Lauded for her ability to write honestly about social issues, marginalized youth, and popular culture, Woodson, to date, has written over twenty-five texts for youth, spanning several genres- from novels and picture books to books-in-verse and short stories. She is, as predicted, a major voice in children's literature. In Brown Girl Dreaming, a book written for youth, Woodson explores how she learned to develop …


Farmville, Eternal Recurrence, And The Will-To-Power-Ups, D. E. Wittkower Jan 2016

Farmville, Eternal Recurrence, And The Will-To-Power-Ups, D. E. Wittkower

Philosophy Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Apportioned Commodity Fetishism And The Transformative Power Of Game Studies, Ken S. Mcallister, Chris Hanson, Judd Ethan Ruggill, Carly A. Kocurek, Tobias Conradi, Kevin A. Moberly, Steven Conway, Randy Nichols, Jennifer Dewinter, Marc A. Oullette Jan 2016

Apportioned Commodity Fetishism And The Transformative Power Of Game Studies, Ken S. Mcallister, Chris Hanson, Judd Ethan Ruggill, Carly A. Kocurek, Tobias Conradi, Kevin A. Moberly, Steven Conway, Randy Nichols, Jennifer Dewinter, Marc A. Oullette

English Faculty Publications

This chapter explores the ways in which the field of Game Studies helps shape popular understandings of player, play, and game, and specifically how the field alters the conceptual, linguistic, and discursive apparatuses that gamers use to contextualize, describe, and make sense of their experiences. The chapter deploys the concept of apportioned commodity fetishism to analyze the phenomena of discourse as practice, persona, and vagaries of game design, recursion, lexical formation, institutionalization, systems of self-effectiveness, theory as anti-theory, and commodification.


Of Sonnets And Archives: Robert Graves, Laura Riding, And The Erasure Of Modern Poetry, Margaret Konkol Sep 2015

Of Sonnets And Archives: Robert Graves, Laura Riding, And The Erasure Of Modern Poetry, Margaret Konkol

English Faculty Publications

In the nearly eighty years since Laura Riding and Robert Graves ceased their collaborative endeavors there has been much speculation as to the nature and extent of their literary partnership. Graves retold the past to his biographers, constructing Laura Riding as a queen yogi figure wielding an almost sinister influence. In response to these accusations Riding returned fire with volley after volley of “corrective” letters which she sent to Graves’s biographers as well as any magazine or student that she found to be sympathizing with Grave’s account of the creative partnership. At the time of her death in 1991, Riding …


Showtime: Pop Culture's Impact On Society's View Of The Lgbtq Population, Hope Comer, Jaime D. Bower, Narketta Sparkman Jan 2015

Showtime: Pop Culture's Impact On Society's View Of The Lgbtq Population, Hope Comer, Jaime D. Bower, Narketta Sparkman

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Popular culture is an influential aspect that shapes society. Popular culture’s impact on society’s view of the LGBTQ population was examined in the context of video media representations. Students at a Mid-Atlantic university (n = 7) were presented with representations of LGBTQ individuals in television media during two focus groups. Participants completed pre-and-post-test qualitative surveys regarding their impact and perceptions. Responses were coded to identify themes of the target populations. Misrepresentations, perpetuated stereotypes, changing perspectives, advocacy, personal connection, differing types of media representation, and lack of representation were themes identified throughout participant responses about the varying popular culture mediums.


Nobody Here Does Anything For Nothing: Reciprocity And Gender In The Wings Of The Dove, Marc A. Ouellette Apr 2013

Nobody Here Does Anything For Nothing: Reciprocity And Gender In The Wings Of The Dove, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The article discusses the work of author Henry James in his novel "The Wings of the Dove." It discusses the comment of aristocrat Lord Mark on heroine of the novel Milly Theale who summarizes the central themes of the story, social exchange. It informs that social exchange is a perspective that motivates people that maximize benefits and minimize costs in their relationships with others.


American Exceptionalism And The Historical Fiction Of Chabon And Delillo: Media Identity Commodification And The Truth Of Lies, Samm Yeakel Apr 2013

American Exceptionalism And The Historical Fiction Of Chabon And Delillo: Media Identity Commodification And The Truth Of Lies, Samm Yeakel

English Theses & Dissertations

At the heart of any democratic nation lie the individuals that inhabit its borders, heed allegiance to its flag, comprise its political and economical bodies, and fight the very wars that disrupt its political ideals. Max Weber, who is revered not merely as a great sociologist, but the sociologist, contends that any sociological explanation regarding the w1derlying will and motives of these individuals must relate to their self-conscious actions. But, however self-conscious these actions may appear, they are decidedly influenced by external factors, and, as will be shown, a well-constructed novel captures the interplay between the individual, the nation, and …


There Is No Word For Work In The Dragon Tongue, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly Jan 2013

There Is No Word For Work In The Dragon Tongue, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly

English Faculty Publications

The past decade or so has witnessed a relatively steady stream of scholarly interest in the mundane medieval—in labor, local economies, and their influence upon wider cultural production.1 Despite this interest (and perhaps as a reaction to it), popular medievalism has continued to emphasize versions of the medieval that are decidedly more heroic—productions that are simultaneously (and paradoxically) more “realistic” and more “fantastic.” Labor plays, at best, a supporting role in these fantasies: while not absent, it rarely, if ever, has the same productive presence as it does in recent scholarly treatments of medieval economies. Inasmuch as popular medievalism …


Married, With Children And An Xbox: Compromise In Video Games Play, Marc A. Ouellette Jan 2013

Married, With Children And An Xbox: Compromise In Video Games Play, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) In a home with two children under six, managing to find the time and the games that allow for play with a partner who has completely different tastes and capabilities produces compromises both inside and outside the game, as well as a hybrid form that spans the two. This last point highlights the fact that compromise remains a popularly studied topic in considerations of games, but only within very discrete boundaries that do not necessarily have anything to do with play or with players. Said another way, compromise appears in studies that foreground games as promoting aggression and …


Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly Apr 2012

Woman At The Top: Rhetoric, Politics, And Feminism In The Texts And Life Of Annie Smith Peck, Hannah Scialdone-Kimberly

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this focuses on the autobiographical rhetoric and public identity of Annie Smith Peck, a scholar, mountain climber and woman rhetor from the turn of the century. My qualitative case study of Peck examines how she worked as a woman rhetor to create a popular identity for herself in both mountain climbing and scholarship. I also focus on how Peck worked to identify herself with her audience; here, I use Burke's concept of "identification," as a way of adding to (rather than substituting for) traditional rhetoric. My project brings new findings in that I examine data on Peck …


The Golems Take New York: The Resurgence Of The Golem In The Work Of Cynthia Ozick And Thane Rosenbaum, Peter Schulman Jan 2012

The Golems Take New York: The Resurgence Of The Golem In The Work Of Cynthia Ozick And Thane Rosenbaum, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

The late twentieth and early twenty first centuries have seen a resurgence of the golem in several major American novels. What factors might lead to such a re-imagining of the golem in American fiction? Cynthia Ozick's The Puttermesser Papers (1997) and Thane Rosenbaum's The Golems of Gotham (2002) re-invent golems no longer anchored in vengeance but in healing, as vehicles for the kabbalistic notion of Tikkun Olam ("repairing the world"). Ozick creates the first female golem to help the lonely protagonist become a reformist mayor; in The Golems of Gotham, the golem is transformed into a team of literary …


"We Should Have Brought The Tank": Hypermediated Interactivity In Red Vs. Blue, Marc A. Ouellette Jan 2012

"We Should Have Brought The Tank": Hypermediated Interactivity In Red Vs. Blue, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Machinima, the practice of adapting recorded video game play into short films, highlights an often unacknowledged but significant shift in the consumption of video games and represents a key and underexplored intersection between the two leading theoretical camps. Considering the landmark series Red vs. Blue through the lens of Bolter and Grusin's propositions about "new" media's relationships with other forms offers an entry point for theorizing not only machinima but also the intersections between the ludology and narratology positions in games studies.


Waiting To Exhale, Kaavonia Hinton Jan 2011

Waiting To Exhale, Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The Story: Savannah Jackson’s sister Sheila tells Savannah about a business owner named Lionel, and Lionel invites Savannah to attend a New Year’s Eve party. As Savannah gets ready to ring in 1990, she reflects on her annoyance with Sheila and their mother, who have suggested that Savannah is miserable because she does not have a husband and does not live closer to her family. She realizes she does not need a man to validate her but admits that, as she broke up with Kenneth Dawkins four years ago, she wants to be in love again


Choosing My Best Thing: Black Motherhood And Academia, Kaavonia Hinton-Johnson Jan 2011

Choosing My Best Thing: Black Motherhood And Academia, Kaavonia Hinton-Johnson

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Scholars argue that White feminist theoretical undertakings concerning mothering are not appropriate for studying Black mothers because they rarely take race and culture into consideration (Collins, 1991; Joseph, 1991). Collins (1994) argues that the experiences of Black mothers are paramount to any inclusive discussion about mother/child relationships. Scholars who have turned their attention to the Black mother often do so via literary works and/or criticism (see, for example, Crews, 1996; Morrison, 1987; Wade-Gayles, 1984; Washington, 1990; Williams, 1986) or in reality (Collins, 1991, 1994; Roberts, 1997a). However, a computerized search for studies on the Black mother produces literature …


How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Kaavonia Hinton Jan 2011

How Stella Got Her Groove Back, Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) The Story: Stella Payne is an ambitious African American woman who holds masters degrees in fine arts and in business administration. A successful analyst for a large investment firm, she makes more than $200,000 per year and has an impressive portfolio. Despite her accomplishments, she no longer finds her career satisfying and feels her life is simply boring and predictable. Anxious to get a respite from single motherhood, she watches her eleven-year-old son, Quincy, board a plane to Colorado, where he will spend a few weeks with his father


Return To Unfinished Business: Re-Energizing U.S. Nuclear Arms Policy, William T. Eliason Jul 2010

Return To Unfinished Business: Re-Energizing U.S. Nuclear Arms Policy, William T. Eliason

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

Today's international environment characterized in nuclear threat terms as having increasing concerns about the potential for terrorist or non-state use of nuclear devices and a decline in the likelihood of the original nuclear weapon states engaging each other in a nuclear war remains in search of a path away from the fear of nuclear attack some twenty years after the end of the Cold War. This research dissertation will seek to answer the question of how best to reestablish a nuclear arms control regime. This dissertation argues that the international environment has fundamentally changed since the end of the Cold …


Genre, Database, And The Anatomy Of The Digital Archive, Elizabeth J. Vincelette Apr 2010

Genre, Database, And The Anatomy Of The Digital Archive, Elizabeth J. Vincelette

English Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to define shared characteristics of literary digital archives, specifically to explore how conceptual and structural qualities of such archives express generic qualities. In order to describe digital media such as database or digital archives, scholars resort to metaphors, and this study offers the metaphor of anatomy as a generic inscription with historical and methodological implications. The definition of the anatomy genre draws from Northrop Frye's in Anatomy of Criticism, in which Frye describes how anatomies are characterized by proliferating lists, the mixing of prose and non-prose forms, and self-reflexivity--under the guise of knowledge …


El Diálogo Cultural Y La Transformación Genérica En El Mariachi De Robert Rodríguez, Andrew M. Gordus Jan 2010

El Diálogo Cultural Y La Transformación Genérica En El Mariachi De Robert Rodríguez, Andrew M. Gordus

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) El Mariachi (1993) de Robert Rodriguez ha recibido un gran número de elogios de la crítica y reconocimiento de la industria cinemática por su creatividad y su historia productiva única. Le película ganó el premio de Audience Award en el festival de cine de Sundance y posteriormente fue estrenada en video por Colombia Pictures. Desde entonces Robert Rodriguez ha llegado a ser uno de los directores latinos más destacados


Commodifying Scarcity: Society, Struggle, And Spectacle In World Of Warcraft, Kevin Moberly Jan 2010

Commodifying Scarcity: Society, Struggle, And Spectacle In World Of Warcraft, Kevin Moberly

English Faculty Publications

Overrun by monsters and tyrants, and ravaged by fanaticism, excess, and greed, World of Warcraft offers players a chance to struggle metaphorically against that which oppresses them: the excesses of late capitalism as they are represented by the game’s spectacular antagonisms. In order to take advantage of this opportunity, however, players must employ the very thing through which their oppression is manifested. Interpellated into the game as fetishized images, players must construct themselves and function in accordance with the limitations imposed upon them by the race and class of their characters. Players, as such, are incorporated into World of Warcraft’s …


Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone, By Elizabeth Armstrong, Johanna Burton, And Dave Hickey. Prestel: New York 2007; Mary Heilmann: Save The Last Dance For Me, By Terry R. Myers. Afterall: London, 2007 (Book Reviews), Vittorio Colaizzi Jan 2009

Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone, By Elizabeth Armstrong, Johanna Burton, And Dave Hickey. Prestel: New York 2007; Mary Heilmann: Save The Last Dance For Me, By Terry R. Myers. Afterall: London, 2007 (Book Reviews), Vittorio Colaizzi

Art Faculty Publications

Colaizzi reviews two books discussing the work of Abstract painter Mary Heilmann. "Mary Heilmann : To Be Someone," by Elizabeth Armstrong, Johanna Burton, and Dave Hickey (Prestel 2007); and "Mary Heilmann : Save the Last Dance for Me," by Terry R. Myers (Afterall 2007).


Correlation Of Music Charts And Search Engine Rankings, Martin Klein, Olena Hunsicker, Michael Nelson Jan 2009

Correlation Of Music Charts And Search Engine Rankings, Martin Klein, Olena Hunsicker, Michael Nelson

Computer Science Faculty Publications

We investigate the question whether expert rankings of real-world entities correlate with search engine (SE) rankings of corresponding web resources. We compare Billboards "Hot 100 Airplay" music charts with SE rankings of associated web resources. Out of nine comparisons we found two strong, two moderate, two weak and one negative correlation. The remaining two comparisons were inconclusive.


Sati In Philadelphia: The Widow(S) Of Malabar, Jeffrey H. Richards Jan 2008

Sati In Philadelphia: The Widow(S) Of Malabar, Jeffrey H. Richards

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Following Tradition: Young Adult Literature As Neo-Slave Narrative, Kaavonia Hinton Jan 2008

Following Tradition: Young Adult Literature As Neo-Slave Narrative, Kaavonia Hinton

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Ideological Transference In The Barbary Captivity Literature Of Post-Revolutionary America, Jason Scott Cooke Jul 2007

Ideological Transference In The Barbary Captivity Literature Of Post-Revolutionary America, Jason Scott Cooke

English Theses & Dissertations

The outbreak of Barbary captivity in the post-revolutionary period was one of the first significant challenges to American statehood and, more importantly, the rhetoric of liberty that had initially unified and galvanized the otherwise fractioned colonies. The Barbary nations, through politically hostile acts such as piracy and seizure, thus ironically participated in the rendering of abstract democratic principles, embodied by America' military victory over England, into the pragmatic functioning of a new republic. However, the process by which Barbary captivity assisted in the public enunciation of an idealized rhetoric of liberty or language of rights owes more to the cultural …


Women Of The New Walden: Gender In Sound Culture, Now And Then, Phylis Johnson Apr 2007

Women Of The New Walden: Gender In Sound Culture, Now And Then, Phylis Johnson

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Sonic diversity in the midst of wilderness, as original and untamed, can confound and discomfort the novice listener who becomes overwhelmed by its plethora of mysterious languages. Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller, author of Summer on the Lakes (1844), expressed sensory overload when she was confronted with the sights and sounds of Niagara Falls. Sound permeates our life, from conception, birth, and varied sonic spheres of influence that penetrate our physical space. Sound acknowledges its relevance as a cultural influence within the socialization of the individual. For instance, high-powered car stereos and subwoofers swimming in bass overtones have become associated with masculinity. …


Gestures Toward Cross-Species Reciprocal Relations In Contemporary Poetics, Mary Newell Apr 2007

Gestures Toward Cross-Species Reciprocal Relations In Contemporary Poetics, Mary Newell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

In this essay, I explore some embodied bases of ethical attitudes toward human/ animal exchanges in the texts of three contemporary authors: Mary Oliver, Heller Levinson, and Adrienne Rich. Since other species share with humans varieties of agency, sentience, and purposive activity, I suggest that reciprocity is a fundamental aim in cross-species relations. Phenomenological philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty depicts the correlation between embodied actions and attitudes, for example, between the hand movement of grasping and an appropriative attitude toward the natural world. His concept of reciprocity, grounded in the experience of one hand touching another, provides a reference for encounters that …