American Studies Commons^™

Of Technology And Apocalypse, Or Whose Independence Day?, Christopher Keep

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The scene is now familiar. The cities of the world are in ruins. The Empire State Building obliterated. The White House reduced to rubble. The remnants of humankind gather in the desert, scrounging together what remains of their air defence systems for one last effort to repulse the alien invaders. Haggard but determined, the last American President prepares to lead his motley crew of resistance fighters into the fray. He takes the hand mic, tests it once or twice, and his voice crackles over the speakers. In less than one hour, he announces, aircraft from here will join …

On Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho, Andrew Miles Jacobsen

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

No book since American Psycho has created as much of a scandal. And few books have been as misunderstood. In 1990, months before it was set to be released, certain violent passages were leaked to the press that, taken out of context, made the book seem like a depth-less celebration of sexual violence. Right after Simon & Schuster canceled the book, an employee of the publishing house said, The most unfortunate thing about this whole controversy is that the book is a piece of shit. It's hard when something like this becomes an issue of censorship, because you …

Contesting Identities: Sports In American Film [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Aaron Baker's Contesting Identities: Sports in American Film is an indictment of the key American myth that anyone can succeed through self-reliance. Baker finds that sports films, in general, comprise a site in which the myth is represented and reproduced. Baker's focus, though presented from multiple analytical perspectives, is singular in its purpose. That said, Baker does concentrate on what he considers the four core American sports: football, baseball, basketball and boxing. Approximately ninety movies, from the silent era to the present day, provide the content of the analysis, but several are exemplary and are cited repeatedly in the book's …

Reel Baseball: Essays And Interviews On The National Pastime, Hollywood And American Culture, Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The editors of Reel Baseball begin by acknowledging the roots of their collection, which explores the intersection between movies and baseball. Since 1989 the National Baseball Hall of Fame has hosted the Cooperstown Symposium on Baseball and American Culture. Since 1997, McFarland has published all papers presented at the symposium. Reel Baseball, then, functions both as a document and as an artifact of the "integral" place of baseball movies in American culture. Indeed, the book not only includes essays presented at the symposium, it has two foreword sections: one written by Hall of Fame President Dale Petroskey and the …

The Night Gwen Stacy Died:' The End Of Innocence And The Birth Of The Bronze Age, Arnold T. Blumberg

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The time was 1973, and superheroes had some growing up to do.

The signs were already there as the genre eased into its fifth decade as the dominant force in American comic books. 1968 had seen the introduction of Robert Crumb's Zap Comics [1], an underground comic more concerned with counterculture trends and bucking the establishment than chronicling the exploits of spandex-wearing conservatives. The medium was testing its boundaries, finding flexibility where once there had been rigidity, and soon superheroes began to look like a timelost collection of crusaders who spoke to a generation long since past.

Review Of Writing Back: Sylvia Plath And Cold War Politics, By Alan Clinton, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

The End Of Science Fiction: When Technological Extrapolation Hits A Wall Across The Future, James John Bell

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Science fiction, as a genre of popular fiction, can trace its roots as far back as the 2nd century AD, where fantastical worlds were conjured up in order to comment on current beliefs. The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1996) outlines a very specific ancestry:

[Science Fiction] is a descendant of the type of prose fiction sometimes referred to as Lucianic Satire (after Lucian of Samosata, a Greek writer of the 2nd century AD). Lucianic Satire -- also commonly known as Menippean Satire after an earlier writer, Menippus, whose works are now lost -- is a kind of …

Imperialism & Globalization: Lessons From Frank Herbert's Dune, Kevin Williams

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

These are the words of The Preacher (a character in Frank Herbert's Children of Dune who is simultaneously the metaphorical reincarnation of the fallen prophet, Muad'Dib, and the self-exiled Emperor, Paul Atreides) as he addresses the masses enslaved by their devotion to his messianic Empire. These words, culled from the pages of science fiction, are more than mere exposition from Herbert's narrative, they point toward several important conditions facing the political world today. These conditions concern certain failures of democracy and effects of globalization spawned, in part, by an intensification of imperialist expansion in the name of democracy.

Paratextuality And Economic Disavowal In Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, Sarah Brouillette

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Dave Eggers' recent novel, You Shall Know Our Velocity (2002), concerns two friends who suddenly stumble upon a lot of money, feel guilty about it, and travel around the world trying to give it away. Like almost all of what Eggers is involved in producing, Velocity is profoundly self-justifying. In fact, if we follow Gerard Genette's model and understand a work's paratexts to be all the physical and social texts that attend its existence, controlling its dissemination and reception, then Velocity thematizes paratextuality and practices it, as a text about Eggers' career and his overriding concern with the …

Innovating Superheroes, Alvise Mattozzi

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Introduction]

Superhero comics have changed. They have passed through a Golden Age and Silver Age, they have been transformed, cancelled, revived, killed, deconstructed, reconstructed, revisited, etc. My aim is to account for part of these changes and show how superhero comics have been innovated. In order to track these changes I chose to compare different versions of a few DC Comics series, such as Doom Patrol, Swamp Thing, Shade, that had been cancelled and then revived and are known to have introduced relevant changes between the earliest and the subsequent versions.

Before tackling the series mentioned, I …

Review Of Nine Horses, By Billy Collins, Arthur Mcmaster

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Review Of Ruthless Democracy, By Timothy B. Powell, Matthew Wolf-Myer

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Holy Fools, Secular Saints, And Illiterate Saviors In American Literature And Popular Culture, Dana Heller

English Faculty Publications

In her article, "Holy Fools, Secular Saints, and Illiterate Saviors in American Literature and Popular Culture," Dana Heller identifies and analyzes characteristics of the holy fool figure in American literature and culture. Heller defines the holy fool, or divine idiot, as a figure central to U.S. myths of nation. One encounters such figures in American literature as well as in American folklore, popular culture, and mass media. In American culture, the Divine Idiot is a hybrid form which grows out of the crossings of numerous literary and historical currents, both secular and non-secular. This unwieldy hybridity -- the fact that …

Bakhtin And The Rhetoric Of The Modern Western Novel, Douglas J. Massey

English Theses & Dissertations

This thesis uses examples of temporal and spatial intersections (chronotope) provided by noted rhetorician, Mikhail Bakhtin, applying them to a modem Western novel. Bakhtin identifies three primary types of historical chronotope: Ancient Greek Romance, Chivalric Romance, and Rabelasian. The Ancient Greek Romance has three basic types: the adventure novel of ordeal, the adventure novel of everyday life, and ancient biography and autobiography. Certain elements of these three basic types are distinct characteristics that are readily identifiable and, according to Mikhail Bakhtin, "have a direct and unmediated relationship to time,'* (86) which is the dominant principle in the chronotope.

The Chivalric …

Mechanical Angel: Carolyn Forché And The Material Projection Of Messianic History, Alan Clinton

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

The work of Carolyn Forché has always retained a political edge, with works such as the exploration of her Czech background in Gathering the Tribes (1976) and her account of visits to El Salvador in The Country Between Us (1981). Forché has been one of the leading poets who, in her own words, has combatted the self-censorship operative among American poets and writers that seemed to preclude writing about...historical events when those events were still unsafe (qtd. in Stein 147). Her third book of poems The Angel of History (published 13 years later), however, represents a new turn …

Spectral Riders: Multiple Heritage And The (De-)Construction Of History In Ken Kesey's Last Go Round, Alexandra Ganser

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Ken Kesey's novel Last Go Round (1994) expands on the tradition of the tall-tale; the protagonist and first-person narrator Johnathan E. Lee Spain looks back on his life at the sickbed of a comatose black rodeo champion, re-membering his days of glory (as the winner of the first Pendleton Round-Up) and his manifold experiences during this weekend.

Supposing A Space: The Detecting Subject In Paul Auster’S City Of Glass, Richard Swope

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

No abstract provided.

Passaic Boys Are Hell: Robert Smithson's Tag As Temporal And Spatial Marker Of The Geographical Self, Felicity Colman

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Robert Smithson seductively created stories about his activities as an artist with attention to his duration; his time of existence. Born in 1938 in the New Jersey suburb of Passaic, Smithson lived in the New Jersey suburbs of Rutherford and Clifton with his family until 1957 when he moved to live in downtown Manhattan, New York (Hobbs 1981, 231-232; Tsai 1991, 6). Smithson's adult life was undeniably shaped by his Pascalian/Sopranos awareness of engaging the circumference by which to navigate the centre of everyday life. In 1972 Smithson described New Jersey as: a kind of destroyed California, …

To Blend In The Place You're In, But With A Mind To Do Something: The Practice Of Merging In James Dickey's To The White Sea, Casey Clabough

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In a final sortie the day before the great fire-bombing raid on Tokyo in the last months of World War II, Muldrow (his first name is purposefully never given), an American tail gunner, parachutes from his burning B-29 into the city. Protected at first by the smoke-blackened anarchy on the ground, he journeys north, away from the chaos and ruin of Tokyo, instinctively drawn toward Japan's sparsely-populated northern island of Hokkaido, a frozen, desolate sanctuary he is certain will assure his survival. With little more than a knife and a small map of Japan he makes his way …

Processes Of Embodiment And Spatialization In The Writings Of Paul Auster, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Processes of embodiment and the spatialization of interior categories such as thought and memory are defining characteristics of Paul Auster's novels, essays, and poetry, and a brief survey of these aspects can offer a new perspective on Auster's oeuvre as an organic whole. It is the underlying assumption of this paper that the transformation of interior into exterior constitutes a specific instance of the transpositional processes discussed therein. Within the theoretical framework of cultural studies -- as opposed to the more narrowly defined literary studies -- such transformations can be regarded as processes of embodiment, that is to …

Activist Desire, Cultural Criticism, And The Situationist International, David Banash

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

In the world of Anglo-American criticism, Situationism was once the province of hip theorists, progressive art historians, and a few scattered Marxists. No more, for the nineties saw Situationism come from obscure movement to the defiant avant of our cultural-critical-garde. Not only has the past decade seen the publication of a dozen books, countless articles, dissertations, and both academic and activist web-sites, the Situationists have moved right into the main line of pop-culture. Situationist graffiti turns up as the epigraph for gen-xer Elizabeth Wurtzel's Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1988), and, with Rolling Stone darling Greil Marcus's …

Good Grief: Representations Of The Death Of Children In Early American Writings, Lisa M. Murray

English Theses & Dissertations

From the spare journals of John Winthrop and William Bradford to the Day of Doom exhortation of Michael Wigglesworth, one can see the basis for a commonly held image of the early Puritan colonists as being a stern, humorless community. This is not inconsistent with the theological underpinnings of the Puritans' faith. Further, some research, such as that by John Demos and Karin Calvert, has concluded that the children of these colonists were not accorded the status of individuals; rather they were variously held at an emotional distance or otherwise marginalized, in part because of the very real threat of …

American Indian-White Miscegenation In Early Nineteenth Century American Literature, Elisabeth Michaelis Simmons

English Theses & Dissertations

The mixing of races has been a controversial issue ever since the first European settlers came to North America. This paper focuses on Native Americans and whites and examines how these two races are represented in early nineteenth century American literature. Specifically, it seeks to trace American authors' motivations and goals in their use of Indian-white miscegenation.

This thesis discusses novels, short stories, and plays by James Nelson Barker, Charlotte Barnes, Lydia Maria Child, James Fenimore Cooper, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, and Ann Sophia Stephens. All analyzed texts were published between 1808 and 1844 and were written by white authors for …

Why Are Those Women So Angry? (Alienating People Of Good Will), Janet Bing

English Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Until quite recently, I dismissed criticisms of "angry feminists" as a sexist stereotype. I was tired of hearing people say, "I believe in equal pay for equal work, but I dislike those bra-burning feminists!" Perhaps I'm too young, but almost all of my friends are feminists, and I have yet to meet anyone who has burned her bra, so this comment always strikes me as bizarre. However, recently I have begun to think seriously about the power of stereotypes and the ability of people to disregard messages they do not want to hear. I now realize that feminists …

Gender Roles Presented In Children's Literature: A Random Selection And Analysis Of Non-Award Winning Books, Renae M. Poarch

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the gender role stereotyping that occurs in children's non-award winning literature. This vast selection of non-award winning books has been neglected by researchers when selecting a sample to study. Past research has concentrated on the Caldecott and Newbery Award Winning books, which are not the majority of those owned by public libraries, hence not the majority being read by young readers. The purpose of this study was not to provide a list of appropriate reading material for parents and educators to select from, but rather provide an awareness of the issues so …

A View Of Melville's Piazza Tales From The Piazza, Amy Nadine Vanek

English Theses & Dissertations

Literary critics have tended to view Melville's short stories as individual units, though sometimes also in relation to his other major works. However, six of his short stories were collected in The Piazza Tales and republished as a unit. This was not just an arbitrary association, but a carefully designed collection established by Melville with the agreement of his publisher. Significantly, the first story, "The Piazza," was never published independently, only as a specific introduction to this combined work. Some critics have noted the important role that "The Piazza" then assumes. However, limited criticism and analysis is currently available which …

Planning The Twentieth-Century American City, By Mary Corbin Sies And Christopher Silver. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore And London, 1996, And Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning The Twentieth-Century Metropolis, By Greg Hise. Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore And London, 1997 (Book Reviews), Robert Wojtowicz

Art Faculty Publications

(First Paragraph) Planning has been a part of the American landscape since the establishment of the first colonial outposts, but it was not until the early twentieth century that the field's protagonists organized and professionalized. Also a relatively recent phenomenon is the field of American planning history, which for many years was the neglected stepchild of urban history and the distant cousin of architectural history. Over the past decade, however, a steady outpouring of interdisciplinary research has garnered for the field well-deserved recognition within the academy. At a time when more established disciplines are increasingly torn by ideological differences and …

The Nautical Quest, Bradford S. Warner

English Theses & Dissertations

Despite crossing genres and continents, strong literary connections exist between Coleridge's poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Poe's novella The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, and Melville's novel Moby Dick or the Whale. The works are similar in terms of plot, symbolism, and other artistic devices. Ties between any two of the works have been mentioned in literary scholarship over the last century, yet I have located none involving all three.

None of the present criticism has revealed that each work utilizes several important literary devices, such as a quality of incorporation of source material (including travel …

Representations Of Gender In Juvenile Literature During The Era Of The American Revolution, Sandra Strohhofer Pryor

History Theses & Dissertations

This study investigates representations of gender in fiction during the era of the American Revolution. Literature has an important role in creating and responding to cultural values, as well as in conveying ideologies. Through analysis of fictional stories for children, the simultaneous presence of themes of gender, religion, liberalism, and republicanism will be documented. Children's stories from England were reprinted in America after the Revolution. The continuity between late nineteenth century American success narratives and their early eighteenth century British precursors, as well as their gendered nature, will be demonstrated.

American fiction of the late eighteenth century foreshadowed both the …

Expressions Of Oppression Or Power? Reconsidering The Texts Of Hannah Webster Foster And Tabitha Gilman Tenney, Debra Anne Akgun

English Theses & Dissertations

Hannah Webster Foster and Tabitha Gilman Tenney were early American novelists writing in the latter part of the eighteenth century. Each author wrote a sentimental novel and a traditional conduct book. The Coquette and The Boarding School by Foster and Female Quixotism and The New Pleasing Instructor by Tenney, have scarcely been understood in relation to each other. This project attempts to view these texts as in the eighteenth-century society might have.

The introductory chapter identifies the problem with the typical feminist critical reading. It also explores many of the popular genres of literature during the eighteenth-century. Included are explorations …