American Studies Commons^™

Down Friendship: A Journey Home, Chelsea Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Unthinkable Botanical Gardens: Poems, Travis Oliver Green Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Unthinkable Botanical Gardens is a book of poems in five sections. The first, third, and fifth sections present a speaker navigating a wondrous and often hostile world. The second and fourth sections are long poems: "Zodiac B," a sequence inspired by obsolete or forgotten constellations, and "Elbow Island," which tells the story of the beluga whales exhibited in Barnum's American Museum.

Mouth, Dorothy Lynn Knight

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Poems written between August 2010 and April 2013.

The Song We Sing: Negotiating Black Nationalism And Queerness In James Baldwin's Late Novels, Elliot N. Long

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite his exclusion from the Black Arts Movement, James Baldwin includes in his later novels many elements of Black Nationalism, including a focus on black communities, black music, Pan-Africanism, and elements of separatism. In his inclusion of queer sexuality, Baldwin pushes against the typical bounds of Black Arts writings, expanding the limits of the genre. Contrary to the philosophy of Black Nationalism, which depends upon solid definitions of blackness, heterosexuality, and masculinity, is Baldwin's tearing down of identity categories through queering sexuality, gender, and race. This thesis examines James Baldwin's late novels, which remain undervalued and under-read, in terms of …

A William Faulkner Remembrance, Randall Kenan, Phillip M. Weinstein

Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference

A day-long program marking the fiftieth anniversary of William Faulkner’s death:

• 6:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Marathon reading of The Reivers at Rowan Oak (917 Old Taylor Road)
• 4:15-5:45 p.m. Keynote lectures by author Randall Kenan and biographer Phillip M. Weinstein at Lafayette County Courthouse (1 Courthouse Square). Program for young readers at Square Books Jr. (111 Courthouse Square).
• 6:00-7:00 p.m. Book signings by Kenan and Weinstein at Off Square Books (129 Courthouse Square)
• 8:00-10:00 p.m. Screening of The Reivers (1969 adaptation, starring Steve McQueen) at Lyric Theater (1006 Van Buren Avenue)

Another World Entire: The Posthumanism Of Cormac Mccarthy, Margaret Henson Pless

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Cormac McCarthy's novels are thought experiments in what it might mean to write posthuman works of fiction. In a close reading of three of his novels, Child of God, The Crossing, and The Road , this project reveals how McCarthy's stories paradoxically unravel the dangerous human desire to make of our world a story. His characters, Lester Ballard, Billy Parham, and the boy, become posthuman as they live increasingly outside of narrative. Their existences extend beyond the page, in a radical intimacy with the world, evident in the haunting and elusive presences, and absences, of wolves, hawks, trout, and even …

Language As Microaggression: The New Lexicon Of American Racism, Juan Thurmond

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

There are countless occasions where marginalized groups bear witness to language-based discriminatory practices. Language, as defined here, is a species of symbolism. After reviewing the sociological literature, the term "microaggressions" appears to best describe the phenomena in its everyday occurrences. Microaggressions are "the brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative racial, gender, sexual-orientation, and religious slights and insults to the target person or group" (Sue, Capodilupo, et al., 2007; Sue, 2010). Sue classifies microaggressions into three forms: microassaults, microinsults, microinvalidations. The purpose of the project was tri-fold. By …

Nonviolent Bodies And The Experience Of Breakdown In The American Movement For Civil Rights, Danielle Andersen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the experience of personal breakdown in the American Civil Rights Movement. It proposes that breakdown was triggered in individuals by the practice of nonviolence and contends that breakdown precipitated the Movement's shift away from nonviolence toward the more self-protective tactic of black power.

The Cost Of Kinship: Southern Literary Families And The Capitalist Machine, Joshua Sean Lundy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the thematic role of families and the familial in the literature of the Southern Renaissance. Whereas a number of scholars have come at this matter from a strictly cultural perspective, this analysis utilizes an economic framework. Following the example set by Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari, I attempt to formulate an understanding of the southern family not as an independent and singular social organism, but, rather, as a mechanism for the distribution of capital, firmly embedded within modern capitalism's expansive network of production, consumption, and exchange. My argument …

From Country To Country Club: The Landscapes Of Walker Percy, Joyce Garrett Butterworth

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

When Walker Percy emerged on the literary scene in 1961, the American landscape had begun to transform in new and dramatic ways. As more and more Americans moved from city centers to suburban developments, Percy found that, in more ways than one, the center would not hold. This American cultural transformation was well underway when Percy wrote The Moviegoer, perhaps the first novel from the American South to have as its subject matter a suburban dilemma. Challenging, as Percy does, traditional notions of southern place and community, this thesis seeks to discover in Percy's body of work whether the rise …

Two Trains Running: Capture And Escape In The Racialized Train Cars Of The Jim Crow South, 1893-1930, Raleigh Mixon Robinson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The role of the railroad in the modern American experience—and its role in making that experience modern—cannot be overstated. This thesis proposes to tell one of many possible railroad stories. By focusing on the historical and cultural relevance of a series of bodies in transit, I examine the implementation of railroad segregation law and the response by African-American performers. The thesis begins at the end of the nineteenth century with the Homer Plessy test case and continues across three decades, meeting along the way novelists Charles Chesnutt and James Weldon Johnson and musicians W. C. Handy, Henry "Ragtime Texas" Thomas, …

Place, Race, And Religion In The Local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community And Movement Of Memphis, Tennessee, Amy Catherine Ulmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study observes the role of place in the local LGBT community and movement of Memphis, Tennessee. I gathered information from fifteen interviews, including LGBT Memphians, activists, preachers, and public figures to show what aspects of place have been the most significant in shaping the nature of the local movement, which has been growing since the early 2000s. I suggest that the conservatism, race, and religiosity of Memphis have played the most significant role. The first chapter demonstrates how LGBTs operate within a city that maintains pockets of openness, but remains largely LGBT-unfriendly according to interviewees. The second chapter observes …

The Queen Of The Household: Mothers, Other Mothers, And Female Genealogy On The Plantation In Postslavery Women's Fiction, Correna Catlett Merricks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In many ways, the plantation defined the U.S. South because it was the primary site of production, and therefore income, for prominent southerners. In addition to being a site of production, the plantation created a complex series of connected relationships that was imagined by the plantocracy to be a large family unit. It functioned according to a specific hierarchical model that was primarily based on a patriarchal understanding of genealogy. Yet Kate Chopin's "Désirée's Baby" and "La Belle Zoraïde," Pauline Hopkins's Contending Forces, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Julia Peterkin's Scarlet Sister Mary, Eudora Welty's Delta Wedding, …

One Time, One Place? Richard Wright And Eudora Welty's Shared Visual Politics In The Depression Era, Mallory Blasingame

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis questions the absence of critical comparative studies of Mississippi-born authors Richard Wright and Eudora Welty. It argues that, though the authors' writing has traditionally been understood as residing on opposite sides of the political spectrum, they share a political vision of the rural South and urban North in the Depression era that is established in their documentary works—Wright's 12 Million Black Voices (1941) and Welty's One Time, One Place (1971)—and extends into such fictional works as Wright's "Big Boy Leaves Home" (1936) and Native Son (1941) and Welty's "Moon Lake" (1949) and "Flowers for Marjorie" (1941). In chapter …

Only Nixon Could Go To China: L. Q. C. Lamar And The Politics Of Reconciliation, Richard Brian Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lucius Quintus Cinncinatus Lamar was a statesman with an almost unmatched career, serving on the President's Cabinet, in Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Lamar's work in government spanned one of the most tumultuous times in American history, and his transformation from secessionist to advocate for reconciliation in the post-Civil War period illustrates the complexity of politics at that time. This thesis examines Lamar's life and provides an historiographic survey of Lamar scholarship to date. From this review, the thesis moves to new and necessary areas of inquiry, including Lamar's relationship with black Reconstruction politicians, his role in the early …

Disciplining The Body: Societal Controls Of Gender, Race And Sexuality, Michelle Renae Bright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Gay Of The Land: Queer Ecology And The Literature Of The 1960s, Jill Elizabeth Anderson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue not only that queer ecology is a legitimate and important next step for ecocritics and queer theorists but also that its literary application does a great amount of good in exploring and dismantling the natural/unnatural binary and exposing the ecological impact of the choices humans make everyday. I take as my method a combination of queer and environmental theory and literary criticism, as well as the foundational queer ecocritical works and include important historical and political perspectives influencing the emergence of the environmental and gay and lesbian movements. Through this dissertation, I legitimize more recent …

Ourself Behind Ourself, Concealed: The Thematic Importance Of Doubling In Nineteenth And Early Twentieth-Century American Gothic Literature, Katharine Mclaren Todd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Without question, Gothic literature provides an impressively suitable venue for the expression of societal anxieties and frustrations, especially those concerning power, patriarchy, and the socially sanctioned roles of women (i.e. to be obediently passive wives and nurturing mothers) and men (i.e. to be representatives of strength, rationality, morality, and order). While it might seem as though supernatural entities or outside forces are often to be feared in Gothic literature, the most sinister force is usually that of the protagonist's unsettled mind. The shadowy haunted houses and often isolated, gloomy, and claustrophobic spaces in which terrorized protagonists are trapped frequently mirror …

Starved: Food Deserts In The Mississippi Delta, Novelette L. Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the impact of food deserts on obesity, and builds a case for additional research on rural food deserts independent from urban ones. The Mississippi Delta consistently presents the highest obesity rates within the state, yet both the third unhealthiest county (Quitman) and the healthiest (DeSoto) are located in that region. One of the reasons there is such a large discrepancy between the health rankings of DeSoto and Quitman counties is that DeSoto is contained within the Greater Memphis Metropolitan Area, but Quitman is entirely rural. Previous research has focused on the prevalence of urban food deserts and …

Playing The Game: Violence And The Revolt Against Normative Masculinity In John Updike's Rabbit Run, Norman Mailer's An American Dream, And Phil Andros's $Tud, Ann Marie Schott

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine two high-brow examples of Cold War literature by white male authors, Norman Mailer's An American Dream (1965) and John Updike's Rabbit, Run (1960), and examine them through the lens of the lesser-known gay pulp $tud (1966) by Phil Andros. Although $tud's gay hustler protagonist Phil seems to be a progressive, even transgressive example of an alternate masculinity, he is actually heavily invested in the binary strictures of normative masculinity and therefore works to uphold or reinforce normativity. $tud, therefore, is not about deviance from a masculine norm but rather a meditation on the ways that American …

Reforming Tastes: Taste As A Print Aesthetic In American Cookery Writing, Sarah Wurgler Walden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many eighteenth-century philosophers such as Kant and Hume worked to develop discourses of taste as a means of standardizing cultural behaviors. Using physical taste as a metaphor for aesthetic perception and judgment, these writers could both define and abstract group boundaries. As American writers worked to distinguish their nation from their British forebears, many recognized the utility of taste-based discourse and worked to develop cultural tastes around shared principles of egalitarianism and democracy. Cookbooks and domestic writing soon engaged these discourses, as it was the task of women to cultivate a virtuous citizenry, and—through domestic print culture—to demonstrate the deleterious …

Southern Noir: Appropriations And Alterations Of A Twentieth-Century Form, Bob Hodges

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern noir conjoins the two seemingly antithetical words in a telling fashion. The word noir conjures images of cheap films about detectives, criminals, and luckless men scurrying across a city at night with expressionistic shadows and light play, a foreboding sense of doom, and deadly seductive femmes fatales nipping at their heels. The understanding of noir as a symptom of urban modernity inextricably linked to cities and cinema stands in stark contrast to the traditional understanding of the south as rural, retrograde, and a repository for all the antiquated, “coercive forms of human society” in labor and social practices (Greeson …

Frontier Identity In Cultural Events In Holmes County, Florida, Tyler Dawson Keith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Holmes County, Florida plays host to several cultural events that perpetuate a frontier identity for its citizens. These events include the dedication of a homesteading cabin, which serves as the meeting place for other "pioneer days" events; "Drums along the Choctawhatchee", an event put on by a local Creek Indian tribe that celebrates the collaborative nature of pioneer and Native Americans; the 66th annual North West Florida Championship Rodeo; and a local fish-fry. Each of these events celebrates the frontier identity of the county in unique and important ways. Using the images of the frontier created by William "Buffalo Bill" …

The Blues Is Alright: Blues Music As A Root For Cultural Tourism And Public History, Katherine Duvall Osteen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

With a focus on the Mississippi Delta, Elvis Presley's Graceland, and Austin, Texas, this thesis is an exploration of the successes, failures, and necessary re-imaginings of sites of music lore, places in which the blues have played a role in music tourism, and how public history is used in different ways to accomplish a similar goal. For cities with ties to blues history, blues music tourism can become a source for financial stability as well as a teaching opportunity in the form of public history. Beyond a push to increase financial gain in places that are benefiting from blues tourism …

A Place Of Happy Retreat: Benefiting Locals And Visitors Through Sustainable Tourism Practices At Beale Street, Graceland And The National Civil Rights Museum, Cathryn Stout

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This interdisciplinary work examines Beale Street, Graceland, and the National Civil Rights Museum through the lens of sustainable tourism. It specifically examines the value of integrating the culture and history of the host community into the attraction, and using tourist attractions to provide personal and economic development for locals. Chapter One is titled "'Can I Live' on Beale Street," Chapter Two is titled "Opening the Gates of Graceland," and Chapter Three is titled "Creating a Public Forum at the National Civil Rights Museum." Memphis has been predominantly African American since 1986, and African American history was significant in the creation …

With Malice Towards None: Six Stories And A Novella, Burke Nixon

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

A fiction collection consisting of six short stories folloby a novella. The pieces attempt to be comic, but also--with debatable success--to be more than just comic. As the title suggests, one of the collection's thematic concerns is mercy and its absence. Most of the pieces are set in Texas; characters in the collection include a female student in an absurdly incompetent public high school, a parking cop, the best friend of a stand-up comedian, an Abilene man whose life goal is to be struck by lightning, and an unselfconscious grandfather character, who bookends the beginning and end of the collection. …

William Faulkner's Hebrew Bible: Empire And The Myths Of Origins, Scott T. Chancellor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I propose that William Faulkner's literary imagination is charged by a Jewish sensibility rooted in reverence for the Bible as a text that is as vital and relevant in his time as in any since its composition. The Hebrew Bible's narrative method of compiling, redacting, doubling, and retelling, and its attention to curses, genealogies, covenants, and nation-building, reverberate in Faulkner's time as resoundingly as in any preceding it. There are myriad links in Faulkner's work between the Hebrew Bible, Southern Christianity, and American colonialism that merit our attention within ongoing discussions of Faulkner, empire, and nation-building, the Bible and colonialism, …

Beyond The Sunset : Race And Ethnicity In Cullman County, Alabama, Miles Laseter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This Southern Studies master's thesis explores the racial and ethnic environment of Cullman County, Alabama from a number of perspectives. Critical readings of archived newspapers as well as local histories provide the foundation for this study. Oral history interviews and census data also figure prominently. The research aimed mainly at illuminating the elusive history of race relations in Cullman, an overwhelmingly white county. Much of the thesis focuses on Cullman's history of racial exclusiveness. Secondary sources, primarily works by historians and sociologists, contextualize Cullman's racial past and present. The county emerges from this study as an unusual if not truly …

The Crescent And The Cross: Islamic Influence In Southern Culture, Jesse Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To a large degree, America has adopted African American culture as its own. One may hear and see African American influence in popular music, grammar, fashion and art, but rarely are the sources of these influences divined, in no small part to difficulties inherent in interdisciplinary studies. This thesis will examine the Islamic aesthetics in African American quilts. This work focuses on design and color elements and I trace Islamic influence from West Africa to the U.S. South by way of the slave trade. The original scholarship comes from in the Mississippi Delta, although this thesis also uses quilt books …

Southern Register. 2003.3 (Fall 2003), University Of Mississippi. Center For The Study Of Southern Culture.

Southern Register

No abstract provided.