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Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Fandom, Racism, And The Myth Of Diversity In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ashley S. Richardson Apr 2017

Fandom, Racism, And The Myth Of Diversity In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ashley S. Richardson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The Marvel Cinematic Universe is currently one of the most commercially successful entertainment brands in American popular culture, with a range of film franchises and television series under its banner. Although the brand maintains its popularity with various demographics, the casting choices in Doctor Strange (2017) generated controversy among Marvel fans and critics alike for excluding people of color or reducing them to villains and sidekicks. This thesis examines the online commentary surrounding the casting and marketing of Doctor Strange to evaluate how social media users on Reddit, Tumblr, and Twitter come to understand race and gender through the Marvel …


"History Written With Lightning": Religion, White Supremacy, And The Rise And Fall Of Thomas Dixon, Jr, David Michael Kidd Jan 2013

"History Written With Lightning": Religion, White Supremacy, And The Rise And Fall Of Thomas Dixon, Jr, David Michael Kidd

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Baptist minister and author of novels, plays, sermons, and essays, Thomas Dixon, Jr. today remains most known as the storyteller behind the 1915 D. W. Griffith Film The Birth of a Nation. I argue that Thomas Dixon crafted a white supremacist rhetoric and narrative of modern whiteness indebted to the structures of Fundamentalist Christianity. With varying degrees of success, later writers struggled with the legacy the Dixonian cultural narrative bequeathed them.;Fundamentalist theology offered a whole host of tropes, metaphors, and arguments to its users. In short, Fundamentalism presented a rhetorical stance that was, in the hands of an ambitious and …


Voters In A Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage And Citizenship In The United States, 1704-1926, Alan Kennedy-Shaffer Jan 2009

Voters In A Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage And Citizenship In The United States, 1704-1926, Alan Kennedy-Shaffer

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Performing Race: Instances Of Color Representation In American Culture, Katrin L. Adkins Jan 2003

Performing Race: Instances Of Color Representation In American Culture, Katrin L. Adkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


"The Freemasonry Of The Race": The Cultural Politics Of Ritual, Race, And Place In Postemancipation Virginia, Corey D. B. Walker Jan 2001

"The Freemasonry Of The Race": The Cultural Politics Of Ritual, Race, And Place In Postemancipation Virginia, Corey D. B. Walker

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

African American cultural and social history has neglected to interrogate fully a crucial facet of African American political, economic, and social life: African American Freemasonry. "The Freemasonry of the Race": The Cultural Politics of Ritual, Race, and Place in Postemancipation Virginia seeks to remedy this neglect. This project broadly situates African American Freemasonry in the complex and evolving relations of power, peoples, and polities of the Atlantic world. The study develops an interpretative framework that not only recognizes the organizational and institutional aspects of African American Freemasonry, but also interprets it as a discursive space in and through which articulations …


Far From "Everybody's Everything": Literary Tricksters In African American And Chinese American Fiction, Crystal Suzette Anderson Jan 2000

Far From "Everybody's Everything": Literary Tricksters In African American And Chinese American Fiction, Crystal Suzette Anderson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation examines trickster sensibilities and behavior as models for racial strategies in contemporary novels by African American and Chinese American authors. While many trickster studies focus on myth, I assert that realist fiction provides a unique historical and cultural space that shapes trickster behavior. John Edgar Wideman, Gloria Naylor, Frank Chin and Maxine Hong Kingston use the trickster in their novels to articulate diverse racial strategies for people of color who must negotiate among a variety of cultural influences. My critical trickster paradigm investigates the motives and behavior of tricksters. It utilizes close literary readings that are strengthened by …


Eying Italians: Race, Romance, And Reality In American Perception, 1880--1910, Joseph Peter Cosco Jan 1999

Eying Italians: Race, Romance, And Reality In American Perception, 1880--1910, Joseph Peter Cosco

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation explores how American representations of Italians and Italian Americans engaged, reflected and helped shape the United States' developing concepts of immigration, ethnicity, race, and national identity from 1880 to 1910, when masses of Italian and other "new immigrants" rigorously tested the country's attitudes and powers of assimilation. In a larger sense, the research examines how the process of constructing the modern Italian/Italian American was part of the process of America constructing for itself a modern national identity for a new century.;The dissertation looks at a variety of "texts," including journalism, travel literature, autobiography, fiction, and photographs and illustrations …


Plaids And Broadswords Of The Altamaha, Robert K. Weber Jan 1998

Plaids And Broadswords Of The Altamaha, Robert K. Weber

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Racism, Sexism And Ageism In America, Bobbie Alexander Lyons Jan 1991

Racism, Sexism And Ageism In America, Bobbie Alexander Lyons

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Japanese Business In The United States: Unintentional Definition Of The Other, Yujin Yaguchi Jan 1991

Japanese Business In The United States: Unintentional Definition Of The Other, Yujin Yaguchi

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.