American Studies Commons^™

American Missionaries And Gender Politics In South Asia: Mark Twain's Following The Equator And Harriet Winlsow's Memoir, Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

Abstract published in South Asian Review 29.4 (2008): 68.

American Broadsides And Ephemera Series I, 1760-1990, Bill Sleeman

Bill Sleeman

Review of an electronic database of rare broadsides and ephemera from the colonial period through the end of the 19th Century.

“I Don’T Mean To Be Defiant Or Anything…”: Instructional Films For Girls, 1945-1960, Jill Anderson

Jill E. Anderson

No abstract provided.

International Terrorism:Role ,Responsibility And Operation Of Media Channles, Ratnesh Dwivedi Mr

Ratnesh Dwivedi

"Terrorism" is a term that cannot be given a stable defintion. Or rather, it can, but to do so forstalls any attempt to examine the major feature of its relation to television in the contemporary world. As the central public arena for organising ways of picturing and talking about social and political life, TV plays a pivotal role in the contest between competing defintions, accounts and explanations of terrorism. Which term is used in any particular context is inextricably tied to judgemements about the legitimacy of the action in question and of the political system against which it is directed. …

The Era Of Greed Is Over, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Why has socialism got such a bad rap in the US? Just check who controls the flow of information, writes Michael I. Niman

Early Modern Digital Scholarship & Deep: Database Of Early English Playbooks, Zachary Lesser, Alan B. Farmer

Zachary Lesser

This paper discusses recent trends in digital resources for early modern literary studies, as well as the implications of these resources for research and scholarship. In addition to comparing the use by scholars of print reference works and online databases, the essay analyzes the recent shift from 'first-generation' digital resources, such as the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) and Early English Books Online (EEBO), to newer 'second-generation' resources like DEEP: Database of Early English Playbooks. Rather than strive for comprehensive coverage of early modern print culture, as ESTC and EEBO do, these 'second-generation' sites typically aim for in-depth coverage of …

Permeable Borders And American Prisons: Malcolm Braly's On The Yard, Katy Ryan

Katy Ryan

No abstract provided.

Weirdos Riot, Media Gets It Wrong, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

Michael I. Niman is concerned by media treatment of a hippie riot that never happened

Food Fight: From Haiti To Laos, People Are Starving – But They Refuse To Do It Quietly, Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

No abstract provided.

Review Of Empire’S Edge: American Society In Nome, Alaska 1898-1934 By Preston Jones Pacific Historical Review 77.2 (May 2008), 330-332., Adam Arenson

Adam Arenson

Coming To See Myself As A Vernacular Intellectual, Peter Elbow

Peter Elbow

A short essay taken from remarks at the annual 2007 convention on getting the Exemplar Award. I look back over my career as an ongoing attempt to democratize writing--operating from the stance of a "vernacular intellectual" (a concept coined by Grant Farret).

Finishing In The Money (An Early Look At The 2008 Presidential Election), Michael I. Niman Ph.D.

Michael I Niman Ph.D.

An early look at the 2008 presidential election "horse race."

Mamie Bradley's Unbearable Burden: Sexual And Aesthetic Politics In Bebe Moore Campbell's Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, Koritha Mitchell

Koritha Mitchell

This essay offers a reading of Bebe Moore Campbell's 1992 novel Your Blues Ain't Like Mine, which re-imagines the 1955 murder of Emmett Till and its aftermath. I argue that the novel is a tribute to Till and his mother, Mamie Bradley, but that it also illustrates the agony of being the survivor whose pain occasions such tributes. Through Delotha Todd, the character loosely based on Bradley, Campbell imagines the mother's burden to have been especially unbearable because so many strangers, including Campbell herself, claimed to share it. In the process of acknowledging the many facets Delotha's pain, Campbell …

Prácticas De Lectoescritura En Los Exvotos, Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

Prácticas de Lectoescritura en los Exvotos Abstract Maria Eugenia de Luna University of Western Ontario mdelunav@uwo.ca En este trabajo estudio las prácticas de lectoescritura en los exvotos, su producción y usos, tomando en cuenta que las prácticas de lectoescritura nos ayudan a tener una mejor idea del concepto de cómo se unen en la práctica la escritura y la lectura con las estructuras sociales. Un exvoto es un documento lleno de información tanto visual como narrativa y gracias a estos se puede decir que se tienen un acervo histórico popular, donde a través de los siglos podemos ver ilustrados y …

Leer Y Escribir En Español: Una Manera De Mantener La L1 De Inmigrantes Mexicanos En Canadá, Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

Maria Eugenia De Luna Villalón

No abstract provided.

Fantastic Covers, Ellen K. Corrigan

Ellen K. Corrigan

Introductory and caption text from “Fantastic Covers,” an independently curated exhibit on display at Booth Library, Eastern Illinois University, October-December 2008. The exhibit featured cover art from a collection of pulp science fiction paperbacks and magazines dating from the 1950s to the early 1970s, housed in the library's Special Collections. Text reformatted from original presentation.

Using The Novel To Teach Multiculturalism, Michelle Loris

Michelle Loris

Description of a fourteen week course taught by Michelle Loris, professor of English at Sacred Heart University. The course, titled Recent Ethnic American Fictions, introduced students to several concepts from contemporary literary theory. The theories included New Criticism, Deconstruction, Cultural Studies, New Historicism, and Feminist Theory. The assumption was that these concepts would give students the tools to become critical readers, which would then provide them with a deeper understanding of these multicultural novels and their particular cultural contexts. For a semester, reading and thinking about these multicultural novels engaged and challenged the students' assumptions about themselves and the America …

Comics, The Canon, And The Classroom, James Carter

James B Carter

This chapter, which explores what I call the canon-curriculum-culture connection in terms of comics and graphic novels, also offers definitions of the augmental and supplemental approaches to using graphic novels in the classroom. The link is to the "Google Books" version of the paper, which begins on page 47 of the book.

Edwards - Thoreau - Dillard: Reading/Writing Nature And The Awakened/Awakening Self, Michael Ditmore

Michael Ditmore

No abstract provided.

Reader Response And The Interpretation Of "Hop-Frog," "How To Write A Blackwood Article," And "The Tell-Tale Heart", Brian Yothers

Brian Yothers

This essay discusses ways in which reader response can enrich the teaching of Poe's short fiction.

Raising Freedom's Child: Black Children And Visions Of The Future After Slavery, Mary Niall Mitchell

Mary Niall Mitchell

The end of slavery in the United States inspired conflicting visions of the future for all Americans in the nineteenth century, black and white, slave and free. The black child became a figure upon which people projected their hopes and fears about slavery’s abolition. As a member of the first generation of African Americans raised in freedom, the black child—freedom’s child—offered up the possibility that blacks might soon enjoy the same privileges as whites: landownership, equality, autonomy. Yet for most white southerners, this vision was unwelcome, even frightening. Many northerners, too, expressed doubts about the consequences of abolition for the …

A Pinnacle Of Feeling: American Literature And Presidential Government, Sean Mccann

Sean McCann

No abstract provided.

'O Supreme Being': Religious Indifference, Theodicy, And Prayer In Crevecoeur's Letters From An American Farmer, Michael Ditmore

Michael Ditmore

No abstract provided.

Mystics Of Desolation: Craig Childs And Ellen Meloy, Jan Wellington

Jan Wellington

No abstract provided.

Die A Graphic Death:" Revisiting The Death Of Genre With Graphic Novels, James Carter

James B Carter

A revisitation of the concept of genre as it applies to graphica. I argue, as have others, that comics is a medium or art form rather than a genre. But, I also illustrate the concept for rhetoric's sake.

The First Literary Hamlet And The Commonplacing Of Professional Plays, Zachary Lesser, Peter Stallybrass

Zachary Lesser

Considers the first ("bad") quarto of Hamlet as Shakespeare's first literary drama, in the context of the use of marginal commas and italics to indicate sententiae in printed professional drama.

Fresh Networks: Science, Literature, Feminism, And Cultural Studies, Randall Knoper

Randall Knoper

No abstract provided.

Does Anse Bundren Love His Wife? Gifts, Promises, And Obligations In As I Lay Dying, Sean Mccann

Sean McCann

No abstract provided.

Demystifying The Black Student Experience At Ucla, La'tonya R. Rease-Miles

La'Tonya R. Rease-Miles

Explores the specific challenges facing Black students at UCLA and discusses how to create and sustain meaningful dialogue about racial diversity.

Why Deny Speakers Of African American Language A Choice Most Of Us Offer Other Students?, Peter Elbow

Peter Elbow

Mainstream teachers commonly invite mainstream students to freewrite and use very informal language for early and mid drafts of important academic essays--and hold off surface editing till the end. This amounts to inviting mainstream students to do lots of writing in their spoken vernacular--and to wait till the end to edit into a clearly different dialect: edited ("correct standard") written English. This essay argues the same approach for speakers of African American Language--and addresses objections.