American Studies Commons^™

Video Games And Citizenship, Jeroen Bourgonjon, Ronald Soetaert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Video Games and Citizenship" Jeroen Bourgonjon and Ronald Soetaert argue that digitization problematizes and broadens our perspective on culture and popular media and that this has important ramifications for our understanding of citizenship. Bourgonjon and Soetaert respond to the call of Gert Biesta for the contextualized study of young people's practices by exploring a particular aspect of digitization that affects young people, namely video games. They explore the new social spaces which emerge in video game culture and how these spaces relate to community building and citizenship. Bourgonjon and Soetaert also examine whether these social spaces can …

Rhetorical Analysis Of Literary Culture In Social Reading Platforms, Joachim Vlieghe, Kris Rutten

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Rhetorical Analysis of Literary Culture in Social Reading Platforms" Joachim Vlieghe and Kris Rutten present a case study of the discourse surrounding literary phenomena that are emerging within social media. The case study is part of a methodological exploration within literacy studies whereby the social media's transformative effects on literary literacies are studied by focusing on language as symbolic and situated action. Vlieghe and Rutten have identified unique social reading platforms based on a prolonged study of the social media environment. The analysis of the developers' discourse on social reading platforms shows how developers are formulating new …

Introduction To Literacy And Society, Culture, Media And Education, Kris Rutten, Geert Vandermeersche

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Literature, Digital Humanities, And The Age Of The Encyclopedia, Gunther Martens

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Literature, Digital Humanities, and the Age of the Encyclopedia" Gunther Martens takes his cue from Robert Musil's novel The Man without Qualities in order to discuss the way in which literature relates to new developments in technology. Martens argues that it is useful to situate some of the fears accompanying literature's renewed (and debated) exposure to media and technology against the background of a similar discussions earlier: the historical perspective allows to identify and link three specific discourses underpinning the debate, namely: education, rhetoric, and the concept of the encyclopedia. The encyclopedia and encyclopedic literature comprise and …

Using New Media In Teaching Greek Roma Students, Fenia Frangoulidou

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Using New Media in Teaching Greek Roma Students" Fenia Frangoulidou discusses the use of media material as a supplementary teaching tool in a Roma classroom. Since 2011, Aristotle University has been running a European Union funded project that deals with a wide range of supportive measures for Roma students. Sociologists, social workers, and educators are the primary participants responsible for its implementation. In her study Frangoulidou discusses gender relations and racism and presents an analysis of the participation and interaction of six high school students in a mixed class of twenty-eight students. The purpose of the study …

About The Destruction, Continuation, And Transformation Of Art, Frank Maet

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "About the Destruction, Continuation, and Transformation of Art" Maet offers an answer to the question raised by Arthur C. Danto's thesis how to discern art from non-art? Maet considers art from the perspective of a technologically mediated reality and he distinguishes three different views on contemporary visual art: the destruction, the continuation, and the transformation of art. Maet considers these three artistic views as different strategies to deal with our current technological condition and evaluates the merits of each of them. He argues that our thoroughly designed reality turns the strategy of artistic destruction into a dangerous …

Perspectives On Literary Reading And Book Culture, Geert Vandermeersche, Ronald Soetaert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Perspectives on Literary Reading and Book Culture" Geert Vandermeersche and Ronald Soetaert provide a narrative framework for analyzing literary scholars' argumentation in the debate on literature and the humanities. Starting from MacIntyre's narrative description of epistemic "crises" they analyze the stories authors construct and the positions they take and ascribe to others within larger developing (grand) narratives on the value and function of literary reading. Both traditional narratives and new alternative (i.e., enlarged) narratives are discussed in how they set up and frame the argument and how they create dichotomies.

Reading, Literacy, And Education, Mikko Lehtonen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Reading, Literacy, and Education" Mikko Lehtonen outlines a contextual approach to literacy. He asks how the changing relations of culture and economy, transformation of nation states and national cultures and changing notions concerning affect and cognition, transform notions of literacy and reading. Relying on the results of a recent Finnish research project on new reading communities and new ways of reading, Lehtonen highlights substantial continuities in the reading habits of the so called Google generation when compared to other generations of readers. Print media is not, however, connected self-evidently to cognitive reading among the said generation. Lehtonen …

Rhetoric, Citizenship, And Cultural Literacy, Kris Rutten, Ronald Soetaert

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Rhetoric, Citizenship, and Cultural Literacy" Kris Rutten and Ronald Soetaert start from concerns in contemporary educational debates about a growing lack of civic literacy. These complaints are raised both in the public sphere, in institutions of pedagogy, and in scholarship about the form, content, and function of civic literacy and civic education. Although there is an ongoing debate about the alleged decrease of political interest and the current state of civic literacy, it is clear that civic education has become an important focus of different governmental initiatives. Rutten and Soetaert aim to move away from a straightforward …

Integrating Social Media In Education, Hadewijch Vanwynsberghe, Pieter Verdegem

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Integrating Social Media in Education" Hadewijch Vanwynsberghe and Pieter Verdegem propose a framework in order to integrate social media literacy in an educational setting. In today's networked society students are new media users and hence the relevance in curricula to include social media literacy. Vanwynsberghe and Verdegem propose a multidimensional conceptual framework of social media literacy that includes the practical, cognitive, and affective competencies needed to deal with information of social media, to communicate with others through social media, to create content on social media, and to handle the consequences related to these three activities. On the …

Practical And Theoretical Implications Of Digitizing The Middle Ages, Roberta Capelli

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Practical and Theoretical Implications of Digitalizing the Middle Ages" Roberta Capelli discusses scholarship about and the teaching of medieval culture in digital humanities. While every medieval manuscript is an individual entity, displaying a series of unique and unrepeatable material, structural and aesthetic characteristics, digital devices are able to generate only two-dimensional photographic reproductions. However, the digital medium brings about some major improvements in the study — and teaching — of medieval manuscripts because the hypertextual nature of its applications allows us to analyse simultaneously synchronic and the diachronic dynamics. From a theoretical point of view, the difference …

Inheritance Of The Past: Patriarchy, Race And Gender In Faulkner's And Chopin's South, Therese D. Osborne

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The death of the Confederacy sealed in white southern memory a lost world of beauty that denied the cruelty of its “peculiar institution.” Southern writers have seemed haunted by this conflict between the cherished past of their ancestors and the reality of the devastated region, with its legacy in slavery. Through the commentary of women diarists who mourn their crumbling society, and selected works of William Faulkner and Kate Chopin, this paper examines the myth and reality of the southern past. It reveals the enduring impact of the all-powerful white patriarchy that gave order to the antebellum South, destroyed it, …

Azzan, Edward Anthony Belly Iii

Student Theses and Dissertations

In an endeavor to improve my writing skills, I chose to write a full-length fantasy novel. The editing of which, as well as the critical feedback from my committee, would allow me to more fully understand the writing process and more accurately evaluate my abilities as a writer. The piece is meant as an entertaining work, though it also exhibits multiple themes that lend themselves toward a deeper meaning. The story explores oppression, parental abandonment, religious persecution, and the dangers of blind devotion to creed. The writing of this work was both fulfilling and affirming for me. I received valuable …

Brown, Phil (Mrs.) - Letter To (Sc 2759), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2759. Letter, 24 September 1927, to Mrs. Phil Brown, Kansas City, Missouri, describing a trip to Pewee Valley, Kentucky. The unnamed writer describes visiting sites associated with Annie Fellows Johnston’s Little Colonel series and conversing with residents familiar with its characters. Includes photographs of the approach road to “The Locust,” home of the “Little Colonel,” and the Pewee Valley railroad station.

Vampirism In Hawthorne’S “The Birthmark,” The Scarlet Letter, And “The Minister’S Black Veil”, Amanda D. Baudot

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Erik Butler’s predicates for vampirism apply in some degree to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s male protagonists who skulk in the margins of “The Birthmark,” The Scarlet Letter, and “The Minister’s Black Veil.” As metaphoric vampires who seek weak prey in order to manipulate power structures, these monomaniacal parasites assume paternalistic positions in order to control and manipulate their victims, and they disguise their exploitive and egotistic sides with idealistic and altruistic passions for science and religion. This thesis explores how Hawthorne’s protagonists’ corrupt and consuming spirits echo traditional vampiristic characteristics.

Telling Their Own Story: How Student Newspapers Reported Campus Unrest, 1962-1970, Kaylene Dial Armstrong

Dissertations

The work of student journalists often appears as a source in the footnotes when researchers tell the story of perhaps the most significant period in the history of higher education in the United States – the student protest era throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet researchers and historians have ignored the student press itself during this same time period. This dissertation considers how the student reporters and editors did their job during major protests that occurred between 1962 and 1970, and tells not only the story of reporting protest but the individual stories of the student journalists.

The key …

Diurnal And Nocturnal Avian Antipredator Behavior In Thermally Challenging Conditions, Jennie M. Carr

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Diurnal avian antipredator behavior has been the focus of much past research, yet the influence of the thermal environment on such behaviors is often overlooked. Far less is known about nocturnal avian antipredator behavior, including how these behaviors are influenced by challenging thermal environments. The first portion of my research focused on how the thermal environment influences the diurnal antipredator behavior of wintering birds while (i) exposed to high wind speeds, (ii) foraging in sunlit and shaded microhabitats, and (iii) when using thermoregulatory postures to conserve body heat. In addition to increasing convective heat loss, high wind speeds increase the …

A Matter Of Regionalism: Remembering Brandon Teena And Willa Cather At The Nebraska History Museum, Carly S. Woods, Joshua P. Ewalt, Sara J. Baker

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

In 2010–2011, the Nebraska History Museum featured two temporary exhibits: “We the People: the Nebraskan Viewpoint” and “Willa Cather: A Matter of Appearances.” We argue the public memories of Brandon Teena and Willa Cather contained in the exhibits are distanced from regional politics when articulated alongside the nostalgic regionalist rhetoric of the Nebraska History Museum. Specifically, both exhibits not only discipline the memory of trans* performance within problematic material and symbolic contexts, but also place these memories within a rhetoric of regional optimism that has critical consequences for restricting counter-public formation. In performing this reading, the essay argues that critical …

Dams, Roads, And Bridges: (Re)Defining Work And Masculinity In American Indian Literature Of The Great Plains, 1968-Present, Joshua Tyler Anderson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

In the study of contemporary American Indian literature, the definition of work and the characterization of Native and non-native laborers—farmers, ranchers, lawmen, smugglers, Indian Affairs agents, academics, activists, "traditionalists," tour guides, artists, among others—are rarely the lenses that scholars use to interpret the texts. Instead, issues of class and labor often take a backseat to those of cultural survivance and traditional and/or "mix-blood" identity, resistance to historical and ongoing acts of colonialism, reassertion of treaty rights and cultural practices, and reclamation of land and cultural artifacts. However, although the canon of contemporary Native literatures warrants close attention to these issues, …

A Slow Reading In Matthew Dickman's Elegiac And Nostalgic Poetry, Sumood Almaowashi

All Theses

This thesis argues the necessity of post modern elegy to adapt to new forms in writing in response to the indifference to death in modern societies, and the recklessness towards such an event. The cotemporary style of writing depends on series of elegies, which express an extended form of mourning as opposed to the circumscribed grief of an individual elegy. Postmodern analytical writings that discuss grief and mourning provide an ethical insight towards the continuous commemorations of the dead. It invites us to rethink the concept of mourning outside the clinical analysis of Freud. Emerging from the theories that study …

An Historical Archaeological Investigation Of The Indianola Prisoner Of War Camp In Southwestern Nebraska, Allison Marie Young

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

Second World War military operations resulted in the capture of thousands of prisoners of war. This led to the creation of internment facilities by both the Axis and the Allies. Archaeologists have begun to examine these facilities. The United States government established a POW program with numerous camps all over the country. This study provides the results of historical archaeological research at the Indianola prisoner of war camp in southwestern Nebraska. A goal of this research is to determine if the archaeological record reflects adherence to the Geneva Convention of 1929. The investigation included archival research and archaeological fieldwork with …

Decoding Literary Aids: A Study On Issues Of The Body, Masculinity, And Self Identity In U.S. Aids Literature From 1984-2011, Alexander Shimon Abrams

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rather than waiting decades to respond, novelists of nearly every literary genre began conceptualizing the AIDS epidemic shortly after the first documented case of the virus in the United States in 1981. Writers, feeling a sense of urgency, wasted little time constructing didactic texts that differ from much historical fiction in that they were written as the tragedy they are commenting on occurred. However, AIDS literature has changed as the disease has spread well beyond the gay communities of San Francisco and New York, causing people to reexamine their longstanding beliefs on masculinity, sexuality, and body politics.

My Master's thesis …

Dressing Indian: Appropriation, Identity, And American Design, 1940-1968, Alison Rose Bazylinski

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the ways the American fashion industry and fashion publications appropriated aspects of Indian cultures as marketing tools from 1940 to 1968 and the ways representations stereotypes created through fashion outlets denoted American and individual, rather than Native, identity. Representational stereotypes created at the turn of the twentieth century provided fashion merchandisers and sellers with a home-grown marketing scheme, while the development of an American fashion industry based on mass-produced, ready-to-wear sportswear led to nation-wide dissemination and use of "Indian" colors, patterns, and designs.

Hamilton, Lulu And Young, Bernice, Bernice Young, Lulu Hamilton, Malik Austin, Debbie Frost

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Davis, Laverne Davis, Debbie Frost, Hugh Davis, Kylene Davis, Kitty Dumas, Malik Austin

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Gregory, Dorothy, Dorothy Gregory, Deborah Oden, Ishmael Lewis

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Patterson, Omar, Hope Harrod, David Kachadourian, Damien Johnson, Omar Patterson

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Theoris, Jeanne. The Rebellious Life Of Mrs. Rosa Parks., Carol Shelton

Journal of Interdisciplinary Feminist Thought

No abstract provided.

Ritter, Leonard (Reverend), Debbie Frost, Leonard Ritter

Video Collection

No abstract provided.

Galloway, Edith, Edith Galloway, Deborah Oden, Ishmael Lewis

Video Collection

No abstract provided.