American Studies Commons^™

Material Embodiments, Queer Visualities: Presenting Disability In American Public History, Andrew B. Marcum

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines the presentation of disability at three of the most popular sites for the consumption of public history in the United States including the U.S. Capitol, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. I de-construct the cultural and historical narratives and discourses of disability circulating at these sites and offer a visual culture analysis of the images, artifacts, and statuary found at each of them. My study is informed principally by the theories and methods of queer disability studies, visual culture studies, and cultural studies critiques of neoliberalism. I consider how …

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Rave Reviews The History Of Akron's Tuesday Musical, Thomas Bacher, Cynthia Harrison, Sharon Cebula

Thomas Bacher

The Tuesday Musical Club was founded in 1887 by thirteen young Akron women who had an overwhelming desire to share their love of music. With further support of Gertrude Penfield Seiberling, the wife of industrialist Frank Seiberling, the organization grew like many other musical organizations across the country. Unlike similar clubs, the Akron-based entity continued to expand and is one of a very few that have survived. Among the artists who have appeared as a part of the rich history of Akron's Tuesday Musical Organization are Vladimir Horowitz, Artur Rubinstein, Yehudi Menuhin, Yascha Heifetz, Glenn Gould, Van Cliburn, Isaac Stern, …

Introduction To History, Memory, And The Making Of Character In Roth’S Fiction, Victoria Aarons, Gustavo Sánchez-Canales

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

“No Baker’S Dozen Was Her Taste”: Rhode Island, Ratification, And Rhetoric In American Constitutional History, Lucy Morroni

American Studies Forum

In 1787, Rhode Island refused to send any delegates to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, becoming the only state to do so. From its early colonial beginnings, Rhode Island's unique status gave its residents the opportunity to develop equally unique attitudes about the nature of government. These attitudes, however, also made the colony particularly susceptible to criticism from outside commentators. Over time, this criticism hardened Rhode Island's individualist, self-reliant determination to resist outside control, which ultimately resulted in the refusal to send delegates to the Convention and later continued refusal to ratify the Constitution until 1790. As Rhode Island's dissidence …

Born In 1930, Prose/Poem 3/7/2014, Charles Kay Smith

Charles Kay Smith

A homage to Presidrnt Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his America, political democracy was extended toward economic democracy. His policies began to be reversed in the 1980s. We are living in the desert of inequality created by that reversal.

The Ghost Of Ravishment That Lingers In The Land: The Beginnings Of Environmentalism In Seraph On The Suwanee And Go Down, Moses, Elisabeth Anne Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner are recognized for their environmental writing. However, few scholars have acknowledged the sophisticated environmentalism present in Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee and Faulkner's fictional depiction of Lafayette County in Go Down, Moses. This thesis seeks to prove that Hurston and Faulkner were keenly aware of the ecological problems of their hometowns through a close reading of each book alongside the environmental history each book was based on, Eatonville, Florida and Lafayette County, Mississippi respectively. Each author's distinct regional environmental knowledge helped Hurston and Faulkner to see larger national and global problems with using land …

The Shanachie, Volume 26, Number 4, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

For more than 300 years, the most compelling reason that caused Irish people of all origins and religions to come in large numbers to the American colonies and the United States was economic opportunity. More simply: jobs. While the Irish are usually labeled as canal builders and domestic servants, a more accurate reading is that they were Jacks and Jills of all trades. In a young nation that was expanding geographically and economically, there was a constant need for workers. The Irish were able and willing. This issue of The Shanachie demonstrates the kind of fascinating information that is available …

Hope For The Dammed: The U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers And The Greening Of The Mississippi, Todd Shallat

Faculty & Staff Authored Books

Always, like the Great Mississippi, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been a conduit of hope and fear and scientific conjecture, of faith in American progress and terror of what progress has wrought. Always the Engineers have shouldered much of the credit and blame for massively spectacular projects. Always, since the 1820s, when the agency emerged as a builder and broker on the Mississippi, the Corps has enlisted science in the service of waterway engineering that defenders call monumental and detractors call grandiose.

My involvement began in the aftermath of Earth Day when the Corps, said a famous critic, …