American Studies Commons^™

Morning's Porch, Colby Gillette

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Morning's Porch continues and follows the walking, waiting, watching that begins and ends off the page. It begins "underway," with two already on the road, and ends in an eye wanting light. In between, childhood, Easter, Winter, Spring, Venice, asphalt, Summer, Fall, sunsets, moorhens, grackles, billboards, dogwoods and cottonwoods walk along the poems. They walk through the poems as they continue to walk in the world. In a similar way, the poems of René Char, George Herbert, Paul Celan, Emily Dickinson, William Blake, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, William Carlos Williams and Pierre Reverdy walk through the pages of …

Objects In Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, Jean Ho

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The short stories in this collection move between two women, Fiona and Jane, who were close friends as teenagers but drift apart in their twenties. The women find each other again, later in life, and ease into an unsettled truce. As a writer I am interested in questions of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity; in these stories, I have tried to explore the intersections of these identities through Fiona and Jane's lives in Los Angeles and New York, and the histories of their families in Taiwan.

The Dakini Project, Kimberley Harris Idol

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation merges creative writing with scholarship using the novel, The Dakini Project, to provide the subject matter to which the criticism applies. It will focus on the source of mystery format as that codified by Edgar Allan Poe that is later taken in hand by his fellows Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett (as novelists), authors of the hard-boiled American style, and it will use Chaos theory to assess to idea of catastrophe in terms of emergence rather than disintegration. Though the format comes from American beginnings, the scope of the stories discussed here are tangled around …

Severed Hands As Symbols Of Humanity In Legend And Popular Narratives, Scott White

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Modern scholarly theories of oral folk narrative suggest that urban legends contain expressions of cultural beliefs that can be understood both through the contexts in which these stories are told and through the elements of the stories that remain constant across multiple tellings by various narrators. This study centers exclusively on stories and popular culture products that utilize missing or damaged fingers, hands, or arms, in order to identify the cultural values that are attached to hands in American culture. These stories in particular were chosen because the severed hand was perceived at the onset to be a common element …

"Haunted By The Sprits Of Men In Blue And Grey:" The "Ghosts Of Marietta" Tour, Selective History, And The Construction Of Local Identity, Shelley Mcginnis

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

A curriculum project consisting of a syllabus and essay, to be used in teaching an undergraduate course on the relationship between public history, place, and identity.

Tapestry Of Space: Domestic Architecture And Underground Communities In Margaret Morton’S Photography Of A Forgotten New York, Irina Nersessova

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

This article addresses the impact urban space has on individuals through the use of Situationist International theory and psychogeography. Representations of homelessness in New York in Margaret Morton's photography are used to demonstrate the interconnectedness among space, people, and social issues. Social issues manifest themselves in urban decay, and the inhabitants react to this phenomenon emotionally and artistically. Some inhabitants demonstrate their relationship with space by responding with material production of housing and art, which they accomplish by building without exploiting the environment the way the manufacturing of commodities often does.

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Cunningham

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Walt Disney’s work as an animator during World War II had a measurable impact on culture and in the development of government produced messages. It is important to examine this understudied area of Disney’s life and his studio’s efforts to produce wartime training and propaganda films during WWII. Government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury, contracted Disney to produce 32 animated shorts between 1941 and 1945 (Gabler, 2007).

Employing a semiotic approach of cinema, this study focuses on the cartoons The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). While American wartime …

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Japanese American Internment: A Tragedy Of War, Amber Martinez

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Japanese American internment in the United States during World War II affected thousands of lives for generations yet it remains hidden in historical memory. The study of Japanese American internment provides a historical catalyst for research and introspection about democracy, citizenship, and constitutional rights in the hope that by understanding the past a dialogue can be established to prevent a recurrence.

Rice, Alice Caldwell (Hegan), 1870-1942 (Sc 2817), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text of letter (Click on "Additional Files") for Manuscripts Small Collection 2817. Letter, 28 October 1905, of author Alice (Hegan) Rice, Louisville, Kentucky, to Helen Keller. She praises Keller’s recent autobiography and reports on its popularity with the girls at a Japanese boarding school Rice visited the past summer. Rice encloses a composition of one of the students (not included in this collection) in which she writes that “the eyes of [Keller’s] heart are open.”

Best Integrated Writing 2014 - Complete Edition

Best Integrated Writing

Best Integrated Writing includes excellent student writing from Integrated Writing courses taught at Wright State University. The journal is published annually by the Wright State University Department of English Language and Literatures.

“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 …

The John Muir Newsletter, Spring 2014 Special Symposium Edition, The John Muir Center

Muir Center Newsletters (1981-2015)

Page 1 transcription missing

Page 2 (continued from page 1) was founding Director of the Edinburgh's Environment Center, which pioneered environmental education in Scotland from 1979 until 2001. In the 1980s he served on the Education Committee of the John Muir Trust in Scotland and in 1986, proposed that a John Muir Award should be established by the Trust in the UK as a national scheme for people of all ages; over 150,000 people have now completed the Award in the UK. He is author/ editor of: The Scottish Environmental Handbook; The Nature of Scotland - Landscape Wildlife and People; …

Lg Ms 031 Dale Mccormick Papers Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Dale McCormick was the first woman in the country to complete a carpentry apprenticeship with the carpenter’s union and is a member of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters local 1996, having been a carpenter and contractor for 30 years. In 1988, McCormick founded Women Unlimited, a program that successfully trains women on welfare to compete for high-paying jobs in trade and technical occupations. In 1984, McCormick helped found and became the first President of the Maine Lesbian/Gay Political Alliance (now called EqualityMaine), which advocates statewide for civil rights and better treatment for lesbian/gay/bi/transgender/and questioning people. She was a co-founder …

Lg Ms 027 Diane Elze Papers Finding Aid, Elizabeth Sistare, Nicholas Martin

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

A 1978 graduate of the University of Maine, Orono, Diane Elze began her volunteer career working for the YWCA Fair Harbor Shelter in Portland, Maine. She was an activist in the LGBT community in the Portland area in the 1980s and 1990s. Among other activities, she was a founding member of the Maine Lesbian Gay Political Alliance, worked on the AIDS Project, and founded the LGBT youth group, Outright. She also edited the newsletter Moving, The Newspaper of the Maine Association of Handicapped Persons and founded the statewide gay and lesbian newspaper, Our Paper. Elze earned a Master’s Degree …

"Take It And Like It": Violence In The Pulp Magazines, Brian Flota

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Pulp In The Ivory Tower: One University Library's Development Of A Pulp Magazine Collection, Brian Flota, Mark Peterson

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Prostitution's Positive Role In Society, Courtney Manning

Student Research

Alice Cooper was a prominent brothel owner in Chattanooga during the mid nineteenth century. This research paper uses primary sources to defend the claim that her business had a positive impact on the local economy.

Serpentine Imagery In Nineteenth-Century Prints, Paula A. Rotschafer

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis explores images of sea serpents in nineteenth-century print culture that reflect an ongoing effort throughout the century to locate, capture, catalogue, and eventually poeticize the sea serpent. My research centers primarily on the sea serpent craze that occurred within the New England and Mid-Atlantic states between 1845 and 1880 and examines the following three prints: Albert Koch’s Hydrarchos, a fossil skeleton hoax, printed in an 1845 advertisement by Benjamin Owen, a book and job printer; an 1868 Harper’s Weekly illustration titled The Wonderful Fish; and Stephen Alonzo Schoff’s etching, The Sea Serpent from 1880, based on …

Seeing The Rebel: Or, How To Do Things With Dictionaries In Nineteenth-Century America, Tim Cassedy

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Historical Configurations Of Knowledge Among The Iñupiat In Arctic Alaska, Joshua Andrew Van Drei

Open Access Theses

This thesis explores how the Iñupiat of the North Slope of Alaska have responded to cultural pressures, specifically those arising from the introduction of missions and schools, and characterized by an increase in permanent outsider settlement, and how they have internalized these pressures into their knowledge system. By examining political, economic, and social factors, this thesis provides a more holistic picture of how and why Iñupiat knowledge has changed through time, beginning with the contact period in the early to mid-1800's until the present day. I find existing models of knowledge transmission cannot account for the ways in which Iñupiat …

Minor Characters With Major Impacts : Examining Giovanelli’S Role In Henry James’ Daisy Miller 2014, Zachary Lang

Master's Theses

Henry James’s first journey into the world of the American girl came in the form of one of his most read novellas, Daisy Miller. Through the eyes of Frederick Winterbourne, the reader begins a study of Daisy Miller, a character whom James uses to showcase many of the issues that were prevalent at the time including the role of women, societal standards, and class mobility. Winterbourne and Daisy are the principal characters, and as such they are given the most attention from readers and critics alike. The minor character Giovanelli, however, has received little critical attention. Despite being a minor …

Native Americans From The 1930s To The 1940s, Sarah Calnan

American Cultures Studies Student Works

The purpose of this assignment was to interpret and preserve a set of events composing Native American history, and by examining a thematic post card. This card served as both a historical document and a record of history for future historians. The card examined represented the Navajo during 1930s-1940s. The assignment consisted of three parts: constructing a description of the card, investigating the date of its production and conducting research on the Navajos during the time when the card was produced. This investigation led to truly eye-opening and inspirational discovery on the function of a postcard as a historical object …

Interpretation Of The Artifact, Jasmijn C. Van Bruggen

American Cultures Studies Student Works

No abstract provided.

Saving Jazz: Applied Ethnomusicology And America's Classical Music, Christopher Long

Masters Theses

In his 2009 article, Can Jazz Be Saved?, Wall Street Journal columnist Terry Teachout asserted that the American audience for jazz music performances was both shrinking and aging. Saving Jazz: Applied Ethnomusicology and America's Classical Music explores this jazz audience problem and finds that over the last thirty years the overall American audience for live jazz performances has not shrunk as has been widely reported, but is essentially unchanged in size. During that same period, though, there is no question that the median age of the audience has changed dramatically. Data collected by the National Endowment for the Arts and …

Hippie Caulfield: The Catcher In The Rye's Influence On 1960s American Counterculture, Richard Neffinger

Masters Theses

This study covers the influence of The Catcher in the Rye on the 1960s youth counterculture in America. Drawing heavily from postmodern and new historicist theory, The Catcher in the Rye has developed a unique connection with the American public, most notably youth culture. This study examines why youth are so attracted to the character of Holden Caulfield and what implications their connection has meant and will mean for future generations of young Americans.

Images For A Nation: The Role Of Conservation Photography In American Environmentalism, Nathaniel W. Yale

Pomona Senior Theses

Photographs have long been integral in revealing American values, ideals, and identity. Accordingly, a study of environmental, or "conservation," imagery offers insight into America’s relationship with the natural world. In an examination of key figures and their conservation photography work, this thesis explores how the national conservation dialogue has been shaped by powerful images that, in some cases, even led to crucial acts of federal conservation. The first section highlights four photographers and their context and influence in this dialogue: W.H. Jackson’s photographs from Hayden’s 1871 survey of Yellowstone, Carleton Watkins’ work at Yosemite and Mariposa Grove in the 1860s, …

Multiple Generations In Today’S Workplace, Nicole Ritter

Best Integrated Writing

Nicole Ritter explores how to manage differences between Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X’ers, and Millennials in the workplace in this essay written for MGT 3110: Business Ethics & Leadership Development, taught by Mrs. Donna Back at Wright State University.

A Review Of Anatomical Presentation And Treatment In True Hermaphroditism, Jodie Heier

Best Integrated Writing

Jodie Heier studies genetic and hormonal contributors to gender identity in hermaphroditism in this essay written for PSY 4950: Sexuality and Endocrinology Capstone, taught by Dr. Patricia Schiml at Wright State University.

The Global Market And The Status Of Women, Khadija Kirksey

Best Integrated Writing

Khadija Kirksey examines the exploitation of women working in textile factories in India in this essay written for SOC 4090-03/WMS 4000: Gender and Sexuality: Global Issues, taught by Dr. Julianne Weinzimmer at Wright State University.