American Studies Commons^™

The New Deal In Puerto Rico: Public Works, Public Health, And The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1935-1955, Geoff G. Burrows

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the 1930s, Puerto Rico experienced acute infrastructural and public health crises caused by the economic contraction of the Great Depression, the devastating San Felipe and San Ciprián hurricanes of 1928 and 1932, and the limitations of the local political structure. Signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) replaced all other New Deal activity on the island. As a locally-run federal agency, the PRRA was very unique and yet very representative of the "Second" New Deal in the United States--which attempted to move beyond finding immediate solutions to the most critical problems …

Different Placements Of Spirit: African American Musicians Historicizing In Sound, Casey Hale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines two recent projects by African American musicians that enact critical and historiographic agency by reconstructing the music of the past: William Parker's project The Inside Songs of Curtis Mayfield, dedicated to re-imagining the works of the soul music icon with an ensemble featuring the poetic recitation of Amiri Baraka; and Marcus Roberts's reinvention of the Jazz Age rhapsodies of George Gershwin and James P. Johnson, Rhapsody in Blue and Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody. Rooted in African American interpretive traditions, and working both within and against such discursive categories as "jazz," "black music," and "American music," these artists …

"With The Class-Conscious Workers Under One Roof": Union Halls And Labor Temples In American Working-Class Formation, 1880-1970, Stephen Mcfarland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a historical geography of interior spaces created by labor unions and other working class organizations in the United States between 1880 and 1970. I argue that these spaces-- labor lyceums, labor temples, and union halls-- both reflected and shaped the character of the working class organizations that created them. Drawing on Neil Smith's theories of geographic scale, I spatialize Ira Katznelson's framework for understanding working class formation. I demonstrate that at their best, these labor spaces furthered working class formation at multiple scales, enabling collective action across lines of racial, ethnic, and gender difference, and bridging the …

Jean Sénac, Poet Of The Algerian Revolution, Kai G. Krienke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The work presented here is an exploration of the poetry and life of Jean Sénac, and through Sénac, of the larger role of poetry in the political and social movements of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, mainly in Algeria and America. While Sénac was part of the European community in Algeria, his position regarding French rule changed dramatically over the course of the Algerian War, (between 1954 and 1962) and upon independence, he became one the rare French to return to his adopted homeland. I will argue, sometimes polemically, that Sénac was and should be considered a properly Algerian …

Millennial Libertarians: The Rebirth Of A Movement And The Transformation Of U.S. Political Culture, Kaja Tretjak

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the contemporary resurgence of libertarianism in the U.S., exploring a rapidly expanding, transnational network of hundreds of thousands liberty movement participants connected through student groups, community organizations, and established institutions, as well as through social media and a vast array of online forums. Grounded in 32 months of ethnographic fieldwork and over 200 interviews, it documents the rise of a profound disenchantment, particularly among millennials, with state-based solutions to pressing contemporary problems and, more broadly, with the nation-state project itself. Drawing on first-hand accounts ranging from elite boardrooms and think tank conference rooms, to political demonstrations and …

Reconstructing The Nation: African American Political Thought And America's Struggle For Racial Justice, Alex Zamalin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how twentieth-century African American intellectuals engaged American political cultural beliefs central to American identity. A prominent argument of American political thinkers has been that the liberal-democratic ideals of freedom, equality, representative government, the rule of law, tolerance and civic obligation are what make Americans a unique people. From the immediate aftermath of the Second World War to the late twentieth-century such an argument provided American politicians, social movements and intellectuals a strong justification for divergent political claims, from Cold War warriors calling for the containment of Soviet Communism, to Civil Rights activists calling for racial integration to …

Straight Record And The Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters To Foreign Correspondents, Magdalena Bogacka-Rode

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Straight Record and the Paper Trail: From Depression Reporters to Foreign Correspondents engages with Martha Gellhorn's The Face of War (1959), Virginia Cowles' Looking for Trouble (1941) and Josephine Herbst's The Starched Blue Sky of Spain and Other Memoirs (1991) as documentaries of struggle. Documentary as a mode of writing and image making reveals dissonance, contradictions and varied perspectives which undermine the official historical record. The three writers, I argue, by republishing their Spanish Civil War (SCW) journalism in book form intended to set their record straight. This was motivated by their commitment to the 1930s struggle and the need …

“Their Song Filled The Whole Night”: Not Without Laughter, Hinterlands Jazz, And Rural Modernity, Andy Oler

Publications

This essay reads the rural Midwest as a modern space in which the sounds and material apparatus of early-twentieth-century jazz music compose the cultural field of Langston Hughes’s 1930 novel Not Without Laughter. It argues that Not Without Laughter does not attempt to supplant the more conventional urban modernities of Harlem and Chicago. Rather, the novel constructs a rural alternative that forms ambivalence through accumulation, both filling and exceeding the novel’s spaces and the experiences of its characters. Approaching Hughes’s novel through the sonic ambivalences of modern rurality evidences how some authors transgressed the supposed boundaries of the Harlem …

The Salzburger Story And Its Legacy In Rincon, Georgia, Joann Trodahl

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

There has been much written about the Protestant Salzburgers, both as religious exiles and as colonists in the New World. Scholarship in this area focuses on the social, political, economic, and religious issues in Europe leading up to the Salzburger expulsion and how these same issues influenced the Salzburgers and how they were perceived by other colonists in Georgia. The information gathered about these events forms the backdrop for understanding the Salzburgers and their importance in Georgia’s history. However, what is missing in the Salzburger narrative is what this legacy means to those descendants living near the site today. Visits …

Impartiality Reconsidered: Al Jazeera And Jessica Lynch, Ashley M. Sankari

The Purdue Historian

Al Jazeera’s coverage of the United States’ wars in the Middle East was controversial and attracted American accusations of propaganda. It is argued in this essay that Al Jazeera reporting was, in fact, more accurate and reliable than American media outlets during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Using the incident of Private Jessica Lynch’s 2003 capture in Iraq, examination of the reporting of Al Jazeera ultimately demonstrated the impartial and critical nature of Al Jazeera reporting.

Democratic Teaching: An Incomplete Job Description, Rachel Bradshaw

Democracy & Education

The importance of public education in democratic states is almost beyond dispute. Too often, though, discussions of democratic education focus solely on policies and systems, forgetting the individual teachers who are ultimately responsible for educating future citizens. This paper attempts to illustrate just how complex and significant the role of teachers in a democratic republic can be.

Justice Not Long Delayed: Historical Perspective And The Twenty-First Century Fight For Gay Rights, Charles O. Boyd

Oglethorpe Journal of Undergraduate Research

This paper attempts to formulate the best comprehensive strategy for achieving equal rights under the law for gays and lesbians. One of the main ways this paper attempts to formulate such a strategy is by looking at the tactics that allowed previous movements, such as abolitionism and the Civil Rights Movement, to succeed. This paper considers which of the tactics of these movements should be adopted by gay rights activists. Some tactics, such as civil disobedience, are determined to be useful for gay rights activists. Others, such as violence (which was avoided by the Civil Rights Movement but used by …

Salvaging Print: Letterhead In Post-Industrial Urban America, Nancy Sharon Collins

The Mid-America Print Council Conference

This panel will explore the link between today’s small press movement and the formal aspects of commercial printing during the American 20th century. Panelists include Christine Medley , Philip Gattuso, and Nancy Bernardo.

Using as its primary example letterhead from defunct companies in Detroit, and secondarily, specimens of business and legal letterhead from other urban centers of the industrial United States, this panel will examine and discuss: What did letterhead represent to 20th century printers in local markets such as Detroit? What is the significance of printed letterhead, and stationery, to the art of small press printing in post-industrial cities …

We Are Cowboys In The Boat Of Ra: Sonny Rollins And Ishmael Reed's Black Cowboy, Brian Flota

Libraries

No abstract provided.

Fridy, Wilford Eugene, B. 1934 (Mss 384), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 384. Correspondence, class materials, published and unpublished papers, and research material collected by Dr. Wilford E. Fridy in his study of Robert Penn Warren and his writings. Includes an untitled and unpublished novel by Robert Penn Warren, correspondence between Fridy and Warren, and photos of Warren and Guthrie, Kentucky, Warren’s hometown.

Filipinos Depicted In American Culture, Eileen Regullano

e-Research: A Journal of Undergraduate Work

From the early 20th century, Filipinos have been depicted as treacherous savages or as innocent children in America, evidenced in political comics and comments from the time. In today's society, even though the depictions are not as blatantly racist as they were in the early 20th century, Filipinos are dehumanized, exoticized, or idealized and represented in a two-dimensional way. However, this construction of the Filipino identity may be starting to change with the advent of more ardent vocalization by Filipinos with regard to the production of their images.

“Capturing The Spirit”: Teaching Karen Tei Yamashita’S I Hotel, Lai Ying Yu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Graphic Self-Consciousness, Travel Narratives, And The Asian American Studies Classroom: Delisle’S Burma Chronicles And Guibert, Lefèvre, And Lemercier’S The Photographer, Monica Chiu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

“Finding” Guam: Distant Epistemologies And Cartographic Pedagogies, Cathy J. Schlund-Vials

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

On Popular Visual Culture And Asian American Literature: Interview With Professor Elaine Kim, Karen Chow

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction: On Contemporary Asian American Literature And Popular Visual Culture, Pamela Thoma

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Disorienting The Vietnam War: Gb Tran’S Vietnamerica As Transnational And Transhistorical Graphic Memoir, Caroline Kyungah Hong

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Teaching With Collaborative Writing Projects: Creating An Online Reader’S Guide To Karen Tei Yamashita’S I Hotel, Grace Talusan

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Remapping Chinatown On The Diagonal: Frances Chung’S Crazy Melon, Anastasia Wright Turner

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Transnational Perspectives On Authenticity, Representation, And Expressions Of Visual Memory In Jewish Women And Childrens Holocaust Narratives, Tania Paloma García

American Studies ETDs

This Master's Thesis explores the Jewish Holocaust (1939-1945) from within a Transnational American Studies framework by emphasizing the importance of learning about multiple genocides within a global or transnational context. An examination into the link between postcolonialism and the Holocaust contributes to broadening global dialogues on Holocaust remembrance and genocide prevention. Through the interdisciplinary vantage points of history, memory, and literature, this thesis invokes a transnational methodology to engage in an academic conversation about the United States government's lack of involvement in adequately addressing the Holocaust. This thesis highlights Jewish Holocaust Literature as a means to understand the unique perspectives …

Revisioning Reality: Normative Resistance In The Cultural Works Of The Lincoln Motion Picture Company, Nella Larsen, And Allan Rohan Crite, 1915-1945, Andrea Louise Mays

American Studies ETDs

Despite the fact that nineteenth and twentieth century biologist and Social Darwinists theories of race have been dispelled, the social residue of white supremacist ideologies continue to have social and political implications throughout American society. America's racial hierarchy, and whiteness as a social and racial construct instantiated within it, against which every other group of people has been relationally situated, has helped not only to define non-white racial subjects in inferior terms, it has also guaranteed a perpetuation of race-based structural and social inequalities in United States of America. African American Studies, Critical Race Theory, Whiteness Studies, and most recently …

Intimate Gestures: Race, Photography, And Spectatorship In Tijuanas Dumps And Irregular Settlements, George Luna-Peña

American Studies ETDs

Through a sustained engagement with the theoretical work of Roland Barthes and Frantz Fanon, this thesis traces the complicated lines of connection linking photography, racial difference, spectatorship, and self-making in Tijuana's dumps and irregular settlements. Understanding photography as a space and form of life and social death, this thesis explores the photographic work of two photographers in Tijuana that pictures the lives of those living in poverty: John Leuders-Booth and Ingrid Hernandez. Of these photographic projects, the thesis asks: How does the spectatorial relationship that is triggered by a photograph also initiate a relationship of value, where one side of …

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 …

Agenda: Celebrating The Great Law: The Wilderness Act At 50, University Of Colorado Boulder. Getches-Wilkinson Center For Natural Resources, Energy, And The Environment, The Wilderness Society

Celebrating the Great Law: The Wilderness Act at 50 (September 4-5)

"A conference sponsored by the Getches-Wilkinson Center for Natural Resources, Energy, and the Environment and The Wilderness Society."

On September 3, 2014, the National Wilderness Preservation System—established and protected by the Wilderness Act of 1964—celebrates its 50th anniversary. We are gathering on September 4th and 5th to celebrate Wilderness—“ornery old wilderness, scratchy, sweaty, and distant, but sacred every step of the way”—and to commemorate the great law so central to its protection.

This is not an ordinary conference, full of dry presentations or heated policy debates. Instead, this will be a full-throated love song to wild country. We have brought …

Lg Ms 033 Dawn Fortune Papers Finding Aid, Christina E. Walker

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

Dawn Fortune revitalized the Gay-Straight People's Alliance and ran the student newspaper at theUniversity of Maine at Farmington in the early 1990s. The Papers contains photographs and contactsheets, 2 folders of Pride materials, 4 VHS videos of programs/events by GASPP, a Central Maine Needs Assessment of LGBT teens compiled in 1996 by Fortune for the group Equal Rights For All (ERFA), and an essay Fortune wrote in 1988 entitled 'AIDS kills.'

Date Range:

1988-2002

Size of Collection:

1 ft.