American Studies Commons^™

The Anxious Shadow Of A Coldwar: Affect, Biopower & Resistance In Fiction & Culture In The Period Of Intra-Anxiety 1989-2001, Kate Adler

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Don DeLillo’s 1997 novel Underworld stands as the framing text for this study of fiction, cultural affect, and resistance in the later part of the 1980’s – the exhausted, waning years of the Cold War – and the 1990’s, the period immediately following its collapse. DeLillo’s book is situated in the 1990’s, a period of what I term “intra-anxiety” following the Cold War and prior to the attacks of September 11^th and the ensuing “War on Terror.” The Cold War had provided an organizing myth for America and American culture, absorbing and structuring anxieties and governing affect. “The Cold …

On The Appearance Of The Comedy Lp, 1957–1973, David Michael Mccarthy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many observers of contemporary comedy in the United States during the 1960s referred to musical aspects of extra-musical performances. Comedy LP records furnish important artifacts for the study of the musical appearances these observers produced for themselves. Where contemporaries described appearances characterized by printable words and polemics as “satirical,” the musical appearances discussed in this dissertation can instead be described as “comic”: instead of mocking persons or ideas, they show people and things becoming involved with one another in absurdly triumphant ways. These two different sorts of appearances correspond to two different uses for comedy in a class society, one …

“Vital Glowing Things”: The Art Of Women’S Writing, 1910-1935, Elizabeth C. Decker

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The rising field of new modernisms continues to breathe new life into the literature of marginalized writers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. By imagining modernism as a series of modes and strategies, and expanding the axes upon which we map modernism’s boundaries, we make way for writers who were shut out by the often imbalanced, limited modernism of the past and illuminate the field with new possibilities. This dissertation takes part in this exciting, vibrant conversation by identifying a mode of modernism present in the literature of three early twentieth-century women writers, who all used visual art techniques to …

Assembly And Association: Mapping The Development Of The Public Sphere In 19th Century Columbia County, Ny, Christopher L. Meatto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to investigate the development of the Habermasian public sphere in Columbia County, NY, during the rapid expansion of railway transportation from the middle- to the late-19^th century, by gathering and presenting information about the proliferation of railway stations and select public institutions between 1840 and 1900. In charting the spread of area libraries, newspapers, post offices, and churches during this period, this project utilizes and combines methodological approaches taken by a number of landmark recent studies in historical geography and digital history; in so doing, it prototypes the research and pedagogical value and promise of incorporating …

The Strains Of Confessional Poetry: The Burdens, Blunders, And Blights Of Self-Disclosure, Lara Rossana Rodriguez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

When a provocative style of autobiographical verse had emerged in postwar America, literary critics christened the new genre “confessional poetry.” Confessional poets of the 1960s and ’70s are often characterized by scholars of contemporary poetry as a cohort of writers who, unlike previous generations before them, dared to explore in their work the personal and inherited traumas of mental illness, family suicides, failed marriages, and crushing addictions. As a result, the body of work these writers produced is often experienced as a collection of stylized, literary self-portraits. What can these self-portraits reveal to us about the connection between confessional poetry …

Boone, Joy (Field) Bale, 1912-2002 (Mss 588), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 588. Papers of poet, editor and activist Joy Bale Boone, Elkton, Kentucky, relating primarily to her service as chair of the Committee for the Center for Robert Penn Warren Studies at Western Kentucky University. Includes correspondence, Committee records, collected data on Robert Penn Warren, and photographs. Also includes audio and video interviews of Boone and colleagues.

Speaking And Mourning: Working Through Identity And Language In Chang-Rae Lee’S Native Speaker, Matthew L. Miller

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In my essay entitled “Speaking and Mourning: Working Through Identity and Language in Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker,” I argue that the novel’s protagonist Henry Park finds himself at a critical juncture in his life at the novel’s beginning. I analyze the protagonist’s relationship to language acquisition and identity, which have been developed by Lee to be associated as traumas. Furthermore, these topics are complicated by the death of his son, Mitt. This loss is a trauma of the heart and of the self for the main character who sees a successful navigation of language and immigration lost by his …

Confession, Hybridity, And Language In Gina Apostol’S Gun Dealers’ Daughter, Cecilia Nina Myers

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In Gun Dealers’ Daughter, Gina Apostol creates multiple tensions reflecting the relationship between the United States and the Philippines and among different linguistic codes. Languages mix throughout the text, set in the Marcos Era Philippines, as symbols of fluidity and disorientation. Other characters’ frequent complex linguistic mix proves alienating for protagonist and narrator Soledad Soliman. Apostol renders Soledad as a young girl disoriented by her inability to competently use native Filipino languages because she spent most of her childhood in the United States and simultaneously traumatized by her role as the daughter of a member of former President Ferdinand …

The Author As The Novel Self: Shirley Lim’S Sister Swing, Denise B. Dillon

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

While authorial omniscience is denied the biographer, I argue that Lim as novelist takes this advantage in Sister Swing as a tool through which to explore the development of self-identity through characterizations of three sisters that in combination form the tripartite self as proposed by Freud. Autobiographical memories of familial, social and cultural life experiences are the source from which Lim draws and fleshes out, in her novel, portrayals of family members seeking freedom through different ways and means. As a self-analyst probing deep within the psyche, Lim employs linguistic stylizations to express contrastive and yet complementary points of view …

Movement And Mobility: Representing Trauma Through Graphic Narratives, Stella Oh

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

The formal and stylistic movements found within the comic architecture of From Busan to San Francisco and Mail Order Bride interrogate the ways in which the visual and textual narrative can represent the emotional landscape of trauma and displacement through comics language. Engaging in a visual and textual critique of the global economy that trades in feminine identities, these graphic narratives interrogate the mobility and visibility of those who are trafficked. In these works, transnationalism is artistically embedded in consumptive practices of reading and seeing that reinforce or challenge Orientalist cultural assumptions about the Asian female body. Geographical movements of …

Rehistoricizing Differently, Differently: American Literary Globalism And Disruptions Of Neo-Colonial Discourse In Tropic Of Orange And Dogeaters, Patrick S. Lawrence

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Through a comparative reading of two important transnational Asian American texts, Jessica Hagedorn’s Dogeaters and Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange, I argue that multiplicity of narration may, but does not always, resist the imposition of culturally dominant aesthetic modes, especially historical and nationalist narratives and multiculturalism. While Karen Tei Yamashita’s Tropic of Orange delegates narrative power to seven characters, it ultimately stages an ambiguous clash of discourses with a multiculturalist historicizing voice that is limited by its own contradictory impulses to control and containment. The novel dialogizes its excessive tendencies by scripting plural-but-discrete identities. In contrast, Jessica …

On Such A Full Sea Of Novels: An Interview With Chang-Rae Lee, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

An interview with author Chang-rae Lee.

Volume 7 Cover, David Burnett

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Seven: Confessing Racial Schizophrenia, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A short meditation on teaching ethnic American literature in 2016, acknowledgments, and a summary of this volume's contents.

Differentiating The Transnational From The National In A Multicultural Setting: Identity In Persepolis And Rush Hour, Laura A. Kasper

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay explores the differences between transnational identities and national identities in a multicultural setting by juxtaposing the films Persepolis and Rush Hour. Furthermore, it examines the characteristics of both transnational and national identities and how they are represented in film. In an increasingly globalized world, it is important to distinguish these two types of identity and consider how these individuals interact with today’s society; thus, this essay asks readers to think about the influence that the commingling of transnational and national identities has on the modern world.

T Bone Burnett, The American South, And The Ethic Of A Contemporary Cultural Renaissance, Heath J. Carpenter

Student Theses and Dissertations

With the success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack, T Bone Burnett spent his cultural capital on repurposing traditional American music in subsequently successful soundtracks and artistic productions, providing a spark for a 21st century cultural movement that moves beyond music. This study aims to position Burnett has a cultural catalyst by grounding his work, and those abiding by a similar ethic, in the American South. In the process, I examine what Burnett’s soundtracks and select artistic productions communicate about contemporary Southern cultures and identities, while negotiating the ever-enigmatic generational issues of identity and authenticity. By extending the …

Family Affairs Newsletter 2016-09-15, Zack Paakkonen

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Partisanship In The Media: A Comprehensive Look At The History And Potential For Bias In News Media, Henry Ferguson

Pop Culture Intersections

On July 10, 2016 Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump tweeted, “The media is so dishonest. If I make a statement, they twist it and turn it to make it sound bad or foolish. They think the public is stupid!”^[1] On August 10, 2016 Trump’s campaign released a statement titled, “Trump Campaign Statement on Dishonest Media.”^[2] The statement itself had nothing to do with media dishonesty, but rather the statement clarified some remarks the candidate made during a speech about gun control. Both of these statements were made due to Trump’s feeling that his words had been twisted and …

Harbison, Kay (Fa 874), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 874. Paper titled: “Uncle Bozo Carver: World’s Oldest Living Country Musician and Entertainer.” Project details the life of Noble “Uncle Bozo” Carver as an entertainer. Project includes lengthy interview, lists of songs, and some stanzas.

Lingua Di Carta, Lingua Di Carne: A Translated Interview With Amara Lakhous, Amara Lakhous, Simone Puleo, Fabiana Viglione

The Quiet Corner Interdisciplinary Journal

Novelist and professor Amara Lakhous lives in the United States, where he has begun his third life—a new phase after his Algerian beginnings and subsequent Italian “adoption,” as he says. After having completed a degree in philosophy from the University of Algiers, Lakhous immigrated to Italy as a political refugee. In Italy, Lakhous would earn a doctorate in anthropology from La Sapienza, Rome. These days, Amara Lakhous lives in New York City and has been a visiting professor at the University of Connecticut. He is often invited by prestigious universities in the United States to discuss social and political …

What I’M Reading: Harper Lee’S 2 Novels, Jerome A. Gilbert

President's Research and Writings

Last fall, shortly after it was published, I read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman, and this summer I reread her classic To Kill a Mockingbird. The controversy around Watchman intrigued me. I saw the differences in the books mainly as the change between the perspectives of the young Scout and the adult Scout (aka Jean Louise). Unlike some, I saw the Watchman as an honest book reflecting the complicated reality of white America in the Jim Crow era.

Tinder: True Love Or A Nightmare?, Anthony Kao

Pop Culture Intersections

The computer first played matchmaker in the late 1950s. Data would have been fed into the system, and after some data crunching, it would spit out a match based on common interests. Today’s dating sites, such as eHarmony.com, PlentyOfFish, and Match.com are reminiscent of the earliest days of online dating - they rely on algorithms to pair potential matches based on shared interests. With the advent of mobile dating apps such as Tinder, of which I will examine in-depth in my paper, the ability for geo-location, which allows users to “see” other users that are nearby their location, has opened …

Green Religion: Manipulation Transcending Ideology, Miranda Wittmond

Pop Culture Intersections

As more Americans become aware of the environmental consequences of their actions and decisions, corporations have moved to profit off of rising environmental consciousness. However, instead of changing their practices to actually become environmentally conscious, many corporations often instead present a false front to make our society perceive them as green when they are not, an action commonly referred to as greenwashing. This allows them to gain advantage over their competitors, some of which might actually be sustainable, by taking advantage of consumers’ environmental consciousness. Despite legal action taken to stop this and federal laws putting restrictions on green advertising, …

September 2016, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Selichot Service; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Women of Achievement Award; Community Notices

How Civility Works, Keith Bybee

Institute for the Study of the Judiciary, Politics, and the Media at Syracuse University

Is civility dead? Americans ask this question every election season, but their concern is hardly limited to political campaigns. Doubts about civility regularly arise in just about every aspect of American public life. Rudeness runs rampant. Our news media is saturated with aggressive bluster and vitriol. Our digital platforms teem with expressions of disrespect and trolls. Reflecting these conditions, surveys show that a significant majority of Americans believe we are living in an age of unusual anger and discord. Everywhere we look, there seems to be conflict and hostility, with shared respect and consideration nowhere to be found. In a …

The Problem Of Obviousness, Benjamin Goldberg

Sophia and Philosophia

1. The Problem of Obviousness
There’s no such thing as obviousness.

This isn’t, of course, itself obvious; nor is it clear why it should be a problem. So let me start elsewhere, with the anti-vaccine movement. A friend of mine laid out the ‘obvious’ position: there are facts and rationality on one side, unenlightened ignorance and bigotry on the other. Scientists versus fools, and the fools don’t even know what game is being played.

America Abandoned: German-Jewish Visions Of American Poverty In Serialized Novels By Joseph Roth, Sholem Asch, And Michael Gold, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

In 1930, Hungarian- born Jewish author Arthur Holitscher’s book Wiedersehn mit Amerika: Die Verwandlung der U.S.A. (Reunion with America: The Trans-formation of the U.S.A.) was reviewed by one J. Raphael in the German- Jewish Orthodox weekly newspaper, Der Israelit. This reviewer concluded: “Despite its good reputation, America is a strange country. And Holitscher, whose relationship to Judaism is not explicit, but direct, has determined that to be the case for American Jews as well.” The reviewer’s use of the word “strange” (komisch) offers powerful insight into the complex perceptions of America held by many …

Loving The Unlovable Body In Yamanaka's Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by expicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …

Family Affairs Newsletter 2016-09-01, Zack Paakkonen

Family Affairs newsletter (2004-2016)

FAMILY AFFAIRS was a free, twice-a-month, social activities newsletter for the GLBTQI (gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans/queer/intersex) community, sent out around the 1st and 15th of each month. It covered the State of Maine only. The list was begun and maintained for many years by Jean Vermette in Bangor, and later operated by Zack Paakkonen of Portland. Over the years it evolved from a social activities newsletter into a business directory, classified ad service, and community bulletin board.

Delillo's Falling Man And The Trouble With Sympathy In Narratives Of Terrorism, Jessica Mcdonald

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "DeLillo's Falling Man and the Trouble with Sympathy in Narratives of Terrorism" Jessica McDonald discusses the ways Don DeLillo's characterization of a 9/11 terrorist elicits reader sympathy in his 2007 novel Falling Man. McDonald argues that introducing sympathy into narratives of terrorism undermines attempts to understand the contextual issues out of which terrorism arises even if the rhetoric of sympathy may seem to foster a sense of "fellow-feeling" that makes acts of political protest and resistance more accessible to broader publics.