American Studies Commons^™

Social Impacts Of Popular Culture During The Vietnam War, Chris Ashton

Pop Culture Intersections

In this paper, I will argue that popular culture is imperative to a population overcoming and learning from a time of economical, political, and social turmoil. Focusing on the Vietnam War, I will demonstrate how common it is for people to rely on popular culture for hope and education during times of crises and it is often that music, movies, or artwork are those outlets.

By dissecting the messages of other popular songs recorded during the Vietnam War while also examining books like The Vietnam War and American Music written by David James and Songs of the Vietnam Conflict by …

The Effects Of Social Media And Apps On Exercise And Health Habits Of Millennial Women, Sarah Mason

Pop Culture Intersections

Exercise and eating healthy have become the next big trends, with new technology and social media allowing them to flourish. It is difficult to avoid this trend when “#fitspiration” is the caption of over 15 million instagram posts and there are hundreds of smartphone applications (apps) focused on health and fitness, that function to track your goals, provide tips or even include full workouts and healthy recipes.

The Missing “X” In Ethnic And Cultural Acceptance, Sofia Michelle Sandoval Larco

Pop Culture Intersections

In our modern world of heightened wall building, we are confident more separates us than brings us together. Added to our intrinsic differences, we find distinctions amongst people of our same gender, ethnicity, and race. These separations, in the long run, can turn into acts of miscommunication, create discomfort and animosity; and thus begins a tragic cycle of thinking in binaries. In this article I will argue that by reclaiming rhetoric traditions Latinx creators have continued a hesitant social move to refashion the aggregate memory of bondage and discrimination that began in colonial times. These creators are not blaming a …

Social Media’S Effect On Mental Health: How America’S Youth Are More Vulnerable To Its Negative Implications, Melissa Magner

Pop Culture Intersections

This article explores the potentially negative psychological effects social media photo-sharing platforms have on America’s adolescents. While most studies on mental health effects related to social media use have focused on Facebook and the young adult age group 18-35, this article focuses on users under the age of 18 with an emphasis on Instagram and Snapchat – the two most rapidly growing social networking sites for adolescents. Photo-sharing sites have characteristics different than other social media sites, specifically the ability to alter photos and to communicate live time through videos and photos, which may have different mental health consequences on …

September 2018, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Erev Rosh Hashanah Sacred Music Concert; Simchat Torah; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Community Notices

Amjambo Africa! (September 2018), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue... Eid Al-Adha .......................... Page 2

Results Conference ................Page 2

Host Community....................Page 3

World Refugee Day................Page 8

National Night Out ................Page 9

November Elections.............Page 13

Arabic Summer School ........Page 15

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Patterns And Prosecutions Of Media Leakers, Julia M. Lipkins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the cases of government employees who are responsible for the disclosure of confidential information to the press, known as media leakers. I claim that the government and media leaker engage in a series of patterned responses, which leads to both the disclosure of information, and prosecution of the leaker. More specifically, I demonstrate how the government’s executive branch manages a game of leaks, in which ‘illegitimate’ leakers are separated from elite officials who also leak, but are often spared from prosecution because they are considered ‘legitimate’ players of the game. Although the boundaries surrounding ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ …

From Establishment To Final Independence: A Study Of The National Archives Of The United States Of America From 1934–1985, Daniel M. Frett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a study of the National Archives of the United States from the institution’s establishment in 1934 under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to becoming the National Archives and Record Administration in 1985. The Archives during the 1930’s and 1940’s functioned as an independent agency, until the Archives lost their independence under the Hoover Commission. In 1949 the Archives became part of the newly formed General Services Administration. During the 1950’s and 1960’s National Archives helped change the archival profession. Furthermore, we see how the two independence movements in the 1960’s and 1980’s that were ultimately successful in …

Manifest Density: Decentering The Global Western Film, Michael D. Phillips

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Western is often seen as a uniquely American narrative form, one so deeply ingrained as to constitute a national myth. This perception persists despite its inherent shortcomings, among them its inapplicability to the many instances of filmmakers outside the United States appropriating the genre and thus undercutting this view of generic exceptionalism. As the Western has migrated across geographical boundaries, it has accrued potential significations that bring into question its direct alignment with national ideology and history. Rather than attempting to define the Western in terms of nation or myth, we should attend to how each new text reconfigures …

Resonant Texts: The Politics Of Nineteenth-Century African American Music And Print Culture, Paul Fess

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Resonant Texts: the Politics of Nineteenth-Century African American Music and Print Culture, investigates musical sound as a discursive tool African American writers and activists deployed to contest enslavement before the Civil War and claim citizenship after Emancipation. Traditionally, scholars have debated the degree to which nineteenth-century African American music constituted evidence of black culture and marked a persistent African orality that still abides within African American textual production. While these trends inform this project, my inquiry focuses on the ways that writers placed elements of musical sound—such as rhythm, melody, choral singing, and harmony—at the center of their …

Mao's "On Contradiction," Mao-Hegel/Mao-Deleuze, Kenneth Surin

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Mao Tse-Tung's famous 1937 essay "On Contradiction" is regarded as a significant attempt to redefine and reapply Marx's notion of a "dialectical contradiction" to the Chinese revolutionary conjuncture of Mao's time. I set out the principles outlined in Mao's essay, before arguing that the revolutionary conjuncture of his time no longer exists in the era of globalization and neoliberalism. I conclude that a new conception of "antagonism" is needed, and revise Mao's position with the aid of the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari.

Mapping Out Chinese Modernity And Alternative Modernity, Song Li

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “Mapping Out Chinese Modernity and Alternative Modernity,” Song Li reviews the writings of Kang Liu, particularly his Aesthetics and Marxism. Kang Liu studies the intellectual trajectory of Chinese Marxism from its inception to its post-Mao phases of transformation by comparing it with the cultural and aesthetic thinking of Western Marxism. It provides not only a new perspective for the study of Marxism in general and Chinese Marxism in particular, but also opens up a new space for mapping out Chinese modernity and alternative modernity. Its 2012 Chinese translation makes it more accessible in China, and it will …

Traveling Theory: Fredric Jameson’S Interpretations Of The Cultural Revolution And Maoism, Xian Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Traveling Theory: Fredric Jameson’s Interpretations of the Cultural Revolution and Maoism," Xian Wang discusses how Fredric Jameson transformed or “transcoded” the Chinese Cultural Revolution into his notion of cultural revolution, regarding it as a radical means to achieve decolonization and national liberation. The Chinese Cultural Revolution therefore became a model for cultural revolution in different parts of the world, and an alternative vision of modernity. Jameson also associates Maoism and the Cultural Revolution with Antonio Gramsci’s concept of subalternity, and considers cultural revolution as an ideological revolution for the oppressed classes. Taking Maoism as a traveling theory, …

Introduction: Rethinking Critical Theory And Maoism, Kang Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, "Rethinking Critical Theory and Maoism," Kang Liu reviews the existing literature in English on the relationship of Critical Theory and Maoism and discusses the need to explore and reconstruct a genealogy of Critical Theory and Maoism within the global context of political, ideological, and intellectual currents and trends. The special issue will focus on three clusters of issues: first, the western invention of Maoism as a universal theory of revolution; second, the reception of Critical Theory in China and its relationship to Maoism; and third, the relevance of Maoism and Critical Theory today. Liu raises the question …

African American Performers In Stalin’S Soviet Union: Between Political Promise And Racial Propaganda, Christopher E. Silsby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first half of the twentieth century, a significant number of African Americans left the United States for the promise of racial and economic equality in the supposedly class-less society of a post-Revolution Soviet Union. This dissertation uses a series of interrelated case studies to contextualize the theatrical work of Paul Robeson, jazz dancer Henry Scott, actor Wayland Rudd, and the 1955-56 international tour of Porgy and Bess within the overlapping social, political, and aesthetic landscapes of African American and Soviet performance in Moscow during the rise and height of Stalinism.

Starting with an overview of race in the …

The Distant Early Warning Line: Geographies, Infrastructures, And Environments Of Warning, Jordan Steingard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was a Cold War era project aimed at providing advanced warning of incoming Soviet attack via the northern periphery of Canada and the United States. The Line was comprised of radar stations across the 69th parallel, spanning from Western Alaska to Baffin Island, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Academic institutions and research labs, private corporations, and military entities collaborated to develop the DEW Line.

The domes used to shield the radar from the extreme terrain were designed by architectural icon Buckminster Fuller, who was elaborating upon a symbolic language of security …

Modern Arts And Pueblo Traditions In Santa Fe, 1909–1931, Elizabeth S. Hawley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines art produced in and around Santa Fe, New Mexico during the early twentieth century, putting the works of Pueblo artists who lived in the area into dialogue with the works of Anglo-American modernists who traveled there. I take as case studies three artists whose practices are linked by both circumstance and agenda: Maria Martinez, a famed Pueblo potter; John Sloan, a leading member of The Eight and the Ashcan School; and Tonita Peña, a Pueblo watercolor painter. Weaving together Anglo-American and American Indian art history – which are too often bifurcated into separate accounts, omitting rich histories …

Maoism In Culture: A “Glocalized” Or “Sinicized” Marxist Literary Theory, Ning Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his essay "Maoism in Culture," Ning Wang discusses the importance to literature and art of Mao's famous "Yan'an Talks" as one of his most representative works. Maoism, or Mao Zedong Thought as is generally called in China, is a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxism initiated and developed by Mao and his comrades in arms and successors in China. Wang argues that although Maoism is not a dogmatically "imported" Marxism from the West, it has indeed grasped some fundamental Marxist principles in combination with the concrete Chinese literary and critical practice. Thus a "glocalized" or "Sinicized" Marxist literary theory has contributed …

The Political (Un)Conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics From A Cross-Cultural Perspective, Xiaohong Zhang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "The Political (Un)conscious: Rethinking Aesthetics from a Cross-Cultural Perspective," Xiaohong Zhang adopts a cross-cultural perspective, examining the cultural-specific nuances of critical terms like race, class and gender, all of which have bearings on our perception and conception of aesthetics. Drawing on Emory Elliot's groundbreaking book, Aesthetics in a Multicultural Age (2002), the paper probes into the aesthetic experience whose primary effect is to depragmatize. Along this line of thinking, the author draws attention to the aesthetic impetus of two Nobel laureates, Mo Yan and Gao Xingjian, whose rewriting of Western classics demonstrates Chinese authors' shared predilection for …

Making It Pay To Be A Fan: The Political Economy Of Digital Sports Fandom And The Sports Media Industry, Andrew Mckinney

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a series of case studies and sociological examinations of the role that the sports media industry and mediated sport fandom plays in the political economy of the Internet. The Internet has structurally changed the way that sport fans access sport and accelerated the processes through which the capitalist actors in the sports media industry have been able to subsume them. The three case studies examined in this dissertation are examples of how digital media technologies have both helped fans become more active producers and consumers of sports and made the sports media industry an integral and vanguard …

Toward Culturally Competent Archival (Re)Description Of Marginalized Histories, Annie Tang, Dorothy Berry, Kelly Bolding, Rachel E. Winston

Library Presentations, Posters, and Audiovisual Materials

Influenced by the radical archives movement, panelists discuss their (re)processing projects for which they wrote or rewrote descriptions in culturally competent approaches. Their case studies include materials regarding underrepresented peoples and historically oppressed groups who are marginalized from or maligned in the archival record. Targeted to processors, this session aims to teach participants to apply their cultural competencies in writing finding aids through an introduction to cultural competency framework, the case study examples, and a short audience-participation exercise.

Polybius, Katelin Branham

Best Integrated Writing

This story brought me back to my video-game days—the roll of the joystick in my twelve-year-old palm, the smell of adolescent sweat, and the dizzying belief the game was out to get me. Now I’m wondering if that might have been true. Branham’s story delves deep into its main character’s consciousness to extract complicated questions about competition and friendship, the relationship between humans and technology, and the chilling question of what it means to be alive. Branham trusts her readers to keep up and crack the codes of the story, and what we’re rewarded with is both a wild fantasy …

Gone With The Wind, Mike Fallen

Best Integrated Writing

This essay is in response to an assignment that required students to select a short book of the Bible and discuss it in two parts. The first section offers an academic appreciation and analysis of the work. In part two students were challenged with imagining that they were a disciple of the author of the book and were asked to compose a funeral eulogy for their recently deceased teacher. Mike’s wonderful essay on Ecclesiastes, a biblical meditation on the meaning of life, is consistently engaging. At times lyrical in phrasing, it is both evocative and insightful---a joy to read.

Best Integrated Writing 2018 - 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.

Thinking Continental: Writing The Planet One Place At A Time By Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, And O. Alan Weltzien, Cory Willard

The Goose

Review of Thinking Continental: Writing the Planet One Place at a Time by Tom Lynch, Susan Naramore Maher, Drucilla Wall, and O. Alan Weltzien, eds.

August 2018, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Kiddush Levana; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Announcements; Book Group; Community Notices

Home To Harlan: African American Miners' Children Celebration Of Homecoming, Jessica L. Cushenberry

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

For decades, Harlan County has been studied for its unique characteristics—coal, class, power, and segregation, which have allowed many fields to understand the deeply rooted history of the region. It has become increasingly clear that Harlan County is unlike many other mining regions in the Appalachian area. Harlan County mines developed “model towns” with schools, hospitals, stores and housing for their workers, thus, drawing in migrant workers, native Appalachians, and immigrants. Among these people were African Americans.

African American coal miners’ have been heavily discussed in literature, especially in West Virginia and Alabama. This work focuses on African American mining …

Amjambo Africa! (August 2018), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue...

Rwanda Bean Coffee ............ Page 7

Congolese Celebration..........Page 8

Cape Verde Celebration........Page 9

South Sudanese Celebration Page 10

Service Listings - Cut Out & Keep! .....................................Page 13/14

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Self-Reliance, Social Welfare, And Sacred Landscapes: Mormon Agricultural Spaces And Their Paradoxical Sense Of Place, Anthony Ross Garner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

What is the sense of place of Mormon agricultural landscapes? That is to say, what makes an LDS Church-owned welfare farm or a Mormon family garden meaningful to those who interact with it? In formulating a partial answer to this question, this thesis demonstrates how religious ideals of self-reliance and social welfare explicitly define Mormon agricultural landscapes, providing a sacred sense of their purpose to those who work and benefit from them. However, these sacred landscapes are complicated by developments of industrial agricultural equipment, corporate institutions, and urban demographics, which tend to isolate people from each other and the land …

"Full On Toy Story": Exploring The Belief In Object Sentience In Western Culture, Amelia Mathews-Pett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

This thesis considers, from a folklorist’s perspective, the people in Western society who believe that everyday objects have feelings. It establishes these people as a cohesive group for study, referred to as “people to experience the belief in object sentience,” then analyzes their personal accounts of the experience to find both commonalities and differences. From this analysis and discussion of folkloristic perspectives on belief, the main argument is established: people in this group have generally been marginalized and could benefit from a more careful consideration of their beliefs.