American Studies Commons^™

Collective Memory In Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident As A Case Study, Idham Badruzaman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his paper "Collective Memory in Advocating Peace. The Nanjing Incident as a case study" Idham Badruzaman provides an example of how to build a peaceful Asian Community. The Foundation is establishing forms of bilateral cooperation at the educational level; mostly in universities and higher education institutions across the world. These programs are contributing to create cross-cultural ties within the Asian Community and across the world, surpassing national interests and boundaries, fostering inter-culturalism, and promoting tolerance amid differences. By focusing on the Nanjing Incident, the paper provides an example of how the building of collective memory can help reconciliation, showing …

Innovations In Self-Consciousness. Towards Oneness With The World, Soon-Ok Myong, Byong-Soon Chun

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In their article "Innovations in Self-Consciousness. Towards Oneness with the World" Soon-ok Myong and Byong-soon Chun examine the limitations and vulnerabilities of modern civilization. Asia is a multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural territory of over 40 countries and more than 4.4 billion people, that is, almost half of the population of the world. The One Asia community seeks to question a world made up of strong egos that make up businesses, organization and nations, and embrace communal goals, helping Asia and the world to become 'one community.' Thus, the paper suggests ways of self-innovation through forms of transitional consciousness. Although the …

Tinker, Robert Rush (Fa 1149), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1149. Student folk studies project titled “Playground Language: [Newburg, Kentucky]” which includes survey sheets with a brief description of playground rhymes in Newburg, Jefferson County, Kentucky. Sheets may include rope skipping rhyme, group game, informant’s name, and text classification.

Warren, Kaye (Fa 1150), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1150. Student folk studies project titled “From Slavery to Freedom for the Negro Race in Logan County [Kentucky]” which includes survey sheets with a brief description of African American life in Logan County, Kentucky. Sheets may include interviews, written records, photographs, informant’s name, age, and address.

Electronics And The Music Of Miles Davis, Darren E. Shekailo

Theses and Dissertations

Miles Davis produced a wealth of music relying on the use of electronic instruments and new technology. With their adoption, the famous trumpeter began his “electric” period. Examining the electric period of Davis’s career helps us trace the profound impact of electronic instruments and technological advances on his music.

The Relationship Between The Methodist Church, Slavery And Politics, 1784-1844, Brian D. Lawrence

Theses and Dissertations

The Methodist church split in 1844 was a cumulative result of decades of regional instability within the governing structure of the church. Although John Wesley had a strict anti-slavery belief as the leader of the movement in Great Britain, the Methodist church in America faced a distinctively different dilemma. Slavery proved to be a lasting institution that posed problems for Methodism in the United States and in the larger political context. The issue of slavery plagued Methodism from almost its inception, but the church functioned well although conflicts remained below the surface. William Capers, James Osgood Andrew, and Freeborn Garrettson …

“After-Ozymandias”: The Colonization Of Symbols And The American Monument, H. R. Membreno-Canales

Theses and Dissertations

After-Ozymandias examines the visual rhetoric of American patriotism through its many symbols, including flags and monuments. My thesis project consists of photographs of empty plinths, objects, products and archival materials. Countless relics remain today memorializing leaders and empires that inevitably declined, from antiquity to modern times. Looking back at distant history feels like a luxury, though: the question for our time in America is whether we have the strength of mind as a society to scrutinize our history, warts and all.

Dorothea Lange: Capturing The Reality Of The Great Depression And The New Deal Era, Laura Vandemark

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Dorothea Lange created some of America’s most enduring and influential images as she documented the reality of the Great Depression in the 1930s and early 40s for the Farm Security Administration. Featured in government publications, printed on postage stamps, and used by social activists, Lange’s photographs helped define the era and the emerging field of photojournalism. This paper examines Lange’s motives and process as she tried to capture her subjects’ most intimate moments without exploiting their lives. It draws on Lange’s field notebooks and interviews and surveys the existing body of scholarship to assess how Lange’s life impacted her work …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Chappaquiddick (Movie Review), Joshua Matthews

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

“'Chappaquiddick' probes basic issues about the moral behaviors of American politicians and why voters elect them, even when politicians behave badly."

Posting about the movie Chappaquiddick from In All Things - an online journal for critical reflection on faith, culture, art, and every ordinary-yet-graced square inch of God’s creation.

https://inallthings.org/movie-review-chappaquiddick/

“More Human Than Human”: Lacan’S Mirror Stage Theory And Posthumanism In Philip K. Dick’S Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?, Richelle V. Finn

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In my thesis, Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is examined using French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan's mirror stage theory. In the novel, humans have built androids that are almost indistinguishable from humans except that they lack a sense of empathy, or so the humans believe. The Voigt-Kampff Machine is a polygraph-like device used to determine if a subject shows signs of empathy in order to confirm if one is an android or a human. Yet, should empathy be the defining quality of determining humanity?

In his article "The mirror stage as formative of the function of the …

Using Digital Mapping Techniques To Rapidly Document Vulnerable Historical Landscapes In Coastal Louisiana: Holt Cemetery Case Study, Alahna Moore

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis outlines a technique for rapid documentation of historic sites in volatile cultural landscapes. Using Holt Cemetery as an exemplary case study, a workflow was developed incorporating RTK terrain survey, UAS aerial imagery, photogrammetry, GIS, and smartphone data collection in order to create a multifaceted database of the material and spatial conditions, as well as the patterns of use, that exist at the cemetery.

The purpose of this research is to create a framework for improving the speed of data creation and increasing the accessibility of information regarding threatened cultural resources. It is intended that these processes can be …

Local Media And The Lethal Injection Drug Shortage In The United States, Emily Sandercock

Senior Capstone Theses

The death penalty in the United States is a much studied, and a much debated, topic of research. This project examines the issue in a new light by focusing on the way in which the recent lethal injection drug shortage is likely to impact public thinking surrounding the death penalty. It will analyze the ways in which regional news sources (television and newspaper) have portrayed the lethal injection drug shortage in four state capitals through the use of a media analysis. This is coverage that deserves study as an influence and reflection of public thinking in localities of the United …

“Unwanted In My Own Country”: Testimonies Of Identity And Belonging-Negotiations In A Post-Trump America, Nadia Naghedi Baradaran Hajjar

Master's Theses

This research investigates the impact of Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 presidential elections and the so-called, “Muslim” Travel Ban presidential executive orders, on communities of first and second-generation Middle Eastern, Muslim immigrant women in the Los Angeles area, and it is framed within the context of post 9/11-biases and racial discrimination. The ethnographic-like methodology for this research has been conducted with the use of 11 semi-structured in-depth interviews from 2017 that have been transcribed and coded. Findings from the interview data shows that there is a varied amount of responses from the 2016 Presidential Elections and travel ban, however, …

The Territorial Politics Of The New York Botanical Garden, 1891-1912, Carolyn Mcsherry

American Studies ETDs

In 1891 fifty-four of New York’s wealthiest speculators came together to incorporate a new botanical garden for their city. This dissertation examines the political work of the New York Botanical Garden during its founding decades to extend the expansionist capacity of botanical science, while addressing political problems endemic in New York. The Garden served as a vehicle for transcribing landscape meaning steeped in European traditions of colonialism, into a new American context defined by plebiscitary rhetoric, territorial dispossession and instability of tenure in land, social rifts and oppressions. It tells the story of how a landed elite in New York …

"Swallowing A World": Globalization And The Maximalist Novel, Benjamin S. Bergholtz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the maximalist novel is an aesthetic response to globalization and a global phenomenon in its own right. To support this claim, I analyze the ways in which four maximalist novels—William Gaddis’s J R (1975), David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), Zadie Smith’s White Teeth (2000), and Zia Haider Rahman’s In the Light of What We Know (2014)—both map and formally mimic different elements of globalization. Each of these novels, I argue, is organized around a significant feature or, to put it simply, “effect” of globalization. This organization is so extensive that not only the vast majority …

Is It Still Impossible To Be Black And American?, Darrian Carroll

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis engages Bill Clinton’s presidential rhetoric to investigate how liberal rhetorical practices can be used to extend and sustain the oppression of Black Americans. By adopting Du Bois’ concepts of the color-line and double-consciousness this thesis examines how Bill Clinton was able to recreate the color-line in the Mason Temple speech and benefit from and recreate a world devoid of consciousness in other selected speeches from his corpus. This project takes up three separate speeches by Bill Clinton as texts. The second chapter focuses on Bill Clinton’s “Remarks to the Rainbow Coalition” and “Remarks announcing the initiative” to make …

Remembering The Revolution: Monuments And Commemorations Of American Revolutionary War Sites In New York, Brant W. Venables

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Memorials and monuments at military heritage sites track the ways American society constructs and then reconstructs its understandings of important events. They present enticing material culture for study by archaeologists seeking to analyze the layers of meaning and the social and chronological transformations in the heritage narratives at military sites. With the prominence of recent national discourses surrounding the heritage narratives presented by Civil War Confederate monuments, there is a paramount need for archaeologists to lend their expertise in material culture studies to these dialogues. I also believe it remains important to expand this critical examination of Civil War monuments …

Boys, Balls, And The Blues: The Erasure Of Genderqueer Bodies, Austin Mcgrath

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The goal of this essay is to re-explore the concept of gender in its relation to genderqueer and nonbinary identities. Before its examination of the gender reveal party, this essay examines male and female, masculine and feminine, and man and woman, carefully critiquing and distinguishing biological sex from gender expression and gender identity using a Queer theoretical framework to contextualize these distinctions in relation to queer identities. Through a modern contextualization, linguistic analysis, and a critical media examination of gender reveal images and footage, this essay acknowledges and analyzes the heteronormative structures that reinforce gender binaries. It challenges the deployment …

A Man Went Looking For America And Couldn't Find It Anywhere: The Wanderer In On The Road And Easy Rider, Taylor Camara

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This paper analyzes the archetype of the wanderer as a cultural phenomenon in 1960s America starting with Jack Kerouac's On the Road as an embodiment of the Beat Generation and ending with Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969) as an embodiment of sixties counterculture. Through this progression, On the Road's projection of the wanderer is found within the hobohero as a dissident nomadic figure, and Easy Rider's as a cosmic cowboy- a countercultural twist on an American icon. By analyzing these figures, the contradictory nature between rebellion and tradition meet as hobo-hero and cosmic cowboy reject societal norms in the search …

Theories Of Anzaldua And Fanon: The Battle Of Algiers To Black Lives Matter, Maren Carey

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Cultural theorists have analyzed and exposed many elements of culture that were otherwise out of plain sight. Two theorists, Gloria E. Anzaldua and Franz Fanon, that have done exceptional work attempting to shatter the norms of how concepts such as decolonization, violence and activism could truly work to create progress. Fanon discusses concepts of black existentialism in the early 20th century. He explores how difficult it is, primarily for people of color, to express and develop an identity within the structures of inequality embedded globally through colonization. Anzaldua, on the other hand, does similar work but through micro-cultural changes that …

A Scripted Approach To Violent Crime Coverage: How News Media Strikes Fear And Racializes Political Discourse, Mackenzie Crosson

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project analyzes the consolidation of crime coverage on the Chicago Tribune's digital platform with the aim to question the formulaic tendencies of news media as an institution. Specifically, the study examines the production of violent crime coverage in urban news media as following a particular "crime script" which, through the script's reliance on racial imagery in the form of mug shots, proliferates toxic correlations between the concepts 'black' and 'criminal.' Paired with elements of a political economic analysis, the project argues that this temp lated production of crime news mixed with news corporations' pursuit of profit ultimately works to …

Speaking Within Subalternity: A Critical Analysis Of Performance Artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena And The Use Of Strategic Essentialism, Paola Martell

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project investigates the work of performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pefia through a postcolonial discourse. This project will be looking at three of the artist's pieces and proposes that though seen as an abstract or avant-garde performer, Gomez-Pefia's these pieces provide a platform for the oppressed who cannot speak for themselves due to hegemony - the subaltern. In the context of Gomez-Pefia's performance art, this theory provides a postcolonial discourse on notions such as hybridity, borders, transculturalism, and other elements of identities found in lafrontera. Ultimately, this project finds that though the subaltern cannot speak, it is through Gomez-Pefia's use of …

Hip-Hop And Poetry: Listen To The Words, Jordan Dingle

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Hip-hop is a subculture that has become a major part of popular culture and heavily affects contemporary music, clothing, and media. The subculture initially started as a way for the historically oppressed to voice themselves and have a dialogue for social dilemmas that were relevant to them. Maintaining this voice of authenticity will become more difficult the larger and more commercialized Hip-hop becomes, thus it is important to identify mediums that are being used to express authenticity through discussion of social dilemmas in Hip-hop culture. This project identifies poetry as a medium that is used to display authenticity in Hip-hop …

Misrepresenting Climate Change: Deconstructing New Media Discourse Through The Case Study Of Hurricane Irma, Amy Dickens

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project uses critical discourse analysis to understand the relationship between U.S. news media coverage on natural disasters like Hurricane Irma and the ideological implications of that coverage. More specifically, in news media discourse, personification of natural disasters alienates humans from their actions, many of which are actively aiding in the advancement of anthropogenic climate change. By taking an in-depth look at how various factors come into play, like the humans vs. nature binary, the polarization of American politics around climate change, and various news media framings, the essay demonstrates that the personification of Irma is both the result of …

Nonbinary Identities And The Self: A Contemporary Analysis Of Hedwig And The Angry Inch, Gender Identity, And Existentialism, Emily "Soren" Hodshire

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Although there has been extensive discourse about gender and the performativity of gender from scholars, there is little room for the language and existence for Non-binary identities in the material world. Through a reading and discourse analysis informed by both queer theory and existentialism, this project demonstrates that the film, Hedwig and The Angry Inch (2001) goes beyond disrupting gender binaries to giving up on gender binaries altogether, postulating the existence of a creative identity beyond male and female. This film is used as a case study to analyze and deconstruct gender on screen and how people read gender non-conforming …

Hip-Hop's Influence On Stripper Culture: The Era Of Cardi B'S, Taylor Bell

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

Twenty years ago the terms 'stripper' or 'exotic dancer' would have made heads turn. However, today feminist politics traditional negative stimga on strip culture is being challenged by the presence of the jhip-hop industry within the strip club space. With the emergence of former stripper Cardi B as well as discussions in American politics around former port star Stormy Daniles, it's clear that the way society thinks and interacts with strip culture is evolving away from the stereotypical negative one. 39 pages.

The Real Atlanta: Representations Of Black Southern Culture, Masculinity, And Womanhood As Seen In Season One Of The Fx Series Atlanta, Tamisha Nicole Askew

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

This project explores how the new FX original series, Atlanta, challenges previous notions of Blackness on American television. The series Atlanta delves into conversations on hip-hop and Black culture through what has been considered an authentic representation of Black Atlanta. This paper examines tropes of Southerness and perceived homophobia in hip-hop and Black culture while analyzing the way in which the series creators and producers create a dialogue on economic and social matters facing the Black Southern community in the city of Atlanta. Finally, this paper examines controlling images of Black women on American television to uncover the ways …

The Phenomenological Beat: Allen Ginsberg's Many Multitudes, Joseph Karwin

English Department Theses

A considerable amount of critical commentary about Allen Ginsberg has focused on his public persona and on his relationship with the Beat Generation. This focus runs counter to Ginsberg’s own wishes, as he wished to be studied as a poet first, a serious poet, and a poet speaking for a new American voice. By focusing on the poetry and on Ginsberg’s extensive amount of self-analysis, this paper details the main strategies and techniques Ginsberg employed in his poetics, and how he used those techniques to form a modern American voice in poetry.

The paper specifically looks at Ginsberg’s relationship to …

Undocumented Queer Latinx Students: Testimonio Of Survival, Maria E. Fernández

McNair Research Journal SJSU

Recent U.S. political turmoil has deliberately embedded fear into many marginalized and underrepresented people living in the U.S. The fact that the United States was founded on the demanding work of diverse populations of immigrants is vitally important to how immigrants are being treated today. In 2016, the U.S. presidential electoral win for Donald Trump left many marginalized communities—including Undocumented Queer Latinx students—fearful of how his administration would affect their communities. This paper reviews literatures on Queer immigration history, the homophobic and transphobic psychological history behind legal immigration barriers, and the recent mobilization to include Undocumented Queer Latinx students in …