American Studies Commons^™

Doc/U/Ment: Affinities In 20th And 21st-Century Documental Poetics, Katherine Payne

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents, analyzes, and builds on the existing literary genealogy of documental poetry. In 2020 Michael Leong proposed the term documental poetry to describe the turn toward source materials in 21^st-century North American poetry, seen in longform research-based poems that explicitly incorporate documentation and seek to intervene in cultural memory. Using Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of family resemblance, I argue that there are clear affinities between 21^st-century poets and their 20^th-century literary forerunners, also that an expansion of the scope of documental poetics is needed. The three nodes of connection I examine are works …

Recognizing Freedom: Zitkala-Ša's Fight For Native Citizenship, Camille J. Karpowitz

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Minority groups protesting and petitioning for civil rights have been fundamental to United States history. Before the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, Zitkala-Ša, a Native American rights activist, positions herself as a voice for Native citizenship. Within the native community, however, the issue of citizenship was not as easily advocated for, due to past injustices perpetrated by the United States government. As a result, Zitkala-Ša has been labeled an assimilationist or one who connect to either Natives or Americans.

While her advocacy for citizenship does not go unnoticed by scholars, it is often ignored in her works outside of political …

The Life Of An American Catholic Radical: Review Of Christian Anarchist, Ammon Hennacy, A Life On The Catholic Left, William L. Portier

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Accessible And Activist Rhetorics: Tiktok As A Learning Tool, Dany Clem

Student Theses and Dissertations

With political tensions high and rising, instructors’ course materials are under scrutiny. Socially conscious instructors with little-to-no job security feel pressured to neutralize class discussions to avoid politically charged interactions. Although avoidance might minimize administrative scrutiny, it harms marginalized students by enacting and exacerbating rhetorical silences. I propose a discourse model that might help instructors to cultivate anti-complicit activist classrooms with minimal risk for political divisiveness. TikTok can also be an effective tool for accessible learning and rhetorical empowerment. Engaging students critically with recreational platforms could be a preventative means of diminishing the spread of disinformation.

"Live Free, Read Hard:" Mass-Market Westerns, Mainstream Readers, And The Far Right, 1970-1999, Indigo Recker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes mass-produced western novels and their readers from the years 1970 to 1999. At the end of the twentieth century, when mass market western novels were sold at a rate indicating consistent readerships, the US was seeing a rise in far-right politics with events like the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff, the 1993 WACO siege, and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. This readership, and these political movements, are the focus of this dissertation, exploring how readers situated themselves into political discourse, how political meanings embedded in mass-market fiction aligned with racial, class, gender, and regional identities in contemporary US …

"The Best Interests Of The Child:" Parental Claims In Nebraska Child Custody Cases, 1877–1924, Esme Krohn

Digital Legal Research Lab

Research poster titled "The Best Interests of the Child:" Parental Claims in Nebraska Child Custody Cases, 1877–1924; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2023.

Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky

The Haunting Aesthetics Of Empire: Filipinx America, Us Empire, And Cultural Production, Alana J. Bock

American Studies ETDs

Throughout this dissertation, I argue that US imperial knowledge production affirms US exceptionalism by disavowing the imperial violence wrought on the Philippines and its people. This disavowal not only renders the Philippines and Filipinx bodies illegible, but also haunts the Filipinx American diaspora. I argue that the haunted logics of empire are a set of relations, rather than specters of specific times and places, in which knowledge and power work together to continually produce and reproduce a specific and limiting reality and sensorium through which to view the world. In my interrogation of empire’s haunted logics, I not only look …

Leeland Jones And Claude Clapp: Case Studies Of Civil Rights In Western New York, Kaelynn Beckman

History Theses

The Civil Rights Movement, which occurred primarily in the 1950s and 1960s, aimed to acquire justice, equality, and an end to racism and discrimination against Black Americans. In an attempt to do so, Black activists staged protests, walkouts, and boycotts and turned to institutions of education and politics to usher in change. However, the historiography on the Civil Rights Movement focuses on the more prominent events and individuals of the time, for example, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The missing components of the historiography include the …

Habeas At Home And Heart: Progressive Era Cases Of Spousal Confinement To Nebraska's Psychiatric Households, Isabelle Childs

Digital Legal Research Lab

No abstract provided.

Adam Binder Series (White Trash Warlock, Trailer Park Trickster, & Deadbeat Druid) By David R. Slayton, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Articles & Research

Book review of the Adam Binder Series by David R. Slayton. Book review by Phillip Fitzsimmons.

Women's Interracial Friendships: Cultivating Coalitional Possibilities Across Difference Through Dialogue, Akie Fukushige Wenk

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

In my dissertation, I thread through the macro-structure as well as micro-operations of hegemonic ideologies, namely white-supremacist capitalist cis-hetero patriarchy (hooks, 1995, Valdes, 1996), that has historically plagued the United States, eventually gaining a global reach over time. I center interracial friendship between Black and White cis-women, where I locate coalitional possibilities that begin at the grassroots level. I situate this interracial relationship within the socio-ecological system where the personal meets the social (including racialized backgrounds). I use a series of analogies to equate these ideologies as toxins in the air, water, and soil. Soil is where we can work …

A Speech On The Principles Of Social Freedom, Delivered In Steinway Hall, Monday, Nov. 20, 1871, Victoria C. Woodhull, Paul Royster (Editor)

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Spiritualist, stockbroker, publisher, activist for women’s suffrage, equal rights, and “free love,” Victoria Claflin Woodhull (1838 –1927) was the first woman nominated to run for President of the United States. The Principles of Social Freedom was delivered to a packed New York City audience in 1871. It called for a revolution in the legal, social, and sexual situation of women, for their liberation from the “despotic” control of men, and for their social freedom to live and love as they might choose. Mrs. Woodhull based this radical reimagining of social norms on America’s own values of freedom and equality, and …

Defending The Call To Preach In Shirley Caesar’S Gospel Autobiography, Angela Nelson

Popular Culture Faculty Publications

Shirley Caesar, a celebrated, multiple award-winning gospel singer and preacher, used and retold stories about three transformative spiritual experiences to build a case for defending her call to preach. These ritualistic spiritual events included chronicling her conversion, spirit baptism, and call experiences. In this discussion, I examine the contexts of Caesar’s familial and religious backgrounds, Christian Protestant preaching culture and gender, Caesar’s “parable” and “prolegomenon” of purpose, and Caesar’s defense of her call to preach. I conclude by exploring the ways in which, as an “outsider within,” Caesar’s “defense case story” negotiated and dissented from theological narratives about the place …

Nella Larsen’S Passing: Ambiguous Symbology & Weather, Sara Casten

Anthós

Nella Larsen wrote Passing in 1929, a novella that explored the relationship between two women of mixed race: Irene and Clare. This article highlights the complimentary weather elements with the emotional turbulence experienced by Irene as she tells the story; Clare’s warmth and beauty to Irene’s cold and lack thereof. This article also explores the skills of Larsen to write these ambiguous complimentary weather elements in Passing by highlighting her other novella Quicksand, published the year before.

Plotting The Plantationocene With The History Of Mary Prince, Shelby Johnson

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

In this essay, I consider how The History of Mary Prince, A West Indian Slave, Related by Herself (1831) extends vital affordances for assembling a literary history of ecological rupture, settler colonialism, and transatlantic slavery. These insights arise from my experiences teaching Prince in “Plotting the Plantationocene in Early Atlantic Literature” (Fall 2021), a course which took up what it means to orient to historical formations of climate change as co-emergent with plantation systems. I argue that my students explored how figures like Prince open politically vibrant pathways for being in the world otherwise to plantation modernity.

Review Of: Make Us A Blessing: A Biography Of Elmer B. Zimmerman—Fred M. Zimmerman, Sheldon Raber

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The title page of Make Us a Blessing states that the book is "The Life of Elmer B. Zimmerman – Farmer, Machinist, Developer, and Church Builder – 1918–1978." The book is clearly intended as dedicated “to all those who could call Pop ‘Grandpa’ or ‘Great–Grandpa.” Because the book is written by Elmer’s son, Fred, the history includes many personal insights. [First paragraph.]

Review Of: John D. Burkholder’S Diaries Written During His Civilian Public Service: Camp 45, Skyline Drive, Luray, Virginia – November 1, 1944 Through May 1, 1946—John D. Burkholder, Steven Yoder

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

The book opens with a lengthy introduction by the editors to the history of the Civilian Public Service camps during the 1940s that came to be known simply as CPS camps. The diary begins November 1, 1944, a few months after John D. Burkholder started his service on July 4th at Camp 45. The diary ends abruptly on May 1, 1946. I cannot find exactly when his time of service ended but the editor reports that the camp closed at the end of June of the same year. [First paragraph.]

Review Of: Phebe’S Home: A Woman’S Life In The Warwick River Mennonite Colony—Jo Anne Kraus, Kathryn Swartz

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Phebe’s Home is the story of Phebe Shenk Kraus’s life, researched and written by her granddaughter, incorporating Phebe’s and others’ handwritten letters and diaries. It is also the broader story of the Denbigh Mennonite farm colony in Tidewater, VA, from its beginning in the early 1900s until it became a neighborhood within the sprawling city of Newport News. [First paragraph.]

Review Of: From Vision To Legacy—Lester And Sarah Gingerich, Mildred Martin

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

They married young and, within months, were stationed in Central America, as pioneers in 1961 for Amish Mennonite Aid missions. What began as relief work for hurricane victims turned into a 50-year saga, as relationships were forged, souls were saved, churches were planted, and grapefruit were bowled (page 261). From Vision To Legacy is an autobiographical life story of Lester and Sarah Gingerich, told in alternating streams of thought: his and hers. This spicy slice of Amish-Mennonite history opens with bits and pieces about ancestors immigrating from Germany but soon arrives at the narrators’ own births and lives from the …

Review Of: Carpenter Under Construction: The Story Of Don Plank—Diane Freed, James Swartz, Kathryn Swartz

Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies

Carpenter Under Construction is the story of Don Plank’s life, written by his youngest daughter. It briefly touches on his early life and moves through major life events. About half of the book covers the busy later years in life when he and his second wife moved from mission to mission in various support roles. Don was a good carpenter, but Freed puts more emphasis on what God built Don to be rather than on what Don himself built during his long life. [First paragraph.]

Palestine Without Borders: A Study Of Arab And Western Voices In Theater, Bassem Mohsen Ahmed El-Sayed Ahmed Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

Theater has always been perceived as a way to link different cultures together and bring them under one large domain. Regardless, the genre does not give the needed attention to works written in certain regions that may otherwise fall outside the consensus. One good example is Palestine and any works that deal with it as a setting. The first thing that comes to mind whenever the word “Palestine” is brought up is almost always of a political nature, having to do with the Palestinians’ national conflict with Israel. This thesis undertakes to amend this by probing into plays written by …

The Impact Of Slavery And Colonialism On The Black Consciousness: Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass, The Confessions Of Nat Turner, And Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, Mariam Badawi

Theses and Dissertations

According to the German author, essayist, and empirical psychologist Karl Philipp Moritz, to be able to analyze someone psychologically, we have to be able to analyze ourselves as one would know oneself better than one would know anyone else. Therefore, he proposed the study of autobiographies to be able to delve into a writer's "innermost soul"; through their knowledge of themselves" (qtd. in Schlumbohm 32). Moreover, "the psychological effect that the ideology of white supremacy and European imperialism, in the form of slavery and colonialism, has had on Africa and her people has never been fully addressed and understood" (Nobles …

The Death And Rebirth Of The Feminine Muse: Edgar Allan Poe And Sylvia Plath, Noha Ibrahim

Theses and Dissertations

While drawing on mythology and a literary history that associated women with death as well as creativity, Edgar Allan Poe and Sylvia Plath experimented with binary oppositions such as masculine/feminine, composition/decomposition, and death/(re)birth. They gained inspiration from the same source, the dead muse, but how do they transform traditions that derive from classical and medieval literary precedent, perhaps in ways that are inherently critical of patriarchal modes of gender dynamics? Why is Poe fixated on a feminine dead muse while Plath is inspired by what she calls her “father-sea-god muse”? How do both authors represent the female body, and how …

“Handicap Removed”: An Alternative Path To The Social Model, Craig M. Rustici

Journal of Gender, Ethnic, and Cross-Cultural Studies

This article identifies an expression of a social model of disability in a 1966 film promoting Hofstra University’s Program for the Higher Education of the Handicapped and traces that model back to books published by the pioneering rehabilitation physician Henry H. Kessler in 1935 and 1947, decades before the UPIAS (Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation) Fundamental Principles of Disability (1976). In light of Kessler’s articulation of social and minority models, identification of contrasting religious, charity and medical models, and discussion of disability stigma, this article reassesses Ruth O’Brien’s critique, in Crippled Justice (2001), of Kessler and the twentieth-century …

“Come Think With Me”: Finding Communion In The Liberatory Textual Practices Of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Jehan L. Roberson

Criticism

Defining text as anything that can be read, self-identified learner and artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed explores reading as radical communion within her multifaceted textual practice. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, Rasheed’s work spans vast bodies of knowledge and temporalities to interrogate both the aesthetic and the limits of the text. At times producing collages with letters cut out from books in her own expansive library, and at other times posting scans from various books that are marked up with her rigorous note-taking, Rasheed approaches the text as an invitation to commune with the author in order to collectively arrive at new …

Citing Seeds, Citing People: Bibliography And Indigenous Memory, Relations, And Living Knowledge-Keepers, Megan Peiser Choctaw Nation Of Oklahoma

Criticism

By turning the page or reading further, you are accepting a responsibility to this story, its storyteller, its ancestors, and its future ancestors. You are accepting a relationship of reciprocity where you treat this knowledge as sacred for how it nourished you, share it only as it has been instructed to share, and to ensure it remains unviolated for future generations.

This story is told by myself, Megan Peiser, Chahta Ohoyo. I share knowledge entrusted to me by Anishinaabe women I call friends and sisters, by seed-keepers of many peoples Indigenous to Turtle Island, and knowledge come to me from …

Black Best-Selling Books And Bibliographical Concerns: The Essence Book Project, Jacinta R. Saffold, Kinohi Nishikawa

Criticism

On October 27, 2021, the Bibliographical Society of America (BSA) sponsored the first in a series of virtual interviews about the Essence Book Project. Founded by Jacinta R. Saffold, the BSA’s inaugural Dorothy Porter Wesley Fellow, the Essence Book Project is a database of the books that appeared on Essence magazine’s bestsellers’ list from 1994 to 2010. In talking about the project with Kinohi Nishikawa, Saffold highlights how Black best-selling books contribute new paths of inquiry to bibliographical scholarship and explains why it is important to archive contemporary Black print culture. Presented in this article is a modified version of …

Trees And Texts: Indigenous History, Material Media, And The Logan Elm, Mark Alan Mattes

Criticism

Settler accounts of the Cayuga Native American Soyeghtowa (Logan), such as Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia, interpret his famous mourning speech, “Logan’s Lament,” as the words of a melancholic, noble savage and vanishing Indian. This essay decolonizes settler accounts of Logan’s words and deeds such as Jefferson’s book by considering Indigenous relationships to a once-living memorial on Shawnee land in central Ohio, the Logan Elm, which nineteenth-century settlers apocryphally identified as the site of Logan’s speech. Drawing on scholarly work on Indigenous writing and historical media by Native American and settler intellectuals, as well as local …

On The Black Book As Durational: Noah Purifoy’S Desert Library, Paul Benzon

Criticism

What happens to a library in the desert? How does it transform as a material object under these pressures, and what might these transformations tell us about its capacity for bearing and registering history? This article considers these questions in relation to the artist Noah Purifoy’s found-object installation Library of Congress, one of approximately thirty works that make up the ten-acre space of the Noah Purifoy Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Art in Joshua Tree, California. The museum consists of a wide range of found-object sculptures, all deeply enmeshed within the space of the desert. The museum, and indeed Purifoy’s …

Pipestone Books: Indigenous Materialisms And Bibliographical Methods, Daniel Radus

Criticism

This article argues that the methods of bibliographical scholarship would be enriched with further attention to Indigenous ontological traditions. It does so via an analysis of a small tablet of pipestone that in 1957 was carved into the shape of an open book by Ephraim Taylor, a Dakota artist. The article first establishes that, for the Dakotas, pipestone is a vibrant and animate material, a sentient trace of ancestral kin. The article then aligns the pipestone sculpture with an archive of books whose material traits have been altered by Indigenous readers, arguing ultimately that a sophisticated account of these books—and …