American Studies Commons^™

Racial Capitalism And Black Maritime Geography In 19th Century Portland, Maine, Jeremy Harrison

Honors Theses

Portland, Maine, is located on the rocky shores of the Atlantic Ocean and has served as home to a diverse population that has benefited from the economic and social aspects of the shipping and trading industry. This port city in one of the northernmost regions of the United States was one of the last stops for ships carrying goods before reaching the city centers of the Americas and Europe. As a result, during the late 18th and early to mid-19th centuries, skilled and unskilled Black laborers from somewhat fringe regions within the Atlantic migrated to Portland in search of not …

Representation In Black Media And How It Affects Generational Mental Health, Amiya Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This article examines how negative media portrayals of Black Americans have harmed their mental health. It traces the impact of persistent stereotypes and the lack of recognition for Black achievements in the media. Each chapter explores how media—from social media to movies—reinforces outdated stereotypes originating in the antebellum era and discusses how Black Americans have challenged these narratives to assert their identity. The article also highlights positive shifts in representation within the media industry, as well as research on how racial discrimination and media depictions influence the mental health and self-esteem of Black adolescents.

0897: William A. “Red” Dawson Collection, 1915-2023, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

William Alfred “Red” Dawson, a native of Valdosta, Georgia, led his high school football team to a state championship and played for four years at Florida State University. Dawson briefly played professional football for the Boston Patriots in the AFL and the Orlando Panthers. He was serving as an assistant football coach at Marshall University when a fatal plane crash killed seventy-five players, coaches, staff, and prominent citizens of Huntington. Dawson was essential in restarting the Marshall University football program, serving as acting head coach and coached through the 1971 season. He then began working in the construction industry and …

Facebooking Under Crisis: A Comparative Study Of Online French And American Mutual Aid Organizing During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Clare Reimers-Hejnal

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis studies the political discussions, practices, and projects that emerged through mutual aid Facebook groups based in France and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Of particular interest is how these online spaces and the Facebook users that comprised them understood their mutual aid organizing in relationship to specific themes, including but not limited to: the COVID-19 pandemic as a "crisis", the role of government presence or absence in the wellbeing of the public, and the concept of collective yet differentiated struggle. Chapter 1 looks at four Facebook pages based in the greater Paris area: Entraide Danube, Clichy …

Rodcon, Flier, 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

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Rodcon, Program, 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Rod Library.

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America The Not Yet Beautiful: Unfulfilled Promises In A Racist-Capitalist Society, Kaitlyn Tibbetts

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis draws from Langston Hughes’s poem “Let America Be America Again” to analyze four American novels that demonstrate the United States’s unfulfilled promises for lower-class individuals and minorities. The four novels examined in this thesis include: The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton, The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead, There There by Tommy Orange, and How the García Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. Utilizing theoretical frameworks such as social reproduction theory, intersectionality, and Burden-Shelly’s theorizations on racist-capitalist oppression, this thesis argues that the policies and systems that the U.S. is founded on are designed to primarily benefit economically …

The Ache Of Modernism: Death, Affect, And Intersubjectivity In Twentieth-Century American Literature, Alex Gergely

Theses and Dissertations--English

This dissertation suggests that we can locate, describe, and experience death as an aesthetic mood called the ache of modernism. The ache is an atmosphere found in twentieth-century literature that goes beyond simply “positive” or “negative” feeling and encourages audiences to come to an affective and existential relationship with their mortality. As an intersubjective mood deriving from an attunement on death, it illuminates the historical and philosophical moment of many twentieth-century authors while clarifying their texts’ continued resonance today. This project therefore draws on the thought of major philosophers like Emmanuel Levinas, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, …

Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, And The Question Of The “True” Ariel: Complicating Binaries In Plath’S Literary Legacy, Jacob C. Quinn

Theses and Dissertations--English

This thesis aims to complicate common binaries that have defined critical responses to Sylvia Plath’s Ariel since its first publication in 1965, and which emerged as the result of her husband Ted Hughes’ alterations to her original selection and arrangement of poems. Hughes’ editing emphasizes a narrative which ends in bleak fatality, whereas Plath’s original narrative concludes on a note of bittersweet hope. I read Hughes’ choice of ending as highly influential on Plath’s reception and legacy. The tone of her immediate reception, largely shaped by Al Alvarez, characterized Plath as an “extremist” poet whose work should be read through …

Cultus: Eco-Phenomenology In The Work Of John Steinbeck, Robinson Jeffers, And Jack London, Carter D. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--English

In the face of increasingly dire environmental crises, proposed solutions have gravitated toward imperatives for faster, cleaner, and more efficient technologies and resources. While practical solutions are necessary, they are entirely insufficient to deal with an underlying issue driving environmental degradation: unbridled instrumental reason. In this dissertation, I suggest a theoretical posture, cultus, which attempts to balance the necessity of instrumental action with the guiding counterweight of receptivity. Furthermore, I argue that such personal receptivity is uniquely fostered in aesthetic experiences, attuning the individual to the non-identical and renewing a relationship of care.

I examine the life and work of …

Into Me See: Visibility, Recognition, And The Need To Be Seen In Kazuo Ishiguro’S Never Let Me Go, Vicki L. Wine Carney

Anthós

While critical scholarship on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go often emphasizes bioethics, transhumanism, and the commodification of life, this lens overlooks the novel’s profound engagement with the psychological necessity of visibility. This paper argues that the tragedy of the clones is fundamentally a crisis of recognition, where invisibility is not incidental but structurally produced to facilitate exploitation. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s concept of the "Form of Utility" and Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, this study examines how systemic indoctrination and objectification deny the clones their innate humanity to soothe the conscience of the "normals." Furthermore, it analyzes the characters’ …

Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences In Contemporary Black Arts, Katie Schadler

Honors Theses

“Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences in Contemporary Black Arts” is a multi-genre exploration that studies the following works: Venus (1996) by Suzan Lori Parks, Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele, and Dawn (1987) by Octavia Butler. I respectively study an experimental play, a psychological horror film, and a speculative novel to understand how Black creatives are depicting and responding to anti-Black violences, particularly medical violences. This work brings together Black art spanning from the late 1980s to 2017 as well as historical events and figures from the eighteenth century all the way to a not-so-distant future. While these works defamiliarize …

Indigenous Land Seizure & Environmental Injustice: Impacts Of Settler Colonialism, Lydia Moorman

Journal of Earth and Life Science

The fields of conservation and environmentalism prioritize ecosystem health, yet both emerged from western frameworks that displaced and criminalized Indigenous land stewardship. The idealization of “pristine wilderness” narratives served to justify the removal of Indigenous peoples from their homelands and erased millennia of sustainable land stewardship that had maintained ecological balance long before western conservation existed. These narratives not only misrepresented Indigenous relationship with land but also constructed a false dichotomy between humans and nature that positioned Indigenous presence as a threat rather than a source of ecological knowledge. Simultaneously, anthropogenic expansion; such as pipelines, mining, railroads, and other extractive …

More Than Meets The Eye: Operation Blue Star & Us-India’S Deadly Exchange, Jannat Verma

Scripps Senior Theses

Operation Blue Star is often memorialized as an independent action carried out by India's Congress Party. While such an understanding is not entirely historically inaccurate, it fails to account for the role played by US influence in the operation. An examination of CIA files and America's involvement in the subcontinent during the Cold War calls for a re-interpretation of Operation Blue Star, not as a solo campaign, but rather as a product of counterinsurgent and deadly exchange between the US and India.

From South Korea To South Central: The 1992 Los Angeles Uprising And The "Rooftop Korean", Mina Althea Lamson Jung

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis examines the historical formation of the "rooftop Korean," the racial figure of the armed Korean American shopkeeper that emerged during the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising and has since been mobilized repeatedly in service of anti-Black counterinsurgency. Drawing on the framework of racial capitalism, this thesis argues that the rooftop Korean was not a spontaneous product of the Korean-Black conflict in South Central Los Angeles but the culmination of decades of U.S.-Korea relations, South Korean militarization, and the racial geography of capitalist development on both sides of the Pacific.

Tracing a transnational arc from the Korean War through the …

Madman's Drum, Lynd Ward

Zea E-Books Collection

Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was born in Chicago and studied at Columbia Teachers College in New York City and at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking in Leipzig, Germany. He began working as a book illustrator in 1927, and in 1929 published this first “wordless novel,” Gods’ Man. He eventually published five more such works, as well as illustrations for more than 100 other books, plus drawings, lithographs, watercolors, and children’s stories.

Madman’s Drum is his second wordless novel. It tells a dark story about a slaver who murders an African and steals his drum, which seems to …

Presidential Slaves: The Story Of Black People In The Lives Of Antebellum U.S. Presidents, Nika Davis

History Dissertations

The historical narrative about American slavery included many topics such as the African slave trade, the Middle Passage, slave culture, rebellions, religion, and abolition.  This study revealed more information to be examined in the record of American slavery relating to the presidents of the United States and their enslaved laborers.  This oversight proved prevalent during the years leading to the American Civil War from 1820-1860.  Therefore, this dissertation focused upon the enslaved and free Black people who intersected with the presidents and their friends, political acquaintances, and family.  By studying their lives, this dissertation revealed that the slaves associated with …

The Essence Of The Heart: Layered Human Experience In Eva Jessye’S My Spirituals, Jessica Brunet

Theses and Dissertations--Music

Much of the spiritual repertory has been transcribed as documentation of purely melodic and lyrical content, and many songs have been arranged by some of the greatest figures in twentieth- and twenty-first century music history, including Harry T. Burleigh, Hall Johnson, Margaret Bonds, and Jacqueline B. Hairston. On this roster of luminaries is Dr. Eva Jessye (1895-1992).

If Eva Jessye is remembered at all, it is typically in the context of her role as choral director for the original production of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (1935). Among a litany of other accomplishments, however, Dr. Jessye also published a collection of …

Clyde On A Cloud: Black Mass-Media Activism In 1950s Orlando, Nathan M. Pelz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Clyde Sanders is fondly remembered by those who were fortunate enough to tune their radio dial to WLOF during the 1950s or WOKB in the ‘60s. His show played the coolest tunes for teenagers who, for the first time, could carry with them music in their pockets. Sanders served as more than a radio DJ, however. Being Black in Orlando in the midcentury was complex and often dangerous. Careful not to explicitly engage with topics of civil rights, Sanders quietly advocated toward racial justice, helped to coordinate meetings, and advance racial harmony with his show which, though intended for Black …

Three In One: An Examination Of Women’S Roles In The Life And Literature Of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Ashley Lear

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

The Heterotopic Horizon In Zora Neale Hurston’S Their Eyes Were Watching God, Emily Norton

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

An Interview With David Nolan, Teri Sopp

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

Norman Berg And The Literary Formation Of Pat Conroy, Jacob Lupfer

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

Voice Of The Frog: Found Poetry And The Revelation Of An Eastern Aesthetic In The Creative Works Of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Antoinette Libro

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

“Ora’S Deep Lament”: Inspired By Mk Rawlings And My Persevering Pioneer Great-Grandmother, Kathlyne Mcdonald Walkup Sheppard

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal Of Florida Literature, Volume Xxxiii (2026): Full Issue

The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Journal of Florida Literature

No abstract provided.

The Confidence-Man Goes To The Moving Panorama: Herman Melville’S Confidence Narrator And United States Imperialism, Bradley J. Lee

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis argues that Herman Melville fashioned his novel The Confidence-Man; His Masquerade (1857) after the moving panorama, a popular entertainment technology contemporary with the novel. More specifically, the thesis argues that the novel recalls Banvard’s Mississippi Panorama (1846). Using Jay Leyda’s The Melville Log and John Hanners’ record of Banvard’s performances, I establish beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that Melville saw this painting, or, at the very least, was aware of it, its content, and its social position. Tracing the novel’s engagement with this panorama reveals what seems at first to be its imperialist, Manifest Destinarian undertones. The novel’s …

Models Of Emulation: Representations Of Foreign, Indigenous, And Accented Speech In Early American Literature, Elaina A. Frulla

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

“Models of Emulation: Representations of Foreign, Indigenous, and Accented Speech in Early American Literature” explores how American writers used depictions of “nonstandard” English and accented English language speech, traditionally described as “literary dialect,” as a way to negotiate identity, power, and political belonging in the formative years of nation building after the American Revolution. Beginning with Noah Webster’s mission to establish a standardized pronunciation of the English language that would simplify and purify spoken American-English and definitively differentiate it from what he saw as the corrupted, cosmopolitan British-English model, each of the three chapters examines literary representations of nonstandard emulated …

White Lies Of Time: Temporal Racialization In 19th-20th Century American Literature, Yu Uchida

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

By examining mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century American literary texts, this dissertation project aims to theorize the ways in which whiteness relies on conceptualizations of time to hegemonize non-white subjects and prescribe their historical representations. Because whiteness is dynamic in its emergence and effects and ubiquitous in sociopolitical and cultural realms, this dissertation holistically turns to white, Black, and Indigenous writers to delineate how whiteness functions throughout the period and how racialized subjects negotiate it. Portraying the nation’s history as lived experience rather than objectified knowledge, the racialized authors I examine undermine the concept of linear progressive time that subtends structural …

(Re)Making Our Own Monsters: Critical Posthumanism And Youth Activism In The Wild Ones, Judith Dunkerly-Boulanger

Teaching & Learning Faculty Publications

This study examines the graphic novel The Wild Ones through a critical posthumanist lens and multimodal content analysis (MMCA) to explore its portrayal of youth activism, cultural diversity, and interconnectedness. The story follows four children who summon monsters from their cultural folklore to resist capitalist developers’ demolition of their apartment building. The analysis identifies three key themes: wildness as a source of constructive power, the challenge to anthropocentric narratives, and intersectional youth empowerment. The book subverts traditional hierarchies by blending human and nonhuman agency and emphasizing relational networks among humans, nonhumans, and the environment. The monsters serve as symbols of …