American Studies Commons^™

The Powerful Mythology Surrounding Bugsy Siegel, Larry Gragg Ph.D.

Occasional Papers

Journalists, authors, filmmakers, and historians have been interested in Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel for over six decades. Collectively, they have crafted a cohesive mythological narrative of Siegel’s life one focused upon “rags to riches” success and his contributions to the development of Las Vegas, Nevada. Most attribute to Siegel the inspiration for not only the Flamingo Hotel‐Casino, but also for the glamorous, classy, flashy resort city Las Vegas became after World War II. This paper describes the development of the myth since Siegel’s murder in 1947 as well as how it has been sustained.

The Shanachie, Volume 22, Number 1, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 22, Number 4, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 22, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 22, Number 2, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Crescent And The Cross: Islamic Influence In Southern Culture, Jesse Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To a large degree, America has adopted African American culture as its own. One may hear and see African American influence in popular music, grammar, fashion and art, but rarely are the sources of these influences divined, in no small part to difficulties inherent in interdisciplinary studies. This thesis will examine the Islamic aesthetics in African American quilts. This work focuses on design and color elements and I trace Islamic influence from West Africa to the U.S. South by way of the slave trade. The original scholarship comes from in the Mississippi Delta, although this thesis also uses quilt books …

[Introduction To] America On The Eve Of The Civil War, Edward L. Ayers, Carolyn R. Martin

Bookshelf

The scholarship and public history the sixteen historians had created over their careers made this plan seem at least feasible. Their collective body of work embraces everything from politics to literature, from industrial slavery to African American art, from women's reform efforts to racial ideologies, from military history to the history of memory. Some of them worked at museums and libraries while others taught at universities and colleges across the nations. They belonged to no particular school of interpretation, and quite a few had never met one another.

The historians, whatever their backgrounds, shared a sense of responsibility for opening …

Rhythms Of Rebellion: Artists Creating Dangerously For Social Change, Susan J. Erenrich

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

On December 14, 1957, after winning the Nobel Prize for literature, Albert Camus challenged artists attending a lecture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden to create dangerously. Even though Camus never defined what he meant by his charge, throughout history, artists involved in movements of protest, resistance, and liberation have answered Camus’ call. Quite often, the consequences were costly, resulting in imprisonment, censorship, torture, and death. This dissertation examines the question of what it means to create dangerously by using Camus’ challenge to artists as a starting point. The study then turns its attention to two artists, Augusto Boal …

Masters, John Post, D. 1973 (Sc 2126), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2126. Typescript of a paper written by John Post Masters, Bowling Green, Kentucky, in 1964 and titled "The Start of Silent Moving Pictures in the United States."

Establishing Creative Writing Studies As An Academic Discipline, Dianne J. Donnelly

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The discipline of creative writing is charged "as the most untheorized, and in that respect, anachronistic area in the entire constellation of English studies (Haake What Our Speech Disrupts 49). We need only look at its historical precedents to understand these intimations. It is a discipline which is unaware of the histories that informs its practice. It relies on the tradition of the workshop model as its signature pedagogy, and it is part of a fractured community signaled by its long history of subordination to literary studies, its lack of status and sustaining lore, and its own resistance to reform. …

Jureka, Theresa And Bob Wallace (Fa 405), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 405. Transcription of interviews conducted by Theresa Jureka and Bob Wallace related to Bowling Green, Kentucky's Main Street. Also, a Main Street timeline, 1886-1959.

The Development Of Nationalism In The Indian Case, Sriram Madhusoodanan

Grace Allen Scholars Theses

Narratives, particularly historical narratives, frame our identities: they tell the story of our origins and provide us with direction to guide future action. Considering the numerous movements they have fostered in past 200 years, few identities have been as powerful a motor for social change or emerged as loudly on the world stage as national identities. In this context, India presents a unique case. In attempting to classify it, India could be labeled a multi‐nation state, due to the immense diversity of linguistic, cultural and ethnic groups that reside within it, each with its own particular historical narrative and myths …

The Modern Community Garden Movement In The United States: Its Roots, Its Current Condition And Its Prospects For The Future, Joshua Birky

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Numerous researchers have shown that community gardens have the potential to eliminate social, communal, health, agricultural and economic problems that many in the United States and the rest of the world are facing. Yet, throughout history allotment and community gardens have been seen as improper elements of urban landscapes and used predominately for crisis mitigation and not as sustainable solutions. This thesis shows that the current U.S. community garden movement is inherently different than past unsustainable movements and may establish community gardens as sustainable features of many municipalities in the U.S. This is because the modern U.S. movement is supported …

The Shanachie, Volume 21, Number 2, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 21, Number 1, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 21, Number 3, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie, Volume 21, Number 4, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire, And The Black American Intellectual, Laura Mattoon D'Amore

Arts & Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Drama Of Collaborative Creativity: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Hollywood Film Making-Of Documentaries, Robert M. González Jr.

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Current creativity research is dominated by attention to the individual, with increasingly less attention paid to creativity in its context, in groups, and in filmmaking as a collaboratively creative enterprise. This study answers the research call to explore filmmaking as an exemplar for collaborative creativity. Utilizing the stories told on DVD extras on special edition releases of feature films, this study analyzes how collaborative creativity is storied. In turn, these stories reveal specific communication forms, practices, and strategies that enrich theoretical conceptions of collaborative creativity. Following dramatistic concepts elaborated by Kenneth Burke, this rhetorical analysis finds three emergent patterns of …

Novela Histórico-Posmoderna: Re-Examinando El Referente Histórico – Narrativo Del Siglo De Oro En Cuatro Textos De Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Alejandro De La Pava

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the relationships between reality and fiction on Arturo Pérez-Reverte's novels about Captain Alatriste. Four out of six novels about this character will be discussed and the analysis of this work will focus on how the author uses historical data and fiction not only to promote a new narrative in Spain, but also as a way to re-evaluate and challenge history. The texts which are analyzed in this thesis, El Capitán Alatriste, Limpieza de sangre, El sol de Breda and El oro del Rey center around a common main character who depicts a Spanish soldier in the Seventeenth …

Investigating Environmental Change Due To Hypoxic Conditions On The Louisiana Continental Shelf: A Geochemical Approach, Marianne E. Dietz

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The Louisiana (LA) shelf is chronically affected by seasonal hypoxia that has been shown to be spatially expanding and growing progressively more severe. Hypoxic conditions on the shelf have been closely linked to the large quantities of nutrients delivered to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. Multiple geochemical proxies on a suite of sediment cores from the LA shelf provide a record of environmental change that parallels the onset of hypoxic conditions over the last century and prior to anthropogenic influences. The sedimentary record for the last century shows a shift from terrestrial to algal sources to the …

Hammers, Clark Porter (Fa 244), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 244. Paper: "The Porter Family of Butler County from 1736 to 1950" written by Clark Porter Hammers for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Harbison, Kay (Fa 237), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 237. Paper: "Other Stories They Told" written by Kay Harbison for a Western Kentucky University folk studies class.

Poetry And Ritual: The Physical Expression Of Homoerotic Imagery In Sama, Zachary Holladay

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Sufi poetry of the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258 CE/132-655 AH) exhibited a particular penchant for highlighting the relationship between humankind and God with homoerotic language. While the homoerotic nature of Sufi poetry has received considerable scholarly attention, the ritual expression of such literature has not. The ritual of sama was a practice that occurred in the Sufi institutions and incorporated various elements of the poetry examined. By listening to the poetry, in the form of song and often with accompanying instrumentation, the mystics would experience transient moments of altered state experiences, usually interpreted as moments of union with God.

This thesis …

The Shanachie Index 1989-2008, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

The Shanachie Volume 20, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

Commending Religion To All Around Us: Baptist Church Discipline, 1780-1850, Claire White

Psi Sigma Siren

In 1818, a letter signed “B.” was sent to The American Baptist Magazine and Missionary Intelligencer. The letter, titled “Things to be set in order in the churches,” stated that the Baptists’ “moral and social habits, including [their] general intercourse with the world, must be such, as to commend religion to all around us.” While all religions fashion themselves pure and saintly, B., and his Baptist contemporaries, truly believed that their discipline and social habits, not just their internal piety, made them the world’s saviors. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, American Baptist congregations were flourishing. In 1740, …

The Shanachie Volume 19, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

No abstract provided.

Dead Roses And Blooming Deserts: The Medical History Of A New Deal Icon, Michelle F. Turk

Psi Sigma Siren

Although a memorial plaque at the Hoover Dam sets the number of workers killed during its construction at ninety-six, the real figure was nearly double. In fact, the figure would have been much higher had it not been for the precedent-setting effort by the federal government, contactors, and workers to save as many lives as possible on the project. Aside from its long unrecognized value as a jobs program, much needed stimulus to the fledging Las Vegas economy, and status as one of the “man-made wonders of the world,” Hoover Dam represented a major step forward for the American occupational …

Boston And New York: The City Upon A Hill And Gotham, Shaun O'Connell

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article is about the author's experience with visiting New York during it's rebirth after 9/11. He speaks about the history of both cities and how they have each grown into their own to become places of future enterprise and cultural cohesiveness.