American Studies Commons^™

Iguza N Wurfan Tasuqilt N The Grapes Of Wrath, Aḥric Wis 19 (Chapter 19), Arezki Boudif

Journal of Amazigh Studies

N/A

Beyond Me: Class, Sexuality, And The Work Of The Autobiographical Fragments Of Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, And Eileen Myles, Erin E. Heiser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at what I am calling the “autobiographical fragments” of three working-class, lesbian (or queer) authors: Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, and Eileen Myles whose writing is stylistically quite different from one another’s, but who nonetheless have all produced bodies of work that represent bits of their lives over and over and in different ways, sometimes overlapping in time and narrative detail. While there are certainly other writers whose work shares many of the same characteristics, I argue that the autobiographical fragment has special significance for marginalized subjects. Woven throughout the dissertation are many of my own autobiographical fragments …

The Redemption Of History: Poetics And Politics In The Modern Epic, Giacomo R. Bianchino

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation, “The Redemption of History: Poetics and Politics in the Modern Epic.” provides a materialist theory of the modern epic, focusing on the way that the poets deployed this form towards political ends. Building on theories of the epic going back to the German Romantics, it argues that the modern form is predicated on the idea that it has departed from the conditions that made the ancient form possible. It examines the way that writers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century developed the idea that the immediacy of the social “totality” expressed by the ancient epopee was …

Frontier: Land, Architecture, And Abstraction, Jacob Boatman

Masters Theses

The abstraction of land is a colonial process by which physical land is transformed into a conceptual or symbolic entity. This transformation occurs through various economic, architectural, and cultural practices that imbue land with abstract values, meanings, and functions beyond its physicality. This includes the division of land into parcels for economic transactions, the design and construction of built environments that shape human interactions with the land, and the cultural narratives and representations that ascribe significance to particular landscapes. Through abstraction, colonial powers devalue indigenous perspectives and relationships to the land, reducing them to mere obstacles in the path of …

Stolen Valor: Mapping The Style Subcultures Of The Left, Lydia Mokdessi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"Stolen Valor: Mapping the Style Subcultures of the Left'' performs an analysis of three observed style subcultures prevalent in American fashion between the 2000s and the 2020s and demonstrates how these distinct style languages each draw from the aesthetics of various 20th and 21st century Leftist political movements, discussing the extent to which each style subculture undergoes a process of appropriation by the dominant culture and subsequent subsumption into the mainstream compared to the extent to which the subversive communicative power of each subculture remains intact for the original adopting population. The three style vernaculars this text identifies will be …

The Four Seasons: Integrating The Big Four Sports, Joseph S. Brody

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

After World War II, even though many African Americans served their country, policies of segregation were rampant throughout the United States of America. The aim of this Capstone is two-fold. First, to shed light on the men who followed the path of Jackie Robinson and give them their due. The most appropriate way to convey my research of these four athletes was by putting them all in the same fictional setting and discussing their trials and tribulations that made them the men they were in their day. Second, I want to highlight the many things I found in my research …

Placemaking And Placewashing In Manhattan's Chinatown: Capitalist Vs. Community Interests, Mary Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the late 1890s, there have been internal and external placemakers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They take the form of city government, real estate developers, and community organizations vying for space, and seeking to define what this neighborhood should be, for whom it should serve, and how it should look. Sometimes these would-be placemakers operate with neoliberal goals and overt orientalist and/or racist views. They push those narratives through via media representations and as a tactic to attract tourism, but with little regard for how it affects the community. In this work, I examine connections between historic ideas of placemaking and …

The Creation Of An African American Jewish Culinary Tradition: Michael Twitty And The Passover Seder As A Vehicle For Remembering Trauma And Celebrating Survival, Samira Mehta

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The Exodus of the Israelites has long held meaning for African American Christians, as noted by scholars of African American religious history. Jewish studies scholars, meanwhile, have written about both Passover and Jewish relationships to the Exodus. Michael Twitty, public historian, James Beard award-winning author, and memoirist, has fused an identity for himself by drawing on the foodways of both traditions to remember and memorialize the trauma of both traditions While Twitty uses food to create meaning in the context of holidays, his memoirs, Kosher Soul and The Cooking Gene, explore how the food of trauma, poverty, and resilience provide …

Lost But Not Found: Southern Appalachia, Migration Patterns, And Culinary Tourism, Ashli Q. Stokes, Wendy Atkins-Sayre

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

Despite growing acknowledgement of the variety of cultures that developed Southern Appalachia’s cuisine, some popular food writing continues to highlight the so-called insular nature of its food, drink, and culinary festivals. Regional tourists, especially those visiting its Blue Ridge or Smoky mountains, also remain likely to experience a delimited, often problematic Scots-Irish or white-European pioneer past, including when they eat and drink. Billboards advertise the outlaw Hatfield and McCoy Dinner Show, visitors choose from moonshine tastings in dilapidated looking but new distilleries, and diners enjoy gourmet biscuits alongside gravy “flights” at trendy restaurants in Asheville, North Carolina. Appalachian Studies and …

Forbidden Fruit: Mary Cassatt’S Mural Of “Modern Woman” At The World’S Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893, Tricia Cusack

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This paper considers a large mural of “The Modern Woman” painted in France by the American artist Mary Cassatt for the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It focuses in particular on the large central panel of the mural titled Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science that depicts women and girls apple-picking. Cassatt’s mural drew on various traditions and myths. Apple harvesting was a common sight in America. Cassatt’s title though points to the story of Eve and forbidden fruit, in which Eve seeks knowledge, but is severely punished for it. Cassatt …

The Memory Of A Victory: The Spanish-American War Through Cocktail Names, “War Drinks” And The Art Of Mixing, Ilaria Berti

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The relevance of examining late nineteenth-century Cuba depends from its being a colony under two powers, one European and one extra-European: the formal Spanish empire that had the political power and the informal supremacy of the US economic influence. However, within the framework of of enlarging its authority in the American region, the US perceived Cuba as a strategic island that was under the Spanish dominion. For the US expansionistic aims, Cuba has, in fact, been defined as a laboratory for the US empire (Pérez 2008) Through the analysis of newspapers’ articles, images published in the satirical magazine The Puck, …

Book Review: Organizing Women: Home, Work, And The Institutional Infrastructure Of Print In Twentieth-Century America, Christine Pawley, Madelaine Russell

School of Information Student Research Journal

In carefully selected case studies of white and Black middle-class American women, Pawley, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Information School, provides a detailed exploration of the “largely untold history” of women who used their involvement in print-centered organizations to reshape their lives beyond the unpaid domestic sphere (1). The first three chapters of the book trace the histories of primarily domestic women who held active roles in institutions of print culture such as journalism and radio broadcasting while the last three focus on the lives of women whose full-time employment helped to shape the developing public library …

Marvelous Ordinariness: Re-Engaging With Realism’S Social Function, Miranda Ochoa Natera

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

Against Romanticism, European literary realism of the 19th century aimed to provide an objective representation of reality through mimesis that could capture the truth in an objective way. Yet, its positivist approach severely narrowed down the complexity of truth, reality, and the mundane by wrongfully drawing the universal from the particular. A new way of engaging with realist literature from any time period, called Marvelous Ordinariness, rearranges this triad in ways that expand our understanding of our own and other realities portrayed. Using Alejo Carpentier’s description of “lo real maravilloso,” Marvelous Ordinariness unfolds in three layers that resemble Carl Jung’s …

“The Way To Dusty Death”: The Feminist Revision Of The Western In Nomadland (2021), Lucas Cicarelli Vieira

FIU Undergraduate Research Journal

The Western film genre is founded upon patriarchal and capitalist conditions embedded deeply within structuralist analyses. The portrayal of the solitary, white male cowboy—with its themes of rugged individualism and phallocentric mannerisms—has affected the depiction of women, people of color, and other marginalized groups across media. These prejudicial structures, though applied throughout the genre, has seen revision in recent productions, most notably by feminist directors of the modern era. In Chloe Zhao’s Nomadland, Western narrative elements and cinematic techniques have been amended to favor genuine testimonials from affected individuals of economic collapse caused by the hubris of industrialists and the …

Analyzing The Enduring White Reception Of Raisin In The Sun: Defining And Reexamining The “Universal” Label, Kayla J. Baur

Student Theses

Hansberry’s intent to centralize the Black American family while simultaneously addressing divisive topics of race and gender positioned Raisin as a prescient, continuously relevant work that is open for interpretation for years to come. With this intent in mind, critics acclaimed Raisin and hailed it as a universal play for every theatergoer to enjoy. However, this enduring sentiment of Raisin as “universal” is a construct created by the predominantly-white theater industry. This perceived universality is dependent on the audience’s ability to find entertainment value in the story, even if the idea of only deriving amusement from the story undermines Hansberry’s …

Eng 155: Introduction To Literary Studies, Joseph Donica

Open Educational Resources

An OER syllabus covering the ways humans have read and continue to read literature from a variety of critical and theoretical perspectives. An emphasis is placed on the application of critical thought to writing expository essays and responding to readings.

Generational Awareness Of Folk Figures In The American Midwest, Addison L. Jensen

Honors Thesis

The popular folklore of a region can clearly reflect how its citizens understand themselves and their nation. The goal of this study was to determine the number of individuals who can be considered “well-versed” in traditional folklore and to speculate on the possible reasons for the differences in recognition that arise. Five figures (Johnny Appleseed, John Henry, Paul Bunyan, Annie Oakley, and Rip Van Winkle) were selected to serve as a representative sample of folk characters that have been historically significant to the country. An online survey of 279 Midwesterners and interviews with various age groups in South Dakota, found …

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

Shut Up And Dribble: The Political Contradictions Of Black Masculinity In Sports, Isaiah Rogers

Master's Theses

"Shut Up and Dribble: The Political Contradictions of Black Masculinity in Sports" is a comprehensive analysis of literature and case studies that explore the regulation and representation of the black masculine body within sports. This thesis investigates three primary themes—sport, protest, and black masculinity—and seeks to uncover the evolution of various black masculine figures and their endeavors toward racial inclusivity. By analyzing sports literature, this work examines the experiences of five significant black athletes, including Jack Johnson, Ron Artest, and Colin Kaepernick, to illustrate how sports environments police the black body. Additionally, this thesis emphasizes two archetypes of black masculinity: …

See Me Show Me: Black Women Representation In Television Sitcoms, Lauryn Jennings

Master's Theses

Television is a commonplace item within the households of America. It brings the family together as well teaching people about other people. With this Black women have been shown in one-dimensional images that are harmful. Although these stereotypes are old they are still present within modern television sitcoms.

Back To Black: Analyzing The Presence Of White Control Over Black Representations In Media And The Responses Of Black Creators, Serena Smith

Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis largely discusses the perceptions held by White people of Black people and the Black community, and how these discriminatory perceptions have been presented in various forms of consumable media and other societal aspects throughout American history. These racially biased misrepresentations have also negatively affected the progression and internalization of the concept of Black cultural identities for Black people throughout history and how they are able to relate to the rest of American society. I am arguing that contemporary media and films produced by Black creators, such as Cord Jefferson’s 2023 film American Fiction, tend …

Gertrude Stein: Autobiography And Play, Ryleigh Thornton

Honors Theses

By using Gertrude Stein’s two autobiographies, this thesis attempts to examine to use and evolution of play in writing. In The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, play stands within the language and games that Stein invites her readers to engage in. By using Roger Caillois’ characteristics of play, Stein’s writing can be seen as different from the high, serious modernism at the time with writers like William Faulkner and T.S. Eliot. After the publication of Toklas, Stein reverted into a crippling writer’s block because she could no longer find interest in the world to think and write about. However, after …

“Our Experience Is Fragmentary”: Partial Redemption In Marilynne Robinson’S Gilead Tetralogy, Zachary Stevenson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

Although the characters and thematic throughlines vary across the four books in the Gilead series, each book takes an interest in the reality of division and considers ways of negotiating and healing that division. Whether the divisions are theological, familial, socioeconomic or racial, their presence haunts the text and the question of their resolution always hovers near the surface. Taken together, these considerations of difference across the four books demonstrate that Robinson populates her novels with chasms that her characters bridge, but only partially so. This coexistence of alienation and reconciliation allows Robinson to articulate a vision of Christian community …

Imaginative Acts, Environmental Futurity: Re-Envisioning The Heroic White Male Savior In Snowpiercer, Michelle Yates

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

In contrast to many Hollywood climate fiction films, Snowpiercer (2013) offers a more complex representation of the white male savior. In contrast to films like WALL-E (2008) and Interstellar (2014) that recuperate and invest in white masculine privilege, Snowpiercer highlights the more destructive aspects of a patriarchal capitalist system that privileges hegemonic white masculinity. While the ending of Snowpiercer may seem bleak, it also points to the possibility of a new system, an environmental futurity that centers indigenous knowledge and the experiences of women and people of color. Though Snowpiercer is not formally an American film, its casting of recognizable …

Mixed Feelings: The Emotional Appeals Of Zitkala-Ša’S American Indian Stories, Kayla Joan Baur

Publications and Research

Zitkala-Ša (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird) was among the first to write about the experiences of Native American children in the U.S. Indian boarding school program to an English-speaking audience. As a writer and political activist, Zitkala-Ša uses emotional appeals and cultural ideas she learned through her white education to expose the very boarding school institutions that taught her. In American Indian Studies (1921), Zitkala-Ša critiques the violence that the Indian boarding school system inflicts on young Native Americans. She presents these critiques through emotional appeals that take two forms: one, a more traditional sentimental appeal associated with middle-class white …

The Black Press And Late Imperial Russia, Benjamin Pierce

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

For centuries, western observers had looked to Russia and seen a place fundamentally different from their home countries. In their accounts, Russia was distinctly oppressive, a state characterized by tyranny, barbarism, and Mongolian influence. But these accounts were faulty. They were written by merchants, diplomats, and explorers, wealthy white men who had never experienced the kind of repression they witnessed in Russia. When Black Americans looked to Russia, however, they saw a place fundamentally similar to the United States. Both countries were large, multiethnic empires driven by territorial acquisition and fueled by forced labor. By tracing the coverage of Russia …

Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the tension and conflict between conceptions of the natural law and the ideal of radical autonomy in the work of the antebellum American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. This tension and conflict was brought to the fore by the modernization of American society in the antebellum period. Modernization is here understood as the social process through which increasing recognition is given to individual autonomy, elevating the individual self, as the creator of meaning and value, above the standard provided by nature, including human nature, according to which one ought to live. This …

The Extreme Rise Of The Fast Fashion Industry From Country To Country: Does Consumer Behavior Differ Cross Culturally Regarding Fast Fashion Between The United States And European Countries?, Madison R. Feuerbacher

Apparel Merchandising and Product Development Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The apparel industry has various categories of fashion. One of these categories known more readily today as fast fashion. Fast fashion has gained immense global popularity over the past decade. The concept of fast fashion apparel involves producing vast amounts of product as quick as possible to sell to the consumer at an aggressively low price. It is important to understand this current phenomenon of the global rise of fast fashion as well as understand the devastating effects our environment is facing because of it. As the vocalization of the harmful effects of fast fashion have become more prevalent …

Gen Ms 15 Francis L. Bailey Papers Finding Aid, John D. Knowlton

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

Dr. Francis L. Bailey (1894-1981) was an educator who served as President of Gorham State Teachers College. The papers consist of materials from Bailey's personal collection, including certificates awarded to Bailey in 1945 as well as correspondence, newspaper segments, and administrative documents pertaining to the Maine Pedagogical Society, a branch of the Maine Educational Association.

Date Range:

1877-1884, 1945

Size of Collection:

0.25 Linear Feet (1 Box) + 2 Oversize Folders

We Who Are Not As Others: Costuming The Godspell Ensemble As Historical Circus Performers, Anderson Palmer

Theatre Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines the Bible as well as circus history and American history to determine the most effective way to design costumes for the musical Godspell by John-Michael Tebelak for a modern audience. The aim of all of this research is to re-center Tebelak’s original inspiration: The Feast of Fools by Harvey Gallagher Cox. Over the years since the premiere of Godspell in 1970, it has become heavily associated with hippies rather than clowns, despite the importance of clowns and clowning to the play’s inception.

Taking inspiration from primary research of circus performers, religious iconography, and early 20^th century …