American Studies Commons^™

Still Circling The Sun, Stefan Rafael Delagarza

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work is a collection of traditional and experimental short stories that explore dynamic human relationships in a variety of settings: a bunker, a beach, and a family home, to name a few. Each character is on a journey to find deeper meaning in his or her life, and oftentimes, this means finding a path to forgiveness.

Using Analogues To Simulate Intensity, Trajectory, And Dynamical Changes In Alberta Clippers With Global Climate Change, Jamie L. Ward

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Alberta Clippers are extratropical cyclones that form in the lee of the Canadian Rocky Mountains and traverse through the Great Plains and Midwest regions of the United States. With the imminent threat of global climate change and its effects on regional teleconnection patterns like El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), properties of Alberta Clipper could be altered as a result of changing atmospheric circulation patterns. Since the Great Plains and Midwest regions both support a large portion of the national population and agricultural activity, the effects of global climate change on Alberta Clippers could affect these areas in a variety of ways. …

Hotel Bukovyna, Rebecca Ann Bosshart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This collection of short stories and first chapter of a novella take place in the historical area of Bukovyna, the beech tree land, partly located in Chernivetska region, western Ukraine. On the edge of it, or under it, or traveling to and from it, in contemporary time. I've been occupied with "the outsider," represented here, and where the seven stories reside, by the giant grande dame tourist hotel on Main Street, across from Shevchenko Park, in Chernivtsi, the region's city center. The occupants: the outsider looking in and around. Outsiders looking at other outsiders. An outsider being welcomed in. Most …

Going Anywhere: Stories, David Armstrong

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Growing up in a rural, Appalachian town, I recognized that tight-lipped doggedness was a mark of strength. As a writer, I became intrigued by how I might portray people whose defining attributes were silence, how essentially to give voice to voicelessness. The answer for me was to begin exploring place as an origin of inner expression. The stories in Going Anywhere track people moving through the landscape, their journeys, often destinationless, traversing the space between life's dark realities and the fantastic leaps of faith we all make to survive. A father seeks out a way to deal with the unexpected …

The Influence Of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick On Cormac Mccarthy's Blood Meridian, Ryan Joseph Tesar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

While many works exert an influence on Cormac McCarthy's 1985 novel Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, I argue in this thesis that Herman Melville's Moby-Dick stands above them all in importance. I examine some areas where Melville's influence on McCarthy's work can be most notably located. I argue that Melville's importance to McCarthy can be seen in the latter's use of several characters from Moby-Dick in his own novel. I also examine the parallels that arise when one examines the confluences between the two novels' structures, vocabularies, and settings. I also consider how Melville's violent aesthetics …

Framing Identity: Repudiating The Ideal In Chicana Literature, Michael A. Flores

All NMU Master's Theses

In the 1960s Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzalez penned his now canonical, epic poem “I Am Joaquin.” The poem chronicles the historic oppression of a transnational, Mexican people as well as revolutionary acts of their forefathers in resisting tyranny. Coinciding with a series of renewed, sociopolitical campaigns, collectively known as the Chicano Movement, Gonzales’ poem uses vivid imagery to present an idealized representation of Chicanos and encouraged his reader to engage in revolutionary action. Though the poem encourages strong leadership, upward mobility, and political engagement the representations of women in his text are misogynistic and limiting.

His presentation of the “black-shawled …

Salman Rushdie In The Postmodern Current: New Venues, New Values, Aya Akkawi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this study is to prove that Rushdie's recent novels are not postcolonial in the sense that they abandon the colonial/colonized binary, the embrace of hybridity, and the theme of undermining the coercion and domination of the colonial country assumed in postcolonial discourse. Instead, his recent fiction is labeled postmodern because it is filled with exuberant postmodern techniques such as historiographic metafiction, the hegemony of mode of productions, the postmodern fragmented self, and suspicions of grand narrative. Furthermore, I will argue that there is an association between Rushdie's postmodern narrative technique (his mixing of history and fantasy) and …

The Influence Of Literacy On The Lives Of Twentieth Century Southern Female Minority Figures, Laura Leighann Dicks

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The American South has long been a region associated with myth and fantasy; in popular culture especially, the region is consistently tied to skewed notions of the antebellum South that include images of large plantation homes, women in hoop skirts, and magnolia trees that manifest in television and film representations such as Gone With the Wind (1939). Juxtaposed with these idealized, mythic images is the hillbilly trope, reinforced by radio shows such as Lum and Abner, and films such as Scatterbrain (1940). Out of this idea comes the southern illiteracy stereotype, which suggests that southerners are collectively unconcerned with education …

Facing The Wreck: Death, Optimism, And The Fragmented Form, Rachael Marie Schaffner

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Walter Benjamin described history as a winged angel who faces backwards, staring perpetually into the past as the violent winds of destiny carry him into the future (Illuminations). Despite a western, post-enlightenment myth of eternal progress, the wreckage of human contributions to history is clearly evident in our 21st-century understanding of anthropogenic impact on global ecology. In the context of these ecological crises (and the resulting political and economic questions), postmodern novels reveal a powerful ability to imagine different ways of living and interacting with the world. This thesis traces the relationship between fragmentation, death, and liminal experiences …

Reading Nostalgia, Anger, And The Home In Joyce Carol Oates’S Foxfire, Heather A. Hillsburg

Bearing Witness: Joyce Carol Oates Studies

This article draws from Svetlana Boym’s concept of reflective nostalgia to explore the intersections between violence, memory, and the home in Joyce Carol Oates’s novel Foxfire. Through reflective nostalgia, Maddy is able to link the abuse she and her friends endure to various iterations of the home. Reflective nostalgia also allows Maddy to draw connections between anger and the domestic realm, and to write the members of FOXFIRE back into dominant narratives that largely exclude their lived experiences. Ultimately, this paper argues that because nostalgia often centers on the home, it is ideally suited to foreground the untenable nature …

Infectious Diseases, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides information about the role of infectious diseases in the early years of U.S. History, with particular emphasis on how they impacted injuries sustained in military conflict.

Trade, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of analysis of U.S. foreign trade policy during the early decades of the country's history. Examines bilateral U.S. trade relations with France and Great Britain, provides import and export statistics, details on commodities and products imports and exported, trade statistics, and information on the political and economic factors shaping U.S. trade during this period.

Coastal Defenses, U.S., Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides an overview of U.S. military coastal defenses during the period up to and including the War 1812.

Revenue, U.S. Government, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of U.S. Government revenue receipts and spending during the early years of national history. Presents revenue generation statistics, information on revenue sources, and information on domestic and international political and economic factors affecting government revenue receipts.

New York Stock Exchange, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Provides a historical overview of the origins and early development of the New York Stock Exchange.

Eva'lution In Fandangos, Fiestas, And Flamenco: Adding To The Repertoire Of Chicano Expressive Arts, Trisha Venisa Martinez

American Studies ETDs

This study seeks to explain this curious and unknown connection of Albuquerque flamenco to Eva Encinias-Sandoval and the dance traditions of Nuevomexicanos. I seek to identify the history and social impact of this rich and distinct New Mexico flamenco tradition by tracing the development of Encinias-Sandoval's career and the establishment of her now world-class flamenco arts program, offered through the University of New Mexico's Dance and Theatre Department, as well as thorough affiliates and organizations of the National Institute of Flamenco. More specifically, my thesis describes how Eva Encinias-Sandoval built and continues to anchor this inspiring expressive art form in …

Counter Culture Youth: Immigrant Rights Activism And The Undocumented Youth Vanguard, Rafael A. Martinez

American Studies ETDs

This thesis offers a social, historical, and political analysis of the Undocumented Youth Movement from 1986 to 2012 for the purposes of understanding how the movement carved out spaces of social belonging that problematized punitive immigration legislation and traditional understandings of citizenship. In particular, I argue that undocumented youth challenge the social binary of deserving and underserving citizenry by positing a counter cultural critique of U.S. immigration policies and the organizations that support or challenge these policies. By counter culture I mean the ways in which undocumented youth combat normative cultural integrations into the broader society and therefore do not …

The Un-Exceptional Bomb: Settler Nuclearism, Feminism, And Atomic Tourism In New Mexico, Eileen Clare Shaughnessy

American Studies ETDs

New Mexico's atomic tourism acts to render the atomic bomb simultaneously so exceptional that it is viewed as the pinnacle of Western intelligence, and yet also so un-exceptional that it is banal, as typified by kitschy atomic souvenirs. A primary way in which New Mexico's atomic tourist sites accomplish this paradoxical narrative is through gendered and racialized discourses in exhibits, gift shops, and on-site narratives. The racialized trope of the "vanishing Native" functions in these spaces to shore up the colonialist progress narrative in which white Western science and Manifest Destiny inevitably result in the creation of the "exceptional" bomb …

Reproducing Prevention: Teen Pregnancy And Intimate Citizenship In The Post-Welfare Era, Clare M. Daniel

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines the politics of teen pregnancy prevention in the 1990s and early 2000s within public policy, popular culture, and local and national nonprofit advocacy. Widely viewed as a distressing social problem, teenage reproduction has provoked decades of prevention and regulation that pervade across public and private sectors. Teen pregnancy has been associated with, if not fully blamed for, a host of other so-called social problems throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and the beginning of the twenty-first century. As scholars such as Kristen Luker and Lisa Arai have labored to illustrate, causal connections between adolescent reproduction and the social ills …

No Admission Required: Sovereignty, Slots And Native American Art, Jane Sinclair

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines how Native American art is displayed in Indian casinos in the Southwest. Exhibition strategies, employed by traditional art and natural history museums offer points of comparison. An overview of legal battles leading up to and following the passage of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988 is provided. While New Mexico is the primary focus of this discussion, the state of Arizona is also mentioned. The evolution of gaming compacts in New Mexico is detailed at length. Local attitudes both for and against the legalization of Indian gaming is documented through media sources, such as newspaper …

List Of Printers Sorted By Date - Full List, Don Armel

American Print History Data

This checklist list is a continuing effort to collect all of the American printers into one location. The majority of the information is dates, place, name, and partners.

Images Of Library Holding Related To Early American Printing, Don Armel

American Print History Data

This spreadsheet is first organized by Library of Congress number and second by year.

The file includes links to the catalog reference at the Henderson Library and also to the reference image in Digital Commons.

Navigating With Harriet Quimby, Rachael Peckham

English Faculty Research

My maternal grandmother Ruth never missed an episode of the game show Jeopardy! One night in 2008, while I was working on my dissertation about a long-forgotten aviatrix with whom my family and I share connections, Grandma Ruth called to tell me about a Jeopardy! clue she had just heard: "The first woman to fly across the English Channel." My grandmother was reserved and soft-spoken, but I imagine her slapping the armrests of the recliner, disturbing the outstretched cat at her side, and beating all three contestants to the buzzer: "Who is Harriet Quimby?"--the subject of my dissertation.

Got Lost Behind The Scenes: Underexposed Television Producers In Magazines, Jordan King

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Award-winning television shows are popularly depicted through digital media and magazine coverage. However, the strenuous efforts of TV producers are hidden behind the publicity of celebrities and plotlines of the show. Using Eugene Shaw's agenda-setting theory and Robert Entman's framing theory as a basis, the author created a case study analyzing how the producers of Lost and Game of Thrones are portrayed in magazines. The research shows that reporters tend to perpetuate the anonymity of these producers, which in effect, leads an audience to deem them as unimportant.

Product Of The Past: The Struggle Between The Lakota Sioux Nation And The United States Government, Brittany Lombardo

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Many may be familiar with the national landmark that is Mount Rushmore, located in South Dakota. The heroes represent the leaders of the United States, the founding fathers. However, it shadows a rich history that is what came before the United States' invasion. The Lakota Sioux roamed freely throughout the Midwest, that is until the the US began to expand westward. The rich history of the Lakota lingers throughout their lives today, but is suppressed under a thick lair of oppression and mistreatment by the United States Government.

Morality And Nonviolent Protest: The Birmingham Campaign, Lindsey A. Mahn

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

Birmingham, Alabama was a racially segregated city up until 1963 when members of Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) began a movement to stop discrimination against the African American population. Though the movement itself was conducted in a peaceful nonviolent manner, opposition from the white civic authorities was often cruel and bloody. Images of protesters both young and old were projected across the news and made the American people think deeply about the problems within their country. Eventually, the protests paid off and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 passed, prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, facilities, transportation and the workplace. …

From Self-Sacrifice To Self-Preservation: The Changing Roles Of Southern Women During America's Civil War, Jennifer E. Edine

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

The Civil War is an event in American history that will continue to be discussed and analyzed for years to come. The conflict affected the entire population of the country, regardless of social class or race. One of the most important changes in southern society was the change in the roles and ideologies of southern women as a result of the war. Before the war, the South was a patriarchal society with prominent gender roles and ideologies on how the perfect Southerner should behave. Ideally, the Cavalier Man, filled with honor and chivalry, was meant to be in complete control. …

Kingsolver, Barbara, B. 1955 (Sc 2846), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2846. Letter, 10 December 1996, of Barbara Kingsolver, Tucson, Arizona, to Gil Moody of Moody Books Inc., Johnson City, Tennessee. She expresses her support of independent bookstores and her willingness to sign books and bookplates for readers, but places high priority on reserving time for her writing and family life.

Read, Opie Percival, 1852-1939 (Sc 2844), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2844. Letter, 16 May 1884, of journalist and humorist Opie P. Read, written from Little Rock, Arkansas, to an unnamed addressee. Read accepts an offer to exchange magazines (probably his Arkansas Traveler) for a publication called the Voice, congratulates the addressee on a story published in Chicago’s The Current, and acknowledges knowing his name although they have never met.

Dan Subotnik, Toxic Diversity: Race, Gender, And Law Talk In America, Hannah Abrams

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.