American Studies Commons^™

Barbie: For Better Or Worse, Renee Ho

Pop Culture Intersections

This article covers a history of Barbie, as well as an analysis of the live action Barbie movie. Barbie lovers and haters alike often debate whether the iconized doll is a feminist figure. Those who critique her argue that the messages she sends are superficial, or that Barbie perpetuates an unrealistic beauty standard and causes harm to the mental well being of her audience, especially because most of her target audience is made up of younger, impressionable girls. However, there is no doubt that Barbie can also be a role model for her audience. She was the first doll to …

Liberation’S Love-Language: The Politics And Poetics Of Queer Translation After Stonewall, Eric Keenaghan

English Faculty Scholarship

Poetry served gay and lesbian liberationists in the years following Stonewall as a mechanism for translating queer experience into a language shared amongst the members of emergent sociopolitical LGBTQ+ communities. Poetry figured prominently in the historical period's activist little magazines, newsletters, and other periodicals as means of doing this work of self-construction and world-building, a simple fact largely unappreciated by both queer studies (which overlooks non-narrative forms) and contemporary American poetry studies (which dismisses much activist poetry as identitarian agitprop). But poetry, due to its formal differences from narrativity, has been a site for queer revolutionary action and imaginaries because …

The Lost Fortune Of The Virginiaman: Analyzing The History Of The Beale Ciphers Using Historical Land Grants, Simon E. Rosenbaum

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

Since the mid-19th century, the mystery of the Beale ciphers has confounded cryptanalysts, intelligence agencies, historians, and treasure hunters alike. Countless works of scholarship have analyzed the story, the ciphers, and possible locations for the massive buried treasure allegedly in rural Bedford County, Virginia. However, prior methodology applied to historiography on the subject has been unsuccessful in making headway in an understanding of the history and location of the Beale treasure. In examining prior scholarship in conjunction with recorded land grants and associated archaeological scholarship, this paper proposes a new direction for research into the Beale cipher mystery and new …

From Mississippi To The Northwoods: A Search For Opportunity, Carol F. Colasacco

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

The submitted article, “From Mississippi to the Northwoods: A Search for Opportunity”, describes the genealogical exploration into the details around one family’s move to northern Wisconsin in the early 1900s. This family research revealed previously unknown details and prompted additional investigation into the historical factors that may have prompted the family’s journey from Mississippi to northern Wisconsin. This article describes the African American history of the Steele family and addresses some of the issues faced by formerly enslaved people and white residents advocated for Black rights in the South that forced them to leave in search of safety and economic …

‘Following The Line Of Least Resistance’: African American Women In Domestic Work, 1899–1940, Taylor Simsovic

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This paper examines the challenges faced by African American women employed in domestic service between 1899 and 1940, with a focus on how race, class, and gender intersected to shape their experiences. Specifically, the study investigates how these women continued to perform reproductive labor as they migrated from the South to Northern states during the Great Migration. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis argues that Black women's persistent employment in undervalued labor within white American homes was driven by the mutually constitutive systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These systems channeled Black women into …

A Study Of Geo-Regional Place-Consciousness In American Literature, Eugene Slepov

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The ancient Greek notions of topos, or place, and choros, or region, emerge from a an oral, narrative-based tradition that predates geography. These concepts remind us that that best source of material to study place is to be found in literary fiction. American fiction in particular will give us the evidence by which we can compile a qualitative, experiential understanding of the role of place in people’s lives. This dissertation inquires into the formation of the imaginative constructions that characters put upon place—such as through the process of consolidating and dwelling in places—and the way place puts …

Genres Of Labor: Wageless Work And The Aesthetics Of Stagnation, Martin A. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Genres of Labor identifies and explores a little-acknowledged fact about labor—that it appears to us in highly conventionalized forms that are subject to evaluation, appraisal, and interpretation. I call this appearance the “aesthetic” dimension of labor, and I show how it increasingly comes into view in the period since 1973, as a contracting economy pushes off work onto unwaged realms of human activity. In chapters on Andy Warhol’s The Andy Warhol Diaries (1989), Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993), and Colson Whitehead’s John Henry Days (2001), I demonstrate that literary texts participate in …

Situating The Child’S Voice Within Children’S Fashion: An Interdisciplinary Examination Of The Child’S Engagement With The Clothing They Wear, Melinda Byam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the child’s relationship with children’s fashion, the clothing they wear, and their fashion consumption practices. Using a wardrobe approach to fashion, and an understanding of the child as the expert in their own lives, the author questions how the child engages, interacts, and experiences children’s fashion considering that how they use, think, and speak about their clothing is minimally consulted. Situating this research within a theoretical foundation set by Goffman and Simmel (social behavior), Featherstone (consumer culture), and Merleau-Ponty and Entwistle (embodiment), this text examines fashion from the point of view of the child, hypothesizing how future …

White Supremacist Print Culture And The Creation Of White Working-Class Ideology In 1860s New York City, Anna Meyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

J. H. Van Evrie believed in the biological basis of white racial supremacy and Black inferiority beliefs which he spread in his publications throughout the 19^th century. He generated support for Copperhead politicians, pro-slavery Northern Democrats, who would enact his racial policies, in his newspaper the Weekly Caucasian, published in New York City during the Civil War. He adapted the presentation of his racial theories to appeal to the economic concerns of among working-class white men and Irish immigrants by using allegories about the Civil War. The newspaper created a sense of white nationalism and racial solidarity with …

Justice, Pandemics, And Museums In Cyberspace: Archaeology Museums’ Decolonization Projects During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Samuel Besse

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores three Archeology Museums (Historic St. Mary’s City, James Madison’s Montpelier, and the American Museum of Natural History), their attempts at addressing the colonial narratives that museums are built on, and how the Covid-19 pandemic and protests over George Floyd’s death affected these projects. I place a special effort on the online presence of these museums, as this is the main way visitors interacted with the museums during the pandemic. After discussing the origins of museum’s decolonization efforts and their efforts to make an online presence, I talk about the Covid-19 pandemic and the events around George Floyd’s …

Narratives In, On, And Around Contemporary Queer Film: A Study Of Adam And Its Paratexts, Jeremy Stoller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Film’s ability to present and inspire desire, and to realize alternate worlds, render it a uniquely potent medium for expressing queerness. Because of this potency, and because films are among the most prominent ways that LGBTQ+ people are represented in society, queer film can feel both deeply personal and highly political for LGBTQ+ identifying audiences. But movies do not merely offer statements about political systems, they are also made within and reflective of those systems.

Scholars have thoroughly investigated films and our relationships to them for productive ways of seeing gender, sexuality, desire, and oppression. But the conversations about how …

Staging Nature: Performing Environmental Crises In War, Housing, And Labor, 1935–1990, Erik Barrett Wallenberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Staging Nature” examines how theater was used as a means for expressing environmental concerns in moments of environmental crisis in the United States. I begin with The Federal Theatre Project’s national tour of a performance addressing the metabolic rift in the divide between the city and country with a focus on the devastation of farmland in the Dust Bowl in the late 1930s. At the heart of the dissertation are three theater groups that start in the 1960s during the rise of the modern environmental movement. Chapters on Bread and Puppet Theater show that they make a name for themselves …

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.]