American Studies Commons^™

Little Women, Little Houses: Authorship And Authority In Louisa May Alcott And Laura Ingalls Wilder, Katia Savelyeva

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House novels, share a place in the canon of American children’s literature as novels centered on female protagonists coming of age within an emblematic period in American history, respectively the duration and aftermath of the Civil War and the post-Homestead Act settlement of the Western frontier. Each text portrays the intertwined processes of girlhood and nationhood through the eyes of rebellious, gender-nonconforming protagonists, Jo and Laura, who each undergo an arc towards starting a traditional family and immersing themselves in normative national projects (respectively a philanthropic school for the poor, …

The Imagined Histories And Futures Of The Past: Wwi And The Cultural Imagination, Kelly Aliano

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this paper, I look at various modes of imagining the futures incarnated by the First World War, beginning with artists and writers, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Maria Remarque, who experienced and depicted the war from a firsthand point of view. From here, I expand that framework to include J.R.R. Tolkien, whose masterpiece Lord of the Rings may owe no small debt to his wartime experiences. I consider the Doctor Who episodes, “Human Nature” and “Family of Blood,” as contemporary attempts to reinsert WWI into the cultural consciousness. Finally, I look at the two versions of War Horse …

Mourning The Marathon: Black Men Rappers, Homicide Survivorship Bereavement, And The Rap Tribute Of Nipsey Hussle, Melvin L. Williams, Justin K. Winley, Justin Causey

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Eritrean-American rapper Ermias “Nipsey Hussle” Asghedom’s murder represented a cultural cataclysmic event that startled the hip-hop community and triggered previous memories of Black men’s homicidal deaths in rap and Black American urban communities. Nipsey Hussle’s death inspired touching rap tribute songs by Black men rappers, who sought to commemorate his cultural legacy and express their bereavement pains as homicide survivors. Rap tribute songs occupy a significant history, as rappers historically employed them to honor hip-hop’s fallen soldiers, communicate their homicide survivorship bereavement processes, and speak about social perils in the Black community. Framed by critical race (CRT) and gender role …

“A Meaningless Institution”: Allen Ginsberg And The Struggle To Resist Dehumanization, James Altman

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

This presentation details how in poems such as “A Meaningless Institution,” “Howl,” and “American Change” Allen Ginsberg depicts individuals striving as best they can to maintain their freedom, especially freedom of thought in the face of lockstep conformity. In doing so, they seek to hang onto and reassert their humanity. In virtually every line, Ginsberg’s ideas about free speech, democracy, patriotism, inclusiveness, the environment, and community collided with the dehumanizing ideals of mainstream Cold War America. Ginsberg’s reverence for the United States as celebrated by his artistic “father” Walt Whitman functions as the catalyst for him to protest what the …

Where Epistemology And Metaphysics Touch In Lois Lowry's The Giver, Seth Vannatta

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In Lois Lowry’s dystopian young adult novel, The Giver, the veil of perception— the gap between appearance and reality— is woven into the community as a policy measure meant to establish Sameness—the effort to insure a world without conflict, inequality, difference, pain, or freedom of choice. But a question lingers in the premise of the novel’s community. Given that our options for bridging the gap amount to building a bridge of experience across it or digging a tunnel of existence under it, has the bridge been sabotaged to render perception spurious, or has the tunnel been blocked to alter reality …

Black Culture And Community In Good Times, Angela Nelson

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The situation comedy Good Times broadcast on the CBS network from February 8, 1974 to August 1, 1979, is a television milestone because it was the first series to feature a recurring, intact Black two-parent nuclear family, the Evanses, on American primetime television. In the conventions of seventies “TV World,” the “intact Black nuclear family” is a married, heterosexual, two-parent African American family with children all living in a single dwelling at the same time. David Marc in Demographic Vistas notes the focus of American situation comedies up to 1974: “The sitcom is a representational form, and its subject is …

A Semiotic Analysis Of Community’S “Advanced Dungeons And Dragons”, Marci Mazzarotto

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Unsurprisingly, the use of blackface rightfully remains a controversial topic situated within a remarkedly large sphere of popular culture (spanning nearly 200 years), as its roots stem directly from the systematic oppression of the African American community by silencing their voices and deleting their visibility. Such depictions turned people of color into grotesque and exaggerated caricatures that cemented deeply hurtful, incorrect, and negative stereotypes that continue to live and haunt our society and culture today.

This project addresses the controversial use of blackface in popular media, by briefly contextualizing its history and influence and then situating such context within a …

"Of Backstories And Epiphanies And Such: A Formalist's Analysis Of Dallas Jenkins' Youtube Series 'The Chosen.'", Richard Logsdon

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Of Backstories and Epiphanies: A formalist’s analysis of Dallas Jenkin’s The Chosen

In this essay, I attempt a formalist’s analysis of YouTube sensation The Chosen, so far a two part, sixteen-episode series about Jesus. In taking a formalist’s approach to this series, I seek the unifying principle holding the episodes of The Chosen together and determining the selection and arrangement of parts.

Presented from perspective of Jesus’ followers, the series' episodes make use of backstories and epiphanies to convey the unifying message that Jesus Christ was God and man. Those who experiences the epiphanies, often occurring in backstories intended to …

When First We Practice To Deceive: The Semiotics Of The Chinese Tv Drama The First Half Of My Life, William M. Kirtley

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Abstract

In the darkest days of the pandemic, an online streaming service offered escape in the form of a 42-episode Chinese dramatic TV series, The First Half of My Life (2017).

This paper provides a history of semiotic thought followed by an analysis of a woman’s professional life in the Peoples Republic of China. It uses, Canadian Sociologist Irving Goffman’s concept of dramaturgy and Austrian social psychologist Fritz Heider’s balance theory. This popular series is the story of the paradigmatic transformation of its female heroine, Luo Zijun, from dependent housewife to independent businessperson. Her ex-husband declares, “I never imagined …

A Visual Exploration Of Bias In Covid-19 Coverage, Elizabeth Zak

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

During the Covid-19 pandemic, news outlets used information visualizations to convey noteworthy data about different facets of the crisis in a short period of time. Despite claims of neutrality, an information visualization also conveys bias. Exploring bias in visualizations allows us to understand the bias that some news outlets hold. I chose to explore how news outlets conveyed political bias in a visualization. In this study, using the AllSides scale, I first identified ten news outlets of varying political bias. I then collected five Covid-19 visualizations from each news outlet. I analyzed each visualization’s use of information visualization techniques and …

Adoption Communication In The Media, Samantha Schaffer

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

Adoption communication is a vital part of developing healthy family relationships in families formed through adoption. The media has recently begun depicting more of the difficulties that adoptees experience. Three key television shows are Charmed, A Million Little Things, and This Is Us, which depict communication about adoption. These television shows offer the opportunity to analyze master narratives, family communication patterns, and information regulation through popular culture. By illustrating the difficulties experienced by adoptees, these shows provide adoptive families with the occasion to begin difficult yet necessary conversations. These television shows not only exemplify adoption communication they also …

Delicacy Of Taste And Passion In The Use Of Mobile Phone Social Trading Apps, Christopher M. Innes

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

No abstract provided.

West Texas Ghost Story, Clayton Bradshaw

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

"West Texas Ghost Story" explores the negative impacts of capitalism and patriarchal society on the well-being of individuals and the ability of families to remain intact under duress of such oppressive regimes. It follows the story of a young man growing up around the oil fields of West Texas in the 1990s as his father begins to hollow out and become a ghostly figure. The young man turns to art as a therapeutic outlet for this loss, eventually making his way to Marfa. The ghost story in question becomes one of metaphorical and perceived experience for the young man.

An Unread Colonial Diary, Brigid Mcevoy

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Brigid McEvoy ’23
Majors: History and Spanish
Minors: Business and Innovation and Latin American Studies
Mentor: Dr. Adrian Weimer, History and Classics

Through funding from a Veritas Research Grant, I deciphered the Shelton shorthand writing of the second volume of Michael Wigglesworth's diary, digitized through the New England Hidden Histories project. Wigglesworth was a famous poet and preacher in early New England. One of the chief purposes of deciphering this second volume was to create a more nuanced perspective on Wigglesworth's life and artistic career.

This diary, written from March 1658 through November 1687, includes both longhand and shorthand writing. …

End Notes, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

The History Program at Florida Gulf Coast University Announces its New M.A. Degree; West Nassau Historical Society Begins Plans for 3rd Annual Railroad Days Festival; Tequesta: The Journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida, Volume LSVII (2007); Guidelines for Submissions to the Florida Historical Quarterly

Patriotism Derailed: John Milton, David Yulee, And The Florida Railroad In 1863, Sean Patrick Adams

Florida Historical Quarterly

The summer of 1863 was a portentous time for the Confederate States of America. In May, Union General Ulysses S. Grant bottled up the last remaining Confederate redoubt along the Mississippi at Vicksburg. That same month saw the stunning victory at Chancellorsville for the Army of Northern Virginia, although tempered by the death of charismatic general Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson. By June, the Confederacy gambled that the Army of Northern Virginia's invasion of Pennsylvania would provoke a climactic battle that could secure victory and independence. Meanwhile, in the relatively calm surroundings of the Florida theatre, another kind of storm was brewing …

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Matthews. Caribbean Slave Revolts and the British Abolitionist Movement by Ryan D. Groves; Mulroy. The Seminole Freedmen, A History by Daniel S. Murphree; Latimer. 1812 War with America by James Cusick; Cimbala and Shaw, editors. Making A New South: Race, Leadership, and Community after the Civil War by Robert A. Taylor; Sheehan-Dean. Why Confederates Fought: Family and Nation in Civil War Virginia by John Sacher; Savitt. Race and Medicine in Nineteenth-and Early-Twentieth Century America by John David Smith; Ayala and Bernabe. Puerto Rico in the American Century: A History Since 1898 by Guadalupe Garcia; Spencer. A History of Gambling in …

In The Aftermath Of The Battle Of Olustee: A Beecher's Surprise Visit To Florida, Sarah Whitmer Foster

Florida Historical Quarterly

Isabella Beecher Hooker spent March 12-14, 1864, visiting senior army officers in Jacksonville. The timing was auspicious, given that her visit came just weeks after the only significant Civil War battle in Florida. The Federal defeat at Olustee had occurred on February 20. Moreover, she had access to regimental and brigade commanders through her brother, James C. Beecher, and her Hartford friend and neighbor, Joseph R. Hawley.1 At the end of her visit Isabella wrote to her husband offering observations about the battle and the Federal officer who led Northern troops in this engagement. The source of her information about …

"If It Was Not For You I Would Be Willing To Die:" The Civil War Correspondence Of Michael And Sallie Raysor, Aaron Sheehan-Dean

Florida Historical Quarterly

Like many Floridians before the Civil War, Michael O. Raysor was not a native.2 Born in Colleton District, South Carolina in 1837, he moved to Florida in 1858 at the age of 21. Raysor settled into life in Jefferson County, Florida, relying on the large extended family that moved to the area as well.3 In June 1861, Raysor enlisted in the Jefferson Rifles (Company H) of the 3rd Florida Regiment. Raysor's military service encompassed many experiences common to Confederates. He accompanied Braxton Bragg in his invasion of Kentucky, where he was captured at the battle of Perryville. After being exchanged, …

Workers Of The Sunshine State Unite!: The Florida Socialist Party During The Progressive Era, 1900-1920, R. Steven Griffin

Florida Historical Quarterly

Florida, whether under Democratic or Republican political control, has always appeared to most outside observers as a haven for political conservatism. Outward appearances, however, often prove to be quite deceptive. Florida politics during the Progressive Era may be such a case. In 1912, the Socialist presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, garnered more votes in Florida than Theodore Roosevelt or William Howard Taft, and Florida was the only state of the former Confederacy where this minor party finished as high as second place in the total vote. A canvass of Progressive Era voting results reveals the steady growth of Socialist electoral strength …

The Nut With A A Huey Long Outlook Versus The Goblins Of Fear And Distortion: Reubin Askew And The Campaign To Establish The Florida Corporate Profits Tax, Gordon E. Harvey

Florida Historical Quarterly

At the dawning of the 1970s, the South stood on the verge of a remarkable period of economic and political growth that earned the region the nickname, "Sunbelt South." Whether named for the constant dosage of sunshine the region received as compared with the "snowbelt" of the Midwest and New England, or for the optimism exuded by a region that had hopefully put the tumultuous 1960s behind it, the South stood on the precipice of a new, more progressive future. In the midst of a transformation from their solidly segregationist past to that of a new optimistic, hopeful South reminiscent …

Title Page, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Title page for Volume 86, Number 3. Includes the Table of Contents

Leaning On The Everlasting Arms: Virgil Darnell Hawkins's Early Life And Entry Into The Civil Rights Struggle, Larry O. Rivers

Florida Historical Quarterly

By 1987, Florida civil rights hero Virgil Hawkins's earthly journey neared its end. At 80 years of age, the sunset of his life had given him many signs that relief and rest lay just on the horizon: grayer hair, slower reflexes, sharper aches, and ailing health. But still, even in these waning years, peace eluded him. The painful, ongoing irony and contradiction in his life appeared as clear as the black-haired, white female newspaper reporter sitting in his living room, carefully scratching out notes as he shared a story that he had repeated so many times.1

End Notes, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Call for Papers, Annual Meeting, Florida Historical Society, May 24-26, 2008; Herman and Celia Chapin Award; Committee Appointments for the 2008 Annual Meeting Florida Historical Society; Call for Papers, Florida Conference of Historians 47th Annual Meeting February 28-March 1, 2008; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Stamp; Orange County Regional History Center; Wolfsonian-FIU Fellowship Program; Guidelines for Submissions to the Florida Historical Quarterly

Why Was Antebellum Florida Murderous? A Quantitative Analysis Of Homicide In Florida, 1821-1861, James M. Denham

Florida Historical Quarterly

Before the Civil War, Florida was one of the most murderous places in the United States. Its homicide rate was rivaled only by Texas and California.1 When it came to murders of or by blacks, Florida was typical for a slave state. But its white citizens killed each other at an extraordinary rate-usually three or four times the rate in most other slave states and eight to ten times the prevailing rate during the Second Seminole War, 1835-42, and the secession crisis, 1858-61.

Book Reviews, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Murphree, Constructing Floridians: Natives and Europeans in the Colonial Flordas, 1513-1783 by J. Michael Francis; Perez, Jr., To Die in Cuba: Suicide and Society by Christina D. Abreu; Hiller, Highway A1A: Florida at the Edge by Keith A. Sculle; Noll and Blumhofer, editors, Sing Them Ouer Again To Me: Hymns and Hymnbooks in America by Daniel S. Pierce; Koszulinski, director, Cracker Crazy: Invisible Histories of the Sunshine State by Robert Cassanello; Braddock, Down in Orburndale: A Songwriter's Youth in Old Florida by Kristine M. McCusker; Butler, Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World by Edward …

Camp Roosevelt: A Case Study Of The Nya In Florida, Dave Nelson

Florida Historical Quarterly

In April 1940, Life magazine's cover story on "Government and Youth" updated an article the magazine had published on the youth problem in 1936. The cover featured a photograph of Mabel Sealey, an enrollee at Camp Roosevelt, a National Youth Administration (NYA) resident project in Ocala, Florida. The accompanying article, presented the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) as boys' work relief, while the NYA provided relief for girls.1 In the gendered language of the narrative and the photographic images, the masculine CCC project accomplished important work such as fire fighting and tree planting, while teaching its enrollees military discipline and job …

The Cuban Convention And Its Role In The Cuban Revolutionary Party, Consuelo E. Stebbins

Florida Historical Quarterly

In June 1892, Luis Lagomasino, an agent of a secret organization known only to its members as the Cuban Convention was summoned to Key West to provide an update on the preparations underway in Cuba for the revolution. Lagomasino, the Convention's agent in the eastern province of Las Villas, arrived in Key West on June 22, 1892, where he was affectionately received by Jose Dolores (J. D.) Poyo and General Serafin Sanchez, who introduced him to the wealthy industrialist, Eduardo H. Gato, and the veteran insurgent leader, Fernando Figueredo Soccards. On the night of June 24, 1892, Lagomasino met with …

Title Page, Florida Historical Society

Florida Historical Quarterly

Title page for Volume 86, Number 2. Includes the Table of Contents

The Burden Of Southern Literature: Can Florida Bear It? 2007 Jillian Prescott Memorial Lecture, Ron Cooper

Florida Historical Quarterly

Historians bristle when asked, "So how do you characterize the South? What makes something Southern? And please, be brief." Most respond that the region is much too complex for a simple answer. After all, this is the land of Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun; Dizzy Gillespie and Britney Spears; Jasper Johns and Junior Samples. To make matters worse, we rarely agree on geographical membership. Is Texas the South? Missouri? Maryland? And, of course, what about Florida? If a culture is unified largely by the stories it tells about itself, even when those stories have little resemblance to historical fact, …