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Full-Text Articles in American Studies

Paintings Inspired By African American Literature, Erinn Dady Jan 2019

Paintings Inspired By African American Literature, Erinn Dady

A with Honors Projects

For this honors project, the student created 5 paintings inspired by the coursework assigned from The Norton Anthology of African American Literature Third Edition Volume 1, with the goal of encouraging new readers to explore this genre and diverse points of view.

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The Search For Microbial Martian Life And American Buddhist Ethics, Daniel S. Capper Jan 2019

The Search For Microbial Martian Life And American Buddhist Ethics, Daniel S. Capper

Faculty Publications

Multiple searches hunt for extraterrestrial life, yet the ethics of such searches in terms of fossil and possible extant life on Mars have not been sufficiently delineated. In response, in this essay I propose a tripartite ethic for searches for microbial Martian life that consists of default nonharm toward potential living beings, default nonharm to the habitats of potential living beings, but also responsible, restrained scientific harvesting of some microbes in limited transgression of these default nonharm modes. Although this multifaceted ethic remains secular and hence adaptable to space research settings, it arises from both a qualitative analysis of authoritative …

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Carceral Camouflage: Inscribing And Obscuring Neoliberal Penality Through New York City's Borough-Based Jail Plan, Katie Wilson Jan 2019

Carceral Camouflage: Inscribing And Obscuring Neoliberal Penality Through New York City's Borough-Based Jail Plan, Katie Wilson

Honors Papers

This project seeks to interrogate the socio-spatial implications of New York City's contemporary criminal justice machine through mayor Bill de Blasio's ongoing jail reform plan to build new, "borough-based jails." In 2017, following decades of controversy over entrenched violence and horrific abuses on Rikers Island, New York's notorious island penal colony, de Blasio announced a 10-year plan to "to close Rikers Island and replace it with a smaller network of modern jails." While the plan claims to make jails in New York "smaller, safer, and fairer," this project analyzes the plan's strategies, its rhetoric, and its goals to understand the …

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Speculative Futures And Futurism In Appalachia, Liz Pavlovic, Jamie Banks, Nicholas D. Bowman, David Smith, Baaria Chaudhary, Ben Babbitt, Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, Daniel Boyd, West Virginia University Press Jan 2019

Speculative Futures And Futurism In Appalachia, Liz Pavlovic, Jamie Banks, Nicholas D. Bowman, David Smith, Baaria Chaudhary, Ben Babbitt, Jake Elliott, Tamas Kemenczy, Daniel Boyd, West Virginia University Press

Exhibit Panels

What if we thought of Appalachia as futuristic? Could the mountains be the setting for imagining better, maybe weirder, futures? Artists, writers, and game designers have been asking just those questions, speculating through science fiction, fantasy, and magic realism to rethink the ways cultural traditions in wildly creative ways. From folktales to videogames, cryptozoology to underground highways, this section asks what a future Appalachian utopia (or dystopia) might look and feel like?

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Laughing Out Loud: American Indian Comedy As A Force For Social Change, Jacob M. Ward Jan 2019

Laughing Out Loud: American Indian Comedy As A Force For Social Change, Jacob M. Ward

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Activism entails not only individuals overtly campaigning for changes in public spheres, but in other ways and strategies as well. One of these other avenues is the use of political satire and humor. Comedy publicizes frustrations of American issues, just as sit-ins, walk-outs, or marches do. For the most part, scholars fail to address the importance of humor. This work researches not only the comedic works of Charlie Hill, the 1491s, and other American Indian comedians, but also how their craft possibly alters stances and opinions. These comedians have a voice, and, therefore, deserve examination. This work shows the influence …

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From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton Jan 2019

From Beyond The Grave: Dead Narrators In Young Adult Literature, Jessica L. Branton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

While scholars and critics have explored various aspects of young adult literature, few have focused on the popular, but odd, use of dead narrators. When examining the dead narrators of Veronica Roth’s Allegiant, Jay Asher’s Thirteen Reasons Why, Lauren Oliver’s Before I Fall, and Jess Rothenberg’s The Catastrophic History of You and Me, it becomes clear that the dead narrators are used as a foil for adolescent growth and maturation, and they also allow young readers to empathize with and accept death through the protagonists. These protagonists experience a proto-adulthood as they die too soon to …

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"A Dark, Abiding, Signing Africanist Presence" In Walker Percy’S Dr. Tom More Novels, David Withun Jan 2019

"A Dark, Abiding, Signing Africanist Presence" In Walker Percy’S Dr. Tom More Novels, David Withun

The Coastal Review

Many of the tropes, commonplaces, symbols, and values used and reflected by American literary works written by white authors, as Toni Morrison writes, are “in fact responses to a dark, abiding, signing Africanist presence.” The black/white racial binary and racial différance that mark this presence inform the use of racialized characters as signifiers in the novels of Walker Percy. In the Dr. Tom More novels Love in the Ruins and The Thanatos Syndrome, Percy adopts racial symbolism as a means toward his critique of the American notion of “the pursuit of happiness.” In Love in the Ruins, Percy …

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Rva, Richmond, And The Geography Of Memory, Laura Browder Jan 2019

Rva, Richmond, And The Geography Of Memory, Laura Browder

English Faculty Publications

“Can The Old South Rebrand Itself? Richmond Tries, With A Dynamic New Logo” ran the headline of a 2012 article in the monthly business magazine Fast Company, announcing the city’s new logo, RVA — shorthand for Richmond, Virginia. “The former seat of the Confederacy has been quietly transforming itself into a more creative place,” explained author Emily Badger. “Now it has the visual identity to match.” Badger went on to describe the challenge faced by students at the VCU Brandcenter, who in 2010 were charged with rebranding the city, “a task more daunting given that Richmond has long had a …

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Long-Term Implementation Of Temporary Immigration Policy On The Security And Integration Of Liberians In The U.S., Glendaly Sanchez-Alicea Jan 2019

Long-Term Implementation Of Temporary Immigration Policy On The Security And Integration Of Liberians In The U.S., Glendaly Sanchez-Alicea

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Immigration policies such as temporary protected status and deferred enforced departure can serve as suitable humanitarian solutions to help displaced individuals. Notwithstanding, when implemented in the course of many years, the uncertainty and stress of living in limbo can pose significant challenges to beneficiaries and create a multifarious scenario for government leaders. This qualitative study examined the experience of Liberians, a group designated with temporary immigration protection in the United States since 1991, who have consequently formed lives in the United States while in temporary status. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the effects of temporary immigration …

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Ghosts Of Madmen: A Generational Tale, Kristen Leigh Olin Jan 2019

Ghosts Of Madmen: A Generational Tale, Kristen Leigh Olin

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

A family story depicting an immigrant family that must deal with the horrors of the past while delving through the psyche of the present. One woman's look into the deepest reaches of her American family and their generations of alcoholism and abuse and her resolution to the ghosts that haunt the family's women.

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Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger Jan 2019

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

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Sleight Of Hand: Gender, Performance, And (In)Sincerity In E. D. E. N. Southworth’S The Hidden Hand, Samantha Martin Jan 2019

Sleight Of Hand: Gender, Performance, And (In)Sincerity In E. D. E. N. Southworth’S The Hidden Hand, Samantha Martin

Scripps Senior Theses

One of the many cultural anxieties that existed during the nineteenth century in antebellum America centered on the dubious status of authenticity of one’s emotions, gender expression, or socioeconomic class. The fluctuating socioeconomic landscape of antebellum America destabilized the logic of categorization, rendering it an ineffectual means by which to evaluate others’ identities. In her novel The Hidden Hand, or, Capitola the Madcap, E. D. E. N. Southworth explores instead of censures the transformative properties of the self, specifically in terms of gender and class. Her interest in this lack of authenticity, or transparency regarding one’s self and intentions, …

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“Liquid Sunshine, Or Something Else,” A Play By Kalli Anne Joslin, Kalli Joslin Jan 2019

“Liquid Sunshine, Or Something Else,” A Play By Kalli Anne Joslin, Kalli Joslin

Honors Program Theses

"Liquid Sunshine, or Something Else" is a historical play set in 1920s Florida that examines the intersections of race, gender, and immigration during American Prohibition. Set in an unnamed town that incorporates aspects of Tampa, Miami, and Key West, the owner of a local Cuban restaurant must grapple with increased police presence in her community as she is simultaneously asked to run an illegal still and shelter a family of Eastern European immigrants.

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Contents, Douglas Higbee Jan 2019

Contents, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Illegitimacy And The Power Of The Mother In The Lais Of Marie De France, Claudia Mccarron Jan 2019

Illegitimacy And The Power Of The Mother In The Lais Of Marie De France, Claudia Mccarron

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Reflecting Identity Through Glass Windows In Charles Dickens’S Tom Tiddler’S Ground, Ryder Seamons Jan 2019

Reflecting Identity Through Glass Windows In Charles Dickens’S Tom Tiddler’S Ground, Ryder Seamons

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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The Earth And The Portrait: A Comparison Of Dostoevsky’S Alyosha Karamazov And Prince Myshkin, Callaghan Mcdonough Jan 2019

The Earth And The Portrait: A Comparison Of Dostoevsky’S Alyosha Karamazov And Prince Myshkin, Callaghan Mcdonough

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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When Life Imitates Art: Aestheticism In The Importance Of Being Earnest, Drake Deornellis Jan 2019

When Life Imitates Art: Aestheticism In The Importance Of Being Earnest, Drake Deornellis

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Front Matter, Douglas Higbee Jan 2019

Front Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Looking Through, At, And Beyond In Thelma And Louise, Mercer Greenwald Jan 2019

Looking Through, At, And Beyond In Thelma And Louise, Mercer Greenwald

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Back Matter, Douglas Higbee Jan 2019

Back Matter, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 21 Fall 2019, Douglas Higbee Jan 2019

The Oswald Review Of Undergraduate Research And Criticism In The Discipline Of English: Volume 21 Fall 2019, Douglas Higbee

The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English

No abstract provided.

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Show Her It's A Man's World: How The Femme Fatale Became A Vehicle For Propaganda, Leann Bishop Jan 2019

Show Her It's A Man's World: How The Femme Fatale Became A Vehicle For Propaganda, Leann Bishop

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

During World War II women joined the workforce in droves due to propaganda such as Rosie the Riveter. When Soldiers began returning from the war they wanted stability and normalcy. They wanted to return to the America they left where women ran the household and men went to work. Women, however, experienced a new sense of freedom from working and wanted to continue their liberation. It was during this time that femme fatales, the sultry women of film noir became popular. They represented the liberated women of the 1940s. The film industry saw an opportunity to use these women found …

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Under The Sign Of Suicide, Theodore Emmanuel Prassinos Jan 2019

Under The Sign Of Suicide, Theodore Emmanuel Prassinos

Wayne State University Dissertations

“Under the Sign of Suicide,” examines modernist writers’ intense and sustained preoccupation with and representations of suicide. Beyond numerous essays on the topic, we also find many fictional characters such as Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Svidrigailov and Kirilov both taken by gunshot, Stavrogin and Smerdyakov both by hanging. We also find Franz Kafka’s George Bendemann who takes his life by drowning, and Virginia Woolf’s Septimus Smith by impaling, Her character, Rhoda, dies off a cliff. In American literature, we find Edna Pontellier, Quentin Compson, Clare Kendry, Semour Glass, Teddy McArdle, Willy Loman, Tod Clifton, and on and on. This list is surely …

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The Center Of All Beauty: Radical Democracy, Materiality, And The Poetic Subject In Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Marcus Merritt Jan 2019

The Center Of All Beauty: Radical Democracy, Materiality, And The Poetic Subject In Twentieth-Century American Poetry, Marcus Merritt

Wayne State University Dissertations

In The Center of All Beauty, I trace a strain of poetics in twentieth-century American poetry from William Carlos Williams through Frank O’Hara, Alice Notley, and Amiri Baraka. This poetics is founded in a radically democratic conception of the poetic subject and in the use of poetry as a tool for developing critical knowledge about the material conditions within which the poetic subject is constituted. In Spring and All and The Embodiment of Knowledge, Williams articulates a poetics that denies the authority of any grounds upon which any poetic subject would be considered inadequate to poetic speech and outlines a …

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Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature, Josh-Wade Ferguson Jan 2019

Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature, Josh-Wade Ferguson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

“Rambling Blues: Mapping Contemporary North American Blues Literature” revises the methodological assumptions that have underwritten our understanding of blues literature and the politics of race and region that surround it. Where previous commentators have defined blues literature primarily through its formal and thematic connections with blues music and with the sociohistorical contours of black southern life more generally this dissertation expands the boundaries of how we conceive blues literature by examining Langston Hughes’ poems “The Weary Blues” (1925) and “Po Boy Blues” (1926) August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984) Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones (2011) James Hannaham’s Delicious Foods …

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Decolonial Resistance In Latinx Writings From Peru To The United States: A Portfolio, Isabel Norwood Jan 2019

Decolonial Resistance In Latinx Writings From Peru To The United States: A Portfolio, Isabel Norwood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This collection begins with the premise that colonial relationships manifest in ways beyond exploitation of one nation by another. It relies on the decolonial theory of Walter D. Mignolo in its assumption that imbalances of power in the realms of race gender sexuality and class are fundamentally colonial. With this more expansive understanding of coloniality in mind I examine resistance to colonial exploitation in a range of texts from across the Americas. The first essay in this collection explores the role of the guinea pig in Andean food culture arguing that the continued consumption of guinea pig represents a form …

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Subverting The Patriarchal Panopticon: Challenges To Eugenics Rhetoric In The Novels Of Mccullers And Welty, Regina Marie Young Jan 2019

Subverting The Patriarchal Panopticon: Challenges To Eugenics Rhetoric In The Novels Of Mccullers And Welty, Regina Marie Young

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My thesis takes into consideration the scope of eugenics ideologies and their influence on literature specifically two mid-twentieth century authors from the U.S. South Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty. I contend that both writers engage with eugenics rhetoric challenging and subverting the prevailing ideology of the day albeit in differing ways. McCullers and Welty address different facets of eugenics rhetoric in their novels— namely the nature of “defect” and the criteria for “fitness” for “citizenship.” This thesis interrogates the ways in which these writers develop rhetorical strategies for resisting eugenics ideologies in their respective novels Reflections in a Golden Eye …

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Mobilizing Genre, Revising Politics: The Intersection Of Audience, Author, And Allusion In Contemporary Latinx Fiction, Jason Klus Jan 2019

Mobilizing Genre, Revising Politics: The Intersection Of Audience, Author, And Allusion In Contemporary Latinx Fiction, Jason Klus

Master’s Theses

This thesis examines contemporary Latinx authors’ use of popular cultural and generic allusions to challenge limiting labels that audiences place on their fiction. Confronting readings that privilege Latinx literature as either imbued with the political rigor of the 1960s’ Civil Rights Movement or an assimilationist attitude, I argue that these writers deliberately appropriate images and tropes familiar to Anglo-American readers to assure success in the literary marketplace while challenging their readers’ expected conclusions. My first chapter analyzes Sandra Cisneros’s reimagining of popular U.S. figures in light of ethnic storytelling practices in her 2002 novel Caramelo. The second chapter examines …

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The Evolution Of Sunset Magazine's Cooking Department: The Accommodation Of Men's And Women's Cooking In The 1930s, Jennifer Hoolhorst Pagano Jan 2019

The Evolution Of Sunset Magazine's Cooking Department: The Accommodation Of Men's And Women's Cooking In The 1930s, Jennifer Hoolhorst Pagano

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The Western regional magazine Sunset has been published under a series of owners and publishers since 1898. In 1928, Sunset was purchased by Lawrence Lane, a Midwestern magazine executive who transformed it from a failing turn-of-the-century, general interest publication about the West, into a successful magazine about living in the West for the Western middle-class. Sunset had always been a magazine for men and women, and one that appealed to both male and female intellectuals at the time Lane purchased it. Lane and his editors attempted to interject more rigid middle-class ideals into a magazine that had espoused ideas that …

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