American Studies Commons^™

Southern Sound And Space: An Exploration Of The Sonic Manifestation Of Place, Christopher James Colbeck

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the relationships between sound and space, sound and time, and the influence of “place,” particularly southern places, on the creative process of contemporary musicians. The work also investigates the possibility of a comsouthern sound or auditory essence which may be embedded within all of the musical genres popularly thought to owe their lineage to the American South. The project is documentary in nature with the written component explaining the scholarship and methodology guiding the accompanying film. At the heart of the work are interviews with eleven contemporary musicians and three scholars of southern culture and history. While …

One Of Our Own: Pawnee Bill's Life As Viewed By Bloomington Residents, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Article examining how William Gordon Lillie, native of Bloomington, Illinois, was viewed by residents of the town through newspaper reports and other sources. Lillie achieved considerable fame as Wild West showman Pawnee Bill and was often associated with other legends of the American West.

The Body And Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison’S Novel In Twenty-First Century Performance And Public Spaces, Patrice Rankine

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Patrice Rankine’s “The Body and Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison’s Novel in Twenty-First-Century Performance and Public Spaces,” contrasts the artistic uses of physicality in Invisible Man the novel with its 2012 play adaptation. Rankine argues that the stage version’s “focus on the corporeal reality of race” complements what the novel can do to facilitate social or political progress: in short, “there is therapeutic value in ‘staging’ or reliving such experiences.” Staging Invisible Man extends Ellison’s relevance in an age where, though the United States had a black president, the very novelty of the black body illustrates how infrequently that body …

Burnt Offerings: How The City Of Angels Engulfed Any And All Involved In The Rodney King Affair And Los Angeles Riots, Michael P. Mcnamara

Pell Scholars and Senior Theses

This thesis analyses the first modern case of police brutality and race relations - the beating of Rodney King and the 1992 Riots that followed. The roots of the gravity of this situation can be found in the the leadership of the city during that time. The thesis tells the story of the juxtaposition of the black, Democratic Mayor of Los Angeles (Tom Bradley) and the white, Republican Los Angeles Police Chief (Daryl Gates). Though both have a very mixed legacy, both men were highly effective in their respective fields and goals. It is their inability to work together and …

From Tulsa To Ferguson: Redefining Race Riots And Racialized Violence, Hesley R. Keenan

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

A Vehicle Of Expression, Cristian Garcia

CMC Senior Theses

This senior thesis studies the evolution and ideals of several populations in Los Angeles through the lens of car culture. The automobile is a symbol of expression and upon analyzing it, a great deal can be revealed about its owner. Los Angeles is home to the hot rodding, lowriding, and import tuning car movements. All three major car cultures were born from a marginalized youth population. The three movements shed light on the sentiments and assimilation process of the various ethnic communities that created the car culture. This essay will show how each movement not only influenced one another, but …

Introduction To "Doughboys On The Western Front: Memoirs Of American Soldiers In The Great War", Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

The First World War existed on paper even as it was being fought. Yes, electronic communications (radio, telephone) played a role, but it was the typewriter and the pen that both recorded the war and, in many respects, made possible the massive organizations it demanded. The American soldier, right down to the lowest ranks, was often both a reader and a writer. Commands and instructions were passed to him in writing—much of his entertainment came that way, too, through books and letters, newspapers and magazines. And he responded with his own pen.

Read Me: The Emergence Of Female Voice In American Epistolary Fiction, Allison Melissa Ramsey

Honors Theses

The objective of the thesis was to study how the letter, as a narrative device provided by the epistolary genre, supplies unheard female characters with an avenue to speak when their worlds do not allow it. In the novels, the letters not only permit a female character to practice building a voice, but also provide a self-reflection and identification experience, which enables the woman to see where she is, rewrite her role, and control where she wants to go. Through reading Hannah Webster Foster's The Coquette, Alice Walker's The Color Purple, Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and Maria Semple's …

Novelistic Intimacies: Reading And Writing In The Late Age Of Print, Vincent Michael Haddad

Wayne State University Dissertations

In Novelistic Intimacies, I consider the political and aesthetic structure of intimacy in a diverse set of narrative forms produced in the so-called digital age, or the late age of print—from encyclopedic and metafictional novels to graphic storytelling and Afrofuturist fantasy. As an organizing principle, intimacy forces us to consider, at once, how novelists have attempted to restore language and narrative with personal meaning after postmodernism—often termed New Sincerity or post-irony. At the same time, intimacy allows us to see how novelists have experimented on the materiality of the book and the eroticism of language to invent new, impersonal modes …

The Western Stemmed Point Tradition: Evolutionary Perspectives On Cultural Change In Projectile Points During The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, Lindsay D. Scott

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

In this thesis I analyze the cultural techniques of Paleoindians in North America by examining the diversification and fusion of stemmed projectile point traditions using an evolutionary analysis. The Western Stemmed Point tradition has an extensive regional and temporal distribution throughout the Intermountain West and High Plains during the Paleoindian period. In an effort to determine how stemmed projectile point technologies relate to each other, I applied a phylogenetic approach to construct heritable patterns of projectile point histories. By measuring the physical traits of those points and using a macro-evolutionary theoretical approach, changes in artifact form can be acquired and …

“Yellow Crowfoot In The Pond,/Not Lotus, Not Lily”: Mapping The River, Mapping Voices, Pamela J. Rader

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This paper examines the prosody of Chin’s eponymous poem, "The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty," through an eco-critical lens. While it does not dismiss the hybrid cultural influences of the poem, it focuses on the ways the non-human agents, or the figures in the poem’s landscape, “speak.” Poetry, like the poem’s terraced gardens, traces tension between the controlling human forces experienced by the narrating female I personas and the natural world’s affective inclinations.

Domestic Violence In Lac Su’S I Love Yous Are For White People: A Sociological Criticism Approach, Quan-Manh Ha

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This article employs sociological criticism to examine domestic violence, parenting, and communication behavior in Lac Su’s Vietnamese American memoir. The book debunks the seemingly positive myth of Asian Americans as a model minority, substantiates certain negative stereotypes of Asian men, and challenges some of the classic Asian values that apparently have shaped the Asian American identity. I argue that Su’s memoir is a critique of structural inequalities, urban poverty, unemployment, inaccessibility to a support network, and the intersection between class, gender, and race in the contexts of war and its aftermath.

Dying To Better Themselves: West Indians And The Building Of The Panama Canal, Written By Olive Senior, Michael L. Conniff

Faculty Publications, History

A book review of Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal, by Olive Senior. Kingston: University of the West Indies Press, 2014. xxiii + 416 pp. (Paper US$ 40.00)

Ancient Puebloan Human Effigy Vessels: An Examination Of Iconography And Tradition, Amy G. Marshman

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation provides an iconographic interpretation of a group of Ancient Puebloan human effigy vessels and fragments from the American Southwest, dating to the Pueblo II period, c. 900 -1150 CE. Initially, this project focuses on Ancient Puebloan human effigy vessels from three specific collections; a single vessel in the collection of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., a human effigy vessel in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the so-called Putnam Human Effigy Jar from Chaco Canyon at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard University. …

The Transition From The Psychical To The Psychological: An Examination Of William James’ Influence On Henry James’ “The Turn Of The Screw”, Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will show that, in its original form, “The Turn of the Screw” acted as a monument to the intellectual unity shared between Henry James and his brother William. Through evaluating James’ biography, memoirs, and letters with William, this thesis will illustrate the subtle collaborative inspirations that initially helped James write the first twelve-part serial edition of “The Turn of the Screw” for Collier’s Weekly, which ran from January 27, 1898 until April 16, 1898. I will also demonstrate the effect of William’s philosophy and his death on the revisions James’ made to his story as published in the …

The Color Of Memory: Reimagining The Antebellum South In Works By James Mcbride Through The Use Of Free Indirect Discourse, Janel L. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who …

Virtual / Reality: Designing Permeable Spaces For Social Well-Being In The Digital Age, Thomas R. Kennedy

Theses and Dissertations

The digital age has pushed people closer together than ever before. A device that fits in the palm of your hand allows instantaneous communication with billions of other human beings. People share everyday experiences, passing thoughts, personal photos, sometimes privately, often publicly. Distances between people and places feel reduced. Never has it been so easy to be so emotionally close to so many people.

But as digital experiences become routine, our collective perceptions of closeness and distance shift. As virtual communities become larger, so does our awareness of the actual distance between things. Even though humans can be genuinely close …

Women At The Crossroads, Women At The Forefront, American Women In Letterpress Printing In The Nineteenth Century, Dianne L. Roman Ms

Theses and Dissertations

The significant role of the female printer in the American home-based print shops during the colonial and early republic periods has been documented in print history, socioeconomic, labor, and women studies, yet with the industrialization of the printing trade, women’s presence is thought to have disappeared. Contrary to the belief that industrialization of the print shop eradicated women’s involvement in skilled employments such as typesetting, the creation of the Women’s Cooperative Printing Union in California and the creation and chartering of the Women’s Typographical Union in New York, both in the late 1860s, clearly indicate that women continued to work …

“‘It’S A Cu’Ous Thing Ter Me, Suh’: The Distinctive Narrative Innovation Of Literary Dialect In Late-Nineteenth Century American Literature”, Kym M. Goering

Theses and Dissertations

American literature and verse advanced in dialectal writing during the late-nineteenth century. Charles Chesnutt’s “The Goophered Grapevine” (1887), “Po’ Sandy” (1888), and “Hot-Foot Hannibal” (1899); Joel Chandler Harris’ Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings (1881); Thomas Nelson Page’s “Marse Chan” (1884); and Mark Twain’s “Sociable Jimmy” (1874) and “A True Story, Repeated Word for Word as I Heard It” (1874) provided diverse dialect representations. Dialect expanded into poetry with

James Whitcomb Riley’s “She ‘Displains’ It” (1888), “When the Frost is on the Punkin” (1882), and “My Philosofy” (1882) and Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “The Spellin’ Bee” (1895), “An Ante-Bellum Sermon” …

Racial Integration In One Cumberland Presbyterian Congregation: Intentionality And Reflection In Small Group, Carolyn Smith Goings

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Negative attitudes toward racial minorities and consequent maltreatment of non-Whites continue to be a crisis in America. The crisis of racism is still realized in phenomena such as residential segregation (Bonilla-Silva, 2014), health disparities (Chae, Nuru-Jeter, & Adler, 2012; Chae, Nuru-Jeter, Francis, & Lincoln, 2011), and in the not-so-uncommon unjust arrests and imprisonment of persons of color (Alexander, 2012). Improvement in race relations through the development of meaningful cross racial relationships in racially integrated settings is one avenue that may lead to reduction of racism (E. Anderson, 2010; Fischer, 2011; Massey & Denton, 1993). Christian congregations are common settings in …

Sherwood Anderson’S "Shadowy Figure": Rural Masculinity In The Modernizing Midwest, Andy Oler

Publications

No abstract provided.

The Cultural And Rhetorical Elements Of American Picaresque, Cory James Dahlstrom

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

The picaresque is a literary genre with a long and rich history. Although protean in nature, it is essentially the fictional autobiography of a likeable delinquent or rogue, who survives a series of adventures and a life of hardships by his or her wits and affinity for trickery. Stemming from a long line of tropes dating back to Greek mythology, the picaresque comes into its own fruition towards the end of the Spanish Golden Age with the anonymous publication of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554). Since then, the antihero of the picaresque, the picaro, has become a literary figure across a …

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

Toward An Ontology Of Exhaustion: On The Affective Structures Of Masculinity In The American Oilfield, John W. Jepsen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

What is the significance of the oil encounter in the lives of men living and working in the modern oilfields of the United States? Engaging with both literary examples of the lives of men in the Interior West and the personal experiences and reflections of the author, this essay seeks to examine the connections between ideology and place as it works to shape the identity and affect of men in America's oilfields, ultimately ending in them identifying with the very resources their activities seek to exploit and exhaust. Utilizing Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia as its moral touchstone, this essay works …

Appropriating Balance: Reversing The Imbalance For Indigenous Women Through Spirituality, Candra Krisch

The Journal of Traditions & Beliefs

No abstract provided.

Mccarthy's The Road And Ethical Choice In A Post-Apocalyptic World, Jingjing Guo

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "McCarthy's The Road and Ethical Choice in a Post-Apocalyptic World" Jingjing Guo analyses ethical choice and its implications in McCarthy's The Road. After examining the deterioration of the ethical context and the prevalence of evil reflected in cannibalism, Guo highlights the father's ethical choice and dilemma. Different from most others, the father chooses to keep alive to protect his son, and to stay man and stay good in a physically devastated and morally bankrupted world. Through discussing the meaning of the metaphor "fire" and "carrying the fire," Guo further explores the significance of the father's choice …

Perspectives Of Ethical Identity In Ng's Steer Toward Rock And Jen's Mona In The Promised Land, Hui Su

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Perspectives of Ethical Identity in Ng's Steer toward Rock and Jen's Mona in the Promised Land" Hui Su examines Fae Myenne Ng's and Gish Jen's novels. In the novels, the protagonists make different decisions: in Steer Toward Rock Jack after displacement in China adopts US-American identity and in Mona in the Promised Land Mona, a second generation Chinese American, selects Jewish identity. Owing to their different situations, the two protagonists reflect challenges of identity building in the case of the "Other" in US-American culture and society. Su argues that Ng and Jen, although varying in their …

Luo’S Ethical Experience Of Growth In Mo Yan's Pow!, Zhenzhao Nie

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Luo's Ethical Experience of Growth in Mo Yan's Pow!" Zhenzhao Nie examines the protagonist's experience of self-discovery in the process of natural to ethical choice. Nie's analysis of the novel rests on the theoretical framework "ethical literary criticism" he developed. In the novel Luo's life is narrated in retrospect when he is attempting to become the disciple of a monk and al-though Luo does not find what he is searching for in religion, he arrives at a new stage in his life which is based on ethical principles. The young Luo is unable to make …

Ethical Discourse And Narrative Strategies In Yan's老师，好美 (To My Teacher, With Love), Zhuo Wang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Ethical Discourse and Narrative Strategies in Yan's老师，好美 (To My Teacher, with Love)" Zhuo Wang discusses the way in which narrative converges with ethics at the site of a radical "ethical environment" in Geling Yan's novel. Wang focuses on how the novel's first-person confessional narration, third-person reflective narration, and online narration dialogue with and interrogate one another working together to bring forth Yan's reconsideration of the ethical dimensions of her text. Wang argues that the novel's personal and social ethics are embodied multiple narrative voices which altogether reflect on the close relationship between novels and ethical discourse …

Indigeneity, Diaspora, And Ethical Turn In Anzaldúa’S Borderlands/La Frontera, Hsinya Huang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Indigeneity, Diaspora, and Ethical Turn in Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera" Hsinya Huang discusses indigeneity vis-à-vis diaspora, two concepts often used as if they were necessarily antagonistic and antithetical to one another. While in diaspora studies Native people are marginalized, Huang resituates the figure of the Native to the core of diasporic discussion by tracing the movement, migration, or scattering of Native people from their established or ancestral homeland. Drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa's life narrative in Borderlands/La Frontera, Huang advances the concept of the ethical turn in diaspora studies by questioning the master narrative regarding …