American Popular Culture Commons^™

Piercing The Veil In Sinners: Theological Insights From The Juke Joint, Antonio D. Sison Cpps

Journal of Religion & Film

Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, importantly, in its very audiovisual language and grammar, its stylistic strategies qua film. As reasoned in this essay, Coogler’s film is a rich locus theologicus, a nexus for theological discovery and insight.Sinners kindles the hermeneutical impulse to dialogue with African American/Pan-Africa theologies exemplified by the …

Performance Of Illustrations And Images As Language In Sarnath Banerjee’S All Quiet In Vikaspuri, Akanksha Barthwal Ms

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri, fictionalizes but at the same time addresses water wars and political ideologies in the city of Delhi. By the means of eco-critical approach in the name of Vi-kas (development) Banerjee discuss the acts of slow violence subverted on nature in the name of progress (vikas). Through text/ images the author depicts chaos and challenges for the readers in more direct and obscene ways. The current paper attempts to look at Banerjee’s illustrations and images as new form of language emerged in modern Indian literature with the possibly that illustrations have more effect on …

Hope, Incorporated: Welborn Hope As B.A. Botkin's "Promising" Oklahoma Poet, Cullen Whisenhunt

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

In 1927, a letter by then-professor at the University of Oklahoma, Roy Temple House, was published in the Ada Evening News complimenting Ada, OK, poet Welborn Hope and suggesting Hope get in touch with folklorist and literary scholar BA Botkin, also an OU faculty member. That same year, Botkin published “Oklahoma Poets, Inc.,” in which he detailed what he believed to be the three stages of a state’s literary development: the pioneer stage, the popular rhymesters stage, and finally, the union of art and life (30-31). In 1935, Botkin presented a lecture in Tulsa in which he cited Hope among …

Art In An Apocalypse: Aids, Activism, And Abolition In Work Of Essex Hemphill And Alternative Video Production, Sydney E. Guntharp

Honors Theses

This thesis is an exploration of Black, POC, feminist, and queer art in the late twentieth century, examining both the AIDS crisis and the increasing privatization of the prison industrial complex as key factors in the development of Essex Hemphill’s poetic, expressive works and the filmmaking activism of various videotape collectives. Through employing the lens of critical prison studies, this work seeks to understand how Black and POC art emerged as a site of political resistance to a carceral state as well as the broader social punishment doctrine that influenced the public health response to AIDS in the United States. …

The Log Cabin | Public Perception And Mediated Reality (1840 – 1980), Aspen M. Regan

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone examines the evolution of the log cabin from 1840 to 1980. At its core, the project questions the legacy of the log cabin from its origins as simply being a traditional dwelling typology to its establishment as a cultural icon or rather, an enduring vessel that established the American Dream and ideals of self-reliance, freedom, and individualism deep within the heart of American culture.

Chapter One situates the log cabin historically and architecturally, defining the popular frontier dwelling as being a single-pen horizontal log constructed cabin. It then explores the cabin’s emergence as a cultural image through political …

Gods' Man, Lynd Ward

Zea E-Books Collection

Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was born in Chicago and studied at Columbia Teachers College in New York City and at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking in Leipzig, Germany. He began working as a book illustrator in 1927, and in 1929 published this first “wordless novel,” Gods’ Man. He eventually published five more such works, as well as illustrations for more than 100 other books, plus drawings, lithographs, watercolors, and children’s stories.

Gods’ Man is credited as the first American wordless novel. It tells a story about a struggling young artist who makes a pact with a mysterious …

Madman's Drum, Lynd Ward

Zea E-Books Collection

Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was born in Chicago and studied at Columbia Teachers College in New York City and at the National Academy of Graphic Arts and Bookmaking in Leipzig, Germany. He began working as a book illustrator in 1927, and in 1929 published this first “wordless novel,” Gods’ Man. He eventually published five more such works, as well as illustrations for more than 100 other books, plus drawings, lithographs, watercolors, and children’s stories.

Madman’s Drum is his second wordless novel. It tells a dark story about a slaver who murders an African and steals his drum, which seems to …

Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences In Contemporary Black Arts, Katie Schadler

Honors Theses

“Imagined Afterlives: Anti-Black Medical Violences in Contemporary Black Arts” is a multi-genre exploration that studies the following works: Venus (1996) by Suzan Lori Parks, Get Out (2017) by Jordan Peele, and Dawn (1987) by Octavia Butler. I respectively study an experimental play, a psychological horror film, and a speculative novel to understand how Black creatives are depicting and responding to anti-Black violences, particularly medical violences. This work brings together Black art spanning from the late 1980s to 2017 as well as historical events and figures from the eighteenth century all the way to a not-so-distant future. While these works defamiliarize …

Into Me See: Visibility, Recognition, And The Need To Be Seen In Kazuo Ishiguro’S Never Let Me Go, Vicki L. Wine Carney

Anthós

While critical scholarship on Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go often emphasizes bioethics, transhumanism, and the commodification of life, this lens overlooks the novel’s profound engagement with the psychological necessity of visibility. This paper argues that the tragedy of the clones is fundamentally a crisis of recognition, where invisibility is not incidental but structurally produced to facilitate exploitation. Drawing on Caroline Levine’s concept of the "Form of Utility" and Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition, this study examines how systemic indoctrination and objectification deny the clones their innate humanity to soothe the conscience of the "normals." Furthermore, it analyzes the characters’ …

The Confidence-Man Goes To The Moving Panorama: Herman Melville’S Confidence Narrator And United States Imperialism, Bradley J. Lee

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

This thesis argues that Herman Melville fashioned his novel The Confidence-Man; His Masquerade (1857) after the moving panorama, a popular entertainment technology contemporary with the novel. More specifically, the thesis argues that the novel recalls Banvard’s Mississippi Panorama (1846). Using Jay Leyda’s The Melville Log and John Hanners’ record of Banvard’s performances, I establish beyond reasonable doubt the possibility that Melville saw this painting, or, at the very least, was aware of it, its content, and its social position. Tracing the novel’s engagement with this panorama reveals what seems at first to be its imperialist, Manifest Destinarian undertones. The novel’s …

The Evolution And Impact Of The Token Black Friend Trope In American Media, Sophie E. Rice, Kurt Milberger

Symposium of Student Scholars

Abstract

This research explores the history of the token Black friend trope in American media and how these misrepresentations continue to influence popular culture and negatively impact Black Americans. Historically, the token Black friend stereotype singles out Black characters to fill gaps in the plot through comedy, intelligence, or self-sacrifice, all while being excluded from the white protagonist’s larger narrative. The prevalence of this trope is apparent through several contemporary and classic examples, which are used to evaluate the effects of the token Black friend trope on American culture. To deconstruct these misrepresentations, this essay supplements these examples with scholarship …

Fraggin’ The Superhero Genre: Parody And Carnival In Dc’S Lobo, Ryan L. Johnson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the DC anti-hero Lobo as an ideal example of the constructive, creative power of parody and Bakhtinian carnival. Unlike Bakhtin’s assertion that carnival since the Renaissance has lost its spirit of play and become purely destructive, Lobo uses grotesque violence to create just as much as he destroys social norms. Ultimately, the mini-series under consideration provide a valuable tool for students to understand carnival, parody, and its power as criticism.

Book Review: Starry Field: A Memoir Of Lost History By Margaret Juhae Lee, Brook Mcclurg

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Without Them, There Is No You: The Role Of Personal Choice And History In Resisting Political Control, Heidi Turner

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In 2011, Korean-American journalist Suki Kim went undercover as an English teacher at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, working to teach her students while simultaneously recording everything she could about the workings of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). In 2014, her book Without You, There is No Us was published as a memoir, in part due to the inclusion of personal details considered less relevant to the story, thereby undercutting her journalistic credentials.

Here, using C. S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man as a theoretical framework for understanding oppressive regimes and the ways that they control …

Full Circle, Full Century: An Interview With Mitsuye Yamada, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth J. Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Thirteen: Teaching In Dangerous Times, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 13, Derick Truong

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

On Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art And Energy Of American Comics, Mike Classon Frangos

Criticism

Petrochecmical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics by Daniel Worden. The Ohio State University Press: Columbus, 2024. Pp. 171. $34.95 cloth.

“More Than What [They] Made Us To Be”: From Passing To Perception In Victorian And Modern Vampire Media, Lauren Sieberg

English (MA) Theses

Throughout Victorian Gothic horror fiction, vampires function as deviant figures, maneuvering within social confines of passing until their status quo-threatening identity is exposed. Of the popular vampires from this period, most gradually fail to maintain status as social insiders—as demonstrated with Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula or Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, who possess the temporary capacity to pass until their hidden monstrosity is revealed over time. Even if Gothic monsters are confined to a limited space and time far from society, this is still not enough; in accordance with the Victorian culture of morality policing by dominant groups, the vampiric Other …

“Re-Storying” Anne Shirley And The Adhd Child: A Crip Genealogy Of Anne Of Green Gables, Darian Aleyna Wilson

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis explores the contested nature of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), focusing on its cultural and historical constructions. While ADHD has been included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders since 1980, its legitimacy remains a subject of debate across medical, disability studies, and historical scholarship. Using Eli Clare’s critique of diagnosis as a tool rather than a fact, this project examines how ADHD is both pathologized and re-storied within societal and medical discourses. It highlights the tension between medical classifications and lived experiences of those diagnosed with ADHD, particularly in the context of girlhood.

The central …

Space And Subjectivity In The Emerging American West, Scott Hendry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The American West resists theoretical definition. As myth, ideal, region, contact zone, place, space, symbol, territory, home, assemblage, dream, and home, the West is continually changing. As a region, the West is not a closed space; it is an open, ongoing constellation of processes, an unfolding simultaneity of storied events or happenings. This dissertation, “Space and Subjectivity in the Emerging American West,” explores literature and cinema of the modern West. My project seeks to answer the question “What is the American West?” by examining the work of novelists, poets, filmmakers, cultural geographers, philosophers, and photographers who reimagine identity, locality, and …

Beyond Just The Negros’ Art: Langston Hughes And The Poetic Renewal Of Black Musical Tradition, Samuel Adewumi

All Theses

Where do we begin the study of Black music in America? Is there even a beginning to it? As a poet, how does Langston Hughes contribute to its continuance during the Harlem Renaissance? These are some of the questions that shape the trajectory of this research. In it, I set a precedent for African orature in future studies of Black music in America. Essentially, I trace the survival of African orature and Langston Hughes’s role in the sustenance and utility of its style and themes in the early 20th century. Through it, I argue that Hughes’s poetry serves not as …

Table Of Contents Vol 10(1) May 2025

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Vol 10(1), May 2025

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Controlling The Narrative: How The United Daughters Of The Confederacy Shaped Collective Memory Through Romance Novels, Karie L. Cobb

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While existing scholarship on the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) reveals the immense influence the organization wielded in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, I assert that their legacy has had a broader and more insidious reach than previously believed. Through close analysis of two foundational romance novelists’ works published during the rapid escalation of the genre’s popularity, I contend that the rhetoric of the UDC shaped generations of Southerners as demonstrated through repetitions and parallels of the Lost Cause ideology found in UDC publications and sponsored materials within romance novels written by white Southern women who came of age …

When Dystopia Becomes Political Criticism: Why Margaret Atwood Wrote The Handmaid's Tale, Celeste Deale

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

When Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, she didn’t think it’d still be relevant nearly forty years later. Yet, her use of historical imagination helped her create a novel that permeates time and space. This essay explores the production and reception of The Handmaid’s Tale, asking how the novel was both a product of the political and cultural context of its production in the 1980s and a critique of Atwood’s own contemporary moment. Atwood drew on biblical themes, Puritan history, and the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu to construct Gilead's social and political order and comment on American …

Queen's Pride: A Queer Reading Of Star Wars Character Padmé Amidala, Madeleine Loewen

Mythopoeic Society Seminar Proceedings

Ever since Luke Skywalker and Han Solo first appeared onscreen together in 1977, LGBTQ+ Star Wars fans have harnessed the power of queer reading to write themselves back into a galaxy far, far away, despite Lucasfilm’s long-term disapproval of such practices. Nonetheless, there exists little scholarly literature on queerness in the franchise, and even less on the potentially sapphic characters. Queen Padmé Amidala, first introduced onscreen in Episode I: The Phantom Menace, proves a surprising—but no less salient—queer figure in Star Wars. From her intimate relationships with her handmaidens, to her experimentation with gender performativity, to her quiet yet …

Is Sex Necessary? Or Why You Feel The Way You Do, James Thurber, E. B. White

Zea E-Books Collection

Contents: The Nature of the American Male : A Study of Pedestalism • How to Tell Love From Passion • A Discussion of Feminine Types • The Sexual Revolution : Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene • The Lilies-and-Bluebird Delusion • What Should Children Tell Parents? • Claustrophobia, or What Every Young Wife Should Know • Frigidity in Men • Answers to Hard Questions • Glossary

The year was 1929, the height of the Roaring Twenties and the eve of the Crash and Great Depression. A “Sexual Revolution” was in progress, and two writers from The …

Deconstructing "Proper Condom Use" As An Introduction To Literary Analysis, Julie Stewart, Thomas D. Clark, Marilyn Clark

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Popular culture figures in television, movies, comics, and video games have captured the imaginations of young people. The themes and characters of shows students watch regularly help shape their views on contemporary issues, especially as they compare their personal experiences with those portrayed on their favorite shows. This paper examines how "Proper Condom Use," an episode of South Park, one of the most popular shows among young viewers, can be used as a springboard for in-class discussion of tools for literary analysis through an exposition of this episode’s visual and aural humor, themes, characters, audience, and genre.

Our experience …

Shared Shame And Affect In Nella Larsen's Passing, Claudia Ludwick

All Theses

This project focuses on the negative affect of shame in Nella Larsen’s 1920s American novel, Passing. While shame is a universal feeling everyone feels, the project argues that Larsen’s two main characters, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, feel a specific type of invisible shame that pulls on them differently. For Irene, this shame is reactive and aggressive, but for Clare, this shame is passive and often ignored. The project details where and how the shame manifests for each character, particularly focusing on how shame can be seen visibly and invisibly in and on the body. Because no other character recognizes …