American Popular Culture Commons^™

"Hair Drama" On The Cover Of "Vibe" Magazine, Bertram D. Ashe

English Faculty Publications

This study consists of a cultural reading of the cover photograph of the June-July 1999 issue of Vibe magazine. It explores the relationship between Mase, an African-American male rap star, and the three anonymous African-American female models that surround him. The study interprets the cover through the long, straightened hair of the models, locating the models' hair in a historically-informed context of black hair theory and practice. The study argues that the models' presence on the cover, particularly their "bone straight and long" hair, "enhances" Mase in much the same way breast-augmented "trophy women" "enhance" their mates. Ultimately, the study …

The Psychology Of Uncertainty: (Re)Inscribing Indeterminacy In Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies, Adrienne Gosselin

English Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

On The Jazz Musician's Love/Hate Relationship With The Audience, Bertram D. Ashe

English Faculty Publications

An assistant professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, Bertram D. Ashe discusses how the intersection of an African American cool style with a black vernacular tradition and multi-racial audiences complicates audience-performer relations. In the vernacular tradition, performers play not "to" but "with" an audience, drawing on the call-response patterns that characterize the black aesthetic. Ashe notes that the vernacular tradition is not racial but cultural, and class can be as important a marker as race in determining audience expectations. Differing cultural backgrounds create, in Ashe's words, "competing realities," distinct sets of expectations that can shape a …

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 097 And 098, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 099 And 100, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Racial Etiquette And The (White) Plot Of Passing:(Re) Inscribing" Place" In John Stahl's Imitation Of Life, Adrienne Gosselin

English Faculty Publications

Examines the machinations of racial etiquette and ways in which John Stahl's 1934 film `Imitation of Life' enforces the politics of the white plot of passing and place. Passing plot as utilized by American white and black writers of the period; Antimiscegenation film.

Journal Of Pedagogy, Pluralism And Practice, Volume 1, Issue 1, Spring 1997 (Full Issue), Journal Staff

Journal of Pedagogy, Pluralism, and Practice

No abstract provided.

An Historical Look At The Negro Baseball Leagues: The Legend Of The Black Knights, Terry Pierce

McCabe Thesis Collection

This study hopes to fill in some of the gaps in the history of the Negro Leagues. More importantly though, this research is successful only if the readers can come away with a true sense of what the ballplayers of the era felt and why they played while enduring racism and humiliation.

This study was conducted to pull together the previously written facts and history of the Negro Leagues with obscure oral history and data found through interviews, videotapes, articles, and books from and about those who played and lived during the era.

Various Black Virginians As Told To Daryl Cumber Dance, Daryl Cumber Dance

English Faculty Publications

Shuckin' and Jivin': Folklore from Contemporary Black Americans, published in 1978, derived from fieldwork done far a doctoral dissertation at Virginia Commonwealth University by Daryl Cumber Dance (the only woman named Daryl I have heard of aside from Daryl Hannah). She gathered stories and verses from black Virginians in colleges, senior citizens' centers, and a penitentiary. Though she doesn't bring to the party an editorial touch as enlivening as Zora Neale Hurston's, she has an ear and-unlike far, far too many assiduous collectors of folktales - knows how to capture vocal rhythms on a page.

Sacagawea: A Uniquely American Legend, Donna Jean Kessler

Humanities & Communication - Daytona Beach

In an examination of American texts produced from 1804 to 1989, this dissertation delineates that Sacagawea became a legendary figure because she has exemplified critical elements of narrative traditions recounting the nation's sacred beginnings. As a plethora of works have portrayed Sacagawea as the Indian princess of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, she became an important emblem of manifest destiny. Flexible within its mythic framework, the Sacagawea legend has additionally enabled proponents to confront timely cultural issues, such as women suffrage, taboos against miscegenation, and modern feminism.

Chapter one provides a review of American frontier myths, concepts of sacred mission …

"Effects Of Tv On Black Children", Portland State University, Patrick Grant, Linda Torrence

Special Collections: Oregon Public Speakers

The speakers in this forum discussion include Dr. Patrick Grant (Portland Public Schools), Linda Torrence (Staff Consultant, Red Cross), and community members in the audience. They discuss, among other subjects, the portrayal of Black men, women, and families in film and television, the representation of Blacks in public-facing and administrative positions in broadcasting, and discrimination problems faced by Blacks and women attempting to obtain employment in the mass media.

The four sessions of the "Minority and the Media" workshop explore in-depth the relationship of minorities to the media through discussion of its background, effectiveness, opportunities, impact, and strategies for improvement. …

Louis Francis Sockalexis : The Life-Story Of A Penobscot Indian, Trina Wellman

Maine Collection

Louis Francis Sockalexis : The Life-Story of a Penobscot Indian

by Trina Wellman, Bangor, Maine, 1975

Published by the Department of Indian Affairs, State House, Augusta, Maine 04333

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 080 And 081, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

America's First Negro Poet: The Complete Works Of Jupiter Hammon Of Long Island, Jupiter Hammon, Stanley Austin Ransom Jr, Oscar Wegelin, Vernon Loggins

Electronic Texts in American Studies

Introduction by Stanley Austin Ransom, Jr.

Biographical Sketch of Jupiter Hammon by Oscar Wegelin

Critical Analysis of the Works of Jupiter Hammon by Vernon Loggins

THE POETRY OF JUPITER HAMMON

An Evening Thought. Salvation by Christ, With Penetential Cries

An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatly

A Poem for Children, With Thoughts on Death

A Dialogue Entitled, "The Kind Master and the Dutiful Servant"

THE PROSE OF JUPITER HAMMON

A Winter Piece

An Evening's Improvement

An Address to the Negroes of the State of New York

Bibliography of the Works of Jupiter Hammon

The Rhetorical Effectiveness Of Black Like Me, Hugh Rank

English Faculty Publications

In 1959, John Howard Griffin, a white Southern novelist, disguised himself as a Negro and traveled through the South to experience "what it is like to be a Negro in a land where we keep the Negro down." The brief narrative account of this experience is recorded in Black Like Me, a book which wom the Saturday Review's Anisfield-Wolf award in 1962 for its contribution toward race relations. In brief, why is Black Like Me rhetorically effective?

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 077 And 078, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 047 And 048, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 023 And 024, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 025 And 026, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 002 And 003, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

This is a detail from the Cummings Guest House Register. You can see a digital version of the full text HERE.

Cummings Guest House Register Pages 004 And 005, Usm African American Collection

We Exist Series 4: Cummings Guest House Register Excerpts

No abstract provided.

Cabinet Photograph Of Millie [And] Christine, "The Two Headed Nightingale," N.D., Ollivier

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Cabinet card is 6.5in (16.5cm) tall and 4.5in (11cm) wide. Millie and Christine are photographed in full portrait, each in fine clothes and shoes, each grasping the curtains that frame them in the photographer's studio. Christine, presumably the figure on the right, hold a fan in her right hand.

Glenn Springs, So. Ca. : Its Location, Discovery, History, Personal Sketches Of Its Habitues, What It Will Cure, &C., Trimmier's Printing Office And Book Store, Simpson & Simpson

Local History

From Introduction:

"[....][Y]ou will find this an interesting little volume, containing a romance of the discovery of Glenn Springs in the time of the Indians; its re-discovery by the white man, and its history, with personal sketches of some of South Carolina's distinguished men, who were constant visitors at this fountain of health; and other description of Glenn Springs as a Summer Resort and accounts of the wonderful results from the use of this water."

Narrative Of My Captivity Among The Sioux Indians, Fanny Kelly

Electronic Texts in American Studies

THE summer of 1864 marked a period of unusual peril to the daring pioneers seeking homes in the far ·West. Following upon the horrible massacres in Minnesota in 1862, and the subsequent chastisements inflicted by the expeditions under Generals Sully and Sibley in 1863, whereby the Indians were driven from the then western borders of civilization, in Iowa, Minnesota, and the white settlements of Dakota, in the Missouri Valley, the great emigrant trails to Idaho and Montann became the scene of fresh outrages; and, from the wild, almost inaccessible nature of the country, pursuit and punishment were impossible.

I was …

Carte-De-Visite Photograph: "2 Headed Girl, Millie Crissie," No Date., J. H. Fitzgibbon

Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Manuscript and Ephemera Collection

Conjoined twins Millie and Christine McKoy in full portrait. Date of photograph unknown (likely ca. 1870, subjects died 1912).