American Popular Culture Commons^™

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Spirituality Among Black Americans: A Hierarchical Classification Of The Family Strengths Model, Genese Clark

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

There is a need for disaggregate data pertaining to the perceived strengths of Black American families. This study identified which traits are salient and dominant among African-American families according to the Family Strengths Model. Utilizing this model, a mixed methods study was conducted among Black Americans living in Connecticut who identify with belonging to a family (N=59) to investigate the importance of six family strength domains. Results found the hierarchical rank (from most important to least important) to be commitment, spirituality/ spiritual wellbeing, appreciation and affection, positive communication, time together, and the ability to manage stress and crisis effectively. Additionally, …

Collins, Gary & Tammy Pickering (Fa 346), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 346. Paper titled "Hog Killing in Western Kentucky" in which Gary Collins and Tammie Pickering discuss the cultural significance of farm-raising hogs and the foodways traditions that result from the slaughtering process. Using slides and interviews, Collins and Pickering document a hog killing that took place in January 1986 on a farm in Trigg County, Kentucky.

Pickering, Tammie & Gary Collins (Fa 348), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 348. Student paper titled “Trees in Folk Crafts” in which Tammie Pickering and Gary Collins explore the connection between trees and traditional folkways. Paper details the medicinal properties of sassafras tea, which is made from tree roots, the production of maple syrup, and the expressive crafts of wood-carving and carpentry. Data collected from three working-class residents of Caldwell County. Paper also includes field journals, recorded interviews, and transcripts.

Hensley, Jennifer Lynn (Fa 351), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 351. Paper titled "The Music Barn" in which Lynn Hensley discusses the founding of The Music Barn, a local music venue in Warren County, Kentucky. Hensley's main informant is Joe Marshall, a country music artist, community organizer, and owner of The Music Barn.

Fox, Randy (Fa 350), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

FFinding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 350. Paper titled "Fiddle About: Ed Carnes-Contest Fiddler" in which Randy Fox charts the history of fiddle playing and the rise of "contest fiddling" during the traditional music revival in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Fox's main informant is Ed Carnes, an old-time fiddler who won the Kentucky State Fiddle Championship in 1981. Carnes details his beginnings as a fiddler, the recording of his fiddle-tunes album, and his travels across the country to different fiddling contests.

Explaining Theory-Guided Research Through The Big Bang Theory, Brittnie Peck, Scott Christen, Stephanie Kelly

Discourse: The Journal of the SCASD

The Big Bang Theory is a comedy aired on CBS that features the lives of a group of scientists. Like many people, the characters in this show find it difficult to avoid taking their work home with them. Thus, most episodes are rich with research terminology and demonstrations. This paper details an activity that provides a fun means of introducing students to the role of theory in guiding research through the use of The Big Bang Theory.

“No But”—Understanding Sally Jenkins’ Friction With Feminism, Steven Master, Taylor Joy Mitchell

Publications

In a conversation years ago with the late, legendary college basketball coach Pat Summitt, Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins asked Summitt if she was a feminist (“To ‘Sum It Up”’). It seemed an odd question, considering Summitt’s unparalleled role in the rise of women’s athletics. Yet, for sports journalism scholars, Jenkins’ question was compelling for another reason. What if Summitt had responded by asking, “Are you?” Much like Summitt, Jenkins has achieved success in an overwhelmingly male-dominated profession, and she has moved the needle forward for women in sports and, by extension, for women in general. Her visibility allows …

Mybarrio: Emigdio Vasquez And Chicana/O Identity In Orange County, Natalie Lawler, Denise Johnson, Marcus Herse, Jessica Bocinski, Manon Wogahn

Exhibition Catalogs

"Emigdio Vasquez created artwork that challenged Orange County’s more prominent narrative of wealthy beachside neighborhoods. He painted the brown bodies and brown histories that defined our earliest communities and economy... Vasquez produced much of the local art history that Orange County should be known for and should protect. It is with this perspective that Chapman University is proud to present the exhibition, My Barrio: Emigdio Vasquez and Chicana/o Identity in Orange County, in conjunction with the Getty Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative. We hope to initiate discourse not only about Vasquez’s prolific career, but also about the larger political …

Sex Trafficking Survivor, Pro-Life Advocate, Darlene Pawlik

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

I was conceived by rape. I was mentally, physically and sexually abused as a child. I endured four years of juvenile sex trafficking. These experiences shaped my views on abortion and pro-life issues. Drawing from my personal experience and the experiences of others, as well as referring to empirical evidence, I set forth the position that children conceived through sexual violence are no less deserving of protection than those conceived in loving relationships. Preserving the health and dignity of sexual abuse survivors is important and supportive help is needed.

Introducing The Open Online Newspaper Initiative, Jessica Dussault, Laura Weakly, Karin Dalziel, Jeremy Echols, Karen Estlund, Andrew Gearhart, Sheila Rabun, Greg Tunink

Digital Initiatives and Special Collections

The Open Online Newspaper Initiative (Open ONI) is an open source collaboration whose goal is to lower the entrance bar for libraries, archives, historical societies, and other cultural heritage institutions to display digital newspaper content. Open ONI was formed in response to a need for free, easily deployed, flexible, plug-and-play software that is useful for collections large and small, local and national.

Black Models Matter: Challenging The Racism Of Aesthetics And The Facade Of Inclusion In The Fashion Industry, Scarlett L. Newman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The global fashion market is expanding every day, but often, the global fashion runways do not reflect that reality. On average, black models make up for six percent of models used on the runway during the fashion month calendar. This small percentage is also mirrored in advertisements and editorials featured in popular fashion magazines. In the 1970s, black models were met with great opportunities, and that success trickled down into the 1980s and the 1990s. As the 90s came to a close, top designers opted for an aesthetic that ultimately excluded models of color, but black models beared the brunt …

Foreign-Born Artists Making “American” Pictures: The Immigrant Experience And The Art Of The United States, 1819–1893, Whitney Thompson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Despite the fact that historians centralize immigration as a defining social phenomenon of the nineteenth century, art historians maintain nationalistic parameters that suppress artists’ immigration and assimilation experiences. While scholars have foregrounded the transatlantic migration of artists who entered during the postbellum Great Wave (1881-1920) and the twentieth century, immigration in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century has been largely neglected, a striking omission given that roughly six million people arrived to the United States between 1820 and 1865. To reconcile this gap, this dissertation examines artists who were part of the major antebellum- and Civil War-era migration streams …

She Would Not Be Silenced: Mae West's Struggle Against Censorship, Charlotte N. Toledo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Mae West, an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age, used her fame on stage, in films, and on the radio to offer social commentary on relationships between men and women in society. Her irreverent style of addressing issues of female sexuality and power certainly caught peoples attention and made them think about these issues in new ways. At the same time, her racy delivery made her a target of stage, film, and radio censorship. She refused to be silenced and continually pushed against restrictions to deliver he message of empowerment in her trademark provocative manner.

Girls Are Us: A Collection Of Oral Histories From The Jmu Community, Anne M. Sherman

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

On a campus where women make up a majority of the student population, it is especially important that female voices are heard and given a platform on which they can control their own narrative. I wanted to give those female-identifying voices that platform. I conducted a series of interviews to examine how college-aged female-identifying students feel about their identity and how they construct that identity within the climate of the JMU community. I was particularly interested in the intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, class, sexual preference, and ability. I asked each person to share their stories of times when they …

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …

Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek)

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the feminist significance of Anya Seton’s historical novels, My Theodosia (1941), Katherine (1954), and The Winthrop Woman (1958). The two main goals of this project are to 1.) identify and explain the reasons why Seton’s historical novels have not received the scholarly attention they are due, and 2.) to call attention to the ways in which My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman offer important feminist interventions to patriarchal social order. Ultimately, I argue that My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman deserve more scholarly attention because they are significant contributions to women’s …

Powell, Joseph, B. 1949 (Fa 1020), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1020. Folk studies student project titled: “Christmas Customs in My Family,” which includes descriptions and survey sheets of Christmas practices in Grayson County, Kentucky. Survey sheets include brief descriptions of customs, stories, and beliefs, informant’s name, and motif index number.

Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …

Narratives Of Miami In Dexter And Burn Notice, Myles Mcnutt

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

In popular discourse around television, a series’ relationship with place is often marked through the suggestion its setting is “like a character in the show”, but this article argues against adopting this as a framework for analyzing television’s relationship with space and place. It articulates the relationship between this discourse of “spatial capital” and hierarchies of cultural capital within the television industry, limiting the types of series that are deemed to warrant closer investigation regarding issues of space and place and lacking nuanced engagement with place’s relationship with television narrative in particular. After breaking down the logic under which these …

Lyle, Beth (Fa 1004), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1004. Paper written by Beth Lyle titled “Class Night: A Lasting Tradition at Allen County-Scottsville High School.” Class night was an annual event held in May in which members of the senior class were formally presented to the community, similar to a debutante or coming out ball.

Sing A New Song To The City: Ambient Rhetoric And Urban Hymns, Adam J. Copeland

Faculty Publications

Hymns are a key component of how Christians express their faith. But many of these hymns do represent the rhythms and sensibilities of an older and largely agrarian world. Using the concept of “ambient rhetoric,” Adam Copeland suggests that it is time for other hymns that represent the ethos of daily life in an increasingly urbanized world, hymns that will speak to the realities of urban culture.

A Long Strange Trip Through The Evolution Of Fan Production, Fan-Branding, And Historical Representation In The Grateful Dead Online Archive, Anna Richardson

Masters Theses

This study explores how a digital music archive tells the story and contributes to the public memory of cult bands. Utilizing the Grateful Dead Archive Online (GDAO) as the primary data source, the researcher obtained a population of 26,835 items and categorized them by the production method of fan or band, item type, era, and logo. Content analysis illustrated themes within the archive in relation to the fannish production and activity within the fandom of the Grateful Dead. The span of this specific fandom spreads across five decades and sheds light onto the ways in which the fandom surrounding cult …

The Reflection And Reification Of Racialized Language In Popular Media, Kelly E. Wright

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

This work highlights specific lexical items that have become racialized in specific contextual applications and tests how these words are cognitively processed. This work presents the results of a visual world (Huettig et al 2011) eye-tracking study designed to determine the perception and application of racialized (Coates 2011) adjectives. To objectively select the racialized adjectives used, I developed a corpus comprised of popular media sources, designed specifically to suit my research question. I collected publications from digital media sources such as Sports Illustrated, USA Today, and Fortune by scraping articles featuring specific search terms from their websites. This experiment seeks …

Negotiating Desire: Resisting, Reimagining And Reinscribing Normalized Sexuality And Gender In Fan Fiction, Charity A. Fowler

Theses and Dissertations

Fan studies has examined how fan fiction resists heteronormativity by challenging depictions of gender and sexuality, but to date, this inquiry has focused disproportionately on slash, to the exclusion of other genres of fan fiction. Additionally, scholars disagree about slash’s subversive effects by setting up a seemingly stable dichotomy—subversive vs. misogynistic—where one does not necessarily exist.

In this project, I examine multiple genres of fan fiction—namely, slash arising from bromances; femslash from female friendships; incestuous fan fiction from dysfunctional familial relationships; and polyamorous fics. I chose fics from four televisions shows—NBC’s Revolution, MTV’s Teen Wolf, the CW’s The …

The Cultural Translation Of Ginsberg's Howl In Turkey, Erik Mortenson

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Cultural Translation of Ginsberg's Howl in Turkey" Erik Mortenson examines three Turkish translations of Allen Ginsberg's poem Howl in order to explore the ways in which Ginsberg's poem becomes redeployed in new cultural contexts. Orhan Duru and Ferit Edgü's 1976 translation presents a more politicized Ginsberg that draws on his anti-establishment credentials as a social activist. This comes as little surprise, since in pre-1980 coup Turkey rebellion was thought in purely political terms of right verses left. Hakan Arslan's 1991 update provides a less political and more familiar Ginsberg, in keeping with a society that left …

A Bounded Affinity Theory Of Religion And The Paranormal, Joseph O. Baker, Christoper Bader, F. Carson Mencken

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

We outline a theory of bounded affinity between religious experiences and beliefs and paranormalism, which emphasizes that religious and paranormal experiences and beliefs share inherent physiological, psychological, and ontological similarities. Despite these parallels, organized religious groups typically delineate a narrow subset of experiences and explanatory frames as acceptable and True, banishing others as either false or demonic. Accordingly, the theory provides a revised definition of the “paranormal” as beliefs and experiences explicitly rejected by science and organized religions. To demonstrate the utility of the theory, we show that, after controlling for levels of conventional religious practice, there is a strong, …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

What’S In A Name?: The Evolution Of The Female Identity In Shalimar The Clown, Jessica Barksdale

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.

English Grammar: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Wendy Delk

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

No abstract provided.