American Popular Culture Commons^™

Afterword: Why Civil War Matters, Why This Book Matters, Marc Dipaolo

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

Afterword by Marc DiPaolo

Originally published in "Marvel Comics' Civil War and the Age of Terror: Critical Essays on the Comic Saga" ed. by Kevin Michael Scott.

To see more or purchase works by Marc DiPaolo, visit his Amazon page here: https://www.amazon.com/Marc-DiPaolo/e/B004LV7W6Y%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Culture On The Move: Depression-Era Documentary And Migrant California, Joseph Entin

Criticism

California on the Breadlines: Dorothea Lange, Paul Taylor, and the Making of a New Deal Narrative by Jan Goggans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010. Pp. 368. $40.00 cloth.

Woody Guthrie, America's Merry Prankster, Kristin Lems

Faculty Publications

A “merry prankster” is a colorful person, real or legendary, who pokes fun at authority and the rich, powerful, and arrogant. The merry prankster appears small and powerless, but manages to outwit his opponents, often summing up the situation with witty one-liners — signal examples from medieval history and folklore are Mullah Nasreddin and Till Eugenspiel. In many ways, Woody Guthrie is an American merry prankster. Small in stature but large of intelligence, he used his wits, musical creativity, and people skills to defend the poor against the rich and powerful. He consistently made enemies of the privileged and those …

Law Library Blog (July 2015): Legal Beagle's Blog Archive, Roger Williams University School Of Law

Law Library Newsletters/Blog

No abstract provided.

Cooking And Eating The Other: Contemporary Representations Of Domestic Workers In Popular Media, Ashley Mcfarland

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

The mass media governs relations among social groups, manufactures political sentiment and shapes opinions on economic relations between individuals to reproduce a self-perpetuating system of power for a minute elite. The construction and organized distribution of manipulated cultural images that communicate embellished or patently false messages about a social group is central to the success of a capitalist economic system. This thesis reveals how media production negatively influences public perception of housework and the women who perform the labor and thwarts efforts to obtain and enforce legislation to protect native and immigrant domestic workers. Using contemporary representations from The Help …

Ruin Porn And Urban Representation In Photography: The Aesthetic And Politics Of Appropriation In "The Ruins Of Detroit", Elyse Remenapp

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project examines the politics of representation in The Ruins of Detroit, a book of photography by Yves Marchand and Romaine Meffre in order to understand Detroit as a privileged site of ruins photography, critically referred to as ruin porn. Examining the book as a representation of Detroit's decay reveals an implicit power dynamic which neglects Detroit's complex history and the lived experience of its residents. Paying particular attention to the dialectic of race and labor under capitalism, this project traces the urban history of Detroit in order to contextualize and reframe the state of ruin presented in the …

Fame Gone Wild (2015: An Era Of Self-Invention), Stephanie E. Kang

Graduate School of Art Theses

Entertainment has become one of the fueling fires of society. In today’s world of nonstop broadcasting and streaming, many begrudgingly trudge through their 9 to 5’s only to live for their few post-work hours of leisure, which have been reserved for this week’s latest items on the viewing queue. Netflix and Hulu have become the opium of the masses. Consequently, this obsession with constant entertainment has now morphed into a shared yearning for the people that are watched and followed religiously through the screen – the celebrities. In this cultural moment, the concept of fame has become a vital element …

"I'M Rich Bitch:" Black Class Performance And The New Nouveau Riche, Nykia Hannah

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

With its multitude of sub-genres, larger than life personalities, and fifteen minutes of fame offerings, reality television has quickly changed the face and economics of television culture. This research examines the disruption of traditional roles of race and class in reality television. Interdisciplinary in content and methodology, this study uses Real Housewives of Atlanta to identify the ways in which various representations of blackness challenge hegemonic understandings of what it means to be black in the United States. Focusing on the fluidity of identity, "I'm Rich Bitch" highlights the role that popular culture plays in redetermining populist perceptions of blackness.

Occupy The Future: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Dystopian Film And The Occupy Movement, Justin J. Grandinetti

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The anarchic Occupy Wall Street protests, which began in 2011, had an immediate impact on politics and the global lexicon. By introducing the terms “the one percent” and “the 99%” into the public sphere, Occupy was able to draw attention to growing global income inequality. This revolutionary spirit was not lost on popular culture, as a number of films that followed the protests were linked to Occupy. The Hunger Games (2012), The Dark Knight Rises (2012), and Elysium (2013) represent films that were not only extremely successful in the box office, but were also connected to the Occupy Movement because …

The “Fatty” Arbuckle Scandal, Will Hays, And Negotiated Morality In 1920s America, Aaron T. Whitehead

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

In the autumn of 1921, silent film comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was arrested for the rape and murder of a model and actress named Virginia Rappé. The ensuing scandal created a firestorm of controversy not just around Arbuckle but the entire motion picture industry. Religious and moral reformers seized upon the scandal to decry the decline of “traditional” moral values taking place throughout American society in the aftermath of World War I. The scandal created a common objective for an anti-film coalition representing diverse social and religious groups, all dedicated to bringing about change in the motion picture industry through …

The Experiences Of African-Born Women Faculty And Administrators At Colleges And Universities In The United States, Oyibo H. Afoaku

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to document the experiences of African-born women faculty and administrators at colleges and universities in the United States. The study explored the factors that motivated African-born women to immigrate to and extend their stay in the United States beyond completion of their education; factors they perceive as constraint on their quest for self-empowerment and identity as foreign students, college instructors, and/or administrators, and parents; and factors that have enabled them to adapt to their host culture and achieve their educational and professional goals even though they had to contend with multiple challenges associated with …

From Maus To Magneto: Exploring Holocaust Representation In Comic Books And Graphic Novels, Rachel Elizabeth Mandel

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The following Capstone project documents my research into the topic of Holocaust representation in comic books and graphic novels. Comics are an oft-overlooked medium in academic circles, so there is a distinct lack of scholarly works examining comics outside the fields of pop culture studies or comics art studies. As a result, outside of works like Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the phenomenon of Holocaust representation in comics is relatively uncategorized and unexamined. It was my intention in this project to demonstrate that comics are a legitimate medium for depicting and analyzing the Holocaust both as a historical event and through …

Raymond E. Jackson And Segregation In The American Federation Of Musicians, 1900-1944, Lance Boos

History Theses

In 1944, the American Federation of Musicians abolished the practice of subsidiary local chapters, granting autonomous charters to the twelve chapters of African American musicians who were bound to a white parent chapter in their respective cities. While most black musicians in the AFM were organized in “separate but equal” chapters, those under subsidiary status were obligated to pay dues to the white local but generally had no access to union offices, voting rights in union elections, control over booking of and payment for jobs, or representation at the national convention. This change was prompted by years of advocacy by …

I Want To Be In That Number: A Song Profile Of "When The Saints Go Marching In", Gregory H. Jacks

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

“When the Saints Go Marching In” has never been subject to a sustained study of its origins, disseminations, and current manifestations. A study like this, focused on a song’s perceptions via various viewpoints through time, is typically referred to as a song profile; a form of reception history specifically concentrated on a single musical composition. “When the Saints Go Marching In,” also known as “Saints” or “The Saints,” is an African-American spiritual typically listed as a traditional in most songbooks without a composer.[1] I have laid out this paper into four sections, one for each period of the song’s …

The Impact Of The Civil Rights Movement On The Advertising Industry, Alexandra B. Bosarge

Honors Theses

Racism has a history in the United States of America that is also manifested in popular culture. Advertising is included in this idea of popular culture. This thesis focused on the advertising industry and the attempt of that industry to use African Americans to sell products to people. The aim of this study was to determine whether or not the Civil Rights Movement affected the way the advertising industry used images of African Americans for marketing purposes. A sample of advertisements was obtained from a newspaper and magazines in order to further analyze the hypothesis. This study contributes to the …

Under The Shadow Of The Awful Gallows-Tree: The Murder Trials Of Thomas Dula And Ann Melton As A Case Study In Gender And Power In Reconstruction Era Western North Carolina, Heather L. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a micro-history that explores everyday life on a small scale by tracing the common, if elusive lives of Thomas Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster, and the communities they lived in, to explore the culture in which they lived—and died. Reactions to the murder unleashed an outpouring of discourse embedded in broader, national debates concerning gender roles. The dominant cultural theme that emerged from the murder trials as reflected in middle-class newspapers maintained that true women did not kill and real men acted as gentlemen and defenders of women’s honor. The project mines a wealth of primary source …

Big Game Cats And Defining Football’S Value: College Football’S Popularity, Controversies, And Expansion, Matthew T. Himel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis directly approaches intercollegiate football from a cultural perspective. The football’s popularity exploded during the Twentieth-Century. Television, merchandizing, and a national sporting culture are associated with this development. However, controversies often muddied the waters of that popularity. Football’s brutality, athletic scholarships, and controversies within athletics departments overshadowed the immense popularity of intercollegiate football. During the Twenty-First Century, several universities started new football programs. Two of which being Georgia State University and Southeastern Louisiana University. Given the context balancing popularity and controversy, the administrators demonstrated how the image of intercollegiate football has changed over the course of the past century. …

"Cause I'M Young And I'M Black And My Hat's Real Low": Race, Hip-Hop, And Transformations In The Nba During The Late 1990s And Early 2000s, Christine Debord

Dissertations, Theses and Capstone Projects (Full IR Collection)

Race and racial tensions have long been pressing concerns in professional athletics in the United States. Issues of race have been of particular importance to the National Basketball Association (NBA) since African Americans compromise 77 percent of the league's players. As such, this work examines the ways in which the media and the NBA responded to and managed the new generation of black players during the late 1990s and early 2000s while marketing to primarily white audiences. This time period is important in that it was unapologetically coined the 'thug era' by sports media and basketball fans alike, and the …

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's...Cultural Anxiety? Using Detective Comics' Three Biggest Heroes To Identify And Explore Cultural Anxieties As Depicted Through Television, Jonathan Vander Lugt

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

This collection of essays uses the mythic nature of superheroes to examine and discuss specific cultural anxieties as they’re navigated and alleviated in superhero television texts. First, I examine the way that anxiety over feminism and the women’s rights movement manifested itself in Wonder Woman, the 70s television series starring Lynda Carter. Next, I use Smallville and its depictions of a teenaged Superman to explore its handling of anxieties over the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Finally, I performed a content analysis of six different series of Batman cartoons to examine the way they respond to national concerns over …

The Movie Mogul, Moses And Muslims: Islamic Elements In Cecil B. Demille’S The Ten Commandments (1956), Michael D. Calabria Ofm

Journal of Religion & Film

Cecil B. DeMille’s 1956 film, The Ten Commandments, has come to define the genre of the biblical epic. It has earned a permanent place in American culture due to its annual airing on television during the Easter and Passover holidays. Most viewers are unaware, however, that DeMille had sought to make a film that would appeal to Jews, Christians and Muslims at a time when their common Abrahamic ancestry had yet to be articulated, and interreligious dialogue was all but unheard of. To this end, Henry Noerdlinger, DeMille’s researcher for the film, consulted the Qur’an, and screenwriters incorporated Islamic …

The Binding Of Abraham: Inverting The Akedah In Fail-Safe And Wargames, Hunter B. Dukes

Journal of Religion & Film

This article draws upon Søren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling and Jacques Derrida's The Gift of Death to trace how two exemplars of atomic bomb cinema reinterpret the Binding of Isaac (Akedah). Released during the twin peaks of Cold War tension, Fail-Safe (1964) and WarGames (1983) invert the Akedah of Genesis 22. In both films, an act of sacrificial patricide accompanies or replaces the sacrifice of an Isaac-like son. When viewed in the context of Cold War cultural politics—events such as Norman Morrison’s Abrahamic self-immolation and Kent State’s rejection of George Segal’s sacrificial memorial— the inverted Akedah emerges as …

The Algorithmic Self, Frank A. Pasquale

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Colonels, Hillbillies And Fightin’: Twentieth-Century Kentucky In The National Imagination, Anthony Harkins

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Live/Archive: Occupy Mla, Kathi Inman Berens

English Faculty Publications and Presentations

Stories set in Twitter and other social media platforms are live, improvisational and subject to decay as the hashtag organizing the conversation loses currency once the happening or "netprov" is over. This case study of Occupy MLA examines the real-world consequences of a netprov that invited participation from real-world participants using their personal Twitter handles by "catfishing": in this case, posing as adjuncts who gave voice to very real working conditions.

“Ab-Soul’S Outro,” “Hiiipower,” And The Vernacular: Kendrick Lamar’S Rap As Literature, Tyler S. Bunzey

Senior Honors Theses

Kendrick Lamar’s “Ab-Soul’s Outro” and “HiiiPower” employ complex patterns of Signifyin(g), testifyin’, and other classical African-American literary tropes in order to construct a nuanced style. Lamar creates a double-voiced text not only within his narrative, but also within the form itself. Lamar plays on rap's unique status in African-American literature as an oral text; it is an extension of the vernacular. Through this oral text, Lamar decentralizes the Eurocentric focus of classical interpretation and qualification of literature to a new Afrocentric perspective that privileges the oral text. These raps are complex, wrapped up in their current context along with a …

Ecotones, Chas Schroeder

CGU MFA Theses

My work explores the intersection of pastoral, urban and idiosyncratic visions. It may reveal the aesthetic and emotional possibilities inherent in the broad-ranging subjects I employ: game animals, advertising, colonialism, love, numerals, textiles, drugs, abstraction, competitive sports, displacement, architecture, gender-bending, civil-rights movements, transgressive literature, social media, indigenous peoples, graphic design, glamour, fashion, hip-hop, rock-n-roll, graffiti, cowboy, exhibitionism and other niche cultures in America. Pieces emerge intuitively via personal narrative and lodged memories as guides. The disjunctive compositions are a breed of contemporary formalism mated with abstraction.

Kentucky Folklife Festivals - Files (Fa 746), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Collection 746. This collection contains documentation of various folklife related festivals held within the state of Kentucky that were documented by folklorist Bob Gates. the ones documented in this collection include the Discovery Festival in Mt. Vernon, the International Festival in Bowling Green, the River Folk Arts Festival in Louisville, “A Day in the Country” Festival, the Horse Cave Heritage Festival in Horse Cave, the Ganesha Festival in Louisville, and the Watermelon Festival in Tompkinsville. There are also slides in Folder 6 that document the Michigan Folklife Festival.

Kentucky Folklife Program - Subject Research Files (Fa 747), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Collection FA 747. This collection contains materials relating to a wide array of folklife subjects collected by folklorist Bob Gates for the Kentucky Folklife Program. The majority of the subjects include ethnic or cultural groups, but there is also various information relating to specific arts or traditions. The materials within the folders are mostly articles or copies of articles. Most folders contain information that relates directly to Kentucky, but some are about the topic more in general terms. Files are arranged by subject.

Politics Of Bob Dylan, Jeff Taylor

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

Bob Dylan’s political worldview has remained essentially the same over six different decades and numerous private and public transformations. Whether he appeared as a New Left protest icon, rock music and Counterculture innovator, rural family man, Christian associated with the Jesus People, or cantankerous social critic distrustful of worldly leaders, Dylan’s notions of freedom and justice, power and sin, have tied all of these roles together.

More Than Just An Image: Pop Culture Representations Of Latinxs And The Immigration Debate, Vanessa Reyes

Eddie Mabry Diversity Award

No abstract provided.