American Popular Culture Commons^™

"A Most Disgraceful, Sordid,Disreputable, Drunken Brawl": Paul Cadmus And The Politics Of Queerness In The Early Twentieth Century, Samuel W D Walburn

The Purdue Historian

This paper examines the work of Paul Cadmus from 1930 to 1948. Over the span of nearly three decades, Cadmus's art evolved from covert depictions of queer culture to an explicit depiction of the politics of queerness in immediate postwar America. Cadmus’s legacy is unique because his art documents the shifting conceptualizations of gender and sexuality in the first half of the twentieth century. He is also notable because he so masterfully maneuvered the liminal space between private and public, painting subversive images immersed in covert queerness early in his career and later using queer art as a tool of …

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.

A Lesson On Hatred From The Annals Of Logan County History, Aaron Barlow

Publications and Research

Stories of lynchings, events of the American past, remain alive in all of us whose ancestors were involved, be it as victims, perpetrators, or even law officers who, for one reason or another, stood aside. We can’t push aside or ignore that history any more than we can bury the other terrible legacies of slavery.

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.

The Anti-Black Hero: Black Masculinity Media Representation As Seen In Netflix Series Luke Cage And Fox Series Empire, Meya Joyell Hemphill

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

The reoccurrence of the Black Brute, the Thug, and the modern day Coon stereotypical images on current television narrowly defines Black masculinity as a monolithic experience. Young Black boys, are often unable to see themselves as those who are portrayed on television. The images they see on screen are sometimes not realistic. Unfortunately, for some young Black boys, these stereotypical images may heavily influence their own behavior. Society often criminalizes and demonizes young Black men as angry, violent, and dangerous. They pose as a supposed threat to society and are thought to be even more problematic as they age. Currently, …

[Review Of] Cuban Underground Hip Hop: Black Thoughts, Black Revolution, Black Modernity, Anne Fountain

Faculty Publications

[Review of] Cuba - Cuban Underground Hip Hop: Black Thoughts, Black Revolution, Black Modernity. By Tanya L. Saunders . Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. Pp. 390. $90.00 cloth; $29.95 paper.

Pop Goes La Cultura: American Pop Culture’S Perpetuation Of Latino Paradigms And Stereotypes, Adrian E. Quinones Rivas, Berlinda Saenz

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This article examines the perpetuation of Latino stereotypes and paradigms within American Pop Culture. Pop culture venues such as film, television, and the web platform YouTube were used as a basis for analysis. In addition, a few television primetime shows and movies are referenced, including The George Lopez Show, Jane the Virgin, Gilmore Girls, Scarface, and Mi Vida Loca (my crazy life), and critically analyzed as evidence of Latino subordination. Latino Americans face many challenges including being stereotyped as uneducated, poverty-stricken, lazy, aloof, and obtaining low end jobs such as janitors, housemaids, and gardeners. These negative depictions have created an …

A Heads Up On Kathy Griffin's Trump Head Depiction, Marleen S. Barr

Publications and Research

This essay is a feminist analysis of the controversy involving Kathy Griffin's depiction of Trump's head.

Acts Of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms On/Through The Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an abolitionist feminist study of the role of liberalism in the twenty-first century political economy. It takes as its object New York City bourgeois cultural productions (in particular Broadway theatre and the New York Times) from approximately 1984 to 2009. It offers insights into important yet widely-misunderstood features of turn-of-millennium US society: class, art, political practice, and war. In order to understand liberalism’s political and economic agenda, I look at how these objects are pitched in the struggle over racism. Sometimes when we say “liberal” we mean it in the philosophical sense, with particular attention to liberal …

Nervous Salomes: New York Salomania And The Neurological Condition Of Modernité, Margaret K. Araneo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In January 1907, New York City had its first major encounter with the figure of Salome. Appearing on three large stages in the city simultaneously, the archetype of the dancing girl quickly became an object of controversy. Her appearance at the Metropolitan Opera House in its staging of Strauss’s Salome resulted in public debate and the ultimate closure of the performance by the Met’s Board of Directors. The event brought attention to the Salome archetype’s already contested character. Salome arrived in the United States from Europe where she had been the subject of a quarter century of debates about how …

Reimagining The Collective: Black Popular Music And Recording Studio Innovation, 1970-1990, Will Fulton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines developments in the production practices of black popular music in the recording studio from 1970 to 1990. The year 1970 marked a transition in the recording practice of popular music that had a distinct impact on styles marketed as R&B, soul, and funk. Multitracking in the 1950s and 1960s had paved the way for a transformed production process, one initiated by Les Paul’s and Sidney Bechet’s overdubbing experiments in the 1940s. The collective sound of instrumentalists and vocalists heard on records no longer resulted from live-to-tape recordings of group performances, but was increasingly the product of constructed …

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 …

The Female Bildungsroman In George R.R. Martin's A Song Of Ice And Fire, Lena M. Nunez

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the concepts of the female bildungsroman in literature. In particular it looks at two female characters created by George R.R. Martin, the sisters, Sansa and Arya Stark. The project focuses on the characteristics of the female bildungsroman and whether or not the female bildungsroman is a valid literary concept. This has been done by examining what is a bildungsroman and is there a difference between male and female bildungsroman. The goal is to show that the female bildungsroman is valid and that Sansa and Arya are perfect examples.

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.

Not So Revisionary: The Regressive Treatment Of Gender In Alan Moore's Watchmen, Anna C. Marshall

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

While Alan Moore’s comic book Watchmen is often hailed as a revisionary text for introducing flawed superheroes and political anxiety to the genre, it is also remarkably regressive in its treatment of gender. Some critics do argue that women are given a newfound voice in Watchmen, but this interpretation neglects to examine character Laurie Jupiter adequately, or the ways in which other female characters' appearance and dialogue are limited and/or based on their sexuality and relationships with male characters. Watchmen's main female characters, mother and daughter Sally and Laurie Jupiter, lack autonomy and their identities are completely intertwined …

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 …

Postmodern Blackness And The Legacy Of Bessie Smith, Phillip M. Warfield

Student Research

This paper aims to analyze and focus on the average life of mostly female African American entertainers before and after the Civil Rights era, while also showcasing the life and legacy of one of the first African American women to gain nationwide acclaim, Bessie Smith, through the lenses of postmodern blackness theory.

The American Dream, Micronationalisms, And The Three Part National Identity As Presented By Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, Brianna J. Doucet

English Department Theses

Hunter S. Thompson was a pioneer in Gonzo journalism, a writing style that fictionalized journalistic reporting through first draft, no editing publication. This unique writing style, coupled with Thompson’s personal collective identity based on Sedikides and Brewer’s three-part identity allowed for Thompson to draft a model for the three-part American identity based in the American dream. Throughout his career Thompson sought to find the American dream but what he found instead was the death of decency in America and the rebirth of the American dream through a whitewashed lens. The thesis paper explores three-parts of American identity, the American dream, …

Image And Perception Of The Top Five American Tourist Cities As Represented By Snow Globes, Caitlin Malloy

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis investigates the connection between popular culture’s perception of place and the physical augmentation of reality. Focusing on the top five tourist cities in America, this disparateness is observed through the lens of a souvenir: the snow globe.

The presentation of the work is broken into two parts: the written portion and the book of diagrams. A total of 45 snow globes (9 for each of the 5 cities) were selected for the study, each carefully analyzed for content to include monuments, colors, text, dimensions, realism, and layout. This resulted in a series of diagrams which graphically express the …

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 …

Sonic Intolerance : Aural Yellowface During The Golden Age Of American Radio., Greyson Perry Neff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The position of the Asian in the American popular imagination has a long history, stretching back to nineteenth century vaudeville theatrical performances and remaining largely unchanged throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Portrayed as simultaneously cunning and ignorant, spiritual and corrupt, or submissive and sexualized, Oriental stereotypes have remained firmly entrenched in popular culture. While perceptions of race exist largely in a visual sense, a closer look at how people heard racial differences opens up new avenues for scholarly interpretation of the social construction of race and the shifting notions of citizenship. This thesis will investigate how listeners …

Dead Places : American Horror, Placelessness, And Globalization., Katherine Ashley Wagner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates particular American anxieties concerning cultural identity and place, particularly fears about America’s place (or lack thereof) within the global world, that can be seen throughout much of post-WWII American horror literature and film. More specifically, this project explores how an existent pattern of visual and narrative depictions of destroyed bodies and places illustrates larger tensions and fears about placelessness—the affect and effect of incomplete, partial, or inauthentic relationships with the places that provide cultural and individual identity and meaning. I argue that representations of placelessness within American horror texts become vehicles for addressing and signifying American fears …

"This Aggression Will Not Stand": The Coens On Masculinity, Evan Kelly

Honors Projects

This research examines the constructions of masculinity within the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Through textual analysis of three film, Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), and The Big Lebowski (1998), three key themes emerge: masculinity as performance, children and family as ego extensions, toxic masculinity personified, and children and redemption through rejection of hegemonic masculinity. Comprehensively, the paper seeks to prove the Coens uniquely construct masculinity as a performance which can override public policy and interpersonal prosperity. This research serves several functions. First, it recasts the Coens as cutting-edge progressive filmmakers, despite their protestations to the contrary. What we …

True Crime As A Literature Of Advocacy, Leslie Rowen

Undergraduate Theses

True crime is often dismissed as a genre of cheap paperbacks with little literary merit and highly sensational, pornographic content. By contrast, my paper proposes an alternative literary history of true crime which merits further investigation because of its focus on advocating for justice where the justice system failed. I begin with Catharine Williams’ 1833 piece Fall River: An Authentic Narrative, an early example from true crime literature. The text disputes the acquittal of a Methodist preacher for the murder of a female mill worker, arguing that the trial was unfairly slanted in the defendant’s favor. More than a century …

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.

From Sand Creek To Somalia: Black Bodies In Denver’S Post-Industrial Urban Cultural Re-Imagination, Webster Matjaka

American Studies ETDs

In this research project I situate black experience in the mid-sized post-industrial city of Denver, Colorado within the city’s colonial history in order to highlight some broader historical, global as well as local and national developments that, although seemingly unconnected, have a significant impact on urban social life today, in the case at hand, black urban experience. As people who have been displaced by the main axis of modern European global capitalist expansion: colonialism and slave trade, Native Americans, African Americans and recent African immigrants in Denver occupy a globalized socio-historical space of Euro-American socio-political domination that, in complex ways, …

1st Place Contest Entry: Critical Media Literacy: Liberating The "Criminal" And Empowering African American Males, Talia Cain

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Talia Cain's submission for the 2017 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. She wrote about how media contributes to the criminalization of African American males and the effects of this on African American male students.

Talia is a sophomore at Chapman University, majoring in Integrated Educational Studies. Her faculty mentor is Professor Anne Steketee.