Other American Studies Commons^™

Ai-Supported Analysis Of Jury Deliberation Impact Factors, Jennifer Siciliani Phd

Generative AI Teaching Activities

Students conduct a controlled, two-run generative AI jury simulation to examine how a single socio-legal variable affects simulated jury deliberation. They compare and manually code the AI-generated outcomes against peer-reviewed human jury research to evaluate the model’s accuracy, limitations, and potential biases.

[2026 Honorable Mention] Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, Daylyn R. Reese

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

This research offers unique insights into the creation and development of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary (N.M.S.) with a focus on indigenous populations’ roles (primarily Chumash and Costanoan). In this episode, I analyze what makes this NMS different from every NMS precluding it, how it recognizes a new goal in conservation (thrivability), and the areas in which improvements still must be made to authentically include and honor indigenous voices.

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …

From Farewell To Fáilte: The Voices Of Iowa’S Irish Daughters, Katie Hermanson

History Theses, Dissertations, and Student Creative Activity

Irish women’s immigration to Iowa brought rich culture and lasting impacts, despite their contributions being silenced by history. Women left Ireland for economic opportunity and education abroad to support their impoverished families. Millions emigrated between 1830 and 1915, spreading across the world. The Irish women who came to the United States encountered discrimination and cultural stereotyping as they worked in domestic service, developed religious orders, taught school, owned businesses and raised families. Women bore the burden of supporting their families in Ireland by sending remittances home and communicating between countries. Their cultural identity as exiles dwelled in guilt for leaving …

Three Hundred Years In New Mexico’S La Cienega Valley: An Archaeology Of Hispano Occupation From The 17th Through 19th Centuries, Heather Trigg

Anthropology Faculty Publication Series

Beginning in the late 16th century, Hispanic settlers colonized New Mexico’s upper Rio Grande Valley, establishing farms and the village of Santa Fe amid Pueblo peoples. Colonists demanded tribute and labor from the Pueblos, enslaving some and suppressing religions. Less than a century later, Pueblo and Plains peoples rebelled and forced the settlers from the region. Twelve years after the Revolt, settlers returned, but they could not legally collect tribute or force labor. This project explores the changes in labor and land allocation between the Pre-Revolt and Post-Revolt periods.

Profile And Insights On Core Authors In National Security Intelligence Research：An Analysis Based On The Journal Intelligence And National Security, Yaping Hu, Yongge Xiao

Journal of Scientific Information Research

[Purpose/significance] This study delineates the developmental trajectory and knowledge production characteristics of international national security intelligence research by revealing the collective profile, career development patterns, collaboration network structures, and core research theme evolution of its key scholars. It aims to provide insights and references for promoting the discipline construction of national security intelligence in China. [Method/process] Core authors were selected from the Intelligence and National Security journal based on publication volume criteria. Employing biographical analysis, the information of these international core authors was categorized into four core dimensions—disciplinary background, research direction, research output, and work experience for comparative analysis. Furthermore, …

Illusions Of Fairness And Sacrifice, Brady Schwertfeger

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The American West is a shifting landscape. An incongruous expanse of isolation and urbanity, wilderness and extraction, wealth and welfare, clear water and fire. Fifteen years ago, I moved to my mother’s ancestral homeland of Montana, and have been here ever since. Before that, I was born and raised in Texas, both the West and the South (and often something else entirely), depending on who you ask. My experiences in this region have shaped me indelibly, and have inspired this collection of essays built around culture, politics, and justice in the West. “Pinedale, Wyoming” considers the musician as itinerant wanderer …

Inside The Gen Z Vote Across Gender And Race, Juliet La Sala

Capstones

This capstone examines how two people from two different Gen Z groups are navigating the 2024 U.S. election. One story revolves around a young woman adopting a U.S. version of South Korea’s 4B Movement and another reflects on a Gen Z Arab American responding to the Israel–Hamas war. Through reported stories and interviews, it explores how personal experience, gender and ethnic violence, and political disillusionment shaped these young voters’ choices and activism. Sierra Bee's story is in light of Trump's election and Liam's is right before the 2024 election took place. Together, the pieces highlight how global events and identity-based …

Marooned: A Western Frontier Dismal Swamp Narrative, Professor Meya E. Hargett

The Scholarship Without Borders Journal

Marooned: A Western Frontier Dismal Swamp Narrative centers the erased figure of Samuel Mars, a lost Black station master whose movements through the Great Dismal Swamp have been excluded from dominant Underground Railroad cartographies. Here, the term “Marooned” refers not to abandonment, but to the maroon geographies of Black and Indigenous resistance encoded in land, lineage, and fugitive infrastructure.

Guided by Diasporic Maroon Memory Theory, Lineage as Method, and the Maroon Geographies Framework, this research reconstructs Mars’s trajectory through oral testimony, spatial patterning, and ancestral land memory. Rather than casting the Dismal Swamp merely as a site of refuge, this …

An Axe To The Funny Bone: Curated Instability And Horror-Comedy Intersections In American Storytelling, Samantha Box

Masters Theses

Funny. Terrifying. Subversive.

Horror-Comedy twists and bites at the intersection of two incredibly reactive genres— with both Horror and Comedy being well known for the political and social discourses they embody and reinvent through story. While prevalent in American popular culture, scholarly analysis of this hybrid space barely exists beyond a small number of Film Studies investigations. Despite this lack, Horror-Comedy works continue to be successfully produced. This thesis unpacks the vibrant relationship between fear and laughter in contemporary American storytelling through Horror-Comedy, maintaining a focus on structural dynamics and the audience-disarming results of simultaneously applying horror and humor to …

The Reception Of Neurodiversity Represented Within Netflix’S Wednesday, Anna Stevens

Graduate Theses & Dissertations

This paper explores how neurodiversity is represented through popular media - particularly Netflix's show Wednesday - and aims to discuss the effects this representation could have in regards to how it's received by the public, as well as those who are neurodiverse.

Women, Race, Recovery: How Some Of History’S Most Impactful Thinkers Reflect On Their Own Healing, Karol Cooper

Gatherings

With examples from influential women of color feminists, the essay points to some obstacles in the way to developing a true practice of recovery for women of color academics whose research brings them in continual contact with histories and enactments of harm against women and people of color. As women of color in higher education, articulating our health and healing needs in our own terms would help us clear a path to promoting ourselves as whole and healthy persons, in addition to promoting us along a career path. The essay collects reflections on health struggles from famous women of color …

Roots Of Justice: A History Of Race And Racism In Nebraska, Kevin Abourezk, M. Dewayne Mays, Paul Olson, Gabriel Bruguier, Preston Love Jr., Adam Fletcher Sasse, Heather Fryer, J.S. Onésimo (Ness) Sándoval, Sharon Ishii-Jordan, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Julia Reilly

Zea E-Books Collection

There is much to understand about the history of Nebraska and how the past shapes the present. This book attempts to bring into clearer focus the triumphs and trials of five broad groups whose lives have often been overlooked when the state’s history is told. The authors know some of this history of racism firsthand: Most of them have lived as people of color in Nebraska. They’ve experienced “the good, the bad and the ugly” that makes up our state story. We encourage educators, scholars and family historians to continue to dig, to document and to tell these stories. And …

False Starts & Finish Lines: Youth Sports, Coaching, & The Crisis Of The American Dream, John S. Lammert Jr

Master's Theses

False Starts & Finish Lines: Youth Sports, Coaching, & the Crisis of the American Dream examines how the American youth sports system reflects, reproduces, and at times resists the evolving contradictions of the American Dream. Drawing on a comparative analysis of institutional documents from public high schools, travel clubs, and recreational leagues, this thesis interrogates how youth sports have shifted from inclusive spaces of play and character-building to stratified marketplaces governed by the Athletic Industrial Complex (AIC). It argues that rising costs, performance pressures, and privatized structures have transformed access to sport—and, by extension, to the Dream itself—into a function …

Podcast: One To Grow On – Why Black Studies Matter When Working And Living In Black Communities, Celia E. Ceballos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the transformative potential of Black Studies in enhancing community work within Black and Brown communities in New York City. The research is driven by the author's firsthand experiences and the realization of the importance of Black Studies, which was largely absent from earlier education. Through the interdisciplinary approach of the Graduate Center’s MALS program, the author has gained a deeper understanding of key topics such as the legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movements, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice. This journey inspired the creation of a capstone project, …

Editorial: Vol 10(1), May 2025

The International Journal of Ecopsychology (IJE)

No abstract provided.

Thompson’S Rifle Battalion: The Original Unit Of The Army Of The United Colonies (Now The United States Regular Army), John A. Bonin

Books, Monographs & Collaborative Studies

©2025 John A. Bonin

Although 1775 is indisputably the birth year of the US Army, two events occurred on June 14 of that year to which the Army can credit its birthday. One is the adoption by the Continental Congress of the collective militia forces from several colonies outside Boston to form a Continental Army, of which Congress appointed George Washington the commander in chief on June 15, 1775. In addition, the US Regular Army officially dates its beginning to June 14, 1775, when the Second Continental Congress directed 10 companies of expert riflemen to be raised immediately in Pennsylvania, …

"Insanity" As An American Empire: The Canton Insane Asylum For American Indians, 1902-1934, Thanh Chi Nguyen

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This graduate thesis involves a retelling of the history of the now defunct Canton Insane Asylum, built in the early 20th century located in Canton, South Dakota. It was America’s first federal psychiatric facility dedicated exclusively for American Indians. The Canton Insane Asylum for American Indians is a touchstone whose microhistory reflects larger political and economic sentiments in both the state of South Dakota and in the United States writ large. Conceiving South Dakota, as first and foremost a white settler society erected on land forcibly wrested from American Indian people, the asylum played an important economic development role and …

Reenvisioning Identities That Precede Us: “Body Acknowledgement” As Social Justice Practice Within A Communication Ethics Course Redesign, Wendy Kz Anderson, Ollivia Webster, Nicole Yang, Cass Bryant, Taylor Herr

Feminist Pedagogy

We infuse this conversation of “body neutrality” through social justice responsiveness (compassion, equity, and accountability of body/presence privilege) by specifically attending to intersections of race, gender, and body mindset built into our identities. In reimagining the term “body-neutrality” through identity engagement, we introduce the term “body acknowledgment” as an active interpretative state. As a co-authored pedagogical “co-conspiring” for racial justice (Houdek and Ore, 2021, p. 92), we (instructor, teaching assistants, and previous students) offered a course redesign centering social justice strategies to address the following question: How can dialogue about intersectional communication work toward redesigning learning with difference and develop …

Woke-Lahoma: Anti-Trans Ideology On The Frontlines, Sarah H. Fogel

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

The past decade (2015-2025) of American politics has been marked by a sharp rise in anti-trans politics. Indeed, during this period, anti-trans rhetoric and legislation have become central to American conservative politics more broadly. As the Republican party under Donald Trump works daily to remake the federal government in its image, studying the recent past of Republican-controlled states like Oklahoma offers a window into the future of anti-trans politics at the national scale. This thesis uses a mix of discourse analysis of anti-trans media and participant observation at 2SLGBTQ+ Pride events to analyze the ideological underpinnings of the present-day anti-trans …

Re-Indigenizing And Collaboratively Tending Urban Greenspaces, Divinity Nnenne Adewale

University Honors Theses

This work details the active process of land tending with the intention of re-Indigenization in the Pacific Northwest at several Portland sites; The Native American Student Community Center, PSU Oak Savanna, and the Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. Land tending is an intuitive process, one rooted in love and respect for life of all forms as well as becoming the perpetual student; land tending is not a skill to be mastered, only practiced. Unlike environmental management, tending cannot be done separate from the earth, in a classroom or otherwise. Connections are what tending is built on top of: the foundation; effort …

Modern Agricultural Servitude: The Modern Farm Worker Experience In The Salinas Valley, Jesus E. Tavarez

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

The prevailing narrative in Chicanx studies focuses on the historical labor activism of the United Farm Workers (UFW) in the 1960s and ‘70s. I am particularly interested in examining the contemporary campesino experience in the Salinas Valley by discussing the history behind Mexican cheap labor, low wages, exploitive work conditions with inadequate healthcare, agrochemical exposure, and historical consciousness of farm workers. I will argue that farm workers are in dire need of a migratory reform as an approach to improve the working conditions of farm workers throughout California. This research aims to shed light on how the multi-billion-dollar agribusiness industry …

Book Review Of Lazzaro: A Man And His Machines. By Ron Moshier. Newburyport, Ma: Coastal 101, 2023. 180 Pages., Elton G. Mcgoun

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of The First Lady Of Dirt: The Triumphs And Tragedy Of Racing Pioneer Cheryl Glass. By Bill Poehler. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024., Douglas Stark

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Bridging Thought And Action: History, The Digital Humanities, And Building The Foundations Of Asian/American Political Thought, Vivian Yan-Gonzalez

Asian American Studies Faculty Articles and Research

This article argues that understanding the historical contours of Asian American electoral engagement provides an essential foundation for studying Asian/American political thought. However, historians have tended to adopt a broad understanding of "politics" beyond traditional civic and electoral politics, due to limited historical sources on Asian American electoral engagement and the longstanding interest among Asian Americanist scholars in alternative politics. I reintroduce Asian American electoral history as a vital and viable subject of study by exploring how scholars can use digital humanities tools and methods to build the archives of Asian American politics and to explore new insights and questions.

Representations Of Violence Against Native American Women, Christine York

Graduate Theses and Dissertations (2019 - present)

It is the aim of this study to provide detailed attention to the representation of violence against Native American women throughout American films and literature. Native American women have been persecuted against since the times of colonization; however, there has been a recent uptake in this crime. This crime has been seen throughout many forms of art, but has not often been a focal point to these artforms. In order to argue that the violence these women experience needs to be central to the texts they are seen in, a comparison between three different texts is imperative. These texts are …

The Creation Of An African American Jewish Culinary Tradition: Michael Twitty And The Passover Seder As A Vehicle For Remembering Trauma And Celebrating Survival, Samira Mehta

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

The Exodus of the Israelites has long held meaning for African American Christians, as noted by scholars of African American religious history. Jewish studies scholars, meanwhile, have written about both Passover and Jewish relationships to the Exodus. Michael Twitty, public historian, James Beard award-winning author, and memoirist, has fused an identity for himself by drawing on the foodways of both traditions to remember and memorialize the trauma of both traditions While Twitty uses food to create meaning in the context of holidays, his memoirs, Kosher Soul and The Cooking Gene, explore how the food of trauma, poverty, and resilience provide …

Forbidden Fruit: Mary Cassatt’S Mural Of “Modern Woman” At The World’S Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893, Tricia Cusack

Dublin Gastronomy Symposium

This paper considers a large mural of “The Modern Woman” painted in France by the American artist Mary Cassatt for the Woman’s Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. It focuses in particular on the large central panel of the mural titled Young Women Plucking the Fruits of Knowledge or Science that depicts women and girls apple-picking. Cassatt’s mural drew on various traditions and myths. Apple harvesting was a common sight in America. Cassatt’s title though points to the story of Eve and forbidden fruit, in which Eve seeks knowledge, but is severely punished for it. Cassatt …

Book Review: Organizing Women: Home, Work, And The Institutional Infrastructure Of Print In Twentieth-Century America, Christine Pawley, Madelaine Russell

School of Information Student Research Journal

In carefully selected case studies of white and Black middle-class American women, Pawley, a professor emerita at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Information School, provides a detailed exploration of the “largely untold history” of women who used their involvement in print-centered organizations to reshape their lives beyond the unpaid domestic sphere (1). The first three chapters of the book trace the histories of primarily domestic women who held active roles in institutions of print culture such as journalism and radio broadcasting while the last three focus on the lives of women whose full-time employment helped to shape the developing public library …

Immigration Policy Evaluation For Technology Professionals Immigrants In The United States, Angel Contreras Cruz

Dissertations and Theses

The U.S. Immigration System is complex for technology professionals seeking to relocate to the United States for employment or education. The United States relies on its employment-based immigration to attract and select the best talent to fill the shortage of skilled jobs. Technology professionals, a stream of highly skilled immigrants, tend to contribute and be more beneficial to the U.S. economy, which is one of the principles of U.S. immigration policies. Although U.S. immigration policies are constantly updating, policymakers, experts, and scholars suggest that the United States needs significant immigration reform to solve current issues, such as improving technological capabilities …