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Notes On The Nut-Crackers' Monthly, Larry Glatz

Maine History Documents

A short piece providing the history of what is believed to be the earliest "strictly puzzle" magazine published in America, The Nut-Crackers' Monthly printed in Auburn, Maine, in 1875 and 1876.

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The Robber Barons Of Show Business: Traveling Amusements And The Development Of The American Entertainment Industry, 1870- 1920, Madeline Steiner

Theses and Dissertations

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, traveling amusements such as circuses, minstrel shows and Wild West shows were the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States. This study argues that advancements in transportation and technology inspired managers of traveling amusement companies to create new business models that transformed popular entertainment from informal, local productions into modern commercial spectacles. These amusement companies were capitalist enterprises, significant not just in the cultural arena but also in the growth of American business. These amusement companies traveled nationwide on the newly expanded railroad system, sporting elaborate sets and props and …

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Dancing On The Dead: Death, Entertainment, And Respectability In Victorian London, Noa H. Segal

Honors Papers

As industrializing nineteenth-century London found itself in the position of a prominent world capital, the city faced problems of overcrowding, high poverty, and waves of epidemics, making the dead progressively more visible in public spheres of society. This thesis examines different forms of publicly-spectated death in Victorian London, moving from anatomical dissections to funerals to burials, following the Victorian corpse in these moments of dealing with the dead and the level of media involvement in structuring and marketing each of these spectacles to the public. While the current historiographical debate surrounding spectacles of death in nineteenth-century Europe agrees that death …

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Into The West And Back Out Again: An Examination Of Cultural And Social Exchange In The Gilded Age United States, Samantha Mcdonald

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to provide a historical analysis of American culture and society at the turn of the twentieth-century, challenging the conceptualization of social isolation, cultural subjectivity, and urban conflict of the rural Midwest. Detailed research utilizes a synthesized mixture of primary sources, contemporary to the Gilded Age, and a volume of scholastic analysis of Midwestern and American history to establish the significance of rural, Midwest communities in the development of social and cultural standards in the United States. A flipped historical focus shifts the rural Midwest from an urban periphery to the center and nexus of …

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Meet The New Villain, Same As The Old Villain: The New Cold War In American Tv, Film, And Video Games, Declan Cronin

Of Life and History

In 1966, the lovable crew of the Спрут landed in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Hollywood’s rendering of these Russians in The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming would prove to be the exception to the rule in Western media for years. A staple of Western entertainment since the mid-20^thcentury, Russian adversaries have not faded from the limelight in the post-Cold War era. Rather, Western portrayals of Russian antagonists have largely continued to reflect contemporaneous states of Western-Russian relations. By studying Russian portrayals in Western media (namely television, film, and 21^stcentury video games) within their historical context, …

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Female Filmmakers In The 1920s, Paige Brunsen

Honors Library Research Award

2018/2019 2nd place award winner. This paper explores the idea that the 1920s filmmaking "was recognized as an opportunity for big business, and women were pushed into the shadows with unfortunate long-lasting consequences." 13 pages.

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"Bring The Fan To The Game:" Football, Baseball, And The Transformation Of Sports Television Into Entertainment, Ethan Collins

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the growing symbiosis of the sport-television relationship as it evolved during the 1960s. Professional football and baseball are primarily considered they demonstrate the ways television impacted local and national audiences. Football embraced television as a way to disseminate the game to a wider, national audience. Baseball, because of its long history as a local attraction, resisted the encroachment of television. Baseball prioritized the live game over the televised version, while football became more visually descriptive for viewers and took on characteristics of entertainment programming. These changes were technologically, industrially, and economically based, and this thesis discusses the …

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Sage Illusionists: A Historical Study Using Illusionists As A Reflection Of Mass Entertainment, Popular Culture, Anf Change During The Late Nineteenth Century, Clayton Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the late nineteenth and early twenty century both the United States and Europe were experiencing massive shifts in social organization, social attitudes, and global influence due to the effects of the industrial revolution and imperialistic expansion. This birth of a public sphere and the mass entertainment industry was related to a blurring of the lines between traditional social classes. Mass entertainment's growth was directly related to the need to attract large audiences with entertainment that appealed in some way to a broad spectrum of the populace. At the same time, stage illusionists or magicians were one of the most …

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"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

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Athens Of The South: College Life In Nashville, A New South City, 1897-1917, Mary Ellen Pethel

History Dissertations

The Progressive Era affected the South in different ways from other regions of the United States. Because Southern society was more entrenched in patriarchy and traditional social strictures, Nashville provides an excellent lens in which to assess the vision of a New South city. Known as “Athens of the South,” Nashville legitimized this title with the emergence of several colleges and universities of regional and national prominence in the 1880s and 1890s. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Nashville’s universities solidified their status as reputable institutions, with Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities garnering national prominence. Within Nashville, local …

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“Fit For The Reception Of Ladies And Gentlemen”: Power, Space, And Politeness In Eighteenth-Century Anglo-Atlantic Playhouses, Troy Thompson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Eighteenth-century English men and women ventured to the playhouse for a night of festive revelry and entertainment. Despite the raucousness (compared to our vision of a night at the theatre), theatergoing was a polite endeavor and as such equipped with the material pleasantries of bourgeois society. But unlike other spaces reserved for the middle and upper classes, all manner of people could and did attend the theatre. Thus, particular methods of physically and visually separating social classes arose within the eighteenth-century playhouse.

In this thesis, I investigate these material phenomena, particularly the ways in which theatre managers, players, as well …

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Ua1b2/1/4 Oral History, Paula Trafton, Ray Buckberry

WKU Archives Records

Interview conducted by Paula Trafton with Ray Buckberry, WKU alum.

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"Giving Back To The Community!" Interview With Gil Scott-Heron, February 1995, Amilcar Shabazz

Afro-American Studies Faculty Publication Series

GIL SCOTT-HERON is a legendary musician in the tradition of Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Larry Neal and other Black cultural artists who helped raise the socio-political consciousness during the sixties. Many credit him as the most influential figure in the early genesis of rap music. His incorporation of wordsongs throughout most of his music helped lay the basis for today's rap artists. Beginning in 1970 with SMALL TALK AT 125TH & LENOX, he has recorded over 22 albums, published two novels and three works of poetry, and has performed throughout the world. In 1994, Gil Scott-Heron, after a 12-year absence …

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