American Studies Commons^™

Humanity, Ai, And The Pedagogy Of Vince Gilligan’S Pluribus, J. Scarlett Kingsley

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This review discusses the tv show Pluribus as a contemporary television narrative that functions as an allegory for artificial intelligence and its implications for human meaning-making. Centering on Carol Sturka, one of thirteen individuals immune to a alien global virus that merges humanity into a cooperative “Hive Mind”, the series explores tensions between autonomy and collective well-being in a “peaceful apocalypse.” The analysis argues that the Hive Mind reflects key concerns surrounding AI, including the production of knowledge without understanding, personalization without discernment, and efficiency that bypasses the struggle through which meaning is formed. Drawing on John Searle’s distinction between …

How The African American Contribution To Early American Literature Aided In Shaping The American Literary Identity, Jennifer E. Thompson

Masters Theses

This study argues that Jupiter Hammon’s early African American literature actively helped shape American literary identity rather than just mirroring it. By blending Christian morality with human rights, Hammon challenged Eurocentric narratives, validated Black humanity, and established a foundational tradition for anti-slavery writing. Traditional theories often contest this national inclusion through critical viewpoints. These views treat slavery as a distinct model, arguing that these texts represent separate responses to bondage rather than unified contributions to a shared national canon. This research redefines the American literary canon by showing how Hammon's historic publications dismantled eighteenth-century racist ideals about intellectual capacity. His …

Border Fascism And The Fascistization Of Society, Nicholas P. De Genova

Emancipations: A Journal of Critical Social Analysis

The massive destruction and social dislocation wrought by capitalist crisis has culminated, historically, in the brutal cataclysms of fascism and other forms of authoritarian rule. Today, across the globe, we are confronted with the aggressive advance and entrenchment of a variety of such authoritarian political projects. Anxious discourses about ascendant fascism have become perfectly mainstream. These developments command our acute attention and critical analysis. This essay addresses these dire questions and the conceptual vexations surrounding the concept of fascism, particularly as it has been elaborated in various Marxist analyses.  Specifically, much of the debate around fascism as an analytical category …

Book Review: The History And Politics Of Star Wars: Death Stars And Democracy, Petra Hendrickson

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Book Review: The History and Politics of Star Wars: Death Stars and Democracy

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.

“The Contributing Cultures Of Ancient Peoples At The Muscle Shoals”, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Writings

An article that addresses the ancient history of Muscle Shoals, Alabama with particular attention to the early cultures of influence, including indigenous tribes, such as the Cherokee and Chickasaws, and eventual European settlers of Anglo-Saxon and Celtic descent.

Dancing In Circles: Bon Dance As Performance Of The Past, Travis Robb Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone project traces the contours of the Japanese folk dance tradition of Bon Dance in Hawaiʻi through the nuances of public scholarship, diaspora, and racial capitalism by producing an original play which aims to perform the knowledge and praxis which the performance ritual puts forward. Treating Bon Dance as muse, the original play examines the necessity of turning to the past in order to disrupt a future made inevitable by oppressive systems; a fiction that comments on and critiques the predictive and generative technologies that have embedded themselves into society at large. Through intertwining conversations that explore prophecy and …

Going The Distance: How The Disney Renaissance Illustrated The Social And Cultural Changes In America During The 1990s, Deborah A. Bates

Graduate Masters Theses

The cultural and social history of America in the 90s is examined in this thesis by looking at the Disney Renaissance, a period of ten films made by the Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS). This thesis illustrates how the animators were able to seamlessly incorporate important societal trends of the 90s into their films, portraying a changing world within their films. As they were creating a new style of the animated movie musical, they were creating works that connected to the audiences watching in new ways, by putting up a reflection of society within their films. The way that the …

Beyond A Little Italy: Italian Community Formation In Washington, D.C., Kathleen P C Millander

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines the development of the Italian immigrant community in Washington, DC, from the early nineteenth century through the beginning of the Second World War. Unlike the dense ethnic enclaves that characterized Italian settlement in many American industrial and port cities, Washington never developed a recognizable Little Italy. Nevertheless, Italians in the nation's capital constructed a cohesive community through social, religious, familial, and economic networks that connected a geographically dispersed population.

Drawing on extensive original archival research, including oral histories, personal memoirs, parish records, newspapers, and manuscript collections, this thesis reconstructs the experiences of Washington's Italian immigrants and their …

Civilian Sustenance: Parcel Exchange, Household Provisioning, And Soldier Foodways In The American Civil War, Kathleen Migneault

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis examines parcel exchange between Civil War soldiers and the households and communities that continued to sustain them after military service removed them from ordinary domestic provision. Drawing on forty published collections of Civil War correspondence and diaries, it follows references to boxes, parcels, food, clothing, money, medicine, and useful goods across camps, hospitals, prisons, and home front networks. It argues that parcels from home were neither incidental sentimental tokens nor simple supplements to the ration, but a recurring practice of civilian sustenance shaped by affection, scarcity, infrastructure, and loss. The chapters trace the routes through which parcels moved, …

Postmodern Fantasy & Its Twin Traditions, Skyler J. Alexander

Honors Thesis

Fantasy literature is diverse and difficult to categorize; nevertheless, throughout the twentieth century two main subgenres emerged: sword-and-sorcery and high fantasy. This thesis examines the differences and similarities between these two traditions, how contemporary examples of the genre fit into or diverge away from the traditions that influenced them, and proves in the negative what and how much of contemporary fantasy fiction is original to itself, with no prominent antecedent. The analysis was performed by comparatively reading two contemporary fantasy novels, The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan and A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, with …

How Philip K. Dick Used The Unreliable Narrator To Transport Unwitting Acolytes, Michael Barros, Jordi Smith

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

This essay examines the use of the unreliable narrator to transport the reader into narrative worlds, specifically in Philip K. Dick's fiction. By exploring the phenomenon of narrative transportation and the role of emotions in engagement with fiction, we argue that Dick's use of the unreliable narrator significantly engages and transports readers into his narrative worlds. Subsequently, we contend that his belief in the fundamental reality of those worlds is effectively positioning himself as a gatekeeper and mediator between the narrative world and the real world, which sets him, in his mind, as a prophet, using fiction as a tool …

Ai And The Music Industry: Its Current Status And A Speculative Projection Of Its Evolutionary Trajectory, Rhett D. Morris, Clayton Rosati, Stefan Fritsch

Honors Projects

Music serves as one of society's biggest cultural outlets, allowing millions to share in what used to be a uniquely human form of expression. The commodification of music has built a huge industry full of companies and platforms that have used technology and property laws to shape music's relationship with the public. This study aims to look into the future to see how AI and its implementation could affect the structure of the music industry. To look into the future, this piece establishes two of the most pressing kinds of AI technology for the music industry and looks to contextualize …

A Poetic Call For And A Reflection And Commentary On Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, And Compassion, Carroy U. Ferguson

Psychology Faculty Publication Series

Finding a published poem I had written as a teenager, titled “The Heavens Weep.” this article uses that poem as the basis for a commentary that reflects on the state of the world today (2026),  As a commentary, the article uses the poetic and metaphoric words in the poem as a relevant "reality check" for what is still going on today.  In essence, the commentary is about a call for Clarity, Understanding, Hope, Courage, and Compassion, or what I call Archetypal Energies, Higher Vibrational Energies that operate deep within our individual and collective psyches to creatively urge us to "see" …

Book Review: Radioactive Dixie: A Nuclear History Of The American South, Will Jones

Georgia Library Quarterly

No abstract provided.

Ethics Under Siege: The Conflict In Tigray Through The Lens Of Just War Theory, Daniela Widya Purba

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

This research article explains the ethical principles of the conflict in Tigray based on the Just War Theory. By using the descriptive qualitative methodology, this research article draws data from secondary sources which includes; academic journals, news reports, as well as international legal instruments to analyze the moral trajectory of the conflict. This research begins with jus ad bellum, to assess Ethiopia’s government justification in declaring conflict within Tigray. While the government fulfilled the criteria of just cause and legitimate authority, the question stands on the ambiguous political intentions and the failure to enact peaceful alternatives before resulting in waging …

Presidential Visits As Foreign Policy Instruments: U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy In Trump’S Second Term, Atar Thaung Htet

Journal of Strategic and Global Studies

Through an analysis of President Donald Trump's October 2025 travel to Asia, this study investigates the consequences of U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy under his second-term diplomacy. The paper examines three significant diplomatic encounters—the ASEAN Summit in Malaysia, bilateral meetings in Japan, and the APEC Summit in South Korea—using a qualitative case study methodology based on role theory and foreign policy analysis. The results show that alliance-centered security cooperation, strategic balancing toward China, and selective economic engagement were U.S. Indo-Pacific goals. Through extremely transactional and bilateralized relations, presidential diplomacy allowed the United States to fulfill a number of foreign policy responsibilities, such …

West Coast Workshop To Southwest Institute, Hannah Marie Cerne

Art & Art History ETDs

This thesis considers Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico (originally established as Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, CA), and its contributions to collaborative printmaking. Originally founded in 1960 by June Wayne with Clinton Adams and Garo Antreasian, Tamarind Lithography Workshop (the precursor to Tamarind Institute) revitalized lithography through structured collaboration between artists and master printers, alongside rigorous training programs. This thesis provides an institutional history of the workshop during its relocation to the University of New Mexico, highlighting its transformation into a university-based institute that integrated education and professional production. Using social and labor-based methodologies, this study analyzes how …

Review Of Supernatural: A History Of Television’S Unearthly Road Trip By Erin Giannini, Duane Ebesu

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

No abstract (book review)

Remaking The Red Death: An Interactive Fiction Post-Mortem, Kenton T. Howard

ELO (un)supervised 2026

This individual talk provides a post-mortem discussion of an interactive fiction game the author created, ReMasque of the Red Death, for the Electronic Literature Collection Volume 5. The game is a web-based interactive fiction recreation of Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Masque of the Red Death” built using ink and Inky, an interactive fiction scripting engine, with 2D art assets created in Sketchpad, a mobile-based digital drawing app. The game was produced entirely without the usage of AI tools. This talk will cover the initial ideation for the game, creating a basic prototype of the game’s core systems, …