Browsing by Subject "American studies"
Now showing items 1-20 of 22
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American Experiments: Science, Aesthetics, and Politics in Clinical Practices of Twentieth-Century American Literature
(2013)This dissertation is concerned with the relationships between experiments in literature, science, and politics in twentieth-century United States culture. I argue that the three can be considered together by understanding ... -
American Manna: Religious Responses to the American Industrial Food System
(2016)“American Manna: Religious Responses to the American Industrial Food System” is an investigation of the religious complexity present in religious food reform movements. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at four field sites. ... -
Beyond Measure: Whiteness in the Twenty-First Century
(2014)In spite of a host of early twenty-first century claims regarding the dawn of a "post-racial" or "anti-racial" era, race remains an important problem for understanding contemporary power. This dissertation provides a genealogical ... -
Big House: Women, Prison, and the Domestic
(2019)Big House: Women, Prison, and the Domestic, addresses the development of the contemporary US carceral state, foregrounding the confinement and control of women and the evolving ideological frameworks and disciplinary techniques ... -
Building a Better World: Youth, Radicalism, and the Politics of Space in New York City, 1945-1965
(2012)According to conventional wisdom, the period of intense antiradicalism that followed World War II effectively drove all radical activity underground by the early 1950s, severing the intergenerational connection between the ... -
Designing Community: Architecture, Race and Democracy in American Life Writing, 1900-‐‑1950
(2017)The turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century saw unprecedented growth and change in the demographics of United States urban environs. Not only did U.S. cities grow bigger, they grew increasingly multicultural and multiracial. ... -
Football Wishes and Fashion Fair Dreams: Class and the Problem of Upward Mobility in Contemporary U.S. Literature and Culture
(2012)Through an analysis of contemporary films, novels, comics, and other popular texts, my dissertation argues that upward class mobility, as the progress narrative through which the American Dream has solidified itself in literary ... -
Gatecrashers: The First Generation of Outsider Artists in America
(2015)Although interest in the work of untrained artists has surged recently, appearing everywhere from the Venice Biennale to The New Yorker, the art world’s fascination with American autodidacts began nearly a century ago. My ... -
Graphic Intimations: Postwar to Contemporary Asian Diasporic Art and Writing
(2019)Graphic Intimations: Postwar to Contemporary Asian Diasporic Art and Writing follows the oblique tensions in Asian diasporic creative compositions between art and writing, performance and inscription. Identifying ... -
Hallmarks, Sigils & Colophons
(2013)This dissertation contains two related documents: a piece of music entitled <italic>Hallmarks, Sigils & Colophons</italic> for three female singers and chamber orchestra setting excerpts from Christian Bök's <italic>Euno... -
Lost Bodies/Found Objects: Storyville and the Archival Imagination
(2017)In “Lost Bodies/Found Objects: Storyville and the Archival Imagination,” I engage the numerous collections and scattered ephemera that chronicle the famed New Orleans vice district of Storyville to show the ways in which ... -
Manifesting Vertical Destiny: Geology, Reform, and the Stratified Earth in American Literature, Long Nineteenth Century
(2019)My project, Manifesting Vertical Destiny: Geology, Reform, and the Stratified Earth in American Literature, Long Nineteenth Century, excavates the cultural impact of the concept of the layered earth—or strata—in American ... -
"No More Shall Be a Dull Book": The Aesthetics of History in Antebellum America
(2014)In the first half of the nineteenth century, historians in the United States described their work as an aesthetic practice. The romantic nationalist George Bancroft claimed that historical writing ought to provide readers ... -
Postmarked Constellations: Historicity and Paraliterary Form in Late American Fictions
(2012)"Postmarked Constellations" examines how three late-twentieth century American writers bring long historical processes into view through their use of paraliterary forms. The term paraliterary is used in this study to refer ... -
Suicidal Romanticism: Race, Gender, and the End(s) of Individualism
(2015)Moving beyond traditional conceptions of suicide in Romantic literature as indices of Romanticism's fascination with tragic or mad genius, this dissertation traces how Romantic-era writers also employed the trope of suicide ... -
Supersized Christianity: The Origins and Consequences of Protestant Megachurches in America
(2015)In three distinct but related chapters, this dissertation explores the causes and consequences of an important trend in American religion -- the concentration of people into very large churches. I undertake a systematic ... -
The Dream Refinery: Psychics, Spirituality and Hollywood in Los Angeles
(2016)This ethnography examines the relationship between mass-mediated aspirations and spiritual practice in Los Angeles. Creative workers like actors, producers, and writers come to L.A. to pursue dreams of stardom, especially ... -
The Hole in the Fence: Policing, Peril, and Possibility in the US-Mexico Border Zone, 1994-Present
(2016)The Hole in the Fence examines the design and effects of the contemporary border securityregime. Since 1994, the growth of military-style policing in the lands between the US andMexico has radically reshaped the path of ... -
Theories of Everything: Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century
(2012)This dissertation, "Theories of Everything: Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century," argues that the ideology of empire shares with science fiction an essential cognitive orientation towards totality, ... -
Unnatural History: Ecological Temporality in Post-1945 American Literature
(2016)While environmental literary criticism has traditionally focused its attention on the textual representation of specific places, recent ecocritical scholarship has expanded this focus to consider the treatment of time in ...
