American Studies

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Horace M. Kallen and the Americanization of Zionism
(1973) Schmidt, Sarah; Lounsbury, Myron; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
Until the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the years 1914-1921 constituted the high point of Zionism in America. Two factors were responsible: the outbreak of World War I which shifted major Zionist responsibility to the United States, and the assumption of the leadership of the American Zionist movement by Progressive reformer Louis D. Brandeis. Under Brandeis' Chairmanship the American Zionist organization changed, developing emphases and goals different from the Zionists in Europe. Responding to intellectual formulations rather than to the pressures of felt antisemitism, Brandeis-led Zionism rejected the traditional Zionist definition of Palestine as an asylum for the oppressed and adopted, instead, the goal of a Jewish nation that would serve as a model social democracy. In tune with the prevailing Progressive emphasis on efficiency and on scientific management, but in contrast to the relaxed and informal operations of the European Zionists, Brandeis stressed organizational discipline and order. Unlike the Europeans, who formed distinct groups of "practical" or "spiritual" Zionists, the American Zionists combined the two; they were "Messianic pragmatists" who defined a Utopian vision for the Jewish people, and then set out, by the most practical means possible, to achieve it. Much of the American definition of Zionism during this period came from an almost anonymous individual, social philosopher Horace M. Kallen, who acted behind the scenes in many capacities. From 1914 until 1921, when a major dispute Letween the American Zionist leaders and their European counterparts over their differing conceptions of Zionism forced Brandeis and Kallen to leave the Zionist movement, Brandeis relied on Kallen in many ways. Kallen, a fellow Progressive, helped to formulate and to implement plans for efficient reform of the organization; he originated many of the ideas that Brandeis and others used as a basis for action in the Jewish community; he became a "missionary" trying to convert both Jews and non-Jews to the Zionist cause; he was, for quite some time, the sole American link with important Zionist activity in Great Britain; he prepared the outlines which American Zionists viewed as basic to the reconstruction of Palestine. Because Kallen did so much for American Zionism during this period, and because his approach to Zionism was influenced both by the philosophy of Pragmatism and the values of Progressivism, a presentation and analysis of his correspondence and records of those years does more than delineate the roles Kallen played as a Zionist activist. It presents, also, a picture of the Zionist movement in America during a crucial decade, showing the way the organization took on an American cast, and relating the development of this Americanized Zionist organization to the mood and values of the dominant American culture of the period.
Richard Nixon's Anti-Impeachment Campaign: America's Paradise Lost
(Fred McMahon, 1974-05-01) Brock, Bernard; Klumpp, James F.
Analysis of Richard Nixon's April 29, 1974, speech during the Nixon impeachment crisis. Interprets the speech as a quest narrative.
Defining American Design: A History of the Index of American Design, 1935-1942
(1982) Allyn, Nancy E.; Kelly, Gordon; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
The Index of American Design was created in the fall of 1935, as one unit of the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Although government-sponsored art projects of the New Deal era, and in particular, the Federal Art Project, have been examined extensively by historians of American art and culture, the Index of American Design has received very little attention. Yet, the Index is important because it existed during the 1930s as a popular and well-known endeavor. On however small or conservative a scale, it reflects a constellation of thought and activity which was the result of the specific circumstances of that decade. In the following thesis I will outline a history of the Index project as it was part of the Federal Art Project, and as it was part of the growing movements of decorative arts and folk arts collecting during the 1930s. I will examine the ideas of three Index administrators: Holger Cahill, director of the Federal Art Project, Constance Rourke, Editor of the Index, and Ruth Reeves, field supervisor of the Index, in order to identify some of the underlying ideals which shaped the project. In addition, an examination of how the Index interacted with two specific audiences: collectors of decorative arts and the artists themselves, will reveal how the Index idea was turned into reality.
Frances R. Donovan and The Chicago School of Sociology: A Case Study in Marginality
(1982) Kurent, Heather Paul; Wise, Gene; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This work examines the Chicago School's contribution to sociological analysis using the life and works of one of its marginal figures, Frances R. Donovan. A "reflexive" approach to the history of sociology turns the early Chicago School's study of "the other" upon itself. Frances Donovan, an English teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, wrote three studies of working women: The Woman Who Waits (1920); The Saleslady (1929) and The School Ma'am (1939). The Saleslady was part of The Chicago Sociology Series. Edited by Robert E. Park and Ernest Burgess, this series included The Hobo, The Ghetto and The Gold Coast and The Slum, among other publications now regarded as early classics in urban ethnography. These studies also are known for their middle class preoccupation with marginal "types" and deviant subcultures, as well as a neglect of studies on women. Therefore, Frances Donovan's own marginal status and unique research interests offer a different perspective on the Chicago School's treatment of other outsiders. Chapter One traces the development of the concept of marginality within the Chicago School from its founding in 1892 until the late 1930's, Georg Simmel's role theory, specifically that of "the stranger," maverick personalities in the department and women's isolated status in academics are included as evidence. Chapter Two is a biographical sketch of Frances Donovan, drawing on unpublished manuscripts and contacts with those who knew her before her death in 1968. Given the dearth of information on early women in sociology, the life of Frances Donovan gives evidence of a kind of woman who worked independently with no credentials, network, or funding to do her research. Chapter Three places Donovan's studies in the context of other works of the Sociology Series. Finally, Chapter Four explores her unique methodology of "disguised" participant-observation. As a waitress, saleswoman and teacher-critic, Donovan raises an important question regarding the relationship between the observer and the observed in social science. Furthermore, Donovan's motivations and personal rewards for doing her own brand of sociology are located in a larger participant-observation tradition including the anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Hortense Powdermaker. The studies of "muckrakers" of the Progressive period also provide a historical context for women's role-playing. Besides marginality, this last chapter emphasizes a second major theme of this inquiry: the transformative nature of the fieldwork experience.
Marguerite Higgins: Journalist 1920-1966
(1983) Keeshen, Kathleen Kearney; Lounsbury, Myron O.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the journalistic c areer of Marguerite Higgins from 1940 to 1966, to analyze her notions of news and news writing and of the duties of a journalist, and to assess her contributions to the field of American journalism. Marguerite Higgins was the first woman to win a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for international reporting. Her award recognized her war correspondence from Korea, where she firmly established the acceptance of women covering the news from the battlefield. Higgins contributed to mid-twentieth century journalism in signficant ways: she wrote hundred of articles for newspapers and periodicals over the twenty-five years of her career. Her work ranged from cub reporting on the Vallejo (California) Times-Herald, to a twenty-one year career with the New York Herald Tribune, to the rank of syndicated columnist with the Newsday Syndicate in the early Sixties. A graduate of the University of California at Berke ley and of Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1942, Higgins demonstrated that a woman could handle the professional demands and responsibilities of fast-paced and often danger-filled journalism. In addition to her front-page newspaper stories, Higgins described events of the times in scores of periodicals and in a number of books that include War in Korea: Report of a Woman Combat Correspondent (1951); News Is a Singular Thing (1955); Red Plush and Black Bread (1956); and Our Vietnam Nightmare (1965). In addition in 1962, she wrote a juvenile, Jessie Benton Fremont, and with Peter Lisagor, in 1963, described experiences of some State Department representatives in a collection called Overtime in Heaven: Tales of the Foreign Service.
Roger Williams Park: Providence, Rhode Island's Response to the American Urban Parks Movement, 1868-1892
(1988) Barbeau, Laura Jo; Caughry, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)
As a result of industrialization and growth, early nineteenth century urbanites began to lose accessible natural environments. Concern among the middle classes and social elite gave birth to the Rural Cemetery Movement in 1831, which spurred the creation of New York's Central Park in 1858. Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, it was the nation's first example of what became t he Urban Parks Movement. The movement embraced a new landscape aesthetic and philosophy focusing on man's relation to nature and the moral and social benefits of this relationship. Vital to this framework was a belief in the park's ability to improve the social behavior and artistic sensitivities of the lower and working classes. This case study examines how Providence, Rhode Island experienced the Urban Parks Movement from 1868 to 1892. During a three-phase process of implementation , conflict arose over issues of moral improvement, civic boosterism, and real estate speculation. After public debate concerning its location, Providence's first substantial public park, Roger Williams Park, was officially approved by the city government in 1872. Six years later the park was designed by Horace Cleveland in accordance with the landscape aesthetic of the Urban Parks Movement. Cleveland was an associate of Olmsted and one of the nation's few noteworthy nineteenth century landscape architects. This study has utilized primary sources such as mayoral correspondence , public addresses , annual reports, real estate deeds, and plot maps to trace Providence's park-making process. My study of Roger Williams Park concludes in 1892 with the completion of Cleveland's plan and the addition of three hundred acres to the park. This thesis shows how the development of an urban park is the product of particular social and cultural forces.
The Vietnam Veteran: A Victim of the War's Rhetorical Failure
(1988-02-22) Hollihan, Thomas A.; Klumpp, James F.
Argues that from defense and media coverage of the Vietnam War, an image of the character and activities of those fighting the war emerged. Within the defense of the war two justifications fought for dominance: a romantic call to idealism and a pragmatic materialist call to complete a task started. These contradictory motivations for the war colored the image of the soldier who fought the war as he became a concrete symbols caught in the contradiction. After the war, survivors had to then struggle with this image produced to defend the war.
Mining the Museum and the Deconstruction of The Maryland Historical Society
(1993) Moure, Michele; Caughey, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This thesis considers Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson (1992~ 93) and the exhibitions's critical impact on the Maryland Historical Society. A brief consideration of contemporary cultural theory, its relationship to revisions in current museological practices and a summary of the history of the American museum provides a context for this case study. Charged with the collection, interpretation, and exhibition of our cultural heritage, the practices and governing policies of American museums are a continuation of those developed in Europe over 200 years ago. In particular, the museum classification system for objects and cultures, based on an Enlightenment system of knowledge, has perpetuated an exclusionary set of practices, which have marginalized the working class, women, ethnic minorities, and Native Americans. Mining the Museum both reflects and responds to this condition while critically questioning the authority of the museum to define truth as it pertains to our arts, culture and history. Will Wilson's installation have a lasting influence'? Through this examination and consideration of selected responses from the profession, the press, and the public, it will be shown how Mining the Museum has impacted the Maryland Historical Society and how this impact could influence the future of this and other similar institutions.
Encounters with the Goddess: An Ethnographic Study of the Emergence of Feminine Forms of Consciousness
(1994) Damron, Bonnie Lucille; Caughey, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This dissertation examines one aspect of how new cultural meanings have developed among some contemporary American women. This particular development concerns a shift in their meaning system away from male-centered symbols towards a meaning system that includes and even emphasizes feminine symbolic forms. From an outsider's point of view, the contemporary "goddess movement" might be seen as a fad, but what does it mean from an insider's perspective? This dissertation presents an ethnographic exploration in depth from the insider's point of view, into the lives of eight women for whom goddess symbols have become an integral part of their meaning systems, their consciousness, and their social worlds. This study explores the emergence of goddess forms in the experience of these informants. It examines what images appear in their consciousness, how they interpret these patterns, and how their interpretations of these patterns affect their daily lives within their social worlds. The theoretical framework consists of two components. The first is the field work component based on ethnographic research methods such as ethnographic interviews, life history research, and self-ethnography from the journals and other writings of informants. The second component is the theoretical framework woven from three distinct disciplines. They are cultural anthropology, the study of myth as it pertains to goddess imagery, and Jungian psychology. Interpretive methods from these three fields assist in describing the process through which these informants have developed new forms of consciousness that derive from goddess mythology and goddess imagery. This research shows how participation in the study of dreams and goddess mythology helped informants reconstruct key elements in their meaning systems from a woman-centered perspective. It also reveals how informants made lifestyle choices in order to cultivate and pursue their relationships to goddess images and other forms of feminine consciousness, and how they have accomplished an integration of inner images with outer dimensions of their social worlds.
Vietnam Veterans and American Mass Media: The Politics of the Image
(1995) Sherry, Douglas Marshall; Lounsbury, Myron; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This is an interdisciplinary examination of the image of the Vietnam veteran as contested cultural and ideological terrain in recent America. Drawing on Gramscian theories of ideology and hegemony, as well as conceptualizations of semiotic appropriation and bricolage employed in cultural studies, the study explores the complex manner in which print media and Hollywood film function as the primary discursive arenas wherein public images of the returned Vietnam veteran are constructed, contested and transformed in the Vietnam and post-Vietnam eras. The shifting nature of these images has had, and continues to have, a profound influence on public conceptions of the Vietnam war, the divisions, challenges and oppositions the war generated in American society, and the very nature of cultural myths of war and the returned warrior as consensual ideological dynamics in recent American culture. Specific attention is devoted to the veterans' antiwar movement of the 1970s, the ways in which this movement actively courted media attention to publicly project an oppositional antiwar image of the returned warrior, and the manner in which this antiwar image was selectively appropriated and reconstructed by Hollywood across three decades – from Billy Jack and Coming Home in the 1970s, Rambo and Born On the Fourth of July in the 1980s, to Forrest Gump in the wake of the Gulf War in the 1990s – with the ultimate implication being the assuaging of the ideological disruptions of the Vietnam era.
"To Remind Us of Who We Are" : An Ethnographic Exploration of Women's Dress and Gender Roles in a Conservative Mennonite Community
(1995) Graybill, Beth E.; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
Combining ethnographic methodology and feminist theory, this interdisciplinary study explores women's dress and gender roles in the religious culture of Eastern Pennsylvania Mennonites, a conservative Mennonite group concentrated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, that has never been researched before. My study is based on participant observation and qualitative analysis of interviews with 11 women and two men in three church districts. I argue that conservative women's domestic roles in the private sphere and their adherence to strict dress codes create the denomination's primary cultural boundary marker. Although Eastern Pa. Mennonites accept modern technology and most no longer farm, members adhere to a church-wide discipline that forbids "immodest" and "fashionable" clothing, jewelry, and cut hair for women, while prescribing a particular style of women's dress and head covering. (Men's clothing is less regulated.) Religious understandings around women's dress reinforce a gender ideology that is firmly rooted in women's subordination to men. My study explores the multiple meanings that conservative women attach to their clothing. Much like a uniform, women's dress expresses group affiliation, suppresses individual expression, and mutes economic and social distinctions. Moreover, their dress affords them a feeling of protection from harm, offers them an opportunity to witness, and serves as an internal motivation toward religiosity. In sum, their dress both produces and reflects particular gender roles. Finally, I discuss the interpretative challenges of my partial membership status and my use of feminist analysis to frame a discussion about women who would not describe themselves as feminists.
Lucy Stone: Speaking out for Equality
(1995) Kerr, Andrea Moore; Diner, Hasia; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This dissertation attempts a cultural, political, and traditional biography of the abolitionist and feminist leader, Lucy Stone, (1818-1893). It also offers a major revision of nineteenth-century historians' treatment of the schism that occurred immediately after the Civil War in the woman suffrage movement. The issue that divided Stone from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony was whether woman suffragists should work to prevent passage of the Fifteenth Amendment. Stone led the majority of suffragists in supporting the enfranchisement of freedmen; Stanton and Anthony actively campaigned to defeat black suffrage. The schism that resulted lasted for more than twenty years. During this time, Stone forged the American Woman Suffrage Association into an effective, politically savvy lobbying machine. Its work and its methods formed the model for the organization that would eventually attain woman suffrage in 1920. The dissertation also focuses on Stone's private life, seeing in it both the extraordinary triumph of a singular "public" woman over the restrictions of her time and place, and the desperate personal struggle of the "private" woman, trying to balance marriage, motherhood, and career. Rising from humble, yeoman stock in western Massachusetts, Stone became internationally famous. From her pre-nuptial marriage agreement of 1855 to the unusual conditions of her will written as she lay dying in 1893, Stone attempted to thread her way through a legal, political, and social minefield.
Washington's Main Street: Consensus and Conflict on the Capital Beltway, 1952-2001
(2002) Korr, Jeremy Louis; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)
This dissertation combines approaches from cultural landscape analysis, ethnography, and planning history to study the Capital Beltway in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. as both a physical artifact and a social institution. Drawing on interviews, survey data, fieldwork, and documentary research, I explore the ways in which the Beltway, its creators and users, and its surrounding natural landscape have affected each other over fifty years. Three research methods underlie this study. First, I introduce an analytical framework for odology, geographer J.B. Jackson’s term for the study of roads, focusing on the beliefs and values roads reveal and create, dynamics of power and access, contributions to normativity, issues of conflict and consensus, and effects on individuals’ lives and identities. Second, I develop and apply a detailed framework model for cultural landscape analysis, building on previous efforts in cultural geography and material culture studies. Third, I draw on and analyze the dynamics and results of a Web survey. The dissertation provides the first detailed discussion of the Capital Beltway's development and construction in Maryland and Virginia, drawing in part on interviews with ten of its original engineers and beginning with an overview of the origins of beltway planning in the United States. It examines the Beltway's effects on individual lives, communities, and the broader metropolitan Washington region, concentrating on conflicts and perceived inequities created by the Beltway's construction, and on both states' efforts to pursue their own agendas and also to redress residents' concerns over the fifty years covered. The study addresses both physical and cognitive manifestations of the Beltway, exploring how the road exists in the minds of the people who use it and how its material and conceptual iterations combine to play an integral role in their lives. It also analyzes how the Beltway serves concurrently as a template through which individuals and groups promote their values and beliefs, as a venue of conflict and community, as a vehicle for the creation of a distinct regional identity, as a site of negotiation between public and private space, and as a site for mediation and compromise in interjurisdictional cooperation.
Vermeer in Dialogue: From Appropriation to Response
(2003-12-05) Glass, Marguerite Anne; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies
The intrinsic value of art rests in the response it conjures in its audience and the information this response can convey about the culture in which it resides. The paintings of the 17th century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer are proving particularly relevant to our contemporary culture. The scholarly discourse on Vermeer and his paintings, the exhibition of his works, their reproduction in diverse media, and their appropriation by artists, novelists, and filmmakers have created dialogues on Vermeer that promote understanding of his meaning today. Surrounding Vermeer with the various dialogues that have surfaced in culture provides a way of understanding how meaning has been ascribed to this artist and just what this meaning is. The degree of attention afforded to Vermeer through the exhibition forum has shifted his paintings into the full view of a broad international audience, made the artist and his paintings celebrities, and established Vermeer's aesthetic as a cultural emblem of beauty open to public response and interpretation. This thesis is argued within the context of five museum exhibitions related to Vermeer that took place between 1995-2003 and through an in-depth discussion of the appropriation of his paintings by other artists, writers, filmmakers and their critics. Critical methods from art history, visual culture studies, film studies, consumer culture studies, anthropology, and ethnography are employed to support this thesis Appropriation is an important theme in our contemporary culture; yet, there is also an historical context through which it has evolved. Artists have engaged in appropriation throughout art history and many traditional motivations for appropriation remain presently relevant. Methods of reproduction have tremendously affected the evolution of painting since the development of the print in the 15th century and this has had impact on art appropriation. Technological developments in reproduction methods since the 19th century have accelerated the appropriation of paintings in diverse media. The reproduction of Vermeer's paintings since the 19th century and especially through the museum exhibition and its media response in recent history have made his images well-known and encouraged their use as a way of conceptualizing and contextualizing ideas of refinement, perfection, and beauty.
Invisible Enemies: The American War on Vietnam, 1975-2000
(2004-05-19) Martini, Edwin Anton; Lounsbury, Myron; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines the construction of United States policy toward Vietnam from 1975-2000. Whereas the period since 1975 has traditionally been relegated to the epilogues of historical narratives about American-Vietnamese relations, this study moves that era to the center of the story, employing an interdisciplinary methodology to explore the intersections of diplomatic history, cultural representation, and international political economy. In the years following the withdrawal of its military forces from Southeast Asia, I argue, the United States continued to wage economic, political, and cultural warfare against the nation and people of Vietnam. In particular, I examine the ways in which cultural representations intersected and interacted with the formation of foreign policy. Both of these activities, I argue, were driven by the same cultural logic of "normalizing" the historical memory of the war, reinserting recuperative American narratives at the center of public discourses about the war while marginalizing and silencing Vietnamese voices. What I call "The American War on Vietnam" was thus as much a battle for the cultural memory of the war in American society as it was a lengthy and bitter economic, political, and diplomatic war against the nation and people of Vietnam. I use a range of primary sources to reconstruct the policy history of this period, including many previously overlooked Congressional hearings. I also bring together a large body of secondary literature from a wide array of fields, including cultural and diplomatic history, cultural studies, political science, and economics. Pieced together from these disparate sources, I trace the changes and continuities in the American War on Vietnam over its twenty-five year course, from the initial imposition of an unprecedented and ill-conceived program of economic sanctions in 1975 to the final ratification of a bilateral trade agreement between the two nations in 2000.
'Have honestly and fairly laboured for money': William and Washington Tuck and Annapolis Cabinetmaking, 1795-1838
(2004-05-28) Lourie, Alexander J.; Struna, Nancy L; American Studies
The careers of William and Washington Tuck coincided with a significant transition of Annapolis furniture-making, and changes in the political and economic hierarchies in the post-revolutionary market economy of Maryland. Both brothers learned their trade under the tutelage of John Shaw at a time when the center of Maryland's cabinetmaking shifted to Baltimore. Politically, republican ideas of democracy and representation began to take hold, and slowly found a place in Annapolis, a town characterized by its adherence to an older system of patronage and backroom negotiations. The Tucks' entrepreneurial talents and social, political, and artisanal connections facilitated their access to the State House, Annapolis' most important source of commerce and employment. This study adds two new players to the scholarly understanding of Annapolis cabinetmaking, a story heretofore dominated by John Shaw, and shows how two artisans in Maryland's capital pursued their trade and maintained their competency in early national Annapolis.
On the Edge of Freedom: Free Black Communities, Archaeology, and the Underground Railroad
(2004-06-09) LaRoche, Cheryl Janifer; Shackel, Paul A.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
"On the Edge of Freedom" is an interdisciplinary study of five free black communities that functioned as Underground Railroad sites along the southern borders of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Small rural free black communities along the borders of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were situated in the landscape to offer sanctuary to runaways as first points of entry within often violent and racially hostile southern regions of the northern border states. I worked with National Forest Service archaeologists, universities, and private non-profit preservation groups. By combining archaeology, with oral and documentary history, genealogy, and cultural landscape studies, I contribute new comparative and theoretical models for explicating African-American history, and identifying and mapping undocumented Underground Railroad sites. The resulting geography of resistance reveals the risks African Americans endured in the cause of their own liberation. Blacks who participated in the subversive work of the Underground Railroad knew the level of violence to which whites would resort in response to black defiance in the face of oppression. Interrelated families played a central role in the establishment of the frontier settlements. Exclusive and independent of white abolitionist activities, virtually every nineteenth-century black settlement, urban or rural, offered some form of assistance to those escaping slavery. African-American, as well as white, Underground Railroad workers were loosely organized to offer assistance within their separate religious denominations although they worked across racial lines. For four out of the five sites, I demonstrate the relationship between the independent black church and the Underground Railroad. Methodist minister and fourth bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, William Paul Quinn, who was instrumental in the spread of Methodism to the northwest, established two churches associated with Underground Railroad sites in this study. Maps, in conjunction with archaeological techniques, are crucial to the identification and recovery of these enclaves. By mapping free black settlements, and black churches, new Underground Railroad routes emerge from the shadows of larger, nearby, better-known Quaker and abolitionist sites. Mapping little known African American Underground Railroad routes has implications for African American preservation initiatives and heritage tourism.
"HUNGRY TO SEE OURSELVES REFLECTED": IDENTITY, REPRESENTATION AND BLACK FEMALE SPECTATORSHIP
(2004-10-12) George, Eva Marie; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
While much has been written about the portrayals of Black women in popular culture, scholars have observed that little attention is paid to the experiences of Black women as cultural consumers. This analysis of Black female spectatorship examines theories related to this experience and the various relationships individuals may have with media. This study sheds light on the ways Black women's spectatorship is shaped by gender, race, class and sexual orientation. Through qualitative methods, we hear the voices of Black women in the Washington, D.C. area reflecting on various forms of popular culture, particularly film. Some of the media women responded to in this study include Waiting to Exhale, The Best Man, Jungle Fever, among others. Responses from a focus group, on-on-one interviews and questionnaires provide evidence of the ways in which Black women engage in multiple relationships with images they see in the media. Ultimately, many of the African American women in this study disregard negative images of Black women and purposely choose types of media that sustain their sense of self and help them maintain a positive identity.
From the INside Out: Women Writers Behind Prison Walls
(2004-11-01) Rowe, Donna L.; Caughey, John C; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
ABSTRACT Title of dissertation: FROM THE INSIDE OUT: WOMEN WRITERS BEHIND PRISON WALLS Donna L. Rowe, Doctor of Philosophy, 2004 Dissertation directed by: Professor John C. Caughey Department of American Studies This dissertation considers what women in prison, or women who have been in prison, have to tell us, in oral testimony or in their writing, about the American "prison experience." This study shows how the interpretation of first person prison narratives provides important insights into patterns in the lives of women in their pre-prison, in prison, and post-prison experiences. It also explores the importance that creating narratives has for women prisoners' lives. This dissertation examines three kinds of prison narratives. The first involves texts produced and written by female prisoners and prison activists in a radical feminist underground prison newsletter published in Seattle, WA between 1976 and 1987. Secondly, oral narratives by two former prisoners involved in the production of that newsletter are presented. Finally, I discuss and interpret the prison poetry, memoir, and other narratives produced in a creative writing workshop series at the District of Columbia Detention Center between 1995 and 1996. Women writers in prison provide insights into situations, such as poverty and abuse, that brought them to prison, they discuss survival strategies in prison, and they offer recommendations for prison policy reform as it relates to their pre-prison, prison, and post-prison experiences. The central questions to which I seek answers are how can we learn from exploring the autobiographical representations of women writers in prison, and what can we learn from the prison experience that assists us in understanding the needs of women in prison today? In addition to examining the characteristics and dynamics of the prison experience out of which the women are writing, this work both interprets what women prisoners have to say and seeks to assess the various meanings narration has for them. The dissertation borrows theories and techniques from feminist theory, social justice theory, critical race theory, and oral history while offering an analysis of the current conditions of women's incarceration in the United States. It employs the methods of ethnography, including participant observation, key informant interviews, oral history, and reflexivity to enter and describe the communities examined in this research. Life stories from prison writers and activists offer a continuity of themes and theories of development as prisoners attempt to re-enter the free world. In particular, this work seeks to increase our understanding of women's prison experiences as a means to a deeper understanding of how female prisoners make meaning out of the prison experience through writing and as a springboard for considering prison policy change.
Remembering Antietam: Commemoration and Preservation of a Civil War Battlefield
(2005-03-11) Trail, Susan W.; Sies, Mary C.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Civil War memory has been the focus of a great deal of scholarship in recent years. A large percentage of this attention has been directed toward one battlefield--Gettysburg, which has come to represent remembrance of that conflict as a whole. This study of Antietam battlefield, however, reveals a very different commemorative experience than the one found at Gettysburg, suggesting a more nuanced Civil War memory at work in the United States than found by looking at Gettysburg alone. The Battle of Antietam remains, to this day, the single bloodiest day in American history. Yet, Antietam's location within the slaveholding, Union border state of Maryland resulted in a conflicted and ambivalent remembrance of that battle on the part of local inhabitants, the state, and national veterans' organizations. This ambivalence shaped the commemorative landscape at Antietam, and was reflected within it. The first objective of this study was to document the formation of the commemorative landscape at Antietam battlefield up to the 1960s, within the larger evolution of Civil War memory. A major factor in this landscape's development was the fact that, unlike other early battlefield parks, the federal government acquired very little land at Antietam. Paradoxically, this contributed greatly toward Antietam's successful preservation under present-day standards. The second objective was to define the local community's role in shaping the landscape at Antietam. Because it remained in private hands, community members exerted a great deal of influence over Antietam's commemorative landscape relative to other battlefields. In fact, elements within the Sharpsburg community consistently resisted or undermined the authority of those seeking to impose a commemorative overlay on Antietam battlefield. Situating Antietam battlefield within the larger discourse and politics of Civil War memory was the third objective. The complexity of remembrance at Antietam first manifested itself with the creation of Antietam National Cemetery, and the struggle between Maryland and the northern states over early memory of the battle. This contrasted with the clear message conveyed by Lincoln at the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery, and set the stage for the different paths of remembrance taken by the two battlefields.

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