American Studies Theses and Dissertations
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Item FROM HOMEBOY TO AMERICAN ICON: IMAGE TRANSFORMATION OF MALCOLM X, 1965-1999.(2010) Gill, Lisa Marie; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines and analyzes the transformation of Malcolm X's image from the representation as the "Angriest Black Man in America," to the intellectual, political American leader of the 1990s. Malcolm was recognized for his outspoken defense of oppressed black and poor people, his leadership in Islam, and transformation from an ostracized political figure to an authority on the plight of black Americans. Recently, X has become a symbol of American individuality, a champion of human rights. Seen by contemporaries and future admirers as the quintessential black man, X's image has been appropriated to represent facets of black male identity to mainstream culture, rendering it consumable to a variety of groups. This dissertation contributes to the evaluation of Malcolm's work in the civil rights movement and his resulting image. It does so in two important ways; first, it positions X as a theoretician on the black diasporic experience and secondly, it significantly cites the importance of X's connection to the African diaspora and his work to connect blacks to that diaspora. By accounting for the images produced by Malcolm himself, it then chronicles the materialization of new images by black nationalists, scholars, black youth culture of the 1990s, Spike Lee, the Shabazz family, and mainstream popular culture beginning shortly after the assassination of Malcolm in 1965 and continuing until the end of the twentieth century. Unlike the images of other civil rights leaders, X's image was contested when appropriated by the mainstream. Analysis of major developments, (X, the postal stamp of 1999, material produced during the 1990s, etc.), will demonstrate how the image circulated from the sole possession of the black community to American mainstream culture. The battle for control over the representations of his image and its meanings can be construed as the struggle between retaining a black champion and creating an American icon. Ultimately, the goal was to establish Malcolm as the ideal black man, who not only predicted the trajectory of the movement, but also established and demonstrated racial pride in black American manhood, in spite of the toll that this position took on his life.Item White Guilt: Race, Gender, Sexuality and Emergent Racisms in the Contemporary United States(2010) Grzanka, Patrick Ryan; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)White guilt is a culturally and historically contingent emotion rooted in White people's recognition of unearned privileges and collective and/or individual roles in the perpetuation of racism. Situated within the context of neoliberal multiculturalism, this interdisciplinary dissertation investigates contemporary manifestations of White guilt in popular discourse and the lived experiences of young White adults in the United States. As a form of identity-based affect, White guilt may aid in the development of antiracist White people; however, because White guilt retains a focus on the White subject, it may offer limited potential to transform social relationships and systems of inequity. Three interrelated studies compose the methodological work of this project and undertake the task of empirically grounding White guilt so that we may better understand its forms, limits and consequences. The first study interrogates journalists' coverage of three moments of controversy in the early 21st century: Anderson Cooper's "emotional" reporting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Don Imus-Rutgers University basketball scandal and Isaiah Washington's firing from Grey's Anatomy after allegedly calling a co-star a "faggot." Reporting on these episodes illustrates how multiculturalism manages and defers racial guilt and shame while simultaneously eliding the intersections of identity that structure experience. The second study is the creation and initial validation of a survey-based measure of White guilt (the Test of White Guilt and Shame or "TOWGAS"), which attempts to reconcile several limitations of extant research on racial affect - namely, the persistent conflation of guilt and shame. The third study centralizes the intersectionality of White people's experiences through in-depth interviews with 10 White college students. A modified grounded theory approach is used to explore how gender, sexuality and race together influence how these White people a) perceive Imus, Washington and Cooper and b) conceptualize their own Whiteness and the feelings associated with racism and inequality. Finally, the concept of "emergent racisms" is posited as a critical, working framework with which to investigate White racial affect. This theoretical approach emphasizes the complex interactions between identity, affect, attitudes and context (i.e., situation) that co-constitute the phenomenology of White guilt and shame.Item GRACIOUS BUT CARELESS: RACE AND STATUS IN THE HISTORY OF MOUNT CLARE(2010) Moyer, Teresa; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Historic plantation sites continue to struggle with the legacy of slavery and black history, particularly concerning their significance in American culture. Although enslaved persons are erased from the contemporary landscape of Carroll Park in Baltimore, Maryland, the historical and archaeological record preserves their importance to the Carroll family and the plantation called Georgia or Mount Clare. I argue that historic preservation is a form of social justice when underrepresented historical groups are integrated into interpretations of historical house museums and landscapes. Enslaved blacks held essential roles in every aspect of Mount Clare from circa 1730 to 1817. They became culturally American at the intersection of race and status, not only through the practice of their own cultural beliefs and values, but those of elite whites, as well. Focus on white ancestors reveals only part of the history of Mount Clare: I demonstrate that blacks' own achievements cannot be ignored.Item Hidden in Plain View: African American Archaeology at Manassas National Battlefield Park(2010) Martin Seibert, Erika Kristine; Shackel, Paul A.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how the categories of race, class, and/or gender intersected and informed life in an historic, rural, Southern community. Examining African American landscapes of consumption and production in historic, rural Virginia through the archaeological record is essential for understanding the development of African American cultural reproduction through time. Archaeological landscapes that include very early sites for this region and are comprised of material culture from pre-emancipation deposits can provide a framework for understanding how ethnogenesis worked as a method for the community to survive the harsh realities of slavery, redefine themselves as raced, classed, and gendered individuals with relation to their economy on their own terms, and build a foundation on which they could continually resist and transform the categories created for them during later periods in history. Sites that date to the mid nineteenth century and later provide information about the shift in these methods from ethnogenesis to racial uplift. Racial uplift during these later periods became the method which the African American families in this area used to connect themselves with citizenship and the American dream through their consumer and producer behavior. This behavior can then serve to illuminate how relationships of inequality became naturalized and institutionalized and how, through these methods, inequality was continually challenged and transformed. Examining historic and modern twentieth century African American landscapes through archaeological sites can also illuminate the response of the community to a period of intense commemoration by the Confederacy immediately following the Civil War and illuminate the lasting effects of the Lost Cause ideology on modern day race relations. Defining and understanding archaeology through this period not only acknowledges how and why African American history has been left out of modern interpretations, but helps outline new interpretive plans that both challenge visitors to our national parks and attempt a more democratic voice for the National Park Service and for our nation.