American Studies Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2740
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Item "Get Dressed Up For The End Of The World!": The Reinvention of the Elder Goth Subculture During a Time of Crisis(2024) Bush, Leah J.; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is an ethnographic examination of relationships between subcultural identity and Gothic social worlds in the Elder Goth subculture in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Formed in Britain in the late 1970s, the Goth subculture is characterized by a distinct morbid aesthetic and an overwhelming emphasis on the color black. The subculture retains a relatively high number of Elder Goths who participate in the subculture beyond their youth. This interdisciplinary project draws from the lifespan perspective of age studies and aspects of performance studies and queer utopian theory. Individual identities and Gothic communities are built and sustained through subculturally specific fashion and embodied practices at nightclubs, outdoor gatherings, and the phenomenon of virtual streaming dance nights which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also considers how meaning is made in subcultural places. Elder Goths draw on the subculture’s embrace of dichotomies in life, commitment to adaptation, and deepen their investment with the subculture at transitional points in their lives. Subculture is thus a fluid process of worldmaking which unfolds over the life course. This dissertation underscores the power of agency in making new and better worlds.Item Work and Social Activism in the Life Stories of Latina Domestic Workers(2012) Barreto Bebianno Simoes, Marcia; Freidenberg, Judith N; Caughey, John; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Since the 1980s, social science research has emerged on gender and immigration to the United States as a result, in part, of the pronounced increase in immigration to the US. It has documented the way in which immigration is changing the social fabric of US society as well as how gender roles are being positioned within society. Scholarship on Latino immigration and gender has also evolved throughout the past decades, providing much needed insight about migration outcomes for Latina immigrants and their effects on these women's situated roles. Consequently, scholars have focused their work mainly on Latinas in their host communities, as workers, family members and community organizers. Transnationalist theories have contributed to understanding how Latinas organize their lives across borders; however, work is still needed to understand how the perspective of the immigrant life cycle (defined as life in the country of origin, the process of migration and life in the host country) informs migration outcomes for immigrant Latina women. In order to contribute to this understanding, this study, using an ethnographic approach, looks at the life stories of five low-income Latina immigrant domestic workers activists in Montgomery County, MD, to document their experience and to understand the factors that influence their civic mobilization for their collective rights. The central research question is: What are the factors conducive to female immigrants' collective mobilization for human rights? More specifically, what are the factors in the women's life course that account for mobilization and what are the structural factors in the host country that support this effort? This ethnographic study contributes to the literature on domestic work and migration by examining the subjective aspects of the Latinas' experience as they evolve as activists and mobilize for their rights as workers, particularly from the perspective of identity formation across the immigrant life cycle. The study also shows that domestic work conditions are determined by the specific relationship between poverty, human mobility and gender at a local and national level.Item Three American Artists at Midlife: Negotiating the Space Between Amateur and Professional Status(2007-05-03) Hummel, Michael John; Caughey, John L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines the life histories of three creative artists who are negotiating the space between amateur and professional status. Using John L. Caughey's "cultural traditions model" in conjunction with other recent life history theory and ethnographic participant-observation techniques, I have created a cultural biography for each of my three informants that details how their artistic identity is influenced by the many cultural traditions they interact with, including national, ethnic, professional, educational, aesthetic, and spiritual traditions. Each informant took entrepreneurial steps to support their artistic identity shortly before the inception of this longitudinal study which follows the ups and downs of the realization of their creative vision over a period of several years. Additionally, in keeping with current ethnographic and life history practice, I discuss my own background as an artist and how that influenced the study, and I reflect on trends in life history and new ethnographic writing and how they impinge upon research on artists. I argue that there is a tension between external and internal identity for artists, of which my informants were well aware. As I discuss this tension, I critique the work of Stebbins and Becker on artists, arguing that Stebbins' otherwise useful definitions of "amateurs" and "professionals" are ultimately too rigid, as my own informants often defy his categorizations both subjectively and objectively. I then suggest that Becker's "art worlds" approach is important in understanding the infrastructure needed for creative artists to flourish, but that it too neglects the significance of subjectivity and does not recognize that key individuals serve as "hubs" of activity. I conclude that the individuals in my study made use of more flexible, related cultural traditions to maintain their internal artistic identities while establishing external ones. Having reevaluated their lives as they entered midlife, they later experienced a "legacy reassessment" following the realization of their original vision. Finally, I conclude that despite outside pressures that challenged and modified the subjective experience of their artistic identity, each of my informants embraced art as a "transcendent" frame which can integrate all other cultural traditions.