History Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778
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Item Insect Politics: Presidential Optics and the Promises of Manly Monsters in 1980s Horror Film(2023) Santos, James Nolan; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In their own terms, the intellectual and political spheres of the American 1980s spoke on conversations on gender through human bodies. Feminist theorist Sandy Stone wrote the foundational text for transgender studies in 1987 at the height of the Reagan Administration, which was defined by its own masculine politics. Between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, their White House Office of Communications staffers were tasked with upholding this image of masculinity, specifically upholding the physical bodies of men, going against 1980s feminist theorists that upheld binary views on gender. Horror filmmakers in Hollywood, however, more closely aligned with feminist thought regarding the flexibility of gender, and like the White House Office of Communications, used the bodies of characters onscreen to convey their ideas. This thesis is a comparative history of Washington and Hollywood in the 1980s, using the psychoanalytic framework of Julia Kristeva’s abject as a means to look beyond the gendered boundaries set by Washington and seeing how those same boundaries were manipulated by Hollywood.Item The Surface of Things: Reading a Cinema of Decline(2018) Leininger, Derek Michael; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A declensionist imagination dominated intellectual and cultural discourse in American society through the late twentieth century. The 1970s and 1980s were punctuated by real declines of multiple sorts, but the alarmed debates about juvenile delinquency, rural blight, urban decay, and violent crime often obscured coterminous trends and the more meaningful critiques of the historical forces prompting the changes felt as decline. By looking at American films from the 1970s and 1980s focused on thematic decline of varied sorts, this project explores the postmodern social experience of the late-twentieth century and the cultural roots of overcriminalization in the United States. Reading between the filmic lines (or what film theorist Siegfried Kracauer called the surface expressions of cinema) provides clues into unpacking the often contradictory political, social, and cultural configurations taking shape at the end of the twentieth century.Item "The other side of the picture": Social History, Popular Culture, and the Idea of the Sand Creek Massacre(2015) Tanner, Kerry; Bell, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Competing schools of thought regarding American imperialism, American constructions of race, Native American experiences, and white settlers’ place within the American West can be seen in non-fiction and fictional accounts of the 1864 Sand Creek massacre in what is now eastern Colorado. Due to a range of factors including the emergence of social history methodology and Cold War politics, a shift in both American historiography and fictional representations of Native Americans and the West can be observed in certain scholarly works and Western films and novels during the period 1945-1970. Debates over the meaning of Sand Creek, often inspired by film representations, also reveal Coloradans’ and Americans’ attempts to reckon with shameful and embarrassing events of the past by contesting notions of race and imperialism presented by Western fiction.Item "Nothing stronger than the heart of a volunteer": Portrayals of Masculinity and Ideal Citizenship in World War II Combat Films, 1989-2001(2013) Cerullo, Michelle; Giovacchini, Saverio; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Traditional platoons of World War II combat films were visualizations of an America that could be, rather than a reflection of the America that was. One might assume that, had the trend toward inclusive representation continued, the World War II combat platoons of the films of the 1990s might have included women or homosexuals, since the military of the 1990s was fully integrated on a racial front. Instead platoons' compositions remained unchanged. And in this new context, rather than acting out of a desire to expand the terms of citizenship, these movies represent a closing off of the terms of citizenship. In the face of demands for a change in the terms of civic participation from women, from homosexuals, from disabled citizens, these movies represent a vision of a shared past that is easier than the one currently inhabited by viewers. What does it mean that this period, out of all the periods in the history of the United States is the one that is deemed most worthy of celebration?