Theses and Dissertations from UMD
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item Black Benefactors and White Recipients: Counternarratives of Benevolence in Nineteenth-Century American Literature(2012) Troppe, Marie; Levine, Robert S; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My study examines four African American-authored narratives written between 1793 and 1901 (Richard Allen and Absalom Jones' Narratives of the Proceedings of the Black People, Harriet Jacobs's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Elizabeth Keckley's Behind the Scenes, and Charles Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition) that depict acts of benevolence by African Americans to white recipients. This work focuses on the power relations represented by acts of benevolence, social perceptions regarding the roles of benefactor and recipient, and authorial choices in the depiction of these acts. The study highlights how these four narratives complicate representations of benevolence, both in terms of race and of the historical contexts in which they were written. Previous scholars have documented the emergence of what they identify as a genre of benevolence texts within nineteenth-century American literature and even identified several subgenres among these texts (including poorhouse stories, seamstress novels, panic fiction, settlement house narratives, and maternal literacy management narratives). My work contributes to this critical literature by identifying what I call counternarratives of benevolence depicting interactions between black benefactors and white recipients, thereby expanding the scholarly discourse surrounding benevolence and challenging the dominant American narrative about it. I call the texts under consideration here counternarratives because they challenge the dominant narrative of black inferiority in benevolent encounters. Unlike benevolence texts previously studied, which usually portray white benefactors and white recipients, white benefactors and black recipients, and even occasionally black benefactors and black recipients--portrayals that often reinforce social hierarchies--the texts I discuss work to disrupt social hierarchies by both uncovering and challenging cultural hegemony. In doing so, they facilitate the expression of black agency and declare African American readiness for full citizenship. Drawing on the methods of social history, cultural anthropology, moral and political philosophy and literary studies, my analysis examines issues of agency, performativity, gift theory, and the psychology of gratitude. My study interprets two canonical and two non-canonical texts to show how benevolence is used as a narrative device to question race and power, to demonstrate a connection between narrative and ideology, and ultimately to destabilize ideologies of race and nation. My study also contributes to current debate about benevolence. By recovering the African American intellectual foundations of today's community-based learning movement within higher education, I raise questions about using traditionally understood nineteenth-century benevolence as a means for teaching students to challenge constructs of race and power in social activist movements in the twenty-first century. The writers I discuss offer a new and important model for community-based learning today.Item 'Working the Crowd': Enacting Cultural Citizenship Through Charged Humor(2010) Krefting, Rebecca A.; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Like many cultural practices, comic performance is one of a host of weapons in the arsenal of tactics, strategies, and offensive maneuverings available to individuals and communities seeking to redress inequitable distributions of wealth, power, rights, and cultural visibility. This dissertation examines contemporary jesters opting to use humor to develop community, instruct and mobilize audience members, and lobby for political and cultural inclusion. It is a kind of humor that illumines one's position in a specific socio-political, historical matrix; it is humor that creates community and conversely demonstrates the ways in which one does not belong. An examination of the economy--the production, exchange, and consumption--of this humor reveals how and why comics produce charged humor or humor that illumines one's status as second-class citizen and how this kind of humor is consumed in the US. I employ a mixed-methods qualitative approach using ethnography, archival research, and critical discourse analysis to investigate comic performances: stand-up comedy, sketch comedy, and one-woman shows. Throughout, I draw from dozens of contemporary comics performing in the US, but take as case studies: Robin Tyler, a Jewish lesbian comic and activist who is currently spearheading the marriage equality movement in California; Micia Mosely, a Brooklyn-based, Black, queer woman whose one-woman show, Where My Girls At?: A Comedic Look at Black Lesbians, is touring the country; and a group of young people (eighteen and under) participating in Comedy Academy programs (a non-profit arts education organization in Maryland), allowing them to author and perform sketch comedy. My sources for this project include popular culture ephemera such as print and electronic media, public commentary, documentaries about stand-up comedy, interviews with comics and industry entrepreneurs, performance and program evaluations, comic material (jokes), and performance texts. Drawing from nation and citizenship theories, cultural studies, performance studies, and a number of identity-based disciplines, I argue that humor intervenes on behalf of minoritarian subjects and it is part of our task to read these performances for the tactics and approaches they supply for being fully incorporated in the national polity.Item Baseball, Citizenship, and National Identity in George W. Bush's America(2008-11-21) King-White, Ryan E; Andrews, David L.; Kinesiology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The four separate, but related, studies within this research project seek to offer a critical understanding for how American national identit(ies), and particular forms of (cultural) citizenship are discursively constructed and performed in and through the sport of baseball. More specifically, this dissertation will utilize and expand upon critical theories of neoliberalism, citizenship, whiteness, and (physical) cultural studies to engage various empirical sites, which help provide the context for everyday life in contemporary America. Each chapter looks at various empirical aspects of the Little League World Series and the fans of the Boston Red Sox (popularly referred to as Red Sox Nation) that have historically privileged particular performances and behaviors often associated with white, American, heterosexual, upper-middle class, masculine subject-positions. In the first instance this project also attempts to describe how 'normalized' American citizenship is being (re)shaped in and through the sport of baseball. Secondly, I aim to critically evaluate claims made by both Little League Baseball, and the Boston Red Sox organization, in response to (popular) criticisms (Bryant, 20002; Mosher, 2001a, 2001b, 2001c) of regressive activity and behavior historically related to their organizations, that they are striving for a more culturally diverse and welcoming condition for all through their tournament and fan community respectively. To best articulate this critical understanding of the cotemporary moment I analyzed the production of the 2003 Little League Worlds Series, the (multi)media discourses surrounding Dominican star/villain, Danny Almonte, the filmic rendering of 'normalized' members of Red Sox Nation within Good Will Hunting and Fever Pitch, and finally an ethnographic study of Red Sox Nation throughout the 2007 baseball season. In following Andrews (2008) suggestive outline for a Physical Cultural Study I used a multi-methodological, qualitatively based, study to gather evidence through which to best understand the socio-political context of the contemporary moment. In so doing, I hope to clarify the dangerous way neoliberal capitalism is practiced and experienced in America.