College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Historic Conservation Landscapes on Fort Hood, Texas: The Civilian Conservation Corps and Cultural Landscape Change in Central Texas(2009) Stabler, Jennifer Anne; Sies, Mary C.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was probably the most popular of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs. Many studies have examined the contribution of the CCC in national and state parks and forests, but less attention has been directed towards soil conservation work performed by enrollees on farms and ranches across the country. This dissertation examines cultural landscapes created by the CCC on farms and ranches in Central Texas that are now part of the Fort Hood Military Reservation. Cultural landscapes created by the CCC in the 1930s are significant because they represent large-scale federal government intervention into farming practices and planning on private land. Dramatic transformations occurred in both the conservation movement and on the land itself. This can be investigated through archaeological sites associated with activities of the CCC on Fort Hood from its period of operation (i.e., from 1933 to 1942). The significance of identified archaeological sites is evaluated based on the Secretary of the Interior's guidelines for evaluating archaeological sites for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. Through the CCC, America's civilians transformed millions of acres of land across the United States from 1933 to 1942 in an effort to conserve natural resources that had been severely overexploited in preceding decades. Soil conservation and other New Deal agricultural programs primarily benefited land owners, but research on Fort Hood suggests that some tenants and sharecroppers benefited as well. Soil conservation work performed by the CCC on private land changed the way America's farming population operated their farms and included ordinary farmers in the conservation movement. Conservation was no longer the sole concern of academics, but through the efforts of federal, state, and local governments, became a major concern of ordinary farmers. This study also explores how rural planning efforts involved farmers in the decision-making process more than ever before. The reorganization of the rural landscape of Central Texas attests to the degree to which conservation measures were accepted by individual farmers.Item Whose Story Is It Anyway?: Constructing the Stories and Pathology of Madness/Mental Illness in the Contemporary U.S.(2009) Rector, Claudia; Caughey, John L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Personal stories are always told in the context of broader cultural narratives. Thus, in the contemporary U.S., stories of personal experience of illness and disability are usually informed by Western notions of health and illness, and a binary classification system of normative/non-normative bodies and behaviors. The emerging field of disability studies represents a socially progressive attempt to interrogate and reconfigure discourses that pathologize and medicalize non-normative bodies, challenging medical discourses with an alternate framework of evidence that emphasizes the personal experiences of individuals who have experienced disability or illness and who conceive of these experiences in different ways. Whose Story Is It Anyway? is an interdisciplinary examination of how the cultural authority of medicine compresses a range of individual experiences into narrow, standardized narratives of the experience of depression, for instance, or other phenomena classified as illness. Specifically, my study makes a three-part argument: first, that biological psychiatry has eclipsed psychoanalysis and that medical definitions of mental illness have become the culturally dominant way of determining what kinds of physical or psychological phenomena are classified as bad, e.g., pathological. Second, these definitions then inform and shape stories of personal experience with such phenomena, enough so that standard narrative formats emerge for describing "individual" experiences of both physical disability and madness/mental illness. The personal stories of madness/mental illness then become, in essence, universalized narratives of illness and recovery that reinforce notions of pathology. Third, this standardization of the personal story often aligns with medical narratives in a way that reflects the storytellers' disempowered position in the medical industry, in that telling the "right" story positions them to receive the benefits of working within the medical system, and telling the "wrong" story becomes an act of political activism. Such de facto coercion has substantial implications for intellectual projects, such as disability studies, that rely heavily on the articulation of personal experience as evidence for the need for change. Finally, this study argues for a re-examination of experience-based, identity-focused activism, and for an invigorated humanities project in science studies.Item Re-Visioning Violence: How Black Youth Advance Critical Understandings of Violence in Climates of Criminalization(2009) McCants, Johonna Rachelle; Struna, Nancy; Woods, Clyde A.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While Black youth are often framed as the perpetrators of violence in the mainstream media and other sites, they are rarely consulted for their views on violence. This dissertation examines how Black youth and other young people of color have used hip hop music and community organizing to publicly articulate their analysis of violence and shape public discourses, ideologies and policies. The project is principally framed by Black feminist theory and Critical Race Theory, and uses discourse analysis, cultural criticism, and historical analysis as its primary methods of analysis. I examine hip hop lyrics and materials produced during community organizing campaigns, alongside a range of sources that reflect dominant frameworks on youth and violence such as television programs and sociological scholarship. This study argues firstly, that there is a discourse of "youth violence"; secondly, that this discourse is central to the criminalization of young people of color; and thirdly, that criminalization facilitates epistemic violence, harm and injury that results from the production of hegemonic knowledge. Finally, I draw on youths' perspectives and social change practices to theorize the concept of epistemic resistance, and show how youth have engaged in epistemic resistance in various ways. Youth have used hip hop music to redefine what counts as violence, who is involved in violence, and why violence among youth occurs; conducted participatory action research projects to influence and change the content of mainstream media; and developed and promoted the discourse of a "war on youth" in organizing campaigns that challenge punitive policy proposals introduced as solutions to "youth violence." This dissertation provides a re-theorized framing of and knowledge about the intellect and agency of marginalized youth. It also provides youth studies scholars with conceptual and methodological approaches for future scholarship on youth, violence, and safety. Lastly, this dissertation informs urban youth policy and grassroots organizing for transformative justice, a vision and practice of attaining safety and justice through personal and social transformation, rather than reliance on the criminal legal system.Item ASPECTS OF AMERICAN MUSICAL LIFE AS REFLECTED IN THE NEW MUSIC REVIEW AND CHURCH MUSIC REVIEW, 1901-1935(2009) Fitts, Elizabeth Crouch; Cohen, H. Robert; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The early twentieth century was a time of growth and important change in American musical life. However, many aspects of our national musical culture during this period remain largely unexplored. Among these is The New Music Review and Church Music Review (NMR) which from 1901 to 1935 offered a detailed chronicle of American musical life in some 404 issues and in over 16,000 pages. During its thirty-year publication run, the NMR was one of the most important music journals published in the United States and one that enjoyed "a high reputation for its able editorials and the excellence of its contributed articles." This dissertation examines the central and, in the main, previously unexplored topics treated in the journal's feature articles including attempts to define an American musical identity, the promotion of American music and composers, and the history and development of the organ and its music in the United States -- i.e., efforts to standardize the organ console, the controversy over unification of organ pipes, transcriptions, service playing, programs, and accompaniment for motion pictures and choirs. The journal also treats the history and accomplishments of the American Guild of Organists, problems relating to early twentieth-century American sacred music, the purposes of church music, musical reforms in the Episcopal and Roman Catholic Churches, the education of the clergy, congregation, choirmaster and organists in their responsibilities for the implementation of sacred music, and the selection of church repertory, especially hymns and anthems. There are four appendices: the first summarizes the NMR's articles on choral music, the second summarizes the NMR's articles on music education, the third lists the NMR's biographical sketches, and the fourth provides a descriptive list of the journal's contributors.Item Butch Morris and the Art of Conduction(2009) Stanley, Thomas Taylor; Witzleben, Lawrence; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris is a 62-year-old composer and bandleader who was part of a cadre of North American jazz innovators whose work began coming to public attention in the mid-1970s. Since 1985 he has developed, refined, and implemented a method for creating unique ensemble music using a patented vocabulary of conducting gestures. This novel strategy and the music it produces present an array of theoretical questions. Some of these have been simplified as questions of classificatory nomenclature: Is Conduction improvisation, interpretation, composition, or none of the above? How does Conduction as a system compare to other methods of structuring musical performance in real time? Other critical and social questions are addressed whose answers hinge upon the values and functions that sustain Conduction in the real world of monetized and competitive musicianship. Through interviews with Morris and members of his ensembles as well as observations conducted at numerous Conduction rehearsals and performances, my study documents Morris' art form as a new instrumentality that offers new ways of making and thinking about music. In the course of this study, a variety of materials and sources are used to describe how Conduction® was developed, what its historical precedents are, and how it operates in real performance situations. The explanatory implications of framing Conduction practice as a novel musical instrument are also examined. This new instrument has garnered a community of users with differential investments in and expectations for Morris' vehicle and how these investments and expectations have defined Conduction's place in the domain of musical performance and education. Supported by self-reporting and analysis, Morris' method is shown to arise from a pro-ensemble orientation that seeks to breathe new life into both the jazz big band and the classical orchestra by awakening and redistributing those core capacities most essential to the production of musical sound.Item Second-Wave Feminism in the American South, 1965-1980(2009) Keane, Katarina; Rowland, Leslie S.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the late 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminism transformed American society, creating new legal rights for women, remaking gender roles, and altering women's position in the economy. Although largely omitted from popular and scholarly accounts, Southern women played critical roles in the second wave. At the grassroots, they engaged in a wide array of feminist activism, from establishing credit unions to opening health clinics, from suing discriminatory employers to opening rape crisis centers, from challenging sterilization abuse to building lesbian community, and from setting up feminist businesses to organizing domestic workers. Their initiatives included efforts to place women in non-traditional jobs, campaigns for political office, and court cases that established reproductive freedom and mandated equal pay. In restoring Southern women to the history of second-wave feminism, the dissertation suggests that the movement was far more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. While drawing on evidence from throughout the South, the dissertation devotes particularly close attention to Atlanta, Georgia, Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina, and Austin and Dallas, Texas, all places where feminists were especially active and the sources are especially rich. It demonstrates that Southern women of widely varying backgrounds engaged in feminist activism, but only rarely in organizations that crossed lines of race and class. More commonly, they mobilized in coalitions that preserved separate identities and agendas while addressing common grievances. The women's movement in the South may thus be characterized as multiple movements that overlapped at times, if only in limited ways, and moved along parallel tracks at others. Southern feminists confronted daunting obstacles, including their region's long history of racial injustice, social and economic conditions that lagged behind those of the rest of the nation, a weak welfare state, and entrenched political conservatism. The need to circumvent hostile state and local authorities led some Southern feminists to turn to the federal courts as a more promising arena. In so doing, they launched a number of landmark legal cases that transformed the lives of all American women. Ironically, feminists in the most conservative region of the nation became the vanguard of the women's movement.Item "What is a Black Man Without His Paranoia?" : Clinical Depression and the Politics of African American Anxieties Toward Emotional Vulnerability(2009) Stewart, Tyrone Anthony; Parks, Sheri L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In an interview after his departure from television and a rumored "breakdown," the comedian Dave Chappelle asked Oprah Winfrey, "What is a black man without his paranoia?" This question forms the crux of a dissertation which addresses African Americans' attitudes toward clinical depression, in general, and black men's anxieties toward emotional vulnerability, in specific. Using the concept of "paranoia" as an indicator of a healthy skepticism toward medical authority, this dissertation deconstructs the concept of depression as a discursive construct and moves it out of the bounds of science and into the precincts of cultural emotion theory. Opting for theory over science, this dissertation argues against the erasure of social and cultural narratives and explores how race and gender can inform our interpretation of depression. Using textual readings, historical comparison, and ethnography, this dissertation examines the politics involved in addressing the emotionality of black men. It is concerned with how definitions of blackness, manhood, crisis, worth, and belonging impact black men's understandings of emotional wellness and inform African Americans' attitudes toward the emotional performances of black men. Two popular books on African American's mental health (Black Rage by William H. Grier and Price M. Cobbs (1968) and Black Pain by Terri Williams (2008)) are examined within their respective historical and social contexts to track the changing cultural discourse on African Americans' mental health and the role of gender in understanding narratives of wellness. And concepts family, labor, and responsibility are explored as implicit elements in black men's attainment of manhood in a comparative examination of the Sanitation Workers Strike (1968) and the Million Man March (1995).Item Words to the Wives: The Jewish Press, Immigrant Women, and Identity Construction, 1924-1925(2009) Shapiro, Shelby Alan; Kelly, R. Gordon; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines how six publications sought to construct Jewish- American identities for Eastern European Jewish immigrant women between 1895 and 1925, beginning in 1895 with the world's first Jewish women's magazine, American Jewess (1895 - 1899), followed by a women's magazine in Yiddish, Di froyen-velt (1913 -1914), and ending with an another Yiddish women's magazine, Der idisher froyen zhurnal (1922-1923). Between 1914 and 1916, three mass circulation Yiddish daily newspapers, Dos yidishes tageblatt, Forverts, and Der tog, started printing women's pages. This study ends in 1925, after Congress passed legislation restricting immigration in 1924. These publications present a variety of viewpoints and identities, that were political, religious and class-based. The three magazines, all in the same genre, held different attitudes on everything from religion to suffrage. The three daily newspapers represented fundamentally different ideologies. Forverts was socialist. Der tog was nationalist-Zionist, and Dos yidishes tageblatt, the oldest publication examined, represented a conservative, traditionally religious viewpoint and supported Zionism. This study examines religious and political ideologies, celebrating religious and civic holidays, attitudes towards women working and learning, Jewish education, women's suffrage and exercising citizenship, as well as women in the public and private spheres of both the Jewish and American worlds. The central question asked is how those involved with these publications endeavored to create particular Jewish-American identities. Not being a reader- response study, I make no assumptions as to these publications' actual influence. The press represented only one institution involved in acculturation. Issues subsumed under the central question include how producers of these publications perceived Americanization and saw Jews in America; and what changes these journals advocated regarding religious practices, gender roles, and citizenship. "Acculturation" implies negotiation in the process of identity formation, as a blending of Old and New World customs, lifestyles, mores, economic and social conditions occurred. This dissertation takes a social constructionist view of ethnicity and identity formation. Based on translations relevant pieces from all issues of the publications under review, this study points to the diversity present on the American "Jewish Street" from 1895 to 1925.Item THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF BALTIMORE'S 19TH-CENTURY WORKING CLASS STONEWARE POTTERS(2009) Kille, John Elliot; Sies, Mary C.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the world of ceramics, too often there is a focus on the "greatness" or "uniqueness" of potters. Traditional approaches involving decorative arts tend to favor rarity or aesthetic qualities of the wares they produced, while archaeological studies often focus on systematic categorizations or classifications of recovered ceramics, with little in the way of interpretation from a humanistic point of view. With regard to Baltimore's 19th-century stoneware potters, portions of their history or narrow related aspects have been studied, but there has been no attempt made to examine the birth, life, and death of an industry that lasted for a century. In order to better understand the vernacular or ordinary existence of these skilled potters a comprehensive study was undertaken to document the dynamic and changing cultural landscape to which they belonged. In addition, the experiences and contributions of these artisans are also placed within the perspective of working class labor history. This research project is concerned with the following three central questions. How did Baltimore's 19th-century stoneware industry shape the city's social, physical, and natural environment? How did the social, physical, and natural environment shape Baltimore's stoneware industry? What key historical circumstances such as industrialization, new technologies, and modern manufacturing methods influenced these dynamic relationships? The framing of research and interrogation of evidence involved a systematic, interdisciplinary cultural landscapes model that creates a three way relationship between humans, artifacts (the built environment), and the natural environment. A systematic social history methodology was also used to recover accessible types of data involving the social/economic and cultural dimensions of urban places, including artifactual evidence. This study reveals a cultural landscape shaped by enduring cultural traditions, a superior transportation system for marketing wares, a shared and restricted urban environment involving pollution and the threat of fire, and industrialization leading to technological advancements in food preservation and storage.Item BUILDING THE VIRTUAL WORLD: SOFTWARE, BETA TESTING, AND THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE SIMS ONLINE(2009) Snyder, Donald I.; Kirschenbaum, Matthew G; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Originally released in 2002, The Sims Online (TSO) was one of the most hyped online games ever brought to market. Many critics believed its connection to The Sims would ensure its success. However, this potential was never reached, and in August of 2008, EA/Maxis shut down TSO, terminating users' accounts and removing all traces of it from the Internet. Despite its failure, TSO remains an interesting text for analysis, especially as a case study of the growing importance of virtual worlds on the Internet, and as a cautionary tale for future virtual world development. Combining a cultural studies approach with the emerging media studies' subfields of "ludology" and "software studies" this dissertation examines the formative period of TSO's development--how was the game developed, created, and used in its earliest stages (especially its beta test, in which users play the game before the official release in order to uncover problems with the software). Whereas previous examples of the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) genre were fantasy-based, TSO fashioned a world very much modeled on the familiar; players would navigate their Sim avatar through a landscape filled with simulacrums of the material artifacts, cultural rituals, and social practices that are common in American culture. TSO was not a game about battle and conquest--it was a game about the meaning of production and consumption in our lives and leisure. The dissertation focuses on the overlapping and even blurring meaning of consumption and production in users' experience of TSO, as well as in the architecture of the game. The analysis of the crucial beta test phase provides a particularly focused examination of the collision of these terms.