American Studies

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Broadcasting Birth Control: Family Planning and Mass Media, 1914-1984
(2010) Parry, Manon; Michel, Sonya; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
The history of the birth control movement in the United States is traditionally told through accounts of the leaders and organizations that campaigned to legalize the distribution of contraception. Only recently have historians begun to examine the "cultural work" of printed media including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause. This dissertation builds on this scholarship, to examine the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by birth control advocates, and the communications experts they increasingly turned to for guidance, over the course of the twentieth century. As advocates tried to mimic the efforts of commercial advertisers to "sell" health-related behaviors to a wide audience, they crafted the new academic specialty of health communication. I argue that mass media was central to the campaign to transform the private subject of fertility control into one fit for public discussion in the United States. Moreover, the international family planning movement played an instrumental role in establishing and expanding health communication in the promotion of contraception around the globe. As they negotiated for access to cinema and radio platforms from which to promote their cause, birth control advocates toned down their feminist rhetoric of sexual liberation. After the legalization of contraception, censorship and broadcasting conventions affecting educational messages further diluted the kinds of representations they could promote over the radio and on the nation's television sets. As commercial media became increasingly explicit in the 1960s and `70s, family planning promoters conversely expunged sex from their broadcasts for domestic and foreign audiences. In this way, media helped to shape the messages of the movement. Seeking greater creative freedom, some of the family planning community began to cultivate informal partnerships with entertainment media producers, perfecting a strategy abroad that would be brought home to the U.S. The Mexican "education-entertainment" approach has since become the most influential model of family planning communication, replicated around the world in efforts to reintroduce the context of sex and relationships to the promotion of contraceptive use. This history is thus a transnational narrative of the dissemination of messages and the technologies and techniques that delivered them.
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.
Beyond the Railroad People: Race and the Color of History in Chinese America
(2009) Thompson, Wendy Marie; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Past discourses on Asian Americans, specifically Chinese immigrants and Chinese Americans, have historically focused on specific racial interactions with white America that fell somewhere between exclusion and assimilation. However, lost in these discussions are the different nonwhite interracial hybridities that did and continue to inhabit Chinese immigrant and Chinese American lives. This study offers a departure from dominant scholarly conversations that reproduce the master narrative of Chinese immigrants coming to the United States, building the railroads, and assimilating just enough to become what white America has termed the "model minority" and shifts the analysis and conversation to look at other experiences, opening up a racial narrative that situates Chinese bodies in proximity to black and nonwhite America. In applying theoretical perspectives from race and ethnic studies, history, visual culture studies, and immigration studies to examine a broad range of texts, I have discovered that Chinese men using racial passing as a tool to cross American borders illegally, Gold Mountain frontier experiences that included significant contact with Native people, husbands and fathers refusing to bow to greater community pressures and disown their black wives and mixed race children in the Mississippi Delta region, and the presence of Chinese women of African descent in local California Miss Chinatown beauty pageants all suggest that how Chinese people saw themselves racially and continue to see themselves was and is more complex and fluid than the master narratives depict and many Americans appear to believe. contributes to the growing field of Asian American studies by establishing a dialogue between counter-hegemonic discourses and works that give agency and voice to various Chinese Americans whose lived racial realities that included kinship with nonwhite Americans complicate what it means to be Chinese, immigrant, or American. This dissertation also intervenes in the field of American Studies by expanding how we gauge the many ways race, power, and agency shape bodies, relationship, communities, and national identities in the United States.
Race and Mass Consumption in Consumer Culture: National Trademark Advertising Campaigns in the United States and Germany, 1890-1930
(2008-02-25) Cserno, Isabell; Thornton Dill, Bonnie; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines how and why visual imagery in selected advertising material in the United States and Germany between 1890 and 1930 influenced the materialization of mass consumption as an important part of national culture. What emerges out of this study is a comparison of two different national environments that despite cultural differences relied on discourses on racialized identities to attract consumers and sell brand name products. This dissertation proposes that in both countries, trade card series in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century helped establish visual elements as important communicators to mass consumers, especially by drawing on easily recognizable motifs of patriotic and racialized mythologization. By the turn of the nineteenth century, as newspaper and magazine advertising continued to grow, the visual compositions of advertisements continued to become more sophisticated in both narrative as well as stylistic composition. This work relies equally on scholarship from the traditional disciplines of history and art history, as well as from the growing interdisciplinary work produced in American Studies, especially its subdivision of visual and material culture. The multidisciplinary methods of African American Studies and other related fields such as Black Diaspora Studies have shaped this dissertation's theoretical foundation of the complex processes of racialization. This dissertation examines three brand name products that started using black trade characters as their trademarks: Aunt Jemima pancakes and Cream of Wheat in the United States, and Sarotti Chocolate in Germany. All three product campaigns emerge at a time of complex social and economic changes as both Germany and the United States evolved as powerful nation-states with colonial and imperialist politics.
Class by the Glass: The Significance of Imported Wine Consumption in America, 1750-1800
(2007-05-03) Thomas, Catherine Stewart; Sies, Mary C; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This paper analyses the ritual of imported wine consumption in America between 1750 and 1800 and its significance in establishing a wealthy gentleman's power and place within a social hierarchy. My research was conducted by exploring contemporary written and visual records, as well as examining material objects and architectural spaces, specifically pertaining to the Annapolis, Maryland region. Beginning with a study of the varieties of wines consumed and their influence in the politically-charged environment prior to the American Revolution, the paper then explores why and how gentlemen used wine bibbing as an indication of one's identity in a burgeoning society. Quantities of wine-related furniture and decorative objects, in combination with architectural storage spaces, conveyed a life far above that of the average citizen. Finally, this paper examines to what degree historic house museums are interpreting the wine ritual and suggests steps that might be taken to do so more effectively.
Infectious Disease in Philadelphia, 1690-1807: An Ecological Perspective
(2006-05-15) Anroman, Gilda Marie; Sies, Mary Corbin; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation examines the multiple factors that influenced the pattern and distribution of infectious disease in Philadelphia between the years 1690 and 1807, and explores the possible reasons for the astonishingly high level of death from disease throughout the city at this time. What emerges from this study is a complex picture of a city undergoing rapid cultural and epidemiological changes. Large-scale immigration supplied a susceptible population group, as international trade, densely packed streets, unsanitary living conditions, and a stagnant and contaminated water supply combined to create ideal circumstances for the proliferation of both pathogens and vectors, setting the stage for the many public health crises that plagued Philadelphia for more than one hundred years. This study uses an ecological perspective to understand how disease worked in Philadelphia. The idea that disease is virtually always a result of the interplay of the environment, the genetic and physical make-up of the individual, and the agent of disease is one of the most important cause and effect ideas underpinned by epidemiology. This dissertation integrates methods from the health sciences, humanities, and social sciences to demonstrate how disease "emergence" in Philadelphia was a dynamic feature of the interrelationships between people and their socio-cultural and physical environments. Classic epidemiological theory, informed by ecological thinking, is used to revisit the city's reconstructed demographic data, bills of mortality, selected diaries (notably that of Elizabeth Drinker), personal letters, contemporary observations and medical literature. The emergence and spread of microbial threats was driven by a complex set of factors, the convergence of which lead to consequences of disease much greater than any single factor might have suggested. Although it has been argued that no precondition of disease was more basic than poverty in eighteenth-century Philadelphia, it is shortsighted to assume that impoverishment was a necessary co-factor in the emergence and spread of disease. The urban environment of Philadelphia contained the epidemiological factors necessary for the growth and propagation of a wide variety of infectious agents, while the social, demographic and behavioral characteristics of the people of the city provided the opportunity for "new" diseases to appear.
Mental Illness in Maryland: Public Perception, Discourse, and Treatment, from the Colonial Period to 1964
(2006-05-01) Schoeberlein, Robert William; Mintz, Lawrence E.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This dissertation is an overview of the public perception of, discourse concerning, and treatment of Maryland's mentally ill citizens from the Colonial Period to 1964. The present day view of the mentally ill in the early colony is, at best, fragmentary. The numbers of such Marylanders were small and little information exists to frame a picture of what constituted their daily life or the level of care until about 1785. The decision to confine individuals at home or at an institution entered public discourse. Certain families entrusted their relatives to hospitals. Mentally ill people constituted a highly visible presence during the first half of the nineteenth century. A vacillating public interest and tepid financial support for their cause, however, prevented access to higher quality care for the majority. County almshouses and jails continued to house the "pauper insane" in a regressive manner. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the rights and well-being of mentally ill citizens came to public notice. The possibility of a sane individual being unjustly confined within a mental hospital fired the public imagination. Court cases and patient exposés persuaded legislators that some laws and formalized state oversight of institutions were required. The first three decades of the twentieth century marked an epoch of progress. A reform campaign resulted in the transfer of all patients from the county almshouses into modern, newly-constructed state mental hospitals. The insular settings, however, ultimately made them less visible. The Great Depression and Second World War era induced shortages that adversely affected state hospital patients. Many such patients languished in sub-standard conditions. A troubling 1949 photographic exposé ultimately pressured state officials to bring system-wide improvements. The 1950s ushered in a new era for Maryland's mentally ill citizens. The advent of psychotropic drugs allowed patients to leave the hospitals. Programs to assist in the transition back into the community were developed by the State and public advocates. Members of a once faceless, inarticulate group came to be perceived as individuals who could contribute to and enrich the life of our communities.
Shifting Whiteness: A Life History Approach to U.S. White Parents of "Biracial" or Black" Children
(2005-08-04) Woodfork, Joshua Carter; Caughey, John L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
This research examines how the experiences of parenting ?biracial? or ?black? children have affected the beliefs of white parents who have published books and essays regarding their situations. The participating parents claim that because of their relationship with their children of African descent their self-understandings, including their own sense of their racial identity, are altered. They now speak of themselves as ?not quite white,? ?black by proxy,? or as a ?bridge? (between the races). My dissertation, ?Shifting Whiteness: A Life History Approach to U.S. White Parents of ?Biracial? or ?Black? Children,? explores how such parents talk about and conceptualize their experiences, including the implications of these parents? claims of racial identity transformation. This dissertation posits that the white parents? shift in attitudes and beliefs reflects their vivid engagement with the racism and racial experiences that their children endure. The discord between the parents? claim of racial transformation and their continued benefiting from white privilege is also examined. Consideration of the parents? shifts provides a better understanding of racial beliefs and transformations at the individual, micro-level, which contributes to society?s general knowledge about the conception of race. Understanding white parents? decisions to write about their identity transformations as?to use Michael Omi and Howard Winant?s (1994) phrase?a ?racial project,? I investigate its aims and limits, exploring which racial projects are presented by this group of U.S. white parents of biracial and black children. John L. Caughey?s (1994) approach to how individuals operate with ?cultural traditions? and ideas of ?border crossing? also provide theoretical frameworks. Tools of analysis include ethnographic life history methods, textual analysis, critical race theory, and intersectional analysis. My research method involves complementing a close reading of the writings of these authors that are white and parents with qualitative ethnographic life history interviews that gather detailed information from each of these individuals. I treat their publications together with my transcribed interviews as case studies through which I compare and contrast the similarities and differences in the belief changes and shifting that these informants have undergone, as well as their current constructions of race.
Stephen W. Meader: His Contributions to American Children's Literature
(2005-05-25) Looney, Chesley Howard; Kelly, R. Gordon; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
Stephen W. Meader published forty-four books of adventure for children from 1920 through 1969. His books successfully captured important aspects of American life and values, and were very popular across these very different decades of American history. This dissertation examines each of Meader's books at least briefly while paying special attention to questions of values and formula in key and representative works. Meader wrote both historical tales and stories with contemporary settings, set in many regions and most historical eras of the United States; his heroes mature in some way during the course of his books. Meader emphasized important American values: self-reliance, honesty, community, courage, loyalty, friendship, and clear thinking. He used formulas, especially the ordeal, in which the protagonist is separated from responsible adult leadership, faces a challenge, and successfully meets that challenge. This approach allowed him to test his protagonists to see if they would stay true to their values. Meader's heroes usually had sidekicks and often had mentors as well. They often tangled with memorable villains, received rewards, and sometimes found romance. Meader had an interest in entrepreneurial themes which he expressed most memorably in four contemporary novels in which the young hero starts a business. Along with the fictional story, Meader provides information to the reader in both general approach and specific costs, on how to start certain business ventures: trucking (T-Model Tommy 1938), fruit cultivation and production (Blueberry Mountain 1941), earthmoving (Bulldozer 1951), and ski resort management (Snow on Blueberry Mountain 1961). The protagonists of most of Meader's books are good at making do with what they have and at thinking on their feet. Two illustrative examples of his many historical novels are Boy With a Pack (1939), whose protagonist is a Yankee peddler and for which he won a Newbery honor award, and Red Horse Hill (1930) based on his New Hampshire boyhood. Meader wrote many historical stories of the sea in various eras. He also wrote on environmental themes throughout his career. Meader's work during World War II stood out among American juvenile authors because he confronted the war directly as it was happening while most such writers avoided the war until after it was over. An example is The Long Trains Roll (1944).
Artful Identifications: Crafting Survival in Japanese American Concentration Camps
(2005-04-20) Dusselier, Jane Elizabeth; Kim, Seung-kyung; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
"Artful Identifications" offers three meanings of internment art. First, internees remade locations of imprisonment into livable places of survival. Inside places were remade as internees responded to degraded living conditions by creating furniture with discarded apple crates, cardboard, tree branches and stumps, scrap pieces of wood left behind by government carpenters, and wood lifted from guarded lumber piles. Having addressed the material conditions of their living units, internees turned their attention to aesthetic matters by creating needle crafts, wood carvings, ikebana, paintings, shell art, and kobu. Dramatic changes to outside spaces of "assembly centers" and concentration camps were also critical to altering hostile settings into survivable landscapes. My second meaning positions art as a means of making connections, a framework offered with the hope of escaping utopian models of community building which overemphasize the development of common beliefs, ideas, and practices that unify people into easily surveilled groups. "Making Connections" situates the process of individuals identifying with larger collectivities in the details of everyday life, a complicated and layered process that often remains invisible to us. By sewing clothes for each other, creating artificial flowers and lapel pins as gifts, and participating in classes and exhibits, internees addressed their needs for maintaining and developing connections. "Making Connections" advances perhaps the broadest possible understanding of identity formation based on the idea of employing diverse art forms to sustain already developed relationships and creating new attachments in the context of displacement. The third meaning offered by this project is art as a mental space of survival. In the process of crafting, internees pieced together mental landscapes that allowed them to generate new ideas and alternative discourses. As recent psychoanalytic scholarship suggests, these artful identifications with loss encompassed radical political possibilities because they keep melancholic struggles alive and relevant to the present. Regardless of whether we understand these crafting examples as tools for remaking inside places, re-territorializing outside spaces, making connections, or artifacts of loss, it is clear that for Japanese Americans incarcerated in complex places of oppression, art evolved into portables spaces of resistance.

American Studies

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