American Studies
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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 Revisiting the Reservation: The Lumbee Community of East Baltimore(2020) Minner, Ashley Colleen; Williams Forson, Psyche; Pearson, Barry L; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Revisiting the Reservation” is an analysis of the relationship between Baltimore’s Lumbee Indian community and the neighborhood where the community settled following the second World War. It is an inquiry into the roles of memory and place in the formation of identity. Vestiges of the Lumbee tribal homeland in North Carolina have become part of the built environment in East Baltimore as a result of the presence of Lumbee people. Tangible aspects of East Baltimore now also exist in the Lumbee tribal homeland. Lumbee people of East Baltimore are the living embodiment of both places. Over time, the community’s connection to the neighborhood has changed due to a complex set of factors ranging from Urban Renewal to upward mobility. This dissertation asks how the community’s identity has been affected. American Indian identity, constructed through a colonial lens, necessarily diminishes over time due to changing connections. The Baltimore Lumbee community illustrates that identity is actually an additive, adaptive process; heritage is living and culture continually evolves. This dissertation utilizes an interdisciplinary framework synthesized from the fields of American Indian Studies and Public Folklore to consider questions of heritage using a decolonial lens. The Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina is introduced via the tribal homeland and the social and economic conditions that prompted a mass migration to East Baltimore. East Baltimore is introduced via an abbreviated chronicle of the presence of American Indian people and other racial and ethnic groups leading up to the presence of Lumbee. Drawing primarily on oral history interviews and archival research, experiences of Lumbee arriving to Baltimore in the postwar years are highlighted, as are the safe havens they adopted, established and stewarded to exist freely and in community with one another away from “home.” The research process to map Baltimore’s former “reservation” and develop a walking tour to commemorate its sites is detailed as a project of reclamation of history, space, and belonging. An analysis of the expressive culture of subsequent generations of Baltimore Lumbee, including fashion, material possessions, food, and speech, reveals that memory and place play significant roles in the formation of identity. As connection to place changes over time, memory of place within identity prevails. Communities must share memory to understand how to engage in a future.Item ‘EXPERIENCE THIS LOVE GIVING ENERGY’: PARENTING AS ACTIVISM, AFFECTIVE LABOR, AND THE DEPLOYMENT OF BLACK LOVE IN CONTEMPORARY BALTIMORE(2018) Leathers, Tanesha Anne; Struna, Nancy L.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Baltimore City uprising of 2015 was in part a reaction to the death of Freddie Gray, but also a response to the repression of this current neoliberal moment. The city’s Black citizenry is one which is profoundly impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline, abject poverty, entrenched neighborhood violence, police aggression and hyper surveillance, underemployment, family stress, health issues, and a host of other challenges and manifestations of violence. Considering this, how does anyone provide a message of hope and engage Baltimore’s largely Black population? This dissertation is a case study that explores the activism of one Black man in contemporary Baltimore and his manifold approaches to the strong, social and economic headwinds that continue to blow through the city. It discusses his efforts to educate and empower his children, other Black youth, and the greater community; his parenting and “otherfathering” as activism; and his deployment of love—Black love—as an important and powerful intervention in spaces where there is often a dearth of resources, opportunity, and hope. This study also considers the everyday life and struggles of a contemporary African-centered organic intellectual and the affective labor involved in his pursuit of transformative change in his community and others like it. This includes a lack of support both in finances and labor, among other challenges. And lastly, with the featured activist’s intended audience in mind, this work explores the subjectivity of Black youth in Baltimore and discusses them as engaged witnesses, artists, and resisters in the face of pervasive violence.Item Alternative Imaginaries, Gothic Temporalities: An Ethnography of the Cultural Construction of Aging in the Goth Subculture(2016) Bush, Leah J.; Paoletti, Jo B.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This ethnographic thesis examines the cultural construction of aging in the Goth subculture in Baltimore, Maryland. Formed in Britain in the late 1970s, Goth retains a relatively high number of Elder Goths who participate in the subculture beyond their youth. By combining interdisciplinary analyses of Goth in the American imaginary with the lived experience of Goths over 40 in everyday life and the nightclub, I argue that participation in the Goth subculture presents an alternative to being aged by culture. Elder Goths subvert constructions of age-appropriate normativity by creating individualized “Gothic temporalities” to navigate through the challenges of adulthood and imagine their futures. This thesis underscores the importance of reconceptualizing aging as a lifespan project. Deconstructing age categories moves authority away from structural forces which support ageism and places power in the hands of individual agents.Item GRACIOUS BUT CARELESS: RACE AND STATUS IN THE HISTORY OF MOUNT CLARE(2010) Moyer, Teresa; Corbin Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Historic plantation sites continue to struggle with the legacy of slavery and black history, particularly concerning their significance in American culture. Although enslaved persons are erased from the contemporary landscape of Carroll Park in Baltimore, Maryland, the historical and archaeological record preserves their importance to the Carroll family and the plantation called Georgia or Mount Clare. I argue that historic preservation is a form of social justice when underrepresented historical groups are integrated into interpretations of historical house museums and landscapes. Enslaved blacks held essential roles in every aspect of Mount Clare from circa 1730 to 1817. They became culturally American at the intersection of race and status, not only through the practice of their own cultural beliefs and values, but those of elite whites, as well. Focus on white ancestors reveals only part of the history of Mount Clare: I demonstrate that blacks' own achievements cannot be ignored.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.