Department: American Culture Studies/History ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
10 matches in the database.
These are records: 1 - 10.
1.
Anderson, Eric.
Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891.
Degree: PhD, American Culture Studies/History, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► How did people think about copyright in the nineteenth century? What did…
(more)
▼ How did people think about copyright in the nineteenth century? What did they think it was? What was it for? Was it property? Or something else? How did it function? Who could it benefit? Who might it harm? Pimps and Ferrets: Copyright and Culture in the United States, 1831-1891 addresses questions like these, unpacking the ideas and popular ideologies connected to copyright in the United States during the nineteenth-century. This era was rife with copyright-related controversy and excitement, including international squabbling, celebrity grandstanding, new technology, corporate exploitation, and ferocious arguments about piracy, reprinting, and the effects of copyright law. Then, as now, copyright was very important to a small group of people (authors and publishers), and slightly important to a much larger group (consumers and readers). However, as this dissertation demonstrates, these larger groups did have definite ideas about copyright, its function, and its purpose, in ways not obvious to the denizens of the legal and authorial realms. This project draws on methods from both social and cultural history. Primary sources include a broad swath of magazine and newspaper articles, letters, and editorials about various copyright-related controversies. Examining these sources – both mainstream and obscure – illustrates the diversity of thinking about copyright issues during the nineteenth century, and suggests alternative frameworks for considering copyright in other times.
Advisors/Committee Members: Terrie, Philip G.
Keywords: Copyright; History of copyright; Copyright and culture; 1831 Copyright Act; 1870 Copyright Act; 1891 Chace Act; International Copyright; Copyright - United States; Copyright - Piracy; Copyright - Social Aspects
More Like This
2.
Kissinger, Kendel A.
Resisting Neoliberal Globalization: Coalition Building Between Anti-globalization Activists in Northwest Ohio.
Degree: MA, American Culture Studies/History, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► Few scholars have attempted to document the nature of coalition building within…
(more)
▼ Few scholars have attempted to document the nature of coalition building within the anti-globalization movement, and this study is an attempt to analyze part of this complex and important social movement. This study is a synopsis of Northwest Ohio’s anti-globalization movement and concentrates on the nature of alliances across movements and the numerous dilemmas they encounter. The major assumption of this project is that neoliberalism dominates the globalization process through the policies and practices of various governance institutions and that the anti-globalization movement arose as a counter-movement in response to neoliberal changes. Based on thirteen interviews conducted within Northwest Ohio’s activist community, this study is a qualitative research project that explores the motivations of labor, peace, farm worker, environmental, and anarchist activists, their concerns about the nature of globalization, and their experiences with cross-movement alliance building. The objective of this study is, first, to provide some historical context on globalization, political and economic thought, coalition building, anti-globalization’s antecedent movements and the broader national and international movement; second, to explain how and why various social movements in Northwest Ohio became part of the anti-globalization movement and identify the problematic issues of cross-movement alliances. The study begins with a review of literature on coalitional movements, anti-globalization activism, and the antecedent movements of Northwest Ohio’s anti-globalization movement. I also provide a history of contending liberalisms and the process of globalization. Finally, interviews with Northwest Ohio activists are analyzed to examine personal recollections of the emergence of concerns about the nature of globalization, anti-globalization activism, and experiences with coalition building across movements. The findings of this study center around the dilemmas of coalition building and the utility of theories on neoliberalism for explaining anti-globalization activism. Northwest Ohio’s anti-globalization movement is not a cohesive movement based on a collective anti-globalization identity but rather a diverse group of activists joined together by the perceived threats of neoliberal globalization. As they attempt to form alliances across movements, differences in social characteristics, group structures, leadership styles, decision-making models, and tactics pose considerable challenges.
Advisors/Committee Members: Mirchandani, Rekha.
Keywords: coalition building; neoliberal globalization; anti-globalization
More Like This
3.
Knoell, Tiffany L.
Animating America: Warner Bros. Animation During the Depression.
Degree: MA, American Culture Studies/History, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► During the 1930s the Depression shook the emotional and financial cores of…
(more)
▼ During the 1930s the Depression shook the emotional and financial cores of many Americans, casting doubt on not only their futures but also their identities. As Americans sought to replace broken ideological foundations with something new and more stable, there were many entities willing to supply materials. Leveraging the power of film, Hollywood producers crafted narratives around an ethos of shared civic values that could be used to instruct readers, listeners or viewers on how to be the “ideal American.” The focus in movies was on the heroic and the blessed, not the marginalized and excluded. Warner Bros. animation, on the other hand, filled their cartoons with characters that did not fit the ideal and turned story-telling conventions inside out rather than simply transmitting the messages without question. They showed working class audiences as foregrounded characters rather than those who occupied the background of live-action films and pulled at the seams binding genres to their messages, giving viewers something to laugh at as well as to think about. In a time when all sorts of expectations were shaken and ideologies re-evaluated, Warner Bros. animation embraced Vittorio Hosle's maxim that "in times of ideological uncertainty comedy may share the task of questioning…the basic conventions of the age." Rather than simply accepting and transmitting those narratives absolutely, Warner Bros. animation invited audiences to think twice about the messages in 1930s media.
Advisors/Committee Members: Schocket, Andrew.
Subjects: American History; American Studies; Film Studies; History; Mass Media; Motion Pictures
Keywords: Warner Bros. animation; 1930s, United States; Depression; Great Depression; genres; Hollywood; breaking the fourth wall; theaters; audiences; cartoons
More Like This
4.
Liggett, Lori S.
Mothers, Militants, Martyrs, and “M’m! M’m! Good!” Taming the New Woman: Campbell Soup Advertising in Good Housekeeping, 1905 – 1920.
Degree: PhD, American Culture Studies/History, 2006, Bowling Green State University
► Various scholars have examined the historical development of women’s consumer magazines, the…
(more)
▼ Various scholars have examined the historical development of women’s consumer magazines, the advertisements of product manufacturers, and the social construction of the idealized American woman. This study is a qualitative historical analysis of the dramatic cultural turn that took place during the early decades of the twentieth century and how those changes were expressed within the editorial content of Good Housekeeping and the advertisements of iconic food producer, the Campbell Soup Company. Both positioned themselves as vital to women’s education, thereby having a significant effect on the traditional private sphere of womanhood and the male-dominated public sphere. During the years of this study, 1905-1920, the United States was in the midst of rapidly transforming from a small-scale agricultural economy to consumer capitalism, which profoundly reshaped the essential structure of society and changed the fundamental nature of everyday life. The mass production and wide distribution of goods created new public concerns, such as the safety of the food supply and the veracity of advertising claims made by product manufacturers. On the surface, it appeared that Good Housekeeping and Campbell Soup primarily intended to inculcate white, middle-class women in a discourse of consumerism, most often represented by idealized images of the modern New Woman. However, as this study demonstrates, the cultural work done by both entities was far more complex than just instilling consumerist behavior in women. Early on, Good Housekeeping tapped into women’s desire for political participation, and the magazine actively encouraged their mobilization in order to tackle significant national issues, such as purifying the food supply, lowering the infant mortality rate, promoting temperance, maintaining the home front during war, and supporting suffrage. While these efforts were supposed to take place in a manner not detrimental to home life, they did in fact provide an opening for women to have demonstrable impact on American culture and history. Campbell Soup typically promoted traditional roles for women, but it too became a vital component in shaping attitudes about what it meant to be a modern woman, wife, and mother in the early twentieth century – "most often embodied in the idealized images of the New Woman.
Advisors/Committee Members: Motz, Marilyn F.
Keywords: Campbell Soup Company; Campbell’s Soup; Good Housekeeping; New Woman; women’s magazines; advertising; advertisements; consumerism; consumption; food studies; food and gender; food and women; food safety; food purity; convenience foods
More Like This
5.
Neilsen, Emily Hall.
Manifestation of a Lack: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Christian Identity Movement.
Degree: MA, American Culture Studies/History, 2007, Bowling Green State University
► During the past twenty years, there has been a major shift among…
(more)
▼ During the past twenty years, there has been a major shift among America’s radical right; increased popularity, radicalism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism have marked this change. These same years have harkened the era of globalization, a period discernible by the increasingly rapid spread of capitalism and related changes in political subjectivities across the globe. This thesis examines the relationship between these changes in an attempt to shed light on political and economic subjectivity in contemporary America. In order to do so, this thesis focuses on the Christian Identity Movement, the most popular religious movement on the radical right. It utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, investigating relationships between this group’s rise and the history of democracy and American cultural traditions (most specifically the group’s use of Puritanism). It concludes by analyzing the effects of these relationships.
Advisors/Committee Members: Labbie, Erin.
Subjects: History, United States
Keywords: CHRISTIAN IDENTITY MOVEMENT; RADICAL RIGHT; AMERICAN DOMESTIC TERRORISM; DEMOCRACY; CAPITALISM
More Like This
6.
Scanlon, Megan Kennedy.
Taking Their Cut: Constructing the Female Patient Through American Health Policy, 1990 - 1993.
Degree: MA, American Culture Studies/History, 2005, Bowling Green State University
► The topic that is addressed here is the embodying of the female…
(more)
▼ The topic that is addressed here is the embodying of the female patient through the political-medical discourse that accompanied the Women’s Health Equity Act and breast cancer politics between 1990 and 1993. Through an examination of women’s health policy during these formative years together with Foucault’s theory of the gaze and embodiment, this paper will formulate the manner in which the female patient comes to personify certain characteristics and medical concerns as an effect of the relationship between politics and medicine. In addition to the central thesis supplementary themes materialize throughout the paper. One motif is the cyclical relationship between politics and the media. When one party brings a subject to the forefront, the other reacts and strengthens national attention concerning the matter. Women’s health as a disciplinary field also raises questions regarding theories of the body by constricting patients to binary categories of male/man and female/woman, a concept that draw parallels to the codification of race/ethnicity in society. As a policy issue women’s health illustrates the contradictions that exist between the body, disease, the goals of medical care, and our self-image in relation to policy makers. Reviewing this period of research and the formation of women’s health policy exposes the multifaceted relationship between politics and medicine. Simultaneously, policy crafted between 1990 and 1993 highlights the deep roots of cultural bias concerning the social value of female bodies and their feminine body parts.
Advisors/Committee Members: Dixon, Lynda D.
Keywords: health policy; breast cancer; Foucault; Women's Health Equity Act
More Like This
7.
Van Melle, Jonathan Herny.
Locked In Time?: The Hariri Assassination and the Making of a Usable Past for Lebanon.
Degree: MA, American Culture Studies/History, 2009, Bowling Green State University
► Why is it that on one hand Lebanon is represented as the…
(more)
▼ Why is it that on one hand Lebanon is represented as the “Switzerland of the Middle East,” a progressive and prosperous country, and its capital Beirut as the “Paris of the Middle East,” while on the other hand, Lebanon and Beirut are represented as sites of violence, danger, and state failure? Furthermore, why is it that the latter representation is currently the pervasive image of Lebanon? This thesis examines these competing images of Lebanon by focusing on Lebanon’s past and the ways in which various “pasts” have been used to explain the realities confronting Lebanon.To understand the contexts that frame the two different representations of Lebanon I analyze several key periods and events in Lebanon’s history that have contributed to these representations. I examine the ways in which the representation of Lebanon and Beirut as sites of violence have been shaped by the long period of civil war (1975-1990) whereas an alternate image of a cosmopolitan Lebanon emerges during the period of reconstruction and economic revival as well as relative peace between 1990 and 2005. In juxtaposing the civil war and the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in Beirut on February 14, 2005, I point to the resilience of Lebanon’s civil war past in shaping both Lebanese and Western memories and understandings of the Lebanese state. I draw from and engage studies on the history of Lebanon by scholars and journalists from the United States and Lebanon, U.S. government documents on Lebanon, and American and Lebanese press coverage of Lebanon. The reactions of the American and Lebanese press and politicians, and the Lebanese people to the Hariri assassination, I argue, have resurrected and consolidated representations of Lebanon’s civil war past as a usable past (both inside and outside Lebanon) that serves to explain the realities confronting Lebanon today and define it as a failed state.
Advisors/Committee Members: Menon, Sridevi.
Subjects: American studies; International relations; Middle Eastern history; Political science; Public administration; Religion; Sociology
Keywords: Arafat, Yasser; Assad, Bashar; Assad, Hafez; Begin; Beirut; Bush, George W.; Chehab, Fouad; Christians; Civil War; Druzes; Eisenhower, Dwight; Franjieh, Sulayman; Gemayel, Bashir; Hariri, Rafic; Hezbollah; Israel; Jordan; Jumblatt, Kamal; Jumblatt, Walid
More Like This
8.
Vayo, Lloyd Isaac.
Silencio: The Spectral Voice and 9/11.
Degree: PhD, American Culture Studies/History, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► "Silencio: The Spectral Voice and 9/11" intervenes in predominantly visual discourses of…
(more)
▼ "Silencio: The Spectral Voice and 9/11" intervenes in predominantly visual discourses of 9/11 to assert the essential nature of sound, particularly the recorded voices of the hijackers, to narratives of the event. The dissertation traces a personal journey through a selection of objects in an effort to seek a truth of the event. This truth challenges accepted narrativity, in which the U.S. is an innocent victim and the hijackers are pure evil, with extra-accepted narrativity, where the additional import of the hijacker’s voices expand and complicate existing accounts. In the first section, a trajectory is drawn from the visual to the aural, from the whole to the fragmentary, and from the professional to the amateur. The section starts with films focused on United Airlines Flight 93, "The Flight That Fought Back," "Flight 93," and "United 93," continuing to a broader documentary about 9/11 and its context, "National Geographic: Inside 9/11," and concluding with a look at two YouTube shorts portraying carjackings, "The Long Afternoon" and "Demon Ride." Though the films and the documentary attempt to reattach the acousmatic hijacker voice to a visual referent as a means of stabilizing its meaning, that voice is not so easily fixed, and instead gains force with each iteration, exceeding the event and coming from the past to inhabit everyday scenarios like the carjackings. In the second section, the move from visual to aural continues, with the focus placed on sound art and music. As the sound art series, William Basinski’s "The Disintegration Loops I-IV," results from decaying magnetic tape to create a presence in absence, so too does the repetition of the hijacker voice, intended to silence it, allow it to speak volumes. The song "Fly Me to New York," by Cassetteboy, functions referentially, using Frank Sinatra samples to narrate 9/11 from the pilot-hijackers' perspective, acting as a rubble music and providing a critique of narrative omission and U.S. culpability. By virtue of the use of the hijacker voice in these contexts, that voice is able to inhabit the U.S. psyche, remaining a spectral presence that haunts 9/11 and the nation.
Advisors/Committee Members: Berry, Ellen.
Subjects: American studies; Mass media; Music; Philosophy
Keywords: sound studies, spectrality, 9/11
More Like This
9.
Watson, Kelly Lea.
“I Laid my Hands on a Gorgeous Cannibal Woman”: Anthropophagy in the Imperial Imagination, 1492 – 1763.
Degree: PhD, American Culture Studies/History, 2010, Bowling Green State University
► This dissertation examines European writings about cannibalism in North America from 1492…
(more)
▼ This dissertation examines European writings about cannibalism in North America from 1492 until 1763, uncovering insights into the establishment and maintenance of imperial power. It contributes to existing scholarship about cannibalism, empire, gender history, and the history of sexuality. Imperial power depended upon the assertion of European superiority and the assumption of Indian inferiority, and the discourse of cannibalism played a key role in the establishment of these hierarchical determinations. Because imperial expansion always involved the conquering of bodies in addition to land and resources, it is imperative to acknowledge and scrutinize the way that conquered bodies were gendered. Cannibalism is an embodied act, and an investigation of the discourse of anthropophagy illuminates the development of early modern ideas about savagery, civilization, gender, and sexuality. Situated at the crossroads of history and cultural studies, this dissertation employs discourse analysis in order to reveal new insights into historical documents and to re-center gender in the study of the discourse of cannibalism. This comparative project traces the discourse of cannibalism in the context of Caribbean exploration, the Spanish empire in Mexico, the French empire in Canada, and the English empire in Atlantic North America, in order to develop an understanding of the ways in which the discourse of cannibalism changed across empires, time-periods, and geographic locations. This project compensates for the lack of scholarly attention that has been afforded to the study of cannibalism in North America. Ultimately, it uncovers some of the ways in which the discourse of cannibalism reinforced, created, and shaped developing ideas about gender and empire.
Advisors/Committee Members: Schocket, Andrew.
Subjects: American history; American studies; Canadian history; History; Latin American history; Native Americans; Womens studies
Keywords: cannibalism; imperialism; gender history; feminist history; North America; history of sexuality; conquest; Christopher Columbus; Amerigo Vespucci; Hernan Cortes; Jesuits; captivity narratives
More Like This
10.
Weeks, Eric C.
Memory and Meaning: Constructed Commemoration in a Nation's Capital City.
Degree: PhD, American Culture Studies/History, 2012, Bowling Green State University
► Memorials and acts of commemoration are all around us; we encounter them,…
(more)
▼ Memorials and acts of commemoration are all around us; we encounter them, in various forms and layers, every day. This dissertation explores the ideas surrounding what these acts of memorialization mean, to communities and to nations, by examining war memorials in the United States and Canada, specifically the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC, and the National War Memorial in Ottawa, Ontario. It argues that the differences between the two are emblematic of the larger differences between each nation’s national identity. A great deal of the existing memorial scholarship approaches visitor reactions in broad theoretical ways, or in response to well-known events with lasting historical impact. By combining the theoretical and historical uses of memorial sites with the ethnographic everyday observations taken directly at the National World War II Memorial and National War Memorial, this dissertation builds on existing scholarship by revealing how the visiting public interprets and engages with the memorials, and also provides case studies on how each nation chooses to literally and figuratively frame its history for public consumption, particularly within the urban ceremonial core of each national capital.
Advisors/Committee Members: Mancuso, Rebecca.
Subjects: American Studies; Canadian Studies; History
Keywords: War memorials; memorialization; Washington, DC; Ottawa, ON; National World War II Memorial; National War Memorial; national identity; built environment; representation; transborder studies
More Like This
