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Events
Jan. 9 | Call for papers: Identities and Technocultures
A 2-day conference about American culture and technologies that examines how new technologies dominate and define Americaness in the US and abroad. Co-sponsored by the University of Iowa Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts (CESA) and the Mid-America American Studies Association (MAASA).
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Blair, Michael Tracy. "Ancestral Signs: Representations of Prehistoric People in American Culture," Washington State University, January 1990. (2, 20, 18)
Many varied descriptions of prehistoric people have been offered to the American public. Prehistoric people are used to signify what modern people are essentially. These representations are ideological counters which justify or explain why modern people act in particular ways. I attempt a semiotic analysis of these representations in a variety of media: scientific literature, fiction, film, textbooks, television shows, and toys. Variation in these signs of the human past is characterized predictably by a dialectic between one pole, at which we are shown to be loving, and its opposite, at which we are depicted as bestial and violent.
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