Register
Register here for the annual meeting and to begin or renew an ASA membership
Register here to submit a proposal through the ASA's 2012 submission site.
Register here for JHU Press and ASA membership services, including online access to American Quarterly and the Encyclopedia of American Studies Online.Register here to join an ASA community. Only current ASA members may contribute to the community blogs. Registration is not required to submit display or text ads or news and events or to view many pages. We will refuse posts that are not of professional interest to ASA members.
Click here for membership FAQ's
Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
For submission guidelines, click here
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
By University | By Year
Uddin, Lisa. "Breeding Grounds: Race, Space and Species in the New American Zoo," Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies (Dept. of Art and Art History), University of Rochester, August 2008. Advisor: A. Joan Saab
This study investigates the renewal of American zoos in the mid twentieth century. Beginning in the late 1950s and continuing for two decades thereafter, zoo makers in the United States grew ever more ashamed of the physical condition of their animal displays. Bars came down and expansive, multi-species enclosures simulating natural territories and encouraging natural behaviors began to take their place, albeit it with the unevenness and historical repetition of many so-called design revolutions. Simultaneously, zoo makers grew concerned about the international supply and reproductive prospects of captive wildlife and began to breed their charges with renewed dedication, expertise, and publicity. This dissertation focuses on how this two-part revitalization, spatial and biological, constituted the birth of a new zoo in the United States and how it also constituted a re-birth of white public culture. Drawing from other critical zoo history, animal studies, studies on the social construction of whiteness, and public sphere theory, I interpret the new zoo’s environmentalist animal displays as a process of public culture formation that a range of mid-twentieth-century Americans recognized and responded to as racially white. Employing discourse analysis on archival sources for the National Zoological Park in Washington D.C. and the two campuses of the Zoological Society of San Diego, I show how new zoo makers constructed white racial identities for a multiplicity of spectators by linking endangered species and habitats with endangered publics and urban and suburban space. Through these overlaps, the new zoo makers enlisted captive animals as powerful surrogates for racial difference and sameness while also grappling with their semantic instability. The dissertation demonstrates that whiteness in the new zoo was thus carefully choreographed, highly provisional, and continuous with a longer history of securing racial privilege through representations of nature.
Quick Links
American Quarterly [official journal site]
American Quarterly [editorial site]
Encyclopedia of American Studies
Encyclopedia of American Studies [editorial site]