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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
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Thielmann, Pia. "Hot Beds: Black-White Love and its Representations in Selected Contemporary Novels from the United States, Africa, and the Caribbean," American Studies, University of Kansas, October 2000.
This dissertation is a comparative study of the representations of Black-white heterosexual love in novels, published since the 1940s, by Black, white, male and female authors from the United States of America, Africa, and the Caribbean. World War II provides the turning point regarding the prevalence of African-Americans’ demands for civil rights, coinciding with the emerging movements for independence from colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean. I use the African-American feminist theories by bell hooks and the postcolonial theories by Ngugi wa Thiong’o to analyze the images the characters hold of each other and the lacking, ongoing or accomplished process of decolorizing the mind, as defined by Ngugi and hooks. Further, I look for changes over time in such representations as well regional and class factors. Reappearing terms such as race/sexuality/class and power are understood as social constructs. The US findings are compared to novels from Africa and the Caribbean available in English and written approximately during the same time frame, since the liberation movement from colonialism. In accordance with the interdisciplinary character of American Studies, this analysis is put in socio-historical context. The dissertation puts forth the argument that each featured novel is political no matter whether its characters are political revolutionaries or people in search of an individual peace and happiness. The political histories of the novels’ regions of origin shape the character’s choices and attitudes toward their partners of the other race. Liminal spaces create opportunities for the interracial partners to meet but not necessarily to stay together in a committed relationship. In the novels where the Black-white relationship is not threatened from the outside, it is from the inside because whites’ assumption of superiority and Blacks’ wounds inflicted by slavery and colonialism remain obstacles in the way of interracial love in these novels.
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