The following is a registry of completed doctoral dissertations in American Studies, as reported by U.S. Ph.D. degree-granting institutions in the field. This list is based on requests to American Studies Programs for lists of doctoral dissertations completed between 1 July 1997 and 30 June 1998. The report contains 113 entries whose titles suggest the broad range of topics and diverse methodologies that American Studies scholars are exploring. For abstracts of these and other dissertations completed this year by ASA members, please see the December 1998 American Quarterly.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY (1)
Shawn, David: “The Transformation of Oratory in Antebellum America: Democrats, Demagogues and the Quest for Citizenship.”
BOWLING GREEN STATE UNIVERSITY (6)
Gadzepko, Leonard: “A Comparative Study of African American and Nigerian Art from the 1960s to the 1970s: A Cultural History Perspective.”
Kunkle, Barbara Lynn: “Appalachia and the Imagination of Empire.”
Mayhew, Kelly: “‘Nobody in Town Can Bake a Sweet Jellyroll Like Mine’: Women’s Expressions/Performance of Sexuality in the Twenties and Early Thirties.”
Miller, James: “Postmodernism and Utopia: Dystopian/Utopian Themes in the Works of Don Delillo, Harold Jaffe, and Octavia Butler.”
Perry, D. LaRouth S.: “The 1957 Desegregation Crisis of LittleRock, Arkansas: A Meeting of Histories.”
Peterson, William: “Storm Warriors: The United States Life-Saving Service in American Culture, 1870-1915.”
BROWN UNIVERSITY (6)
Briggs, Laura: “Reproducing Empire: Race and Sex, Science and Reform in Puerto Rico and the Mainland United States, 1880-1960.”
Cooper, Mark: “Visual Love Stories and the Making of Managerial America.”
Hart, William: “For the Good of Our Souls: Mohawk Authority, Accommodation, and Resistance to Protestant Evangelism.”
Okoomian, Janice: “Engendering Ethnicity: The Female Body and Cultural Production.”
Reumann, Miriam: “American Sexual Character in the Age of Kinsey, 1946-1964.”
Thomas, Deborah Gisele: “Workers and Organizers: African-American Women in the Work Force and Club Movement, 1890-1930.”
CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY (2)
McMickle, Marvin: “Film Portrayals of the Black Preacher.”
Taylor, Marsha Natalie: “‘Shoutin’: The Dance of the Black Church.”
CLAREMONT GRADUATE SCHOOL (1)
Ash, Patricia B.: “The Quest for Harmony: Religion in the Origin of the Antebellum Woman’s Rights Movement.”
COLLEGE OF WILLIAM AND MARY (3)
Mieras, Emily: “Reforming Selves, Reforming Others: College Students and Social Service, 1889-1914.” Neel, Hildy Michelle: “Let Us Now Praise Service Men: A History of the American World War II Personal Narrative.” White, William: “Charlatans, Embezzlers and Murderers: The Revolution Comes to Virginia.”
EMORY UNIVERSITY (5)
Brown, Rodger: “Tara Infirma: The Troubled History of a Southern Theme.”
Howard, John: “Men Like That: Male Homosexualities in Mississippi, 1945-1985.”
Loudermilk, Kimberly: “Fictional Feminism: Representing Feminism in American Best Sellers.”
Mauney, Margaret: “Consciousness and Activism of Atlanta Teachers: Desegregation and Unionization, 1960-1990.”
Soper, Kerry D.: “Seriously Funny: A History of Satirical Newspaper Comic Strips in the Twentieth Century United States.”
GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY (3)
Bowles-Reyer, Amy: “Our Secret Garden: American Popular Young Adult Literature in the 1970s and the Transmission of Sexual and Gender Ideology to Adolescent Girls.”
Ishii, Norika Kawamura: “American Women Missionaries at Kobe College, 1873-1909.”
Priestly, Wendy Kenerson: “‘Holy Mount Pleasant Grove’: The North Family of Mount Lebanon Shaker Village in the Late Nineteenth Century.”
HARVARD UNIVERSITY (2)
Crockett, Rosemary Faye: “The Garies and Their Friends: A Study of Frank J. Webb and His Novel.”
Wachtell, Cynthia J.: “War No More: The Emergence of Anti-War Literature for the Civil War through World War I.”
INDIANA UNIVERSITY (5)
Bloch, Jon P.: “A Realer Reality: Alternative Spiritual, Narrative, and Self-Identity.”
Boudreau, George: “The Surest Foundation of Happiness: Education and Society in Franklin’s, Philadelphia.”
LaGrand, James B.: “Red Metropolis: American Indians in Chicago, 1940-70.”
McEntire, Dee Lynn: “Remodeling Our Lives: A Search for Values in the Art, Folklore, and Ideology of Home Improvement, Bloomington, Indiana (1979-98).
Walls, Robert E.: “The Making of the American Logger: Traditional Culture and Public Imagery in the Real of The Bunyanesque.”
MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY (2)
Bauer, Ralph: “Transcultrations in Colonial Space: Creole Identity and the Ethnographic Imagination in Early British & Spanish Literature. “
Pilato, Denise: “The Retrieval of a Legacy: Perspectives on Presence & Progress of Nineteenth Century Women Inventors in American Culture.”
NEW YORK UNIVERSITY (1)
Abate, Richard: “The Middle Years.”
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY (2)
Frankwitz, Andrea K.: “Speaking Spaces: Tropes of Distance in 19th Century American Slave Narratives.”
Heflin, Ruth: “Examples for the World: Four Transitional Sioux Writers and the Sioux Literary Renaissance.”
PURDUE UNIVERSITY (3)
Baham, Eva S.: “Anna Julia Haywood Cooper: A Stream Can Not Rise Higher Than Its Source.”
Cousins, Robert J.: “Citizenship and Selfhood: Negotiating National and Personal Identities.”
Pendergast, Thomas D.: “Consuming Men: Masculinity, Race, and American Magazines, 1900-1950.”
SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY (2)
Hohlt, Brian: “‘Laws of the Lord: ‘The Political World of Peter Cartwright, 1824-1848.”
Yancey, Valerie: “Attending the Dying: William James, A Resource for Medical Ethics at End-of-Life.”
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK, BUFFALO (5)
Boukari, Safoura: “Retrouvailles: A Comparative Meditation on the Experiences of African Descended Women & the Quest for Sisterhood- Toward a New Syncretic Paradigm.”
Coppola, Marie Saccomando: “Toward a Missing Link in the Identity of Italian American Women: Oral Histories of Sicilian and Sicilian American Women.”
Hampton, Bonita: “A Comparative Study of Risk Factors Associated with Exposure to HIV Among a Sample of African American Women.”
Henderson, Behjat: “Reversing the Lens: Voices and Images of Iranian Women.”
Ragona, Melissa: “A Genealogy of Spectacle: Fascism, Consumerism and the Mimetic Body.”
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAII, MANOA (2)
Hodges, Anita P.: “Images of the Feminine: Gender & Ethnicity in the Works of Selected Women Writers.”
Mamoto, Retno Sukardan: “United States-Indonesian Relations, 1953-1958: The Views of Four Key Print Media.”
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, URBANA-CHAMPAIGN (5)
Andreasen, Bryon C.: “‘As Good A Right to Pray’: Cooperhead Christians on the Northern Civil War Home Front.”
Bradly, Richard Mark: “From Kennedy to Nixon: American Political Mythology.”
Clemmons, Linda Marie: “‘Satisfied to Walk in the Ways of Their Fathers’: Dakotas and Protestant Missionaries, 1835-1862.”
Kamerling, Henry D.: “Too Much Time for the Crime I Done: Race, Ethnicity and the Politics of Punishment, 1865 to 1900.”
Krugler, David Frederick: “The Voice of America and the Republican Cold War, 1945 to 1953.”
UNIVERITY OF IOWA (8)
Alexander, Ilene. “Learning in Other Ways: Toward a History of Feminist Pedagogy in the U.S.”
Baskerville, John: “The Impact of Modern Black Nationalist Ideology and Cultural Revitalization on American Jazz Music of the 1960s and 1970s.”
Beemyn, Brett: “A Queer Capitol: Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Life in Washington, D.C., 1890-1955.”
Lewis, Catherine M.: “From Temple to Forum: The Changing Face of the Chicago Historical Society.”
Moten, Derryn: “‘A Gruesome Warning to Black Girls’: The August 16, 1912, Execution of Virginia Christian.”
Pustz, Matthew: “Fanboys and True Believers: Comic Book Reading Communities and the Creation of Culture.”
Taylor, Leslie A.: “Veritable Hotbeds: Lesbian Scandals in the United States, 1926-1936.”
Urstein, Rob: “Aging, Activism, and Spirituality in an American Community.”
UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS (1)
Gretchen, Eick: “‘Lift Every Voice’”: The Civil Rights Movement in America’s Heartland.”
UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND (2)
DeVaul, Diane: “Motherwork—Quilts and Art: A Material Culture Study.”
Patton, Sandra L.: “Birth Marks: An Interdisciplinary Ethnographic Study of Transracial Adoption.”
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS (2)
Fairman, Deborah: “‘Unhampered Child of Liberty’: Modernity, Representation, and American Jewish Women, 1890-1930.”
Griffin, Connie D. “Ex-Centricities: A Geo/Graphics of Self-Re/Presentation in the Autobiographies of Dorothy Allison, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and Kim Chernin.”
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (6)
Ardizonne, Heidi: “Red Blooded Americans: Mulattos and the Melting Pot in U.S. Racialist and Nationalist Discourse 1890-1930.”
Brent, Elizabeth: “Domestic Horrors: Family Values and the Intruder Film, 1987-1997.”
Epsten, Michael: “Detectives, Therapists, Fathers and Hired Guns: A Cross-Examination of Lawyer Images on American Television.”
Genser, Wallace: “A Rigid Government Over Ourselves: Transformations in Ethnic, Gender, and Race Consciousness on The Northern Borderlands – Michigan, 1805–1865.”
Majewski, Karen: “Traitors and True Poles: Narrating a Polish-American Identity, 1880-1939.”
Zimmerman, Enid: “A Depth Psychological Analysis of Chicana/o Narrative: Pocho, The Moths and Other Stories, and Under the Feet of Jesus.”
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA (17)
Bates, Carla: “Settling the Industrial Frontier, 1890-1940, Being an Historical Study of Anglo-American Social Reformers and Their Struggles to Reconcile Republican Virtue and Industrial Capitalism with Particular Attention to Questions of Property, Citizenship and the Welfare State.”
Bernstein, Lee: “The Greatest Menace: Organized Crime in U.S. Culture and Politics, 1946-1961.”
Collins, Lisa: “‘Revolutions in Vision’: African-American Women, Aesthetics, and Visual Politics.”
Fry, Polly Martin: “A River Runs Through it: Cultures, Economics, and Ecologies in the Minnesota River Basin.”
Hanson, Randel: “From Environmental Bads to Economic Goods: Marketing Nuclear Waste to American Indians.”
Hill, Roberta: “Dr. Lillie Rosa Minoka Hill, Mohawk Physician.”
Law, Andrew Davis: “Chance and Necessity: Reengaging John A. Kouwenhoven and Tradition-Oriented Criticism.”
Munro, Victoria: “The Cultural Construction of Crime: Media Representations, Public Belief, and Political Discourse.”
Peterson, Kevin: “From Self to Subject: the Americanists’ Response to Cartesianism: Embodiment as a Problem in Historical-Cultural Translation.”
Proshan, Chester: “Jewish Immigrants and their Children on the Minnesota Iron Range, 1910-1950.”
Reis, Martha: “Consider the Source: The Lives and Texts Behind The Autobiography of Box Car Bertha.”
Romeyn, Esther: “My Other/My Self:Impersonation, Masquerade, and the Theater of Identity in Turn-of-the-Century New York City.”
Swartzbaugh, Laura: “Public/Private Geographies: Construction Order in Chicago’s City Streets, 1893-1922.”
Torres, Eden: “Caras vemos, corazones no sabemos/Their Faces We See, Their Hearts We Don’t Know: Chicana Writers in Context.”
Waksman, Steven: “Instruments of Desire: the Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience.”
Walzer, Andrew: “Nationalism and Masculinity: 20th Century Cultural Criticism.”
Zimmerman, Scott: “Representative Stages: American Theatre and National Identity.”
UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO (2)
Griffin, John: “Yours in His Service: H. Orton Wiley as Evangelical Theologian and Educator.”
Jenks, Shepherd M: “The Phoenix has Risen from the Ashes: A Socio-Cultural Examination of the Neo-Psychedelic Movement.”
UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN (8)
Davis, Timothy Mark: “Mount Vernon Memorial Highway and the Evolution of the American Parkway.”
Eliason, Eric: “Celebrating Zion: Pioneers in Mormon Popular Historical Expression.”
Hauck, Gerald: “Reluctant Immigrants Klaus and Erika Mann in American Exile, 1936-1945.”
Goodyear, Frank: “Constructing a National Landscape: Photography and Tourism in Nineteenth-Century America.”
Kupfer, Charles: “‘Whom Do We Fear?‘American Reactions to Blitzkrieg, Summer 1940.”
Rice, Kathleen: “Notations of the Hart The Wood Engraving Illustrations of Clare Leighton, 1929-1954.”
Silverman, Jonathan: “Success in the Margins: How African Americans, Immigrant Jews, and Women Used Cultural Production to Negotiate Prejudice and the American Dream from World War I to the Great Depression.”
Turner, Catherine: “Marketing Modernism Between the Two Wars.”
WASHINGTON STATE UNIVERSITY (4)
Brennan, Raymond: “Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in Vietnam Veterans: Cultural Representation and Therapeutic Models.”
Fritze, Tamara: “A View of Her Own: A Cultural Study of the Dooryards of Rural Western Women.”
Hart, Patricia: “A Home for Every Child, A Child for Every Home: Relinquishment and Adoption at Washington Children’s Home Society, 1896-1915.”
Sellen, Jeffrey: “The Discourse of Private Property in Contemporary Environmental Politics.”
YALE UNIVERSITY (7)
Applegate, Deborah: “The Culture of the Novel and the Consolidation of Middle Class Conscientiousness: Harry Ward Beecher and the Uses of Sympathy, 1830-1880.”
Bernard, Emily: “Black Anxiety, White Influence: Carl Von Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance.”
Klein, Christina: “Cold War Orientalism: Musicals, Travel Narratives, and Middlebrow Culture in Postwar America.
Marr, Timothy: “Imaging Ishmael: Studies of Islamic Orientation in America from Puritans to Melville.”
Newman, Kathleen: “Critical Mass: Advertising, Audiences and Consumer Activism in the Age of Radio.”
Saltz, Laura: “The Vision-Building Faculty: Women and the Public Sphere in Turn-of-the-Century Fiction and Film.”
Shukla, Sandhya: “India Abroad: Transnational Ethnic Cultures in the United States and Britain.”