Brown University Theses and Dissertations

Brown University Library archives dissertations in accordance with the Brown Graduate School policy.

For dissertations published prior to 2008, please consult the following Dissertation LibGuide

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  • 51 American Studies

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Items (1-20) out of 51 results

"Canned History": American Newsreels and the Commodification of Reality, 1927-1945

Description:
By examining the history of the sound newsreel in the 1930s and 1940s, this dissertation illustrates how moving picture news changed the way Americans experienced ...
Copyright Date:
2011
Contributors:
Clark, Joseph E.J. (creator) Smulyan, Susan (Director) Rosen, Philip (Director) Joyrich, Lynne (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
newsreel documentary film history moviegoing media history cultural history Lindbergh Sino-Japanese War Motion picture journalism Documentary films Mass media and history Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945)
Full Record

(Re)Imagining Brown 250+: histories of violence in the making of an American university

Description:
This thesis asks, what histories are forgotten in order for the campus to uncritically celebrate its origins in 1764? And, how does this present-day process ...
Date Created:
2017
Contributors:
Young, Phoebe (author) Martinez, Monica (advisor) Hu-DeHart, Evelyn (reader) Brown University (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Slavery Colonization
Full Record

A Cultural Arsenal for Democracy: The War Work of U.S. Museums, 1939-1946

Description:
In June 1941, a Central Press wire story declared, “The latest and strangest recruit in Uncle Sam’s defense line-up is—the museum!” The release ...
Copyright Date:
2015
Contributors:
Ceglio, Clarissa J (creator) Lubar, Steven (Director) Smulyan, Susan (Reader) Nickel, Douglas (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
National identity Inter-American Affairs U.S. Cultural History Museums World War II Material culture Pan-Americanism Cultural diplomacy
Full Record

A DEEPER SCIENCE: RICHARD WRIGHT, DR. FREDRIC WERTHAM, AND THE FIGHT FOR MENTAL HEALTHCARE IN HARLEM, NY, 1940-1960

Description:
A Deeper Science explores how novelist Richard Wright and psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, along with an interracial group of intellectuals, doctors, clergy, and artists, attempted to ...
Copyright Date:
2009
Contributors:
Mendes, Gabriel N. (creator) Campbell, James (director) Buhle, Mari Jo (reader) Bogues, B. (reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Richard Wright Fredric Wertham Race and Mental Health Harlem Brown v. Board of Education Psychiatry
Full Record

Advertising Love: Personal Ads, Product Advertisements, and the Consumption of Romance

Description:
Advertising Love: Personal Ads, Product Advertisements, and the Consumption of Romance considers how love has been used in attempts to sell consumer goods; how cultural ...
Copyright Date:
2014
Contributors:
Burbank-Gilb, Elizabeth (creator) Smulyan, Susan (Director) Buhle, Mari Jo (Reader) Joyrich, Lynne (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
cultural history consumer culture romantic love 20th century Advertising
Full Record

American Bandstand and School Segregation in Postwar Philadelphia

Description:
This dissertation, a social and cultural history of media and education in postwar Philadelphia, examines the concurrent struggles against racial discrimination on American Bandstand and ...
Copyright Date:
2008
Contributors:
Delmont, Matthew (creator) Garcia, Matthew (director) Smulyan, Susan (director) Joyrich, Lynne (reader) Kaestle, Carl (reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Philadelphia Media Television Civil rights Education Race Mass media
Full Record

Anxieties of Empire: Class, Race, Nation, and the Roots of the Anti-Neoliberal Globalization Movement in the U.S. and Mexico, 1987-2003

Description:
As the Cold War ended and a "New World Order" emerged, elites in the U.S. and Mexico created a continental economic arrangement, integrating national ...
Copyright Date:
2011
Contributors:
Larson, Eric David (creator) Hu-Dehart, Evelyn (Director) Bogues, Anthony (Reader) Buhle, Paul (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
mexico oaxaca identity united states immigration Social movements Nationalism Labor Emigration and immigration Globalization
Full Record

At the Roots: Genealogy, Genetics, and Race in American Popular Culture

Description:
The growing interest in genealogy for African Americans is one expression of a longstanding desire to find answers to questions about ancestors, family, and heritage ...
Copyright Date:
2015
Contributors:
Wilson, Miel Mason (creator) Murray, Rolland (Director) Rose, Tricia (Director) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
genetic ancestry testing black women etiology narrative memoir Roots Alex Haley Henry Louis Gates Isaiah Washington Rebecca Skloot Henrietta Lacks Thomas Jefferson Sally Hemings Strom Thurmond Essie Mae Washington-Williams African Americans Popular culture Genealogy Genomics Genetics Slavery Slave trade Race Women, Black Diseases--Causes and theories of causation Ideology Television Literature
Full Record

Bicentennial Memory: Postmodernity, Media, and Historical Subjectivity, 1966-1976

Description:
This dissertation looks at different forms of historical practice to argue that the 1970s saw a significant transformation in the ways that individuals, groups, and ...
Copyright Date:
2012
Contributors:
Rymsza-Pawlowska, Malgorzata Joanna (creator) Smulyan, Susan (Director) Lubar, Steven (Reader) Joyrich, Lynne (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
preservation reenactment 1970s identity Memory Historic preservation Historical reenactments Nineteen seventies Group identity History
Full Record

Braceros on the Boundaries:Activism, Race, Masculinity, and the Legacies of the Bracero Program

Description:
My dissertation entitled, "Braceros on the Boundaries: Activism, Race, Masculinity, and the Legacies of the Bracero Program," focuses on the historically largest guest worker program ...
Copyright Date:
2011
Contributors:
Loza, Mireya (creator) Garcia, Matthew (Director) Hu-Dehart, Evelyn (Reader) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
guest workers chicano transnational migration bracero bracero program Mexicans Foreign workers Chicano movement Labor Transnationalism Seasonal Farm Laborers Program Public history Oral history
Full Record

By Forests Or By Fields: Organizing Immigrant Labor in the Pacific Northwest, 1940-1990

Description:
The aim of this dissertation is too examine the role that ethnic Mexican labor played in fashioning the Northwest into one of the most productive ...
Copyright Date:
2010
Contributors:
Sifuentez, Mario J (creator) Garcia, Matt (Director) Jacoby, Karl (Reader) Hu-DeHart, Evelyn (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Immigration Bracero Farm Workers Union UFW Tejano Emigration and immigration Labor Mexicans Agricultural laborers PCUN United Farm Workers of America
Full Record

City Lights Books: The History of a Community

Description:
Based upon archival research at the Bancroft Library, Stanford, Harvard and UCLA and oral histories conducted with several prominent booksellers on the West Coast, my ...
Copyright Date:
2008
Contributors:
Gatewood, James Vernando (creator) Buhle, Mari Jo (director) Lee, Robert (director) Buhle, Paul (reader) Kaestle, Carl (reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
City Lights Bookstore San Francisco Renaissance Small Business history Independent bookstores Beat generation
Full Record

Claiming History, Claiming Rights: Queer Discourses of History and Politics

Description:
Working at the intersection of queer studies and public history, Claiming History, Claiming Rights: Queer Discourses of History and Politics focuses on queer archives in ...
Copyright Date:
2010
Contributors:
Mazaris, Evangelia (creator) Rodriguez, Ralph (Director) Lubar, Steven (Reader) Krahulik, Karen (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
queer studies lgbt studies American studies Public history
Full Record

Conceiving National Bodies: The Trans-Pacific Politics of Birth Control, 1920s-1950s

Description:
This dissertation explores how a transnational movement for women’s reproductive freedom became, by the Cold War era, a state-sponsored effort of population control targeting ...
Copyright Date:
2012
Contributors:
Takeuchi-Demirci, Aiko (creator) Lee, Robert (Director) Shibusawa, Naoko (Director) Braun, Lundy (Reader) Smith, Kerry (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Birth control; Eugenics; Imperialism; U.S.-Japan Relations
Full Record

Entrepreneurs in the Age of Chinese Exclusion: Transnational Capital, Migrant Labor, and Chinese Restaurants in New York City, 1850-1943

Description:
“Entrepreneurs in the Age of Chinese Exclusion” tells the story of Chinese restaurants transforming from an ethnic enclave business into one of the largest mass-consumer ...
Copyright Date:
2014
Contributors:
Lee, Heather Ruth (creator) Lee, Robert (Director) Self, Robert (Reader) Parrenas, Rhacel (Reader) Kim, Daniel (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
U.S. History; Asian American History; Urban History; Immigration History; Ethnic Entrepreneurship; Chinese Restaurants
Available to Brown-affiliated users only
Full Record

Excessive Visions(s): Multi-mediated Intimacy, Visuality, and the Body

Description:
Some of us are “too much.” Too large, too thin, too freaky, too plain, too outspoken, too dark, too light, too old, too vulnerable. Some ...
Copyright Date:
2018
Contributors:
Ahmid-Kargbo, Majida (creator) Rodriguez, Ralph (Advisor) Joyrich, Lynne (Advisor) Alvarado, Leticia (Reader) Brown University. Department of American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
race Gender fat body Queer theory Digital media abject excess sexuality
Available to Brown-affiliated users only
Full Record

Fashioning the Diaspora: Sartorial Racialization in South Asian Popular Culture

Description:
This dissertation examines how South Asian racial identity in the United States and England is entwined with the sartorial. It demonstrates the ways in which ...
Copyright Date:
2016
Contributors:
Sahni, Pia Kaur (creator) Kim, Daniel (Director) Lee, Robert (Reader) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Mannur, Anita (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
racial formation identity sartorial South Asian diaspora Fashion Group identity
Available to Brown-affiliated users only
Full Record

Figures of the Unassimilable:American Empire, Filipino American Postcoloniality, and the U.S.-Philippine War of 1898-1910s

Description:
The U.S.-Philippines War of 1898-1910s is strangely placed and displaced in the history of twentieth-century colonial wars, and in U.S./Philippine historiographies ...
Copyright Date:
2011
Contributors:
Oscar, Campomanes Vinluan (creator) Lee, Robert (Director) Smulyan, Susan (Reader) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
empire postcolonial critique war Imperialism Filipino Americans Nationalism
Full Record

Fitting into Multiethnic New York: Korean Immigrants from Latin America

Description:
This dissertation explores the multifarious experiences of the migration and resettlement of Koreans from Latin America now residing in the New York metropolitan area. By ...
Copyright Date:
2013
Contributors:
Bae, Jin Suk (creator) Lee, Robert (Director) Hu-DeHart, Evelyn (Director) Park, Kyeyoung (Reader) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Brown University. American Civilization (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Diaspora New York City Remigrant Koreans
Full Record

Four-Color Creatures: Japanese Monstrosity in American Comic Books, Manga, and Popular Culture, 1938-1970

Description:
This dissertation examines the role of monstrosity in the construction of Japanese identity within the American cultural imagination. It asserts that a discursive formation founded ...
Copyright Date:
2015
Contributors:
Fujioka, Brent Akio (creator) Lee, Robert (Director) Rodriguez, Ralph (Reader) Shibusawa, Naoko (Reader) Brown University. American Studies (sponsor)
Genre:
theses
Keywords:
Comic Books Cultural Studies Monstrosity Comic books, strips, etc. Graphic novels Culture--Study and teaching Japanese Americans
Full Record

Items (1-20) out of 51 results