American Culture Studies Ph.D. Dissertations

 

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Dissertations from 2022

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A Spectrum of Horror: Queer Images in the Contemporary Horror Genre, David Eric Browning

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Portrait of a Real American: Class, Masculinity, Race, and Ideology in American Professional Wrestling, 1983-1993, Nicholas Ryan Canada

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Debate Watch Parties in Bars and Online Platforms: Audiences, Political Culture, and Setting during the 2020 United States Presidential Election, Adam Nicholas Cohen

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Never the Twain Shall Meet?: Arab and Muslim Immigration and Far-right Reactions to Race, Nation, and Culture, Emily Edwards

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Hex the Kyriarchy: The Resignification of the Witch in Feminist Discourse from the Suffrage Era to the Present Day, Stephanie Nicole Scheurich

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Black Queer TV: Reparative Viewing and the Sociopolitical Questions of Our Now, Tobias L. Spears

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“It’s Hell”: Examining Suspicion, Ableism, and Disability Pride through an Intersectional Analysis of Fibromyalgia Experiences, Tabetha K. Violet

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"I Wish to Be, I Wish to Give, I Wish to Go, I Wish to Meet": Make-A-Wish and the Construction of Disability, 1980-Present, Kaitlyn E. Wauthier

Dissertations from 2021

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Representations of HIV/AIDS in Popular American Comic Books, 1981-1996, William Richard Avila

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The Pleasure in Paradox: The Negotiation Between Agency and Admiration in the Disney Fan Community, Alissa Nicole Butler

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I'm Every (Black) Woman: Negotiating Intersectionality in the Music Industry, Jacqueline P. Hudson

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Challenging the Leadership Narrative in Sport: An Exploration of NCAA Division I Women Student-Athletes' Understandings of Leadership, Joanna Line

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Living in the European Borderlands Representation, Humanitarian Work, and Integration in Times of Crises in Greece, Michail-Chrysovalantis Markodimitrakis

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Queer Sensibility as an Aesthetic of Inclusion: How Non-demographic Designers are Challenging Fashion Norms, Mariia Spirina

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Sojourners in the Country of Freedom and Opportunity: The Experiences of Vietnamese Women with Non-Immigrant Dependent Spouse Visas in the United States, Thi Hai Ly Tran

Dissertations from 2020

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Civilizational Memory: The Transformation of Palmyra as a Cultural Patrimony of The West, Bincy Abdul Samad

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Urban Suburb: How the Built Environment Influences Class Identity, April Braden

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Am I a Bad Feminist? Moments of Reflection and Negotiation in Contemporary Feminist Identity, Elizabeth Ryan Brownlow

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Spaces of Laughter: Stand-up Comedy in Mumbai as a Site of Struggle Over Globalization and National Identity, Aju James

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"So You Want To Be A Retronaut?": History and Temporal Tourism, Tiffany L. Knoell

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If She Were President: Fictional Representations of Female U.S. Presidents in Film, Television, and Literature in the Twentieth Century, Kathleen Taylor Kollman

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Morality and Aspiration: Some Conditions of Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms, Sylvio Lynch III

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Confined: Motherhood in Twenty-First Century American Film, Tessa Pyles

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Hippie Films, Hippiesploitation, and the Emerging Counterculture, 1955-1970, Britton Stiles Rhuart

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Making Profit, Making Play: Corporate Social Media Branding in the Era of Late Capitalism, David F. Stephens II

Dissertations from 2019

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"I Can Do Whatever the Hell I Want": Female Tattoo Artists, Their Experiences, and Identity Creation, Johni Amos

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Dungeons & Discourse: Intersectional Identities in Dungeons & Dragons, Philip Jameson Clements

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A King of Time and Motion: Richard Pryor and the Evolution of Modern Stand-Up Comedy, Cori Healy

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Performing Gender and Authority: Juvenile Corrections Officers' Self-Perceptions and Strategies at Work, Starlit Hill

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Trusty Teens: Reading American Adolescence through the Superhero Sidekick, Lauren O'Connor

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Dictating the Terms: GamerGate, Democracy, and (In)Equality on Reddit, Shane Michael Snyder

Dissertations from 2018

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Building Cold War Warriors: Socialization of the Final Cold War Generation, Steven Bellavia

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Whose Voice?: A Critical Analysis of Identity, Media, and Popular Music in The Voice of China, Xinxin Jiang

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Playing the Big Easy: A History of New Orleans in Film and Television, Robert Joseph

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Living the Fat Body: Women's Experiences and Relationships with Their Bodies and Popular Culture, JoAnna Murphy

Dissertations from 2017

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Something Queer in His Make-Up: Genderbending, Omegaverses, and Fandom's Discontents, Elliot Director

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Between Feminism and Femininity: Shifting Cultural Representations of Girlhood in the 1960s, Ying-bei Eldridge

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The Colonia Next Door: Puerto Ricans in the Harlem Community, 1917-1948, Daniel Elkan

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Film Comedy and the American Dream, Zachary Sands

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Collaborative Storytelling 2.0: A framework for studying forum-based role-playing games, Csenge Zalka

Dissertations from 2016

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The Reimagined Paradise: African Immigrants in the United States, Nollywood Film, and the Digital Remediation of 'Home', Tori Arthur

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True Loves, Dark Nights: Queer Performativity and Grieving Through Music in the Work of Rufus Wainwright, Stephanie Salerno

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Male Bodies On-Screen: Spectacle, Affect, and the Most Popular Action Adventure Films in the 1980s, Christopher Wagenheim

Dissertations from 2015

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An Autoethnographic Exploration Into Bipolar Depression and Social Support As A Factor Of Resilence, Wonda Baugh

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Constructing Elysium and Playing Ugly: Methods of Intimacy in Fantasy Role-Playing Game Communities, Genesis Downey

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Contested Titles: Gendered Violence Victim Advocacy and Negotiating Occupational Stigma in Social Interactions, Johnanna Ganz

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"It's not just about giving them money": Cultural Representations of Father Involvement Among Black West Indian Immigrants in the United States of America, Lance Gibbs

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New Deal To New Majority: SDS's Failure to Realign the Largest Political Coalition in the 20th Century, Michael Hale

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Love is (Color) Blind: Historical Romance Fiction and Interracial Relationships in the Twenty-First Century, Mallory Jagodzinski

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"Introducing America to Americans": FSA Photography and the Construction of Racialized and Gendered Citizens, Lisa Kaplan

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Thinking Otherwise: Exploring Narratives of Women who Shifted from a Heterosexual to a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Queer, and/or Unlabeled Identity, Clare Lemke

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Have You Heard the One About the Woman Driver? Chicks, Muscle, Pickups, and the Reimagining of the Woman Behind the Wheel, Christine Lezotte

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Squeezing In: Exploring Female Athletes' Body Perceptions, Mallory Mann

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Healthy Bodies Matter: Analysis of the Disclosure of Race and Health Care on WebMD.com, Aisha McGriff

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"I Don't Take Kindly To Your Invasion of This Fine Gaming Culture": Gender, Emotion, and Power in Digital Gaming Spaces as Demonstrated Through Dead Island, Nicole Reamer

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(Re)Presentation: An Affective Exploration of Ethnographic Documentary Film Production, Deborah Ribera

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Threatening Immigrants: Cultural Depictions of Undocumented Mexican Immigrants in Contemporary US America, Katharine Schaab

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Poverty and the Art of Medicine: Barriers to Empathy in Medical Education, Heather Sloane

Dissertations from 2014

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Spinsters, Old Maids, and Cat Ladies: A Case Study in Containment Strategies, Katherine Barak

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Mechanics and The Essence of Technology, William Emerson

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Sumptuous Soul: The Music of Donny Hathaway Everything is Everything Donny Hathaway, 1970, Keisha Hicks

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"That's What She Said": Politics, Transgression, and Women's Humor in Contemporary American Television", Melinda Lewis

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The Impact of Race on Perceptions of Authenticity in the Delivery and Reception of African American Gospel Music, Adriane Thompson-Bradshaw

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Playing for Their Share: A History of Creative Tradeswomen in Eighteenth Century Virginia, Elisabeth Woronzoff-Dashkoff

Dissertations from 2013

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Vatos Sagrados: Exploring Northern Ohio's Religious Borderlands, Adrian Bautista

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Women of Ill Fame: Discourses of Prostitution and the American Dream in California, 1850 - 1890, Angela Fitzpatrick

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Mindful Movement as a Cure for Colonialism, Kristy Ganoe

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From Holmes to Sherlock: Confession, Surveillance, and the Detective, Arundhati Ghosh

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FutureBodies: Octavia Butler as a Post-Colonial Cyborg Theorist, Cassandra Jones

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Madness as a Way of Life: Space, Politics, and the Uncanny in Fiction and Social Movements, Justine Lutzel

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How Does Religion Shape Filipino Immigrants' Connection to the Public Sphere? Imagining a Different Self-Understanding of Modernity, Aprilfaye Manalang

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Luggage to America: Vietnamese Intellectual and Entrepreneurial Immigrants in the New Millennium, An Tuan Nguyen

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Vodou and the U.S. Counterculture, Christian Remse

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An Uncertain Poetics of the Intoxicated Narrative: Drugs, Detection, Denouement, Sudipto Sanyal

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Implicit Religion and the Highly-Identified Sports Fan: An Ethnography of Cleveland Sports Fandom, Edward Uszynski

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Women's Participation in Endurance Motorcycle Challenges, Abagail Van Vlerah

Dissertations from 2012

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Parrotheads, Cheeseburgers, and Paradise: Adult Music Fandom and Fan Practices, Kelly MacDonald Weeks

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Houses, Hot Dogs, and 'Hoods: Place Branding and the Reconstruction of Identity in Rick Sebak's Pittsburgh Documentaries, Bryan McGeary

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Memory and Meaning: Constructed Commemoration in a Nation's Capital City, Eric Weeks

Dissertations from 2011

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Voicing the Voiceless: Feminism and Contemporary Arab Muslim Women's Autobiographies, Taghreed Abu Sarhan

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“Well, It Is Because He’s Black”: A Critical Analysis of the Black President in Film and Television, Phillip Cunningham

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Cosmopolitan Ethics and the Limits of Tolerance: Representing the Holocaust in Young Adult Literature, Rachel Dean-Ruzicka

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Hackers, Cyborgs, and Wikipedians: The Political Economy and Cultural History of Wikipedia, Andrew Famiglietti

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“You’ve Seen the Movie, Now Play the Game”: Recoding the Cinematic in Digital Media and Virtual Culture, Stefan Hall

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The Wild Things, Joanne Joys

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A Place Apart: The Role of Nostalgia in a Detached Community, Martin Otto Zimmann

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(Dis)Articulating the Frontier Body: Artifacts, Appendages, and Spectres in the Discourse of the American West, Charlotte Quinney

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Consuming Liberation: Playgirl and the Strategic Rhetoric of Sex Magazines for Women 1972-1985, Chadwick Roberts

Dissertations from 2010

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Selling the Splat Pack: The DVD Revolution and the American Horror Film, Mark Bernard

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Pressed between the Pages of My Mind: Tangibility, Performance, and Technology in Archival Popular Music Research, Rebekah Burchfield

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Political Melodies in the Pews?: Is Black Christian Rap the New Voice of Black Liberation Theology?, David Moody

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A Hermeneutical Ontology of Cyberspace, Cristian Pralea

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Rewiring Difference and Disability: Narratives of Asperger's Syndrome in the Twenty-First Century, Neil Shepard

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What Are Little (Empowered) Girls Made Of?: The Discourse of Girl Power in Contemporary U.S. Popular Culture, Rosalind Sibielski

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Silencio: The Spectral Voice and 9/11, Lloyd Vayo

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“I Laid my Hands on a Gorgeous Cannibal Woman”: Anthropophagy in the Imperial Imagination, 1492 – 1763, Kelly Watson

Dissertations from 2009

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From 'The Wizard of Oz' to 'Wicked': Trajectory of American Myth, Alissa Burger

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Foods That Matter: Constructing Place and Community at Food Festivals in Northwest Ohio, Nathan Crook

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Use and Influence of Amateur Musician Narratives In Film, 1981-2001, Colin Helb

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From Girlfriend to Gamer: Negotiating Place in the Hardcore/Casual Divide of Online Video Game Communities, Erica Kubik