Dissertations and M.A. Theses in American Studies

Recent Ph.D. dissertations:

2008

  • Helen Louise Davis, Compassionate Consumerism: Mass Movements, Youth Markets, and the Evolution of an Ethic from Band Aid to Idol Aid
    Director: Ann Larabee
  • Katherine Edney, Gliding Through our Memories: American Musical Theater Does History, 1940s-2000s
    Director: David Stowe
  • Jeff Johnson, Selling Ourselves: Transnationalistic Myths and Symbols in Polish-American Advertising from 1990-2205
    Director: Gary Hoppenstand
  • Jian Wu, Identity in Translation: English-Language Discourse on China, 1976-present
    Director: Sheng-mei Ma
  • Makito Yurita, Metahistory and Memory: Making/Remaking the Knowledge of Hiroshima's Atomic Bombing
    Director: Ann Larabee

2007

  • Mat Bartkowiak,
  • Tricia Jenkins, The Female Agen(t)cy: Gender and Nationalism in Prime-time American Spy
    Director: Gary Hoppenstand
  • Joseph Jones, The Making of a National Forest: The Contest over the West Michigan Cutover, 1888-1943.
    Director: Thomas Summerhill

2006

2005

  • Monique M. Chism, Hear our voices: The intersections of race, class, and gender in a mixed-income community in Chicago.
    Director: Maxine Boca Zinn
  • Susan Rose Dominguez, The Gertrude Bonnin story: From Yankton destiny into American history, 1804—1938.
    Director: George L. Cornell
  • Elizabeth Fairhead, Essential Nature: Bartram's Garden and Natural History in Philadelphia, 1790-1825.
    Director: David T. Bailey
  • Jennifer Stevens, Consuming the past: Television and the popular American historical consciousness.
    Director: Gary Hoppenstand

2004

  • Cecilia A. Samonte, Representations of Early 20th-Century Philippines in American Women’s Travel Narratives
    Director: Jyotsna Singh

2003

  • Peter MacFarland Coogan, The Antediluvian Age: The Emergence of the Superhero in America
    Director: Gary Hoppenstand
  • Kerry Duff, Biographies of Scale: The Life Writing of Nineteenth-Century ‘Midgets’ and ‘Giants’
    Director: Steve Rachman & Dagmar Herzog
  • Penelope Gardner, Feminist Autobiography: Method & Practice
    Director: Joyce Ladenson
  • April Herndon, Carrying the Torch: Fatness and Nation in the Age of Weight Loss
    Director: Alice Dreger
  • Nathan Clinton Garrelts, The Official Strategy Guide for Developing a Critical Media Literacy of Video Games: An Analysis of the Final Fantasy Video Game Series
    Director: Kathleen Geissler
  • Stephen Alan Jones, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Black Studies and the Transformation of American Higher Education 1967-1972
    Director: David T. Bailey
  • Dominic Ording, Intimate Fellows: Representations of Masculinity and Gay Liberation Before and After Stonewall
    Directors: Dagmar Herzog & Dean Rehberger
  • Brant Pope, Arthur Miller: Popular Front Playwright
    Director: Kenneth Waltzer
  • Anthony Sze-Fai Shiu, Marginals, Citizens, and Subjects: The Perilous Foundations of Asian American Studies
    Director: Scott Michaelsen
  • Rieko Tomisawa, The Crisis of Democracy in a Pluralistic Society: A Genealogy of W.E.B. Du Bois’s Double Consciousness
    Director: Larry Landrum

2002

  • Mary Penelope Gardner, Weaving a female symbolic: Autobiography, a method of scholarship.
    Director: Joyce Ladenson
  • Patrick Lee Lucas, Realized Ideals: Grecian-Style Buildings As Metaphors for Democracy on the Trans-Appalachian Frontier.
    Director: Susan Sleeper-Smith
  • John McKiernan, Fevered Measures: Race, Communicable Disease and Community Formation on the Texas-Mexico Border, 1880-1923 2002.  
  • Paul Andrew Manoguerra, Classic Ground: American Paintings and the Italian Encounter, 1848-1860.   
    Director: Kenneth Haltman
  • Anthony Joseph Michael, Cultural Rhetorics: Writing at the Intersection of British Cultural Studies and Rhetoric.
  • Christopher Aaron York, Splendid splinters: Memory and myth in contemporary baseball fiction.
    Director: Barry Gross

2001

  • Teresa Trupiano Barry, Rhetorics of Representation: Race, Gender, and Intermarriage in the Frontier Fiction of Ann S. Stephens, 1838-1865.   
    Director: Kathleen Geissler
  • Jeanne Elaine Gazel, Building Community on Campus: The interdependent Theory and Practice of the Multi Racial Unity Living Experience—MRULE.
    Director: Richard W. Thomas
  •  Mary Hughes, We’ve Got Father and Mother and Each Other: Little Women and the American Nuclear Family Romance in Novel and Film, 1864-1994.
    Director: Dean Rehberger
  • Debra Pozega Osborn, Women in Transitional Times: The Untold Stories of Working Women in the 1950s.
    Director: Gretchen Barbatsis

2000

  • David T. Givens, Guam: An analysis of an American colony with particular emphasis on the integration of the precontact class system into the modern society.
    Director: Robert H. McKinley
  • Maria Quinlan Leiby, Michigan Museums Interpret the Automobile, 1929-1995.
    Director: Kurt C. Dewhurst
  • Byron Douglas Mason, Beyond primitivism: Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance.
    Director: Barry Gross
  • Christy Rishoi, Girl Power: The American Woman’s Coming of Age Narrative.
    Director: Katherine Fishburn
  • Stephen A. Rohs, Eccentric Nation: Irish Embodiment and Performance in Nineteenth-Century New York City.
    Director: Peter Levine

1999

  • Michael Van Dyke, Poetry's Revival: Kenneth Rexroth and the San Francisco Renaissance.
    Director: David T. Bailey

1998

  • Ralph Bauer, Transcultrations in Colonial Space: Creole Identity and the Ethnographic Imagination in Early British & Spanish Literature.
  • Tammy Lee Stone-Gordon, "Fifty-cent sybils": Occult workers and the symbolic marketplace in the urban United States, 1850—1930.
    Director: Lisa Fine
  • Denise E. Pilato, The Retrieval of a Legacy: Perspectives on Presence and Progress of Nineteenth Century Women Inventors in American Culture.   
    Director: Ann Larabee

1997

  • Jeffrey Scott Miller, Something Completely Different: British Television and American Culture, 1960-1980.
  • Troy D. Paino, The End of Nostalgia: A Cultural History of Indiana High School Basketball During the Progressive Era 1997.   

1996

  • John A. Kinch, The Biodiversity Mission in American Environmentalism.  
  • Rodney L. Phillips, "Forest Beatniks" and "Urban Thoreaus": Beat literature and nature.
    Director: James L. McClinctock

1995

  • Phillip Curtis Belfry, Division and unity, dispersal and permanence: The Anishnabeg of the Lake Huron borderlands.
    Director: George Cornell
  • Cassius Bears Bultman, Terms of endearment: The relationship between Adlai E. Stevenson II and American intellectuals.
    Director: James Seaton

1994

  • William David Barillas, Place and landscape in Midwestern American literature.
    Director: James I. McClintock
  • Deborah Verdice Smith Barney, The gospel announcer and the black gospel music tradition.
    Directors: Kurt C. Dewhurst & Laurie K. Sommers

MA theses in American Studies:

2007

  • Anthony Kolenic III, (Re)making sacred ground: American national memory and the memorialization of 9/11.
    Director: Ann Larabee
  • Denise Blair Leach, In Place of Memory: Museums and Historic Resources as
    Distinct Place Types.
    Director: Kristine Morrissey

2006

2005

  • Yael Epstein, European Jewish refugee chemists in the United States: Adjustment, achievements and Jewish identity.
    Director: Kenneth Waltzer
  • Charlotte Louise Quinney, Wisconsin Death Trip: An excursion into the Midwestern Gothic
    Director: Gary Hoppenstand
  • Reina Tanaka, United States occupation and recontextualization of American culture in Japan: Japanization of Tokya Disneyland.
    Director: Ann Larabee

2004

  • Puspa Lal Damai, Narratives of the uncanny: A study of Asian/American fiction.
    Director: David Stowe

2003

  • Joseph Richard Hardwick, The colony in the radical mind: Settlement patterns, the Chartist Land Plan and the American West, 1790—1850.
    Director: Edward Watts
  • Todd William Wahlstrom, Defeated and colonized: The psychology of the planter and ex-Confederate class in the postwar South.
    Director: Robert F. Bonner

2002

2001

2000

  • Mark Krasovich, Poverty and culture: Postwar affluence and the origins of Head Start.
    Director: David T. Bailey

1999

  • Juan Antonio Sanchez, The Portrayal of the Chicago Experience in the Novels of Alejandro Morales.
  • Joshua Carter Woodfork, (Dis)claiming whiteness: Homer Plessy, Tiger Woods, and racially transformed parents.

1998

  • Mary Alice Gebhart, The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival: Building a lesbian community.

1997

1996

  • Emi Minemura, Asian Pacific Islander lesbian and bisexual women in North America: Activism and politics.

1995

1994

  • Fred J. Mayer, The jazz process: Brass bands to swing bands. Music in Detroit, 1850-1930. Director: Harry Reed