A historiographical history of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The historiography has changed a lot over the years. From Diedrich Knickerbocker to Russell Shorto, every writer had their own...Show moreA historiographical history of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. The historiography has changed a lot over the years. From Diedrich Knickerbocker to Russell Shorto, every writer had their own heroes and focus. This thesis is how this historiography has changed over the years.Show less
The avoidance of procreation is a recurrent theme in John Dos Passos’s novels, playing an especially significant role in Manhattan Transfer (1925) and The Big Money (1936). However, few scholars...Show moreThe avoidance of procreation is a recurrent theme in John Dos Passos’s novels, playing an especially significant role in Manhattan Transfer (1925) and The Big Money (1936). However, few scholars publishing on gender in relation to Dos Passos have addressed the theme of procreation, or more precisely, his denial of procreation from his female characters. To fill this hiatus in the scholarship on Dos Passos, this thesis will address and explore several aspects of procreation as a theme in Manhattan Transfer and The Big Money, placing these novels in the wider social-historical context of contemporary debates about birth control and abortion, and especially the literary-historical context of modernism in general and Dos Passos’s work in particular.Show less
This study examines the public debate surrounding gangsta rap as a musical genre in 1980s-1990s America. Whereas most academic studies of the genre have focused on testing and contesting negative...Show moreThis study examines the public debate surrounding gangsta rap as a musical genre in 1980s-1990s America. Whereas most academic studies of the genre have focused on testing and contesting negative stereotyping of the music by approaching the genre as a cultural and political product with deep roots in African-American history and culture, this study focuses on the public reactions that emerged against the genre as well as the national discourses that ensued. An extensive analysis of the treatment of those stereotypes and characteristics most commonly ascribed to gangsta rap in scholarly research and anti-gangsta rap campaigns, this study constructs a better understanding of the way gangsta rap was defined by its mainstream opponents (black and white), what its societal positioning was in an era of increasing poverty and tension in disadvantaged neighborhoods, and why the genre was considered so controversial. Additionally, the public discussion of gangsta rap is linked to the concurrent public discussion of crime, African-American youth and economically disenfranchised neighborhoods, which offers interesting new insights into the problematic stereotyping of these subjects in American society.Show less
Literature on wartime removal and incarceration of Japanese American describes the opposition and resistance to the governmental policies mostly in terms of deficiency. This interpretative bias is...Show moreLiterature on wartime removal and incarceration of Japanese American describes the opposition and resistance to the governmental policies mostly in terms of deficiency. This interpretative bias is characterized by privileging the governmental account of the removal and incarceration over the Japanese American accounts while disregarding any incident short of civil disobedience as unimportant. Moreover, Japanese Americans' cooperation is seen as contributing greatly to the success of the procedures that ultimately deprived them of their liberty. This view, though widely held, does not provide an accurate description of Japanese American attitudes and actions during the fateful months after the Pearl Harbor attack. I will argue that the number of strikes, the extent of community organization, and the scope of individual and group protest inside the relocation camps testify that Japanese Americans' reaction to their wartime removal and incarceration was anything but passive. Japanese Americans protested against the injustice of their evacuation and incarceration, but they were systematically silenced, intimidated, and punished by the government. Moreover, the relocation program officials and generations of relocation scholars contributed to the marginalization of Japanese American resistance by uncritically accepting the governmental account of mass removal and incarceration which refused to recognize evacuee resistance as legitimate protest.Show less
Mississippi was once called by many scholars as the most racial violent state in America. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans were lynched and even killed by local white...Show moreMississippi was once called by many scholars as the most racial violent state in America. Throughout the Civil Rights Movement, many African Americans were lynched and even killed by local white supremacists especially members of the Ku Klux Klan. In 1966, Vernon Dahmer, the leader of the Forrest County Chapter of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi, was murdered by Klansmen’s firebombing. However, different from earlier murder cases, Dahmer’s murder happened during a changing racial situation in Mississippi: many local white people, who used to support the Klansmen, began to hate their racial violence; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) strengthened their suppression of the Ku Klux Klan; white politicians had to adjust themselves to the irresistible trend that more blacks would participate in politics and stop ignoring racial violence performed by the Klansmen. Under these circumstances, it seemed that the Ku Klux Klan was out of ways in fighting against the voting progress and thus the murder of Vernon Dahmer turned their one last battle. In my thesis, I intend to look into how the Ku Klux Klan was influenced by both the Federal Government and Mississippi authorities. How did the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPR) in the 1960s suppress the force of the Ku Klux Klan. Inside the state, the relationship between white liberals and the civil rights movement became increasingly strained. Based on these facts, we can see that the murder of Dahmer stimulated Mississippians’ adaption to a changing racial atmosphere and their reaction against modern liberalism, which brought profound influence to the decline of the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan as well as Mississippi politics in the late twentieth century. I will base my research on both national and local newspaper sources, literature works, oral history collections and documentaries of university libraries in Mississippi. The first chapter will look into the murder case of Vernon Dahmer and analyze its difference with former civil rights cases specially with the murders of Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers; the second chapter will be dealing with the roles that the FBI and the Federal Government played in the murder case and their influence to the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The third chapter will analyze the influence that Paul Johnson’s administration brought to the local racial atmosphere.Show less
