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This dissertation argues for the potential of an American politics built on identities, cultures, and faith. Works by two Caribbean authors, Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980) and Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), provide central connections throughout these considerations while demonstrating how disparate people consider themselves American without losing their differences. Chapter one examines faith as enunciated in Carpentiers explanation of American Marvelous Realism and as practiced in Hurstons novels. According to these works, credence in America comes not from governmental attempts at continental unity, which too often leads to domination, but instead arises out of cultural endeavors that transcend political boundaries. Music in the second chapter exemplifies American cultural practice by boldly going where politicians fear to tread, resonating throughout the continent with sounds that typify specific regions while remaining strongly connected to one another. A backbeat, for example, that reveals musical connections between swing and vallenato does not negate the individuality of, respectively, Kansas City or Baranquilla. The third chapter considers Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks employment of Area Studies competencies in studies of Comparative Literature. In this case, specific applications of biology and music history apply to cultural studies of the Americas. Recent studies in genetics that trace similarities in all humans also reveal America as a site of greatest biological differentiation. Following ideas put forth by Spivak, Homi Bhabha, and Nstor Garca Canclini, this deconstructive approach to cultural studies concludes in the fourth chapter with an American politics that does not merely reverse established patterns of domination but instead emulates American cultural practices with the potential to make hegemonic readings irrelevant. / English

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Thesis advisor: James M. O'Toole / This dissertation examines the ways in which Catholics, Mormons, Pentecostals, Lutherans, and Congregationalists repositioned themselves in American life and culture during the Progressive Era. Between 1890 and 1920, the place of these religious communities in American society became less secure as faith and religious practice became increasingly individualized. In response, churches reasserted their place in American society through deliberate reconstructions of the past to recreate their religious and historical identity. Through pageants, parades, poetry, and orations, they publicly displayed and celebrated their place in America and their contributions to the making of the nation. Specifically, they argued that religion and national progress went hand in hand. Progress needed religion. As such, the clerical and lay members of these communities constructed collective religious memories that strayed from historical reality in order to reinforce present needs and concerns. Perpetuating these often times misleading memories helped them to navigate the murky waters of modernity including theological change, societal prejudice, industrialization, and war by supplying them with the space to sustain the cultural legitimacy of their community. By examining religious experience via the lens of memory this dissertation illustrates how religious communities pursued an active role in America at a time when society increasingly disregarded the relevance of religion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

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This dissertation addresses the place of music in circuit chautauqua, the place of circuit chautauqua in American culture, and the role of music in defining that place. It takes into account the perception of chautauqua as a conduit by which higher culture and urban intellectual discourse could reach rural Americans, and the implications of this perception on musical programming. The heyday of the circuit chautauqua movement (1904-1932) occurred during a time of considerable interaction between, and discussion of, entertainment and education in the United States. Music was important to the self-image of those involved in the entertainment and education industries, and especially to those who could not easily be labeled as either entertainers or educators. Chautauqua performers, and the chautauqua movement itself, held an uneasy position on the continuum between pleasing crowds and bettering audience members’ lives. Music helped to define circuit chautauqua, both as an edifying factor and as an empty diversion. Popular music attracted crowds, while art music enhanced chautauqua’s image as a valid outlet for high culture. Music’s role in defining chautauqua’s identity was often more complex, however, as the lines between art and popular music, and thus between education and entertainment, were rarely clearly defined. Much of the programming billed as cultural outreach would have been more accurately labeled as novelty, while the popular music often espoused patriotism, loyalty, piety, and other sentiments that would cause audiences and critics to deem such music as edifying, if not purely educational. This dissertation seeks to clarify music’s role in establishing and maintaining circuit chautauqua’s reputation as a cultural conduit, an educational force, and an American institution.

In today’s college culture, more universities in the United States are confronted with the escalating societal problem of alcohol abuse. Some say college-aged alcohol consumption is a rite of passage, or a way of enjoying college life. Others say such behavior is a start of a life-long tragedy of addiction and destructiveness. The photographs in Requiem for A Drink were taken at the University of Iowa which capture the excessive profanity of disoriented intoxication, inhibition, and disregard for the environment. The stark scenes of the aftermath ultimately signify the morning after, a sunrise filled with nausea, hangovers, and regret. This photographic series provides the viewer with the images to answer this question: when does alcohol consumption transition from a pleasurable party scene to one of personal destructiveness?

The Mardi Gras Indian culture of New Orleans, Louisiana is a unique tradition that blends African spirituality, Caribbean spirituality, African music and dance, with Native American style dress. The Mardi Gras Indians engage in ritual battle and ancestor worship as a part of their tradition of using cultural expression as a means for social protest. While many tourists to the Crescent City may have the opportunity to witness the Indians in full dress, even few native New Orleanians ever learn the depth of the phenomenon. / text

This study examines the Corvette, an automobile with a distinct place in American literature and culture. For more than fifty years, the Corvette has been in the process of becoming what is described as an "icon," although this progress has never been satisfactorily approached and explained. Why this particular machine has not just survived, but come to be recognized--by and large by most if not all Americans--as the signifier of various virtues (and some vices) is a question of some significance: in analyzing the reasons for the Corvette's long life and success as an overwhelmingly positive and distinctively American car, we look at the literature and culture of the United States. What this reveals is a complex web of ideas and attitudes that centers on one thing--a material object with six different forms over fifty years, yet one that has always retained its identity and power to signify. The approach here is thematic rather than historical. As a popular subject, the Corvette already has historians who look at it as a tangible thing that can be described, measured, and defined. My assignment is different: through the lens of critical theories, several of them, and a wide range of materials--film, novels, songs, and more--I seek to discover some essential aspects of the car that make its image dynamic and permit it to evolve over time. This is not an easy process; it has demanded an open mind to materials not often looked at in an English dissertation. The Corvette and its image are described in four areas and a conclusion: * The Corvette: the Empty, the American, and the Deadly Signifier (the original that becomes America's image of itself and the danger of speed and technology out of control) * The Image of Potency: the Corvette, Males, and Minorities (aggressive sexuality, African-American males, and male domination) * Women, Sex, and Identity as Power: the Corvette, Baddest Mother of Them All (phallic females, the car as sexual power and identity) * Corvette as Art: the Expressive Image (the car's own self-reflexive nature, the automobile as fashion--belonging ["I stand out, yet I belong"] and sense of self--and its presence in "art") * The Corvette: Image and Object

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