The Western has been an important and iconic part of American culture since the opening of the frontier. However, very few scholars have looked closely at the way the genre constructs the past through public and private spaces like frontier towns and settlements. The 1971 films, The Hired Hand and McCabe & Mrs. Miller are two texts that revitalized, and in the process revised, the Western genre in the early 1970s. My paper examines the ways in which conflicts between public and private spaces in the films reflect the social and cultural conflicts in America at the time. Both films feature lead male characters that strive to, but ultimately fail to resurrect an older idea of public space as they attempt to reclaim their place in it. The men attempt to navigate changing ideas of public space by retreating in to domestic or feminine space and resisting the corporatization of public space. This paper uses the works of Nancy Fraser and Richard Sennett to explore the different approaches to the nature of public space in post World War II America and sheds new light on the ways in which men adapted or, in some cases, refused to adapt to the changing social conditions of the second half of the 20th century.

In this age of globalization, or more specifically, partial globalization, the significance of cultural shifts in various parts of the world, is considerable. In consideration of cultural convergence and divergence, it must be investigated whether or not cultures are gaining more similarities and less differences (convergence) due to globalization and whether or not standard business practices will emerge as a result. An adaptation of the Dorfman and Howell (1988) survey was used to provide a better understanding and comparison of the special conditions that characterize business practices of Jamaicans living in Jamaica, and Jamaicans living in the U.S.A. or whose behavior have been impacted by the U.S. culture. The results indicate that there are no significant differences in the areas of power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and paternalism which suggest strength of the Jamaican culture. However there was some evidence of crossvergence or possibly divergence as there was a significant difference in individualism between the native Jamaican and the global Jamaican. The apparent shift in individualism, which is in alignment with Hofstede's (1986) belief that as a result of westernization and teaching in a multinational classroom a shift in individualism is possible, needs to be further investigated in light of the relatively small sample size used in the study. There was no difference between the native male Jamaican and the global male Jamaican in all the five cultural dimensions. This research provides students, managers, business leaders and entrepreneurs with information that can help business practices, through the better understanding of cultural orientation of the NATIVE Jamaican (Jamaicans living in Jamaica) and the GLOBAL Jamaican (Jamaicans living in the U.S.A. for an extended period or who have been exposed to the U.S. culture for an extended period of time, leading to improved business and economic performance. The researcher suggests further research utilizing a larger sample size to investigate not only how demographic factors such as gender, age, and educational level affect cultural orientation but also to explore the effects of economic ties, family ties, cable television and internet usage on the cultural orientation among the native and global Jamaican and whether convergence, crossvergence and divergence occurs. Also, it is worth undertaking a study of the observed shift in greater individualism for the global Jamaican to discover whether the change is of any permanence and the contributing factors to the differences to these values.

A group of Protestant refugees from Salzburg founded the town of Ebenezer, Georgia, in 1734. The Pietists at the Francke Foundation in Halle sent two pastors, Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Christian Gronau, to lead the religious immigrants in their new settlement. As other historians have shown, the Halle sponsors wanted Ebenezer to fulfill their own purposes: establish social and religious autonomy under British colonial rule, reproduce the economic structure and institutions of social and religious reform of the Francke Foundation, and establish a successful Pietist ministry in North America. This study examines journals and correspondence from Ebenezer's pastors, British colonial authorities, and the German religious sponsors to reveal how different aspects of the Pietist vision were compromised until Ebenezer resembled a typical German-American settlement rather than a model Pietist community. Georgia's economic conditions, political pressures, and Ebenezer's internal demographic changes forced the pastors to sacrifice their goals for an orphanage, a free labor economy, and a closely structured community of persecuted Protestants. They ensured Ebenezer's economic success and social autonomy, but they were unable to replicate their sponsors' most distinctly Pietist economic, social and religious enterprises.

Based on three and a half years of research among semi-cloistered Christian monastics and a dispersed network of non-monastic Christian contemplatives around the United States, this study shows how religious practitioners in both settings combined social action and intentional living with intellectual study and intensive contemplative practices in an effort to modify their ways of knowing, sensing, and experiencing the world. It explores the interplay of social diversity and cohesiveness in pluralistic society and the relationship of agency and habitus in practitioners' conscious attempts at spiritual transformation. Organized by the metaphor of a seeker journeying towards the inner chambers of a monastic chapel, The Porous Cell uses innovative "intersubjective" fieldwork methods to study these opaque interiorized, often silent communities, in order to show how solitude, chant, contemplation, attention, and a paradoxical capacity to combine active ritual with intentional "unknowing" develop and hone a powerful sense of communion and foster a unitive state in relationship to "life in the world." Cloistered monastics encouraged a commitment to ancient Christian ideals and practices, but both they and dispersed non-monastics enriched the movement's character by including aspects of other religious traditions. Partially inspired by Fredrik Barth's anthropology of knowledge, the thesis develops a novel theory of clines of multiple epistemologies, which include intellectual, experiential, performative, and contemplative knowledges, as well as the notion of "unknowing." This model of variable knowledges (both conscious and "embodied") shows how contemplative communities can be diverse and yet retain considerable cohesiveness and stability. American Christian contemplatives' ability to fuse so many spheres of knowledge and to live contemplatively challenges the often taken-for-granted segregation of the religious, secular, sacred, and profane in the modern world. Further, this study contributes to the anthropologies of perception, silence, embodiment, and experience, and to the anthropology and epistemology of Christianity. It extends American ethnography by its use of new methods for studying silence and performance, and by focusing on a highly educated and mostly urban, professional, Euro-American community (in both its geographically-situated and "non-gathered," network-based guises) which is rarely the subject of ethnographic research and is often assumed to be the demographic most likely to reject religion. / 2022-08-01T00:00:00Z

For approximately the last 20 years, researchers have studied the "environment" for students who are lesbian, gay, and bisexual. However, there has been little empirical research on the experiences of lesbian, bisexual, or gay students at historically Black colleges and universities. Most of the literature to date has focused on students at predominantly White institutions and students who are male. Further, HBCUs have long-been lauded for the unique educational experience they have created for African American students in general as evidenced by reports of greater satisfaction, faculty and social support, positive self-images, strong racial pride, and better psychosocial adjustment (Allen, Epps, & Haniff, 1991; Berger & Milem, 2000; Fleming, 1984; Fries-Britt & Turner, 2002; Terenzini, Bohr, Pascarella, & Nora, 1997). However, little research has been conducted on within-group differences among African American students at HBCUs to explore whether and how other social identities such as sexual orientation or socioeconomic class impact an African American student's experience of an HBCU. This is an exploratory study that examines the experiences of seven lesbian and bisexual female students at an historically Black college and inquires into the relationship between the culture of HBCUs and the students' perceptions of campus climate. Drawing from a focus group interview, a survey, institutional artifacts, and historical data, I explore three research questions. The questions are 1) what can be characterized as the culture at historically Black colleges and universities; 2) what is the lesbian and bisexual female student perception of the campus climate for lesbian and female bisexual students at HBCUs and; 3) how, if at all does the HBCU culture impact the campus climate? The culture was characterized by adherence to traditional gender norms of dress and behavior, affirming racial identity but not sexual identity, the dominance and prevalence of Christian values and beliefs, and a system of rewards and punishments for conforming or not conforming to gender norms. The climate was characterized by students feeling afraid; being harassed; feeling as though they are not wanted at the institution; restricting themselves from participating in activities; facing threats of expulsion; and having little to no social or institutional support.

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No description available.

No description available.

Americans view neutrality in the 1790s as the far-seeing wisdom of the Founders and a weak power's common-sense approach to a transatlantic war in which it could not afford to get involved. Far from this benign image of prudence, however, neutrality in the Early Republic was controversial: it was a style and paradigm of foreign policy that grappled with the consequences of a democratic politics exacerbated by diplomatic crises. Far from promoting tranquility, neutrality provoked uproar from the very beginning. Intense print battles erupted over sensational exposés of foreign influence and conspiracy, reverberating through the international, national, and local levels simultaneously. Print exposés of foreign intrigue provoked partisan warfare that raised the larger, unsettled (and unsettling) issues of the national interest, the exercise of federal power, and the relationship between the people and their government. This dynamic reflected and exacerbated preexisting sectional fissures in the union, triggering recourse to the politics of slavery. As a result, the politics of slavery calibrated the competing national visions of the emerging Federalists and Republicans, defining the limits of American independence while challenging the ability of the United States to remain neutral. Drawing on the efforts of diplomatic historians, political historians and literary scholars, this work illustrates the mutually constitutive relationship between print politics, foreign relations, and the politics of slavery in the Early Republic. It argues that neutrality was a style of foreign policy that both political parties used to contain sectionalism and faction, and that print politics and the politics of slavery combined to create a dynamic that made that style malleable. / History

This dissertation explores the idea of the 1970s as a critical turning point for the representation of young Jewish women in American popular culture, specifically considering examples from popular literature, popular film, television, and comedy that undermine the validity of midcentury conceptions of the Jewish-American Princess (JAP) or Jewish Ugly Duckling. The introduction and first chapter establish the historical context of how stereotypes of Jewish women—including the JAP—came to be used as a means of mitigating assimilation-related anxieties, especially in light of the post-WWII Jewish ascent into the white suburban middle class. The dissertation then transitions into a deeper investigation of female-driven responses to these archetypes. With the rise of the contemporary Feminism movement, the sexual revolution, the Jewish New Wave of filmmaking, and the shift in emphasis from assimilation to multiculturalism within the American social consciousness, the 1970s provided a platform for Jewish female authors, entertainers, and filmmakers to directly respond to and reconceive the stereotypes of Jewish women honed during the midcentury period. The second, third, and fourth chapters each tackle a different facet of popular culture, looking specifically at how popular literature, film, television, and comedy produced by Jewish women confirmed, complicated, and challenged stereotypes of Jewish women, effectively shifting the cultural paradigm away from the JAP and towards a new understanding of Jewish female identity that undermined existing archetypes. In this way, the dissertation argues that Jewish female-driven popular literature, film, television, and comedy during this time period acted as a bridge between the more one-dimensional, often male-driven midcentury conceptions of the JAP and the more complex, nuanced images of young Jewish women in contemporary popular culture. Simply put, while the novels, films, and series that are explored here all draw from the hegemonic stereotypes of young Jewish women established in the 1950s and 1960s, they also articulate something new about Jewish women in their privileging of the Jewish woman’s voice, their re-conception of Jewish beauty, and their questioning of gender norms, and thus can be seen as the natural predecessors of modern popular cultural depictions of Jewish women.