After World War II in the United States, the household refrigerator and freezer became interwoven into a domestic reality defined by consumption, mechanical innovation, and a tension between spatial isolation and cultural interconnectivity. This thesis positions narrative Hollywood cinema, television and print media as the dominant sites where the refrigerator and freezer’s social identities were formed and negotiated. These productions employ the devices to explore postwar family gender roles, the influence of culture industries and consumer economies within the home, and technological fantasies and fears. They also illustrate a fertile conversation between household media technologies and kitchen accessories. As a result, viewing the refrigerator and freezer through film and television representations substantially alters existing conclusions over who interacted with the objects on an everyday basis, and their effect for a culture increasingly reliant upon appliances to provide basic human needs and generate a satisfying, entertaining lifestyle. / text

O objetivo desta dissertação é apresentar, discutir e analisar a relação que Cane, de Jean Toomer, Dutchman, de Amiri Baraka e Playing in the Dark, de Toni Morrison possuem com seus contextos no século XX em manifestações artisticas em três gêneros literários distintos. Após construir e delimitar o pano de fundo vivido pelos Afro-Americanos ao longo do século, pretendo analisar cada obra ao período em que foi escrita. Desta forma, a questão central de minha dissertação é como a Literatura produzida pelos Afro-Americanos (representada pelos três textos literários em pauta) dialoga com a realidade vivida por essas pessoas dentro da sociedade estadunidense ao longo do século XX, e como essa literatura funciona como um poderoso instrumento de expressão da ideologia, das questões raciais e dos sentimentos Afro-Americanos / This dissertation intends to present, discuss and analyse the relation that Cane by Jean Toomer, Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, and Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison, have with their backgrounds during the twentieth century in artistic manifestations of three distinct literary genders. After designing a background of the African-American people along that century, I intend to relate each of the three works to time in which they were written. This way, the central question of this dissertation is how the Literature produced by the African-Americans (represented by those three works) dialogues with the reality lived by those people within the US society during the twentieth century and how such literature works as an extremely important instrument of expression of the African-American feelings, racial concerns and ideology

O objetivo desta dissertação é apresentar, discutir e analisar a relação que Cane, de Jean Toomer, Dutchman, de Amiri Baraka e Playing in the Dark, de Toni Morrison possuem com seus contextos no século XX em manifestações artisticas em três gêneros literários distintos. Após construir e delimitar o pano de fundo vivido pelos Afro-Americanos ao longo do século, pretendo analisar cada obra ao período em que foi escrita. Desta forma, a questão central de minha dissertação é como a Literatura produzida pelos Afro-Americanos (representada pelos três textos literários em pauta) dialoga com a realidade vivida por essas pessoas dentro da sociedade estadunidense ao longo do século XX, e como essa literatura funciona como um poderoso instrumento de expressão da ideologia, das questões raciais e dos sentimentos Afro-Americanos / This dissertation intends to present, discuss and analyse the relation that Cane by Jean Toomer, Dutchman by Amiri Baraka, and Playing in the Dark by Toni Morrison, have with their backgrounds during the twentieth century in artistic manifestations of three distinct literary genders. After designing a background of the African-American people along that century, I intend to relate each of the three works to time in which they were written. This way, the central question of this dissertation is how the Literature produced by the African-Americans (represented by those three works) dialogues with the reality lived by those people within the US society during the twentieth century and how such literature works as an extremely important instrument of expression of the African-American feelings, racial concerns and ideology

O principal objetivo deste trabalho é investigar a forma dialética presente em Exércitos da Noite, uma das mais reconhecidas e ousadas obras do romancista norte-americano Norman Mailer. Publicada originalmente em 1968, Exércitos é um relato pessoal do autor sobre sua vivência na Marcha sobre o Pentágono, manifestação civil que reuniu milhares de pessoas em Washington, em outubro de 1967, em protesto contra a política americana na guerra do Vietnã. O livro, dividido em duas partes, recria, na primeira, uma perspectiva ficcional dos eventos, em contraste com a segunda, na qual Mailer procura criar uma visão histórica sobre os episódios da Marcha, recorrendo, para tanto, a técnicas de reportagem e excertos da cobertura da mídia no período, num tom fundamentalmente ensaístico. Permeando toda a narrativa, há o explosivo contexto da vida norte-americana do período, com sua cultura hippie, a emergência dos movimentos civis e a queima pública das cartas de convocação para a guerra. A presente dissertação analisa este peculiar romance à luz de textos centrais das áreas de teoria literária e estudos jornalísticos, além de evocar outros autores que, como Mailer, fizeram parte de um grande contexto renovador do jornalismo literário nos anos 1960 e 1970 chamado, genericamente, de Novo Jornalismo, de origem norte-americana e repercussões profundas, inclusive no Brasil. Com tal abordagem, intento alcançar uma melhor compreensão acerca dos mecanismos ficcionais que sustentam e aproximam os discursos jornalístico e literário, nomeadamente na obra de Mailer, que o crítico do New York Times Alfred Kazin definiu à época como um \"diário-ensaio-tratado-sermão\", com Mailer desempenhando seu dileto papel ficcional de visionário da América. / The main purpose of this issue is to investigate the dialectic form on Norman Mailer\'s acclaimed and Pulitzer-winner novel The Armies of the Night: The History as a Novel, The Novel as History, first published in 1968 as the author\'s personal account of the March on the Pentagon, a peace rally that shook Washington D.C. for three days in October 1967 and gathered thousands of civilians on a protest against the american policies concerning the Vietnam War. The book, divided into two parts, recreates, on the first, a fictional perspective of the events, while the second intends to convey a historical view on the same context, by mixing reporting techniques, excerpts from the media coverage and essayistic interventions. Throughout the whole book runs the thread of the mythic north-american background of the period, with its hippie culture, civilian movements and burned draft cards. Drawing on key authors from the literary and journalistic studies, this work pursuits a better understanding of the specific fictional procedures shared both by journalism and literature, namely on Armies of the Night, Mailer\'s new journalistic piece, that the New York Times critic Alfred Kazin defined tentatively as a \"diary-essaytract- sermon\", with Mailer playing his favorite part of the American visionary.

The purpose of this study is to address the way in which several quite varied and often commodified representations of L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900) express and reproduce shifting notions of national identity within American culture across the twentieth century and at the beginning of our own. This thesis pursues the question of national identity that the American myth perpetuates throughout the twentieth century and examines the shift in citizenship through representations found in popular culture’s re-writings of the Wizard of Oz tale. This thesis evaluates both original and contemporary adaptations of the Oz story and their deconstruction for sociohistorical representations of racial, gendered, class, and national identity. I argue, that the numerous historical and ideological comparisons from the Oz tale reflect our own world in our discussions of identity, race, class, and gender and have become significant reflections of our own imaginations and national identity.

The purpose of this diploma thesis is to describe the features of the American culture by analyzing the cultural standards, use them for comparison with the Slovak culture and create a set of recommendations for easier adaptation of the Slovaks in the United States. The work is divided into three parts - theoretical, practical and empirical. In the theoretical section we define the concept of culture, cultural standards and cultural dimensions, and on this basis we compare the features of the American and Slovak culture. The practical part describes the characteristics of the USA - national symbols, history, geography, religion, population, economy, political system, basic features of the US market, the impact of globalization and the specifics of the US business environment. The empirical section uses a questionnaire survey to examine the American culture from the Slovak point of view. The result of this thesis is a manual created with the use of the synthesis and comparison methods.

abstract: La autobiografía, como medio de expresión y reivindicación del yo, ofrece a las autoras/artistas femeninas la oportunidad de definirse a sí mismas. El género autobiográfico tiene orígenes muy antiguos y resulta fundamental en el proceso de construcción de la identidad por parte de mujeres pertenecientes a grupos étnicos minoritarios. El discurso autobiográfico permite a la mujer ser al mismo tiempo escultura y escultor, creador y creación. El objetivo de este trabajo es ofrecer una nueva aproximación al universo femenino de la autorepresentación visual. La autonarración debería estar en el centro de la atención feminista, siendo uno de los métodos más efectivos que las mujeres pueden aplicar para hablar sobre sus experiencias y condiciones. Esta investigación intenta reunir voces multiétnicas y promueve un recurso interdisciplinario que interesa no solo a la literatura y la cultural, sino también a otros campos de las humanidades, como la historia, la sociología y los estudios de género y de la discapacidad. Una de las principales intenciones es desmantelar las formas tradicionales de identidad y destruir las fronteras sociales, adoptando la diferencia y la alteridad como un componente único de cada individuo. Mi proyecto de disertación analiza textos autobiográficos femeninos en sus diferentes formas visuales poniendo especial énfasis en los países de Argentina, México y Estados Unidos. A través de narrativas personales, fotografías, películas, pinturas, murales y producciones digitales, estas obras femeninas examinan temas como la homofobia, la identidad política, la soberanía nativa, la maternidad, la identidad lesbiana y diferentes identidades culturales minoritarias. Algunas de las autoras seleccionadas viven al margen de la supremacía blanca por el hecho de pertenecer a grupos étnicos y sociales minoritarios. Otras voces viven al margen del sistema heteronormativo dominante para reconocerse a sí mismas como lesbianas o bisexuales. Más allá de estos contextos, todas las autoras se encuentran discriminadas por ser mujeres en un contexto patriarcal. Los marcos teóricos que se emplean incluyen en sí definiciones autobiográficas interdisciplinarias teorizadas exclusivamente por mujeres. Podrían mencionarse, por ejemplo, los conceptos de HERstory (Ashby y Gore 1995), Autohistoria (Anzaldúa 1999) Pathography (Hawkins 1999), Feminography (Abrams 2017) y Autobiografilm (Paola Lagos Labbé 2011). Las diferentes historias visuales exploran los diferentes matices de la identidad racial y/o lesbiana de las mujeres que a menudo se perciben como forasteras dentro de su propio país. Todas las artistas objetos de mi análisis se enfrentan a diferentes formas de represiones y están motivadas por un deseo de reconocimiento social. Estos grupos marginados invitan a los lectores a desarrollar nuevas formas de diálogos, prácticas y alianzas transculturales. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Spanish 2020

This research investigates the culturally programmatic symbolism of jazz music in film. I explore this concept through critical analysis of composer Terence Blanchard's original score for Malcolm X directed by Spike Lee (1992). I view Blanchard's music as representing a non-diegetic tone parallel that musically narrates several authentic characteristics of African-American life, culture, and the human condition as depicted in Lee's film. Blanchard's score embodies a broad spectrum of musical influences that reshape Hollywood's historically limited, and often misappropiated perceptions of jazz music within African-American culture. By combining stylistic traits of jazz and classical idioms, Blanchard reinvents the sonic soundscape in which musical expression and the black experience are represented on the big screen. My new work––Black Magic––is a musical response to the research found within this study. The through-composed piece is written in three movements for a studio orchestra. It is an homage to the musical, cultural, and entertainment contributions of African-Americans in the magical realm of Hollywood cinema.

This master thesis is focused on the phenomenon of cultural appropriation and the use of American Indian imagery in American and European culture. In both cultures are American Indians represented by distorted image of the universal White Man's Indian, which leads to the perception of them only as relicts of the past. In the United States, Native Americans try to point out the negative impacts, which the distorted image has on them, but the dominant white society refuses to acknowledge the inappropriateness of such images. The master thesis focuses on the historical evolution of the Native American image in American and European cultures. The author explains why the image was distorted and why the distortion still remains in both cultures. Then, the master thesis examines examples of appropriation of the American Indian in contemporary culture. Considering the extensiveness of this topic, the author focuses only on one example of cultural appropriation, which is the issue of Native Americans mascots and sports logos. On the American continent, the author chose the most controversial case of the Washington football team - the Washington Redskins. Despite the long history of Native American activism against the Redskins brand, the team refuses to change their racist name and logo. In Europe, the...

The tradition of protest songs in the United States is a continuum, which began in colonial times with the British Broadside Ballads, was nurtured in the 19th century through the Negro spirituals, and throughout the 20th century by performers such as Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Bob Dylan. Out of necessity, blacks developed strategies of veiled protests to a fine art during the 19th century. The perennial cause of the black protest was the status forced on them by white supremacists. The spirituals encouraged them to persevere in their efforts to free themselves from the shackles of slavery. Many of the spirituals were modified in the 1950s to accommodate the needs of the Civil Rights Movement. This appropriation of the Southern rural folk music tradition was the genesis of a phenomenon which has become known as the American folk music revival. The foremost figure of the movement was Woody Guthrie, the author of "This land is Your Land." Guthrie is cited as major influence on his disciple Bob Dylan, who was pronounced the folk messiah of the folk circles. This paper seeks to determine whether Dylan was, in contrast to his assertions, a topical songwriter writing about particular events or whether he was in fact an apolitical artist, whose personal insight and feelings simply happened to fit the...