This dissertation charts the dramatic cultural transformation of Uncle Tom, the heroic Christian martyr of Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), into a commonly known slur for a submissive race traitor. As many scholars have noted, the hero of Stowe's novel is not what we would today call an "Uncle Tom." Some have put the blame for the figure's drastic transformation on the many popular stage adaptations of Stowe's novel that blanketed the nation during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, relying on extensive archival work in both traditional archives and digitized historical periodicals, which have been unexamined on this topic until now, this dissertation reveals that Uncle Tom's transformation did not occur in the theater. Not only did the Uncle Tom character often retain his dignity in these postbellum shows, but the Uncle Tom's Cabin dramas remained politically relevant to many African Americans--and for that reason deeply threatening to many white Southerners--into the twentieth century. Significant objections to Uncle Tom as a racial representation in popular culture did not emerge until the late 1930s, but Uncle Tom became a detested political model two decades before that. The Christ-like qualities that made him a hero in Stowe's novel and to many nineteenth-century Americans, black and white, became increasingly undesirable to a new generation that embraced a more assertive understanding of masculinity and were less interested in heaven's salvation than in earthly progress. This turn-of-the-century transformation in cultural values set the stage for a more pointed critique of Uncle Tom as a political model in the 1910s, a decade of turmoil not only because of growing racial injustice, but also because of major political, educational, and geographical shifts within the race. While Uncle Tom's Cabin retained progressive meanings to many African Americans, Uncle Tom became a slur in the black political rhetoric of the 1910s, when a younger generation of leaders responded to the deteriorating racial climate by attacking the values and strategies of the older generation for seriously jeopardizing racial progress.

The thesis focuses on the Czech translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Unce Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly (1957) by Emanuela Tilschová and Emanuel Tilsch. The translation was aimed at children; therefore the specifics of children's literature and of the translation thereof will be described. The thesis will emphasise the role of the Czechoslovak social and cultural context in the given period, i.e. approximately between the year 1948 and the late 1950s. Special attention will be paid to the production of Státní nakladatelství dětské literatury/ State Children's Literature Publishing House. After the examination of the context, the thesis will look at the translation itself and compare it with four selected books published in the same period, the focus being primarily the language of the translations. Finally, selected passages of the translation will be analysed and compared with the relevant parts of the original. The translation will then be assessed in terms of its acceptability or adequacy (Toury, 1995). Key Words: H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom, Czech translation, cultural situation, historical norms

This study examines African American stereotypes in film. I studied six directors, Kathryn Bigelow, Spike Lee, the Russo Brothers, Ryan Coogler, Tate Taylor, and Dee Rees; and six films Detroit, BlacKkKlansman, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Help, and Mudbound. Using the framework of critical race theory and auteur theory, I compared the common themes between the films and directors. The main purpose of my study is to see if White or Black directors predominantly used African American stereotypes. I found that both races of directors rely on stereotypes for different purposes. With Black directors, the stereotype was explained further through character development, while the White directors used the stereotype at face value with no further explanation.