One medium has dominated accounts of American art in the years following the Second World War. The period witnessed, in the words of one critic, a 'Triumph of American Painting', with advances in the easel picture far surpassing those in other media. Whilst more recent accounts have nuanced this view, drawing attention to developments in music and sculpture, literary contributions to the new American modernism have gone almost without assessment. Were there advances in literature comparable to those of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, David Smith and John Cage? Drawing extensively on his unpublished writings, After the New Failure of Nerve reveals the poet Charles Olson to have been the keenest literary advocate of the new American avant-garde and one of the most astute observers of its conditions and possibilities. Paying special attention to unpublished notes, lectures, and correspondence, the thesis utilises Olson's early writings in order to examine the momentum given early postwar modernism by a potent contemporary reaction against abstract rationality, a reaction identified at the time as a 'New Failure of Nerve'. Born of recent disillusionment with 'scientific' Marxism and New Deal progressivism, the thesis demonstrates the several ways in which this 'New Failure of Nerve' fuelled vanguard American art from the middle of the Second World War to the end of the decade. It argues that the new critique of abstract rationality - which was also reflected in the contemporary American work of the Frankfurt School - defined the way American artists understood the function of postwar modernism, the posture of the postwar modernist artist, and the status of the postwar modernist artwork. This pivotal moment in the history of modernism was shaped, I contend, by a philosophical critique explored most ambitiously by an American poet.

This thesis offers a new policy history of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency responsible for providing grants to artists and arts organisations in the United States. It focuses in particular on the development of conservative perspectives on federal arts funding from the 1950s to the 1980s, and hence, illuminates the broader evolution of conservative political power, especially its limits. The most familiar narrative holds that the Endowment found itself caught up in the Culture Wars of the late 1980s when Christian right groups objected to certain federal grants, particularly to Andres Serrano's Piss Christ and Robert Mapplethorpe's Self-Portrait with Whip. This thesis, however, uncovers the older origins of conservative opposition to state support for the arts, analyses conservative conceptions of art, and illuminates the limited federal role the right sought to secure in the arts in the post-war period. Numerous studies have analysed the meanings and origins of the Culture Wars, but until now, scholars had not examined conservative approaches to federal arts politics in a historical sense. Historians have generally been too interested in explaining change to the detriment of examining continuity, but this approach under-emphasises the long-term tensions that underlie seemingly sudden political eruptions. This work also offers a deep account of the conservative movement and the arts world, an area that has so far been almost completely ignored by scholars, even though a focus on marginalised players is essential to understanding the limits of conservatism. In a general sense then, this thesis evaluates the range and diversity of the conservative movement and illuminates the overall odyssey of the right in modern America. In so doing, it provides a new insight into the ways we periodise political history and also invites a broader view of how we understand politics itself.

This research addresses an emerging scholarship examining relations between media, religion, and culture in contemporary society. Whilst it acknowledges the value of this growing body of work, the study is based on a recognition that an overwhelming concern with the contemporary scene has resulted in a neglect of the history responsible for the conditions of the present. Given the prominence of America as both a source and an object of this scholarship, moreover, the particular national context in which the institutions and practices of the US media have developed has been taken for granted somewhat. Oriented towards these perceived lacunae, this thesis examines the interaction between religion and film as an influence upon the development of American culture in the twentieth-century. The dissertation is divided into two main parts. The first of these is devoted to an extended discussion of the scholarly background to the research, and argues that the historical dimension of the interrelationship between religion and film in America is worthy of more attention than it has hitherto received. In particular, it stresses the fundamental importance of religion within the discourse of national identity in the United States, and posits the notion of a non-denominational American civil religion as a useful theoretical tool with which to examine Hollywood as a distinctively 'American' form of cinema. Part Two develops this position through a case study of The Birth of a Nation, directed by D.W. Griffith, and one of the most famous films of all time. Discussing the picture as a response to a crisis in American Protestantism, the study argues that the race controversy prompted by its Southern viewpoint was, to some extent, a function of Griffith's ambitions to revive the traditional religious bases of U.S. national identity via the medium of film. Furthermore, it suggests that the impact of Birth helped enact a broader transformation of American culture, wherein the cinema became instrumental in sustaining the belief that the United States was a nation uniquely favoured by Providence.

The thesis examines the relationship between Martha Stewart's rendition of domesticity and a broader cultural trend of the late 1990s U.S. domestic retreatism. It argues that the mode of construction and representation of the "domestic dream" in Stewart's programs cannot be examined outside of such concepts as class and ethnicity, whose understanding depends on the cultural, social, and political context of a given era, a context, in which they become transparent as aspects of the Western (white, patriarchal) status quo. Performing a deconstructive reading of these categories as employed by Stewart in the process of creation of her media persona, the thesis examines what the negative as well as positive reactions to "Martha Stewart" convey about the condition of American society of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

The purpose of this research was to describe the relationship and to compare the programming of major Christian ministries during the first decade of Christian television. A historical perspective was the method used in identifying and explaining the events and activities that constituted Christian television from 1949 to 1959. The results of the research concluded that Christian television began at a time of social trauma, unrest, and confusion in America. Competition for a viewing audience was not a factor. Leading personalities presented themselves as independent thinkers who also saw themselves as "preachers" with a strong desire to succeed. Motivation was provided by a sense of "dominion" that emerged from the Great Awakenings within the churches of America that became a driving force in the first three decades of this century.

In 1967 and 1968, members of the Youth International Party, also known as Yippies, created several mass street demonstrations to protest President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s handling of the United States’ military involvement in the war in Vietnam. The Yippies were a loose network of hippies, anti-war activists, and left-wing radicals committed to cultural and political change. This dissertation investigates how the Yippies used avant-garde theories of theatre and performance in their year of demonstrating against the Johnson administration. The Yippies receive little attention in most histories of American performance, and theatre remains on the margins of political and social histories of the 1960s; therefore this dissertation places performance and political archives side by side to create a new historical narrative of the Yippies and performance. The Yippies created their own networked participatory street performance form by drawing on the political philosophy of the New Left student movement, the organizational strategies of the anti-war movement, and the countercultural values of the hippies. They modified this performance form, which they termed “revolutionary actiontheater,” with performance theories drawn from New York’s avant-garde art world, the concept of guerrilla theatre outlined by R. G. Davis of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the notion of Theater of Cruelty created by Antonin Artaud. Using performance theory and cultural history as primary methodologies, this project traces the Yippies’ adoption of revolutionary action-theater with three examples: the 1967 “March on the Pentagon” where future Yippie leaders performed an exorcism ritual at the Pentagon; the 1968 “Grand Central Station Yip-In” event that advertised for the Yippie movement; and the 1968 “Festival of Life” at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago where the Yippies nominated a pig as presidential candidate. The final chapter on the recent phenomenon of flash mobs argues that the Yippies’ legacy lives on in this participatory street performance form, and suggests that revolutionary action-theater can still serve as a model for political action. / text

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This dissertation examines the interaction between American social movements as they pursue their constitutional rights. The public law literature is dominated by a topdown approach to the study of constitutional politics, frequently focusing on the impact of Supreme Court decision-making. Instead, I explore constitutional politics from the bottom-up, analyzing constraints on social movement organizations as they formulate their constitutional strategies. Social movements must always be keenly aware of the actions of their peers who also seek to exploit the Constitution for their own benefit. My findings indicated that social movements recognize this competitive relationship with other social movements and treat their fellow constitutional claimants accordingly, acting to contest claims unfavorable to their cause, co-opt claims of other groups that have shown promise, and even form coalitions with their peers where an adjustment of their own claims to accommodate their coalition partners will likely net a greater return than going it alone. These negotiated constitutional claims have resulted in significant, durable and often ironic or unexpected shifts in constitutional development. / text

This study identifies and analyzes architectural inscriptions found on university and public libraries from the period of 1890 to 1930 in the United States. An architectural inscription refers to carved text, most often found adorning the walls of the interior or exterior of the building. The period of 1890 to 1930 saw the increased use of the inscription on a range of civic and institutional architecture. The era was particularly prone to moralizing and didactic sayings, which stemmed from a number of social and political factors. University libraries were drawn to the inscription as an ornamental type, for it became an expression of the ideals of the school and reflected a desire for legitimacy and sophistication. This study analyzes the decisions behind the inscriptional program, which often uncovers the latent agenda of the librarian, university president, or building committee. At the same time, the Beaux Arts and Neo-Gothic styles that were widely adopted for library buildings carried their own conventions for the aesthetic and associative use of the inscription. This study analyzes the historical and aesthetic factors that influenced university library inscriptions, and provides insight into the particular inscriptional themes found on number of American universities. / Architectural inscriptions and morality, 1890-1930 -- Trends in library building -- Inscriptions of Beaux Arts university libraries -- Inscriptions of Neo-Gothic university libraries -- Influence of the Modern movement and the resurgence of contemporary library inscriptions. / Department of Architecture

This thesis demonstrates that Calvin Coolidge applied a philosophy of limited government to his executive decisions concerning two domestic issues, Prohibition and agricultural policy. In both matters, various groups attempted to pressure Coolidge into permanently increasing the scope of the federal government's activities. Coolidge refused to comply with their demands and maintained his belief in the benefits of a federal government that limited itself to minimal activism by mediating the disputes of conflicting interest groups. Through both Prohibition and the agricultural problem, Coolidge exhibited his effectiveness in handling divisive political issues while maintaining his philosophy of limited government. Overall, this thesis contributes to the scholarly revisionism of Coolidge. / Department of History