The Minuteman Project is a national civilian border patrol group, founded in 2005 to defend the U.S.-Mexico border from "invasion" by illegal immigrants and protest the "blatant disregard of the rule of law" exhibited by government and politicians. This study explores one state chapter of this organization: the Utah Minuteman Project (UMP). The research questions I seek to address are: Who are the Minutemen? What motivates them? How do the Minutemen define what it means to be an American? Using a grounded theory approach, I explore the construction of American identity among the members of the UMP using a range of qualitative data sources: in-depth interviews with 24 individuals, fieldnotes, and primary documents. My findings suggest that what problematizes illegal immigration in the minds of the Minutemen is their view that illegal immigration is a threat to American identity. While illegal immigration and its perceived consequences are the focus of much attention within the UMP, the central motivating factor in the movement relates to the question of who is an American. My findings suggest that American identity, as defined by the Minutemen, can be understood in terms of four main concepts: assimilation, respect for law, work ethic, and patriotism. In many ways, the Minutemen have defined American identity by answering the question of who is not an American. It is against the backdrop of illegal immigration that anti-illegal immigrant movements like the Minutemen have defined themselves, defined America, and defined who is an American. By emphasizing the elements of American identity that stand in most striking contrast to illegal immigration, they exclude undocumented immigrants from American identity. Amidst all the voices seeking to define what it means to be an American, this study contributes another voice and provides a better understanding of how the Minutemen see the world. It is important to that as our country confronts the challenges of immigration reform and answers the question of who is an American, that all voices are heard, including the voices of the Minutemen.

No description available.

This thesis asserts that Marcus Bruce Christian (1900-1976), a New Orleans, Louisiana, black poet, writer, and historian, used his diary and notes as a site of rhetorical education and as a space in which he constructed and reinforced a Duboisian ethos, a particular type of black identity and character shaped by the political rhetoric of W. E. B. Du Bois. Maintaining this ethos, Christian, an autodidact throughout most of his life, negotiated a society strangled by white supremacist ideology and resisted being interpellated into the negative black identity constructed by a hostile and stifling Jim Crow South.

Este trabalho visa a estudar a construção e a representação da identidade norte-americana na mídia televisiva. Neste contexto, buscamos também observar os mecanismos utilizados por este veículo de comunicação em massa para que venda o seu produto - o American way of life. Nossa hipótese norteadora é a de que a representação do povo americano na mídia televisiva camufla diferenças e conflitos para construir uma narrativa histórica que justifique a realidade vivenciada e reforce valores considerados essenciais na constituição da identidade nacional e na preservação do American way of life. O ponto de partida desta pesquisa é uma leitura discursiva do documento que marca o início da narrativa da nação americana - a Declaração de Independência - na qual são instaurados três princípios fundamentais na constituição da identidade do sujeito norte-americano, a saber: a liberdade, a igualdade e a busca da felicidade. No estudo de nosso corpus, composto de diversas seqüências discursivas que mostram práticas sociais em episódios selecionados da série norte-americana Anos Incríveis (título original em inglês: The Wonder Years), verificamos como os três ideais instituídos como discurso fundador na Declaração funcionam e afloram no cotidiano da sociedade americana, afetando seus sujeitos, produzindo sentidos e construindo identidades. A perspectiva adotada para a análise de nosso corpus é a da Análise do Discurso (AD) de linha francesa, especialmente os trabalhos propostos por Foucault (1969/2000) e Pêcheux (1975/2001). Concluímos este estudo confirmando que, por meio da criação e da exibição de diversos programas, a mídia televisiva colabora na produção de sentidos sobre a nação norte-americana, influenciando, organizando e reforçando não só seu sistema de representação mas, principalmente, o processo de construção de sua identidade cultural nacional. / The purpose of this study is to analyze the construction and the representation of the American identity through television. In this context, we also aim at observing the mechanisms used by this mass communication medium in order to sell its product - the American way of life. Our central hypothesis is that the representation of the American people on television disguises differences and conflicts so as to construct a historical narrative that justifies their reality and reassures some values considered essential in the constitution of their national identity and in the preservation of the American way of life. The starting point of this study is a discoursive reading of the document that celebrates the beginning of the narrative of the American nation - the Declaration of Independence - which contains three of the fundamental principles for the constitution of the North-American subject identity: freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. In the analysis of our corpus, composed by some discoursive sequences that show social practices in selected episodes of the American sitcom The Wonder Years, we examine how the principles above mentioned work as a founding discourse and appear in the everyday life of the American society, affecting its subjects, producing meanings and constructing identities. We adopt the perspective of the French School of Discourse Analysis for the analysis of our corpus, particularly the studies developed by Michel Foucault (1969/2000) and Michel Pêcheux (1975/2001). We conclude by stating that, through the creation and broadcasting of many different programs, the medium of television contributes to the production of meanings on the American nation, influencing, organizing and reassuring not only its representational system but mainly the construction process of its national and cultural identity.

Katherine Weiss’s chapter addresses the ways both Dylan and Sam Shepard work to destabilize American myths while insisting upon the very necessity of such myths—in the form of masks, or always mutating performances. By focusing specifically on Shepard’s relationship with and effort to understand him, Weiss reveals the significance of Dylan’s protean nature (as it relates to America’s tendency to get trapped in, or to reify, its necessary myths). At the same time, she shows how Dylan and Shepard collaborated to break down outmoded myths by resurrecting, necessarily, new, albeit more temporary, unstable, performative ones—especially in their interrogation of the concept of American identity. Weiss draws particular attention to Shepard and Dylan’s collaboration on the song “Brownsville Girl” (1986).

This dissertation analyzes the impact of musical transatlanticism on the identities of American communities. I do so through case studies in three time periods: seventeenth-century colonial Massachusetts, the post-Revolutionary Early American Republic, and early twentieth-century Progressive era Chicago. I develop an Atlantic musicology approach that which moves beyond national and nationalist frameworks and traces the strong and lasting musical connections between America and Europe. I explore three kinds of musical transatlanticism: the migration of musicians, the transmission of musical works, and the circulation of ideas about music. Music that crossed the Atlantic Ocean underwent changes wrought by transcription, translation, and contrafacting, and I argue that these changes were instrumental to the self-fashioning of American identity. Intercultural encounter and ideas of difference also drove communities to delineate their conceptual boundaries, although not without ambivalence. Ever in a state of flux, music reflected groups’ self-conceptions both locally and for transatlantic audiences in an ongoing process of conscious and unconscious musical adaptation. A wide-ranging project such as this demands a myriad of historical sources, which range from printed musical volumes to newspapers to diaries and letters. These variegated materials call for an interdisciplinary approach, and I draw on analytic methods from musicology, archival methods from history, and interpretive lenses from ethnomusicology and Atlantic history. I begin with an introduction that elucidates the conceptual and historiographical stakes of the project. The first two case studies focus on puritan psalmody in the seventeenth century. Chapter 1 analyzes puritan ideas about the affective power of music to promote personal piety, and Chapter 2 examines the role of music in colonial encounters with the native population of southern New England. Moving to the late eighteenth century, Chapter 3 traces the circulation of political song, particularly partisan and patriotic American contrafacta of British tunes, through the public print sphere. Chapter 4 turns to the domestic sphere, using one woman’s musical activities as a guide through the contemporary debates over feminine musical accomplishment. Chapter 5 enters Progressive-era Chicago, where European immigrants brought Old World folk repertories to the aesthetically and civically idealistic programs at the Hull-House Settlement. / Music

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 302-318).

abstract: Identity theorists have emphasized the importance of integration across identity domains for psychosocial well-being. There remains little research, however, on associations across identity domains, group differences across identity profiles, and the joint association of multiple identity domains with academic outcomes. This dissertation includes two studies that address these limitations in the identity literature. Study 1, examined the ego-social identity profiles that emerged from ethnic identity exploration and commitment, American identity exploration and commitment, and ego identity integration and confusion among an ethnically diverse sample of emerging adults using latent profile analysis (N = 8,717). Results suggested that an eight-profile solution was the best fit for the data. The profiles demonstrated differences in identity status and salience across identity domains. Significant ethnic, sex, nativity, and age differences were identified in ego-social identity membership. Study 2 focused on the ego-social identity profiles that emerged from the same identity domains among biethnic college students of Latino and European American heritage (N = 401) and how these profiles differed as a function of preferred ethnic label. The association of ego-social identity profile with academic achievement and the moderation by university ethnic composition were examined. Results indicated that a two-profile solution was the best fit to the data in which one profile included participants with general identity achievement across identity domains and one profile included individuals who were approaching the identity formation process in each domain. Ego-social identity profile membership did not differ based on preferred ethnic label. Individuals who had a more integrated identity across domains had higher college grades. University ethnic composition did not significantly moderate this association. Taken together, these two studies highlight the intricacies of identity formation that are overlooked when integration across identity domains is not considered. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Family Resources and Human Development 2012

Este trabalho visa a estudar a construção e a representação da identidade norte-americana na mídia televisiva. Neste contexto, buscamos também observar os mecanismos utilizados por este veículo de comunicação em massa para que venda o seu produto - o American way of life. Nossa hipótese norteadora é a de que a representação do povo americano na mídia televisiva camufla diferenças e conflitos para construir uma narrativa histórica que justifique a realidade vivenciada e reforce valores considerados essenciais na constituição da identidade nacional e na preservação do American way of life. O ponto de partida desta pesquisa é uma leitura discursiva do documento que marca o início da narrativa da nação americana - a Declaração de Independência - na qual são instaurados três princípios fundamentais na constituição da identidade do sujeito norte-americano, a saber: a liberdade, a igualdade e a busca da felicidade. No estudo de nosso corpus, composto de diversas seqüências discursivas que mostram práticas sociais em episódios selecionados da série norte-americana Anos Incríveis (título original em inglês: The Wonder Years), verificamos como os três ideais instituídos como discurso fundador na Declaração funcionam e afloram no cotidiano da sociedade americana, afetando seus sujeitos, produzindo sentidos e construindo identidades. A perspectiva adotada para a análise de nosso corpus é a da Análise do Discurso (AD) de linha francesa, especialmente os trabalhos propostos por Foucault (1969/2000) e Pêcheux (1975/2001). Concluímos este estudo confirmando que, por meio da criação e da exibição de diversos programas, a mídia televisiva colabora na produção de sentidos sobre a nação norte-americana, influenciando, organizando e reforçando não só seu sistema de representação mas, principalmente, o processo de construção de sua identidade cultural nacional. / The purpose of this study is to analyze the construction and the representation of the American identity through television. In this context, we also aim at observing the mechanisms used by this mass communication medium in order to sell its product - the American way of life. Our central hypothesis is that the representation of the American people on television disguises differences and conflicts so as to construct a historical narrative that justifies their reality and reassures some values considered essential in the constitution of their national identity and in the preservation of the American way of life. The starting point of this study is a discoursive reading of the document that celebrates the beginning of the narrative of the American nation - the Declaration of Independence - which contains three of the fundamental principles for the constitution of the North-American subject identity: freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. In the analysis of our corpus, composed by some discoursive sequences that show social practices in selected episodes of the American sitcom The Wonder Years, we examine how the principles above mentioned work as a founding discourse and appear in the everyday life of the American society, affecting its subjects, producing meanings and constructing identities. We adopt the perspective of the French School of Discourse Analysis for the analysis of our corpus, particularly the studies developed by Michel Foucault (1969/2000) and Michel Pêcheux (1975/2001). We conclude by stating that, through the creation and broadcasting of many different programs, the medium of television contributes to the production of meanings on the American nation, influencing, organizing and reassuring not only its representational system but mainly the construction process of its national and cultural identity.

No description available.