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The representation of slavery at historic house museums : 1853-2000Jay, Bethany January 2009 (has links)
Thesis advisor: James O'Toole / This dissertation examines the development of historic house museums in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present to unravel the complex relationship between public presentations of slavery and popular perceptions of the institution. In conducting the research for this project, I examined the historic and contemporary public programming at nineteen separate museums. This sample of museums includes both publicly funded and private sites in both the North and South. By bringing together a diverse group of museums, this project examines national trends alongside regional traditions as well as the role of organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and a host of private institutions in determining different interpretive foci. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.
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A descriptive study of how African Americans are portrayed in award winning African American children's picture books from 1996-2005Ussery, Susie Robin, January 2006 (has links)
Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Mississippi State University. Department of Curriculum and Instruction. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.
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Funding footprints : U.S. State Department sponsorship of international dance tours, 1962-2009Croft, Clare Holloway 16 September 2010 (has links)
Since the middle of the twentieth century, American dance artists have presented
complicated images of American identity to world audiences, as dance companies traveled
abroad under the auspices of the US State Department. This dissertation uses oral history
interviews, archival research, and performance analysis to investigate how dancers
navigated their status as official American ambassadors in the Cold War and the years
following the 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Dance companies worked and performed in
international sites, enacting messages of American democratic superiority, while
individual dancers re-interpreted the contours of American identity through personal
encounters with local artists and arts practices. The dancers’ memories of government-sponsored
tours re-insert the American artist into American diplomatic history, prompting a reconsideration of dancers not just as diplomatic tools working to persuade
global audiences, but as creative thinkers re-imagining what it means to be American.
This dissertation begins in the late 1950s, as the State Department began
discussing appropriate dance companies to send to the Soviet Union, as part of the
performing arts initiatives that began in 1954 under the direction of President Dwight
Eisenhower. The dissertation concludes by examining more recent dance in diplomacy
programs initiated in 2003, coinciding with the US invasion of Iraq. My analysis
considers New York City Ballet’s 1962 tour of the Soviet Union, where the company
performed programs that included George Balanchine’s Serenade (1934), Agon (1957),
and Western Symphony (1954), and Jerome Robbins’ Interplay (1945) during the
heightened global anxieties of the Cuban Missile Crisis. My analysis of Ailey’s 1967 tour
of nine African countries focuses primarily on Revelations (1960), which closed every
program on the tour. Moving into the twenty-first century, I analyze A Slipping Glimpse
(2007), a collaboration between Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Tansuree Shankar
Dance Company, which began as a US State Department-sponsored 2003 residency in
Kolkata. To explore each tour, I consider government goals documented in archived
minutes from artist selection panels; dancers’ memories of the tours, which I collected in
personal interviews conducted between 2007 and 2009; and performance analysis of the
pieces that traveled on each tour. / text
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Unity, Justice and Protection: The Colored Trainmen of America's Struggle to End Jim Crow in the American Railroad Industry [and Elsewhere]James, Ervin 2012 August 1900 (has links)
The Colored Trainmen of America (CTA) actively challenged Jim Crow policies on the job and in the public sphere between the 1930s and 1950s. In response to lingering questions concerning the relationship between early black labor activism and civil rights protest, this study goes beyond both local lure and cursory research. This study examines the Colored Trainmen's major contributions to the advancement of African Americans. It also provides context for some of the organization's shortcomings in both realms. On the job the African American railroad workers belonging to the CTA fought valiantly to receive the same opportunities for professional growth and development as whites working in the operating trades of the railroad industry. In the public sphere, these men collectively protested second-class services and accommodations both on and off the clock.
Neither their agenda, the scope of their activities, nor their influence was limited to the railroad lines the members of the CTA operated within the Gulf Coast region. The CTA belonged to a progressive coalition comprised of four other powerful independent African American labor unions committed to unyielding labor activism and the toppling of Jim Crow. Together, they all worked to effectuate meaningful social change in partnership with national civil rights attorney Charles H. Houston. Houston's experience and direction, coupled with the CTA's dedicated membership and willingness to challenge authority, created considerable momentum in movements aimed at toppling racial inequality in the workplace and elsewhere.
Like most of their predecessors, the CTA's struggle for advancement fits within a continuum of successive challenges to economic exploitation and racial inequality. No single person or organization can take full credit for ending segregation or achieving equality. Many who remain nameless and faceless contributed and sacrificed. This study not only chronicles the contribution of a relatively unsung African American labor organization that waged war against Jim Crow on two different fronts, it also pays homage to a few more individuals who made a difference in the lives of an entire race of people during the course of a bitterly contested, never-ending struggle for racial equality in the United States of America during the twentieth century.
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