2017 American Studies Senior Thesis Schedule

March 22 – April 5, 2017

March 22

Who Tells Her Story?: Examining the Impact of Hamilton: An American Musical on the Legacy and Memory of Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton – Benjamin M. Reiser

The Boy Who Lived and the Mother Who Died: An Examination of the Dead Mother Plot in a Cultural Context – Katherine Riga

“The Biggest Colored Show on Earth”: How Minstrelsy has Defined Performances of African American Identity from 19th century Theater to Hip Hop – Laura-Brynn Neuhoff

mirARTe – Art, Resistance, and Life in East Los: A Comparative Study of Creative Resistance in East Los Angeles, California – Clara A. Mejía Orta

March 27

Holding Out For A Hero: The Romanticization of West Coast Lighthouses and The Keepers Living on the Last Frontier, 1850-1900 – Madison Stingray

The M&M Paradox: How the Seemingly Positive Model Minority Myth Inhibits Asian American Communities within the HIV/AIDS Epidemic -Harry Lee

Suicide of the Sexes: Playboy’s Use of Psychiatry Through Gay Liberation – Ellen Yaeger

The Gang’s in a Thesis: An Examination of American Television’s Dark Horse Sitcom “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” – Katharine Kimmel

March 29

The Golden Age of Censorship: An Analysis of Marriage and Women’s Sexuality Before and After the Implementation of the Code in 1930s Hollywood – Ryley Gregorie

The Castle on High Street: Analyzing the Tensions Present in 19th and 20th Century Newark Through the Lens of the Krueger-Scott Mansion – Abdurrahman Ajeigbe

The Soul of Classical Music: How African American Musical Custom Re-Imagined the Boundaries of Classical Music – Sage Sarason

Chosen for What?: Liberal-Jewish Crisis in the Wake of Black Power – Josh Dostal

April 3

Dancing into the Mushroom Cloud: The Idealization of the Atomic Bomb in 1950s Las Vegas – Madeline Auerbach

#Trigger Warning: Using Tumblr to Understand Current Conflict in Higher Education – Bee Jaworski

Remaking Rape-Revenge: Navigating Wartime Moral Anxieties Through Last House on the Left (1972/2009) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978/2010) – Emily Troisi

An Ode to the Zen Master: Phil Jackson’s Spiritual Rhetoric as an Approach to Cultivate Transcendent Team Building – John Oswald

April 5

The Peculiar Kind of Clarity which Hell Affords: Defining Loyalty in the Wartime North, 1860-1865 – Emma Thompson

Creating a “Restless Population”: Myrtilla Miner and Her Legacy on Public Higher Education in Washington, DC – Khaliyah Legette

A Journey to America’s Electric Playground: Advertising Coney Island 1890-1910 – Grace Brennan