Recent Dissertations

Dissertations in progress

2023-2024

Lisa Doi
Journey to the Ireito: Japanese American Community Pilgrimages, Place, Identity, and Repair

Jeff Moscaritolo
Floating Anchor: Social Embodiment in the West Coast Swing Dance Community

Recent dissertations

2021

Giselle Cunanan
Filipino Entrapment: Re/Dis/Membering Empire

2020

Morgane Flahault
Crossing Boundaries: Gender and Racial Bending in Three Contemporary Ethnic American Novels

2019

Oslo Brewster
Distracted Intimacies: Subjectivity and Survival in American Empire

Alex Chambers
Climate Violence and the Poetics of Refuge

2018

Yari Rios Cruz
Negotiating a Hemispheric Latinidad: Latin American Representations of Latinxs in the U.S.

Nzingha Kendall
Imperfect Independence: Black Women Experimental Filmmakers

Jed Kuhn
Indigenous Intimacies: Native Americans and Mexican Americans Since 1848

2015

Clark Barwick
Obscurity, Blackness, and the Making of the Harlem Renaissance, 1919-Present

Elizabeth Burbach
“Baseball City”: Cultivating Ball Players in the Boca Chica Dominican Republic

Kate Burch
Uncivil Rituals: Civil Religion and Democracy in New York City, 1780-1850

Sarah Dees
The Scientific Study of Native American Religions, 1879-1903

Jordache Ellapen
From Black to Brown: Race, Diaspora, and Post-apartheid South Africa

Jeremy Gordon
A Labyrinth of Warriors, Gods, and Monsters: Towards a Mythopoeic Vision of Combat Trauma

Mark Hain
Revamped: Theda Bara, Cultural Memory, and the Repurposing of Star Image

Jennifer Heusel
Why Do These Silly Things Exist?: Postracial, Free Market Logics in Local Discourse about Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)

Brad Kroupa
The Ree-volution Movement: Contemporary Cultural Recovery Among the Arika Indians

Dana Logan
Uncivil Rituals: Civil Religion and Democracy in New York City, 1780-1850

Erin Pauwels
Sarony’s Living Pictures: Photography, Performance, and American Art, 1865-1900

Justin Rawlins
Method Men: Race, Gender, and Performance Stylein U.S. Culture 1922-1957

Ruth Reichard
Sick in the City: Isolation and Policy in Times of Crisis

Natasha Ritsma
The Postwar “Arts Explosion” in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction: the Production, Distribution and Exhibition of Non-Theatrical Films on Art

Holly Schreiber
Representations of Poverty in American Literary Journalism

Kimberly Stanley
Pulling Down the House and Tearing Up the Yard: Constructing, Policing, and Containing Black Masculinity, 1920-1960

2014

David Church
Retrosploitation: Cultural Memory, Home Video, and Contemporary Experiences of Exploitation Film Fandom

Callie Clare
Off the Road: American Identity and Modification of Off-Road Trucks

Susan Eckelmann
Freedom’s Little Lights: The Role of Youth during the Black Freedom Struggle, 1954-1965