Issue 7 Editorial: Special Postgraduate Issue Rosemary Gallagher Editorials Taking its inspiration from the Great Seal of the United States, the November 2015 Irish Association for American Studies Postgraduate Symposium considered the implications inherent in the motto “E Pluribus Unu... Read More...
“The Love of Liberty Brought Us Here”: Writing American Identity in Liberia, 1830–1850 Carmel Lambert Articles In the early winter of 1821, a ship called the Nautilus sailed from Richmond, Virginia, to West Africa. Aboard were thirty-three “free people of colour,” one of whom was a teenager, Hilary Teage. He was ninetee... Read More...
Race and Protest in New Orleans: Streetcar Integration in the Nineteenth Century Hilary McLaughlin-Stonham Articles At the outbreak of the Civil War, New Orleans expanded the city’s streetcar service and, for the use of black patrons, incorporated Star cars into the new routes. Though Star cars could be used by both black an... Read More...
Hawthorne’s “Dangerous Soul” and Jacksonian Individualism: Artistic Isolation in Fanshawe and “The Artist of the Beautiful” James Hussey Articles In his seminal American Renaissance, Frances Otto Matthiessen points to the development by Nathaniel Hawthorne of tragic elements of character, noting his exploration of the “subterranean history of the America... Read More...
Ego Pluribus Unum: How One Man, Speaking for Many, Changed Hip-Hop Andrew Duncan Articles “King of the Assholes, drama queen, Red Bull’d 12-year old, Next Chappelle, strangely relatable Megaman,” Black supremacist, hypocrite, poet, social commentator, superstar: the list of titles and labels ascribe... Read More...
“Before You Come Alive, Life Is Nothing; It’s Up to You to Give It a Meaning”: Making Meaning in James Sallis’ Death Will Have Your Eyes Kelsie Donnelly Articles Following Jean-Paul Sartre’s claim that “efore you come alive, life is nothing; it’s up to you to give it a meaning” (Existentialism and Human Emotions 49), this essay will examine the methods for constructing ... Read More...
The Viewer Society: ‘New Panopticism’, Surveillance, and the Body in Dave Eggers’ The Circle Jennifer Gouck Articles Winner of the 2016 WTM Riches Essay Prize According to Thomas Mathiesen, “In a two-way and significant double sense of the word, we live in a viewer society” (219). This essay seeks to examine the w... Read More...
Empty Constructs: The Postmodern Haunted House in Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves Seán Travers Articles Special Mention in the 2016 WTM Riches Essay Prize According to Dale Bailey, “since Poe first described the House of Usher in 1839, the motif of the haunted house has assumed an enduring role in the ... Read More...
Review: Marc Leeds, The Vonnegut Encyclopedia Miranda Corcoran Reviews Leeds, Marc. The Vonnegut Encyclopedia. Revised and updated ed., Delacorte, 2016. The novels, plays and short stories of Kurt Vonnegut can be said to constitute a complex, interconnected fictive universe. Ch... Read More...
Review: Catrin Gersdorf and Juliane Braun, eds., America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment Sarah Cullen Reviews Gersdorf, Catrin, and Juliane Braun, eds. America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment. Universitätsverlag Winter, 2016. American Studies 270. What is the State of the Union, what the state of US-Amer... Read More...
Review: Jon C. Teaford, The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise and Reality Lucy Cheseldine Reviews Teaford, Jon C. The Twentieth-Century American City: Problem, Promise and Reality. 3rd ed. John Hopkins UP, 2016. The title of the third edition of Jon C. Teaford’s study of the American metropolis, The 20th... Read More...
