New Errands: The Undergraduate Journal of American Studies
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Black Culture? I know that\u27s Right! The Commodification of the Jordan 1 Sneaker, and the Subculture Behind It
Full text linkTo most Americans, Michael Jordan is a household name. Jordan first became widely known at the start of his collegiate basketball career at the University of North Carolina in the 1980s. He signed a deal with the Nike shoe company that would eventually change the course of his life and the course of sneaker culture around the world. A new up-and-coming star in the league, Nike took a chance, and it paid off for both parties. The first pair of “Air Jordans” was released to the public on April 1, 1985. Jordan is not alone; however, in commodifying his image. African American culture overall has mastered what it means to be a part of the marketplace
The Second Generation: Ednah Dow Cheney Carries Margaret Fuller\u27s Feminist Transcendentalism into the Early Progressive Era
Full text linkoai:journals.psu.edu:article/59125In the nineteenth century, the Transcendentalist and women\u27s movements combined to alter the discussion on the politics of womanhood, developing creative space for progressive individuals to actively make change in the expansion of human rights. Ednah Dow Cheney, a young widow and single mother in the mid1850s, merged the spirit of Transcendentalism that she inherited from her family and friends and her burgeoning passion for social activism to become a dedicated public servant. An early attendee of the Conversations of Margaret Fuller, author of Woman in the Nineteenth Century and a pioneer in the field of feminist Transcendentalism, Cheney borrowed Fuller\u27s radical ideas and translated them into real action. Throughout the second half of the 1850s and into the early twentieth century, Cheney founded the New England School of Design and the New England Women\u27s Club and managed the New England Hospital for Women and Children, the Boston Education Commission of the Freedmen\u27s Aid Society, and lectured for the New England Suffrage Association and the Concord School of Philosophy. More significantly, she continued through the century to become a feminist intellectual in Fuller\u27s vein
"Why Every Girl Isn\u27t a Riot Grrrl":Feminism and the Punk Music of Bikini Kill in the Early 1990s
Full text linkIn 1991, when Jen Smith, a college student and member of the little known band Bratmobile, "called for a girl riot" members of the punk band Bikini Kill had not yet met (Meltzer 11). Punk music, a subculture of mainstream rock music, "remained resolutely, with some notable exceptions, a boys\u27 club," and women were justifiably frustrated by their exclusion from such an influential and unique form of expression (6). The preexisting stereotypes of women in punk hindered women\u27s ability to break into the genre. There would be no progression without action, and many women like Jen Smith were tired of their assumed "roles of groupie, girlfriend, or back-up singer" (Schilt 5). So commenced what would be known to the generations to come, as the Riot Grrrl Revolution.Why Every Girl Isn\u27t A Riot Grrrl by Charlotte Briggs is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
Comedic Relief in a Culture of Uncertainty: The Contribution of Life Magazine to 1920s America
Full text linkAmidst the chaotic atmosphere of the 1920s, Life magazine was a common sight in the homes of middle-class Americans everywhere.1 During this period of massive social and cultural change, many Americans experienced an unprecedented loss of certainty. As a humor and general interest publication existing during the time, Life capitalized on the vulnerability of Americans. Life worked on two distinct levels – while it fostered anxiety about modernity and the changing times, it also used humor to provide middle-class Americans with comedic relief from the very anxieties it fueled. In perpetuating the feeling of uncertainty, Life simultaneously offered itself as a salvation from the unsettling problems afflicting 1920s society.Comedic Relief in a Culture of Uncertainty: The Contribution of Life Magazine in the 1920s by Andy Ho is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
The American Dinner Party
Full text linkThe dinner party is a seemingly simple part of the American culture. At its core, a dinner party is a gathering of family, friends or honored guests, who come together to share in food, drink and conversation. Contradictory to this simple appearance, dinner parties contain a wealth of historical influence, social expectations, and gender roles. This intriguing part of American life is, unfortunately disappearing from mainstream society. This decline can be explained by the shift in American dining, from formal to informal, as evidenced by dinner parties
Robinson Crusoe and Isolation in Immigrant America
Full text linkOnce the Homestead Act was passed in 1862, foreign settlers were presented with the prospect of owning extensive amounts of land across the Great Plains of America, provided that they cultivate and enrich their acreage. This promise of land and economic possibility encouraged mass migration from Europe to America, with the pioneering immigrants making their claims and attempting to cultivate the dry prairie soils of the Midwest. An array of characters within Willa Cather\u27s My Ántonia (1918) have followed this course and travelled to America under the illusion of finding a better and more profitable life; such is the case with the Shimerda family. However, such promises were often cruelly misleading and the unrelenting farmland proved severely challenging to cultivate in the extreme weather conditions. It is a culmination of this unforeseen difficulty and a sense of dislocation from their culture which leads to tragedy for the Shimerda family, as Mr. Shimerda\u27s overwhelming sense of helplessness and isolation results in him committing suicide. Succeeding this incident, the narrator and protagonist Jim Burden, alludes to an object which exemplifies these concepts of loneliness and dislocation during an analogous time of pioneering expansion: Daniel Defoe\u27s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Burden recalls "[t]hen, for the first time, I realized that I was alone in the house […] I got \u27Robinson Crusoe" and tried to read, but his life on the island seemed dull compared with ours" (Cather 43). Although the texts were published two centuries apart, many of the themes and experiences within Defoe\u27s classic novel would have continued to resonate with the nineteenth and twentieth century readership of My Ántonia, most frequently the concepts of economy and materialism which prevailed during American modernity. Furthermore, the novel\u27s position within the narrative implies a clear connection between the obstacles of the shipwrecked mariner and the hardships which faced the recently deceased Mr. Shimerda. As Joyce McDonald suggests "Cather\u27s allusions to Robinson Crusoe […] in all of her plains novels […] suggest she perceived prairie life as being shipwrecked on an island, cut off from the civilised world" (McDonald 21). The embedded intertextuality of Robinson Crusoe, both in terms of its physicality as a text and its allegorical implications to My Ántonia\u27s wider themes, performs as a symbol of isolation for Mr. Shimerda and the settlers of the Great Plains, particularly during a period of xenophobia at the turn of nineteenth century America.This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
Liberty and Republicanism within the North American Context: A Study of the American Revolution and the Canadian Rebellions
Full text linkThe Atlantic Revolutions of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries were prosecuted on the advancement of liberty and republicanism. Within the North American context, these broad tenets articulated the importance of a sovereign, educated and virtuous citizenry as well as the standards of an effective government constitutionally constrained in its authority. The American Revolution and the Canadian Rebellions stand as specific affirmations of these principles.Liberty and Republicanism within the North American Context: A Study of the American Revolution and the Canadian Rebellions by Michael A. Wallace is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International Licens
The Origins of the American Environmental Movement: Hudson River School Naturalism in the 19th Century
Full text linkThe stage is set. The great Enlightenment experiment of the United States has begun. The turn of the nineteenth century has come and gone, and the past colonists of America were ripe to become future pioneers of not only an exorbitant westward landscape but new ways of seeing their world. While aboard the ship Arbella en route to the \u27New World\u27, John Winthrop preached that the settlement to be built would be \u27as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.\u27 (Banas, "John Winthrop, A Modell of Christian Charity) Winthrop\u27s original manuscript was printed in old English, and the single quotations around this quote indicate a modernized transliteration of the original text. From the very beginning of their quest for settlement, these Puritans saw themselves as the privileged few traveling to the new lands of Canaan. The origins of American exceptionalism today can be traced back to this small moment in the experiences of the first Europeans to plant roots in America. Religion motivated the move to America and allowed for the expansion of the metaphor that America was the new promised land. Its mountains and valleys were the lands of Eden, lost so long ago to the curiosity and greed of humans. In the nineteenth century, the folktale heroism of Daniel Boone resounded in the heart of a youthful America, which sought to conquer the width of a continent and cast the light of its \u27shining city\u27 from coast to coast. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licens
