1,720,967 research outputs found
Avondale: A Search for Identity in a Transitioning Neighborhood
No full textAvondale today exists as one of Birmingham, Alabama’s most popular historic neighborhoods for its public green spaces and bustling entertainment scene. Founded in 1887 as an industrial hub, Avondale quickly grew into a center for southern textile production. The 1971 closure of Avondale Mills, however, precipitated the collapse of the local economy and the need to shift its economic base. Avondale struggled economically for decades in the shadow of the old textile mill. Despite this, the neighborhood managed to retain significant elements of its historic landscape, if not always historic character. This dissertation seeks to understand elements of power, identity, and class that catalyzed these changes and also shaped the exploitation and disenfranchisement of segments of the population. In order to understand the complexity of these roles, a bottom-up perspective focusing on generations of blue-collar workers, local populations of African Americans, and people of lower socioeconomic status will provide insight into the lived experiences of everyday life in Avondale. A chronological examination of Avondale lends to distinct periods in the neighborhood’s history beginning with its founding and the establishment of Avondale Mills in 1897, followed by deindustrialization and economic decline in the 1970s and 1980s, and the eventual process of gentrification beginning in the early 2000s. The examination of each of these periods will center Avondale’s many overlooked voices while engaging with a question repeatedly asked by locals today – Who is Avondale for
Movement, Migration, and the Material History of the AIDS Closet
Get PDFThis thesis explores the choices that people living with HIV and AIDS in the United States made to embody various identity constructions as a strategy for survival. While ‘coming out’ is often seen as a social goal, for some, ‘coming out’ was neither a goal, nor desirable given the contexts of community participation, care, and social belonging. Further, people often embodied fluid identities and made choices about their locations and movements, and carefully managed the language of their relationships in order to secure care and social belonging. This thesis also highlights the ways in which objects and spaces associated with sexual difference and/or HIV/AIDS were manipulated and modified in service of managing perceived identity formations
'My goal will ever be to make history popular': Peter Brannon's Quest for Alabama History
Get PDFPeter Alexander Brannon (1882-1967) was a noteworthy figure in Alabama history during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century. Throughout his fifty-year career at the Alabama Department of Archives and History, Brannon wrote extensively on Alabama’s rich history, covering a vast array of topics relating to local history, place names, archaeology, folklore, travel and transportation, material culture, and geography. His weekly column in the Montgomery Advertiser spanned nineteen years and still cited today by professionals and amateurs alike. The columns were just one of the ways Brannon connected with the public in his quest to make history “popular.” Brannon also lectured on, taught about, and advocated for Alabama history to anyone who would give him a hearing, all the while expanding his agency’s outreach mission. Newspapers statewide documented his travels and upcoming lectures at various schools, civic organizations and local historical societies. His knowledge of Alabama history led one newspaper to nickname him a “colossus of knowledge.
Hoeing out the New South: The Material Culture of the Hoe and the Segregation of Progress
Get PDFIn the New South, the hoe became a symbol, utilized by white southerners, that attempted to primitivize blackness and segregate progress before the solidification of the Jim Crow. The historical relationship curated between blackness and the hoe removed Blacks from white ideals of progress in the New South. The hoe became a representation of anti-modernity that conjured a pre-industrial landscape of the primitive South. This thesis explores the hoe in Uncle Remus tales, the Old Plantation Show, lynching rhetoric, and the cotton mill labor force. Narratives implemented primitivity through the hoe and hoeing, placing sharecroppers and rural Blacks in romanticized cotton fields. With the ubiquity of the hoe, many poor whites also used the farm tool, either as sharecroppers or small farmers, cultivating cash crop commodities. However, unlike Black sharecroppers, poor whites could leave the hoe behind and enter an increasingly white cotton mill world. The different uses of the hoe between races highlight white attempts to segregate material life in the New South. This material culture study showcases how southerners employed narratives about the hoe to bind primitivity and blackness in the New South
The Master’s Tools Will Do Just Fine: Booker T. Washington, Racial Capitalism, Immigration, and the Utility of Differentiation
No full textBooker T. Washington understood capitalism quite well. It was a system that not only promoted uneven social terrain but depended on such conditions to sustain itself. Washington had an acute grasp on the reality that everyone could not succeed within the system of capitalism. For this reason, the Principal of Tuskegee Institute, through his verbalized and written words, would attempt to elevate the socio-political position of African Americans by denigrating the image of European immigrants, Native Americans, and other racialized groups that were struggling to survive under the accepted principles of the Gilded Age. Washington didn’t fight to eliminate the worldwide system that fed on African Americans to create massive profits. No, he would attempt to preserve the system by replacing African Americans with other racialized groups that would take their place at the bottom of the racial totem pol
The Alabama State Troops’ Failed Encampment of 1891
Get PDFOn June 10, 1891, the Alabama State Troops’ (AST) three regiments assembled in Mobile for a two-week encampment. Under the personal command of Governor Thomas Goode Jones, a Civil War hero and former AST regimental commander, fifteen hundred troops from across the state would come together in the biggest gathering of Alabama troops since the end of the Civil War. Newspapers in big cities and small towns hyped the event for weeks before its commencement. Railroad companies arranged special trains to carry the troops to Mobile from across the state. The encampment was an unmitigated disaster. Sanitary arrangements failed. Soldiers from the different regiments fought each other, and there were even reports of militiamen firing live ammunition at each other. Mess halls could barely fit a third of the troops. After a near riot in front of one dining facility, officers from one regiment sent a petition to Governor Jones demanding the discharge of one of his aides, Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Peyton. Jones ultimately ordered the encampment to end two days early, but the disaster continued to the last as troops from Anniston, Alabama, burned Peyton in effigy. This paper will argue that the State of Alabama showed little interest in maintaining a competent state military force, did not institute a system to provide for competent leadership in the AST, and did not prepare its troops to conduct such an encampment. I will review the history of the militia in the late nineteenth century and the history of the militia in Alabama. I will also examine the histories of two of the key players in the events in Mobile, Thomas Jones and Randolph Peyton, to learn if the experiences of these two men show us where the state went wrong in preparing their troops for this event
Voices From the Plains: The Black Legacies of Auburn Alabama
Get PDFThis study explores the legacies of African Americans in Auburn Alabama beginning with the city’s founding and ending with desegregation of Auburn’s schools. The first section focuses on slavery, the migration of African Americans into Auburn, their experiences, and the surviving plantation houses in the area. The second section explores community. It highlights experiences during segregation, African American businesses, and culture. The third section is about education. It also looks at the experiences of African Americans under segregation but also the impact of the schools on their graduates, and the impact of desegregation to the developed community. The content of this study primarily comes from oral histories and documents obtained through history harvests. Supplementary data was obtained through primary and secondary sources
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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