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Dissertations and Capstones

Both undergraduate and graduate students in 老司机福利网's Department of American Studies will complete a culminating project at the end of their programs.

Senior Capstone Projects

Each American Studies major completes a capstone project during the final spring semester of study. Students develop these projects in the Senior Seminar class, working closely with the seminar's faculty leader and participating peers. Generally, the capstone project takes the form of a 30鈥40 page research essay, though students are also free to propose projects in mediums such as creative writing, video and film, audio production, museum exhibitions, performance, photography, painting, sculpture, or web design.

Doctoral Dissertations

Dissertation Proposal and Dissertation Proposal Defense

Students in the Ph.D. program must submit a dissertation proposal by the end of the second semester following the successful completion of their comprehensive exams, using the template provided by the department. After the three-person committee has accepted the final version of the proposal, the student schedules a one-hour oral defense of the proposal before the student's committee and additional faculty. Proposal defenses are typically scheduled for one to two days per semester, and are open to the public. Upon successful completion of the proposal defense, the dissertation proposal is put on file with the department.

Dissertation and Dissertation Defense

Students write their dissertations working closely with their committee. When the student and committee agree that the dissertation is satisfactory, the student schedules a one-hour public defense of the dissertation. Students must submit the final version of the dissertation to their committee at least two weeks before their defense date. In order to obtain a degree in the Spring semester, dissertations should be submitted by February. For Fall semester, dissertations should be submitted by October.

Registration during the Dissertation

A student researching and writing her or his dissertation registers for ASTD 6990: Dissertation Research, using the section number of his or her committee chair. The course is graded as IP (In Progress) or U (Unsatisfactory) until the semester within which the student graduates, when the grade will be S (Satisfactory). Course requirements include meeting with the dissertation advisor at least once during the semester; arranging to do so is the student's responsibility. The Office of Graduate Education requires that students take at least 12 credits of Dissertation Research during their course of study. Since tuition must be paid for these credits, it is recommended that funded students enroll in their 12 credits of Dissertation Research during the years when they have funding. After these 12 credits are accrued, students may continue to enroll for ASTD 6990 for 0 credits, unless they have received an extension of time to degree.

Dissertation Titles, 1965-present 

 In Progress

Kate Boudreau

"You're Too Smart for That! Federal Education Legislation and the Changing Image of the Public High School Teacher in American Culture and Society, 1944鈥2001"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker 

2023

Emily Colmo

鈥淢ore than Degrees: Activism at Women鈥檚 Colleges in the 1960s and 1970s鈥
Advisor: Emily Lutenski

Kimberly Cowan

鈥淭eaching Mary, Training Martha: Catholic Education for Girls in St. Louis, Missouri, from Suffrage to Rosie the Riveter鈥
Advisor: Emily Lutenski

2022

Victoria Cannon

鈥淏order Visits: American Tourism on the Twentieth Century U.S.-Mexico Border鈥
Advisor: Flannery Burke

Manuela Engstler

鈥淭ranslating a Revolution: Black and White Panthers and the German Student Movement鈥
Advisor: Kate Moran

Mary Maxfield

鈥淣etworkin鈥 It: Mediated LGBTQIA+ Connections in St. Louis鈥
Advisor: Kate Moran

Tandra N. Taylor

鈥淎 Credit to My Race: Black Women, Education, and the Subversive Use of Domestic Science, 1900鈥1965鈥
Advisor: Heidi Ardizzone

2021

Elizabeth Eikmann

鈥淚n Her Image: Photography, Whiteness, and Womanhood in St. Louis, 1877鈥1920鈥
Advisor: Benjamin Looker

Cindy Reed

鈥淏y Any Means Necessary: Representations of Black Girlhood and Artistic Agency鈥
Advisor: Emily Lutenski

2020

 

2019

 

2018

Mark A. Koschmann

鈥淔inding Their Footing in the Changing City: Protestant and Catholic Congregations Adapt to the 
New Urban Environment in Post鈥揥orld War II Chicago鈥濃
Advisor: Heidi Ardizzone

Nicholas Porter

鈥淧rofessional Wrestling in the United States, 1877鈥1920鈥
Advisor: Matthew J. Mancini

Karen Smyth

鈥淭he Errand of Angels: Gender, Sexuality, and Feminism in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1972鈥2014鈥
Advisor: Kate Moran

Cathryn Stout

鈥淎 Mighty Hard Row: Racism and Resistance in the Postwar British Caribbean and the US South from World War II to the Late Twentieth Century鈥
Advisor: Matthew J. Mancini

2017

Susan Lee

鈥溾楪onna Teach Them What's What with a Rope鈥: Reinventing the Western and the Gauchesque, 1900鈥1939鈥
Advisor: Emily Lutenski

Kate Piatchek

鈥溾榊ou鈥檙e Too Smart for That!鈥 The Representation of  the American High School Teacher in Postwar Public Policy and Popular Culture鈥
Advisor: Benjamin Looker

Anna E. Schmidt

鈥淭he Blest Words in Their Best Order: Transcultural Spiritual Practices in American Poetry since 1960鈥
Advisor: Emily Lutenski

2016

Sabrina Davis

"Adapting Identity: Jewish American Narratives from the Page to the Screen"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Trevin J. Jones

"African American Prison Writers: Masculinity, Identity, and Spirituality"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Melissa Ford

"A Bible in One Hand, a Brick in the Other: African American Working Women and Midwestern Black Radicalism during the Great Depression, 1929鈥1935"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Lou W. Robinson

"White Women, Race, and Rape: Narratives of Mob Violence in the Midwest, 1880鈥1930"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Maurice Tracy

"Seeing Unseeable Things: Blackness, Queerness, and Homonormativity in U.S. Popular Culture, 1989鈥2016"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

2015

Brandy C. Boyd

"'Keep Your Chin Up and Your Skirt Down': Female Country Artists' Struggles for Respectability within the Nashville Music Industry, 1952鈥揚resent"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

Nicole Haggard

"Race, Sex, and Hollywood: The Illicit Representation of the Black Man鈥揥hite Woman Pair in American Cinema"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Laura A. Shields

"Fighting for Animal Rights: A U.S. History, 1900鈥1996"
Adviser: Cindy Ott

Corinne Mary Wohlford

"Putting Government in Its Place: Cultural Racism, Sentiment, and Neoliberalism in Contemporary U.S. Responses to Natural Disasters Abroad"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

2014

Brian W. Greening

"Representing New Orleans: Race, Space, and the Spectacle of Progress in the Crescent City since 1965"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

Rebecca Preiss Odom

"Negotiating Hyphenated Identities: Transnational Identity Formation of the German-American Residents of St. Charles, Missouri, during World War I"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

2013
 

Alexander Bayard Clark, III

"Forgotten Eyewitnesses: English Women Travel Writers and the Economic Development of America's Antebellum West"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Jaclyn H. Kirouac-Fram

"'Yellow Rolling Cell Blocks': The Urban Bus and Race in the United States"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

2011  

Robert L. Hawkins, IV

"Natural Born Ease Man?: Work, Masculinity, and the Itinerant Black Musician"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith
Winner of the 2011 ASA Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize

Joshua M. Roiland

"Engaging the Public: Toward a Political Theory of Literary Journalism"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Jody L. Sowell

"Divided Discourse: The Kerner Report & Stories of Separate and Unequal"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Jamie Schmidt Wagman

"Our Pill, Ourselves: American Anxieties Surrounding Oral Contraception, 1956鈥2000"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

2010 

Robert Pittman

"The St. Louis Movement in Education: Public Education Reform in the Gilded Age"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

David J. Suwalsky

"'North of Yankee Country': Antebellus Kansas and the Missourians of the Platte Purchase County"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Gregory F. Taylor

"Picturing the Enemy: The Use of Visual Metaphors in Photography of the Japanese American Immigrant"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

2009 

Richard D. Marshall

"'The Grapes of Wrath': John Steinbeck's Cognitive Landscapes as Commentary on 1930s Industrialization"
Adviser: Cindy Ott

2008

Henry T. Brownlee

"Keeping Their Memory Green: The Pleasant Green Baptist Church in St. Louis, 1866鈥1950"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Angela K. Dietz

"Spectacles of Labor: Visualizing a Nation at Work, 1850鈥1920"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Robin A. Hanson

"The National Cemetery: Race and Sectional Reconciliation in a Contested Landscape"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Patricia Checkett Rooney

"Re-presenting WWII, Reviving Neo-classicism, Reaffirming Super Power in a Post鈥9/11 Era: The Anomalous 2004 American National World War II Memorial"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Elizabeth Schroeder

"The Chicago Black Renaissance: Exercises in Aesthetic Ideology and Cultural Geography in Bronzeville, 1932鈥1945"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Alicja K. Syska

"Eastern Europe in the Making of American National Identity"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

2007 

Kimberly M. Curtis

"Black Consciousness is the Cornerstone of Liberation: The Black Arts Movement in African American Literature and Visual Culture, 1966鈥1976"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

Sharon E. Grimes

"Women in the Studios of Men: Gender, Architectural Practice, and the Careers of Sophia Hayden Bennett and Marion Mahony Griffin, 1870鈥1960"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

John Hensley

"Dreadful People: Historical Representations of Ozark Folks"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Diana F. Pascoe-Chavez

"Pragmatism and the Frontier Narrative in 'It Is': A Magazine for Abstract Art"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

Charles (Rob) Wilson

"The Disease of Fear and the Fear of Disease: Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Mississippi Valley"
Adviser: Candy Brown

Ying Ye

"Black Initiative in Black Education prior to and during the Civil War"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

2006

John I. Kille

"Re-mediating Racial History: Representations and Interpretations of the Amistad Incident (1839鈥1842) in the 20th Century Texts"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

David R. McFarland

"Virtuous Yeoman or Ignorant Farmer? Rhetorical Ambivalence in the Illinois Agrarian Reform Movement 1840鈥1860"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Jennifer A. Price

"Middling Desires: P.T. Barnum and the Visual Culture of the American Middle Class, 1840鈥1865"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

2005  

Rhonda J. Armstrong

"Rural Women and Cultural Conflict in Contemporary American Literature"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

Valerie Padilla Carroll

"Re-presenting and Representing on Girl Power TV: Examining Portrayals of Resistance and Domination from Dark Angel, Charmed, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

Teresa B. Holden

"'Earnest Women Can Do Anything': The Public Career of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, 1842鈥1904"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

Kristine R. Smith

"Following Buster Brown's Footsteps: Leading Families into the Middle-Class Consumer Society"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

Burton St. John III

"The Trail of Tension Between Public Relations and Journalism: The Unfinished Business About Using Propaganda to Move Crowds"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini 

2004

Stephen A. Gibson

"How Green is Hollywood? Nature and Environmentalism in American Cinema, 1970鈥2002"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Bryan M. Jack

"Bridging the Red Sea: The Saint Louis African-American Community and the Exodusters of 1879"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Eileen R. Solomon

"Kosher in the United States: An Examination of American-Jewish Adaptation"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer 

2003

John Glen

"'How Shall We Remember Them?': Pearl Harbor in Private, Public, and Historic Memory"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Victoria York

"Defining Moments: Narratives of the 1834 Burning of Mount Benedict"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

2002

Kent B. Bunting

"The Koan of Seiwa En: History and Meaning in the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

George R. Carson

"Teen Challenge and the Development of Social Concern Ministries in the Assemblies of God"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Miriam E. Joseph

"Perceived Cultural Influences on Generativity Identified by Childless Women"
Adviser: James H. Korn

Robert M. Lee

"Henry Adams and the Construction of Intellectual Unity"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

2001

James P. Dohle

"JROTC: A Study of Two St. Louis Schools"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

Jane F. Ferry

"Flavors of Culture: A Semiotic Reading of Food in Film"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

Christine F. Harper

"The Water Wizard: John F. Wixford and the Purification of the St. Louis Water Supply in 1904"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Carole L. Knight

"Survival of the Forest: The Evolution of Forest Park as a Reflection of the Social and Cultural Dynamics of St. Louis"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Mark H. Kruger

"The Influence of the 1960's Countercultural Values of Individualism, Anti-materialism, and Community on a Contemporary Intentional Community"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Rodney G. Stephens

"Richard Harding Davis and American Culture"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

2000

Mary D. Blixen

"David Rowland Francis: Missourian and Progressive Public Servant"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Regina M. Faden

"The German St. Vincent Orphan Home: The Institution and its Role in the Immigrant German Catholic Community of St. Louis 1850鈥1900"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Patricia L. Gregory

"Women's Experience of Reading in St. Louis Book Clubs"
Adviser: John J. Pauly

Loftin Woodiel

"William C. Quantrill: Deviant or Hero?"
Adviser: John J. Pauly

1999

Kamau Kemay贸

"An Afrocentric Critical Theory and Its Application to Three African American Novels"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Maureen Murphy

"Daughters of Sam Spade: The American Private Eye"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

1998

Thomas C. Barnett

"A Utopian-Mythopoesis Reading of American Puritan Jeremiads: A Reclassification of Selected Seventeenth Century New England Pulpit Literature"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Brian R. Hohlt

"鈥楲aws of the Lord': The Political World of Peter Cartwright, 1824鈥1848"
Adviser: Mark E. Neely, Jr.

Jane Marie Holwerda

"Family and Social Class in Selected Novels of Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Alice C. Warren

"The Junior College District of St. Louis鈥揝t. Louis County, Missouri under the Leadership of Joseph P. Cosand, 1962鈥1971: A Study of the Impact of the Post鈥揥orld War II Milieu on Policies That Shaped the Institution"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Valerie J. Yancey

"Attending the Dying: William James, a Resource for Medical Ethics at End-of-Life"
Adviser: Belden C. Lane 

1997

Michael L. Banks

"George S. Kaufman: American Social Critic on Stage"
Adviser: Thomas R. Knipp

Dawn L. Elmore-McCrary

"Culture in the Basic Writing Classroom"
Adviser: Buford E. Farris, Jr.

F. Terry Norris

"The Illinois Country, Lost and Found: Assessment of the Archaeological Remains of French Settlements in the Central Mississippi River Valley, 1673鈥1763"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Paul D. Nygard

"Man of Maine: A Life of Robert P. Tristram Coffin"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Timothy D. Uhl

"The Naming of St. Louis Catholic Parishes"
Adviser: James T. Fisher

Matthew S. Warshauer

"Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law"
Adviser: Mark E. Neely, Jr.

 

Books Adapted from SLU American Studies Dissertations

Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach (Ph.D. 2008), Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago's Literary Landscape (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

Burton St. John III (Ph.D. 2005), Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-mindedness, 1917鈥1941 (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010).

Bryan M. Jack (Ph.D. 2004), The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007).

Jane Ferry (Ph.D. 2001), Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication (New York: Routledge, 2003).

Matthew Warshauer (Ph.D. 1997), Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law: Nationalism, Civil Liberties, and Partisanship (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).

Kamau Kemay贸 (Ph.D. 1999), Emerging Afrikan Survivals: An Afrocentric Critical Theory (New York: Routledge, 2003).

Michael J. Steiner (Ph.D. 1994), A Study of the Intellectual and Material Culture of Death in Nineteenth-Century America (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).

Jeannette Batz Cooperman (Ph.D. 1996), The Broom Closet: Secret Meanings of Domesticity in Postfeminist Novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).

Kenneth C. Kaufman (Ph.D. 1996), Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996). Winner of the 1997 Missouri History Book Award.

Mary E. Young (Ph.D. 1990), Mules and Dragons: Popular Culture Images in the Selected Writings of African-American and Chinese-American Women Writers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).

W. Arthur Mehrhoff (Ph.D. 1986), The Gateway Arch: Fact and Symbol (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1992).

Milton S. Katz (Ph.D. 1973), Ban The Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1957鈥1985 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).

Luther E. Smith, Jr. (Ph.D. 1979), Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981; repr. 2007).

Roger Whitlow (Ph.D. 1975), The Darker Vision: A Socio-critical History of 19th Century Fiction Written by Black Americans (New York: Gordon Press, 1977).