bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Examining Deaf Culture in Coming-of-Age Novels within a Multicultural Framework
Authors: Schill Angela
Published: September 2023

This chapter considers stories of deafness in two young adult fiction novels and how these stories portray the cultural nuances of deafness. It also examines stereotypical portrayals of deafness and how a multicultural perspective addresses the biases and prejudices that sometimes stem from stereotypical portrayals. Power imbalances between mainstream and minority cultures are examined from a Deaf perspective, and how such imbalances can impact a reader’s perspective of deafness and deaf individuals. Finally, it is argued that an absence of stereotypes within young adult fiction encourages compassion in readers, as well as a potential desire to engage in positive ways within their own communities.
China
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter is an exploration of Chinese political cartoons. Visual humor through caricature, satire and parody, and wit and playfulness has a long, rich history in dynastic China. Modern cartooning—usually meaning coming from the West—entered China at the juncture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries through cartoon/humor magazines, pictorial magazines, newspapers, and lianhuanhua (palm-size narrative picture books). Major catalysts for this transformation were the growing dissatisfaction with the Qing Dynasty and increased contact with the outside world. In addition to the history of political cartoons in China, the chapter also explores contemporary government regulation and censorship of cartoons and comics. It also explores the state of cartooning under the Xi Jinping presidency. The chapter concludes with some remarks on the differences between political and news cartoonists.
Hong Kong
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on the history of Hong Kong political cartooning, especially when regarded independently from the overall history of Chinese political cartoons. It begins with the history of visual political humor during the British period, before turning to the cartoons created past the 1949 Communist takeover of China. Aside from Chinese-language cartoons, the chapter also explores English-language ones produced in Hong Kong as well. Throughout the rest of the 1990s and into the twenty-first century, the chapter shows how Hong Kong political cartooning could be likened to a sinking vessel, patched almost beyond recognition but determined to stay afloat. Finally, the chapter considers how, in both 2014 and 2019–2020, parts of Hong Kong served as extended canvases adorned with protest art.
Taiwan
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter considers the history of Taiwanese political cartoons. It shows how Taiwanese political cartooning for much of its early period was a contented lapdog of the Guomindang government. Cartoonists labored under many Guomindang government restraints: working under martial law restrictions, paper shortages, and the 1951 newspaper regulations limiting the number of printing licenses and pages. Those who chose to resist were met with confiscations or bans. Hereafter, the lifting of martial law and restrictions on newspapers in 1988 made for the most important transition period in Taiwan's political cartoon history. Newspapers expanded in number, as did space devoted to cartoons and strips. As the chapter shows, however, in contemporary Taiwan, political cartoonists have a higher degree of freedom than at any time in the country's history, but are experiencing fewer opportunities to exercise that freedom with the drying up of venues.
Indonesia
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter focuses on Indonesian political cartoons, the earliest of which pay homage to centuries-old wayang shadow-puppet performances. As the chapter shows, Indonesian political cartoonists have given a nod to wayang kulit as a source of inspiration. From there, the chapter explores Indonesia's political history and the state of political cartooning during this period, particularly during the Sukarno and Suharto eras. It also looks into contemporary political cartooning in Indonesia, such as the state of its protest comics and cartoons, the freedom to cartoon during the Reformasi (Reform) era, and how highly organized the country's cartoons/comics world is. The chapter concludes that Indonesian political cartoonists often played cat-and-mouse games with authorities during the country's first fifty-three years of independence. Sometimes, they lost and paid the consequences; other times, they succeeded, getting their attacks on the government distributed through subterfuge and trickery.
The Philippines
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter presents an overview of political cartoonists and relevant periodicals in the Philippines, spotlighting such figures as national hero José Rizal and World War II-era cartoonists such as Izon, Gene Cabrera, and Gat (Liborio Gatbonton). The latter three had even more successful careers in the freewheeling 1950s and 1960s, when the Philippines stood almost alone in Southeast Asia in maintaining a free and open atmosphere for political caricature, and when komiks as magazines and newspaper funnies flourished. Yet as the decades passed, political cartoonists continued to face a multitude of challenges in their careers, including censorship. The chapter discusses problems facing contemporary Filipino political cartoonists. The 2000s revealed the same lingering issues, which were compounded by the global economic downturn and dwindling interest in newspapers with the shift to digitalization.
Thailand
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines political cartoons in Thailand. It begins with an overview of pioneering Thai cartoonists, starting from King Rama VI, who drew satirical caricatures to embarrass corrupt officials that were published in royal newspapers. However, as the chapter shows, Rama VI is hardly the first cartoonist in the country, which has a rich history of political cartooning. The chapter demonstrates how political turmoil has drawn out dormant cartoonists in Thailand, before turning to Thai cartooning in the twenty-first century. Here, it is revealed that, compared to neighboring Southeast Asian countries, Thailand has a relatively high level of freedom to cartoon.
Bangladesh
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter examines Bangladeshi political cartooning. It explores the nation's history of cartooning from even prior to the country's official founding as “Bangladesh” after the 1971 War of Liberation. The chapter also remarks on a thriving community of contemporary Bangladeshi political cartoonists. Unlike in other parts of Asia, Bangladesh's cartooning community consists of a number of up-and-coming and middle-aged practitioners who, at one time or another, were either a staff member on and/or a contributor to Unmad (Mad), a cartoon/humor magazine founded in 1978. However, the chapter reveals that there are also restrictions to Bangladesh's freedom to cartoon, as guided cartooning remains a persistent problem for Bangladesh's political cartoonists.
Nepal
Authors: Lent John A. , Lent John A.
Published: September 2023

This chapter follows the rich history of political cartooning in Nepal. It begins by tracing the country's rich heritage of challenging and mocking tradition and authority, which has survived political dictatorships, repressive monarchial rule, and natural disasters. It thrives through humor clubs, comedy shows, and festivals; the most prominent and longest-lasting festival is Gaijatra (the Cow Festival), which has lent itself well to cartooning. Indeed, it is remarkable that cartooning has endured, and even made advancements, given the topsy-turvy world of Nepalese government and politics. However, as the chapter shows, cartoonists faced some harrowing situations in the closing years of the millennium, when there were many changes of political administration, a Maoist military movement, and emergency periods. Political cartooning in Nepal overall remains a dismal prospect in contemporary times, however, the chapter reveals a few bright spots for its future.
Regulating, Controlling, and Sanctioning Revelry
Authors: Machado Isabel
Published: September 2023

Chapter 2 shows how those in positions of power and privilege tried to regulate, control, and police revelry in Mobile, and how these decisions restricted the participation of marked bodies in the festivities while establishing “safe” outlets for inversion and non-normative expressions. It provides three examples of how the celebration was controlled and negotiated by authorities, the press, and concerned citizens, and shows how, as carnival scholars have argued, the carnivalesque has elements of the ritualesque. First it takes a look at the trajectory of the ordinances that regulated marked bodies’ celebrations and expressions. Then, it shows costuming as a space where non-normative expressions and identities could be displayed, but also where social hierarchies were reinforced when people in privileged social positions wore marked identities as costumes. Finally, it recounts the late 1970s polemic over the future of the Joe Cain Procession and how different segments of the population reacted to it.
Downtown
Authors: Machado Isabel
Published: September 2023

Since Mobilians from all walks of life come downtown to experience Mardi Gras, what better place to search for socio-cultural interactions and change? Chapter 3 shows how marked bodies negotiated the physical and symbolic space of downtown Mobile in the second half of the twentieth century. It also problematizes the excuse to the city’s segregated Mardi Gras celebrations, that people like to gather with their peers, placing social inequality and separations in a historical context and showing how they generated radically different experiences that are reflected in and reinforced by Mardi Gras celebrations.
Official “Colored” Mardi Gras and Mobile’s Black Liberation Struggle
Authors: Machado Isabel
Published: September 2023

The fourth chapter shows racially marked bodies appropriating and adapting to normative discourses by investigating the role of Mardi Gras in how African Americans negotiated their space in Mobile’s society and placing their Mardi Gras experiences in the context of the city’s Black liberation movement. Since the late 19th century, Black carnival organizations have employed respectability politics as a means of combating racist stereotypes and achieving some level of social acceptance and ascension for affluent African Americans. In 1938, prominent members of the city’s Black community formed the Mobile Colored Carnival Association (MCCA), allying with the Mobile Carnival Association (MCA), the white elite organization, in an attempt to “uplift the race.” That tactic eventually created a conflict between the MCCA’s social pursuits and the more radical activism of the Neighborhood Organized Workers (NOW) in the late 1960s.
Queering Mobile’s Mardi Gras
Authors: Machado Isabel
Published: September 2023

Chapter five shows how people who have been marked because of their gender expression and/or sexual orientation appropriated and adapted normative discourses and rituals to establish their space in a heteronormative society. It also places Mobile’s LGBTQIA+ Mardi Gras experiences in a broader context of queer world-making and activism. It looks at the creation of the Order of Osiris in the 1980s as a turning point in LGBTQIA+ visibility, acceptance, and community building, and also to some of the earlier manifestations of gender and sexuality nonconformance in the festivities.
Conclusion
Authors: Machado Isabel
Published: September 2023

The book concludes with a survey of the recent attempts to reinvent Mobile’s Mardi Gras tradition that challenge normativity and decenter the narrative in more inclusive terms.
Race, Class, and Fear in Twenty-First-Century America
Authors: Malcolm Nigel I.
Published: September 2023

Chapter 1, “Race, Class, and Fear in Twenty-First-Century-America,” critiques Ta-Nehisi Coates’s work Between the World and Me. Coates writes for two audiences, one black and the other white. In his work, Coates provides his white readers with more than a glimpse of what the lives of blacks are like, or more specifically as I will argue, poor blacks, in America. Coates’s work reveals not only the gap that separates blacks from whites according to the author but also the distance that separates blacks from each other as well. While the author’s aim is to address the subject of race and what it means to still be a problem in twenty-first century America, his work also reveals issues of class that exist among blacks and the ways in which this creates separate communities that may go unseen or unacknowledged even among blacks themselves.
Divided Loyalty: Race, Class, and Place in the Affirmative Action Debate
Authors: Malcolm Nigel I.
Published: September 2023

“Divide by Loyalty: Race, Class, and Place in the Affirmative Action Debate” critiques Sheryll Cashin’s text Place Not Race. Cashin’s book provides more than a different way to look at affirmative action policy in the United States. A closer reading of the text in light of Du Bois’s notion of the Talented Tenth provides us with a new understanding of the conflict that now exists between the Talented Tenth and members of the black lower class. While Du Bois posited that the role of the Talented Tenth was to provide leadership and lift up the masses of blacks, Cashin’s text provides evidence that the Talented Tenth may work alongside whites to keep poor blacks in their place at the bottom of the social hierarchy.
Detecting the Forbidden Fruit in Eudora Welty’s The Golden Apples
Authors: Leiter Andrew B.
Published: September 2023

A consideration of The Golden Apples as detective fiction intersecting with southern gothic and Bildungsroman genres, this essay contends that Eudora Welty positions sexuality as a mystery that individuals investigate as a problematic but unavoidable focal point of maturation. The children of the novel contribute to a composite Bildungsroman that features Nina Carmichael of “Moon Lake” and Cassie and Loch Morrison of “June Recital.” The silence surrounding sexuality leads to the characters’ imaginative association of sex with criminality and madness in “June Recital” and with the unknown and death in “Moon Lake.” “June Recital” features Loch Morrison as a detective figure investigating a crime in the gothic house next door, but the revealed mysteries are the chaotic and unspoken realms of illicit sex, sexual violence, and homosexuality. This revelation speaks to Welty’s interest in the fluidity of childhood sexual identity and complicates reductive heteronormative readings of Loch’s character.
Court’s Opened
Authors: Mark Rebecca
Published: September 2023

Eudora Welty in The Ponder Heart creates three female characters who fight to end the deadening stereotypes of enmeshed racism, class prejudice, and gender bias which the white, rich men and women of Clay County, Mississippi spout forth. As each woman takes on the role of storyteller, she works to weave a plot that will enable her to get her just rewards: Edna Earle, her inheritance, Narciss, her power, and Bonnie Dee, respect. All three women are potential suspects in Welty’s buried murder plot. Close readings of Glaspell’s “A Jury of Her Peers” (1916) and Melville’s Benito (1855) expose multiple intertextual clues about Edna, Narciss, and Bonnie Dee’s plotting.The Ponder Heart is not only, as critics have supposed, a light comedy, but also a feminist addition to, and critical deconstruction of, the murder mystery and film noir genre of the 1950’s.
The Sleuth of Pinehurst Street
Authors: Nolan Tom
Published: September 2023

This essay explores the literary affinities of Eudora Welty and the detective novelist Ross Macdonald.It posits that Welty, in her 1963 story “Where is the Voice Coming From?,” realized to an extreme degree the dictum Macdonald put forth in his 1953 lecture “The Scene of the Crime” for writers of the most serious crime fiction: that they should “submit themselves” to “the involuntary anguish of the criminal, the insane, the dispossessed,” in order to “present a true vision of evil … and leave a residue of terror and understanding pity, as tragedy does.”How well this fits with Welty's description of her own approach to fiction, as exemplified in her first-person-voiced story based on the Medgar Evers assassination: “What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself.”
Unsolved Mysteries
Authors: Ford Sarah Gilbreath
Published: September 2023

Eudora Welty was an avid reader of Agatha Christie’s mystery novels, as evidenced by the nineteen books by Christie in Welty’s house. In The Optimist’s Daughter Welty borrows from Christie the formula for a country house murder mystery plot. Gathering characters in a library containing a dead body allows Welty to explore the problematic connections of marriage, property, and class. The library, however, becomes a metafictional space as Welty conducts a genre-bending exercise. While Laurel initially plays detective by searching for clues in both of her parents’ desks, the all-important texts she finds are not purloined objects that only need to be located for the narrative to be complete. Instead, the texts are read, bringing Laurel’s parents back to life. Eschewing the easy finality of a classic detective story, the novel’s genre bending reveals a valuing of the abiding mysteries of character.
Introduction
Authors: Kugler Jimmy
Published: September 2023

James “Jimmy” Kugler grew up in wartime Lexington, Nebraska. A lonely only child, Kugler’s alcoholic parents split up about the time he was twelve. Starting soon after the war, and between the eighth grade and high school, Jimmy began retelling Pearl Harbor and the Pacific theater conflict with comic strip characters he and a friend invented. His war between “Frogs” and “Toads”, from comic art’s “funny animal” tradition, was a long-form distillation of combat reported in American movies, comics, and propaganda. Depicting his Pearl Harbor-like aerial attack in a town like his own, Jimmy gave the war an intimacy that suggests audacious fantasy as well as anxiety. This detailed examination of these comics and their context argues that wartime mass media provoked this adolescent’s imagination to augment the already rebellious character of the comic book, through black-humored cruelty and into the realms of horror.
What Started the War
Authors: Kugler Jimmy
Published: September 2023

Kugler’s opening chapter has Toad aircraft erupting from a clear Sunday morning sky. As “Frogtown’s” civilian population rests, gardens, or attends church, bombers and fighter planes attack. The enemy destroys the local church first; they gun down fleeing citizens; they strafe firemen responding to the destruction. In the best tradition of mystery and horror, the reader sees no Toads; just their relentless machines of war. The story gives no geopolitical context for the attack; just unprovoked mayhem falling on innocent people. But the Frogs quickly respond with a determined rebuilding of their town, turning their industries to armaments, and train for the cruel confrontation to come.
Redefining Terms, Rethinking Concepts
Authors: Roszak Suzanne Manizza
Published: September 2023

Chapter 3 spotlights writings by a suite of Latinx and Indigenous authors whose work spans the 1960s to the present day, examining how these authors’ cross-writing projects have deconstructed and redefined the concepts of colonialism, “civilization,” and cultural belonging. Children’s books by writers including Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, and Esmeralda Santiago scrutinize US settler colonialism and examine its relationship to gentrification, western models of environmental violence, and racist patterns of white flight. They also validate the hybrid cultures of resistance that have developed in response to these pathologies, relying on the agency of independent, confident child protagonists who rework received notions of identity and history from an actively anticolonial perspective. In the process, these books stand to engage readers of all ages with a constellation of vital questions.
Do You Remember?
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

In Do You Remember? Celebrating Fifty Years of Earth, Wind & Fire, Trenton Bailey traces the humble beginning of Maurice White, his development as a musician, and his formation of Earth, Wind & Fire, a band that became a global phenomenon during the 1970s. By the early 1980s, the music industry was changing, and White had grown weary after working constantly for more than a decade. He decided to put the band on hiatus for more than three years. The band made a comeback in 1987, but White’s health crisis soon forced them to tour without him. During the twenty-first century, the band has received numerous accolades and lifetime achievement and hall of fame awards. The band remains relevant today, collaborating with younger artists and maintaining their classic sound.
Earth, Wind & Fire stood apart from other soul bands with their philosophical lyrics and extravagant visual art, much of which is studied in the book, including album covers, concerts, and music videos. The lyrics of hit songs are examined alongside an analysis of the band’s chart success. Earth, Wind & Fire has produced twenty-one studio albums and several compilation albums. Each album is analyzed for content and quality. Earth, Wind & Fire is also known for using ancient Egyptian symbols, and Bailey thoroughly details those symbols and Maurice White’s fascination with Egyptology. After enduring many personnel changes, Earth, Wind & Fire continues to perform around the world and captivate diverse audiences.
Imagination
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

The first chapter details the formative years of Maurice White and the founding of Earth, Wind & Fire. Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1941, White developed a love of music at a young age, singing in a quartet and Rose Hill Baptist Church and later practicing doo-wop drumbeats in high school. Thanks to his drumming talents, Maurice White was able to play professionally. For almost three years, White traveled the globe with the Ramsey Lewis Trio, yet he often thought about starting his own band with a specific musical vision. In 1970, White moved to LA and recruited the first lineup of EWF. White’s spiritual inspirations of the Zodiac and Egyptology is discussed, and the various African, R&B, gospel, etc., musical influences of EWF are explored. The first three albums and their artwork are analyzed.
See the Light
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

Chapter 5 is about EWF’s continued success in the late 1970s, beginning with their Grammy Award-winning cover of the Beatles song “Got to Get You into My Life.” This album is followed by the release of The Best of Earth, Wind & Fire, Vol. 1 in 1978, which features the hit song “September.” The chapter analyzes this song before continuing with the timeline of the band, including their 1979 performance for The Music for UNICEF Concert, their Tour of the World 1979, the single “Boogie Wonderland,” and album release I Am in June of 1979.
I’ve Had Enough
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

Chapter 7 details the two albums released during the last year of EWF’s classic period. The hiatus of the band is also discussed. The band finished production of Powerlight in 1982, and its first single “Fall in Love with Me” was released. The 1983 release of Electric Universe signaled a shift in White’s approach to EWF’s music, experimenting with sounds of the modern era and the new wave sound out of Europe. The shift in sound is reflected by a shift away from their usual album art and fashion, which is discussed further in this chapter. 1983 brought about a hiatus for the band, spurred by Maurice White’s burnout after years of non-stop work. The chapter follows the band members during the hiatus.
Back on the Road
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

The eighth chapter discusses EWF’s comeback in 1987 with Touch the World and the challenges they endured with changes in the music industry. Maurice White, Verdine White, and Philip Bailey had a meeting to discuss the comeback. With Al McKay and Larry Dunn declining to return to EWF, new members were welcomed to the group. The band returned with the singles “Touch the World” and “System of Survival.” In 1987, they released the album Touch the World, which shows a change from their previous album art and fashion. In 1988, their second compilation album is released. By 1990, Heritage is released, its album art featuring West African symbols and Pan-African colors. The band collaborated with younger artists, The Boys and MC Hammer, on the album—to some criticism. Behind the scenes, Maurice White is diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Millennium
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

Chapter 10 deals with EWF’s newfound popularity during the first six years of the twenty-first century and discusses the albums The Promise and Illumination. In 2000, the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Interest in the band continued, resulting in articles, a documentary, and the continuation of compilation albums. In 2002, they performed at the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Later that same year, the band received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Second Annual BET Awards. The release of the album The Promise is discussed in this chapter, and the band embarks on a tour. The band continue to receive awards and attention, and continued to release music while adding new performers.
Now, Then & Forever
Authors: Bailey Trenton
Published: September 2023

The final chapter discusses EWF’s latest studio albums. In addition to awards and honors, the band’s tours, public appearances, and fiftieth anniversary year are discussed. Now, Then & Forever, the first album without Maurice White’s input, is released. Sadly, in 2016, Maurice White passes away at 74 years old. Two weeks later, the Grammy Awards are held and feature a tribute to White. Later that year, White’s autobiography is published. The band continues to perform. In 2020, the band celebrated its golden anniversary. While the pandemic caused their celebratory tour to be canceled, a special compilation album was released.
Memories of Africa
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: September 2023

Memories of Africa: Home and Abroad in the United States suggests a “new lens” for viewing African diaspora studies, in this case, through the experiences of African memoirists who live in the United States. The book shows how African diaspora memoirs beautifully and grippingly depict the experiences of African migrants over time through political, social, and cultural spheres. In reading African diaspora memoirs from the transatlantic slave trade period to the present, a reader can understand the complexity of the African migrant legacy and evolution.
(Shifting) Space and (Fixed) Crossroads
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: September 2023

African migration and resettlement can be examined within a frame composed of the rich history of mobility, physical shifts, and epistemological reconfiguration supporting the idea of the Diaspora as “home away from home,” considering how this weighs on African migrants and their relationship with Africa as the motherland. Diaspora is often used to label migrant settlers in new destinations who raise new generations while maintaining ties with their homeland. This chapter explores how the realities of host spaces —either hostile or hospitable spaces — and the lived experiences of migrants instigate reconsideration of images where Africa is dominant. To achieve this, it approaches the Diaspora as a midpoint between lived spaces and ideal spaces, a Third Space where African migrants tactically re-negotiate their identities.
Culture and Cultural Politics in Cherno Njie’s Sweat Is Invisible in the Rain
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: September 2023

Over the years, a new crop of writers and thinkers have engaged in discussions and debates on the concept of culture and cultural politics in a diaspora. These writers focus on the worrisome living conditions in their country and the experience of not belonging in their host country. Consciously and consistently, they work to retain their ties to their homeland. One of such writers is Cherno Njie, whose work, Sweat is Invisible in the Rain, is discussed in this chapter. This chapter explores some of the themes covered in the memoir, such as freedom and culture in The Gambia, the varying politics of home, diaspora, cultural politics and adaptation, Afropolitan ideals, as well as the role of migrants in development and peace-making in their natal homes, diasporic communities, and their position in global affairs.
The Representation of Tradition and Modernity in Emmanuel Babatunde’s Kelebogile
Authors: Falola Toyin
Published: September 2023

Tradition and modernity are part of the social and cultural transformations that occur from one historical phase to the next. There is tradition in modernity, and there is an equally modern presence in tradition; cultural features are forms or materials of tradition that have been maintained, preserved, and taught to groups of people in a social group or community. This chapter discusses how the representations of tradition and modernity have been contextualized in Emmanuel Babatunde’s Kelebogile and how modernity has been symbolically placed. It explores themes such as: names, marriage, and childbearing as symbols of identity; traditional beliefs such as life after death and reincarnation; home and family as components of tradition; language as the bedrock of tradition; traditional medicine and system of healing; and the projection of tradition in modernity.
“There’s more to the gay experience than can be chronicled in 36 pages”
Authors: Utell Janine
Published: September 2023

This chapter tells the story of Howard Cruse’s editorship of Gay Comix. Cruse was invited by Denis Kitchen of Kitchen Sink Press, an important underground comix publisher, to edit the new anthology series. The chapter draws on archival material from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center.
How They Get Clothing
Authors: Minehan Thomas
Published: September 2023

This chapter shows how inadequate social supports are that provide needle and thread to repair unrepairable tatters. Finding clothes and shoes is even more difficult than accessing adequate food. And yet, “Transients, considering their means, are generous.” Here we learn how young tramps help each other to cover themselves, including tactics for creative layering, well-timed stealing, andbegging.
Where They Sleep
Authors: Minehan Thomas
Published: September 2023

The challenges of finding safe places to sleep, against the cold and infestations: “Any thicket, any grove along the railroad track may be a burrow for a boy, a moll, or a bum,” and yet, “in the squeezing-in process, child tramps are usually squeezed out.”
Prestige Standards
Authors: Minehan Thomas
Published: September 2023

Physical fighting and the power of might. Sheer struggle for survival depends upon endurance but also savvy, including the ability to lie effectively: “As American life rewards the nervy sales promoter who forces his way into a house and his product upon a nation, so transient life rewards the boy or girl with plenty of brass.” Lying, says Minehan, “cements friends and softens enemies.”
Their Tribal Life
Authors: Minehan Thomas
Published: September 2023

Consistent with the 1930s vogue of turning the anthropological lens homeward, Minehan analyses the structure of young hobohemia as a subculture. Ultimately revealing about tramp folkways, power, protection, and stability in constant flux. Shows how the young hoboes entertain each other, work together and withdivided tasks, how leaders emerge, and how they influence members to be fair.
Conclusions
Authors: Minehan Thomas
Published: September 2023

Minehan concludes by unequivocally protesting the dreadful excuses used to justify Westward expansion, worker exploitation, and selective awareness in relief efforts. What we call ‘grit’ and justify as character-building for the young is oppressive and cruel: “I, who have lived with the child tramps, eaten with them, slept with them, studied them for two years, find little that is wholesome and nothing that is permanently good. It is encouraging, I admit, but not surprising to learn that the child tramps, left to themselves and living as outcasts of society, develop rules and regulations, elect leaders, and enforce their punishmentswithout the aid of elders.”
Introduction
Authors: Bunn Mike , Williams Clay
Published: September 2023

The book’s introduction sets the stage for the drama by narrating the specific moment when state-appointed commissioners located the spot that would serve as permanent capital of Mississippi on the bluffs of the Pearl River in future Jackson. As they make this discovery, the two commissioners think back on the history of the previous few decades and the steps it took to remove European colonial powers, set up a territorial government and eventually become a state.
War on the Frontier
Authors: Bunn Mike , Williams Clay
Published: September 2023

No other event impacted the Mississippi Territory more than the interconnected Creek War and War of 1812. The results of these conflicts forever altered the political and economic landscape in the Territory and did more than all the previous activity to pave the way for statehood. Although most of the actions of these conflicts took place in the present-day state of Alabama, their impact dramatically shaped the course of future Mississippi, therefore deserving a detailed examination. These battles produced horrific combat, spectacular displays of courage and leadership, and devastated a powerful Native nation. In order to understand their consequences, it is important to grasp how and why the Creek War occurred, its relationship with the larger War of 1812, an understanding of the battles and campaigns themselves, and how both impacted the Mississippi Territory.
Twentieth Star on the American Flag
Authors: Bunn Mike , Williams Clay
Published: September 2023

Mississippi’s entrance into the American union as the twentieth state is a landmark event in its history and one of the defining events of the roughly forty-year period under discussion. While much of the story of the Mississippi Territory’s development can be understood as preparatory to that milestone goal, competing visions of how could it could best be achieved made Mississippi’s road toward statehood a sometimes contentious and at times divisive issue. Sectional rivalries, uneven regional paces of development, and international intrigue all became major factors in determining where and when the borders of the state as we know it today were placed.
Nurturing Mind and Spirit
Authors: Bunn Mike , Williams Clay
Published: September 2023

Opportunities for learning and worship were fundamental to the stability and nurturance of early Mississippi society. The ways these endeavors were undertaken reveal important details about the hopes, dreams, and worldview of those who inhabited the state during its developmental era, as well as something of the wherewithal of its citizens to create institutions they believed important to civilize society. The slow growth of schools, churches, and civic institutions therefore helps us understand the raw frontier in which Mississippi emerged and the remarkable transformation of the few decades between its founding and its antebellum maturity.
Introduction
Authors: Fenimore Wanda Little
Published: September 2023

The Introduction presents an account of Plessy v. Ferguson and manifestations of the legal precedent for separate-but-equal. In the decades before Brown v. Board of Education, Charles Hamilton Houston and the NAACP considered legal strategies to reverse Plessy. While a number of scholarly works detail the politico-legal dimensions of Brown and its role in the Black Freedom Struggle, scant attention has been paid to the rhetorical efforts of white allies like Elizabeth and Waties Waring. The Warings publicly opposed segregation in a repressive rhetorical culture that silenced dissent. Innovative textual recovery methods such as reconstructing speeches through digital surrogates remedies the absence of full-text manuscripts and permits a fuller account of the public conversation surrounding segregation. The rhetorical history of Brown dispels the notion that the decision was inevitable.
The Year of Decision
Authors: Fenimore Wanda Little
Published: September 2023

Chapter 6 examines Henderson v. United States, McLaurin v. Oklahoma, and Sweatt v. Painter. While the Supreme Court inched closer when deciding the trio of cases, it balked at reversing Plessy. After success with Charles Hamilton Houston’s equalization strategy, the time had come for the NAACP to build on its victories in equalization cases and challenge segregation outright. The remainder of Chapter 6 accounts for local organizing in Clarendon County to secure plaintiffs for a second lawsuit against the school board, except this time, the parents wanted more than bus transportation. The Warings continued to deliver speeches that constituted white supremacy as a disease, denounced gradualism, and called for the force of federal law to cure the South. At the same time, newly-inaugurated Governor James F. Byrnes developed a preparedness plan to defend segregation, including a massive school equalization project funded by a three percent sales tax.
The Day Dreamed and Prayed Would Arrive Has Come
Authors: Fenimore Wanda Little
Published: September 2023

On May 28, 1951, Judge Waring and two other judges presided over Briggs v. Elliott, the first case in the United States to challenge the constitutionality of legally-mandated segregated public schools. The parent-plaintiffs lost in a 2-1 ruling. After Judge Waring retired in 1952, he delivered five speeches that exhorted Black citizens to refuse the new “equalized,” but still segregated schools. In Clarendon County, the parent-plaintiffs had to sustain themselves as the Briggs case meandered from federal district court to the Supreme Court and back again. The Supreme Court noted jurisdiction on June 9, 1952, then consolidated four cases with Briggs: Brown v. Board of Education from Kansas, Davis v. County School Board from Virginia, Gebhart v. Belton from Delaware, and Bolling v. Sharpe from the District of Columbia. The Justices heard oral argument in 1952, but were unable to reach a decision, so scheduled additional oral argument in 1953.
Conclusion
Authors: Fenimore Wanda Little
Published: September 2023

Elizabeth and Waties Waring embarked on a rhetorical campaign to expose the incongruity between the American Creed and second-class citizenship for African-American people. They circulated the responses to their speeches to encourage other people to publicly oppose white supremacy. In response, they endured harassing phone calls, mail, and media coverage and in turn, could be just as contentious, rigid, and critical. In sum, their privileged status as well-to-do white people permitted the Warings to address Black and white audiences and disseminate their message across the United States to an even larger audience. Their public address supported the school segregation case from Clarendon County. Textual recovery of their speeches broadens our knowledge of Brown v. Board of Education and situates the decision as more than a legal victory. Despite their perseverance, the Warings’ efforts are little-known or if acknowledged, attributed to a quest for revenge against white Southerners.
A Slow, Calculated Lynching
Authors: Anderson Devery S.
Published: September 2023

In the years following Brown v. Board of Education, countless Black citizens endured violent resistance and even death while fighting for their constitutional rights. One of those citizens, Clyde Kennard (1927–1963), a Korean War veteran and civil rights leader from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, attempted repeatedly to enroll at the all-white Mississippi Southern College—now the University of Southern Mississippi—in the late 1950s. This book tells the story of a man who paid the ultimate price for trying to attend a white college during Jim Crow. Rather than facing conventional vigilantes, he stood opposed to the governor, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, and other high-ranking entities willing to stop at nothing to deny his dreams. The book examines the relentless subterfuge against Kennard, including the cruelly successful attempts to frame him—once for a misdemeanor and then for a felony. This second conviction resulted in a sentence of seven years hard labor at Mississippi State Penitentiary, forever disqualifying him from attending a state-sponsored school. While imprisoned, he developed cancer, was denied care, then sadly died six months after the governor commuted his sentence. In this prolonged lynching, Clyde Kennard was robbed of his ambitions and ultimately his life, but his final days and legacy reject the notion that he was powerless. The book highlights the resolve of friends and fellow activists to posthumously restore his name. Those who fought against him, and later for him, link a story of betrayal and redemption, chronicling the worst and best in southern race relations. The redemption was not only a symbolic one for Kennard but proved healing for the entire state. He was gone, but countless others still benefit from Kennard's legacy and the biracial, bipartisan effort he inspired.
“To Spy On The Enemy”
Authors: Anderson Devery S.
Published: September 2023

This chapter elaborates on the attempts to maintain segregation in Mississippi. It cites that the Sovereignty Commission was already investigating Clyde Kennard for two and a half years even before Governor J.P. Coleman's instruction. The commission of FBI agent Zack Van Landingham involved unearthing anything he could find that might be used to keep Kennard out of Mississippi Southern College without having to reveal its real reason, which was Kennard's race. The chapter mentions that the Sovereignty Commission and Citizens' Council felt Black conservatives hoping to preserve segregation were a godsend. The chapter notes that Citizens' Council's head Dudley Conner needed Kennard to leave Hattiesburg and never return, referencing his preference to use economic pressure.
“Every Semblance Of Innocence”
Authors: Anderson Devery S.
Published: September 2023

This chapter provides a further overview of the trial of Clyde Kennard. It elaborates on the testimonies of trial witnesses. The final defense witness was Kennard himself, who testified on his behalf. While there is always a risk to putting the defendant on the stand, it is possible that in this case, the defense realized that in trying a Black client before an all-white jury, they had nothing to lose. After the day-long trial, Johnny Lee Roberts knew the full truth behind the alleged theft and why Kennard came to be accused. The chapter cites that Mississippi justice prevailed once again while a Black defendant insisting on his rights made the line between a lynch mob's noose and a jury's verdict blurry.
Introduction
Authors: Lechuga Michael
Published: September 2023

The opening chapter of Visions of Invasion explains both how and why the alien invader became a central figure in U.S. popular culture. The alien begins as a political figure in the early settler colonial U.S., imagined as a threat to the newly formed nation. Since then, the alien persona has become associated both with migrants to the United States and with science fiction tales of extraterrestrial invasion. This chapter defines the concepts of assemblage theory and rhetorical materialism that will frame the discussion of “alien-making” throughout the book. Alien-making is a rhetorical process that relies on manufacturing technologies of visibility, which, along with violent political discourses, subject migrants as alien invaders to fulfill the settler colonial fantasy of imminent threat from abroad. I contend that this process is not limited to Hollywood, but is an integral part of U.S. anti-migrant policy.
The War of the Worlds and Alien Making
Authors: Lechuga Michael
Published: September 2023

Chapter One of Visions of Invasion considers how the reemerging narrative found within The War of the Worlds resurfaces settler colonial anxieties about the threat of foreign invasion. H. G. Wells’ story accounts for the relationship between extraterrestrial fiction and coloniality; this chapter describes this relationship and its influence on U.S. film. Cinematic alienhood is exemplary of settler narrative production, which requires a concomitant erasure of the Indigenous peoples paired with the “nativizing” of the settler persona. A study of the development of alien cinema technologies uncovers how they mobilize settler colonial consciousness through a narrative reproduction of settler logic that assembles the ever-evolving technologies, images, and discourses of settler nationalism. By connecting various examples of extraterrestrial settler colonial narratives—including the Alien and Star Wars franchises—this chapter articulates how the production of an alien subject redistributes the narratives of settlement and invasion to cast migrants as alien invaders.
Character Studies
Authors: Abate Michelle Ann
Published: September 2023

In the introduction, Michelle Ann Abate establishes the widespread success of Peanuts, which inevitably lead to the characters appearing in mediums beyond the newspaper: Emmy award-winning television specials, an off-Broadway musical, radio, and myriad material goods ranging from toys to cookbooks to beauty products. The commercial success of Schulz’s work was met with critical success, too—decades of work and nearly 18,000 comic strips prove Schulz’s longstanding dedication to his beloved comics. Curiously, despite the beloved series’ longevity and success, the critical interest in Peanuts has been small, albeit growing. Abate seeks to add to the burgeoning world of Peanuts studies through her varied essays, which are briefly outlined in this introduction.
“Sometimes my Hand Shakes so Much I Have to Hold my Wrist to Draw”
Authors: Abate Michelle Ann
Published: September 2023

The character studies that comprise Blockheads, Beagles, and Sweet Babboos begin, quite appropriately, with the character behind it all, Charles M. Schulz himself. While countless individuals know the cartoonist’s tremendous commercial success and ongoing cultural impact, most do not know that he struggled with a health condition for the final two decades of his life: essential tremor (ET), a neurological disorder that causes parts of the body to shake uncontrollably. First diagnosed in 1981, Schulz’s essential tremor is visible in his cartooning. In many comics, there is a discernable waviness to his lines. As the cartoonist aged and the condition worsened, this feature became more pronounced. This opening chapter reexamines the life and career of Charles M. Schulz by moving his possession of ET from the background to the forefront of consideration. For more than half of its run, Peanuts was not only drawn by an artist with an impairment, but this condition is also a highly visible aspect of his cartooning. Accordingly, this chapter explores both the importance and the implications of viewing Charles M. Schulz through the context of essential tremor. Doing so yields new critical insights about the composition as well as the aesthetics of Peanuts. At the same time, it adds to ongoing discussions about disability in comics.