American Studies PhD Dissertations


2025

  • Ozgun Basmaz, "Hollywood/Holivut: Transnational American Cinema and the Making of Turkish Modernity"
  • Araba Dennis, “Carceral Proximity and American Prison Culture”
  • Yu Dou, “Envisioning Inclusion in the Heartland: Chinese Laborers, Merchants, and Students in the Midwest United States, 1880s-1910s”
  • Judy Fisher, "German Indianthusiasm and Settler Colonialism: Pernicious Continuities"

2024

  • Veronica Coates Ahmed, “Literary Kinship: An Examination of Black Women's Networks of Literary Activity, Community, and Activism as Practices of Restoration and Healing in the 20th and 21st Centuries”
  • Kaylah Marielle Morgan, “Conjure, Care, Calls, and Cauls: Histories of Black Folk Health Beliefs in Black Women's Literature”
  • Jehan Mullin, “Exploding the Frame: Feminism, Art, and Authenticity in Arab America.”
  • Cait Parker, "Don't Let Them Bury Us": Lesbian Activism in the Genealogy of the Prison Abolition Movement

2023

  • Jolivette Jessica Anderson-Douoning, “Mrs. Goldleana’s Ledger: Louisiana Learning in Shreveport’s Hollywood Neighborhood on Ledbetter Street 1945-1975”
  • Rachel E Bonini, “Imagineered Imperial Tourism: Disney & US Empire in Hawai'I”
  • Allison Paige Frazier, “Drag Cuisines: The Queer Ontology of Veganism”
  • Maria A Mears, “Mascots, Monuments, and Memorialization: The Collective Memory of Chief Illiniwek”
  • Ryan Schnurr, “Where There's Smoke: Fire Narratives from the Long American Century”

2022

  • Malik Raymond, "Reverence, Variance, Deviance, and Convergence in Black Women's Eco-Spiritualities"
  • Ariel D Smith, “Black Food Trucks Matter: A Qualitative Study Examining The (Mis)Representation, Underestimation, and Contribution of Black Entrepreneurs in the Food Truck Industry”
  • Melvin Earl Villaver, Jr, “Harmonic Resurgence: Reclaiming the Godino Twins’ Journey Through Hip Hop”
  • Megan M Williams, “Vibrational Reprieves: Black Women’s Soul Food Narratives as Aesthetic sites of Erotic and Sexual Agency”