Scholarship & Research
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Item American fantasies and imagined histories: ethnic play and settler colonialism in twentieth-century Wyoming(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2021) Powers, Andrea Shawn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Susan KollinAmerican Fantasies and Imagined Histories examines three case studies unified through ethnic play, the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy, geographical location, and time period. This project employs an interdisplinary approach that combines original archival historical research, and literary and cultural analysis while drawing on Indigenous and Black frameworks. In twentieth-century Wyoming, redface and blackface filled Native and Black cultural absences maintaining the structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy. At the same time, this dissertation examines settler colonialism, slavery, and white supremacy in relation to the experiences of Black and Native peoples. This study shows how ethnic play both maintains and disrupts the race and gender hierarchies created by the interrelated structures of settler colonialism and white supremacy.Item Predilection, progress and prejudice: coon songs and the construction of race in nineteenth century American culture(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2019) Matzinger, Ryan Joseph; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Rydell; Billy Smith (co-chair)This is a study about the history of American culture and the construction of race through the musical idiom of coon songs. It is an examination of the jazz narrative and the role of blackface minstrelsy and coon songs, as they directly relate to the jazz tradition and the construction of race in nineteenth-century America. The modes of inquiry utilized are from the American Studies methodology and resulted in a more thorough, in-depth understanding of the construction of American race ideology, with a more complete, holistic perception of the jazz narrative. In a methodology that blends the excavation of less standard resources and research techniques that approach American history from further outside the chronological strictures and modes of conventional historical inquiry, the American Studies jazz-scholar-musician is compelled to live by, creatively inquire about, and more thoroughly comprehend the rationally intuitive values of jazz music and cultural literacy. In this study of race construction, coon songs, and the American jazz narrative as regarded from a revised conventional modality of jazz as American Studies, and American Studies as jazz, what's really on the line is the way American culture cultivates and also demolishes social and racial hierarchies through musical idioms.Item Summer camp's color line: racialized landscapes and the struggle for integration, 1890-1950(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2017) Hardin, Amanda Suzanne; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy SmithThough seldom discussed in the larger struggle for African American equality, the ideological and physical exclusion of people of color from outdoor spaces reveals the pervasive, and insidiously widespread nature of white supremacy in the United States. The common historical narrative of the American outdoors focuses on prominent white male figures, such as John Muir or Theodore Roosevelt. This study interrogates the largely unexamined intersections of race and outdoor recreation during the first half of the twentieth century through examining the archival records of three integration-focused summer camps: the Union Settlement Association, the Wiltwyck School for Boys, and Camp Atwater. Analysis of these archives complicates the historiographical concept of 'outdoor recreation' by revealing its connection with white supremacist mentalities and demonstrating the ways in which some people resisted the black-white, urban-nature binary that emerged during this ea. The stories of these camps illuminate more diverse perspectives about the outdoors, and add to an underdeveloped body of research on nonwhite perspectives about recreating in 'natural' environments. By centering these marginalized voices, this scholarship will contribute to future research about similar topics.Item The erosion of the racial frontier: settler colonialism and the history of black Montana, 1880-1930(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2018) Wood, Anthony William; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mark FiegeFrom 1880-1910, Montana was home to one of the most vibrant and diverse African American communities in the Rocky Mountain West. By the onset of World War II, however, the black population had fallen by over fifty percent, and Montana was well on its way to being the least black state in the US by the twenty-first century. In The Erosion of the Racial Frontier, I argue that scholars of African American studies and the American West must consider the sedimented afterlife of US settler colonialism if those fields are to articulate a distinctly western narrative of African American history. My approach draws on colonial and settler colonial theories to examine the history of African Americans in Montana from 1880-1930. As a non-indigenous, non-white, community of color--or what Lorenzo Veracini would call 'subaltern exogenous others'--black westerners fall into an uncertain space in settler colonial theory. As an ongoing structure, settler colonialism continues after the violent appropriation of Indigenous lands appears to culminate. The thesis of The Erosion of the Racial Frontier is two-fold: The logic of settlement together with the logic of anti-blackness created distinctly western categories of racial exclusion that is evident in the archive of black Montana. This western, colonial racism acted as an erosive force across the state, targeting the stability and place identity of western black communities. Moreover, the society that developed in tandem with colonial erosion necessarily continues to live with the sedimented afterlife of settler colonialism. As such, the history of Black Montana can be understood as individual and collective experiences of thousands of black Montanans struggling against and subverting the settler colonial project in western North America.Item Emerging identity in Afro-American women's novels, 1892-1937(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1989) Goetz, Catherine CoughlinItem The relevance of African American singing games to Xhosa children in South Africa : a qualitative study(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Education, Health & Human Development, 2009) Burns, Carolyn Diane; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Priscilla Lund; Douglas Bartholomew (co-chair)In post-apartheid South Africa there has been a strong emphasis on teaching traditional music in the schools. Previously the music was greatly influenced by Western European and English systems. New standards were developed in the Arts and Culture Curriculum 2005. The purpose of this study was to explore how children in South Africa could be taught African American singing games, their perception and preferences, and how these songs would meet the new standards. A qualitative study was conducted with 69 Xhosa children in grades five and six at Good Shepherd Primary School in Grahamstown, South Africa. The learners were introduced to three African American singing games of which they had no prior knowledge. The songs were taught in the South African traditional manner; i.e., singing and moving simultaneously. Interviews were subsequently conducted with 47 learners and 5 families. The primary school teachers also provided information informally. The learners related their knowledge of African American singing games compared to their traditional Xhosa singing games and other music. They recognized a relationship between African American slavery and the apartheid era. A learner's preference of song was directly related to his previous experience with a Xhosa children's song or traditional music used for rites and rituals. Interviews with the teachers and parents were very positive indicators that the African American singing games should be included in the curriculum. Parents remembered and sang Freedom Songs and they indicated the need for their children to learn about other African cultures. The outcome of this study may provide South African teachers with materials to introduce African American folk music as an applicable source of multicultural music with African origins. The study suggests successful ways in which we teach multicultural music.Item African American suffering and suicide under slavery(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2006) Kneeland, Linda Kay; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Robert Rydell.While the suffering of slaves in the antebellum American South is common knowledge, what is not so commonly known is the suicide rate among those slaves. How did slaves respond to the suffering they were forced to undergo? While some slaves did choose suicide, the rates appear to be surprisingly low. This is consistent with suicide rates for Africa and for people of African descent living in other areas of the world, and further supports the theory that a low suicide rate is an element of African culture. The overwhelming majority of African-American slaves chose to deal with their suffering through a variety of means, including resistance, external compliance and spirituality. When slaves did resort to suicide, it was apparently often in response to a deterioration in their circumstances or unfulfilled expectations. When the slaves developed dialog to address their suffering on an ideological level, they frequently did so through religious channels.