M.A. Theses Completed in the Department of American Studies
California State University, Fullerton

Completed Theses Authors and Topics by Year

Year	Author	Thesis Topic
2020	Christina Brown	Shaping the Story: The Poetry, Television, and Dance of the #MeToo Movement
	Alex Foy	"Your Boy, Jim": The Diary and Letters of a Soldier in World War I
2017	Susan Mitchell	The Shadows of Assimilation: Narratives and Legacies of the Carlisle Indian Boarding School, 1879-1918
	Jasmin Gomez	Reel Latinas, Reel Food: Unpacking Latina's' Food Narratives
2016	Rachel Schiff	Jewish Subcultures Online: Outreach, Dating, and Marginalized Communities
2015	Jason Ward	The Privatized City: Finding Space for the Working Poor in Orange County
2014	Patrick Heyer	Revolution of Spirit: Henry George, Leo Tolstoy, and the Land Value Tax
	Sukeinah Kassir	Missions in Miniature: Cultural Constructions of California's Mission Past
	Amelia (Amy) Kremer *	Woods, Wolves, and Falcons: The Nature Writing of Jean Craighead George
	Ekaterina (Katya) Kuzmina	Russians in Post-Cold War American Films: Still a Foe or a Friend-To-Be? Looking for a Cultural "Reset" Button
	Casey Ratto	From the Gunslinger to the Road Warrior: The Post-Apocalyptic and the Western in Literature, Film, and Video Games
	Jose Zamora	Ser Papa: The Experiences and Masculinities of Young Chicano Fathers
2013	Yvonne England	A Punk Practice: The Development of Punk Political Activism, 1979-2000
	Nathan Kuntz	I Like, Therefore I Am: Constructing Identity and Community on Facebook
2012	Ian Barraza *	Lend Me Your Eyes: Attending to Deaf Culture and the Maneuverability of Identity
	Jason Cannon	George Orwell's Animal Farm in the Post-Soviet Union Era
	Patrick Covert	Politicizing the Mailbox: Examining the Morals, Men, and Motivation within Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial
	Jaclyn Mahoney	Myths of Modern Maternity: Negotiating Meaning in the Development of Obstetric Culture in Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Los Angeles
2011	Heather Andrews	"With His Head in the Lion's Mouth”: James Baldwin Interrogates American Innocence and Identity
	Joy Shannon	The First Counterculture Celebrity: Oscar Wilde's 1882 North American Tour
2009	Matthew Glassman	“The Ball Don’t Lie”: Cultural Tension and the Commodification of Hip-Hop Authenticity in the 1990s NBA
	Steve Manseau *	Roll, Truck, Roll: A Cultural Appreciation of Trucker Music, America's Last Worksong Canon (Winner of the 2010 Giles Brown Outstanding Thesis Award)
2008	Melanie Pyles	In This World But Not of This World: Pentecostal Churchgoers Negotiate the Spiritual, Political, and Financial Aspects of Contemporary Life in Orange County
	Eri Tsuji	“Six Eyes Gazing at the Ghosts in the Dark”: Three Novelists' Explorations into the Memories of the Vietnam War
2007	Brenda Beza	El mundo de lotería: Transnational Identity in Play
	Danielle Marie DiPirro	From Biting The Apple to Breaking the Spell: Analyzing Love in the Disney Princess Collection
	Sarah Gillen	Hip Hop According to the Adolescents of the Inland Empire
	Megan Jensen	This Land Is Our Land Too: Rural Women and the 1980s Farm Crisis
	Matthew Knowlton	Military Crackdown: Policing the Boundaries of Race, Gender, and Same-Sex Relations in Oceanside, California, 1974-1976
2005	Kristin Hargrove	Sunpist: Exploring the Alienation Resulting from Orange County 's Post-World War II Development
	Stephanie Kolberg	Marketing the Middle Landscape in Irvine , California : The Image of a Master-Planned Community and the Pursuit of the Suburban Ideal, 1959-2005
2004	Jeff Auer	Glitter Rock: Sex, Drugs, and Gender in American Youth During the 1970's
	Akane Shinohara	The World of Urban Native Americans: People, Community, and Challenges for Cultural Survival in Contemporary Southern California
	Lydia Ann Cristea	Romanians and the American Dream: Myth and Reality in Contemporary Immigrant Experience
	Phillip Scott	The Ford Mustang and the Chevrolet Corvette: Icons in American Culture
2002	Cynthia Bruns	Into the Wilderness: The Rise and Decline of Backpacking in America, 1965-1977
	Bradley Parsons	The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Postmodern Narratives in Popular Culture
2001	Leslie Boullon	Surf Narratives: California Dreamin' on a New Frontier
	Trista O'Connell	Seductress, White Slave, or New Woman: Competing Images of Prostitution and Womanhood in American Illustrations and Paintings, 1830-1920
	Brenda Yecke	In and Out of Bounds: The Representation of Women in Sports Illustrated, 1954-1999
2000	Amy Lefkowitz	Packaging Religion: Exploring the Boundaries of Religion and Spirituality in Contemporary Popular Media
	Donald Langford	Good Vibrations, Southern California Surf Culture
1999	Annette M. Bagley	Rural Lessons in Multicultural Education: An Ethnographic Study of a Small Town's Public Schools
1998	Jon Legree	Icarus in America: The Pilot in American Culture
	Eric C. Wat	In No One's Shadows: A History of Organizing among Gay Asian Men in Los Angeles in the Pre-AIDS Years
1997	Kenneth Delbert Boteler	Love, Marriage, and Death: A Study of Change in the Vietnamese and American Cultures
	Barbara Anne Campbell	Underneath This Prim Exterior: The Passion of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Construction of Public Self in Women's Ministry
	Denise J. Flynn	Smoking Heads: Decoding Cigarette Advertisements, 1936-1996
	Julie Ann Omelich	Responding to 'Stories That Had to Be Told': The Popular Reception of Journalist, Author, and Television Heroine Laura Ingalls Wilder
	Arlene J. Ring *	The Coyote: An American Character (Canis Latrans)
1996	Christopher York	Bat Signals: The Popular Construction of the Batman Myth
1995	Tracy Allison Smith	Uncovering a Sense of Place: The Interaction between Culture and Landscape in Santa Ana Canyon, Orange County, California
1994	Denise Nola-Faye Lowe	The Depiction of Single-Career Women in Network Situation Comedies, 1950-1994
1992	Marsha Gilpin Ehlers	The Film Depiction of America's Teachers, 1968-1983
	Suzanne Walter	The American Christmas: Tradition in Transition
1991	Mary Grant	Imagining Orange County: Gregory Benford, Science Fiction, and Cultural Criticism in a Southern California Community
1990	Roseanne Greenfield *	The Bolsa Chica Wetlands of Huntington Beach: The Changing Environment, Land Use Patterns, and Cultural Values of Its Inhabitants from 500 A.D. to the Present
1989	Brigitte E. Johnson	Elvis Presley: The Symbol of an Age
1988	Rose Hamilton-Gottlieb	Defending the Errand in the Nuclear Age: The American Civil Religion under Stress
1987	Denise Marie D'Amico	American Beauty Culture: Ethnography of a Cosmetics Department
1985	Kathryn Ruth Hamilton	Villains and Cultural Change: Aaron Burr and Victorian America
1984	Gabriele Gugetzer	Lesbianism in the American Expatriate Community in Paris in the 1920's: A Study
	Jessica Ruth Johnston	The Double Bind: 'Eat and Stay Thin': Food as a Condensed Cultural Symbol and the Overweight Stigma, 1890-1980
1983	Dana Thayer Duenzen	The Cultural Image of Women and Femininity in Sports
1982	Deborah Dawson Christner	The Romantic Ideal of the Artist in the Music Industry
1981	Chiharu Kawai	For Whom the Wedding Bells Toll: Methods of Mate Selection and Attitudes toward Marriage among College Females in Japan and in the United States
1980	Marlon Knopf Brown	The Deprogramming Controversy: A Struggle for Image
	Pamela Hunt Steinle	The American Marital Paradigm in Crisis, 1959-1979

* Received the Giles T. Brown Award for the Outstanding M.A. Thesis of the Year at CSU Fullerton