Thesis

A thesis in this department is an extended discussion, with a central argument, based on complex analysis of your original research and includes a review of the literature on your topic as well as a historical framework.

With the approval of your committee chair, you enroll in AMST 598 in your final semester of coursework. You begin by developing a thesis proposal that discusses how you plan to approach your topic and your research. You then meet with your committee for their feedback and guidance regarding your research and writing plan. Once you have completed your research, you submit drafts of each chapter to your committee chair for their review and circulation to the other two members. Chapters are then revised in response to faculty critique and formatted to University guidelines for theses (the Grad Studies office publishes these guidelines).

Once your committee has approved the final draft, your thesis is submitted to the University thesis reader for evaluation of compliance with University standards. Theses in American Studies are typically at least 80 pages in length and organized into at least three chapters. You can find a listing of titles of completed theses in American Studies below. For more information about each of them, please see our Thesis Abstracts page.

 

COMPLETED THESES AUTHORS AND TOPICS BY YEAR

Year	Author	Thesis Topic
2024	Samantha Drake	The Girl Next Door: The Sexualization and Representation of Women in Playboy Magazine over Three Cultural Moments in Time
2023	Shannon Anderson*	Remembering the Bernals: Untangling the Relationship Between Race, Space, and Public Memory in Fullerton, California
2022	Jonathan Garcia	"Migrant Cages: "Illegal Bodies," Enforced Borders, and the War to Presever a White America
2021	Brandon Rocke	Resorting to Health: Southern California as Cure and Destination, 1860-1920
2021	Monica Morales-Garcia	Being in Excess: An Auto-Ethnography of Work, Leisure, and Fashion
2020	Christina Brown	Shaping the Story: The Poetry, Television, and Dance of the #MeToo Movement
2020	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
2017	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
2014	Sukeinah Kassir	Missions in Miniature: Cultural Constructions of California's Mission Past
2014	Amelia (Amy) Kremer *	Woods, Wolves, and Falcons: The Nature Writing of Jean Craighead George
2014	Ekaterina (Katya) Kuzmina	Russians in Post-Cold War American Films: Still a Foe or a Friend-To-Be? Looking for a Cultural "Reset" Button
2014	Casey Ratto	From the Gunslinger to the Road Warrior: The Post-Apocalyptic and the Western in Literature, Film, and Video Games
2014	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
2013	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
2012	Jason Cannon	George Orwell's Animal Farm in the Post-Soviet Union Era
2012	Patrick Covert	Politicizing the Mailbox: Examining the Morals, Men, and Motivation within Bob Mizer's Physique Pictorial
2012	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
2011	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
2009	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
2008	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
2007	Danielle Marie DiPirro	From Biting The Apple to Breaking the Spell: Analyzing Love in the Disney Princess Collection
2007	Sarah Gillen	Hip Hop According to the Adolescents of the Inland Empire
2007	Megan Jensen	This Land Is Our Land Too: Rural Women and the 1980s Farm Crisis
2007	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
2005	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
2004	Akane Shinohara	The World of Urban Native Americans: People, Community, and Challenges for Cultural Survival in Contemporary Southern California
2004	Lydia Ann Cristea	Romanians and the American Dream: Myth and Reality in Contemporary Immigrant Experience
2004	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
2002	Bradley Parsons	The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Postmodern Narratives in Popular Culture
2001	Leslie Boullon	Surf Narratives: California Dreamin' on a New Frontier
2001	Trista O'Connell	Seductress, White Slave, or New Woman: Competing Images of Prostitution and Womanhood in American Illustrations and Paintings, 1830-1920
2001	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
2000	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
1998	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
1997	Barbara Anne Campbell	Underneath This Prim Exterior: The Passion of Aimee Semple McPherson and the Construction of Public Self in Women's Ministry
1997	Denise J. Flynn	Smoking Heads: Decoding Cigarette Advertisements, 1936-1996
1997	Julie Ann Omelich	Responding to 'Stories That Had to Be Told': The Popular Reception of Journalist, Author, and Television Heroine Laura Ingalls Wilder
1997	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
1992	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
1984	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
1980	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