Caughey | Kelly | Lounsbury | Mintz | Paoletti | Parks | Sies | Struna | Conroy |GTAs

John L. Caughey's research involves the ethnographic, comparative investigation of contemporary cultures as systems of meaning. He has done field research in Micronesia, South Asia, and the U.S. (including field work with Old Order Mennonites, on a Psychiatric Ward in Philadelphia, with psychotherapists in Washington, D.C., with South Asians in America, and with Americans in South Asia). He is particularly interested in how contemporary individuals handle multiple cultural traditions including how they simultaneously or alternatively construct senses of self out of diverse cultural models of race, gender, ethnicity, and personality. His work on individuals and their cultures also includes ethnographic investigations of the cultural dimensions of imaginary experience (such as dreams, daydreams, memory, and media use).

Degrees:

Ph.D. Cultural Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania, 1970)
M.A. Cultural Anthropology (University of Pennsylvania, 1967)
B.A. English Literature (Harvard College, 1963)

• Cultures and Identities: A Life History Approach to the Study of American Cultures. Scholarly Resources Press: in press.
  
• "How to Teach Self-Ethnography." Tricks for Teaching Anthropology. Ed. Patricia Rice and David McCurdy. New York: Prentice Hall, 2000.
  
• "Personal Identity on Faanakkar." Pieces of the Personality Puzzle: Readings in Theory and Research. Ed. David C. Funder and D. Ozer. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1997. 377-382.
  
• "Imaginary Social Relationships." Media Journal: Reading and Writing About Popular Culture. Ed. Joseph Harris and Jay Rosen. Boston: Allyn and Bacon 1995. 121-146.
  
• "Gina As Steven: The Social and Cultural Dimensions of A Media Relationship." Visual Anthropology Review 10 (1994): 126-135.
  
• "Social Dimensions of Mental Imagery: An Anthropological Approach." Imagery: Current Perspectives. Ed. Joseph Shorr. New York: Plenum, 1989. 33-44.
  
• "On the Anthropology of America." Symbolizing America. Ed. Herve Varenne. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986. 229-50.
  
• Imaginary Social Worlds: A Cultural Approach. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984.
  
• "The Ethnography of Everyday Life: Theories and Methods for American Culture Studies." American Quarterly 34 (1982): 222-243.
  

Contemporary American Cultures (undergraduate)
Culture and Mental Disorders (undergraduate and graduate)
Imaginary Social Worlds (undergraduate and graduate)
South Asian/American Cultural Connections (undergraduate and graduate)
Ethnography and American Studies (graduate)
Life History Research in American Studies (graduate)

E-mail: jc29@umail.umd.edu

R. Gordon Kelly's research interests continue to center on two closely related issues in cultural studies. The first has to do with conceptualizing the factors, and their interrelationships, that both enable and constrain the production, distribution, selective transmission, and reception of literature, broadly conceived. Such a framework should be adequate theoretically, i.e. in terms of comprehensiveness and coherence, as well as empirically, i.e. consistent with the known particulars. The second issue has to do with the uses of literary works as evidence in the service of cultural analysis.

Degrees:

Ph.D. American Civilization (University of Iowa, 1970)
M.A. English & American Literature (Claremont Graduate School, 1962)
B.A. English (DePauw University, 1961)

• "Children's Literature" and "Historical Fiction" in Handbook of American Popular Culture, ed. M. Thomas Inge (Greenwood Press, 1988).
  
• Edited Children's Periodicals of the United States (Greenwood Press, 1984).
  
• Mystery Fiction and Modern Life. University Press of Mississippi, 1998.
  
• "Literary and Cultural Values in the Evaluation of Children's Literature." The Advocate 4 (Winter 1985): 84-100.
  
• "The Social Construction of Reality: Implications for Future Directions in American Studies." Prospects 8 (1984): 40-47.
  
• "Literature and the Historian." American Quarterly 26 (1974): 141-59.
  
• Mother Was a Lady: Self and Society in Selected American Children's Periodicals, 1865-1890. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974.
  

Growing Up American (undergraduate)
Literature and Society (undergraduate and graduate)
Introductory Seminar in American Studies (graduate)
Critics of American Culture (undergraduate)"

E-mail: rk12@umail.umd.edu

Myron Lounsbury is currently investigating "film culture" in New York City between 1940 and 1970: the practice of film theory and criticism in the context of urban institutions (movie theaters, museums and art galleries, college campuses, book stores, radio stations), where the reception of the motion picture intersected with the activities of European intellectual and surrealist artists, behavioral scientists, and the founders of cybernetics and information theory to contribute to the national debate regarding public taste and cultural literacy in the emerging era of television and mass communications. His current interests are informed by past research (the course of film reception in the decades of the genteel tradition, the post-World War I Hollywood film industry, the Great Depression between 1910 and 1940) and projected future research (the emergence of contemporary academic theorists who explore the implications for personal and collective identity in the era of the Internet and other manifestations of computerization). Throughout, he has been guided by a central question: what is the role of the public intellectual in redefining what constitutes community and communication in the context of innovations taking place within our media technology?

Degrees:

Ph.D. American Civilization (University of Pennsylvania, 1966)
M.A. American Civilization (University of Pennsylvania, 1962)
B.A. History (Duke University, 1961)

• The Progress and Poetry of the Movies: A Second Book of Film Criticism by Vachel Lindsay, Ed. Lanham, Maryland & London: Scarecrow Press. 1995.
  
• "'The Gathered Light': History, Criticism and the Rise of the American Film," Quarterly Review of Film Studies 5 (Winter 1980): 49-85.
  
• The Origins of American Film Criticism, 1909-1939. New York: Arno Press, 1973.
  
• "'Flashes of Lightning': The Moving Picture in the Progressive Era." Journal of Popular Culture 3 (Spring 1970): 769-97.
  

Culture and Communications, 1945-1970 (graduate)
Introduction to American Studies (graduate)
Site-Webs: The Cultures of Theory, 1985-1997 (graduate)

E-mail: ml36@umail.umd.edu

Lawrence E. Mintz's research is in American popular culture and American humor. He is particularly interested in television, standup comedy, popular literature, and theater (performance, popular entertainments). Some of his research emphasizes ethnicity in popular culture and humor. His current research deals with performance comedy (standup comedy, variety theater humor, performance art, humor in magic, juggling, circus, and other performance entertainments).

Degrees:

Ph.D. American Studies/English (Michigan State University, 1969)
M.A. English (Michigan State University, 1967)
B.A. English (University of South Carolina, 1966)

• "Unity and Diversity in American Humor." Humor: International Journal of Humor Research 12:3 (1999) 237-252.
  
• "In a Sense Abroad: The Image of Europe in Busch Gardens' The Old Country and Walt Disney World's World Showcase." Journal of Popular Culture 32:3 (Winter 1998) 47-58.
  
• "Humor and Ethnic Stereotypes in Vaudeville and Burlesque." MELUS 21:4 (Winter 1996) 20-28.
  
• "American Humor Looks at Family Values," in Peter Freese and Michael Porsche, eds., Popular Culture in the United States, Essen, Germany: Die Blaue Eule Verlag, 1994.
  
• Ethos and Pathos in Chaplin's City Lights, Adolphe Nysenholc, ed., Charles Chaplin: Approach to Semiotics: Approaches to Semiotics, Berlin, Mouton deGryter, 1989.
  
• Lawrence E, Mintz, ed., Humor in America, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1988.
  
• "The Standup Comedian as Social and Cultural Mediator." American Quarterly 37 (Spring 1985): 71-80.
  
• "Situation Comedy." TV Genres. Ed. Brian Rose. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1985. 105-129.
  
• "Devil and Angel: Philip Roth's Humor." Studies in American Jewish Literature 8 (Fall 1989): 154-67.
  

Critics of American Culture (undergraduate)
Humor in America (undergraduate)
Popular Culture in America (undergraduate and graduate)

E-mail: lm36@umail.umd.edu

Jo Paoletti's training is in apparel design and the history of textile and clothing, and she has spent about 25 years researching and writing about children's clothing in America. This has given way to an interest in how to do the best possible job of interdisciplinary education. How do we teach critical thinking? How do students best learn to do research? How do we make the best use of available technologies?

Degrees:

Ph.D. Textiles (University of Maryland, 1980)
M.S. Textiles (University of Rhode Island, 1976)
B.S. cum laude in Clothing Design (Syracuse University, 1971)

• "Using a Virtual Museum for Collaborative Exhibit Design in an Undergraduate Course." humanities.team@edu : Exploring Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities. Ed. James Inman. MLA in Press, 2001. (Co-author with Mary Sies and Virginia Jenkins)
  
• "The Value of Conversation in Teaching and Learning." Essays on Quality Learning. Ed. Stephen Selden. University of Maryland IBM-TQ Project, 1997.
  
• "The Gendering of Infants' and Toddlers' Clothing in America." The Material Culture of Gender/The Gender of Material Culture. Ed. Katharine Martinez and Kenneth Ames. (The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, 1997.)
  
• "The Children's Department." Men and Women: Dressing the Part. Ed. Claudia Brush Kidwell and Valerie Steele. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.
  
• "Clothing and Gender in American Children's Fashions, 1890-1920." Signs 13 (Autumn 1987): 136-143.
  

Diversity in American Culture (undergraduate)
Electronic Exhibits and Publication in American Studies (undergraduate)
Growing Up American (undergraduate)
Childhood in American Culture (undergraduate and graduate)
Fashion and Consumer Culture (undergraduate and graduate)
Historiography of Costume and Textiles (graduate)

Web Site: http://otal.umd.edu/~jpaolett
E-mail: jp4@umail.umd.edu

Sheri L. Parks' interests revolve around popular American aesthetics with a special focus on culture, family, and gender. In particular she is interested in the aesthetics of everyday experiences, including mass media and other popular culture artifacts. Dr. Parks' work in the field of popular mythologies is informed by content studies, aesthetic analysis, and ethnography. Dr. Parks co-hosts "Media Matters," a radio show featured on NPR-affiliated stations.

Degrees:

Ph.D. Communication Studies (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1985)
M.A. Communication Studies (University of Massachusetts-Amherst, 1983)
B.A. English and Radio, Television and Motion Pictures (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 1978)

• Lion Mother of the American Soul: The Black Maternal Figure in Popular Mythology. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, forthcoming.
  
• "Black Families and the Media." Managing Black/White Tensions at Home: Family Communication and Ethnic Cultural Diversity. Ed. T. Socha and R. Diggs. New York: Erlbaum, 1999.
  
• "Through Our Own Eyes." Black Film Review March 1995.
  
• "Ridicule as an Educational Corrective." Journal Of Educational Psychology 73 1981. 722-27.
  
• "In My Mother's House: Traditional Black Feminism in the PBS production of A Raisin in the Sun." Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. K. Laughlin and C. Schuler. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1995.
  
• "In My Mother's House: Black Feminist Aesthetics, Television and A Raisin in the Sun." Feminism and Theater. Ed. C. Schuler. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson, 1993.
  
• "Feminism in the Lives of Ordinary Women." Barnard College Occasional Papers. Fall 1990.
  
• "The Effect of Ridiculing a Television Model on Children's Imitation of the Model's Behavior." Human Communication Research 10 1983. 243-55.
  

Marginality and Popular Culture (graduate)
Black Mother and Popular Mythology (graduate)
Gender Roles and Media (undergraduate)
Family and Popular Culture (undergraduate)
Children and Television (undergraduate)

E-mail: sp10@umail.umd.edu

Mary Corbin Sies is Director of Graduate Studies and an associate professor in the department, an affiliate faculty member of the Women's Studies Department, and a member of the Historic Preservation faculty. Her research and teaching interests span material culture studies, planning history, architectural history, urban history, and cultural and social history of the U.S. in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is an authority on American suburbs from 1850 to the present, particularly planned, exclusive suburbs and the cultural landscapes, values, and lifeways established by their upper-middle class residents. She is also working on a history of the American Arts and Crafts Movement from the perspectives of consumers, and is interested in theorizing and studying issues of gender, space, and the domestic built environment. On a personal level, Professor Sies is very concerned with issues of professionalization and graduate study, especially with preparing students to compete for positions in academe and in various kinds of cultural resource management positions.

Degrees:

Ph.D. American Culture (University of Michigan, 1987)
M.A. American Culture (University of Michigan, 1977)
B.A. European History (Michigan State University, 1974)

• "Using a Virtual Museum for Collaborative Teaching, Research, and Service." With Jo Paoletti and Virginia Jenkins. Electronic Collaboration in the Humanities: Issues and Options. Ed. James A. Inman and Cheryl Reed. (forthcoming from Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.)
  
• The American Suburban Ideal: A Cultural Strategy for Modern Middle-Class Living, 1877-1917. (In final revisions for Temple University Press)
  
• Planning the American City Since 1900. Ed. Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001 (Second Printing).
  
• Planning the Twentieth-Century American City. Ed Mary Corbin Sies and Christopher Silver. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
  
• "George W. Maher's Planning and Architecture in Kenilworth, Illinois: An Inquiry into the Ideology of Arts and Crafts Design." The Substance of Style: Perspectives on the American Arts and Crafts Movement. Ed. Bert Denker. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1996. 415-445.
  
• "Toward a Performance Theory of the Suburban Ideal, 1877-1917." Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture IV. Ed. Thomas Carter and Bernard Herman. Columbia, Mo: University of Missouri Press, 1991. 197-207.
  
• "'God's Very Kingdom on the Earth': The Design Program for the American Suburban Home, 1877-1917." Modern Architecture in America: Visions and Revisions. Ed. Richard Guy Wilson and Sidney K. Robinson. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1991. 2-31.
  
• "The Domestic Mission of the Privileged American Suburban Homemaker, 1877-1917: A Reassessment." Making the American Home: Middle Class Women and Domestic Material Culture, 1840-1940. Ed. Pat Browne and Marilyn Ferris Motz. Bowling Green, OH: The Popular Press, 1988. 192-209.
  
• "The City Transformed: Nature, Technology, and the Suburban Ideal, 1877-1917." Journal of Urban History 14 (November 1987). 81-111.
  

American Suburbia (undergraduate)
Interpretation of Cultural Landscapes (graduate)
Material Culture Studies Theory (graduate)

E-mail: ms128@umail.umd.edu
Web Site: http://otal.umd.edu/~sies

Nancy L. Struna is a full professor in the department and an affiliate professor of Womenıs Studies and of History. Her research and teaching interests focus on social and cultural production in the Atlantic world. From her early work in the social history of sport and leisure, she has moved to exploring the making and transformation of ordinary life in the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. She is particularly interested in the construction of social practices and the meanings assigned to them by ordinary people and the ways in which such experiences affected social and power relations and cultural forms. Currently, she is doing research for a book on an institution that was central to the making of society and culture in the United States before the Civil War, the tavern. This work draws on county court, probate, and land records, in addition to literary sources, and examines changes in the dimensions of the tavern trade, the economic and cultural power of tavern keepers, the making of popular culture in taverns, and the changing role and significance of taverns in political, economic, and cultural life from the mid-18th to the mid-19th centuries in two Maryland counties. She is also developing graduate courses on cross-cultural popular culture and the social history of ordinary life in the United States.

Degrees:

Ph.D. Sport History (University of Maryland, 1979)
B.S. American History & Physical Education (University of Wisconsin, 1972)

• "Reframing the Direction of Change in Sport History." International Journal of Sport History 18 (December 2001), in press.
  
• "The Economic and Ideological Grounds for the Gendering of Sport in Early America." Stadion 27 (August 2001): in press.
  
• "Framing a History of Sporting Styles in America." Sport and Material Culture. Ed. Ellen R. Hughes. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute Press, in press.
  
• "Historical Research." Introduction to Research in Physical Activity. Ed. Jerry Tomas and Jack Nelson. Champaign, Ill: Human Kinetics Pub., 4th ed., 2001.
  
• "Social History and Sport." Handbook of Sports Studies. Ed. Jay Coakley and Eric Dunning. London: Sage Publications, 2000. 143-80.
  
• People of Prowess: Sport, Leisure and Labor in Early Anglo-America Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.
  
• "Sport and the Awareness of Leisure." Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century. Ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, & Peter Albert. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994. 406-43.
  
• "Sport and Society in Early America." I nternational Journal of Sport History 5 (December 1988): 292-311.
  
• "Gender and Sporting Practice in Early America, 1750-1810." Journal of Sport History 18 (Spring 1991): 10-30. Reprinted in Sport in America: From Wicked Amusement to National Obsession. Ed. David K. Wiggins. Champaign, Ill: Human Kinetics, 1994. 13-28; and The New American Sport History. Ed. Stephen W. Pope. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1996. 147-72.
  
• "The Formalizing of Sport and the Formation of Formalizing of an Elite: The Chesapeake Gentry, 1650-1720s." Journal of Sport History 13 (Winter 1986): 212-34.
  

Social History of Taverns & Tavern Life (undergraduate)
Seminar: Popular Culture in the United States (graduate)

E-mail: ns16@umail.umd.edu

Marianne Conroy is a Visiting Assistant Professor in American Studies and Comparative Literature. She examines popular films and other texts in an effort to discover the different taste cultures (cultures of difference) produced and consumed during the heydays of the Hollywood studio system in the 1950s.

Degrees:

Ph.D. English (University of Chicago, 1993)
M.A. English (The Ohio State University, 1984)
B.A. cum laude in English (The Ohio State University, 1981)

• "Allegories of Affluence: Class, Cultural Capital, and the Middlebrow Disposition in Postwar American Film." In Progress.
  
• "Discount Dreams: Factory Outlet Malls and the Performance of Middle-Class Identity." Social Text 54 (Spring 1998): 61-81.
  
• "'No Sin in Lookin' Prosperous': Gender, Race, and the Class Formations of Middlebrow Taste in Imitation of Life." The Hidden Formation: Cinema and the Question of Class. Ed. Rick Berg and David James. University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 114-137.
  
• "Acting Out: Method Acting, the National Culture, and the Middlebrow Disposition in Cold War America." Criticism 35:2, Special Issue: Fin de siecle Perspectives in 20th Century Literature and Culture (Spring 1993): 239-263.
  

American Cultural Eras: The 1950s (undergraduate)
American Cultural Critics (undergraduate)
American Postmodernity (graduate)
Popular Culture in America (undergraduate)
Women and Film in the Hollywood Studio Era (undergraduate)

E-mail: mc215@umail.umd.edu