American Audience Research Articles

Ripples in the Historiography: Harlem Studio Photographer James Van Der Zee and Cecil Beaton’s New York, 1938

Abstract In 1938, the well-known British photographer Cecil Beaton published his travelogue Cecil Beaton’s New York for American and British audiences. The book was the first to publish and consider works by the African American studio photographer James Van Der Zee. Yet this account of Van Der Zee has been overlooked by scholars and relegated to footnotes, feasibly because of Beaton’s dismissive and tactless consideration of the now highly regarded photographer. With commitments to exploring the overlooked and unexpected moments in Van Der Zee’s historiography, this essay approaches Cecil Beaton’s New York as an opportunity to begin thinking about Van Der Zee in ways that transgress established narratives. It does so by inserting Van Der Zee within an avant-garde circle in which he is rarely considered, and attending to the possibility of an early-twentieth century-critical Black readership of Beaton’s book. With the aim of centring Van Der Zee, this essay demonstrates his relevance to a multitude of interwar contexts animated by the practice of photography. As a result, it becomes conceivable to shift the very terms through which we interpret the early account of Van Der Zee’s work, and the transatlantic contexts that scholars may choose to consider.

Through a southern prism: translating Stuart Hall into Spanish

ABSTRACT Translation is an intellectual endeavour that requires engagement with authors and conceptual frameworks from different times and worlds. It is not a neutral or simple task of converting linguistic codes but a situated, partial, and interested process that goes beyond mere intellectual activity. In translating Stuart Hall into Spanish for a Latin American audience, specific challenges and interests arise, as detailed in this article. Three main challenges are discussed: preserving the contextuality and complexity of Hall's writings, resisting the temptation to simplify or academicize his work, and ensuring that translations facilitate meaningful cross-cultural exchanges. The article underscores the importance of understanding Hall's work as an intellectual and political project, deeply rooted in specific historical and cultural contexts, and argues for an approach to translation that remains faithful to these dimensions while making his ideas accessible and relevant to contemporary Latin American readers. Finally, the paper reflects on the political significance of translation, highlighting how ideas can transcend boundaries and enrich local debates. Hall's concepts, such as articulation, context, and conjuncture, are presented as valuable tools for understanding and intervening in the social and political realities of Latin America today. The article concludes by emphasizing the ongoing relevance of Hall's intellectual and political contributions and the need for translations that honour his legacy while engaging with the specific challenges and opportunities of our present moment.

Documenting the War: American Library Community Supports Ukrainian Colleagues

This project shares experiences of a multi-institutional team of library scholars to document the crimes of Russo-Ukrainian war. It highlights construction of a community archive of Ukrainian libraries affected by the war. The project employs participatory archiving with the Ukrainian partners engaged in collection, appraisal, and description and the U.S. researchers create platforms to preserve, classify and disseminate the knowledge, via digital archive in two languages. The project brings experiences of the war to American audience seeking to end the war and prevent future violence.

Stand-up documentary: An emerging narrative device in Yvonne Orji’s comedy

Stand-up documentary—the inclusion of video film footage in stand-up performances—is a growing trend in comedy specials. Gary Gulman in The Great Depresh and Whitmer Thomas in The Golden One are some of the earliest comedians to employ documentary clips in creating portraits of their real-life circumstances on stage. More recently, Yvonne Orji’s comedy special for Home Box Office (HBO) entitled Momma, I Made It! also utilizes documentary video films of the comedienne’s experience in Nigeria to bring the Nigerian experience closer to her American audience. In this article I bring to the academic mainstream the understudied subject of stand-up documentary in humour studies. Through close reading and nuanced analyses of the gig, I examine stand-up documentary as a novel device of narration through which Orji introduces her audience to life in Nigeria through an exposition of her experiences growing up. Accentuating the differences between Nigerians and Americans and playing on Nigerian stereotypes, the comedienne deploys the clips as precise proofs transitioning her American audience into the alternate Nigerian contexts in Momma, I Made It! I conclude that stand-up documentary enhances the credibility of the performance, shapes perceptions of Nigerians, and facilitates audience understanding of cultural contexts that would otherwise remain unfamiliar to them.

Abstract B036: Native American cancer prevention outreach strategies: Approaches developed for outreach teams working with Native Nations and Native American urban communities

Abstract Community-directed outreach activities developed to provide cancer education and/or to promote cancer screening are quite varied and difficult to evaluate. The published literature offers few recent descriptions of cancer education efforts or interventions designed to enhance awareness of cancer risks or screening recommendations for specific underserved populations, e.g., Native Americans. Furthermore, the National Institute of Health’s guidance for Community Outreach Cores provided in Funding Opportunities for Center awards, is brief and offers few parameters and examples. This brevity is most evident in comparison with the lengthy descriptions provided for Research and Education Cores. This elusive language may be purposeful, recognizing the diversity of communities and technical assistance needed by research teams. The challenge, Outreach Cores use quite different approaches and generally do not share effective strategies that could be tested with other communities. The Outreach Core of the National Cancer Institute funded Native American Cancer Prevention Partnership (NACP), has employed several innovative strategies in the 2019-2024 funding period. To encourage increased national dialogue about culturally appropriate cancer-related outreach with underserved communities and outreach support for research teams, two strategies of the NACP Outreach Core are described. The intention is to contribute to the limited outreach literature and to inspire emerging or existing cores developing plans for engaging underserved communities and/or supporting research teams involved in community-based work. One NACP approach involves the development of a podcast series to provide cancer-related education and personal stories specifically by public health practitioners, health care providers and Native American patients, for Native American audiences. The second approach was designed to enhance research teams’ skills in reporting their activities and outcomes with communities. The Community Dissemination and Application Training (C-DAT) was developed to improve institutional and investigator capacity to conduct respectful research and share relevant research findings with Native American communities. C-DAT was supplemented with a Directory for Reaching Relatives Using Media (DRRUM), that contributes to investigators’ knowledge of dissemination venues used in Native American communities The DRRUM provides contacts and additional information on regional Native Nations or Native serving social media platforms/groups and tribal radio stations. NACP’s outreach activities are shared in an effort to initiate a Best Practices Inventory upon which outreach cores and interventions could draw. Unfortunately, evaluation continues to be a challenge, and is generally limited to reach and does not address impact. Citation Format: Nicolette Teufel-Shone, Carol Goldtooth-Begay. Native American cancer prevention outreach strategies: Approaches developed for outreach teams working with Native Nations and Native American urban communities [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 17th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2024 Sep 21-24; Los Angeles, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2024;33(9 Suppl):Abstract nr B036.

Positioning in Turbulent Times: Ottoman Intellectuals and the South African War (1899–1902)

ABSTRACT The South African War of 1899−1902, between Great Britain and the Boer states, marked by British victory, garnered extensive international attention, thus offering a compelling case study on the influence of modern propaganda globally. European and American audiences closely monitored the conflict between the ‘mighty’ British Empire and the ‘little white Christians’. Employing critical analysis, this article scrutinises Ottoman intellectuals’ pro-British propaganda and their stance on the war. Utilising sources like Young Turk publications and memoirs, particularly focusing on Ismail Kemal Vlora’s work ‘The Question of Transvaal’ (1900), it sheds light on their efforts to legitimise British imperialism in South Africa and beyond. Vlora played a pivotal role in leading the Anglophile faction amongst Ottoman statesmen and intelligentsia and his writings offer crucial insights into their perspectives. This study aims to comprehend the views of Anglophile Ottoman intellectuals on colonialism, imperialism, and civilisation, alongside their advocacy for Britain. Centred on Ottoman perspectives of the war, with supplementary attention to colonial South African history, this research unveils how and why the Southern African conflict impacted Ottoman intelligentsia. This study is embedded within the broader context of the South African War’s substantial international ramifications, emphasising its relevance to global historical discourse.

The Market Life of Japanese Literature in Postwar America: Knopf, Translation, and the Archives of Cultural Commerce

This article examines the aesthetic and economic forms of judgment that guided the Japanese literature translation program at the American publisher Alfred A. Knopf Inc. in the 1950s—1970s. During these years, the editor Harold Strauss coordinated Knopf’s ambitious translation program that made dozens of recently written Japanese novels available in English to an American audience. This article provides a fresh perspective on Knopf’s well-known Japanese literature translation program by understanding it to be an illuminating case study that reveals how the practical business of cultural commerce mixes aesthetic and economic modes of valuation, producing provocative connections that link what might otherwise seem to be the antagonistic realms of art and the market. Guided by documents held in the Knopf corporate archive, the article shows how the aesthetics of modern Japanese literature and the economics of publishing each encountered the other in the transactional territory of translation.

Hispanofilia e hispanofobia en el imaginario estadounidense: la España del Cid, de la virilidad épica a la decadencia

"During a period of around 100 years, the American audience was exposed to the history of Mio Cid from several points of view. The world of The Alhambra:A Series of Tales and Sketches of the Moors and Spaniards by Washington Irving provided in 1832 an idealized version of this period of Spanish history. This was followed by the more nuanced visions of the History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella by William Prescott in 1837 and George Ticknor’s History of Spanish Literature in 1849. A new vision of the Cidian imaginary was that of sculptor Anna Hyatt in several of her famous statues devoted to El Cid in the 1920s in Balboa Park, San Diego, or in the Hispanic Society of New York. Of course, she was influenced in her choice of topic by her husband Archie Huntington, the founder in 1904 of the Hispanic Society. The corollary to this representation of Cidian history came in 1961 with the epic film The Cid, greatly acclaimed by critics and audiences.Keywords: Mio Çid Ruy Díaz;Washington Irving; George Ticknor; Prescott; Anna Hyatt"

The Representation of the Scottish Accent in Hollywood Movies and TV Series

Both Scottish culture and the Scottish accent have been oft misrepresented in Hollywood movies and TV series starting in the 20th century and continuing into the 21st. The purpose of this paper is to analyse said misrepresentations, determine why characters are given Scottish accents, how that accent contributes to their characterisation and what kind of character types tend to receive the Scottish accent. The paper concludes that the Scottish accent is selected for certain characters because the previous success of Scotland-based Hollywood movies has made the accent popular among audiences, thus Hollywood, utilising what has worked before and seeing the popularity of the accent, decided to bestow the accent to more characters. It is also given to characters to make them humorous; the accent sounding foreign makes it funny for American audiences, thus many comic relief characters have got it. Tough-as-nails and masculine characters can likewise receive Scottish accents. Moreover, certain archetypes are assigned with the accent in mind by default, such as the Highlander warrior and dwarves, its usage in their case being questionable notwithstanding. Lastly, having a Scottish accent is integral to characterisation, which is exemplified by analysing Shrek, McDuck and three other hyper-stereotypical cartoon characters.

Howdy Comrade

Abstract American and Western audiences have long come to understand Soviet and Russian womanhood, and thus US womanhood, from representations in popular televisual texts. While there is a long history of popular culture presenting the “othered” women of Eastern Europe, for example as temptress “Bond girls” during the Cold War, these narratives have continued onscreen into the twenty-first century. We examine the myriad representations from both the Cold War and post-Cold War period, noting the typical narrative constructions that focus on femme fatales, psychological and sexual trauma, and economic precarity, and how these have continued in contemporary popular culture to shore up notions of Western cultural and political superiority. The characters and the situations in which they find themselves, as spies, assassins, and double agents, continue to send messages about danger and dominance regarding both gender and geopolitics.

The prevalence and portrayal of Asian Americans in advertising: a comparative content analysis over three decades

Few studies have examined the prevalence and portrayal of Asian Americans in advertising; and those that have done so are outdated. To address this gap in the literature, the present study first examines the prevalence and portrayal of Asian Americans in advertising produced by the top 25 advertisers in the United States from 2010 to 2019; and then compares these findings to previous studies examining the portrayal of Asian Americans in advertising from the past three decades. Factors analyzed from a longitudinal perspective include (1) frequency of representation, (2) ad setting, (3) product category, and (4) role prominence. To build on these findings, the present study also analyzed how Asian Americans were portrayed in terms of their integration with actors and models of other races. Insights from this study contribute to knowledge about the prevalence and portrayal of Asian Americans in modern advertising as compared to the previous three decades and pose important questions about the potential societal impact of such portrayals. Findings also offer useful practical implications for advertisers seeking to leverage the buying power of the important and growing Asian American audience and suggest important areas of future research for cultural scholars, diversity advocates, and policymakers.

“The highest in each class was a twilight baby”: scientific motherhood, twilight sleep and the eugenics movement in McClure’s Magazine

In the early twentieth century, childbirth was increasingly being viewed as a medical experience in North America. Women were encouraged to engage with ‘scientific motherhood’ by adhering to medical advice...

Conservation Humanities and Multispecies Justice

This article argues that biodiversity conservation is primarily a social and cultural issue and only secondarily a scientific one. It explains the proxy logic of narratives about endangered species, which typically serve as proxies for community identities and the changes communities have undergone through processes of modernization and colonization. Polar bears, whose endangerment is interpreted differently by North American and European audiences, on the one hand, and by Inuit communities, on the other, serve as an example of how endangered species narratives not only involve culture but also, more specifically, issues of multispecies justice. Conservation humanities needs to engage with the two central problems that multispecies justice has identified and grappled with: conflicts between the interests of disadvantaged human communities and nonhuman species and conflicts and trade-offs between the interests of different nonhuman species. The essay argues that adopting the framework of “multispecies justice” rather than “conservation” will help to overcome some of the impasses of interdisciplinary collaboration in environmental studies in the past.

Characteristics of Russian Propaganda in Latin America with Regard to Russian Aggression Against Ukraine: Case of Brazil

Russian aggression against Ukraine has become one of the most serious challenges for the international security system. One of the regions where Russian propaganda has been spread widely is Latin America. And one of the countries especially influenced by the Russian disinformation in the region is Brazil. The goal of this article is to define characteristics of the Russian propaganda in Latin America regarding Russian aggression against Ukraine, particularly, look at the case of Brazil, trace features of the Kremlin propaganda in this country at the current stage and outline possible ways of countering this propaganda.It can be concluded that Russian propaganda in Latin American and in Brazil, particularly, has several specific characteristics-it is widespread, long-standing and generally supported. Key current narratives concerning the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine include the nuclear threat, calls for peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia and accusing the West of russofobia. Other false narratives include accusing Ukraine of war crimes and provocations, as well as dangers of further “escalation” of the war. Among reasons for common misconceptions about the Russia-Ukraine war in Brazil one can name a simple lack of information and familiarity with the local politics. This gap is partially the result of Ukraine’s insufficient communication with the Latin American and Brazilian audiences and the countries’ lack of interest in each other for many years.In order to counter Russian propaganda in Latin American and Brazil, in particular, Ukraine should enhance its communication and diplomatic efforts, cooperate with the Ukrainian diaspora in the region and consistently deconstruct Russian disinformation narratives. In the long-term perspective, it is worthwhile increasing opportunities to study the Spanish and Portuguese languages and have respective Regional Studies courses at Ukrainian educational institutions.

Designing for the Land of Affluence: The Postwar American Dream through Synthetic Fabrics

After World War II, overproduction and overconsumption overshadowed the ascetic period 1940-1945, as new commodities such as houses, new technological house equipment, cars and other vehicles, travel, frozen food, fast food, but also plastics realized the dreams and expectations of middle class Americans, fulfilling their purchasing desires. Synthetic fabrics constituted a great part of this new socioeconomic and cultural phenomenon and symbolized the US’s emergence from years of deprivation, austerity, depression and war. In the 1950s and 1960s the American market was flooded with man-made materials such as nylon, acrylic and polyester, the ‘miracles of Du Pont’s chemistry laboratories’ which replaced traditional natural fibers such as silk, cotton and wool, suggesting a, new, colorful, modern clothing. This article aims at exploring the effect of man-made fabrics mainly invented during the 1940s or before, on the social and cultural theater of the US as new technological achievements in the fields of fashion and home interior design. The article also aims to shed light on their historical background and unprecedented behavioral qualities which fascinated the postwar American consumer audience by altering their sense of taste and purchasing choices.

Televising Talent: Musicality, Meritocracy, and the Aesthetics of Exclusion

AbstractThroughout the history of television, American audiences have participated in a tradition of programs that follow a consistent structure: Amateur musicians and entertainers are offered an opportunity to display their talent on stage, competing for audience votes to win first prize and a chance at stardom. This article contributes to a growing literature on the significance of televised talent shows, demonstrating how their remarkable longevity and representational power stems from their configuration as a “format,” the set of guidelines that structure and constrain the content of each broadcast—an aesthetic process grounded in exclusion. Through their formatting, I argue, these programs reify the notion of “talent” at the heart of talent shows, transforming a multidimensional and context-contingent assemblage of musical abilities into a seemingly stable object able to be recognized, rated, and ranked. Musical auditions offer a microcosm of formatting's role as a means of training audiences’ attention. They normalize the practice of eliminating whatever (or whomever) is deemed unworthy—on these programs and in the wider world. Through analyzing examples from Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour (1948), The Gong Show (1978), and The Voice (2017), the article demonstrates how beneath the widely discussed content of contestant demographics, judge commentary, or audience voting results, the talent show format serves to obscure the contradictions upon which meritocracy's cruel optimism rests.

Signaling Blackness: Understanding Industrialized Constructions of African American Radio Audiences in the Obama Era

ABSTRACT This study considers how the Black radio industry imagined and addressed its African American audiences in the Obama era. Through an examination of the use of sound on air, interviews with station executives, and industry publications, I argue executives used three constructed lifestyles—the culture of affluence, the culture of the mic, and the culture of grace—to segment their audiences. Industry efforts to construct audiences along class/status lines produced a bifurcated understanding of Blackness as either sophisticated or street. With this binary driving industry logic, Black radio unproductively promoted narrow constructions of Blackness in the public sphere.

The matrices of female bonding and lesbian sexuality: female homoerotic cinema in Mainland China

ABSTRACT The mis-representation of female homoeroticism in China and misunderstanding of films in this regard leads to the question: What explanatory frameworks should we adopt to analyze Chinese female homo-erotic films in the way that respects the local historical and cultural context? After studying the local history of women’s separatism and formation of lesbian identity under Western influences, I suggest two frameworks, namely, the matrix of female bonding and the matrix of lesbian sexuality. Adopting these two frameworks, respectively, I conduct close analysis of Sweet Eighteen (甜蜜18岁, 2012) and Fish and Elephant (今年夏天, 2001), to locate the “Chinese lesbianism” in these not very lesbian films in the eyes of American audience. I will argue that the narrative of homosexual-maternal transferability in the former resonates with Chinese women’s literature, while the narrative of homosexual normality and a coming-home rather than coming-out strategy in the latter film speak to the local specificity of lesbian discourse since the 1990s.

Концерт в голливудских короткометражных мультфильмах «золотой эры»

The article is devoted to the representation of classical music concert in Hollywood cartoons of the 1930s — 1950s. A concert as a symbol of the academic musical culture was well-known to the American cinema audience. The author of the article studies how the cartoons creators rethought the main elements of a concert ceremony using both the general stereotypes related with the world of classical music and the familiar images of American life of the first half of the 20th century. Special attention is focused on the development of a typical concert repertoire in cartoons and its relation to the category of popular classical music. The article gives a detailed analysis of concert types, features of a concert space, the appearance and behaviour of soloists, orchestra players, and conductors, and the evolution of these elements during the Golden Age of Hollywood cartoons. The conclusion is made that a concert in cartoons becomes an ideal object of parody and carnival play which mirror the conflict between high and low art that exists in the mind of the audience and work as assimilation mechanisms for the artistic experience of the elite culture. The methods of history, art studies, and cultural studies are used in the research.

The Effectiveness of Ideological Communication in Mainstream Films Based on Semantic Networks --Taking the Chinese and American Movie Reviews of Top Gun: Maverick as an Example

The co-occurrence networks are used as a tool for examining and interpreting discourse analysis to reveal the attitudes and perceptions implicit in film reviews. Based on the self-constructed corpus of online movie reviews in China and the United States, this research generates co-occurrence word-sense networks and summarizes three frameworks: sequel narrative, heroic narrative, and military narrative, and further reveals and explains the ideologies and linguistic features revealed in the different discourse frames. At the macro level, the Chinese and American audiences evaluation of the film shows different results of medium and medium-high. At the micro level, corresponding to the three frames, Chinese and American audiences construct images of commercial sentiment films and dramatic action films, national propaganda films and Hollywood hero films, U.S. Air Force propaganda films and U.S. Army recruitment advertising films; under the hero narrative frame, individual heroism and collectivism are realized side by side in the audiences discourse; under the military narrative frame, the political identity of transnational narratives is not realized in Chinese audiences.