American Culture Research Articles

Never Have I Ever: A Critical Analysis on the Role of Netflix in Promoting Multiculturalism

Netflix, a pioneering streaming platform in the era of the rise of OTT platforms’ popularity, has established itself as an advocate of multiculturalism unlike any other contemporary in its time. It thrives by producing and featuring a diversity of content that includes stories, cast, and characters from various cultural backgrounds. Through its method of narrating stories, Netflix represents the cultural inclusivity, appreciation, and mutual understanding of cultures in the United States of America, representing it as a salad bowl. This research essay critically examines the web series Never Have I Ever that on one hand, underscores the role of Netflix in promoting multiculturalism, and on the other hand, it highlights the United States of America as a multicultural society. By close examination of the cast, storytelling, and themes of the web series, this article identifies the United States of America as a salad bowl wherein every culture is allowed to retain its individualistic identity while being a part of the community instead of a melting pot wherein all the cultures get dissolved into the American culture. With the showcasing of a cast from various backgrounds who face complex issues such as identity crisis and cultural assimilation, Never Have I Ever efficiently challenges the stereotypes and elicits empathy from the audience along with building an all-embracing society with unique identities.

Faith Formation and Children’s Agency in the Context of Vietnamese American Catholic Families

In light of the history of immigration during and after the Vietnam War, Vietnamese American families are struggling to live between two worlds: their old culture and nation and their new life in the United States. Parents face a dilemma in raising their children, either to maintain the Vietnamese tradition or to adapt to the new American culture. I propose a Family-Centered Faith Formation model to accompany immigrant children on their faith journey by naming false family narratives and rewriting family narratives using a practical theology approach.

Art Voicing Peaceful Protest: Hip-Hop and Rap in the American and Arabic Cultures

For centuries, poems and songs have been utilized to criticize oppressive and violent regimes, eliciting emotions and aiding the public in coping with hegemony. Rap and hip-hop, blending poetry and music, have emerged as powerful tools for combating oppression and marginalization. Despite the misconception that loud, aggressive music may incite violence, recent research disproves this notion. This study employs Sigmund and Anna Freud's psychoanalytic theory, focusing on defense mechanisms and free association, to analyze data. The study reveals that poets and artists across cultures, including Arabic culture, have employed rap and hip-hop as a means of cultural resistance, fostering a collective identity among young individuals to enhance their understanding of themselves and their culture. The study argues that rap and hip-hop serve as peaceful tools of resistance and function as a therapeutic outlet for managing anger, contrary to claims by some critical theorists that they stimulate violence in society.

Untold Narratives and Reimagined Histories: The Work of Dawoud Bey and Titus Kaphar

This article provides high school art room activities that address the past, contemplate the present, and encourage teaching for change. The authors introduce two contemporary artists, Dawoud Bey and Titus Kaphar, whose work embraces the idea of untold narratives and juxtapose their artwork to instigate difficult but necessary conversations about America’s racial past and present. Bey’s photographic narratives and Kaphar’s innovative paintings unveil truths and histories of Black American culture that have long been neglected. Each juxtaposition is accompanied by background information, discussion questions, and ideas designed to engage students in critical dialogue about race and racism. These conversations are followed by creative writing, and artmaking processes encouraging students to learn from our histories to reimagine our present.

Bilateral risk-reducing mastectomies in American culture.

Bilateral risk-reducing mastectomies in American culture.

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Cultivating Community: The Essential Role of Intergenerational Relationships in Culturally Specific Museums

ABSTRACT This article delves into the vital role played by intergenerational, cultural, and social relationships in the work of museum educators at the Japanese American National Museum (JANM). It highlights the relational exchanges among different generations of staff and volunteers. These relationships not only facilitate the intergenerational transfer of Japanese American history and culture, but they also help to cultivate a sense of community and shared experience. This case study underscores that these relationships not only contribute to the professional growth of museum educators, but also foster a community-centric approach to history education and the preservation of cultural heritage. The authors further emphasize the distinct organizational culture at JANM, characterized by care, familial connections, and mutual support. Through the cultivation of relationships and shared cultural traditions, an enriching environment is created at the museum that enhances the work of its educators and provides a richer experience for visitors.

“Speak the Language of Your Flag”: Speech, Language, and Oralism During the First World War

AbstractWith the United States’ entrance into the First World War, linguistic and cultural cohesiveness became imperative, compelling everyone—from immigrants with foreign accents to people with speech problems and hearing loss—to “sound American” by fluently speaking the language of their flag.This article examines lip-reading, speech, and auricular training prescribed to deaf and hard-of-hearing children as well as for servicemen deafened in the war to demonstrate how World War I demanded all Americans to contribute to and participate in shared national soundscapes, regardless of their hearing status. Use of American Sign Language was considered a conspicuous sign of one’s failure to integrate into hearing society, and it shared parallels with immigrants who failed to learn English and fully assimilate into American culture. Indeed, rehabilitation of deafened soldiers of the First World War through speech training and lip-reading instruction at Hospital No. 11 at Cape May, New Jersey, coincided with broader national efforts to improve Americans’ speech and language use, and in turn, their patriotism and productivity.

Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico, and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture by Marilisa Jiménez García

<i>Side by Side: US Empire, Puerto Rico, and the Roots of American Youth Literature and Culture</i> by Marilisa Jiménez García

온라인 활용 상호문화 프로젝트학습에 대한 영어학습자의 인식과 경험

This paper investigates tele-collaborative project learning in which Korean EFL learners perceived and experienced Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) based on Byram’s intercultural competence(1997) in foreign language learning. This study is follow-up research of “Development and Implementation of a Platform-based intercultural English Teaching and Learning Model.” Participants were paired to do the intercultural project utilizing Zoom and social media platforms during the pandemic period. We adopted Byram’s assessment guidelines to analyze the process and perceptions of the students’ learning experiences by ethnographic method. The data was collected from the learners’ self-reflection reports, zoom-meeting observation, learners’ video presentation, and interviews. By comparing the two cultures, the paired Korean-American participants delved into their chosen topics of Korean and American culture and society. This study addresses the following three points: The tele-collaborative culture project facilitated participants in gaining insights into specific aspects of American or Korean culture; the project helped raise the participants' intercultural awareness; and the participants had the critical cultural awareness on their own culture in the global societies. They also realized that they need to build up their practical English ability to appropriately explain their own culture. This study implies that foreign language teaching needs to be redesigned to draw the learner’s direct learning to improve learners’ intercultural competence with the use of advanced technology in the global society.

Nursing’s Role in Firearm Violence Prevention

American communities are in crisis due to the alarming frequency of gun violence during the last two decades. While it can be argued that the country is no more at risk of gun violence than at other times in history, technological advancement has failed to ensure any breakthroughs to curb the prevalence of violence in American culture. Nurses are trusted healthcare professionals well-positioned within communities to promote awareness, education, and lead intervention strategies to mobilize community resources to foster firearm injury prevention. However, nurses are ill-prepared to advocate for policy changes to bridge gaps in firearm safety regulations and promote the critical interdisciplinary collaboration necessary to develop comprehensive approaches to reduce firearm violence. This paper aims to provide nurses with fundamental knowledge related to strategic models that may help engage communities in meaningful, sustainable change to improve firearm safety and prevent firearm violence across the country.

The image of Russia through animal metaphors: A diachronic case study of American media discourse

The image of a country has a critical impact on the degree of its political, economic and cultural influence in the world. This indicates a need to understand various perceptions of a country that exist among other nations and mechanisms of their formation and change in an ever-shifting world. This qualitative case study seeks to examine the changing nature of wild animal metaphors employed to model the image of Russia in American media discourse in the XIX-XXI centuries. The study is limited by two source domains, namely, the beast and the bear. They were analyzed within particular contexts: American English, culture and media discourse. The research data were drawn from dictionaries and corpora. The dictionaries included etymological and explanatory entries, as well as those covering idioms, symbols, and metaphors. The corpora research data were collected from the Corpus of Contemporary American English and Chronicling America, a collection of historic digitalized texts. A total of 218 metaphors were selected from 4929 texts. The metaphors were studied through lexicographic, conceptual metaphor, culture-specific, corpus, discourse, and diachronic methods. The findings of this study suggest that the two metaphors “Russia is a beast” and “Russia is a bear” are frequently used in realizing the strategy of ‘othering’ in XXI century American media discourse. Still, their meanings allowed for variation and modification in the periods of the two countries’ amity and cooperation. In the XIX century and in the years of US-Soviet alliance in WWII the metaphors could evoke positive images of Russia, thus, realizing the strategy of ‘bridging’ or ‘belonging’. The contribution of this study has been to confirm that, whatever metaphorical projections exist in language and culture, historical factors determine choices in any sample of discourse. This could be important for understanding the mechanisms involved in modeling the image of modern Russia in foreign media discourses.

Chinese Families’ Pursuit of Confucian Learning Beliefs through Overseas Education: Rethinking Learning Cultures in Cross-Cultural Research

Aim. The aim of the article is to understand how Chinese parents draw on their learning beliefs and experiences within the Chinese educational context to make decisions about their children’s overseas education, as well as analysing how their learning beliefs are similar or different from East Asian or Western learning beliefs. Methods. The study is based on more than 100 in-depth separate interviews with 22 Chinese families conducted over serval years between 2016 and 2019. Based on interpretative phenomenological analysis and discourse analysis, the results are coded according to the theory of values proposed by Clyde Kluckhohn (1951). These learning values are further coded according to whether they are reflective of the American learning model (EALM), Confucian learning model (CLM), and Confucian learning philosophies. Results. The analysis shows that Chinese parents have displayed similar learning beliefs in socialising their children in the family domain, in their disapproval of the Chinese education system, and in their pursuit of a Western overseas education. The Chinese families’ pursuit of a Western education for their children are driven by their cultural leaning beliefs, which are rooted in Confucian heritage culture, and which also echo European American heritage cultures. Conclusion. Many researchers tend to emphasise cultural differences in learning, particularly between Confucian heritage and European American heritage cultures. This paper shows the possibilities of cultural learning values shaping educational choices, expands upon the understanding of Confucian heritage culture, and suggests the similarities between the learning cultures of East Asia and the West.

African American History and Culture

African American History and Culture

Play and Misinformation: How America's Conspiracy Culture Became Gamified

In this article, the author draws upon their own experience as a commercial alternate reality game designer and interviews with other working professionals, examining how the form moved from its origins as outsider art into the realm of commercial production and then beyond that as a tool of political influence. The article traces the long history of misinformation and conspiracy in American politics and demonstrates how the introduction of entertainment industry design methodologies has altered the production of disinformation campaigns. From Andrew Jackson and the New York Slave Conspiracy of 1741 through Gamergate and QAnon, the article argues that while conspiracy has always been a central part of American culture, the introduction of modern game design has altered the landscape, and that only by recognizing how our work as designers is being co-opted can we can begin to work to prevent additional social harms.

The Relationship of Skateboard Culture and Modern Street in China

With the introduction of skateboarding in the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, the influence of skateboarding in China improves constantly, and it has played a role in the transformation of Chinese streets. This essay analyzes the reasons of the different influences of Chinese and American skateboard culture on their respective streets, discusses the acceptance degree of Chinese streets to skateboard culture and the influence of skateboard culture on Chinese streets through questionnaire survey. Research shows that skateboard culture mainly plays a positive catalytic role in Chinese streets, which can make the streets younger, diversified and interesting. However, due to insufficient attention to skateboard culture, problems such as noise, rising pavement maintenance costs, personal safety hazards, and street shop conflicts appear. Taking into account the above problems, suggestions to further transform the street are proposed. In the future, it can also consider distinguishing the skateboarder and pedestrian flow lines and setting some transition space.

The Two-level Construction of Asian Identity in American Born Chinese from a Third-space Perspective

This paper examines the film “American Born Chinese” through the lens of the “Third Space” theory, which focuses on the boundary areas between cultures. It explores how Asian characters in the film reconstruct their unique identity within the “Third Space” and why this film elicited different responses from Chinese and American audiences. The analysis shows that Chinese American characters face a dual otherness: being seen as “the other” by both American and Chinese cultures. The film adeptly combines traditional Chinese mythology to narrate the identity-building process of Chinese Americans, telling the story of their dual identity construction. However, it also conveys certain political unfriendliness towards China. The paper argues that Chinese-American film and television works can be seen as a form of “reflective literature,” highlighting the similarities, differences, and conflicts between two different cultures and value systems. By understanding the dual otherness of Chinese Americans, this study aims to promote cross-cultural understanding and mutual reflection between the East and West.

The Arts of Antifascist Black Transnationalism during the Spanish Civil War

Abstract This article asserts the critical role of art and literature in the resistance against fascism by situating the aesthetic work of African Americans as central to the transnational phenomenon of the Spanish Civil War. This article highlights the prehistory to the African American support of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 when news of Benito Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia galvanized members of the Harlem Renaissance. These two conflicts triangulated the imaginaries of the United States, Spain, and Ethiopia, producing a distinct form of antifascist Black transnationalism that extends work by Brent Hayes Edwards, Robert F. Reid-Pharr, and Nadia Nurhussein. To manifest this argument, this article examines Paul Robeson’s speeches at rallies in London that he later reprinted in his autobiography Here I Stand (1958) and Claude McKay’s posthumously published novel Amiable with Big Teeth about 1936 Harlem. Using archival research, this article analyzes the collage aesthetic of the scrapbook that the activist Thyra J. Edwards compiled in 1937 to record the actions of the Negro People’s Committee to Aid Spain. In sum, this article demonstrates the integral role of African American visual culture and literature to the development of twentieth-century antifascist ideology within a transnational perspective.

Paul’s Imaginary Revenge in Teddy Wayne’s The Great Man Theory

ABSTRACT Although Teddy Wayne’s The Great Man Theory (2022) is most obviously a response to the Trump presidency, this essay explores how the novel also engages larger questions about political critique and a meaningful response to power. We analyze, in particular, the protagonist’s closing attack on a right-wing pundit in the context of the novel’s exploration of magical thinking, drawing special attention to Wayne’s references to the idealism of Hegel. This essay thus reveals Wayne’s core idea in this novel, that the persistence of the “great man theory” in American culture represents a perverse ideology of disempowerment that must be overcome.

The Heritability of Psychopathology Symptoms in Early Adolescence: Moderation by Family Cultural Values in the ABCD Study.

Family cultural values that emphasize support, loyalty, and obligation to the family are associated with lower psychopathology in Hispanic/Latino/a youth, but there is a need to understand the implications of family cultural values for youth development in racially/ethnically heterogeneous samples. This study examined phenotypic associations between parent- and youth-reported family cultural values in late childhood on youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms in early adolescence, and whether family cultural values moderated genetic and environmental influences on psychopathology symptoms. The sample comprised 10,335 children (Mage=12.89 years; 47.9% female; 20.3% Hispanic/Latino/a, 15.0% Black, 2.1% Asian, 10.5% other) and their parents from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, and biometric models were conducted in the twin subsample (n = 1,042 twin pairs; 43.3% monozygotic). Parents and youth reported on their family cultural values using the Mexican American Cultural Values Scale at youth age 11-12, and parents reported on youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms using the Child Behavior Checklist at youth ages 11-12 and 12-13. Greater parent- and youth-reported family cultural values predicted fewer youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms. Biometric models indicated that higher parent-reported family cultural values increased the nonshared environmental influences on externalizing symptoms whereas youth-reported family cultural values decreased the nonshared environmental influences on internalizing symptoms. This study highlights the need for behavior genetic research to consider a diverse range of cultural contexts to better understand the etiology of youth psychopathology.