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A Digital Media Exploration of the Federal Writers' Project's Folk Song Collecting Expeditions in Depression Era Florida
Title
A Digital Media Exploration of the Federal Writers' Project's Folk Song Collecting Expeditions in Depression Era Florida.
Creator
Baker, Holly, Cassanello, Robert, French, Scot, Walker, Ezekiel, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This digital thesis project examines the folk song collecting expeditions of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) in Florida between 1935 and 1942. The FWP carried out numerous folk music collecting expeditions in Florida through the Works Progress Administration. Folklorists such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Lomax, and Stetson Kennedy led the expeditions and traveled throughout Florida to record blues, (")jook(") songs, work songs, and traditional music from African American, Cuban, Czech,...
Show moreThis digital thesis project examines the folk song collecting expeditions of the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) in Florida between 1935 and 1942. The FWP carried out numerous folk music collecting expeditions in Florida through the Works Progress Administration. Folklorists such as Zora Neale Hurston, Alan Lomax, and Stetson Kennedy led the expeditions and traveled throughout Florida to record blues, (")jook(") songs, work songs, and traditional music from African American, Cuban, Czech, Greek, Minorcan, Seminole, and Slavic communities. While romantic notions of nationalism in the 1930s often promoted homogenization, the FWP emphasized inclusiveness and highlighted cultural diversity. The FWP's approach challenged popular concepts concerning the homogeneousness of American culture and identity. Their recordings indicate that Florida was a patchwork of varied cultures. Yet, Florida's diversity is not adequately highlighted in popular history. Historians often see Florida history through the eyes of the mythologized (")Florida Cracker("), the Celtic pioneer who settled in Florida in the eighteenth century, but the Cracker perspective represents but a square in the patchwork quilt that makes up Florida's cultural history. An exploration of the FWP folk song recordings brings Florida's diversity to the forefront and increases the public's understanding of the state's cultural variety. The project includes a podcast series that features stories about the FWP expeditions, the folklorists, the performers, and the music. It also includes an interactive exhibit that is currently a work in progress. Source materials derived from open-access public archives create an immersive, interactive learning experience.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFE0007153, ucf:52321
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007153
THE REPRESENTATION OF POVERTY IN GREAT DEPRESSIONAMERICAN LITERATURE
Title
THE REPRESENTATION OF POVERTY IN GREAT DEPRESSIONAMERICAN LITERATURE.
Creator
Austin, Cavel, Olan, Elsie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The objective of this thesis is to explore how American authors represented poverty across different states during the Depression Era. I have chosen to review social reform author John Steinbeck, and proletariat authors, Michael Gold, Meridel Le Sueur, and William Attaway. Before addressing the issues presented in the data collection tools (novels): The Grapes of Wrath, Jews Without Money, The Girl, and Blood on the Forge, I reviewed the fundamentals of the events leading up to the crash of...
Show moreThe objective of this thesis is to explore how American authors represented poverty across different states during the Depression Era. I have chosen to review social reform author John Steinbeck, and proletariat authors, Michael Gold, Meridel Le Sueur, and William Attaway. Before addressing the issues presented in the data collection tools (novels): The Grapes of Wrath, Jews Without Money, The Girl, and Blood on the Forge, I reviewed the fundamentals of the events leading up to the crash of the stock market, which spiraled the United States and the world at large in the greatest Depression ever known. In this thesis, I have also outlined a summary of the novels for the benefit of readers who may not have had the opportunity to read them. I have applied a Marxist literary critical analysis to the preceding novels highlighting three overarching concepts of the theory: economic power, materialism versus spirituality, and class conflict. Evolving from these concepts are the key tenets of Marxism: base, superstructure, hegemony, commodification, class conflict, and false consciousness. In the literary critical analysis, I applied these key tenets to the plot of each novel in order to underscore the ideologies of Marxist theorists with regards to the existence of class divisions and how this division creates class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariats.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFH0004708, ucf:45397
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004708