DISSERTATION (IN PROGRESS)
"National Transgressions: U.S. Representations of Mobility, "Boundary-Busting" and the Allegorical American During Periods of Major Economic Crisis"
ABSTRACT: For over a hundred years, U.S. popular culture has reflected America’s ongoing ambivalence towards nomadism and ideological transgression by framing them as both intrinsic and antithetical to rendering an “exceptional” and definable “American” disposition. This study examines popular representations of three nomadic, ideologically transgressive, predominantly white, hypermasculine subcultures (hobos, carnies and Irish Travellers living in the U.S.) in order to compare and contrast how this ambivalence has been mediated during three historic and technological epochs in the nation’s history. Through comparative and critical analysis of the way these subcultures’ worldviews have been rendered and circulated, I argue that a “crisis in representation” concerning mobility and ideological alterity has played a significant role in “mass” or widely distributed analog content. I discuss how this “crisis” helped produce and stabilize a unified American identity during previous periods of major social, cultural, political and economic upheaval. I also map key and distinct advantages and drawbacks that analog and digital media present to cultural producers, in order to interrogate current conventional wisdom that digital production technologies and distribution strategies enable the expanded incorporation and circulation of transgressive content.