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Ayllus And Haciendas: Social Reproduction Of Community And Reciprocity In Nineteenth Century Ecuador, Laura Powell

History ETDs

This dissertation argues that indigenous peons of nineteenth-century Ecuador maintained ayllu practices of community and reciprocity through the reconfiguration of kinships networks and the reinterpretation of reciprocity within the context of the hacienda system. This argument challenges prevalent beliefs that indigenous networks of kinship and reciprocity largely dissolved with the rise of the hacienda system and the oppressive exploitation of the institution of debt peonage known as concertaje. However, a close reading of the hacienda records shows that, first, indigenous peons used their ability to accrue debt in order to build and maintain communities of both real and fictive kinship …

Slavery And Architecture Across The Mediterranean, John Behnken

History ETDs

Enslaved people as architectural material, found in the cultural examples of the Great Mosque of Cordoba and the Hagia Sophia, provide a lens from which scholars can re-envision the historical narrative. The scholarship surrounding the development and transition of the Great Mosque of Cordoba from a mosque to a church, elicits new research into what medieval people thought about race, race-making, and cultural ownership. The conceptions of race are evident through the medieval paradigms of enslavement. Who could and could not become enslaved establish social, cultural, and phenotypic classifications which in turn become race. The work of scholars such as …

“Great Excitement”: Violent Incorporations Of The American Southwest, Joseph Hall-Patton

History ETDs

This dissertation studies various incidents of violence throughout the Southwest from 1848-1919, often called “great excitement,” revealing a “Western Civil War of Incorporation.” US incorporation designated whether people would be included or excluded from the American body politic. Violence in the Southwest between the mid-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries exposes deep change fueled by a relentless US drive to swallow and digest its people and resources, profiting handsomely in the process. Each chapter is a case study, culminating in a conclusion that ties them together to gain a greater understanding of American violence. They are the 1858 San Luis Obispo vigilantes, …

Challenging The "Unexceptional": Marguerite Of Provence, Thirteenth-Century Queenship, And Power, Katie Despeaux

History ETDs

Marguerite of Provence, wife to Saint Louis IX of France, has long been overlooked or negatively characterized by historians. Due to the unique circumstances of her mother-in-law’s political reach and her sister’s role as queen of England, Marguerite was limited by her husband and his court in her access to power. Traditionally understood as a passive queen, Marguerite’s expression of power through motherhood, curated images, and emotional performance can be better understood through Theresa Earenfight’s paradigm of gender and power. In a series of comparisons between Marguerite and her mother-in-law, sister, and Egyptian counterpart during the Seventh Crusade, Marguerite’s role …

A Medieval Pirate's Life: The Role Of Piracy In Medieval Life Versus Its Role In Modern Historiography, Leah Lam

History ETDs

Medieval piracy is a mysterious phenomenon that is interwoven within the politics, culture, economic histories of the Middle Ages. Its presence throughout the Middle Ages is not questioned, yet it is rarely researched thoroughly. The subject of medieval piracy falls prey to the biases and assumptions that modern historians carry towards piracy as a whole, making the subject be under researched and improperly utilized. In this thesis, I will be highlighting the role that piracy played in medieval life and the way that modern historiography has neglected it. To do so thoroughly, I have pulled examples from different times, regions, …

Visionary Women Or Suspected Witches: The Shifting Use And Construction Of Reputation In Accusations Of Witchcraft During The High And Late Middle Ages, Megan E. Hattey

History ETDs

Throughout the high and late Middle Ages, an individual’s social acceptance and well-being were heavily dependent upon fama, or reputation, they cultivated within their communities. Women, especially, constructed and molded their reputations to protect themselves from hardship and social ostracization, allowing them a degree of agency in social situations. In this thesis, I argue that the mindful development of one’s fama was key for women to protect themselves from accusations of witchcraft. Through the lives of Hildegard of Bingen, Elisabeth of Schönau, and Jeanne d’Arc, I demonstrate how medieval reputations were built, the trifold nature it could hold, and …

The Bluff And Blanding Fights: Race, Religion, And Settler Colonialism In Progressive-Era America, Reilly Ben Hatch

History ETDs

This project uses the Bluff War of 1915 and the Posey War of 1923—both of which took place in southeastern Utah—to look at the complex relationship between race, religion, and culture in American Indian policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. It shows how White Mesa Utes, local Mormon settlers, the federal government, and Progressive activists used the conflicts to argue the place of Indians in a “frontier-less” America. It also examines the complex relationship between Mormons and Indians and draws conclusions on how that relationship was influenced by an American government which sought to assimilate “others” into the …

Interreligious Intimacy In Medieval Spain, Hero L. Morrison

History ETDs

The field of Spanish historiography has overwhelmingly been shaped by theories of Convivencia or anti-Convivencia, of total harmony or complete violence. The interpersonal connections made between individuals of different faiths—Islam, Judaism, and Christianity—often contravene institutional regulation that prohibited sexual and familial connections and dissuaded casual camaraderie, complicating and disagreeing with histiorgraphic (anti-)Convivencia traditions. In place of an (anti-)Convivencia framework, modern theories of sexuality, as first championed by Michele Foucault, can explain discrepancies between individual action and institutional regulation through a matrix of power, identity, and interaction. Even as institutional rule prohibited interreligious sexuality—and to some extent, even casual interreligious interaction—intimacy …

“For All You Know, I Might Be A Black Panther”: How The News Media Cultivated White Anxiety In The United States And Became A Modern Panopticon For Black Power, Caitlin Grace Leishman

History ETDs

Building upon French philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, I argue that throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the news media and resulting culture nurtured and reinforced the postcolonial narratives that associated Blackness with criminality. I analyze the national newspaper coverage for their narrative portrayal of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The national media and U.S. government targeted the BPP and Black Power politics to discredit them and the overall movement for Black Liberation. I argue that this media-state project only intensified during the 1970s and into the 1980s with the country’s turn to …

"For All You Know, I Might Be A Black Panther": How The News Media Cultivated White Anxiety In The United States And Became A Modern Panopticon For Black Power, Caitlin Grace Leishman

History ETDs

Building upon French philosopher Michel Foucault’s analysis of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, I argue that throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the news media and resulting culture nurtured and reinforced the postcolonial narratives that associated Blackness with criminality. I analyze the national newspaper coverage for their narrative portrayal of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). The national media and U.S. government targeted the BPP and Black Power politics to discredit them and the overall movement for Black Liberation. I argue that this media-state project only intensified during the 1970s and into the 1980s with the country’s turn to …

"Do You Know The Way To San Jose?" Ethnic Mexicans, Urbanism, Culture, And Politics In Emerging Silicon Valley, 1940-1980, Alexandro J. Jara

History ETDs

My dissertation explores the Latino experience in Santa Clara County, especially in San Jose. The area, located in Northern California’s Bay Area, is nestled just south of the more popular cities of Oakland and San Francisco, nearly five hundred miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. My examination of the social, cultural, and political activities of Latinos in San Jose provides insight into the community development of ethnic Mexicans away from traditional sites of study in places like Tucson, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. I argue that beginning at mid-century, Latinos moved into the downtown area and helped prevent nearby neighborhoods from …

Gathering Around A New Fire: The Bemo Family, Interracial Marriage, Race, And Power In The Mvskoke Nation, 1870-1897, Michelle M. Martin

History ETDs

“Gathering Around a New Fire: The Bemo Family, Interracial Marriage, Race, and Power in the Mvskoke Nation, 1870-1897” explores from an Indigenous and gendered perspective the lived experiences of the interracial Bemo family in the Mvskoke Nation located in the Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). The marriage of Douglas Bemo, a Mvskoke/Semvnole student at Tullahassee Mission, to Katie Edwards, his white teacher, is the primary focus of this dissertation. My research seeks to restore Indigenous cultural agency to the complex Bemo family history. I merge Katie’s myopic narrative, federal Indian policy documents, missionary records, and nineteenth-century newspapers with Mvskoke/Semvnole oral histories, …

Alternative Chicanx Educational Activism In The U.S. Southwest, 1935–1975, Moises Santos

History ETDs

This project studies the use of independent newspapers, community theater, and independent Chicana/o colleges by activists to educate their community. Geographically, this study is placed in the Southwest states of New Mexico, Texas, and California. Using the theoretical frameworks of Southwest Borderlands Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education, this project contextualizes the historical racial power dynamics of U.S. takeover in the Southwest region that influence oppressive educational practices, and the challenge to those institutions by the alternative educational activism among Chicanx communities.

Activists employed ingenuity to provide educational materials to their communities when they needed them the most. These …

Emotional Villages In The Medieval Mediterranean: Territorial Language Of Emotional Expression, 644–1508 C.E., Eden Vigil

History ETDs

This thesis examines the concept of an emotional village as one that embodies territorial emotions. The emotions themselves are categorically defined based on modern conventions, but utilizes the author’s words to expose the fluidity of emotion language amongst cultures and traditions. My research presents emotional villages in four sections to expose these modalities of feeling amongst cultures. The first section looks at devotion, wonder, and reverence; the second, loss, grief, and nostalgia; the third, fear and anger; the fourth, disgust and hatred. The fifth section is dedicated to the emotional village that is medieval Jerusalem. Emotions are merely the language …

Beauty, Real Or Apparent: Christian Kings, Muslim Artisans, And The Development Of An Imperial Image Through The Silk And Horticulture Industries In Sicily. (Ca. 1090-1190), Casey K. Brown

History ETDs

In the wake of the Norman conquest of Sicily in the second half of the eleventh century, the Mediterranean island housed a diverse collection of Greek, Latin, and Muslim communities. Norman kings chose Palermo to become the seat of Latin-Christian Sicilian government for its productivity and strategic location and included the island into the complex world of self-fashioning politics and exchange. For Sicilian and ‘foreign’ Muslims alike, the imperious pose Roger II and his successors held created a precarious balancing act between the real and imagined worlds of Sicily. The content of this thesis is primarily concerned with the impact …

Immodest Immortality: Emperor Maximilian I'S Artistic Program And The Ambraser Heldenbuch, 1504-1519, Jessica Cochran

History ETDs

Maximilian I (r. 1493-1519) utilized various forms of artistic and literary media throughout his reign to control his public image after his death. This thesis focuses on a manuscript project that has historically received little scholarly attention. The Ambraser Heldenbuch, produced between 1504 and 1517, preserves German heroic epics, many of which would otherwise be lost today. The manuscript has been highly valued for its literary and linguistic significance, but this thesis argues that the entire project sheds light on Maximilian’s plan to immortalize not only his own reputation, but also that of his family. This thesis focuses on …

The Transformation Of Identity In Early Medieval England: Continuity, Disruption, And Creolization, Michael Sean Limmer

History ETDs

The period following Rome’s administrative withdrawal from Britain (c. 410 CE) has sparked intense debate for centuries, spawning a variety of theories concerning ethnic identity and the nature of cultural exchange on the island. Presently, the very nature of the term “Anglo-Saxon” itself is at the center of these discussions. This thesis examines historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence to cast a light on who constituted the people of Britain during this migration period through to the time of Alfred, and to what extent creolization might have played out. Ultimately, the evidence from this period suggests that ethnic identities cannot reasonably …

A Threatening Heresy: Cathar And Protestant Identity Against Catholicism In France Between The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) And The French Wars Of Religion (1562-1598), Jonathan Wright

History ETDs

The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) and the French Wars of Religion (1562- 1598) were two of the most violent moments in French history. Both involved the persecution of a perceived minority by Catholic forces, and both left irreparable scars on the area of Occitania in the south of France. Battles along river fronts and the clandestine boat smuggling of heretics were actions undertaken by a heretical Cathar group that confronted orthodox religion. Water became a critical part of the creation of a persecuted minority in Occitania. Intensifying Cathar heresy led to increased violence in the Wars of Religion as Catholic aggression …

“Don’T Make Fun Of The Residents!” Revisiting The Sunbelt’S Vanishing Communities: Mobility And Suburban Development, 1900-1990, Jerry D. Wallace

History ETDs

“Don’t Make Fun of the Residents” examines home ownership and suburban development over the last one hundred years in the borderlands, American West, and Sunbelt regions. In this dissertation I argue that mobility shaped urban planning, neighborhood design, and architectural identity in the Sunbelt over the course of the twentieth century. “Don’t Make Fun of the Residents” places architectural identity at the center of this dissertation discussion to understand the origins of the Sunbelt as a geographic and intellectual space. I focus in particular on smaller cities in the intermountain West---New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Arizona, and California---an area that has …

Sundiata Keita's Invention Of Latin Purgatory: The West African Gold Trade's Influence On Western European Society (Ca. 1050-1350), Graham Abney

History ETDs

Following the advent of the North African Almoravids into West Africa during the late eleventh century, the region experienced a prolonged period of political instability, resolved only after the legendary victory at the battle of Kirina in 1235 by Sundiata Keita (r. 1235-55), ruler of Mali. Despite this turmoil, West Africa—the premodern world’s major supplier of gold—is still largely imagined in historiography as producing and exporting gold into the global market during this time at or above pre-conquest levels. Concurrent to these developments, however, Western Europe experienced a prolonged gold famine. By utilizing world systems theory and synthesizing high medieval …

El Pastor: The Life And Ministry Of José Ynéz Perea, 1837–1910, Benjamin Rankin Davis

History ETDs

Although numerically few, Presbyterian Hispanos constitute a persistent presence in the predominately Catholic religious landscape of New Mexico. Despite their resilience, they have been largely invisible in historical scholarship. This study foregrounds the Protestant Hispano identity through the experience of the first Hispano ordained as a Presbyterian pastor, José Ynéz Perea. Using Perea’s correspondence, U.S. government documents, contemporary newspapers, Presbyterian serials, and Catholic oppositional writings, this study locates Perea’s experience in the wider context of the Gilded Age, both in New Mexico and in the United States. Perea’s religious identity made tenuous his place in Hispano society. Although he found …

Remembering New Mexico's War: Service, Sacrifice, Suffering, And The Surrender Of Bataan In Wartime New Mexico, 1941-1946, Elena Marie Friot

History ETDs

New Mexicans positioned defeat, surrender, and captivity at the center of their narrative of World War II and incorporated the surrender of Bataan into New Mexico’s long history of service, sacrifice, and suffering as part of the United States. During and after the war, they created rituals, spaces, and texts that made the surrender a permanent and defining feature of the state’s social, cultural, and political landscape, which challenges the prevailing victory narrative that tends to dominate public commemorations of the war. Importantly, this dissertation shifts our gaze to investigate how defeat and surrender, and the corresponding experiences of surrendered …

Little Farm Hands: Rural Child Labor, Family, And Memory In The U.S. Southwest, 1890-1940, Jairo E. Marshall

History ETDs

Child labor was a traditional subsistence and agricultural practice throughout the rural Southwest. Between 1890 and 1940 a series of changes occurred within agriculture, ranching, and rural land/labor patterns in New Mexico and Texas. However, child labor remained a useful economic strategy for families well into this period, because it remained grounded in environmental challenges, cultural practices, agrarian ideologies, and children’s social and physical development. Agribusinesses took advantage of this labor pool, while schools and communities continued to allow children to labor, believing it to be either necessary or beneficial.

Families and children continued to have agency to determine the …

Beach Bodies: Gender And The Beach In American Culture, 1880-1940, Margaret Elena Depond

History ETDs

This dissertation argues that American beaches, within the world of leisure and pleasure, were significant contested spaces of social change and debate. Overtime, from about 1880 to 1940, social restrictions loosened at the beach, allowing men, women, and people of color to express themselves in ways that had been previously controlled, curtailed, or proscribed. The emergence of mass popular amusements at the beach attracted a wide array of the American population. Both working-class and middle-class Americans absorbed the culture of new beach attractions, such as amusement parks, piers, boardwalks, and bathhouses. In doing so, they interacted more with each other …

Clever Cleric: Saint Wilfrid Of York And The Complexities Of Power And Authority In Seventh-Century England, Olivia E. Gannon

History ETDs

Saint Wilfrid of York was a Northumbrian bishop, abbot, and missionary. He was born in 634 and died in 709/710. His life was characterized by his landholdings that spanned territories and kingdoms, his enduring persistence to remain bishop, his monastic empire, his hostile relationships with kings, his powerful friends and supporters, and his resistance in the face of adversity. Wilfrid’s achievements were remarkable for a seventh-century bishop – a bishop deserving of recognition for his lasting impact on England. By closely examining the sources, this thesis analyzes Wilfrid’s tumultuous life and career in the form of his landholdings, his trips …

Statewise: Jurisdictional Fictions, Transnational Politics And Remaking The Nation State On The Chiapas-Guatemala Border, 1821-1899, Lean Sweeney

History ETDs

Statewise: Jurisdictional Fictions, Transnational Politics And Remaking The Nation State On The Chiapas-Guatemala Border, 1821-1899, focuses on the undrawn border between Mexico and Guatemala during the nineteenth century. I argue that this lack of national definition allowed social actors and state authorities in both Mexico and Guatemala to successfully negotiate alliances and competing territorial claims. In this space of "jurisdictional fiction," where the Mexican and Guatemalan governments' claims to authority were undermined by their lack of political, economic and military control, exiles could become political leaders, contrabandists could hold the keys and records to the customs house, displaced indigenous …

Urban In Nature: Yosemite, Cars, And California's Cities, 1913–1970, Guy Mcclellan

History ETDs

The impacts of national parks do not stop at their borders, and neither should their histories. Located less than a day’s drive from California’s biggest cities, Yosemite National Park remains a product of their combined influences. “Urban in Nature” is a relational history of the park and its nearby metropolitan areas like Merced (70 miles away), Berkeley (180), San Francisco (200), and Los Angeles (300).

Since the advent of the automobile Yosemite has been a mirror of the state’s urban areas, rather than an escape from them. Passenger cars drove Yosemite’s urbanization in two interconnected ways. Firstly, increasing amounts of …

Contested Education, Continuity, And Change In Arizona And New Mexico, 1945-2010, Stephen D. Mandrgoc

History ETDs

Sibling states split from the original New Mexico Territory, Arizona and New Mexico are neighbors geographically but very different otherwise: in how they were founded, in their ethnic makeup, in their sociocultural values, and in the forms of structural racism that are part of this history of both states. Mexican American residents who found themselves suddenly American citizens struggled in response to discrimination aimed at “Mexicans” by their Anglo American neighbors fueled by racist stereotypes built on the Spanish Black Legend and the mythology of the Alamo in Texas. Above all, Mexican Americans contested Anglo Americans for the right for …

Blackdom: Interpreting The Hidden History Of New Mexico's Black Town, Austin J. Miller

History ETDs

This master’s thesis recovers the history of Blackdom, New Mexico. Founded by an African American family from Georgia, Blackdom is a ghost town that existed in the early decades of the twentieth century near Roswell, New Mexico. Blackdom was initially imagined as both a refuge from the hostilities of Jim Crow society and as a for-profit enterprise. Entanglement in land-fraud scandals hindered the town’s early development, but Blackdom eventually grew to nearly three hundred residents, with its own school, Baptist church, post office, and general store. Blackdom settlers practiced a variety of agricultural methods, including dry farming and irrigation from …

Reckoning With Violence: Counterinsurgency, Prisons, And Gang Truces In Los Angeles And El Salvador 1979-2017, Sarah L. Knopp

History ETDs

Mara Salvatrucha is a street gang that developed organizationally in California's prisons in the 1980s and was exported to El Salvador beginning in 1992. Convicted felons were deported to their native El Salvador just as the Peace Accords brought an end to the twelve-year civil war. Most of these convicted felons had come to California as children during the civil war, and many had been present for the seminal gang truce in Los Angeles in 1992 and 1993. Some of those same gang members were also present during the gang truce negotiated in El Salvador in 2012. The latter truce …