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The Clemson Class Of 1939, Lawrence Korth

All Theses

Abstract
The Clemson graduating class of 1939 entered college in 1935, during the Great Depression. By the time they enrolled, even as teenagers, many of them had encountered the economic hardships and family disruption of the times. When they got to Clemson, they discovered a military school with strong discipline and regimentation. Shortly after graduation these same men were engaged in World War ll. These three experiences, - the Depression, military training and World War ll combat - combined to form a bond among these men that has carried forward for over 70 years.
Circumstance played a role in helping …

'Losing A Life To Find It' Ben Robertson, Jr.'S Freedom Quest, Beatrice Bailey

All Theses

This thesis is a revisionist perspective on the life and legacy of Ben Robertson, Jr. Throughout the last seventy years, a few efforts have been made to assess Robertson's significant contributions. For the most part, these have focused on his accomplishments as a southern author or journalist in the first half of the twentieth century. This thesis, in contrast, examines Robertson's life trajectory in terms of his understanding of and commitment to American freedoms. It examines how Robertson, a young man from the upcountry of South Carolina, was able to become a leader in one of the most significant freedom …

Through A Glass, Darkly: The Changing Past Of Coffee County, Georgia, Jonathan Hepworth

All Theses

In 1954, Coffee County, Georgia, commemorated its centennial with a massive celebration that essentially shut down the county seat of Douglas for a week. Parades, fireworks, speeches, and above all a large-scale historical pageant, the 'Centurama,' were components of the celebration. The history celebrated in 1954, however, did not necessarily match up with Coffee County's actual history. This thesis examines the history of Coffee County and its changing nature, looking at politics, economics, and culture. It finds that historical 'memory' is not always planned out by society's elites, but can change as the result of politics, demographic shifts, and commercial …

Visions & Fissures, Sarah Butler

All Theses

My work references both Early Renaissance paintings and digital technology through highly-saturated and detailed hybrids of painting styles. The religious narratives combined with digital symbols and artifacts of digital processes suggest the spiritual undercurrents surrounding digital technology in its potential for enlightenment, transcendence, and evoking a sense of the infinite. To further clarify the reasoning behind this connection, I discuss three themes. Firstly, the function of illusion in Early Renaissance and in digital space, secondly, the mythology and promise associated with digital space and lastly, the fact that we currently occupy two spaces simultaneously as computer users, and aligning that …

Irene Nemirovsky: A Jewish-Russian Inter-War Writer, Lucy Hoffman

All Theses

Irene Nemirovsky was a woman balanced between two worlds--the world of her childhood as the daughter of a wealthy man in Russia and the world of her immigrant status in France. Many critics have maintained that the Jewish Russian writer, Irene Nemirovsky, was an anti-Semite. Writing in the interwar period of the early 20th century, Nemirovsky often used stereotypical Jewish characters in her early writing. As her writing progressed, her subject was often on immigrants and their lifestyle choices in a foreign country. Nemirovsky appears to be a woman of neither world, a woman juxtaposed in the 'borderland' world of …

When The Rangers Came Home: Reconstructing Lives In Fauquier County, Virginia, 1865-1866, Madeleine Forrest

All Theses

Fauquier County, Virginia, is an idyllic spot in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. However, it has seen its fair share of heartache and pain. It is better known to history as being an integral part of Mosby's Confederacy, the postage-stamped sized area of land in Northern Virginia. It was there in the foothills of the mountains, that one of the most famous guerilla outfits in the Confederate Army operated under the command of John Singleton Mosby. Mosby's men came from many of the leading families in the county and were used to a world of wealth and privilege. …

Will The Real Miss Scarlett Please Stand Up: How The Life Of Mary Boykin Chesnut Can Be Considered A Model For Margaret Mitchell's Scarlett O'Hara, Anna Braunscheidel

All Theses

Scarlett O'Hara may well be one of the most well known Southern women of all time. Outside of the world of fiction, Mary Boykin Chesnut is probably the most famous woman of the Confederate era. There are striking similarities between both women, not only in terms of their experiences but also their reactions to these experiences, as well as their striking personalities. Because of these similarities, it is quite easy to draw parallels between the two women, and surprisingly, this subject, although it has been suggested, has not been explored in greater detail.
Mary DeCredico's introduction to her biography of …

From Confederate Expatriates To New South Neo-Filibusters: Major Edward A. Burke And The Americas, Michael Powers

All Theses

The traditional historiography of the American South presents the New South creed as a vision emphasizing national reconciliation based upon the advancement of Southern commerce and industry. In addition, scholars broadly define New South spokesmen as men who came to maturity after the Civil War and did not involve themselves in state or national politics. An examination of Major Edward Austin Burke, however, reveals that at least one pivotal New South booster was a Confederate veteran and leading political figure; it also suggests the presence of an international component inherent in the New South paradigm of the 1880s. It is …

New Directions Of Play: Native American Origins Of Modern Lacrosse, Jeffrey Carey

All Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to provide a history of lacrosse from the seventeenth century, when the game was played exclusively by Native Americans, to the early decades of the twentieth century, when the game began to flourish in non-Native settings in Canada and the United States. While the game was first developed by Native Americans well before contact with Europeans, lacrosse became standardized by a group of Canadians led by George Beers in 1867, and has continued to develop into the twenty-first century. The thesis aims to illuminate the historical linkages between the ball game that existed among …

A Scandal In Britain: The Mary Anne Clarke Affair And Representations Of Gendered Patriotism, Parissa Djangi

All Theses

In 1809, Mary Anne Clarke served as a key player in an investigation against her former lover, the Duke of York. She testified before the House of Commons that the Duke, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, did not provide her with enough financial support and allowed her to accept bribes for commissions in the army. Her confession rocked early nineteenth-century Britain, and the scandal caused the Duke to resign his military position. With Britain in the thick of the Napoleonic Wars, 1809 was a bad year for a scandal, as it encouraged Britons to doubt the authority of their military …

Paradise Found: Religiosity And Reform In Oberlin, Ohio, 1833-1859, Matthew Hintz

All Theses

Founded as a quasi-utopian society by New England evangelists, Oberlin became the central hub of extreme social reform in Ohio's Western Reserve. Scholars have looked at Oberlin from political and cultural perspectives, but have placed little emphasis on religion. That is to say, although religion is a major highlight of secondary scholarship, few have placed the community appropriately in the dynamic of the East and West social reform movement. Historians have often ignored, or glossed over this important element and how it represented the divergence between traditional orthodoxy in New England and Middle-Atlantic states, and the new religious hybrids found …

To Live, To Love, To Labor: Challenging The Rigidity Of The Public And Private Spheres, Mallory Neil

All Theses

JŸrgen Habermas's bourgeois public sphere theory led many historians to adopt new categories of social divisions. More specifically, gender historians utilized the theory in order to explain the exclusion of women from the political realm. Imparting male and female classifications onto the public and private spheres, in turn, led to the claim of complete social immobility for women. In the 1990s and 2000s, however, gender historians began to question the rigidity of the gendered spheres. This study adopts this line of argument by looking at the lives of Madame de Sta‘l, George Sand, and Lucie Aubrac. These women present three …

Mr. Aull's Grand Experiment, Paul Crunkleton

All Theses

Institutional histories, be they about colleges, public agencies, or corporations, are generally impersonal affairs. The story of the Clemson Experimental Forest and its history, however, is intensely personal. While manning his post as head of the department of agricultural economics and rural sociology, George Aull labored daily to ensure that the people of the Fant's Grove community, the heart of the Clemson Project's land, could achieve better lives, that the land--severely damaged by overfarming and droughts--could return to productivity, and that Clemson College could apply its research initiatives in agriculture, forestry, economics, and sociology to the people living around it. …

'A Sane Sense Of Loyalty To Nation In Peace And War,' Military Education And Patriotism At Wofford College, 1917-45, Andrew Baker

All Theses

The Upper Piedmont of South Carolina is home to a disproportionate number of Army ROTC units and citations for heroism in battle. Within the region, the story of Spartanburg, South Carolina's Wofford College provides a unique perspective on the idea of a southern military tradition. In 1917, Wofford's president Henry Nelson Snyder proved an avid supporter of the American war effort. His support culminated in the formation of an ROTC detachment on Wofford's campus in 1919. After several tenuous early years, Wofford College's voluntary detachment's ranks were filled by the majority of the all-male student body. In competition, the detachment …

Slavery, Imprinted: The Life And Narrative Of William Grimes, Susanna Ashton

Publications

In 1824, in a fury over the injustices of slavery, racism in the North, and exploitation of the workingman, William Grimes wrote the story of his life. The Life of William Grimes, the Runaway Slave (1825) ends with a visceral and violent image of literary sacrifice: Grimes offers to skin himself in order to authorize the national story of the United States:

If it were not for the stripes on my back which were made while I was a slave, I would in my will leave my skin as a legacy to the gover(n)ment, desiring that it might be taken …