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Remaking Of Race And Labor In British Guiana And Louisiana: 1830-1880, Amanda G. Lewis Ms. Dec 2011

Remaking Of Race And Labor In British Guiana And Louisiana: 1830-1880, Amanda G. Lewis Ms.

History Theses

During the nineteenth century, the Gulf of Mexico fostered the movement of people, ideas, and news throughout the surrounding regions. Although each colony and state surrounding the basin had distinct cultures and traditions, they shared the legacy of slavery and emancipation. This study examines the transformation of labor that occurred for sugar planters in British Guiana and southern Louisiana during the age of emancipation. In this comparative project, I argue that in the 1830s planters from the British West Indies set the trajectory for solutions to the labor problem by curtailing the freedom of former slaves with Asian contract labor. …


Reconciling Memory: Landscapes, Commemorations, And Enduring Conflicts Of The U.S.-Dakota War Of 1862, Julie A. Anderson Dec 2011

Reconciling Memory: Landscapes, Commemorations, And Enduring Conflicts Of The U.S.-Dakota War Of 1862, Julie A. Anderson

History Dissertations

The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 resulted in the deaths of more than 500 Minnesota settlers, the expulsion of the Dakota people from their homeland, and the largest mass execution in U.S. history. For more than a century, white Minnesotans declared themselves innocent victims of Indian brutality and actively remembered this war by erecting monuments, preserving historic landscapes, publishing first-person narratives, and hosting anniversary celebrations. However, as the centennial anniversary approached, new awareness for the sufferings of the Dakota both before and after the war prompted retellings of the traditional story that gave the status of victimhood to the Dakota as …


Ballads, Culture And Performance In England 1640-1660, Sarah Page Wisdom Nov 2011

Ballads, Culture And Performance In England 1640-1660, Sarah Page Wisdom

History Theses

Ballads published during the English Civil Wars and Interregnum were a uniquely potent cultural medium. Ballad authors and publishers used the tools of format and genre, music, and available discourses to translate contentious topics into a form of entertainment. The addition of music to what would otherwise have been merely another form of cheap print allowed ballads to be incorporated into many parts of daily life, through oral networks as well as through print and literacy. Ballads and their music permeated all levels of society and therefore the ideas presented in ballads enjoyed a broad audience. Because any given ballad …


The Apocalypse Will Be Televised: Representations Of The Cold War On Network Television, 1976-1987, Aubrey Underwood Aug 2011

The Apocalypse Will Be Televised: Representations Of The Cold War On Network Television, 1976-1987, Aubrey Underwood

History Dissertations

This dissertation examines how the major television networks, in conjunction with the Reagan administration, launched a lingering cloud of nuclear anxiety that helped to revive the Cold War during the 1980s. Placed within a larger political and cultural post-war context, this national preoccupation with a global show-down with the Soviet Union at times both hindered and bolstered Reagan’s image as the archetypal conservative, cowboy President that could free America from its liberal adolescent past now caustically referred to as “the sixties.” This stalwart image of Reagan, created and carefully managed by a number of highly-paid marketing executives, as one of …


The African-American Emigration Movement In Georgia During Reconstruction, Falechiondro Karcheik Sims-Alvarado Jun 2011

The African-American Emigration Movement In Georgia During Reconstruction, Falechiondro Karcheik Sims-Alvarado

History Dissertations

This dissertation is a narrative history about nearly 800 newly freed black Georgians who sought freedom beyond the borders of the Unites States by emigrating to Liberia during the years of 1866 and 1868. This work fulfills three overarching goals. First, I demonstrate that during the wake of Reconstruction, newly freed persons’ interest in returning to Africa did not die with the Civil War. Second, I identify and analyze the motivations of blacks seeking autonomy in Africa. Third, I tell the stories and challenges of those black Georgians who chose emigration as the means to civil and political freedom in …


Nationalizing The Dead: The Contested Making Of An American Commemorative Tradition From The Civil War To The Great War, Shannon T. Bontrager Ph.D. May 2011

Nationalizing The Dead: The Contested Making Of An American Commemorative Tradition From The Civil War To The Great War, Shannon T. Bontrager Ph.D.

History Dissertations

In recent years, scholars have emphasized the importance of collective memory in the making of national identity. Where does death fit into the collective memory of American identity, particularly in the economic and social chaos of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? How did death shape the collective memory of American national identity in the midst of a pluralism brought on by immigration, civil and labor rights, and a transforming culture? On the one hand, the commemorations of public figures such as Ulysses S. Grant, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt constructed an identity based on Anglo-Saxonism, American imperialism, and …


Imagining Haiti: Representations Of Haiti In The American Press During The U.S. Occupation, 1915-1934, Molly M. Baroco May 2011

Imagining Haiti: Representations Of Haiti In The American Press During The U.S. Occupation, 1915-1934, Molly M. Baroco

History Theses

Throughout the United States occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934, the U.S. government and its supporters were forced to defend the legitimacy of American action. In order to justify it to the American public, officials and journalists created a dichotomy of capacity between an inferior Haiti and a superior U.S., and they presented the occupation as a charitable civilizing mission. This vision of Haiti and Haitians was elaborated in a racialized discourse wherein Haitians were assigned various negative traits that rendered them incapable of self-government. In examining how the New York Times, the National Geographic Magazine, and the Crisis …


Tactics, Politics, And Propaganda In The Irish War Of Independence, 1917-1921, Mike Rast May 2011

Tactics, Politics, And Propaganda In The Irish War Of Independence, 1917-1921, Mike Rast

History Theses

This thesis examines the influences on and evolution of the Irish Republican Army‘s guerrilla war strategy between 1917 and 1921. Utilizing newspapers, government documents, and memoirs of participants, this study highlights the role of propaganda and political concerns in waging an insurgency. It argues that while tactical innovation took place in the field, IRA General Headquarters imposed policy and directed the conflict with a concern for the political results of military action. While implementing strategies necessary to effective conflict of the war, this Headquarters staff was unable to reconcile a disjointed and overburdened command structure, leading its disintegration after the …


Most Desperate People: The Genesis Of Texas Exceptionalism, Michael G. Kelley May 2011

Most Desperate People: The Genesis Of Texas Exceptionalism, Michael G. Kelley

History Dissertations

Six different nations have claimed sovereignty over some or all of the current state of Texas. In the early nineteenth century, Spain ruled Texas. Then Mexico rebelled against Spain, and from 1821 to 1836 Texas was a Mexican province. In 1836, Texas Anglo settlers rebelled against Mexican rule and established a separate republic. The early Anglo settlers brought their form of civilization to a region that the Spanish had not been able to subdue for three centuries. They defeated a professional army and eventually overwhelmed Native American tribes who wished to maintain their way of life without inference from intruding …


19th Century Tragedy, Victory, And Divine Providence As The Foundations Of An Afrikaner National Identity, Kevin W. Hudson May 2011

19th Century Tragedy, Victory, And Divine Providence As The Foundations Of An Afrikaner National Identity, Kevin W. Hudson

History Theses

Apart from a sense of racial superiority, which was certainly not unique to white Cape colonists, what is clear is that at the turn of the nineteenth century, Afrikaners were a disparate group. Economically, geographically, educationally, and religiously they were by no means united. Hierarchies existed throughout all cross sections of society. There was little political consciousness and no sense of a nation. Yet by the end of the nineteenth century they had developed a distinct sense of nationalism, indeed of a volk [people; ethnicity] ordained by God. The objective of this thesis is to identify and analyze three …


Finding Their Place In The World: Meiji Intellectuals And The Japanese Construction Of An East-West Binary, 1868-1912, Masako N. Racel May 2011

Finding Their Place In The World: Meiji Intellectuals And The Japanese Construction Of An East-West Binary, 1868-1912, Masako N. Racel

History Dissertations

The Meiji era (1868-1912) in Japanese history was characterized by the extensive adoption of Western institutions, technology, and customs. The dramatic changes that took place caused the era’s intellectuals to ponder Japan's position within the larger global context. The East-West binary was a particularly important part of the discourse as the intellectuals analyzed and criticized the current state of affairs and offered their visions of Japan’s future. This dissertation examines five Meiji intellectuals who had very different orientations and agendas: Fukuzawa Yukichi, an influential philosopher and political theorist; Shimoda Utako, a pioneer of women's education; Uchimura Kanzō, a Christian leader; …


Red Helmsman: Cybernetics, Economics, And Philosophy In The German Democratic Republic, Kevin T. Baker May 2011

Red Helmsman: Cybernetics, Economics, And Philosophy In The German Democratic Republic, Kevin T. Baker

History Theses

Cybernetics, despite being initially rejected in the Eastern Bloc throughout the 1950s for ideological reasons, rose to a high level of institutional prominence in the 1960s, profoundly influencing state philosophy and economic planning. This thesis is an examination of this transition, charting the development of cybernetics from the object of the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands’s (SED) opprobrium to one of the major philosophical currents within the party intelligentsia.