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Working On Desert Rails: A Social And Environmental History, Ann E. Vileisis

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Focusing on the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway from Grand Junction, Colorado to Green River, Utah, this study examines the working circumstances of nineteenth-century railroad laborers, the ecological limitations of the isolating desert where they worked, and their relations with railroad management and local communities. It begins by investigating the experiences of the railroad surveyors and construction laborers. The study then examines the experiences of workers' response to labor organization in the communities of Green River, Utah and Grand Junction, Colorado. The study identifies ecological changes spawned by the railroad and addresses issues of worker autonomy and labor organization …

Homeward The Course Of Empire: The Popularization Of The American West In Great Britain, 1850-1913, Ian Craig Breaden

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Images of the American West in Britain became prevalent in British popular culture during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This popularity arose out of the shared ethic of the Anglo myth. This myth was based upon the confidence gained from a growing industrial complex and the application of the Christian "Genesis" to the new Edens, the American West and the British Empire.

The Anglo myth could be found in British adventure novels set in both the West and empire. "Buffalo Bill" Cody used it in his Wild West, and Samuel Franklin Cody utilized it in his frontier melodramas as well …

Silent Saints: Deaf Mormons In Utah, Petra M. Horn

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Research for this thesis drew on the network of Deaf Mormon wards/branches, newspapers, magazines, books, unpublished documents, personal collections, and oral interviews to illustrate the religious activities engaged in by deaf Latter-day Saints at the national and local levels during the mid and late twentieth century America. The study focused on the theological perspectives, church participation, and personal experiences of deaf Mormons with a special focus on the accommodations the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ·Saints has for the deaf populace. This special attention was used to examine and demonstrate the influence and attractions the Mormon religion has for …

Nature's Second Course: Water Culture In The Mormon Communities Of Cache Valley, Utah, 1860-1916, Kathryn T. Morse

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Nineteenth-century Mormon settlers in Utah combined a unique set of religious beliefs with a fervent agrarianism and a strong sense of community. They encountered a specific arid environment along the Wasatch Front. A distinctive cultural set of irrigation institutions and practices developed out of the complex interchanges between nature and culture in Cache Valley, Utah, between 1860 and 1916. The structure of water flow, and conflicts over water rights and responsibilities, reflected the fundamental tensions within Mormon communities between individual gain and collective progress; it also reflected the patriarchal essence of Mormon culture.

The season-to-season workings of irrigation institutions that …

Utah And Mormon Migration In The Twentieth Century: 1890 To 1955, Todd Forsyth Carney

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Most Utahns spent the years between Mormon entry into the Great Basin and statehood for Utah pursuing the traditional frontier-rural life, a mode which had been an integral part of the American experience since earliest colonial times. After the Mormon capitulation and statehood, Utah moved into a transitional phase, a phase between the traditional and the modern in which elements of each were mixed and mingled. This phase ended with the Second World War.

This transition to modernity affected migration behavior. Seen in light of migration theory, the Utah experience is something of an anomaly. One theory says that migration …

The Glory Of Cambresis, Mark Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

In the Sixteenth century, Paris dominated France as the economic, social, and political center of all that happened in the Western world. For a brief moment, at the close of the Habsburg-Valois War, a small and virtually insignificant town snatched away the center stage; the final negotiations for peace would take place in Cambresis. Each power involved in the treaty wanted to see a quick end to the war, but not at their own expense. France and Spain, the "superpowers" of the negotiations, struggled to come out on top, but while their differences appeared to take precedence over all else, …