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“Thirsteth For The Blood Of America”: Propaganda And Violence During The American Revolution, Taylor Fischer

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from paper: "On December 14, 1763, a group of discontented farmers from the Pennsylvania frontier, called the Paxton Boys, arrived at Conestoga Manor in Lancaster County. The Paxton Boys were Scots-Irish Presbyterians who aimed to take over a Quaker colony. The group of farmers murdered six peaceful Conestoga Indians who were under the long-standing protection of the colonial Pennsylvania government. After the initial attack, Pennsylvania’s government placed the remaining Conestoga in a Lancaster jailhouse for their supposed protection. The Paxton Boys then traveled to Lancaster and slaughtered fourteen more Conestoga peoples. These murderous and militant frontiersmen claimed that the …

"The Unlucky Rebel": William Claiborne And The Evolution Of The Kent Island Dispute, Adam Pleasants

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis attempts to present a more complete view of the often-overlooked conflict over Kent Island between the merchant and early Virginian politician William Claiborne and the Lords Baltimore by presenting it in the evolving cultural context of the Atlantic world.

“Lepers For Show:” The Performance Of Medical Authority And The Illusion Of The Chinese Medical Threat In Nineteenth-Century America, Claire Wyszynski

Undergraduate Research Awards

Excerpt from the paper: "The energy of the crowd was infectious. On a fateful day in August 1884, over 200 men flocked to the City Hall of Washington, DC. They gathered to hear the remarks of Dr. Charles C. O’Donnell, the candidate for coroner of San Francisco, who had traveled across the country from California to deliver a speech to their city. It was unusual for a local politician of the West to journey so far for a speaking engagement, but this peculiarity only seemed to warm the crowd to him more. Under the shadow of the Capitol, the anticipation …

Scenes From Williamsburg’S 19th Century, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "When the capital of Virginia shifted from Williamsburg to Richmond in 1780, Williamsburg’s history shifted too, but did not end—three little known accounts of the town offer glimpses of life into the nineteenth century..."

The “Shoe Holly” And The “Dressing Trees” On Richmond Road, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "A site connecting the W&M campus and local Black history should be recorded--the “Shoe Holly” on Richmond Road, just off the corner of Bryan Hall..."

The “Peculiar Institution” In And Near Williamsburg, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "Slavery in Williamsburg and nearby—what was it like? Depends on who you ask..."

W&M’S Kkk Flagpole: Found?, Terry L. Meyers

Arts & Sciences Articles

Excerpt from the article: "Ever since 2008, when I wrote a piece for the Gazette about Williamsburg’s almost century old encounter with the KKK, I’ve been on a hunt for a flagpole. In 1926, 5000 Klansmen flocked to town to see W&M dedicate the Klan’s gift to the College—a huge American flag and a 70 foot flagpole to fly it. I wanted to know what became of that pole..."

Divided We Stand: An Investigation Of America’S Dual Psyche And The Fbi’S War On Anti-Americanism, Laura Mills

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In periods after war, the U.S. has a tendency to feel insecure amidst a changing world order. Reassuring narratives of American exceptionalism often emerge, as well as reactive vilification of the un-American “Other.” This thesis explores the split in American identity that occurs in times of heightened national insecurity, a division that awards labels of Americanism or deviant anti-Americanism to the broader citizenry. To explore the tie between security and identity, a case study approach is taken with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI. From its establishment in 1908, the FBI carefully built itself under the expectation that …

Disappearing Smoke: Why Black Pitmasters Are Being Left Behind By Commercialization Within North Carolina Whole Hog Barbecue, Charlotte Lucas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In North Carolina, there is only one Eastern whole hog establishment left that is owned by black pitmasters. As a result of historical context, black pitmasters have been left behind by the recent trend of commercialization within North Carolina whole hog barbecue. This exclusion can be explained by examining the history of whole hog barbecue, the struggles black entrepreneurs face in the restaurant industry, and the role that the media has played in ignoring black pitmasters. Historical background dives into the history of the whole hog from the plantation era to the Civil Rights movement and beyond in North Carolina …

"But A Contraband Is A Free Man:" Civil War Literature And The Figure Of The "Contraband", Mary A. Kardos

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores Civil War popular literature related to "contraband" individuals by Black and white authors. In May 1861, those who escaped from enslavement to Union territory were deemed "contrabands of war," a label placing them between freedom and property. This purgatorial category delayed freedom and depicts formerly enslaved persons as both intellectual and literal property of white America. Across various poems, essays, speeches, novels, illustrated envelopes, and sketches, Civil War authors debated the function of the “contrabands” within the American social order. Consequently, this thesis explores the patterns through which the uniquely transitory nature of the “contraband" allowed the …

Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.

Paradoxical Toleration: Southern Antisemitism In The Nineteenth Century, Jason Blau

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores antisemitism in the nineteenth century South. It seeks to demonstrate the relative paucity of religious prejudice directed towards Jews by white southern gentiles until the late nineteenth century, despite the virulence of anti-black racism in white southern society at the time. This “paradox,” contrary to modern assumptions that disparate prejudices run together as has been documented by social psychologists, attracts attention. Historically, scholars made similar claims without much substantiation. Other researchers, such as Leonard Dinnerstein in “A Note on Southern Attitudes toward Jews,” challenged the possibility of southern Jewish acceptance relative to northern mores, pointing out an …

The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.

The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a close reading of Civil War pedagogy in Alabama and Virginia with special attention given to Black history during the Civil War era. Through an examination of Civil War history, it is evident that slavery was the main cause of the War. The development of the Lost Cause narrative, a reaction to Blacks gaining Civil Rights that aimed to prove the Confederate war effort was honorable, is still promoted in southern schools. Alabama and Virginia both provide state standards, outlines of the minimum required knowledge to be obtained on a given subject by the end of the …

From Necessity To Novelty: Historic Trades In Colonial Williamsburg, Cecelia Rose Eure

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum in Virginia that hosts a large program interpreting and preserving eighteenth-century craft methods. Using ethnographic research methods, this paper evaluates the value of the historic trades program as a means of preserving otherwise lost skills, producing knowledge, and engaging the public in history. I argue that historic trades interpretation connects with audiences more than traditional exhibits, particularly highlighting specialized interpretation, on-the-job discoveries, representation of identity groups, and the ability to utilize online video platforms. Additionally, I address the divide between modern consumption and production, and how visitors can find historic trades that were …

The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper assesses why two projects with the same name, concept and intent of forming cultural consensus, the Freedom Trains, took such different forms between the postwar "consensus" (1947-1963) and detente (1963-1979) phases of the Cold War. It argues that organizers Attorney General Tom C. Clark (1947), Ross Rowland (1975), and their corporate backers articulated histories based on perceived common values of limited rights (1947), cultural pluralism (1975) and consumption (both) that attempted unity, but resulted in silences. The reception to each train, and the organizers' responses to those reactions, showed the limitations of a unifying consensus, but varied between …

“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The presence of Confederate symbols and other reminders of white institutional power in courtrooms introduces a risk that impermissible factors such as implicit bias, conscious prejudice, and sympathy for white supremacy will harm litigants’ rights. I compiled data for 210 of 328 courts (64%) in the Commonwealth and found that there are more than 617 portraits on display in Virginia courtrooms. At least 357 portraits depict white men, six depict Black men, fifteen depict white women, and twenty-eight depict people who served in the Confederacy, either in the government or the Confederate States Army (CSA). At least fourteen different courts …

They Are United As Me Now: Chloe Whittle In Norfolk During The Secession Crisis, Brooke Hemingway

Undergraduate Research Awards

"On the late evening of Monday, April 15th, 1861, seventeen year-old Chloe Whittle sat down to transcribe a thrilling tale of the weekend in Norfolk into her diary. She wrote the wrong date at the top of her page, perhaps intending to mark the importance of April 12th, 1861 for posterity. She took care to write that she was in “Norfolk, VA United States”, as a prediction that soon she would not reside in the United States, but in the Confederate States of America. As a secessionist, Chloe said “this is the last day I will even be able to …

Machines On The Farm: Capitalism And Technology In Midwestern Agriculture, 1845-1900, James Jonathan Rick

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Farming people in the Midwestern United States and in Ontario began using new machines throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. These included machines related to the production of grain crops—including threshers, reapers, and drills—as well as machines related to the production of the farm household— such as sewing and washing machines. In their use, maintenance, and alteration of machines within the natural and social contexts of their farms, rural people produced new technological systems of industrial agriculture. They also struggled with machine manufacturers and their agents for control of those systems—both as individuals and through farmer’s organizations. This …

"Summer's Gone:" Rethinking The History Of The Beach Boys, 1961-1998, Grant Wong

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis rethinks the history of American rock band The Beach Boys from 1961-1998 in terms of how its members tapped into the zeitgeists of the sixties, seventies, and eighties to create successful music and branding. In its analysis, it draws upon methods of cultural history, business history, and biography in order to dispel popular myths surrounding the band and consider the meaning of its impact within United States history and American popular culture as a whole. The Beach Boys, in recording innovative music and marketing a winning brand, created a durable pop cultural institution that defined its times just …

The Republic Of Happiness: James Wilson, Political Thought, And The American Revolution, Kevin Diestelow

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The moral quantity of “happiness” provides an organizing principle for understanding the political thought of James Wilson. By using happiness as a metric for understanding his thought, the Revolution can be conceptualized as an intervention in favor of human improvement. In his political thought, Wilson supported an actively empowered government which could take steps needed to support citizens’ moral and material advancement and ultimately, their happiness.

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …

The Enslaved People And The Tylers Too: Why It Is Imperative To Discuss Slavery In Public History, Meredith Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper focuses on the intersection of slavery and public history in the present day, specifically researching how the Tyler family perpetuated slavery and the Lost Cause and the enslaved people at Sherwood Forest Plantation as a microhistory.

"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …

John Dickinson: The Development And Deployment Of A Legal Mind: 1754-1774, Sophie Rizzieri

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis argues that John Dickinson’s political thought is best described as legal-minded. I define Dickinson as broadly “legal-minded,” with his use of statute-based arguments conveyed with oratorical skill, and his articulation of constitutional principles of natural rights and balanced government. Dickinson’s work during the period from 1764 to 1774 was concerned with deploying measured arguments and constitutional principles to convince American colonists to preserve their rights against encroachments from Great Britain. Using the letters he wrote to his parents while studying law at the Middle Temple in London in the 1750s, and various public writing and speeches from the …

The Intersection Of Activism And Black Memory: Space, Memory, And Resistance In John Mitchell, Jr.’S Woodland Cemetery And Remembering Emancipation In Hampton Roads, 1917-1963, Timothy Allen Case

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

“Emancipation is an Act, Freedom is a State of Being”: Remembering Emancipation in Hampton Roads, 1917-1963. This paper traces the centralized organization and an activist turn in the commemoration of emancipation in the Hampton Roads region of Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina. While considerable scholarship exists on African American freedom commemorations from the Civil War through its semi-centennial, the story told of twentieth-century emancipation memory is mostly one of marginalization and decline. Accounts of these celebrations in the local Black press reveals their persistence well into the twentieth century. Jim Crow and racial violence haunted the celebratory culture of …

The “Cherry Tree Rebellion”: Jefferson’S Controversial Addition To The Washington Memorial Landscape, 1936 - 1939, Meredith Barber

Undergraduate Research Awards

This research paper is the second chapter of my honors thesis, “Jefferson’s ‘Marble Mausoleum’: Incongruence in the Historical Memory of Thomas Jefferson, 1936-1945.” The first chapter covers the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Commission’s formation and situates the commission’s memory of Jefferson into the political and economic landscape of the time. The third chapter explores the incorporation of Jefferson as an “abolitionist” into the memorial and determines how memory of early American slavery influenced the memorialization of Jefferson. It also focuses on African American perceptions of the memorial.

To “Whiten” The Mountains: Abolishing Slavery In West(Ern) Virginia, 1861−1863, Adam Zucconi

Richard Bland Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Undermining “The Deal Of The Century”: The Siberian Natural Gas Pipeline & The Failure Of American Economic Pressure On The Soviet Energy Industry, Brandon T. Von Kannewurff

James Blair Historical Review

In late 1981, President Ronald Reagan announced far-reaching sanctions on a critical Soviet infrastructure project, a 3,000 mile pipeline connecting the Soviet Union to Western Europe. American allies had carefully negotiated “The Deal of the Century” with the Soviets to minimize its energy dependence on the Middle East, but the Reagan administration flouted the concerns of his allies to test the resolve of the United States’ ideological archenemy. American allies were shocked. A fracture in the democratic-capitalist alliance opened.

Reagan Victory School proponents claim these sanctions were a masterful stroke to exploit Soviet economic weakness and triumph in the Cold …

A Failed Vision Of Brotherhood: The New Left And The Occupation Of Alcatraz, Yutong Zhan

James Blair Historical Review

In the United States, the Sixties witnessed the rise of the political New Left, the counterculture, and the interracial cooperation between white and African American youth activists. However, few scholars have examined the interracial coalition between the white New Leftist and Native Americans after the exclusion of white activists from the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee in the late 1960s. To address this gap, my research focused on the New Leftists’ participation in the occupation of Alcatraz by activists of Indians of All Tribes from 1969 to 1971. I used the occupation as a case study to answer the questions of …