Digital Commons Network^™

We Can Do It, Or Can We?: Women’S Domestic And Workplace Roles In Advertising During Wwii And Postwar America, Jillian Brissette

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines the dramatic change from the empowering image of women workers that appeared in World War II advertisements and the domestic picture of women’s lives as depicted in the Cold War era. In examining this transformation, I seek to understand why there was such a drastic shift and how it affected real women. I examined hundreds of advertisements from the 1940s and 1950s that featured women in domestic or workplace roles. Contrary to the popular image of Rosie the Riveter, World War II era advertisements did not truly empower women. Instead, the emphasized women’s war work as a …

I-195 In Providence, Rhode Island: Urban Development Or Dislocation?, Alec Fraggos

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

In 1939, as the effects of the 1938 New England Hurricane that devastated much of Rhode Island, it became painfully evident to Providence city officials that it needed a better system of highways and bridges. More than this, because several Rhode Islanders had died while evacuating, the state made a concerted effort to build more and better highways. As the U.S. joined the war effort, the possibility of another failed evacuation caused a panic among city officials that continued to drive the placement of urban highways in Providence. With changes in the city’s landscape and major shifts in demographics, Providence …

May We Remember How The Great War Changed The Practice And Ceremony Of American Memorialization In Norfolk County, Massachusetts, 1868-1939, Grace Heffernan

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The emotional and psychological damage wrought by the Great War has long been rendered exceptional. The sheer numbers of dead and wounded coupled with new kinds of wounds – physical, emotional, psychological – perhaps justify this view. Yet in declaring that the Great War was a shock, a watershed, a tragedy, there is an implicit presupposition that some kind of precedent existed. As long as war had existed, so too did loss, grief, and mourning. The Great War did not introduce human sorrow to the world, though perhaps it altered human remembrance. When American families grieved their loved one, was …

James Madison And The Supreme Court The Evolution Of The Madisonian First Amendment In Early America, Thomas Mcsweeney

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

No abstract provided.

A Soldier And A Statesman: The Evolution Of George Washington’S Political And Military Career During The Encampment At Valley Forge, Dean Costalas

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Toward the end of 1777, George Washington was burdened with major obstacles on his path to becoming not only a victorious general, but a political figurehead for the budding United States Government. Mounting losses, men in disarray, and a lack of resources all led him into dire straits as his army huddled together for a long, solemn winter at Valley Forge. The result was a contentious relationship between Washington and the Continental Congress, an already strained dynamic thanks to Congress’ lack of efficiency in getting Washington the necessary supplies to equip and care for his men. And while he is …

“A Scepter Of Terror Or A Sword Of Freedom”: Elaine Brown’S Time In The Black Panther Party, Maeve Plassche

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This project highlights the activism of Elaine Brown, who was the only female chairperson of the Black Panther Party. It looks to enhance the way in which the Black Panther Party is remembered, by placing gender and gender relations in the center of the conversation. Even though women were crucial participants in the Party, they often did not receive the respect that their male counterparts did, and the historical scholarship, using male-centered sources, reiterates this point. While conducting research in the Dr. Huey P. Newton records, located the Stanford Libraries, I delved into the newspapers, internal Black Panther Party documents, …

Twentieth Century Education Reform: Centralization And The Integration Of Providence Public School, Emily Cavanaugh

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

No abstract provided.

Gag Rule Bibliography, Erik J. Chaput, Russell J. Desimone

Dorr Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Gag Rule And The Politics Of Slavery: A Brief Overview For Students And Teachers, Erik J. Chaput, Russell J. Desimone

Dorr Scholarship

A Note for Students and Teachers: This overview essay should be read before embarking on projects dealing with primary source material on Rhode Island in the Gag Rule. The essay, which includes digital primary and secondary source material in the footnotes for students and teachers, details the national debate over the abolitionist mailings and petitions in the mid-1830s in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate. The essay also sets up the debate in Rhode Island over the abolitionist agenda, especially in the final pages. The essay is designed to provide students and teachers with detail not found …

Rebranding The Native: Selling The ‘Ideal’ Indigenous Worker At The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1918, Luke Prior

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Luke Prior ’22
Major: History/Secondary Education
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alexander Orquiza, History and Classics

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School sought to recreate the image of the Native American from the savage brute of the past and the lazy free-loader who lived off the government ration to an ‘ideal’ worker who was a productive member of the American economy. In doing so, the school stripped students of their cultures and replaced them with American ideals. A very small minority of those at Carlisle used what they learned to fight against the assimilationist mission of the school.

An Unread Colonial Diary, Brigid Mcevoy

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Brigid McEvoy ’23
Majors: History and Spanish
Minors: Business and Innovation and Latin American Studies
Mentor: Dr. Adrian Weimer, History and Classics

Through funding from a Veritas Research Grant, I deciphered the Shelton shorthand writing of the second volume of Michael Wigglesworth's diary, digitized through the New England Hidden Histories project. Wigglesworth was a famous poet and preacher in early New England. One of the chief purposes of deciphering this second volume was to create a more nuanced perspective on Wigglesworth's life and artistic career.

This diary, written from March 1658 through November 1687, includes both longhand and shorthand writing. …

Race Films & American Society, Angie Pierre

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Angie Pierre ’25
Major: Global Studies
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

This project will explore Black cinema, specifically the race film industry and its relationship to Black identity and American society. Through an analysis of a number of early race films and archival documents from the 1920s, the project seeks to reveal how these films contributed to positive political, social and economic changes in Jim Crow America. Ultimately, the successes of race film pioneers are reflected throughout Black film history and the Black films we still watch today.

Terrible Terrell: The Forgotten Story Of Carolyn Daniels, Olivia Moll

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Olivia Moll ’22
Major: History
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

My thesis explores the participation of black women in the Civil Rights Movement, more specifically the contribution from Carolyn Daniels. Daniels is a mother and SNCC activist from Terrell County, and her story has yet to be told. I am here to tell Daniels’s story; her success towards the SNCC voting registration project that took place in the summer of 1962. The beauty of the Civil Rights Movement is that everyone’s story and activism matters, especially the story of women.

Terrible Terrell: Black Women’S Activism The Forgotten Story Of Carolyn Daniels, Olivia Moll

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

More often than not, when individuals think of the Civil Rights Movement, idolized individuals like that of Martin Luther King, Ella Baker, and Malcom X, come to mind. While their activism was heroic, their contributions do not and should not represent the entire success of the Civil Rights Movement. The real fuel of the Civil Rights Movement was in the hands of the people, ordinary individuals, more specifically black women. My thesis explores the participation of black women in the movement in a particular region, that of Terrell County, Georgia. In the first chapter, the reader studies the racist and …

Rebranding The Native: Selling The ‘Ideal’ Indigenous Worker At The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1918, Luke Prior

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Brigadier General Richard Henry Pratt of the United States Army established the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in 1879, which was the foundation the United States federal government used to establish over twenty-five similar schools. From its founding to its closure in 1918, every aspect of the Carlisle School, whether curriculum or even football, sought to create an ‘ideal’ Indigenous worker that was sold to America as the new stereotypical Native American. To reach this goal, Carlisle stripped its students of their cultures by cutting their hair, changing their dress, restricting their use of native languages, and teaching from an American …

Let Us March On: Lavilla, Florida, And The History Of The Harlem Of The South, Christine Sullivan

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Jacksonville, Florida, is a city that defies most expectations of an American city. Its massive size covers a vast array of people, cultures, and traditions. Jacksonville’s colorful history encompasses stories of success, failure, and control by three different nations. This diversity of people and backgrounds overwhelms Jacksonville’s narrative, leaving stories and memories forgotten. No more groups have been forgotten or overlooked in Jacksonville’s story more than the Black natives and residents. LaVilla, a neighborhood in downtown Jacksonville, is the historically Black community that has been consistently left out of Jacksonville’s story. LaVilla, known as the ‘Harlem of the South’, was …

Dorrite Prisoners Of War, Russell J. Desimone

Dorr Scholarship

Following two failed armed attempts in May and June 1842 by Thomas Wilson Dorr, the People’s governor, to establish the People’s government in Rhode Island, the opposing Charter government’s legislature enacted Martial Law throughout the state. During a period lasting several weeks forces allegiant to the Charter government and its governor, Samuel Ward King, commenced an all-out effort to arrest more than 260 pro-Dorr citizens. Some of Dorr’s followers fled the state to avoid arrest but those arrested appeared before a commission formed to interrogate the prisoners. Listed here are the actual accounts of each interrogation providing the reader with …

“Doe As Thou Wouldst Be Done By”: Relief Responses To Mental Illness In Puritan New England, Rebecca Farias

History & Classics Dissertations and Masters Theses

The emergent historical field of early American disability studies has catalyzed discussion on the mental and physical impairments that contributed to America’s cultural, medical, social, and economic foundations. How can historians tell an accurate story of mental illness, grounded in the narrative of America’s founding, and situate mental illness within disability studies? Literary and linguistic categories of analysis, presented in this thesis, can help historians begin to unpack disability in early modern New England.

The New England Puritan welfare model formed a basis of American disability ideology, a framework that persisted well until the 1800s. This article seeks to dispel …

Reactions And Responses To The American Chestnut Blight In The Twentieth Century, Sarah Heavren

Undergraduate Craft of Research Prize Papers

Chapter from The Perfect Tree: The American Chestnut Tree in American Culture, Economics, and Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

The tale of the American chestnut tree offers incredible insight on Americans’ changing relationship with their environment and the complications added by economic motivations and scientific advancements. The American chestnut tree was known for its favorable timber and delectable nuts, which allowed the tree to assume a level of economic and cultural significance in twentieth century America. The timber was versatile and durable, and picking chestnuts and roasting them during the holidays were common seasonal traditions. However, the arrival …

Aerial Terror: The Shift In American Daylight Bombing Over Europe During World War Ii, Joseph Sullivan

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

In the final two years of the Second World War, the United States abandoned daylight precision bombing for terror bombing. During the interwar years, the United States cited international norms and laws to speak out against unjust air attacks by Germany and Japan. Even during the United States’ period of neutrality, President Franklin Roosevelt criticized Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union for their tactics. But, as the war dragged on, the ferocity and persistence of the Nazis forced the United States to change their approach to strategic bombing. With fewer military industrial targets remaining and Allied casualties rising, the US …

Reagan’S State Of Grace: J. Peter Grace And The Effort To Cut Government Expense At The Public’S Expense, Kevin Michels

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Ronald Reagan’s ideological basis in neoliberalism and the difficulties with cutting out programs to which the citizenry had grown accustomed prompted him to change the narrative on government expenditures, focusing on the rooting out of wasteful and inefficient government agencies and programs as a means by which to lower taxes. In doing so, Reagan created a private sector survey for cost control that placed the responsibility of identifying such waste and inefficiencies under the purview of J. Peter Grace and the private sector—a group of corporate businessmen who shared Reagan’s deregulatory ideology yet were accountable to their own shareholders rather …

Bringing “Justice To Every Man’S Door”: John Jay’S Struggle To Build The Supreme Court, Sean Gray

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

In December of 1800, as his presidency concluded and he became desperate for the Federalists to maintain power, John Adams nominated John Jay for a second term as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Days later, Jay unequivocally rejected the job. “I left the bench,” he responded, “perfectly convinced that under a system so defective, it would not obtain the energy, weight, and Dignity which are essential to its affording due support to the national government, nor acquire the public confidence and respect, which, as the last resort of the justice of the nation, it should possess.” Adams then nominated …

Give Peace A Chance: Responses To The Vietnam War On Catholic College Campuses, Elizabeth Gleason

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, colleges and universities were at the center of the anti-Vietnam War movement in the United States. While there were certainly moments of tense, violent protest at American institutions such as Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, there were many more moments of nonviolent, peaceful protest at other institutions, particularly Catholic colleges and universities such as Providence College, Notre Dame University, and its sister school St. Mary’s College. While Catholic college students were not the only American students to employ peaceful methods of protest in conveying their opposition to the war, they comprised a …

Spymaster Of Setauket: The Impact Of Benjamin Tallmadge And The Culper Spy Ring On The American Revolution, Kyle Burgess

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Despite the staunch support that British occupiers enjoyed in New York and Long Island amongst Anglicans, there still remained plenty of citizens whose disdain for their new overseers provided Tallmadge with a large pool to recruit agents. In Patriot super spy Benjamin Tallmadge’s home of Suffolk County, Presbyterians endured an oppressive occupation at the hands of the British Army as many became wartime refugees following the destruction of their farms. This made many of them eager participants in Tallmadge’s schemes and some would even accompany Tallmadge on his whaleboat raids. Although none of these skirmishes proved decisive in tipping the …

“Educators Of The Public Taste”: Post-Civil War Textbook Publishing And The American History Textbook, Andrea T. Traietti

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

No abstract provided.

Introduction To The Dorrite Women Letter Collection, Erik J. Chaput, Ph.D

Dorr Scholarship

In this introductory essay to the Dorrite Women Letter Collection, historian Erik Chaput outlines the significant role women played in the Dorr Rebellion. The openly partisan activism of Dorrite women highlights an understudied aspect of antebellum America. Much of the scholarship on women in the antebellum period focuses on abolitionism and connections to other Whig Party reform efforts. The vast majority of women associated with Thomas Dorr, however, were open supporters of the Democratic Party and were not connected with Rhode Island abolitionist societies. In the essay, Chaput highlights the activism of a key group of Dorrite women, including Ann …

“A Compact With The Whales”: New Bedford, The American Civil War, And A Changing Industry, Mark Ryan Mello

History & Classics Dissertations and Masters Theses

On the late afternoon of June 28, 1865, Captain Thomas G. Young, master of the whaleship Favorite, defiantly stood atop the roof of his cabin, brandishing revolvers and bomb guns. His courage, perhaps inspired by liquor, was stout in the face of the nearing Confederate ship. He determined his ship would not be like the other thirty-one New Bedford whaleships that fell to Confederate pirates since 1862. Fearful for their captain’s life, his crew pleaded with him to stand down. Any fight he made would be fruitless and would probably end up killing him. But Young was a desperate …

Prison Correspondence, Erik J. Chaput

Dorr Scholarship

This overview essay by SCE Professor Erik J. Chaput provides context for the drafting of the letters from Dorr to his mother Lydia. The essay provides a brief description of Dorr's treason trial, his sentencing and the nature of his imprisonment in the state prison on the Providence cove.

The Dorr Rebellion Project http://library.providence.edu/dorr

The Dorr Letters Project http://library.providence.edu:8080/xtf/index.html

The Evolution Of United States Supreme Court Jurisprudence Under The Leadership Of Chief Justices Melville Fuller And Edward White From 1888 To 1911, Christine Cromie

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The phrase “What is Old is New Again” is a timeless adage. Indeed, on a deeper level, this sentiment can relate to political issues and governmental problems. Questions about how involved the federal government, especially the judicial system and Supreme Court, should be in the lives of the public tend to repeat themselves. A close reading of today’s headlines about monopolistic power as it relates to technology and the rise of Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple harkens back to similar issues and concerns at the turn of the nineteenth century as the United States moved from the Gilded Age to …

Italian Immigrants In The Early 20th Century And How They Have Impacted American Opinions On Immigration, Colleen Keating

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Italian immigration into the United States of America during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, from 1880-1915, provides insight for the contention of immigrants brought about by the drastically changing composition of immigrant groups who came at this time. Issues of class, religion, culture, and linguistics became very prevalent due to this shift in immigration patterns. Immigration remained an unanswered question for the American government which found itself ill-prepared and unsure of how to handle the increased number of immigrants who sought a better life in the states. Italian immigrants gained a great deal of attention for three main reasons. First, …