Digital Commons Network^™

If I Had A Hammer: American Folk Music And The Radical Left, Sarah C. Kerley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Folk music is one of the most popular forms of music today; artists such as Mumford and Sons and the Carolina Chocolate Drops are giving new life to an age-old music. It was not until the 1950s that new popular interest in folk music began. Earlier, folk music was used by leftist organizations as a means to reach the masses. It assumed because of this history that many folk artists are sympathetic to the Left. By looking at the years from 1905-1975 with the end of the Vietnam War, this study hopes to present the notion that even though these …

The Czech-Egyptian Arms Deal Of 1955 : A Turning Point In Middle Eastern Cold War History., Thomas Michael Shaughnessy Skaggs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on the Czechoslovakian-Egyptian arms deal of 1955 and analyzes how it impacted Middle Eastern Cold War policy. Central to the issue is Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s approach to garnering Pan-Arab Nationalist support and his decision to approach the Soviet Bloc for weapons and economic aid. Supporting evidence came from several repositories, including the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, and the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library. In addition to primary sources, a thorough examination of the existing scholarship was conducted. In conclusion, the Czech-Egyptian arms deal, more than any other event, cemented Nasser's place as champion …

Against Celsus: Piety In Context, Dustin Janssen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores Celsus’s and Origen’s differing understandings of what it means to be “pious” (ὅσιος). Celsus conceived of tradition as the norm for determining piety. On the other hand, Origen maintained that the true norm was found in the Logos and Wisdom of God—i.e., Jesus. This dichotomy of understanding is consistent with the backdrop of the religious revolution happening in the Roman world during the early centuries CE proposed by scholars like Guy Stroumsa.

While this thesis does not aim to prove or fully expound on the religious revolution, it will use the shift in religious thought as a …

Reverend Jonathan Fisher: One Thread In The Web Of Early American Education, 1780-1830, Brittany P. Cathey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jonathan Fisher was a remarkably gifted man with a passionate interest in the education of the future generations of Maine citizens. No historian, however, has yet to examine Jonathan Fisher’s connection to American educational trends. Primary and secondary schools had existed in colonial America since the 1630s. Fisher witnessed and participated in the transformation of American schooling through his involvement in the local schools, libraries and education within his home, his establishment and maintenance of the Blue Hill Academy and the Bangor Theological Seminary and the publication of his juvenile works The Youth’s Primer and Scripture Animals.

The first …

Canterbury And The Crown : How The Personal Relationships Between Tudor Monarchs And Their Archbishop Of Canterbury Affected The Church In England., Mary Alexandra Covington

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how the personal relationships between the monarchs of the Tudor period in England and their Archbishops of Canterbury affected the Church in England, particularly after Henry VIII broke with Rome. Through the examination of the correspondence of the individuals included one can understand the personal relationships and how the archbishops interacted with their respective monarch(s). Two chapters discuss Archbishop Cranmer his relationships with Henry and Edward VI and how Cranmer enacted some reform under Henry but more under Edward. The fourth chapter evaluates the relationship between Mary I and Reginald Pole and how they moved England back …

Window Into Cultural Manipulation: The Conservative Attack On National History Standards, 1994-1995, Todd Blanchette

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research looks into the public debate surrounding the release of proposed voluntary National History Standards within the context of the 1990s culture wars in the United States. The goal is to offer a glimpse into how history education is tied with notions of culture, and how conceptions of history and national identity were manipulated by individuals, spear headed by former NEH chairwoman Lynne Cheney, with a political motive. The author gives a brief context of the United States’ during the mid-1990s, including tenuous issues of race, gender, sexuality and multiculturalism. The origins and development of the national history standards …

The Nazi Genocide: Eugenics, Ideology, And Implementation 1933-1945, Michael A. Letsinger

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to seek knowledge of how eugenics justified extreme racial policy, territorial expansion, committing unprecedented crimes against humanity; and to understand why and how eighty million human beings yielded to totalitarianism and racial murder. Further, by examining Nazi science and policies, through the lens of concentration/extermination camps at Dachau and Auschwitz, we sought to understand the linkage between scientific racism, Nazi ideology and genocide. Critiquing Germany’s failure to exercise sound science and morality in its occupation, subjugation, and depopulation during WW II, this paper will argue Nazi Germany’s evolution to systematized, industrial mass murder of …

More Than "Moon Gold And Marbles" : Rationalization, Reform, And The Transformation Of The American Circus, 1900-1940., Matt Holdzkom 1981-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The circus, despite its prominence in the American imagination and popular culture, has yet to be given its due among the scholarly studies of cultural historians. This thesis is a historical contextualization of the circus in the United States. It contends that historical processes of rationalization and reform prevalent in the early twentieth century can be adequately interpreted through a study of the circus, and that these forces contributed significantly to the circus’ decline in size and cultural relevance in that period. Specifically, this thesis examines the amelioration of corruption and reform of labor relations as instrumental in the shrinkage …

Sisters Of The Mississippi Struggle : Examining The Contributions By Women To The Fight For Voting Equality In Mississippi In The Early 1960s., Morgan Ackerman, 1980-

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the contributions made by women in the fight for voting equality in Mississippi in the early 1960s. The covered period began with the immediate reaction to the Brown Vs Board of Education decision and culminates with the Mississippi Freedom Democrat Party’s challenge to be seated in place of the regular (and proactively segregated) Mississippi delegation to the 1964 Democratic National Convention. The focus of primary concern of this thesis is the grassroots tactics utilized primarily by women, in contrast to the more visceral marches and civil disobedience espoused by male leaders, and how these differing tactics affected …

Under The Shadow Of The Awful Gallows-Tree: The Murder Trials Of Thomas Dula And Ann Melton As A Case Study In Gender And Power In Reconstruction Era Western North Carolina, Heather L. Miller

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This is a micro-history that explores everyday life on a small scale by tracing the common, if elusive lives of Thomas Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster, and the communities they lived in, to explore the culture in which they lived—and died. Reactions to the murder unleashed an outpouring of discourse embedded in broader, national debates concerning gender roles. The dominant cultural theme that emerged from the murder trials as reflected in middle-class newspapers maintained that true women did not kill and real men acted as gentlemen and defenders of women’s honor. The project mines a wealth of primary source …

In The Shadows Of Dominion: Anthropocentrism And The Continuance Of A Culture Of Oppression, Christopher A. Shields

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The oppression of nonhuman animals in Western culture observed in societal institutions and practices such as the factory farm, hunting, and vivisection, exhibits alarming linkages and parallels to some episodes of the oppression of human animals. This work traces the foundations of anthropocentrism in Western philosophy and connects them to the oppressions of racism, sexism, and ethnocentrism. In outlining a uniform theory of oppression detailed through the marginalization, isolation, and exploitation of human and nonhuman animals alike, parallels among the groups emerge as the fused oppression of each exhibits a commonality among them. The analysis conducted within this work highlights …

All The King’S Men: British Codebreaking Operations: 1938-43, Andrew J. Avery

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Enigma code was one of the most dangerous and effective weapons the Germans wielded at the outbreak of the Second World War. The Enigma machine was capable of encrypting radio messages that seemed virtually unbreakable. In fact, there were 158,900, 000,000,000 possible combinations in any given message transmitted. On the eve of the war’s outbreak, the British had recently learned that the Poles had made significant progress against this intimidating cipher in the early 1930s. Incensed and with little help, the British Government Code & Cipher School began the war searching for a solution. Drawing from their experiences from …

Pursuing West: The Viking Expeditions Of North America, Jody M. Bryant

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose to this thesis is to demonstrate the activity of the Viking presence, in North America. The research focuses on the use of stones, carved with runic inscriptions that have been discovered in Oklahoma, Maine, Rhode Island and Minnesota. The thesis discusses orthographic traits found in the inscriptions and gives evidence that links their primary use to fourteenth century Gotland. Also connecting the stones to Gotland, is the presence of an unusual rune dubbed the Hooked X. This single rune has been the center of controversy since it was first discovered in Minnesota, 1898. Since that time, it has …

Encounters With The American Prairie: Realism, Idealism, And The Search For The Authentic Plains In The Nineteenth Century, Jacob L. Vines

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Great Plains are prevalent among the literature of the nineteenth century, but receive hardly a single representation among the landscapes of the Hudson River School. This is certainly surprising; the public was teeming with interest in the Midwest and yet the principal landscape painters who aimed to represent and idealize a burgeoning America offered hardly a glance past the Mississippi River. This geographical silence is the result of a tension between idealistic and empirical representations of the land, one echoed in James Fenimore Cooper’s The Prairie, Washington Irving’s A Tour on the Prairies, and Margaret Fuller’s Summer on the …

Chief Bowlegs And The Banana Garden: A Reassessment Of The Beginning Of The Third Seminole War, John Settle

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study examines in depth the most common interpretation of the opening of the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). The interpretation in question was authored almost thirty years after the beginning of the war, and it alleges that the destruction of a Seminole banana plant garden by United States soldiers was the direct cause of the conflict. This study analyzes the available primary records as well as traces the entire historiography of the Third Seminole War in order to ascertain how and why the banana garden account has had such an impactful and long-lasting effect. Based on available evidence, it is …

The Rwandan Genocide And Western Media: French, British, And American Press Coverage Of The Genocide Between April And July Of 1994, Candice Tyrrell

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Rwandan Genocide occurred between April and July of 1994. Within those four months, approximately a million Tutsi were brutally murdered by the Hutu in an effort to cleanse the country of a Tutsi presence. The genocide was the culmination of decades of unrest between the two groups created from Western influence under colonialism and post-colonial relationships. The international response to the genocide was scarce. While international intervention waned, the international media kept the genocide relevant in its publications. This thesis examines print media sources from the United States, Britain, and France. This thesis argues that the reporting of the …

'The Tourist Soldier': Veterans Remember The American Occupation Of Germany, 1950-1955, Meghan Vance

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Studies of postwar Germany, from 1945-1955, have concentrated on the American influence as a military occupier, the development of German reconstruction and national identity, and memory of this period from the German perspective. Within the memory analyses, firsthand accounts have been analyzed to understand the perspectives of Germans living through the postwar period. Absent from this historiography is an account of American memories and firsthand perspectives of the occupation, particularly during the 1950-1955 period. This thesis employs oral histories of American veterans stationed in postwar Germany, American propaganda and popular cultural mediums during the early 1950s, and modern historiographical trends …

Persons, Houses, And Material Possessions: Second Spanish Period St. Augustine Society, Daniel Velasquez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

St. Augustine in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was a prosperous, multi-ethnic community that boasted trade connections throughout the Atlantic world. Shipping records demonstrate that St. Augustine had access to a wide variety of goods, giving residents choices in what they purchased, and allowing them to utilize their material possessions to display and reinforce their status. Likewise, their choice of residential design and location allowed them to make statements in regards to their place in the social order. St. Augustine was a unique city in the Spanish Empire; the realities of frontier living meant that inter-ethnic connection were …

Mass Media And The Evolution Of The Environmental Movement: 1960-1979, Donald Anguish

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how particular forms of mass media spurred and guided the United States environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Its objective is to better understand how mass media contributed to the evolution of the environmental movement. Three particular types of media form the basis of this study: writing (books, newspapers, and magazines), audio-visual material (movies and television), and photographs. These three mediums of communications and their intrinsic effects on the human psyche and society as a whole are major contributing factors to a raised environmental consciousness, a lasting legacy of environmentalism, and the promotion of the environmental …

The Relationship Between The Industrial Workers Of The World And The Communist Party Shortly After World War I, Michael Gromoll

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Recognized as one of the most revolutionary labor unions in America during the early twentieth-century by the general public and the federal government, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) separated themselves from the rest of the labor unions because of their success in executing general strikes and their brash appeal. The group advocated tactics which, the organization believed, would strengthen the country's labor movement, which included “dual unionism” and a stance against politically affiliated groups. During a period of poor labor conditions and inadequate income with long working hours the United States experienced a swell of labor unions that …

Bluegrass, Bildung, And Blueprints: The Little Shepherd Of Kingdom Come As An Appalachian Bildungsroman, Leona Shoemaker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come takes as its backdrop the American Civil War, as the author, John Fox, Jr., champions Kentucky's social development during the Progressive Era. Although often criticized for capitalizing on his propagation of regional stereotypes, I argue that the structure of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come is much more problematic than that. Recognizing the Bildungsroman as a vehicle for cultural and social critique in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century writing, this project offers an in-depth literary analysis of John Fox, Jr.'s novel, The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, in which I contend the story itself is, …

Visions Of Race And Gender: Press Coverage Of The French Colonial Expositions Of 1922 And 1931, Zachary Morgan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the interwar period, France attempted to reinvigorate interest in the empire amongst the public via elaborate colonial expositions. The colonial expositions of Marseille (1922) and Paris (1931) served as a means to celebrate the empire and to educate the French about the benefits of living within Greater France, an entity that included the metropole and the colonies. This thesis examines how press coverage of both expositions worked alongside these events to counteract anxieties regarding France's economic recovery after the war, continuing world presence, demographic losses, and most importantly the relationship between France and its colonies. It explores how the …

The Costs Of Cuba Libre: U.S. Neo-Imperialism, Tourism In Cuba, And The Habana Hilton, Lauren Elizabeth Holt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper is an investigation into North American tourism in Cuba between the “Spanish-American War” in 1898 and the Cuban Revolution in 1959. The research it presents was prompted by a set of photographs taken at the grand opening of the Habana Hilton in March 1958, part of the Bern and Franke Keating Collection, held in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi. Many of these photos are also included throughout the text of the paper. I begin with an overview of the relationship between Cuba and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, …

Please Don't Forget About Me: African American Women, Mississippi, And The History Of Crime And Punishment In Parchman Prison, 1890-1980, Telisha Dionne Bailey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast amount of research covering incarcerated men in the southern prison system from the beginning of the nineteenth century to present, the incarceration of women has gone almost unexamined. As the forgotten offender, historians, criminologist, and others interested in Mississippi carceral studies have failed to include a historical study that focuses on the incarceration of African American women in Mississippi. To date, there are two major historical works that explore Mississippi penology and its notorious Parchman Penitentiary. David Oshinsky’s, Worse Than Slavery and William Banks Taylor’s, Down on Parchman Farm, are the two pivotal historical works that examine …

The Class Appeal Of Marcus Garvey's Propaganda And His Relationship With The Black American Left Through August 1920, Geoffrey Cravero

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the class appeal of Marcus Garvey's propaganda and his relationship with the black American left through the end of his movement's formative years to reveal aspects of his political thought that are not entirely represented in the historiography. Although several historians have addressed Garvey's affiliation with the black American left there has not yet been a consummate study on the nature of that relationship. This study examines the class element of Garvey's propaganda from his formative years through his radical phase, tracing the evolution of his ideas and attributing factors to those changes. Garvey influenced and was …

Le Temps Des Copains: Youth And The Making Of Modern France In The Era Of Decolonization, 1958-1968, Drew Fedorka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the popular yé-yé phenomenon and its role in articulating a vision of modern France in the aftermath of decolonization. Yé-yé, a teen-oriented and music-based popular culture that flourished from roughly 1962-1966, was in a unique position to define what it meant to be young in 1960s France. I argue that the yé-yé popular culture, through its definition of youth, provided an important cultural channel through which to articulate a modern French identity after the Algerian War (1954-1962). Using a combination of advertisements, articles, and sanitized depictions of teenage pop singers, the yé-yé popular culture constructed an idealized …

Sage Illusionists: A Historical Study Using Illusionists As A Reflection Of Mass Entertainment, Popular Culture, Anf Change During The Late Nineteenth Century, Clayton Phillips

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

By the late nineteenth and early twenty century both the United States and Europe were experiencing massive shifts in social organization, social attitudes, and global influence due to the effects of the industrial revolution and imperialistic expansion. This birth of a public sphere and the mass entertainment industry was related to a blurring of the lines between traditional social classes. Mass entertainment's growth was directly related to the need to attract large audiences with entertainment that appealed in some way to a broad spectrum of the populace. At the same time, stage illusionists or magicians were one of the most …

Bridging Discourse: Connections Between Institutional And Lay Natural Philosophical Texts In Medieval England, Alayne Lorden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Translations of works containing Arabic and ancient Greek knowledge of the philosophical and mechanical underpinnings of the natural world—a field of study called natural philosophy—were disseminated throughout twelfth-century England. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, institutional (ecclesiastical/university) scholars received and further developed this natural philosophical knowledge by reconciling it with Christian authoritative sources (the Bible and works by the Church Fathers). The subsequent discourse that developed demonstrated ambivalence towards natural philosophical knowledge; institutional scholars expressed both acceptance and anxiety regarding the theory and practice of alchemy, astrology/astronomy, and humoral/astrological medicine. While the institutional development and discourse surrounding natural philosophical thought …

Wrestling With Tradition: Japanese Activities At Amache, A World War Ii Incarceration Facility, Zachary Allen Starke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

I employ archaeological analyses, archival research, and oral histories to investigate traditional Japanese practices that were performed at Amache, a World War II Japanese American incarceration facility. I argue that these inter-generational practices helped to bridge a cultural gap that existed between several generations of Japanese Americans. For many incarcerated Japanese Americans, their first exposure to many traditional activities occurred during incarceration. The resulting social environment incorporated aspects of Japanese, Japanese American, and mainstream American influences, all of which were adapted to conditions during incarceration. Similarly, archaeological analyses allow for the investigation of traditional practice features. These provide evidence regarding …

Brewing Behind Barbed Wire: An Archaeology Of Saké At Amache, Christian Driver

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, approximately 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry living on the west coast of the United States were forcibly removed from their home communities. These people were designated as "evacuees" by the U.S. Government and were incarcerated within a network of federal government facilities the largest of which were internment centers operated by the War Relocation Authority that held mostly U.S. citizens. The Granada Relocation Center (Amache) was the smallest of these internment centers. The presence of saké at Amache indicates that Japanese Americans continued important practices of daily life despite …