Digital Commons Network^™

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

Hollywoodlandia: Celebrity Women, Movie Culture, And American Public Womanhood, 1916-1950, Skye Cranney

History Theses and Dissertations

This project proposes to study the ways in which celebrity women’s behavior may have encouraged American women to challenge, but not necessarily subvert, traditional gender roles even as Hollywood publicity continued to emphasize the importance of those same roles in women’s lives. It does that by examining three sites where celebrity women prominently lived, worked, played, and volunteered between 1920 and 1950: the Hollywood Studio Club, a boarding house only for women in the entertainment industry, in Los Angeles; the Sun Valley Ski Resort, the first modern ski resort in the American West, in central Idaho; and the Hollywood Canteen, …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History (2022 Update), John R. Chavez

History Faculty Publications

This bibliography of secondary sources includes surveys and monographs, but few collections or biographies; while some works may overlap disciplines, their content is historical on the whole and focused significantly on ethnic Mexicans in the United States.

Three Prongs Of Knowledge For Black/African American Parents To Prepare Them To Assist Young Black/African American Children Navigate Through Systemic Racism, Diane R Miles, Diane R. Miles

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

This dissertation focuses on three prongs of knowledge in parent education programs for Black/African American parents. These three prongs of knowledge fortify and enhance Black/African American parents' effectiveness in their role. This dissertation focuses on Black/African Americans' parenting experience because of the unique challenges they and their children face in a country that does not always value them or respects their humanity. Living in a country where systemic racism is foundational, Black/African American parents and their children have added challenges presented by this reality. It is systemic racism that creates the need for additional knowledge to ensure that Black/African …

Colonialism, Cohabitation, And Charismatic Llamas: Representations Of Animals In Felipe Guaman Poma De Ayala's El Primer Nueva Corónica Y Buen Gobierno, Laura Varela Mejia

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the role of animals, specifically llamas, in El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, a manuscript that dates to 1615-16, and was hand-written and illustrated by the Andean author Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala. Through the lens of animal studies, I analyze the manner in which Poma represented llamas to convey greater ideas surrounding the nature of colonial life under the Spanish empire, as well as the nostalgic remembrance of Inca practices before the conquest.

My study focuses on three of the Corónica’s drawings: “The second age of the world: Noah,” and how its reinterpretation …

Globalizing The Rio Grande: European-Born Entrepreneurs, Settlement, And Mercantile Networks In The Rio Grande Borderlands, 1749-1881, Kyle B. Carpenter

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the borderland region from the Nueces River to the Sierra Madres has been a crossroads of trade since the era of Spanish colonization, and that after Mexico won its independence from Spain, the region became the focus of intense commercial modernization projects initiated by both state agents and individual businessmen from all over Western Europe. These entrepreneurs wanted to transform the Rio Grande and its surroundings from a regional crossroads to a hub of the Atlantic economy. However, their efforts to create rapid change were often stymied by mismanagement, notions of ethnic and cultural superiority, and …

Internationalism In The Barrios: Hispanic-Americans And The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Carlos Nava

History Theses and Dissertations

The ripples of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) had a far-reaching effect that touched Spanish speaking people outside of Spain. In the United States, Hispanic communities –which encompassed Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Mexicans, Spaniards, and others— were directly involved in anti-isolationist activities during the Spanish Civil War. Hispanics mobilized efforts to aid the Spanish Loyalists, they held demonstrations against the German and Italian intervention, they lobbied the United States government to lift the arms embargo on Spain, and some traveled to Spain to fight in the International Brigades.

This thesis examines how the Spanish Civil War affected the diverse Hispanic communities …

Painting And Performing The Past: Representation Of A Historical Marriage In Eighteenth-Century Peru, Xena Fitzgerald

Art History Theses and Dissertations

This thesis establishes the connection between painting and performance as crucial for understanding eighteenth-century representations of the historic marriage of the Inca ñusta (princess) Beatriz Clara Sairitupac and her Spanish husband Martín García Óñez de Loyola. During the eighteenth-century, the marriage was repeatedly commemorated through both paint and theatrical performance as part of the mythologization of the early history of the Viceroyalty of Peru. My study addresses the only two paintings known to remain in their original locations: the Compañía de Jesús in Cuzco and the Beaterio de Nuestra Señora de Copacabana in Lima. I analyze both paintings in conjunction …

Broken Households: Black And White Baptists And Methodists In Transition In Post-Emancipation Texas, Timothy "Ashton" Reynolds

History Theses and Dissertations

The end of slavery in Texas and the South undercut more than just the economic, labor, and social foundations in Texas. It undercut doctrinal certainty for white Baptists and Methodists and called into question two of their most valued beliefs: the biblical legitimacy of slavery and the divine appointment of white (and male) supremacy. This thesis asks and attempts to answer the question of how white Baptists and Methodists reacted when they were no longer able to practice slavery as a legally sanctioned religiously underpinned institution. By examining denominational documents, church minute books, writings by influential Baptist and Methodist figures, …

“Of Nobler Song Than Mine”: Social Justice In The Life, Times, And Writings Of Fitz-James O'Brien, John P. Irish

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will be a detailed study of the life, times, and writings of a mid-nineteenth century Irish-American writer, Fitz-James O’Brien. This will be the first full length study of O’Brien’s thought and writings. O’Brien was known, during his day, for two different types of writing: fiction of the supernatural and his writings on social justice, written in the emerging style of literary realism. It is his writings on social justice which this dissertation will explore. O’Brien’s writings on social justice covered three main topics: children, women, and animals. I look at how the historical context, O’Brien’s life, and his …

Reworking The White-Masculine Ideal, Steven H. Gonzalez

Art Theses and Dissertations

This text functions as an exploration of self through artistic practice, a designated space for reflection on contemporary Queer experience. In looking specifically at the permeation of the idealized-white-masculine figure as found within Western visual culture, social media and gay pornography become isolated as sites where these figures are commonly found. This line of inquiry defines how the ideal is reified through these differing digital platforms and the social implications the homogenized male form has on raced individuals. In addition to determining the image of the perfect masculine physique through research, this text expands on how its' imaged representation becomes …

Racial Integration And White Supremacy In America: Can America Integrate Its Power Structures And Liberate Them From White Supremacy, Billy Lane

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

Neither the presence of black people in predominantly white spaces nor the appropriation of black culture are indicators of racial justice. Power structures must be integrated even more so than subdivisions, classrooms, breakrooms, church pews, and pop culture. This thesis will explore the absence of African-American leadership from the highest ranks of our power structures that are central to contemporary life and the dynamics within each of these power structures that help to protect white supremacy and therefore maintain segregation.

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History (2018 Update), John R. Chavez

History Faculty Publications

This list of secondary sources includes surveys and monographs, but few collections or biographies; while some works may overlap disciplines, their content is historical on the whole and focused significantly on ethnic Mexicans in the United States.

True Americanism: Mexican-American And Irish-American Nationalism Through The Twentieth Century, Zachary Adams

History Theses and Dissertations

In the years after World War I, Mexican Americans and Irish Americans consciously utilized the language and symbols of American patriotism to advance their social and political agendas. In doing so, they adopted and repurposed the rhetoric that a new wave of American nationalists, the True Americanists, sought to use to negate their very citizenship. True Americanists argued that the cultural obligations of United States citizenship required complete assimilation. With Mexican-American and Irish-American community leaders continuing to rely upon messages of shared ethnicity to garner and mobilize followers, their use of Irishness and Mexicanness ran afoul of this new nationalism. …

Oscar Brousse Jacobson: The Life And Art Of A Cosmopolitan Cultural Broker, Anne Allbright

History Theses and Dissertations

As a graduate student studying art at Yale, Oscar Brousse Jacobson (1882–1966) pinned his career on the hopes of someday opening an art school in the American West. Jacobson was a Swedish immigrant, but he felt a deep connection to the West because he spent much of his youth on a ranch in Kansas and roamed the greater Southwest by horseback during the late 1800s. Jacobson believed that after he completed his graduate studies in New England, he would eventually return West. He planned to bring great works of art, produce his own paintings, instruct young artists, and foster art …

Toward Unity, Acceptance, And Empowerment: Bridging The Chasm Between Women Laity And Clergy In The A.M.E. Church, Rhonda Yvonne Green Harmon

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

A B S T R A C T

Rhonda Green Harmon

B.S., Texas Southern University, 1980

M.Ed. Texas Southern University, 1989

M.Ed. Principal Certification, University of Houston, 2002

M.Div. Houston Graduate School of Theology, 2012

“Toward Unity, Acceptance, and Empowerment:

Bridging the Chasm between Women Laity and Clergy in the A.M.E. Church”

This Doctor of Ministry project/practicum endeavors to initiate and engage dialogue between clergywomen and laywomen in the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church for the purpose of uniting, empowering, and fostering acceptance among all women. It addresses the ways that internalized patriarchy has hindered relationships between women. The main …

Becoming Indian: The Origins Of Indigeneity Among Chicana/Os In Texas, Ruben A. Arellano

History Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the idea of Mexican-American indigenous identity, or indigeneity. I argue that modern Mexican-American indigeneity progressed from the Chicana/o movement’s notion of belonging as a primordial people of Aztlan to the full-fledged embrace of Native American identity. This idea of being indigenous is traced to the colonial writers and thinkers, criollo patriots, mestizo nationalists, and the indigenists intellectuals of twentieth-century Mexico. The evolution of ethnic Mexican indigeneity culminated with cultural extremists in the first half of the last century who assumed a neo-Aztec identity. They in turn gave way to the neo-Mexika identity that emerged in the second …

Mestiza, Métis, American: How Intermixture On United States Borders Shaped Local, Regional, And National Identities, Carla L. Mendiola

History Theses and Dissertations

This project compares mestizaje in Mexican American communities of the Texas-Mexico border and métissage in Franco American communities of the Maine-Canada border, from the pre-contact period to the 20th-century. Exploring the central themes of intermixing, borders, and identity, the paper shows the long-standing presence of mixed-ancestry groups in the U.S. and investigates how social and geopolitical borders have been used to racialize and exclude these groups from U.S. history, and, ultimately from acceptance as part of U.S. identity. The comparison of Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley and Maine’s St. John River Valley follows the development of these communities and recognizes …

A History Of The Participatory Map, Jo Guldi

History Faculty Publications

This article tells, for the first time, the story of the history of the participatory map: that is, the many-to-many map-making techniques that most people are familiar with through smartphone apps and Google maps. Archival research in previously untapped archives traces the origins of participatory mapping in subaltern conversations around the world, its embrace in the modern academy and development circles, its place in the World Bank, and its conversion to online formats like Google Maps and Open Street Map. The story begins in surprising places, as international networks in the 1970s began experimenting with many-to-many mapping, their members spanning …

Leaving Behind The Yellow Submarine, Jo Guldi

History Faculty Publications

A personal account of a choice to leave behind the privilege of the tenure track in the Ivy League (in my case, voluntarily, with the goal of escaping a hostile work environment), as told through a remembrance and celebration of the life of Jeremy Adams, medieval historian, who was denied tenure at Yale in the 1970s.

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

This list of secondary sources includes surveys and monographs, but few collections or biographies; while some works may overlap disciplines, their content is historical on the whole and focused significantly on ethnic Mexicans in the United States.

The History Manifesto, Jo Guldi

History Faculty Publications

How should historians speak truth to power -- and why does it matter? Why is five hundred years better than five months or five years as a planning horizon? And why is history -- especially long-term history -- so essential to understanding the multiple pasts which give rise to our conflicted present? The History Manifesto is a call to arms to historians and everyone interested in the role of history in contemporary society.

Caregiving And The Case For Testamentary Freedom, Joshua C. Tate

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Almost all U.S. states allow individuals to disinherit their descendants for any reason or no reason, but most of the world's legal systems currently do not. This Article contends that broad freedom of testation is defensible because it allows elderly people to reward family members who are caregivers. The Article explores the common-law origins of freedom of testation, which developed in the shadow of the medieval rule of primogeniture, a doctrine of no contemporary relevance. The growing problem of eldercare, however, offers a justification for the twenty-first century. Increases in life expectancy have led to a sharp rise in the …