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Measuring Rural Revolutionary Mobilization: The Militiamen, Soldiers, And Minutemen Of Fauquier County, Virginia 1775 - 1782, Jason Fackrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The story of the rural soldiers and militiamen of Virginia that served in the American Revolution remains open to historical research and exploration. Recent scholarship of Virginia’s military contribution to the Revolution focuses heavily on relationships of power among social groups that operated within the colony’s hierarchy, concluding that a lack of white, lower-class political and economic representation disabled mobilization among the Old Dominion’s more settled regions. My study emphasizes the revolutionary backcountry’s story by using Fauquier County, Virginia as a case study.

A study of Rural Virginia during the Revolution presents scholars with significant challenges. Literacy rates among the …

From Establishment To Final Independence: A Study Of The National Archives Of The United States Of America From 1934–1985, Daniel M. Frett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is a study of the National Archives of the United States from the institution’s establishment in 1934 under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt to becoming the National Archives and Record Administration in 1985. The Archives during the 1930’s and 1940’s functioned as an independent agency, until the Archives lost their independence under the Hoover Commission. In 1949 the Archives became part of the newly formed General Services Administration. During the 1950’s and 1960’s National Archives helped change the archival profession. Furthermore, we see how the two independence movements in the 1960’s and 1980’s that were ultimately successful in …

Gender And Terrorism: A Homeland Security Perspective, Diana Rosa Rodriguez-Spahia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While scholars have been studying the growing trend of female terrorists for several years, their research has not permeated politics or the media to help inform our Homeland Security policies. The findings from this body of research indicate that there is hesitance on behalf of the public (especially politicians and law enforcement) to acknowledge that women can be terrorists due to deeply engrained gender norms and expectations about gender roles. Terrorist groups are exploiting this unwillingness by recruiting more women to perpetrate terrorist acts (Lele, 2014; Bloom, 2011). Against the backdrop of the changes in gender norms and expectations that …

Examining The Measurement Invariance Of The Mmpi-A-Rf Externalizing Scales Across Korean And American Adolescent Normative Samples, Kristoffer Yong Park

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory – Adolescents – Restructured Form (MMPI-A-RF; Archer, Handel, Ben-Porath, & Tellegen, 2016) is a newly developed instrument in personality and psychopathology and has been translated into many different languages, including the Korean language (University of Minnesota Press, 2016). Due to the cultural differences between Korean and American populations, it is important that constructs measured in the MMPI-A-RF are interpretable across cultures. Focusing on the Externalizing Scales, the present study used multiple-group confirmatory factor analysis (MGCFA) to examine the measurement invariance in Korean and American adolescent normative samples. Partially supporting the hypothesis, the results showed that …

Rural Ready, Deanna Hart

University Honors Theses

Rural Ready is a domestic exchange student recruitment program to bring western Oregon students into eastern Oregon schools and communities. The desired impact is an immersive cultural exchange resulting in a deeper understanding and diplomacy across the divide while stabilizing school funding and increased diversity to the benefit of the host schools and host communities. This domestic exchange program will fill in the gaps for each of the ten eastern Oregon school districts with small rural schools who are eager to develop domestic exchange student programs or who need to transition from foreign to domestic exchange student hosting. These gaps …

Masculinity In American Television From Carter To Clinton, Bridget Kies

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines American television during a period I call the long 1980s. I argue that during this period, television became invested in new and provocative images of masculinity on screen and in networks’ attempts to court audiences of men. I have demarcated the beginning and ending of the long 1980s with the declaration of Jimmy Carter as Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1977 and Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. This also correlates with important shifts in the television industry, such as the formation of ESP-TV (later ESPN) in 1979 and the end of Johnny Carson’s tenure as …

Second Safest City In America, Liam Cassidy

Theses

Second Safest City in America is a collection of short fiction set in Midwestern cities and suburbs, as well as the Gulf Coast. These stories explore the untethered expectations, broken promises, and absurdity of American life. The characters are violent, funny, emotionally unstable, politically wrong-minded, and compassionate. They implore empathy or actively avoid the pain of others. They search out security or take matters into their own hands. They sacrifice and they seek revenge. They are not outliers in this country. They are part of the mainstream weirdness that permeates everything.

Fiction And Politics: Karl May And The American West In Nineteenth Century German Sociopolitical Consciousness, Emily Scott

Theses

This thesis seeks to answer the following question: Why did the nineteenth century novels and short stories of Karl May, which take place in the American West, find such great commercial success in Germany? Through the examination of the novels themselves, in addition to various primary and secondary sources related to the life of May and the historical context in which this phenomenon took place, this question is answered. Though the novels take place in an American landscape, they are full of references to various cultural and political phenomena which took place throughout the course of May’s life in Germany. …

American Journeys: Quest, Displacement, Escape, Gianluca Avanzato

Honors Theses

The “American Way of Life” is deeply engrained into the narrative of America and the dreams of many Americas—so much so that it often goes unexamined. This thesis explores the American Way of Life and related narratives—including American individualism, American exceptionalism, and the American Dream—and examines its tendency to disappoint and damage those who strive for such a way of life. I ground this analysis in three major works of American literature: Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, and Richard Wright’s Native Son. With a special attention to critical and political theory, my analyses …

The Way We Dream Now: History, Theory, And Lgbtq Memoir In America, Megan Paslawski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines American memoirs written after 2000 by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer authors with an eye to how the recent institutionalization of queer theory and the open production of LGBTQ histories affect these writers’ conceptions of their lives, aspirations, and cultures. I argue that these memoirs, sometimes consciously, find themselves struggling with what are also competing ideas within queer theory about the queerness of futurity even as they turn to the past of queer/trans literature and history to bolster their senses of possible identities and communities. This often has the effect of positioning contemporary LGBTQ writers as …

The “Americanization” Of Global Education: A Comparative Study Of American And Italian Students At John Cabot University In Rome, Italy, Chiara Evelti

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

With the turn of the century, the rise of globalization has greatly impacted, and continues to impact, the development of nation-states’ economies and native cultures. This international phenomenon generates the idea that countries are now on a similar playing field, whether that be culturally, economically, or politically. While it is hard to defend the latter, globalization has seemingly “flattened” the world by way of bringing individuals of different cultures, ethnicities, races, genders, and nationalities closer together. Moreover, as citizens of this internationalized community, we see a specific type of cultural globalization through increased opportunities in travel, the rise in number …

Nineteenth Century American Newspapers And The Criminal Transgressor, James Maxwell Fuller

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This study examines depictions of the criminal transgressor in two American newspapers, the Hartford Courant and the San Francisco Chronicle, during the 19th century. Case studies are offered of two individual crimes and the subsequent trial proceedings covered extensively by these publications: the triple murder at Bull Run in Windsor Locks, CT, and the murder of newspaper editor Charles de Young in San Francisco, CA. Examination of the narratives utilized by Hartford Courant and San Francisco Chronicle journalists demonstrates the widespread use of depictions of criminal transgressors as possessing an inherent moral corruption. This study facilitates a more nuanced understanding …

Away From The End Of Motherhood: Sites Of Haunting In The Social Imaginary In Lemonade And The Handmaid's Tale, Julia Michele Fleming

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the television series adaptation of The Handmaid's Tale, specifically the episode "A Woman's Place," and Beyoncé's Lemonade: A Visual Album. I argue that these cultural texts leverage representations of women's lived experiences to scrutinize contemporary American anxieties about motherhood and reproductive justice. Lemonade, a celebration of Black womanhood, presents a counterpoint to The Handmaid's Tale's preoccupation with white motherhood in way that speculates on the utopian potentials of a woman-centered society.

Using bell hooks' film analysis, Avery Gordon's "haunting," and Luce Irigaray's "mimicry," I examine two interconnected themes: feminist aesthetics and generational haunting. …

Depending On Twitter For Breaking News: A Comparison Between American And Saudi Students, Maria Zoheir Hamdan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aimed to measure the extent of American and Saudi students' dependence on twitter to get breaking news and how they interact with this platform in light of uses and gratifications theory. To investigate the similarities and differences between the two groups, 91 American students and 98 Saudi students participated in an online survey in spring 2018. It concluded that both American and Saudi students depend on twitter to get breaking news, and finding out what is happening is the first motivation to use twitter. While most Saudi students voted for twitter as the most important source to get …

What Does It Mean To Belong In San Antonio? How The Battle Of The Alamo And The Cart Wars Shaped What It Means To Be American Through The Institutionalization Of Discrimination And Violence Toward Those Of Mexican Descent, Madison Endesha Sharp-Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Why The Sky Stays Up, Brigid G. Fister

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College

From Fear To Reverie: Incidents In Isolation In The American Wilderness, Serhiy Metenko

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis looks at Nineteenth Century American adventure narratives to examine the role of the wilderness. This thesis centers on a motif of isolated characters in the wilderness and analyzes the various techniques nineteenth-century authors use to project the psyche of their characters. The selected Nineteenth Century authors: Washington Irving, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Alan Poe, Harriet Spofford, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville root America’s identity in the wilderness. They emphasize its power on the human psyche as positive, restorative, inward-looking, and divine. This thesis argues that these authors portray the wilderness as a protagonist that needs to be preserved …

Differences In Hair Significance Among Black And White Women: An Exploratory Study On Black Hair, Yasmine S. Keen

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

In Western culture, standards of beauty are often based on European characteristics that Black women are inherently unable to meet. African American history and anecdotal accounts suggest that hair in particular can have a significant impact on the perception and body image of Black women, though whether that impact is positive or negative is not clear. The current study takes a quantitative approach to examining women’s relationship with their hair. Black women (n = 146) and White women (n = 1,116) participated in an anonymous online survey regarding time devoted to hair maintenance, money spent on hair upkeep, …

"True Principles Of Liberty And Natural Right" : The Vermont State Constitution And The American Revolution, Kevin R. Ingraham

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The Vermont state constitution was the most revolutionary and democratic plan of government established in America during the late eighteenth century. It abolished adult slavery, eliminated property qualifications for holding office, and established universal male suffrage. It invested broad power in a unicameral legislature, through which citizens might directly express their will through their elected representatives. It created a weak executive with limited power to veto legislation. It mandated annual elections for all state offices, by which the people might frequently accept, or reject, their leaders. It thus established a participatory democracy in which ordinary citizens enjoyed broad access to …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Experiences And Motivations For Diabetes Self-Management In African American Men Between The Ages Of 40-85 With Type 2 Diabetes, Anthony Q. Walker

Theses and Dissertations

Diabetes is a devastating disease that can affect an individual’s health and quality of life, but if managed properly, individuals with diabetes can have a good quality of life. Diabetes strikes African American men at a high rate. This study used a qualitative design to explore African American men between the ages of 40-85 with type 2 diabetes (T2DM) and their definition of diabetes and motivation, their experience of living with diabetes, their self-management behaviors, their motivations for managing diabetes, and what they and healthcare providers believe motivates them to self-manage diabetes and to attend diabetes self-management education (DSME) programs. …

Garagecraft: Tinkering In The American Garage, Katherine Erica Mcfadden

Theses and Dissertations

The American garage, whether in the home or larger, communal ventures, has been a site of technological crafting for a variety of people across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The garage has been a space in which to both reaffirm the status quo of masculinity, and to discover feminist modes of self sufficiency. It has provided a place to play, experiment, commercialize technology, while also providing a space to create new identities and communal standards. What we make and how we make it is, in the end, more about crafting ourselves than crafting objects.

Re-Entry Challenges: Comparison And Contrasts Between Korean And American Mks, Ok Kyung Ha

Master's Theses

Problem

Missionary Kids (MKs) have a different experience in the mission fields in terms of culture, language, and social adjustment when compared with their parents. They also face another challenge when they return to their parents’ home country, for they feel out of place and often do not think of their parents’ country as home. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the experience of MKs in the mission field, during re-entry, and to research the common elements or differences between Korean MKs and American MKs in their re-entry process.

Method

The research method used in this Masters …