Digital Commons Network^™

Ontological Security And Environmental Hegemony In American Suburbs, Finlay Dunn Mackenzie

Senior Projects Fall 2023

This project briefly examines the history of suburbanization in the United States and proposes a theory for its durability as a form of housing its roles as an idealized source of ontological security and its nature as an expression of the hegemony of capital.

Just A Buncha Clowns: Comedic-Anarchy And Racialized Performance In Black Vaudeville, The Chop Suey Circuit, And Las Carpas, Michael Shane Breaux

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the practice of white musical variety clowns embodying stereotypes of African, Chinese, and Mexican Americans has been widely documented and theorized in scholarship on US American popular performance, it has been done largely in segregated studies that maintain the idea that racial impersonations in musical variety is a privilege of white performers. For instance, no study exists that focuses on more than one stereotype at a time, and the performer’s body is always either white or of the same “color” as the type being played. In addition, very little has been written about the tours and circuits run by …

The Closing Of The Gates "The Politics Of Xenophobia In Immigrant Nations", Graham P. Nau

Senior Projects Spring 2019

The following study seeks to explain the reason for increasing immigration restriction in countries with strong histories of immigration. The main country of focus is the United States, with Argentina and Canada analyzed in comparison. After exploring the conventional answers of: right-wing populism, economic explanations, and security concerns, the study makes the argument that a history of deep-rooted xenophobia is the best explanation for increasing immigration restriction in all three countries of analysis.

“The Wickedest Man On Earth”: Us Press Narratives Of Austria-Hungary And The Shaping Of American National Identity In 1898, Evan Haley

UVM College of Arts and Sciences College Honors Theses

The narratives in this coverage created a sense of American nationalism and influenced U.S. leaders and members of the public on migration restriction and other issues. They also provided a basis for early English-language historiography on Austria-Hungary. Subsequent, archival based scholarship reveals that many of these narratives were fictions. My project adds to existing historiography by focusing on mainstream perceptions of Austria-Hungary, rather than the perceptions of high-level diplomats and politicians.

The United States And The Caribbean In The 21st Century: Towards A New Era Of Engagement?, Samantha S.S. Chaitram

Open Access Dissertations

Did the United States neglect or increase its engagement with the Caribbean during the twenty-first century? I argue that from the Bush to the Obama administrations (2001-2016), there was an effort by the United States to increase engagement with the Caribbean nations. My main research question was, why did the United States increase its engagement with the Caribbean during the twenty-first century? I focus on the Anglophone Caribbean and I examine the cases of The Bahamas, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, and Guyana. By measuring engagement based on levels of U.S. foreign assistance, legislative changes, regional initiatives, and high-level diplomacy, I …

Bonaparte's Dream: Napoleon And The Rhetoric Of American Expansion, 1800-1850, Mark Ehlers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1800 and 1850, the United States built a continental empire that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. As scholars have come to realize over the past three decades, this expansion was not a peaceful movement of American settlers into virgin wilderness. Instead, it involved the conquest and subjugation of diverse peoples in Louisiana, Florida and the northern provinces of Mexico, and forced the United States to interact aggressively with the European empires of Great Britain, France, Spain, and eventually Mexico. My work helps to explain how Americans in the early republic reconciled this militant expansion with …

Ideology, The Counterculture, And The Avant Garde: Positioning The Filmmaker And The Spectator In Four Films Of Late-1960s America, Mary Bronstein Cantoral

College of Communication Master of Arts Theses

Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969), Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968), Jonas Mekas’s Diaries, Notes, and Sketches: Also Known as Walden (1969) and Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool (1969) constitute historical artifacts as well as discursive interventions intended to shape a vision of the nation. Therein emerged varying imbrications of ideology and the volatility of the era, along with palpable disharmony that scholars have identified between the youth movement’s cultural and political camps.¹ In each case, the film’s avant-garde status did not, in and of itself, confer liberatory ideology. While all but Medium …

Irish Women's Immigration To The United States After The Potato Famine, 1860-1900, Mackenzie S. Flanagan

Senior Theses

Thousands of single Irish women emigrated to the United States after the Great Potato Famine. These women left Ireland because social conditions in Ireland limited their opportunities for fulfilling lives. Changes in marriage and inheritance patterns lowered the status of unmarried women and made marriage increasingly unlikely. As a result, many women emigrated to the United States and, once here, worked, used their wages to help others emigrate, and most eventually married. Irish culture facilitated this mass migration by promoting the autonomy of single women yet limiting their options. Emigration did not signify a break with their Irish culture and …

From Normalization Of Relations To War: United States-Libya Relations 2001-2011, Kelly Gosa

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine the fluctuating United States-Libya relations from September 11th, 2001 to the 2011 international military intervention in the Libyan conflict. Both world events critically shaped the course of U.S.-Libya relations in conflicting courses and therefore raise important questions on the economic, strategic and political incentives for both the U.S. and Libya behind the normalization of U.S.-Libya relations. This study uses theoretical (neorealism, liberal internationalism and neo-Gramscian analysis) and qualitative research methods in order to investigate the rationale for the U.S. government’s decision to support the 2011 international military intervention in the Libyan conflict. …

Behind The Scenes Of The American Dream: Identity Struggles Of Arab And Muslim Minorities In The U.S., Lama Abbasi

Global Honors Theses

While diversity and inclusion are commonly regarded as American ideals, minorities often feel out of place in "mainstream" American society, marginalized by misconceptions of culture, religion, and politics. In this thesis, the author analyzes the struggles of Arab Americans, focusing on issues such as racial classification, the contradictions of the Arab and American identities, and the influence of U.S. foreign policy and the media on public perceptions of Arabs and Muslims. The paper concludes with suggestions on how educational and societal curricula can correct misconceptions about Arab Americans and other minority groups.

Bumbling Biddies And Drunken Pats: Anti-Irish Humor In Antebellum New Orleans, Ashley Barckett

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The Irish in New Orleans have been a notoriously understudied group. With the third largest Irish population in the country by 1860, New Orleans is crucial when trying to understand the Irish immigrant experience. Viewing the Irish from the public perspective, this study explores the Daily Picayune, New Orleans' largest newspaper, from its inception in 1837 to 1857, to decipher the city's attitudes towards the Irish. Jokes in particular are explored, their function being multifaceted. First, jokes grouped Irish women into three types in an effort to maintain control of a large and unfamiliar group of white women who did …

Public Advocacy By The Roman Catholic Church And The United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops In The Twenty-First Century, Michele L Cannella

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The Roman Catholic Church has engaged in moral criticism throughout history and continues to do so today through movie reviews published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The history of the Roman Catholic Church's censorship of moral content includes controlling the amount and type of media available. This rhetorical analysis of both the USCCB and New York Times movie reviews for the top ten grossing movies of 2006 discusses rhetoric as an expression of meaning that emerges through a texts' historical and cultural situation. Both sets of reviews are found on the Internet and this analysis argues …

Little Short Of National Murder: Forced Migration And The Making Of Diasporas In The Atlantic World, 1745--1865, Jeffrey A. Fortin

Doctoral Dissertations

Removal---or, the exile and forced migration of marginalized cultural and racial groups from one region of the British Empire and, later, the United States, to another less volatile region---emerged as a key tool in the construction of the Anglo-American Atlantic World. British officials used removal to secure the empire, ridding the realm of Catholic menaces, black insurgents, challenges to the throne and the brutal conflicts between English colonists and Native Americans. American leaders, after the conclusion of the American Revolution, viewed removal as a viable solution to the problem of slavery and the potential troubles induced by freeing the slaves. …

Swing Voters? Roman Catholics From 1992 To 2004, Lori Gula Wright

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis evaluates whether Catholics are swing voters, how their voting behavior has changed from 1992 to 2004, and what issues are influencing their voting behavior. National Election Survey datasets from 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 are used. Two models are evaluated, the ethnoreligious model and the culture wars thesis. In addition, this thesis looks at whether Catholics tend to be single-issue voters.

The research and analysis of this thesis support the conclusion that Catholics are not swing voters and that their voting patterns are more similar to the general electorate than ever before. Although religious, class and cultural issues …

Exploring Opportunity In America: Immigrant Entrepreneurship And Rags To Riches Success, Anna Erdheim

Honors Theses

The United States is, indeed, a land of vast opportunity. A diverse group of individuals continually benefit from the prospects provided by this inherently free nation. Although some constraints in America have prevented people from realizing their ultimate potentials, this nation offers immense possibilities overall to progress socially, economically, and culturally. America allows for people of all socioeconomic, religious, racial, and ethnic backgrounds to take full advantage of the various opportunities offered by this mainly egalitarian land. I will demonstrate how various people have emerged from disadvantaged circumstances to succeed in the United States. In America, the majority of successful …

The Free World Confronted: The Problem Of Slavery And Progress In American Foreign Relations, 1833-1844, Steven Heath Mitton

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enacted in 1833, Great Britain’s abolition of West Indian slavery confronted the United States with the complex interrelationship between slavery and progress. Dubbed the Great Experiment, British abolition held the possibility of demonstrating free labor more profitable than slavery. Besides elating the world’s abolitionists, always hopeful of equating material with moral progress, the experiment’s success would benefit Britain economically. Presented evidence of the greater profits of free labor, slaveholders worldwide would find themselves with compelling reason to abandon slavery. Likewise, London policymakers would proceed with little need—and no economic incentive—to promote abolition in British foreign policy. British hopes foundered on …

Playing The Man: Masculinity, Performance, And United States Foreign Policy, 1901--1920, Kim Brinck-Johnsen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Playing the Man": Masculinity Performance, and US Foreign Policy, 1901--1920 argues that early twentieth century conceptions of masculinity played a significant role in constructing US foreign policy and in creating a new sense of national identity. It focuses on five public figures (Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Reed, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson). Although their conceptions of masculinity varied, each of these central historical figures based his or her US foreign policy position on the idea that in the conduct of US foreign relations, the United States needed to "play the man." Similarly, even when their policy …

Shaping The Thin Blue Line: American Police Reform From The London Model To Community Policing, Philip Rosenbloom

Honors Papers

American interpretations of the police officer's role in our society span the distance between two distinct and opposite poles. On the one hand, many Americans, especially those living in middle or upper class, non-urban, predominantly white areas, believe that a police officer is a hero, "a courageous public servant [and] a defender of life and property." If they are victimized in some way, they believe they can call the police, and that the police will come to their aid. There is however, a considerable segment of our society, often those living in poor, urban, non-white areas, that understands police officers …

A Study Of Prisoners Of War In The Twentieth Century, Victor Montejo

Student Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Implementation Of The Reagan Administration's Counterterrorist Policy, Howard Lawrence Steinberg

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

This thesis investigates the implementation of President Ronald Reagan's active counterterrorist policy. The paper attempts to determine why the stated policy of "swift and effective retribution" was not carried out. This paper concentrates on the discrepancies between the numerous statements advocating retaliation made by Reagan and his top officials and the failure of these officials to administer the necessary orders for such retaliatory policies. This research indicated numerous causes, although the primary cause is attributed to the divergent opinions of the reticent Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and the more retributive views of the two successive Secretaries of State, Alexander …

The Role Of The Tobacco Trade In Turkish-American Relations, 1923-29., Robert Carey Goodman

Master's Theses

This study of the tobacco trade between Turkey and the United States provides new perspectives on two major themes in Turkish-American relations between 1923 and 1929: the effect of Turkish nationalism on American interests in Ataturk's Turkey, and the effort to restore Turkish- American diplomatic ties broken during World War I. The marked rise in American cigarette consumption after World War I made the tobacco trade a crucial link between Turkey and America because it required the importation of aromatic tobacco. During the Turkish Republic' s first decades, the value of American tobacco imports from Turkey exceeded the value of …

Giving Up The Ghost: Death In The Depression, Victoria Getis

Honors Papers

The preceding section is the human evidence behind this paper: what did the Great Depression feel like? What was it like to live in a Hooverville? To travel across the country in a rundown Jalopy? To Jump freight trains and live in box cars? To go on relief? What impact did the depression have on the national and individual psyche? Many authors have dealt with these questions, so why do it again? First, this thesis represents a attempt to draw together all the information for myself. Second, it is also an endeavor to find what people considered then (and perhaps …

The United States And Naval Limitation: From The Washington Conference To Pearl Harbor, David Jonas Murphy

Honors Papers

In conducting their foreign affairs, nations rarely act for purely altruistic reasons. Often, when their stated objectives are noble ones- such as world peace- one can find others which stem from the perceived needs of the individual nation or nations. The United States has not been an exception to this rule. Between World War I and World War II the foreign policy of the United States had as one of its major goals world peace or, failing world peace, peace for the United States. Naturally, this was not a totally altruistic ideal. It was believed that the United States would …

Protagonist Of Prudence: A Biography Of John Wentworth, The King's Last Governor Of New Hampshire, Paul Wendell Wilderson Iii.

Doctoral Dissertations

No abstract provided.

The Politics Of John Muir, Dorothy M. Freeman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

A man does not always see himself as others see him. John Muir is venerated by several generations of Americans as a man who left a legacy of State and National Parks, State and National Forests, outdoor beauty and untouched wilderness areas which would never have survived has it not been for this dedicated man.

He did not plan such a course. He did what he found necessary to be done, without thought of personal gain or public honor.

However, during his lifetime there were those who did not view him with such veneration. Countless ranchers, lumberman and politicians must …

Reapportionment : An Oregon History And A Critique Of Baker Vs Carr, Ann Frissell Lackey

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the ways in which federal and state authorities have sought to deal with a difficult problem of political power in the context of the U.S. Constitution. Oregon reapportionment history offers an appropriate introduction to a critique of the national reapportionment decisions of Baker vs Carr and Reynolds vs Sims. Its Constitution stipulated population and the ratio derived from a population based formula were the means by which apportionment was to be determined and noncompliance had been particularly evident from 1933 to 1952. Also, by the initiative process and a decision by the Oregon Supreme Court, Oregon had …

American Career Of James Connolly, Kara P. Brewer

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

So badly wounded that he had to be propped up in a chair to face the firing squad, James Connolly was executed by the British on May 10, 1916 in Dublin's infamous Kilmainham Jail. He had been one of the leaders of the abortive Easter 'Rising against English control of Ireland. This event in itself was sufficient to guarantee him a significant place in Irish history but Connolly had achieved prominence in other activities as well. Besides being a revolutionary nationalist he had been a Marxist and a labor leader, had founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party and had played …

A Study Of Negro Riots In The United States 1963-1968, Leona Ann Chase

Master's Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine the civil rights phenomena in the context of the Negro riots during the years 1963-1968. The inadequacies of this study are in part due to the material upon which it is based. The reports of the state study commissions did not deal with racism adequately, or the probability of implementation of various recommendations. Consequently, this paper could not treat these topics except perfunctorily. In turn, it was difficult to assess the practicality of various proposal since the extent of these variables was unknown. The failure of thee Kerner Commission report to outline …

A Historical Study Of The Development Of The Bracero Program,With Special Emphasis On The Coachella And Imperial Valleys, Margaret Breed Mackaye

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Why at the present time do we need added sources of labor beyond that available within the country? One faction would cry, "We don't!" Another would say, "We decry the importation of labor, but there simply aren't United States citizens in sufficient numbers to get these jobs done." A third group would probably answer, "Why worry about it? These laborers will come across the border, legally or illegally; we may as well avail ourselves of their services." Perhaps we should let a fourth group speak: "We must see that you do not misuse these people."

Political Behavior In A Time Of Crisis, 1865-1905, John Cameron

Senior Scholar Papers

This study has attenpted to explain the nature of the institutions from 1865-1905 that made it inevitable that manipulators of persons on the grand scale should emerge to take control where there was, temporarily, a political-sccial vacuum to be filled. A nation of individuals., accustomed to the idea that each person must fend for himself as an independent unit, moved into an age of interdependence. The people, however. were slow to recognize this fact and slow to organize the institutions which such an era required. Ray Stannard Baker in his American Chronicle has caught the feelings of the average man …