Digital Commons Network^™

Model Minorities: Asian Americans And The White-Black Racial Paradigm, Jason Tom

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the racial wedge driven by Whites between Blacks and Asian Americans during the Cold War on to the present. Model minorities is a term coined by whites in the 1960s to suppress Civil Rights protests and Black demands. By elevating a minority group through success stories, whites constructed a means to suppress Black people’s organizing for change against systemic racism and oppression.

Body Snatching In Philadelphia: A Social And Cultural History, 1762-1883, Timothy R. Dewysockie

Theses and Dissertations

In 18th-century Philadelphia the first medical school in the thirteen British colonies was established. However, cadavers for dissection could only be obtained involuntarily, a posthumous punishment generally reserved for murderers and suicides. Body snatching, the disinterment of corpses for dissection, immediately became a problem because legal sources of "subjects" did not meet demand. Body snatching was resisted in popular representations and the actions of everyday citizens in riots, petitions, and other forms of protest. However, in the late 19th century the requisition of "unclaimed" bodies for dissection - that is, dead "paupers" - became enshrined in Pennsylvania's 1883 Anatomy Act, …

"Accountable To No One": Confronting Police Power In Black Milwaukee, William I. Tchakirides

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uncovers the roots of discriminatory police power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and traces Black-led efforts to make the city’s police bureaucracy more accountable to all citizens. It analyzes the politics of police reform in the century spanning the passage of two state laws that reconfigured Milwaukee’s law enforcement arrangements. The first (1885) removed City Hall’s managerial control over the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Corporate elites and social reformers fearful of rising working-class power and moral degeneration in the immigrant-industrial city lobbied for the statute’s enactment. The second (1984) reversed course, re-empowering non-police officials after decades of Black-led campaigns for …

Houses Divided: New Perspectives On Antiwar Dissent In The American Civil War, Mark Ciccone

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACTHOUSES DIVIDED: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON ANTIWAR DISSENT IN THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

by

Mark Ciccone

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2020Under the Supervision of Professor Lex Renda

Since the conclusion of the American Civil War, antiwar dissent in the Union and the Confederacy has predominantly been viewed through the lens of political treason alone, with limited exploration of other factors—judicial, social, economic, personal—which motivated its expression. Both explicitly and implicitly, the individuals and movements that advocated peaceful negotiations to end the conflict, or protested what they viewed as illegitimate or unjust war policies enacted by Washington, D.C. or Richmond, or demonstrated …

“They Know Too Much Already:” Black Education In Post-Emancipation Era Columbus, Ga, 1866-1876, William Dwayne Thomas

Theses and Dissertations

Despite local histories that have been published on the history of Columbus, Georgia, and its school system, very little has been written about Columbus’s freedmen schools created after the U.S. Civil War. As a result, a comprehensive history of Columbus’s freedmen does not exist, and those written are fragmented. The focus of this study is to document the beginnings of Columbus’s freedmen school efforts in the post-emancipation era, through those African Americans’ own historical voices and experiences. Though an analysis of archived unpublished letters, local and religious newspapers, census data, government documents, and meeting minutes, this study recovers the authentic …

“I’M A Nurse, Not A Woman”: The Historical Significance Of The Uwm Nurse Romance Novel Collection, Katie Elisabeth Stollenwerk

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to promote future collection and preservation of popular culture resources at academic libraries by demonstrating the research potential and instructional value of a particular collection—the Nurse Romance Novel collection, held by the UWM Special Collections department. The study examines the history of American nursing and the history of romance fiction, raising questions about the role mass media and popular culture played in the professionalization of nursing and in the construction of dominant ideologies about gender roles in twentieth century America. This study treats romance novels as both consumer goods and as narratives, analyzing not only their literary …

Brew City Black Ball: Milwaukee As Microcosm Of The Early-Twentieth Century Black Baseball Experience, Ken Jon-Edward Bartelt

Theses and Dissertations

While historians have learned a great deal about the Black professional baseball played during organized baseball’s Jim Crow era, there are many teams whose stories are yet to be told. Two of these teams, the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, played their home games in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 1920s. By exploring the untold histories of the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, much can be learned about overarching themes in early-twentieth century Black professional baseball. By analyzing newspaper coverage of the McCoy-Nolan Giants, an independent barnstorming team without Negro League affiliation, important truths about the experience of Black baseball on …

The Beast And The Revival Of Rome: Mussolini And Rome In The Premillennial Imagination, Jon Stamm

Theses and Dissertations

Premillennial dispensationalism became immensely influential among American Protestants who saw themselves as defenders of orthodoxy. As theological conflict heated up in the early 20th century, dispensationalism’s unique eschatology became one of the characteristic features of the various strands of “fundamentalists” who fought against modernism and the perceived compromises of mainline Protestantism. Their embrace of the dispensationalist view of history and Biblical prophecy had a significant effect on how they interpreted world events and how they lived out their faith. These fundamentalists established patterns of interpretation that in the second half of the 20th century would fuel the emergence of a …

Blood On The Floor: Public Memory, Myth, And Material Culture In American Historic House Museums, Alyssa B. Caltabiano

Theses and Dissertations

This research examines the historic narratives of the Hancock House Historic Site, The Jennie Wade House Museum, and the Shriver House Museum, analyzing the historical accuracy of each. Each site has used historic human bloodstains and other elements of material culture, authentic and fabricated, to facilitate and support their historic narratives. The traditional Hancock House narrative, as well as the current Jennie Wade House narrative, are each sensationalized and riddled with myth and legend. The Shriver House represents a well-researched and interpreted narrative, that tastefully uses historic human bloodstains as an element of their interpretation. The evolution of each site …

Prohibition And Religion: William H. Anderson, The Anti-Saloon League, And The Rise And Fall Of A Protestant Evangelical Crusade Against Alcohol In New York, Lionel Benavidez

Theses and Dissertations

The Prohibition Era of the 1920s was a social and political condition created and designed by a nineteenth-century rural Christian Protestant crusade against alcohol. Evangelical Protestant activists took a very personal and spiritual approach to the issue of alcohol consumption and turned it into a far-reaching and long-lasting nationwide campaign aimed at changing American culture. The Prohibition Era which resulted was a brief noble experiment remembered more for its sensational news stories of organized crime, political corruption, and popular culture than for the religious crusade that produced this episode in American history. The untold story of Prohibition involves a social …

Divorce As Liberation: Marital Expectations Among The Working-Class In The 1950s, Kristin M. Catrone

Theses and Dissertations

Divorce was a remedy employed by working-class Americans in the 1950s when their marital expectations went unmet. Spouses left emotionally, physically, or sexually abusive marriages. Expectations for marriage also centered around assumptions based on gender. Working-class women showed how divorce could be used as a tool of liberation and empowerment.

Against The Classes And The Masses: The American Legion, The American Federation Of Labor, And Square Deal Americanism In The 1920s, Gregory Steven Hopely

Theses and Dissertations

This work explores the ideological contributions of the American Legion and the American Federation of Labor to American conservatism in the 1920s. It argues that the two organizations shared a vision of what the author calls Square Deal Americanism, a loose conception of ideal citizenship that added a nationalist rejection of class to more traditional nativist Americanism. The conservatism of both groups took inspiration from the legacies of the Progressive Era and World War I. They sought an active role for the federal government and engaged citizenry in eliminating any strain of radicalism, fostering patriotism, and securing a square deal …

Polish Organizations And Chicago's Polonia, 1880-1930, Anna Kathleen Leska

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a large, growing amount of literature on the Polish community in Chicago, there remains a lack of information about organizations in the Polish communities. Organizations in the Polish community are generally spoken about in one of two ways. Either one organization is spoken about in great depth or organizations are barely touched upon. This work seeks to bridge both of those types of work by focusing both on small organizations and large organizations and connecting them through the Poles who were members.

The Oral History of Chicago’s Polonia project, 1880-1930, is used in this work to limit the number …

Historical Dissidence: The Temporalities And Radical Possibilities Of American Comics, Jeremy M. Carnes

Theses and Dissertations

Formal criticism of comics has often focused on the importance of sequence and the filling of gutters with causative logics. Practitioner-theorists like Will Eisner and Scott McCloud have focused on “sequentiality” and “closure” to conceive of how readers connect the disparate panels of a given comic. More contemporary scholars of the form have followed Eisner and McCloud, foregrounding the causative logics that create narrative progression in the comics form. Yet, these approaches implicitly rely on dominant, western logics of temporality in the construction of narrative in comics.

This project considers how comics form actually relies on various temporalities and thus …

The Business Of The Girl: Celebrity And The Professionalization Of Girlhood In Early Twenty-First Century Media Culture, Jessica Elizabeth Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

The achieving “can-do” girl, who thrives in her personal, academic, and aspirational endeavors, emerged in response to self-help crisis literature of the 1990s urging mothers to manage their daughters’ low self-esteem. However, even as media industries have adopted the successful girl subject in popular film, television, and digital marketing campaigns, public conversations of tween and teenage girls still identify rising levels of anxiety and self-doubt that diminish girls’ confidence well into adulthood. Responding to what critics call the “confidence gap,” girl culture of the twenty-first century has organized itself around the affordances of social media and digital celebrity in the …

Built Of Pine And People: Adaptability And Stability In The Wisconsin Lumbering Community Of Oconto, 1850-1950, Amy Fels

Theses and Dissertations

Near the midpoint of the nineteenth century, logging enterprises began to emerge across the northern half of Wisconsin at an increasing rate. Though the lumber boom dwindled throughout the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century, hundreds of new communities had been established throughout the northwoods region as a result of the industry’s growth. Traditionally, historians have examined Wisconsin’s logging history from a regional or industry perspective, favoring broader conclusions over detailed microhistories. In order to shift this perspective and enrich the existing body of scholarship by offering a significantly more focused narrative, this thesis examines the growth and development …

Benevolent Women And An Orphan Asylum: The Case Of Rochester, New York, Joseph Resch

Theses and Dissertations

Rochester, New York typified the rapid growth towns were experiencing in the early 19th century. Benevolent women established charitable societies and institutions like the Orphan Asylum to combat the social ills brought on by that growth. Their humanitarian endeavors laid the foundation for today’s child welfare agencies.

Robert Cowley: Living Free During Slavery In Eighteenth-Century Richmond, Virginia, Ana F. Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the life of Robert Cowley, a formerly enslaved man living free during slavery in eighteenth-century Richmond, Virginia. The first chapter examines Cowley’s enslaved life through the records of others. The data collectors and historians of early America did not intend to capture the truth of Black people’s American experiences, except as defined their enslavement--people in service to the wealth-building capacity of the nation. Yet the lives of Black people who lived in proximity to prominent whites can be glimpsed in a variety of records and writings from account books to deeds, from private letters to newspaper advertisements. …

Recovering Lost Voices: The Rappahannock Tribe And The Jamestown Festival Of 1957, Woodie L. Walker Ii

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis employs the interdisciplinary methodologies of ethnohistory and oral history to examine the legacy of the 1957 Jamestown Festival through the experiences and memories of Rappahannock people. “Recovering Lost Voices: The Rappahannock Tribe and the Jamestown Festival of 1957” adds to the historiography of Virginia Natives by revealing that Rappahannock participation in the Jamestown Festival was the culmination of centuries of cultural preservation, greatly influenced and made immediate by their experiences in “Jim Crow” Virginia during the twentieth century. This research establishes that the enduring legacy of the Festival for the Rappahannock Tribe was political influence, culminating in state …