Digital Commons Network^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 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."