Arts and Humanities Commons^™

A Divisive Community: Race, Nation, And Loyalty In Santo Domingo, 1822 – 1844, Antony Wayne Keane-Dawes

Theses and Dissertations

On 8 February 1822, Haitian President Jean-Pierre Boyer entered Santo Domingo and ended the short-lived experiment of a moderate republic and the triumph of a popular and radical vision of nationhood. For the next two decades, this unified Haitian Republic faced the scrutiny of Spanish, French, and British slave empires, fueled by the accounts and reports of those Dominicans who rejected this change in events. Using government correspondences, reports, pamphlets, and proclamations, this study argues that the Haitian Unification affected Dominican political allegiances and drove white elites to support Spanish monarchy in contrast to those in Santo Domingo who supported …

Black Power And Neighborhood Organizing In Minneapolis, Minnesota: The Way Community Center, 1966-1971, Sarah Jayne Paulsen

Theses and Dissertations

The Way Opportunities Unlimited, Inc. was a non-­‐profit community center that operated from 1966—1984 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Inspired by the national black power movement that arose in the 1960s, this community center led a local movement for African American equality. This thesis investigates The Way as a unique example of how black power ideology was implemented at the local level, in a city with a statistically small black population, presenting a northern urban context often overlooked by historians. The Way offered a space where aspiring young black musicians could perform, including Prince.

The Lost Ones: The Cold War State, Child Welfare Systems, And The Battles Over The Rosenberg Children, Megan Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

The conspiracy case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was a formative event in the early stages of the Cold War, but it also set their two sons adrift in a domestic climate which emphasized domestic order but feared communists and those connected to communists within their midst. Michael and Robert Rosenberg’s lives remained in various states of instability from their mother’s arrest in August 1950 until they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol in 1958. The placement of the Rosenberg children with the Meeropols came only after years of upheaval and family strife in which the notoriety of the …

Perks Of Perkins: Understanding Where Magic And Religion Meet For An Early Modern English Theologian, Kyle Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft by William Perkins, a prestigious Puritan theologian in Elizabethan England, highlights several themes in his witchcraft discourse which reflect his larger theology and more general trends in English theology: a world with an active Devil, predestination, providence, Biblicism, and anti-Catholicism. These central themes shape his understandings of where witchcraft fits within a world where God dominates everything. Witchcraft is an attempt to steal the dominion from God, even though the Devil only tricks witches into thinking they have power. He also tricks them into thinking he has power, …

“I Hope They Fire Me:” Black Teachers In The Fight For Equal Education, 1910-1970, Candace Cunningham

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a growing body of research on African American schoolteachers and their role in the civil rights movement, as well as increased interest in South Carolina’s civil rights movement, few historians have uncovered the contributions black schoolteachers made to the South Carolina movement. Additionally, while many histories have highlighted how integral the NAACP was to the civil rights movement, few have revealed the deliberate relationship they built with black teachers associations. This dissertation uses the NAACP papers, political manuscript collections, oral histories, newspaper and magazine articles, and court documents to address this gap in the historiography. Chapter 1 discusses the …

Of Cannonades And Battle Cries: Aurality, The Battle Of The Alamo, And Memory, Michelle E. Herbelin

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis takes a sensory-historical approach to the 1836 Siege and Battle of the Alamo, its inscription into history and its propagation as a touchstone of Texas’ memory and identity. My focus is on the auditory, an especially important sensory experience to consider. Among the many auditory tactics deployed during the siege, the storming itself took place in the pre-dawn darkness, and many of the survivors’ accounts were from women and children among the garrison, who were sequestered away from the visual experience of the battle. Flooding from the accounts of survivors into the popular imagination of Texans, the sounds …

Reading Material: Personal Libraries And The Cultivation Of Identity In Revolutionary South Carolina, Gabriella Angeloni

Theses and Dissertations

In South Carolina, a colony known for its wealth and transatlantic connections, private libraries offer a unique lens through which to explore the culture of reading and book ownership that was an essential part of daily provincial and early national life. Largely overlooked by historians, personal libraries functioned as statements of wellrounded, often cosmopolitan identities before, during, and after the Revolutionary War. A careful reading of newspaper advertisements, probate inventories, loyalist claims, and correspondence, in conjunction with extant books, bookcases, portraiture, and spaces allows us to reconstruct the culture of reading and book-ownership that dominated Lowcountry society before 1800. Doing …

The Popular Education Question In Antebellum South Carolina, 1800-1860, Brian A. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reviews the struggle for popular education in Antebellum South Carolina. It contends that the failure of popular education in South Carolina was not a foregone conclusion nor was it mistake by school administration or state leaders, but instead, the failure to provide education for the white majority was the result of an intended goal. This project concludes that South Carolina remained without a system of public schools for the majority of citizens because those who opposed general education firmly believed popular education held the seeds of revolution while ignorance the better tool to perpetuate the status quo.

Chapter …