Arts and Humanities Commons^™

New York City’S Health Governance And Activism From The 1950s To The 1970s, Andres Valcarcel

Theses

New York City's expansive network of hospitals and preventative health services has an intense history outside of the popular narratives of biomedical and technological advancement. This thesis will discuss the period between the 1950s and 1970s and the various movements and parties that shaped the city's health and hospital system. During this period, New York City's healthcare delivery system became increasingly privatized and commercialized; processes that improved the quality of healthcare yet simultaneously barred the poorest from accessing it. Communities, healthcare workers, and civil rights organizations worked to address perceived faults and extend their agency in health and hospital policy; …

The Politics Of Hip Hop: A Political Analysis Of Hip Hop’S History And Its Complicated Relationship With Capitalism, Danielle Garcia

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emergence of the Hip Hop movement in the 1970s in areas of New York City often referred to more generally as the South Bronx. Focusing mostly on the 1970s and 1980s, this thesis explores the underlying conditions that Hip Hop was born out of. Influenced by both global and national politics, Hip Hop provided a common space for underrepresented individuals and groups to unify, create common identities, and liberate themselves from the oppressive norms and political activity of a rich, mostly white, and dominant American society that tried to erase or silence them. This revolutionary aspect …

U.S. Government And Politics In Principle And Practice: Democracy, Rights, Freedoms And Empire, Samuel Finesurrey, Gary Greaves

Open Educational Resources

This book is written for students early in college to provide a guide to the founding documents and structures of governance that form the United States political system. This book is called American Government and Politics in Principle and Practice because you will notice that what has been inscribed in law has not always been applied in practice-particularly for indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples, people of color, women, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, those formerly incarcerated, immigrants and the working class within U.S. society. In designing this book, we have two goals. First, we want you to know what the founding documents …

More Austerity Coming? Lessons From New York City's 1970s Fiscal Crisis, Marc Kagan

Publications and Research

Crises can be moments of opportunity, but it is not foreordained who will seize the ring. The Great Depression ultimately led to the New Deal/Great Society state and increasing equality. 1975 New York City fiscal crisis, on the other hand, laid the groundwork for decades of neoliberal austerity. Despite political vulnerabilities, bankers and their Washington allies acted boldly to protect imperiled assets and remake a city in which the working class wielded some power as a bastion of finance capital. Seemingly powerful unions abandoned the public they served, and followed a risk-averse strategy of concessions in exchange for junior-partner corporatism, …

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 …

Runaway: A History Of Postwar New York In Four Factories, Andy Battle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

At midcentury, New York City was among the preeminent manufacturing centers in the United States. Within a generation, this manufacturing economy suffered an extraordinary collapse. Beginning in the 1950s, workers and their unions began to use the term “runaway” to describe factories that pulled up stakes in New York and set them back down in other climes. This dissertation explores the deindustrialization of New York City through case studies of “runaway” plants, or factories that left New York for the American South or abroad between the years 1945 and 1975.

In general, the manufacturers that remained in New York at …

From Mourning To Monuments: How American Society Memorialized The Dead After 1945, Eugenia M. Wolovich

Theses and Dissertations

The following four memorials — the World War II Memorial in The Fens in Boston, the Brooklyn War Memorial in Cadman Plaza Park, the Pennsylvania Railroad World War II Memorial in the 30th Street Station, and the East Coast War Memorial in Battery Park — suggest that mid-twentieth century commemorative architecture possessed defining characteristics that differentiated them from monuments of the previous era and from each other. These unique qualities make it difficult to define this architectural period in a unified way because multiple forms of memorials arose in the wake of World War II.

Immigration, Small Business And Assimilation: Three Stories Of Small-Time Capitalism On The Lower East Side, Marcus Hillman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Small businesses in New York City have often been a catalyst to assimilation for individual immigrants, their families and their communities. For this capstone project, I have recorded conversations with three small-time entrepreneurs on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and created a narrative audio piece that explores some of the important and study-worthy characteristics of New York City including economic opportunities in the city, immigration, assimilation and the ways that New Yorkers share space, just to name a few. These themes are threads that ran through all three of the conversations that I had and are crucial elements of …

Performing Desire In Times Square: Sailors, Hustlers And Masculinity, Kel R. Karpinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From WWII to the early 1970s, New York City as a port town created a liminal space extending from the piers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard all the way to Times Square in Midtown Manhattan. In Times Square, through interactions on the street, in bars and in hotel rooms, desire and masculinity become a performance between and for men. The queerness of these performances lies in the fact that they fall outside of the norms of society both as same-sex encounters and because sex work is viewed as “deviant.” Further, these interactions eschew traditional labels and limits of desire and …

Morris High School: A Biography, Naomi Sharlin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Morris High School was conceived and built in the Bronx with a lofty mission: to provide a comprehensive, world-class secondary education to the children of immigrant and working-class families, and in so doing to elevate the American public education system and America itself. Such a weighty mission for an institution would result, one could expect, in painstaking record keeping, the lionization of great leaders, consistent investment in the building, and attention given to problems encountered or created over the years. And yet, the life of Morris High School remains elusive. Key figures in its story are lost to obscurity like …

Black Women As Activist Intellectuals: Ella Baker And Mae Mallory Combat Northern Jim Crow In New York City's Public Schools During The 1950s, Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Anarchist Classroom: A Test Of Libertarian Education And Human Nature At The Modern School In New York And New Jersey, 1911-1953, Eric G. Anderson

Student Theses

A study of anarchist education at the beginning of the twentieth century questions common perceptions of anarchists as solely bomb-throwing radicals and reveals that they cared deeply about children and the future of humankind. Inspired by the martyrdom of Francisco Ferrer, Spanish anarchist and founder of anarchist schools in Barcelona, anarchists worldwide applied their radical principles to the creation of “Modern Schools.” In these schools, anarchists attempted to blend Enlightenment ideals of freedom with politically revolutionary goals. The Modern School movement reached its zenith in the decade following Ferrer’s 1909 execution by the Spanish government for sedition, but declined by …

100 Years: The Death Of John Purroy Mitchel – New York City’S Boy Mayor, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

The blog post focuses on the life and times of John Purroy Mitchel, the mayor of New York City during the First World War. Mitchel was active in the Preparedness Movement and eventually killed in a military training exercise in July 1918, six months after leaving office.

Final Call: Rank-And-File Rebellion In New York City, 1965-1975, Glenn D. Dyer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Between 1965 and 1975, New York City’s workers fomented a powerful yet inchoate movement that challenged the entrenched power of employers, union officials, and politicians. In the words of Central Labor Council head Harry Van Arsdale Jr., “strike fever” gripped the city; workers refused to follow their leaders, rejecting contracts, wildcatting, and organizing insurgent electoral campaigns. While historians have explored the rebellion as a national phenomenon, New York City’s wave of upheaval was a locally bound movement with its own unique dynamics, culture, and timeline, both powerfully shaping and shaped by the local political and social environment. Significantly, workers’ rebellious …

The Spring Street Church In The Age Of Abolition, David S. Pultz

Dissertations and Theses

This study profiles the Spring Street Presbyterian Church in antebellum New York City as an integrated congregation active in the local abolitionist movement. It is framed against the rapid economic and social changes taking place within New York and the immediate neighborhood of the Eighth Ward during the early 19th century. Research focuses on religious antislavery during the Second Great Awakening and the place occupied by the Spring Street congregation as led by three of its antislavery pastors: Samuel H. Cox (1820-1825), Henry G. Ludlow, (1828-1837), and William Patton, (1837-1847). The study argues that Spring Street was a uniquely activist …

"The World Of Our Children": Jews, Puerto Ricans, And The Politics Of Place And Race On The Lower East Side, 1963-1993, Barry Goldberg

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines how Jewish political leaders on the Lower East Side responded to neighborhood change, particularly the influx of Puerto Rican migrants, from the 1960s through the 1990s. Utilizing untapped archival material, including congressional records, municipal papers, legal files, articles from the ethnic press, and quantitative voting data, I demonstrate that the Lower East Side remained home to an influential network of Jewish political leaders, institutions, and voters long after the early twentieth-century. Residing on Grand Street, largely Orthodox, and often descended from Lower East Side Jewish immigrants, this political base created, shaped, and implemented antipoverty, education, housing, and …

An Alliance Of Ladies: Power, Public Affairs, And Class Construction In Early National New York City, Alisa J. Wade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The dissertation studies elite women’s political consciousness in New York City between 1783 and 1815, contextualizing women’s position within the city’s social strata and the rise of market capitalism in the post-Revolutionary era. In a period of deferential politics, women within the leadership class played a unique role in remodeling the structure of republican government and determining who belonged within it. Building on the foundation of learned femininity, they constructed the etiquette that undergirded men’s political careers and oversaw the marriage market. They mediated divisions between new merchant capital and more established landed wealth, reinforcing dynastic stability. Moreover, they were …

Die Meistersinger, New York City, And The Metropolitan Opera: The Intersection Of Art And Politics During Two World Wars, Gwen L. D'Amico

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1945, after a five-year hiatus, the Metropolitan Opera returned Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg to its stage. It had been the only one of Wagner’s operas that had been banned during World War II, ostensibly because of its German nationalism and association with the Third Reich. But was it the German nationalism or Wagner’s own anti-Semitism that caused the unease? What resounded with the audiences? World War II stands at an historic cross roads in the reception of Die Meistersinger in America. This is where the present day “problem” with this work begins. The Metropolitan Opera’s decision created …

The Ideological And Organizational Origins Of The United Federation Of Teachers' Opposition To The Community Control Movement In The New York City Public Schools, 1960-1968, Stephen Brier

Publications and Research

This article explores the origins and ideological practice of public school teacher unionism as it was articulated and revealed in New York City before and during the epochal strike against an experiment in community control of neighborhood schools undertaken by the United Federation of Teachers in the fall of 1968 that closed down the city’s massive public school system for weeks and put almost 1 million school children in the street. How and why did unionized New York City public school teachers support the particular kind of trade unionism that the UFT and its president, Albert Shanker, embodied and practiced …

Queen Of The Underworld: The Biography Of Sophie Lyons (1848-1924), Barbara M. Gray

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Sophie Lyons was a nineteenth-century American pickpocket, blackmailer, con-woman, and bank robber. She was raised in New York City's underworld, by Jewish immigrant parents who were criminals that trained their children to pick pockets and shoplift. "Pretty Sophie" possessed a rare combination of skill at thievery, intellect, guts and beauty and became the woman Herbert Ashbury described in Gangs of New York as, "the most notorious confidence woman America has ever produced." Newspapers around the world chronicled Sophie's exploits for more than sixty years, because her life read like a novel. Her mentor was another forgotten woman who held a …

Brooklyn's Thirst, Long Island's Water: Consolidation, Local Control, And The Aquifir, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

The creation of greater New York City in 1898 promised a solution to the problem of supplying Brooklyn and Queens with water. In the 1850s, the City of Brooklyn tapped ponds and streams on the south side of Queens County, and in the 1880s, dug wells for additional supply. This lowered the water table and caused problems for farmers and oystermen, many of whom sued the city for damages. Ultimately, salt water seeped into some wells from over-pumping. By 1896, Brooklyn’s system had reached its limit. Prevented by the state legislature from tapping the aquifer beneath Suffolk’s Pine Barrens, the …

Brooklyn's Thirst, Long Island's Water: Consolidation, Local Control, And The Aquifer, Jeffrey A. Kroessler

Publications and Research

The creation of greater New York City in 1898 promised a solution to the problem of supplying Brooklyn and Queens with water. In the 1850s, the City of Brooklyn tapped ponds and streams on the south side of Queens County, and in the 1880s, dug wells for additional supply. This lowered the water table and caused problems for farmers and oystermen, many of whom sued the city for damages. Ultimately, salt water seeped into some wells from over-pumping. By 1896, Brooklyn’s system had reached its limit. Prevented by the state legislature from tapping the aquifer beneath Suffolk’s Pine Barrens, the …

Educating For Justice: A History Of John Jay College Of Criminal Justice. [Third Edition]., Gerald Markowitz

Publications and Research

Revision of the previously updated edition Educating for justice. 2004. Includes an interview with Jeremy Travis, the fourth President of John Jay College of Criminal Justice conducted June 5, 2008.

TOC: Introduction. The making of John Jay College; 1965-1970. The era of open admissions: 1970-1976. The crisis: 1976. The development of criminal justice: 1976-1989. The student takeovers of 1989-1991. The quest for equity. John Jay comes of age. Epilogue. Index.

Emancipation, Elevation, And Education: Black Educational Institutions In New York City During The 1830s, Kristopher B. Burrell

Publications and Research

This conference paper studied the significance of African Americans' efforts to organize around education in New York City during the 1830s. There was a proliferation of black-led educational institutions in the aftermath of slavery's end in the city. These institutions were part of a broader effort to prove that African Americans deserved full citizenship in the State and country during the 1830s. What was happening in New York City was not occurring in a vacuum and the paper briefly puts what was occurring in New York City within a regional context, as well.