Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Ordinary Power: Frontier Sentimentalism And Cultural Perceptions Of Gender In The Nineteenth-Century West, Erin Elizabeth Hastings

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will examine nineteenth-century women and their primary role in the cultural formation of frontier sentimentalism. White, middle class women primarily moved west with their husbands and families, initially to the Midwest in the early nineteenth century, and were continuing to settle in the Great Plains and further west by the end of the century. The first generation of women who migrated west were the pioneers of frontier sentimentalism, but it prevailed in successive generations of westering women. This thesis will argue that in the formation of their own form of sentimentalism, nineteenth-century women were at the heart of …

“Natural Ties For Patriotic Purposes": The Committee On Public Information, Americanization, And Swedish-American Transnationalism, Race L. Fisher

Theses and Dissertations

The Committee on Public Information (CPI) was the official propaganda agency of the United States during the First World War, seeking to homogenize American public opinion and spread American ideals across the globe. Through a case study of Edwin Björkman’s work among Swedish Americans, this thesis illuminates how the CPI approached its work among immigrants, engaging questions of Americanization and transnationalism. Through an analysis of the John Ericsson League of Patriotic Service and the Scandinavian Bureau—both its domestic and foreign operations—this thesis argues that Edwin Björkman and the CPI promoted cultural pluralism rather than assimilation to a dominant Anglo-American culture. …

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 …

Why Did The Eisenhower Administration Decide To Deploy Jupiter Missiles In Turkey: A Case Study In Nuclearization Of Nato Strategy, Murat Iplikci

Theses and Dissertations

Looking out at the international political landscape of the late 1940s and the early 1950s, the Eisenhower administration was determined to challenge the evident appeal of Communism, particularly in Western Europe. NATO, which was a fragile organization due to the devastation of World War II (WWII), and its members were prone to any communist attack, either by military forces or through political parties. They had to be defended. The Eisenhower administration saw nuclear weapons as the only means to defend the alliance against the massive threat of the Soviet Union. Therefore, President Eisenhower committed nuclear weapons to NATO as a …

‘Answering The Call’: Ange. V. Milner And Posters From The ‘Great War’, Angela L. Bonnell

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

Illinois State University’s Milner Library is one of the few libraries in the nation possessing original posters produced during the First World War. It owes this distinction to the University’s first librarian, Angeline (known as Ange.) Vernon Milner. Milner preserved these posters after the war’s end, despite their original intent for a short-term, wartime-only purpose. As ephemera they were produced and distributed for public display and then meant to be discarded following the war. Milner preserved the posters recognizing their strong visual impact and value in illustrating a campus during wartime. Today these posters constitute the Answering the Call World …

The Plight Of Wage-Earning Women In Peoria, 1905-1915, Cheryl Kay Fogler

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the conditions of wage-earning women in Peoria, Illinois, during the first two decades of the twentieth century. I present the plight of wage-earning women as well as the well-intended efforts of both local and national crusaders who helped the working women of Peoria survive and in some cases overcome hardships.

A Vision Of Peace Through U.S. Leadership: President Jimmy Carter's Moral Foreign Policy Vision And The Panama Canal Treaties, Holly L. Welsh De Paula

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy and his administration’s campaign to promote the ratification of the Panama Canal treaties from 1977 to 1978. I argue that President Carter’s administration developed a coherent foreign policy vision that was inspired by moral convictions and aimed to promote international peace. The fundamental aspects of this vision are reflected in the Panama Canal treaties. During the turbulent Senate debate over the treaties, opposition arguments attacking President Carter’s moral policy encouraged the Carter administration to favor more pragmatic arguments in support of the treaties, which ultimately obscured President Carter’s overarching foreign policy vision. …

The 1622 Powhatan Uprising And Its Impact On Anglo-Indian Relations, Michael Jude Kramer

Theses and Dissertations

On March 22, 1622, Native Americans under the Powhatan war-leader Opechancanough launched surprise attacks on English settlements in Virginia. The attacks wiped out between one-quarter and one-third of the colony's European population and hastened the collapse of the Virginia Company of London, a joint stock company to which England's King James I had granted the right to establish settlements in the New World. Most significantly, the 1622 Powhatan attacks in Virginia marked a critical turning point in Anglo-Indian relations.

Following the famous 1614 marriage of the Native American Pocahontas to Virginia colonist John Rolfe and her conversion to Christianity, English …

Frontier Respectability To Gilded Age Splendor: Women And Consumerism In The Cultural Development Of Bloomington, Illinois, 1839-1900, Kera B. Storrs

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the importance of late nineteenth century gender ideals and consumer practices in the development of the city of Bloomington in McLean County, Illinois. Most histories of not only Bloomington, but the greater Midwest, have focused on the rise of industry and business, and their effect on the development of the region. This study instead places women's social and cultural activities at the center of the story, and explains the significance of feminine consumption to the community's growth from a small frontier village to a Gilded Age city. While all of Bloomington's classes played a role in this …

The Countryman: Joseph Addison Turner And The Cultural Construction Of Confederate Nationalism, Christina Lea Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This master's thesis starts from the premise that Confederate nationalism was not just a political entity, but a cultural project. It examines the role of print culture in shaping a distinctive and unified Confederate community. Emerging on the eve of the Civil War, Confederate nationalism flourished due to the creation and dissemination of southern print culture through newspapers and magazines. This thesis approaches the development of Confederate cultural nationalism through a case study, Joseph Addison Turner, who wrote and edited a weekly journal, The Countryman, from 1862 to 1866. Through The Countryman, Turner advocated and shaped white southern beliefs and …

We Are Aquin: The Creation Of Community And Personal Identity In The Freeport Catholic Schools, Sherry Ann Cluver

Theses and Dissertations

Aquin Central Catholic High School, a tiny institution in the rural, Midwestern town of Freeport, Illinois, is a case study unlike the schools from Chicago, Boston, and other large cities highlighted in previous scholarship. Freeport's patterns of schooling in the 1970s and 1980s were largely unaffected by race or "white flight," and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockford afforded to its schools a greater than usual degree of local control. Yet, Aquin (founded in 1923) followed the trends of Catholic schools with regard to the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), assimilation of previously immigrant Catholic families into middle class American social …

Documenting Women’S Civil War Experiences In The Ohio Valley At The Filson, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This collections essay describes archival collections of the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky. These collections document women and their experiences in the American Civil War.

Documenting 'Herstories' In The Ohio Valley At The Filson, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

This collection essay describes archival collections held by the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky. The collections described document women’s contributions to the region’s history, their struggles and triumphs, and the contours of their daily lives, including interactions with family, peers, neighbors, and business associates.

Contested Nation: Freedman And The Cherokee Nation, Dave Watt

Undergraduate Research - History

The Freedmen are, most simply, those individuals that have been freed from bondage. In the United States this term is often used in reference to legally emancipated slaves and consequently, their descendants. The term “Cherokee Freedmen” refers to those freed slaves who joined with the Cherokee Nation, or, men and women who were formerly held in servitude within the Cherokee Nation. This term has also been given to the descendants of marriages involving freed Africans and Cherokee spouses, thus making the network of people labeled Freedmen an expansive group of people. Totaling roughly 3000 people in the present day, Cherokee …

The Squatters And The Polish Exiles: Frontier And Whig Definitions Of Republicanism In Jacksonian Illinois, Eric Willey

Faculty and Staff Publications – Milner Library

In 1834, 235 exiled Polish revolutionaries petitioned the United States Congress for a grant of land for the purpose of establishing a colony on the American frontier. Congress, sympathizing with the plight of the Poles and applauding their struggle against Russian tyranny in the Polish Revolution of 1830, issued a limited land grant with certain restrictions to the Poles; unfortunately, the lands near modern day Rockford and Rockton, Illinois selected by Polish agent Louis Chlopicki were occupied by native squatters attempting to exercise their own preemption rights. For several years the two sides debated who was best suited to settle …

Albert D. J. Cashier And The Ninety-Fifth Illinois Infantry ( 1844-1915 ), Mary Catherine Lannon

Theses and Dissertations

An historical account of a person who fought in the Civil War and subsequently lived in Central Illinois. It is primarily based on official records, letters, interviews, and newspaper articles.