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Articles 1 - 30 of 44
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
'Our Sacred Rights': The Southern Baptist Convention And The Rhetoric Of Oppression, 1845 And Present Day, Katlyn Durand
'Our Sacred Rights': The Southern Baptist Convention And The Rhetoric Of Oppression, 1845 And Present Day, Katlyn Durand
Masters Theses
My master’s thesis focuses on the endurance of white supremacy and patriarchy in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), founded in 1845 and currently the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. I look at two moments in the SBC’s history and place these moments within their broader contexts to elucidate the political and cultural characteristics that shaped these moments: its founding in 1845 upon proslavery partisanship, as well as its current sexual abuse scandal. I argue that the Nullification Crisis of 1828-1834 and the cult of domesticity greatly influenced SBC policy and culture at its origins. Additionally, I examine the …
Revenge Of The Nerds: Tech Masculinity And Digital Hegemony, Benjamin M. Latini
Revenge Of The Nerds: Tech Masculinity And Digital Hegemony, Benjamin M. Latini
Doctoral Dissertations
Revenge of the Nerds provides a cultural history of the evolution of white nerd masculinities in American culture through interpretations of a wide variety of texts and representations using the methods of literary studies and American studies. The dissertation is organized around four overlapping stages of nerd masculinity based on changes in technology and their effects on culture, as well as white male nerds’ efforts to remain culturally relevant and gain the benefits of being close to hegemonic masculinity. The four nerd types are the computer nerd, the gamer, the gatekeeper nerd, and the maladaptive nerd which reflect the following …
Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez
Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez
Masters Theses
Scholars of American Jewish history have long debated the complicity of the American Jewish community in the loss of six million Jewish lives in Europe during the Holocaust. After Hitler took power in 1933, American Jewish leaders took to the streets to protest the Nazi Party’s abuse of German Jews. Two central figures in this history are Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht because of their wide-reaching protest movements that operated in competition with each other. Although the historiography presents Wise and Hecht's inability to unite as the product of difference, my examination of their protest performances …
Cut Out Of Place: The Geography And Legacy Of Otto Ege's Broken Books, Melanie R. Meadors
Cut Out Of Place: The Geography And Legacy Of Otto Ege's Broken Books, Melanie R. Meadors
Masters Theses
Otto Ege cut apart hundreds of medieval manuscripts during the first half of the twentieth century, claiming to do so to provide wider access to them. His destruction resulted in the loss of provenance, material history, and context of these manuscripts. Moreover, he made mistakes when identifying and dating the manuscript leaves he cut, and the loss of the bindings and front matter of the manuscripts makes it difficult to correct these. Much of the research concerning Ege focuses on his identity as a biblioclast, yet even scholars who denounce his book-cutting admit he allowed for places and people to …
From A Culture Of Poverty To A Culture Of Property: Preservation And Urban Crisis In The "City Of Homes", Brian F. Whetstone
From A Culture Of Poverty To A Culture Of Property: Preservation And Urban Crisis In The "City Of Homes", Brian F. Whetstone
Doctoral Dissertations
From a Culture of Poverty to a Culture of Property: Preservation and Urban Crisis in the “City of Homes” explores the intersection of the historic preservation movement and the urban crisis from the vantage point of Springfield, Massachusetts in the two decades following the passage of the landmark National Historic Preservation Act in 1966. Rather than explore the workings of larger professional or governmental preservation organizations, this dissertation instead centers the role of community preservationists—those homeowners, community activists, and founders of neighborhood organizations who pursued historic preservation as an avocation and articulated preservation’s significance at the scale of their homes, …
“They Can Only Be Influenced By Their Fears”: Redefining White Mob Violence Against Blacks, 1898 – 1917, Riots Or Pogroms?, Deroy C. Gordon
“They Can Only Be Influenced By Their Fears”: Redefining White Mob Violence Against Blacks, 1898 – 1917, Riots Or Pogroms?, Deroy C. Gordon
Doctoral Dissertations
The aim of this dissertation is to help to redefine racial riots carried out against the African American community in the United States during the 19th and the early 20th century. I provide an examination to argue for those racial riots to be redefined as pogroms rather than riots. Racial riots that had been carried out against the African American community in the United States often did not get the attention they deserve. The initial framing of those attacks as riots, made it difficult for black victims of those racial riots to seek legal redress or request government …
Benjamin Smith Lyman: Geologist At The Intersection Of Hokkaido, Japan, And The United States, Benjamin Ashby
Benjamin Smith Lyman: Geologist At The Intersection Of Hokkaido, Japan, And The United States, Benjamin Ashby
Masters Theses
Benjamin Smith Lyman was a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts, who was contracted by the Japanese government in 1872 to carry out coal surveys on the island of Hokkaidō 北海道. What started out as a standard geological survey, quickly evolved into a lifelong interest in Japan for Lyman. The large collection of letters, books, photographs, and other documents housed under the Benjamin Smith Lyman Collection at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, serve as a primary source on both early relations between the Japanese and the West and the beginnings of the large network of academic writings which today can be classified …
“A Constant Surveillance”: The New York State Police And The Student Peace Movement, 1965-1973, Seth Kershner
“A Constant Surveillance”: The New York State Police And The Student Peace Movement, 1965-1973, Seth Kershner
Masters Theses
Historians recognize that there was an increase in political repression in the United States during the Vietnam War era. While a number of accounts portray the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the primary driver of repression for many groups and individuals during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those on the left, historians typically overlook the role played by local and state law enforcement in political intelligence-gathering. This thesis seeks to advance the study of one aspect of this much larger topic by looking at New York State Police surveillance of the Vietnam-era student peace movement. Drawing extensively on State Police …
Sailing Illicit Voyages: Colonial Smuggling Operations Between North America And The West Indies, 1714-1776, Carl A. Herzog
Sailing Illicit Voyages: Colonial Smuggling Operations Between North America And The West Indies, 1714-1776, Carl A. Herzog
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines colonial smuggling in the mid-eighteenth century between British North America and the Caribbean from the operational perspective of the captains and crews of the coastwise merchant vessels engaged in that trade. In doing so, this work seeks to recast these particular smuggling mariners as agents of a unique professional maritime skillset, whose expertise created paths for upward mobility in their communities and careers. Returning the mariners’ skills and core occupation to their historical identity refines and corrects arguments about mariners’ perceived attitudes toward the Navigation Acts, smuggling, and the American Revolution. Focusing on operational skills differentiates the …
The Art Of Not Seeing: The Immigration And Naturalization Service’S Failed Search For Nazi Collaborators In The United States, 1945-1979, Jeffrey Davis
Masters Theses
From 1945 to 1979, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was responsible for identifying and prosecuting Nazi collaborators and potential war criminals in the United States. It failed in this task for a number of reasons. The first of these was that the agency was severely disorganized and mismanaged. Reliance on interagency cooperation, lack of manpower and resources, and lack of institutional support for “Nazi hunters” posed further problems. Morale crises among employees and the legal difficulties of actually prosecuting Nazi collaborators also hampered the agency’s effectiveness. Most importantly, the agency was overwhelmingly focused on policing the southern border and preventing …
Treating The Revolution: Health Care And Solidarity In El Salvador And Nicaragua In The 1980s, Brittany Mcwilliams
Treating The Revolution: Health Care And Solidarity In El Salvador And Nicaragua In The 1980s, Brittany Mcwilliams
Masters Theses
Health care played an important role in the revolutions of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Both the Sandinistas and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) prioritized popular health throughout the 1980s. Clinics and hospitals served as sites of revolution that drew healthcare solidarity activists from the United States. These health internationalists worked to build community-level networks that relied upon trained medical volunteers. In both El Salvador and Nicaragua, women comprised a bulk of the community health workers. These women chose to interact with revolution by building on radical promises of universal healthcare access. Healthcare solidarity activists trained community volunteers and …
“Nothing Material Occurred”: The Maritime Captures That Caused Then Outlasted The United States’ Quasi War With France, Emma Zeig
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the French maritime seizures during the eighteenth-century US Quasi War with France (also called the half war, or the United States’ undeclared war with France), encompassing events on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in France, the United States, and the Caribbean, particularly Haiti. The analysis focuses on the captured ships, telling the stories of seamen who feared for their lives and merchants who lost their ships. This point of view allows the thesis to explore an area of the Quasi War that are less documented in other histories: how civilian participants experienced violence and the indifference …
Interpreting Access: A History Of Accessibility And Disability Representations In The National Park Service, Perri Meldon
Interpreting Access: A History Of Accessibility And Disability Representations In The National Park Service, Perri Meldon
Masters Theses
This thesis illustrates the accomplishments and challenges of enhancing accessibility across the national parks, at the same time that great need to diversify the parks and their interpretation of American disability history remains. Chapters describe the administrative history of the NPS Accessibility Program (1979-present), exploring the decisions from both within and outside the federal agency, to break physical and programmatic barriers to make parks more inclusive for people with sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities; and provide a case study of the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site (HOFR) in New York. The case study describes the creation of …
"The Whole Nation Will Move": Grassroots Organizing In Harlem And The Advent Of The Long, Hot Summers, Peter Blackmer
"The Whole Nation Will Move": Grassroots Organizing In Harlem And The Advent Of The Long, Hot Summers, Peter Blackmer
Doctoral Dissertations
“The Whole Nation Will Move” provides a narrative history of grassroots struggles for African American equality and empowerment in Harlem in the decade immediately preceding the era of widespread urban rebellions in the United States. Through a street-level examination of the political education and activism of grassroots organizers, the dissertation analyzes how local people developed a collective radical consciousness and organized to confront and dismantle institutional racism in New York City from 1954-1964. This work also explores how the interests and activities of poor and working-class Black and Puerto Rican residents of Harlem fueled the escalation of protest activity and …
Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner
Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner
Masters Theses
U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a …
Fantasy Frontier: Old West Theme Parks And Memory In California, Amanda Tewes
Fantasy Frontier: Old West Theme Parks And Memory In California, Amanda Tewes
Doctoral Dissertations
This study examines sites of Old West tourism—specifically the three California theme parks of Knott’s Berry Farm, Calico Ghost Town, and Frontier Village—as avenues through which the myth of “the West” gets propagated, even among the people of the American West, and even if these sites do not reflect the actual history of the region. California’s Old West theme parks act as windows into mid-twentieth-century cultural conflicts of politics and identity within the state. But these sites are artifacts of a particular historical moment and their fantasy of the Old West memorializes mid-century renderings of the past rather than nineteenth-century …
Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History, Dan Allosso
Peppermint Kings: A Rural American History, Dan Allosso
Doctoral Dissertations
Explores rural history through the experiences of three families that dominated the American peppermint oil business from its beginning in the early nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. The rural entrepreneurs who became Peppermint Kings acted in ways that challenge traditional historical depictions of rural people. The freethinking Ranney clan built a family business that extended from Massachusetts to western New York and Michigan during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Hotchkiss brothers entered the international market and ventured into finance and banking at a time when the United States government was reducing opportunities for regional bankers. …
Springing Forth Anew: Progress, Preservation, And Park-Building At Roger Williams National Memorial, Sara E. Patton
Springing Forth Anew: Progress, Preservation, And Park-Building At Roger Williams National Memorial, Sara E. Patton
Masters Theses
The process of local preservation, urban renewal, and national park building at Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island, reveals important facets of the urban park idea. In 1958, the Providence Preservation Society and the Providence City Plan Commission jointly released the College Hill Study, which called for renewal of the College Hill neighborhood through preservation of the architecturally significant homes, selective demolition, and the creation of a new National Park Unit dedicated to Providence’s founder, Roger Williams. The new park, established in 1965, went through a lengthy planning process before opening in 1984. The planning process revealed concerns …
The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll
The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll
Masters Theses
Eighteenth-century Methodist evangelism supported, perpetuated, and promoted slavery as requisite for a productive economy in the colonial American South. Religious thought of the First Great Awakening emerged alongside a colonial economy increasingly reliant on chattel slavery for its prosperity. The records of well-traveled celebrity minister and provocateur of the Anglican tradition, George Whitefield, suggest how Calvinist-Methodist evangelicals viewed slavery as necessary to supporting colonial ministerial efforts. Whitefield’s absorption of and immersion into American culture is revealed in his owning a plantation, portraying a willingness to sacrifice the mobility of the disfranchised for widespread consumption of evangelical thought. A side effect …
And Liberty For All: Geechee Culture And The Black Freedom Struggle In Liberty County, Georgia, 1752-1946, Felicia Jamison
And Liberty For All: Geechee Culture And The Black Freedom Struggle In Liberty County, Georgia, 1752-1946, Felicia Jamison
Doctoral Dissertations
“And Liberty For All” is a case study of an African-American rural community in Georgia. It argues that to understand the manners in which Southern rural black communities fought for civil rights in the Black Freedom Struggle, one must take the longue durèe approach to researching and writing their histories. Thus, this dissertation covers the period of slavery until the modern Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s. This case study is representative of other Southern rural communities in that it highlights the nuanced ways in which they survived and persevered while facing racism, racial violence, and disenfranchisement by using grassroots …
A Papered Freedom: Self-Purchase And Compensated Manumission In The Antebellum United States, Julia Bernier
A Papered Freedom: Self-Purchase And Compensated Manumission In The Antebellum United States, Julia Bernier
Doctoral Dissertations
“A Papered Freedom” is a systematic study of how enslaved and self-emancipated African Americans engaged with compensated manumission to become legally free. To do this, I address fundamental issues related to compensated manumission within the United States from the founding era to the fugitive slave crisis of the 1850s. The project works to give voice to the concerns and problems that African Americans faced in their attempts to buy freedom by analyzing how they interacted with different kinds of networks, both social and economic, in the interest of liberation. By accruing different kinds of capital within these networks, African Americans …
Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo
Moving Against Clothespins:The Poli(Poe)Tics Of Embodiment In The Poetry Of Miriam Alves And Audre Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation examines literary representations of the black female body in selected poetry by U.S. African American writer Audre Lorde and Afro-Brazilian writer Miriam Alves, focusing on how their literary projects construct and defy notions of black womanhood and black female sexualities in dialogue with national narratives and contexts. Within an historical, intersectional and transnational theoretical framework, this study analyses how the racial, gender and sexual politics of representation are articulated and negotiated within and outside the political and literary movements in the U.S. and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. As a theoretical framework, this research elaborates and uses …
Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot
Theatre Women And Cultural Diplomacy In The Transatlantic Anglophone World (1752-1807), Sandra Perot
Doctoral Dissertations
Anglophone theatre provided a solid cultural bridge between Britain and America and served as an influential, informative, and accessible mode of social, political and cultural exchange transported throughout the eighteenth-century transatlantic world. Unlike works focusing on colonial American restrictions on theater, or examining its subsequent role in constructing American nationhood and identity, I explore how theatre served to both cultivate and challenge transatlantic connections. I show that actresses and women playwrights played a distinctive role in this process; they exercised agency in helping shape Anglo identity, influenced the formation of the cult of celebrity, challenged physical gendered spaces and normative …
Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard
Nixon's War On Terrorism: The Fbi, Leftist Guerrillas, And The Origins Of Watergate, Daniel S. Chard
Doctoral Dissertations
In 1969, militant factions within both Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Black Panther Party (BPP) began to form the United States’ first clandestine revolutionary urban guerrilla organizations: the Weather Underground and the Black Liberation Army (BLA). These groups carried out bombings, police ambushes, and other attacks throughout the country, prompting responses from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the administration of President Richard M. Nixon. Several historians have analyzed U.S. leftist guerrillas’ motives, and much has been written on FBI operations against the Black Power movement and New Left, including the Bureau’s covert counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) …
“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal
“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal
Doctoral Dissertations
Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity's forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. …
"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti
"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti
Masters Theses
This thesis analyzes the editorial content of a popular regional newspaper from the Shenandoah Valley, the Spirit of Jefferson, during the height of the Civil-War Era (1848-1870). The newspaper’s editor during most of the period, Benjamin F. Beall, was a white, southern slaveholder of humble origins, who spent time serving in the Confederate military. Beall, however, had also quickly established himself as one of the preeminent Democrats in his home county of Jefferson, as well as both the Shenandoah Valley and the new state of West Virginia. Beall firmly believed in the institution of racial slavery and fought to …
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Masters Theses
This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …
"'We Began The Contest For Liberty Ill Provided': Military Leadership In The Continental Army, 1775-1783", Seanegan P. Sculley
"'We Began The Contest For Liberty Ill Provided': Military Leadership In The Continental Army, 1775-1783", Seanegan P. Sculley
Doctoral Dissertations
In 1775, a Virginia gentleman-planter was given command of a New England army outside of Boston and the Continental Army was born. Over the course of eight years, a cultural negotiation concerning the use of and limits to military authority was worked out between the officers and soldiers of the Continental Army that we call leadership today. How this army was led, and how the interactions between officers and soldiers from the various states of the new nation changed their understandings of the proper exercise of military authority, was codified in The Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the …
“Nantucket Women”: Public Authority And Education In The Eighteenth Century Nantucket Quaker Women’S Meeting And The Foundation For Female Activism, Jeffrey D. Kovach
“Nantucket Women”: Public Authority And Education In The Eighteenth Century Nantucket Quaker Women’S Meeting And The Foundation For Female Activism, Jeffrey D. Kovach
Doctoral Dissertations
“NANTUCKET WOMEN”: PUBLIC AUTHORITY AND EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NANTUCKET QUAKER WOMEN’S MEETING AND THE FOUNDATION FOR FEMALE ACTIVISM MAY 2015 JEFFREY D. KOVACH, B.A., FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE M.A., WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barry J. Levy The women’s monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, on Nantucket in the eighteenth century regulated the private lives of its members, particularly matters of marriage and sexuality. This regulation inhibited the behavior of female Friends, but it also served to create a culture of education and public authority for the island’s …
The Physical Uplift Of The Race: The Emergence Of The African American Physical Culture Movement, 1900-1930, J. Anthony Guillory
The Physical Uplift Of The Race: The Emergence Of The African American Physical Culture Movement, 1900-1930, J. Anthony Guillory
Doctoral Dissertations
My dissertation, “The Physical Uplift of the Race: The Emergence of the African American Physical Culture Movement, 1900—1930,” situates the early twentieth century of African American physical culture within a historical narrative that shaped philosophical viewpoints of African American urban community development. Previous inquiries of related topics attempt to describe a physical culture movement that was somehow separate and apart from the larger historical narrative of African people in the United States. My work does not continue in that vein. My objective is to illustrate how the black physical culture movement was primarily a reaction to African Americans’ new geo-political …