Arts and Humanities Commons^™

“For The Benefit And Enjoyment Of The People”?: The Imperial Nature Of The United States National Park System, Mitchell Macdonald

Major Papers

As the founders of national parks, the National Parks and National Park Service of the United States are monoliths on the global stage, inspiring all other national parks worldwide. Ever since the first park was created in 1872 at Yellowstone, Wyoming, people have been captivated by the idea of going into a land that is supposedly unspoiled by man. In a world where fossil fuels and industry are having extremely adverse effects on the global environment, the existence of land that has been set aside and protected is essential for global health. Yet, viewing national parks as institutions that are …

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 …

The Queer Life Of Lorena Hickok, Samantha D. Leyerle

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the life of Lorena Hickok, a remarkable woman whose story has been glossed over throughout history. Hickok was an accomplished journalist and writer, and her life offers a fascinating glimpse into being queer in the early twentieth century. While much has been written about Hickok’s relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, this thesis aims to go beyond their connection to examine Hickok’s entire life and experiences in greater detail. Through analyzing her work as a writer, as well as her personal correspondence and unpublished autobiography, this thesis illuminates the quiet details of defining moments in history, including the Great …

The Railsplitter And The Pathfinder: The Relationship Between Abraham Lincoln And John C. Frémont, Kourtney Yantis

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

This study serves as an analysis of the connections between Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States and John Charles Frémont as a Civil War general. Lincoln’s position within history is solid, unlike that of John C. Frémont. The thesis will elevate Frémont to a higher status as a historical figure by arguing that the emancipation edict that he issued for Missouri in August of 1861 would influence Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary emancipation proclamation of September 1862, even though Lincoln repealed Frémont’s decree. In biographies of each man, their interactions are merely a small part of the stories of their …

Working For The Benefit And Advancement Of Women: Three Women's Organizations That Commemorated The American Civil War, 1880-1920, Annette F. Guild

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the past forty years, scholars and members of the public alike have obsessed over the complex legacy of the American Civil War (1861-1865). As debates over Confederate monuments and the United States’ racial past have frequently emerged in politics, many Americans have disagreed as to how the Civil War should be remembered. In examining the evolution of Civil War memory in American society, numerous scholars have noted the important role that women’s organizations played in influencing the Civil War’s collective memory in the fifty years following the conflict. However, while scholars have noted the significance of these organizations for …

Leaders On The Ground: Command Influence On War Crimes In The Armies Of France And The United States, Hayward Hood

All Theses

Utilizing torture during the Battle of Algiers, the My Lai Massacre, and torture at Abu Ghraib as specific case studies, this thesis contends that negligence or dereliction of duty by the brigade, battalion, and company commanders were the primary factors. Additional factors included commanders stressing rapid results, and external stressors in the soldiers’ immediate environment. War crimes are defined as violations of the 1907 Hague Convention which was supported by the 1949 Geneva Protocols, and negligence is defined in the legal sense.1 Contrary to the existing narrative, this thesis contends that lower-level commanders did more to create the conditions required …

Doris Stevens: A "Fascist" Feminist? Stevens, The Inter-American Commission Of Women, And The Unión Argentina De Mujeres, 1936-1939, Jeannette Hunker

Scripps Senior Theses

Doris Stevens (1888-1963) was a U.S. feminist, suffragist, and member of the National Women’s Party. After the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920, Stevens, among other U.S. feminists, involved herself in Latin American politics, working to pass women’s suffrage legislation in multiple countries. Stevens was chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) from 1928 to 1939. Eventually, a number of Latin American feminists, as well as members of the Roosevelt administration, sought to remove her from the IACW when her political tendencies posed a threat to both. Accused of being a “fascist,” Stevens was voted …

From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne

Honors Projects

This thesis studies the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations from 1958-1961. Mainly drawing from primary sources from the National Archives, it seeks to answer and understand how and why relations deteriorated so rapidly. It pushes against the common belief that U.S.-Cuban relations were doomed from the start, instead highlighting in Chapter One Fidel Castro’s rise to power (and Fulgencio Batista’s fall from power) and revealing that the U.S. government was not entirely against Castro’s seizure of power. Chapter Two explores Castro’s first year in power and the (futile) attempts made by both governments to keep relations alive. Finally, it closes with …

The Roadmap To Iraq: How 9/11 Facilitated The 2003 Invasion, Michael Loren Shumway

Theses and Dissertations

The attacks of 11 September 2001 not only resulted in retaliatory attacks upon the nation of Afghanistan for its harboring of the terror cell al Qaeda but also for the later U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although initial intelligence connected the terrorist group al Qaeda to the attacks, Bush’s administration officials began assembling intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities and its possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this 2002 National Security Strategy, Bush announced his administration’s position that the United States would react pre-emptively to threats against the United States or its global interests. This pre-emptive position opened the …

The Forgotten Faith: The Experiences Of Enslaved Muslims And The Influence Of Islam In The United States From 1730-1864, Amani Altwam

All Theses

Muslims were present in North America before the establishment of the

American/British colonies. The first Muslims in America were not citizens, but

enslaved Africans forced into the slave trade in the eighteenth century. Muslim slaves

in America were much more prevalent than anyone could have imagined and yet, the

religion of these slaves was rarely ever brought to the surface. In this thesis, I argue

that Muslim slaves not only existed in America but most of them were literate in

multiple languages, well-educated, and were capable of holding on to a set of beliefs.

History books and previous literature have …

You Go To My Head: Women's Prescription Pill Use In Postwar America, Erin K. Brown

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

During the postwar era, US pharmaceutical companies grew their production and distribution of prescription pills, which included barbiturates, minor tranquilizers, and amphetamines for mass consumption. Middle- and upper-class women were the majority users of these pills, finding assistance with the aid of prescribed drugs that helped correct difficulty with sleeping, eased anxiety, provided energy, and reduced the users’ size. This dissertation works to bring drug history and women’s history together to integrate the impact prescription pills had on women’s lives, positive and negative, and how and why consumers sought these drugs and the effects they promised. This project uncovers interactions …

The Rise Of Oxycontin: How Purdue Pharma And The Sackler Family Is Responsible For The Epidemic Behind The Pandemic, Colin White

History | Senior Theses

This research paper serves as a case study, providing an updated history of the American opioid crisis through the lens of OxyContin and Purdue Pharma. In 1996 the long-acting opioid OxyContin was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and became the most prescribed Schedule II narcotic by 2001. Prescription guidelines from the World Health Organization show that opioid prescription before 1996 was limited primarily to those who were terminally ill or suffering severe pain. This paper will show how Purdue Pharma successfully manipulated the medical outlook on pain and opioids in an attempt to streamline OxyContin for mild pain. …

Unraveling The Geographies Of The U.S. Public Education System: An Analysis Of Scale, Segregation, And Hegemony, Olivia Ildefonso

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Other than one or two studies that focus on specific state-wide systems of public education, there has been no accounting for how the U.S. public education system came about in relation to space and scale. My dissertation research seeks to fill in this gap. Through focusing on the development of public education in the North and the South, I provide a foundation for understanding the grounded and contested processes of scale production that largely determined the U.S. public education system’s design and function.

In each of the seven chapters, I detail how fights over the structure and purpose of public …

On The Other Side Of The Tracks: Hannibal Square And Eatonville In The Interwar Years, Margaret Stewart

Honors Program Theses

The purpose of this study is to add nuance to the understanding of the Great Migration period, not only as a period of migration of North to South. The lives and migration of African Americans living in Hannibal Square and Eatonville highlight that African Americans were not just moving North. The Great Migration became more than a simple movement; it was a complex tapestry of African Americans moving where they felt the best opportunities were. This examination will stand within the bound of the early Great Migration period, from 1920 to 1940. The growth of each community will be analyzed …

A Delicate Balance: Us-China-Taiwan Relations Under The Nixon And Carter Administrations In The 1970s, Evan H. Matthews

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This project is guided by its research question of why and how the Nixon and Carter administrations decided to maintain unofficial relations with Taiwan, despite pursuing the normalization of relations with the People’s Republic of China. President Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger struggled to answer this question and left it up to “historical evolutions.” The Carter administration believed in three fundamental principles, each spearheaded by different agents in the administration: (1) that the United States had a moral obligation not to jeopardize the future of the Taiwanese people, (2) that the United States must pursue normalization with the …

Weaponizing Ballet: An Episode In American Cold War Diplomacy, Remy Laray Naumann

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In October 1962, as American citizens were building bomb shelters in their backyards, the New York City Ballet toured the Soviet Union, receiving raving applause from Soviet audiences. The tour is just one example of the many ballet exchanges in the late 1950s and early 1960s between the United States and the Soviet Union. In these acts of cultural diplomacy, ballet companies became ideological weapons, selling their country's achievements to audiences abroad.

Tours such as the New York City Ballet’s 1962 trip have been acknowledged in analyses on cultural diplomacy between the US and Soviet Union in the Cold War …

In The Shadow Of The Atomic Cloud: Masculinity, Modernity, And The ‘Bomb’ In The Electoral Politics Of Canada And The United States, 1949-1963, Allen G. Priest

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation explores the impact of hegemonic masculinity, in the early Cold War era, on the electoral politics of Canada and the United States. It situates itself in the years between 1949 and 1963, arguably the height of nuclear fear, at a time when masculine ideals were adjusting to an uncertain postwar reality. Previous scholarship has established that the Cold War brought with it a retreat into domesticity, followed by an emergent “crisis” of masculinity. This monograph contributes to the historiography by demonstrating that the masculine architypes of the early Cold War are frequently reflected in electoral discourse. It also …

Illusory Inclusion: The Underlying Racial Barriers In Civil Defense 1950 - 1965, Hayley R. Dick

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Between the years of 1950 and 1965, evacuations and sheltering were used to ensure the protection of American civilians from a nuclear threat. However, not all Americans were able to employ these safety measures to prominent racial hierarchy within civil defense policy. This thesis explores the distribution, attainability, and utilization of civil defense to and by Black Americans. It examines the demographic, societal, and financial discrepancies between white and Black Americans employing census information, federal documents, and newspaper distribution. Owing to deep-rooted disparities in income between white and Black Americans, demographics, and racial ideals, this thesis argues that Black Americans …

The United States And Its Coercive Democratization Attempts In Japan And Iraq, Noah Shepardson

College Honors Program

The United States engaged in coercive democratization (bringing democracy to a country via coercive measures such as occupation) endeavors in both Japan and Iraq, achieving drastically different results. The democratization of Japan is typically regarded as the gold standard of coercive democratization due to Japan’s rapid social and economic development following the United States’ occupation of the country in the years after World War II. The United States’ democratization effort in Iraq, on the other hand, has failed to create such prosperous conditions and has arguably made Iraq more unstable. This thesis seeks to identify why coercive democratization worked in …

The 1918 Flu: Lessons Learned From Seattle, Heather Somers

History Undergraduate Theses

The 1918 “Spanish influenza” was the worst influenza pandemic in recorded history. This paper traces advancements made in medicine and public health, especially those made during the latter half of the nineteenth century through the early twentieth century, leading up to the 1918 pandemic, by examining primary source materials and scholarly secondary sources. Unfortunately, the viral cause of influenza would not begin to be understood until the early 1930s. In 1918, the lack of scientific understanding of viruses led to many theories on the nature of influenza, including how to best treat it, and, ultimately, to a feeling of failure …

The National Interest And The Roots Of American-Saudi Diplomacy, Oliver B. Wiegel

Theses and Dissertations

This paper analyzes the beginnings of diplomacy between the United States and Saudi Arabia during the interwar years and World War II. It explores how national interest was decided upon, how oil companies affected American foreign policy, and the American government’s strategic interest in Saudi oil reserves.

“The Spirit Of Revolution:” The Impact Of Rum On The Formation Of The United States, Charles Streator

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the impact of rum, be it the distillation, consumption, or trade of it, upon the formation of the American Revolution and the desire of American Colonists for independence. Through the analysis of three distinct subfactors: rum as an economic force, rum as a political tool, and the cultural and societal impacts of the rum trade and its subsequent removal from the American ethos, this project contends that rum as a commodity became a driving factor in the creation of the United States. While much has been written on the roles of stamps, sugar, and tea in the …

Women’S Impact On Cooking Culture During The Great Depression: Limited To Being A Homemaker, Unlimited In Their Authority On Nutrition In Their Communities, Michelle Molina

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper examines American cooking culture of the Great Depression, as the impact it had on everyday people’s diet was much greater than one may initially think. By analyzing interviews, photographs, and newspaper advertisements, and conducting archival research, I illuminate the public history of the Great Depression’s impact on diet and the roles women played during it. The existing scholarship on the Great Depression typically focuses on the relief efforts made to help people affected by this economic downturn, but this paper will focus more specifically on the cooking culture that involved women during this desperate time. Harsh conditions experienced …

A Study Of The United States Influence On German Eugenics., Cameron Williams

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a study of the influence and effects that the United States had upon Germany from the rise of eugenics to its fall following the end of World War II. There are three stages to this study. First, I examine the rise of eugenics in the United States from its inception to the end of World War I and the influence it had upon Germany. Then I examine the interwar era along with the popularization of eugenics within both countries before concluding with the Second World War and post war era.

My thesis focuses on both the active …

Making Nebraska: The Pawnee, The United States, And The Transformation Of Space, 1803-1854, Ethan Reavis Bennett

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Making Nebraska is a history of foreign relations and power politics between the Pawnee confederacy and the United States over the control and governance of the greater Platte Valley between 1803 and 1854. These groups never fought a war, but struggled over the meaning and use of power to control space at a transitional moment of North American history. While nominally part of the United States post-1803, the region remained outside the federal territorial system. Yet, this space was central to larger strategic and policy concerns over Indian Removal, territorial expansion, and the survival of the Pawnee as a nation. …

Requisitioned: American War Art Of The Second World War, Spenser Carroll-Johnson

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

The United States requisitioned artists to assist with military objectives and servicemen requisitioned art as a form of rhetoric. This research reexamines the role of “official artists” and thereby extends its definition to include the multitude of art they produced during the Second World War. The underpinnings of this thesis reside during the economic crises of the 1930s that brought about American emergency relief initiatives for artists under the direction of Holger Cahill and, by extension, Edward Bruce. For the first time in history, the American public engaged with state-sponsored art. Due to a symbiotic relationship that formed between the …

Peaceful Collaboration: The Truman Administration's Response To The Costa Rican Revolution Of 1948 And The Costa Rica-Nicaragua Crisis Of 1948-1949, James Wilkerson

History Theses & Dissertations

Before, during, and after the Costa Rican Revolution of 1948 and the Costa Rica-Nicaragua Crisis of 1948-1949, the Truman Administration maintained a posture of strict neutrality and helped to isolate, and bring a quick end to, both conflicts. This thesis attempts to revise the historiography of the Costa Rican Revolution by challenging the common view that the United States inaugurated the Cold War in Latin America by facilitating the overthrow of the communist-supported government in Costa Rica. The Truman Administration did not care who won and only wanted the Revolution and Crisis to come to a quick end. The United …

The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict In The Trump Era: A Human Rights Perspective, Manny Rodriguez

Senior Theses and Projects

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been an ongoing war in the Middle East that began in the mid-20th century. Over the last seventy years, the region has been characterized by widespread violence and war as disputes over territory and religious freedom have heightened tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians. Many countries, especially the United States, have attempted to resolve the conflict and bring peace to the region. Since the conflict started, U.S. presidents, both Republican and Democrat alike, have generally maintained a similar, pro-Israel approach while attempting to be inclusive of the Palestinian community. However, the election of Donald J. Trump …

Constitutional Reflections Of The People: Representation In The Constitutions Of The United States (1789) And Chile (1833), Zoe E. Nelson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper is a comparative analysis of the American Constitution of 1789 and the Chilean Constitution of 1833, as well as the political writings of major political theorists prior to the making of each constitution. In comparing the historical development and making of Constitutions in post-war, newly independent American nations, this paper seeks to understand the similarities between American and Chilean Constitutional institutions and underlying political theory from a historical perspective. Bearing this purpose in mind, this paper asks, “In what ways were the Constitution making measures of Chile and the United States in 1833 and 1789, respectively, a reflection …

Seasons Past: Wildcat Strikes And The Smith-Connally Act During World War Ii, Andrew Robert Mccloskey

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This thesis explores the phenomenon of wildcat strikes during World War II in the United States, the raging public opinion about these wartime strikes, and the passage of the War Labor Disputes Act (popularly known as the Smith-Connally Act) of 1943. Broadly, this thesis examines the wellsprings of working-class anger and frustration which underscored the spontaneous wildcat strikes, the No-Strike Pledge, and the various factions within the public’s perception of these strikes. This thesis furthermore analyzes the congressional debate surrounding the SmithConnally Act and the American public’s reaction to the passage of this restrictive legislation. Finally, this thesis posits that …