Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Black Deathways: An African Methodist History, 1829-1916, Christina M. Varney

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This study will focus on the transformations of death practices and the shifting roles of death workers from 1829-1916. The Postbellum portion of this study will focus on African Methodist communities in the states of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee as practices and people moved West to the states of Montana, Colorado, and California. These practices experienced changes as a result of rising literacy rates, the establishment of Black churches, and from the movement of Black people within the South. More changes occurred with the creation of mutual aid societies and Black-owned funeral homes. Black funeral directors …

“Principles Which Constitute The Only Basis Of The Union” : Virginian Beliefs During The Nullification Crisis, 1832-1833, Sean Elliott Kellogg

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Preceding the American Civil War by three decades, the Nullification Crisis is often overshadowed by that larger conflict. It tends to be thought of only as an event in which the two sides of the war, pro-union and anti-union, coalesced around divisive issues. This perspective obscures the complex ideological loyalties that were in conflict during the crisis. These disagreements were on especially clear display in the influential border state of Virginia, which hosted many different opinions about the relevant issues. The state ultimately chose to steer a middle course. In January 1833, it adopted a set of resolves that rejected …

Boston Discusses The Massacre, Jean C. O'Connor

The Montana English Journal

Teachers may use this chapter from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution as a short story for grades 7 – 12., to explore themes of interpersonal conflict, conflict resolution, and the value of law.

The chapter “Boston Discusses the Massacre” is taken from The Remarkable Cause: A Novel of James Lovell and the Crucible of the Revolution (Knox Press, 2020), and used with permission. James Lovell, teacher at the Boston Latin School, discusses the pivotal events of March 5, 1770. As the conflicts that become the American Revolution begin a group of …

Damming Paradise: Public Power, Free Enterprise, And Tribal Sovereignty In The Mountain West In The Twentieth Century, Jacob T. Schmidt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“Damming Paradise” examines the transformation of the political economy of the Mountain West through the development of hydropower over the course of the twentieth century. Beginning with early attempts to regulate electricity marketing and dam construction, this thesis traces the development of a conservation paradigm which insisted upon full development of water resources and public ownership of hydropower facilities. The author then follows that development through the New Deal and Post War eras, focusing particular attention on the Kerr Dam (now Seli’š Ksanka Qlispe’ Dam) and Hungry Horse Dam on Montana’s Flathead River. “Damming Paradise” then examines the attempt to …

Mansfield, Marines, And Mothers: The Politics Of Resistance To The American Intervention In North China From 1945-1946, James Robert Compton

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

At the conclusion of World War II, American citizens, including millions of deployed servicemen, reasserted the democratic freedoms they sacrificed to win the war. The American intervention in North China during the Chinese Civil War presented a ripe opportunity for civic restoration in late 1945. Controversial and seemingly at odds with the stated goals of the Second World War—namely the “Four Freedoms” and the Atlantic Charter—the US military presence in North China faced formidable domestic political obstacles. This thesis explores the nexus of domestic politics and foreign policy in the post-World War II era. Focusing on 1945-1946, this project steps …

Witch Pamphlets, Tsea M. Francisconi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The witch hysteria that overtook Christian Europe during the Early Modern era inspired a mass paranoia over the conspiratorial belief that the Abrahamic religion’s personification of the world’s evils, also known as Satan, the Devil, demons, or Lucifer interchangeably, was attempting to rise up and cause harm to Christian communities during this time period. It was believed that in order to achieve this goal the Christian version of the Devil had been recruiting humans within Christian communities and turning these chosen humans into witches by granting them the ability to wield magical powers to spread their destruction, murder, and terror …

The New Monumental Era: Daniel Webster And The Commemoration Of Compromise In The Age Of Disunion, 1853-1865, Michael James Larmann

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Professional Paper 1:

This professional paper is an in-depth analysis of a statue of Daniel Webster erected in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1859. Daniel Webster was a congressman for Massachusetts who became a controversial figure after he spoke in support of the Fugitive Slave Law as part of the Compromise of 1850. This paper analyzes the Daniel Webster statue and argues that the fractured politics of Union politicized public commemoration in the late antebellum period after the Compromise of 1850. This paper furthermore analyzes one of the first debates surrounding the public commemoration of a controversial historical actor with close ties …

The Road To Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation And The Associational State, 1917-1945, William Jared Norwood

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

“The Road to Self-Support: Vocational Rehabilitation and the Associational State, 1917-1945” traces the origins and development of the Civilian Vocational Rehabilitation (CVR) program from its inception in 1920 until the conclusion of the Second World War. Rapid industrialization and the fallout of the First World War handed the nation a large amount of people with disabilities, which drew on already strained state and local welfare relief. The project examines the interwar period and finds it to be a battleground of differing governing strategies over how best to solve America’s growing level of disabled workers. The project argues that policymakers settled …

The Radicalism Of Rebecca Felton: Reforming Southern Masculinty And Creating And Destroying History: Butte, Montana’S Model City Program, 1968-1975, John C. Stefanek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This professional paper is made up of two individual papers required for the M.A. degree in history. In my first paper, I discuss the radical suffragist Rebecca Felton. In 1897, Felton spoke to the Georgia Agricultural Society. Felton, a native Georgian who would later become the first female U.S. senator, gained prominence in the U.S. South as a politician, suffragist, and white supremacist. Her speech, “Woman on the Farm,” discussed the economic struggles of southern farmers. Felton’s speech also addressed a variety of controversial issues including agricultural economics on the farm, prison reform, and temperance. From the 1870s until her …

Marketing The Golden Rule: Near East Relief And Philanthropy’S Role In The Political Economy, 1915-1930, Elizabeth Berit Barrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The history of the American aid agency Near East Relief (NER), particularly its Golden Rule Sunday campaign from 1923 to 1928, reveals an integral part played by philanthropy in the broader political economy in the interwar years, specifically in the American food industry. Millions of Americans participated in the campaign by eating a simple four-cent orphanage-style meal and donating the cost difference from their normal Sunday dinners to support starving children orphaned by the Armenian genocide. By the mid-twenties NER’s Golden Rule Sunday became a nation-wide cultural phenomenon.

Near East Relief was founded in 1915 as a temporary effort to …

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 …

"How About The Tariff And Homestead?" Homestead, Tariff Rhetoric, And Wage Insecurity In 1892, Paul T. Thompson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Members of Congress appropriated the 1892 labor conflict at Homestead, Pennsylvania as a point of partisan rhetorical debate over the ills or benefits of the 1890 McKinley Tariff. This appropriation demonstrated how congress found the tariff in general useful not only for engaging public concerns over industrial era woes like wage insecurity, but also for deflecting public discussion away from an underlying federal helplessness to mitigate those same detrimental effects of industrial capitalism.

“The Most Poisonous Of All Diseases Of Mind Or Body”: Colorphobia And The Politics Of Reform, April J. Gemeinhardt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Focusing on the mid-1830s through 1865, this thesis explores colorphobia—the irrational fear and hatred of black people otherwise known as racial prejudice—as a reform tactic adopted by abolitionists. It argues that colorphobia played a pivotal role in the radical abolitionist reform agenda for promoting anti-slavery, immediate emancipation, equal rights, and black advancement. By framing racial prejudice as a disease, abolitionists believed connotations, stigmas, and fears of illness would elicit more attention to the rapidly increasing racial prejudice in the free North and persuade prejudiced white Americans into changing their ways. Abolitionists used parallels to cholera, choleraphobia (fear of cholera), and …

Prescribing The American Dream: Psychoanalysts, Mass Media, And The Construction Of Social And Political Norms In The 1950'S, Daniel P. Kamienski

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper surveys how and why psychoanalysis during the 1950s—its “Golden Age” in the United States—emerged as a highly respected professional discipline with great public currency. The prevalence and popularity of psychoanalysts in public culture is substantiated by an extensive survey of primary print sources featuring psychoanalysts opining on many of the major social and political issues of the decade. Combining these opinions with those expressed in professional journals and publications, this paper reveals how psychoanalysts used their growing public currency to shape debates about which social identities and behaviors, cultural values, and political ideals were appropriate and legitimate for …

A Public Revolt Against Spitting: Education And Politics In The Progressive Era, Patrick J. O'Connor

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

We Are Against Socialized Medicine, But What Are We For?: Federal Health Reinsurance, National Health Policy, And The Eisenhower Presidency, Jordan M. Graham

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This project investigates the foundations of post-war health care in the United States by examining the first major proposal for federal involvement in health insurance, after the defeat of national health insurance in 1949. In doing so, this project aims to also illustrate Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency as one of limited liberal, or “Tory,” reform. The majority of primary sources were located at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. Secondary sources were chosen based on the frequency with which contemporary scholarship continues to rely upon and engage with them.

In the first two chapters, the thesis examines the …