History Commons^™

The U.S.–Mexican War: Visualizing Contested Spaces From Parlor To Battlefield, Erika Pazian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The U.S.-Mexican War[1] (1846-1848) was a watershed event that transformed the North American continent politically, socially, and ideologically. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, Mexico lost approximately half of its national territory in the north, and the United States acquired the modern states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah, and portions of Colorado and Wyoming. Both nations were plagued by internal conflicts after the war, and each was plunged into civil war within fifteen years of its conclusion.

During this time of turmoil, Mexican and U.S. artists created and recreated myriad images …

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 …

Women’S Suffrage In American Art: Recovering Forgotten Contexts, 1900-1920, Elsie Y. Heung

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1920, women in the United States finally won the right to vote. The campaign for suffrage, which began in the 1848, with the first women’s rights convention held at Seneca Falls, NY, involved the efforts and enthusiasm of countless women who believed that they both deserved and needed the right to vote. This dissertation investigates the ways in which women artists both responded to and contributed to this divisive movement through painting and sculpture during the final decades of the campaign, when visual culture and propaganda played a crucial role in advancing the suffrage and anti-suffrage agendas. The literature …

The Bronx Was Brewing: A Digital Resource Of A Lost Industry, Michelle Zimmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Bronx: a bucolic oasis laden with history, a suburb within city-limits, an urban warzone, and thanks to the recent renaissance, a phoenix of progress rising from the proverbial ashes of the fires that burned through the borough in the 1970’s. But many people are unaware that the Bronx also brewed.
Uncovering the brewing industry of the Bronx tells not only the story of the lost industry, but it also communicates the narrative of the development of the Bronx. The brewers were German immigrants who developed a thriving industry by introducing lager beer to the United States by taking advantage …

Never Forgets: Traumatic Trace Within Public Space, Jan Descartes

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will interrogate the ways in which ephemera from events affects the human and non- human environment and how the absence, manipulation or presence of traumatic trace weaves itself into the atmosphere of the past, present and future. It will look at space and the ways that trace manifests itself in hierarchal spaces and Lebbeus Woods’ concept of heterarchial spaces, which are organic and/or horizontally organized. A thread throughout is the question that if trace from trauma can exist in the visual field, i.e. the physical or digital landscape, in a way that maintains a discourse without perpetuating oppression. …

Embodying Rhythm Nation: Multimodal Hip Hop Dance As A Site For Adolescent Social-Emotional And Political Development, Lauren M. Roygardner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This exploratory study employed qualitative methodology, specifically values analysis, to learn more about how being involved within Hip hop dance communities positively relates to adolescent development. Adolescence was defined herein as ages 13-23. The study investigated Hip hop dance communities in terms of cultural expertise (i.e. novice, intermediate and advanced/expert) to look specifically at dance narratives (i.e. peak experience narratives and “I dance because” essays) and hip hop dance performances. The primary purpose of this dissertation was to (1) explore how adolescents use multimodal Hip hop dance discourse for social-emotional development and critical consciousness, and to (2) understand how values …

I. M. Pei, William Zeckendorf, And The Architecture Of Urban Renewal, Marci M. Clark

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation reevaluates the practice of design and real estate in the United States through an insufficiently understood case study of the architect-developer team of I. M. Pei and William Zeckendorf and their twelve-year partnership in urban renewal. William Zeckendorf (1905-1976) was the most ambitious real estate developer in the United States in the 1950s, with an outsize personality and larger-than-life plans. Unlike most developers of the era, Zeckendorf believed that quality design and visionary planning were critical to remaking city cores through urban renewal. To accomplish this, he hired I. M. Pei (b. 1917), a talented, young designer out …

Nature And Nostalgia In The Art Of Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), Shannon Vittoria

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study dedicated to the work of American painter-etcher Mary Nimmo Moran (1842-1899), an innovative printmaker and influential interpreter of the American landscape. She began her career in 1863, studying drawing and painting with her husband, artist Thomas Moran (1837-1926). Throughout the 1870s, she exhibited works at both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the National Academy of Design, and published wood engraved illustrations in books and popular monthly magazines. Yet it was in the medium of etching that she achieved her greatest recognition: between 1879 and her untimely death in 1899, she …

Export / Import: The Promotion Of Contemporary Italian Art In The United States, 1935–1969, Raffaele Bedarida

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Export / Import examines the exportation of contemporary Italian art to the United States from 1935 to 1969 and how it refashioned Italian national identity in the process. I do not concentrate on the Italian art scene per se, or on the American reception of Italian shows. Through a transnational perspective, instead, I examine the role of art exhibitions, publications, and critical discourse aimed at American audiences. Inaugurated by the Fascist regime as a form of political propaganda, this form of cultural outreach to the United States continued after WWII as Italian museums, dealers, and critics aimed to vaunt the …