History Commons^™

Facing Catholic Antisemitism In Post-War France, The Finaly Affair: 1945-1953, Elizabeth Jane Spaide

Theses and Dissertations

In February 1944, Dr. Fritz and Anni Finaly, Jewish Austrians who had fled the Nazi regime for France in 1939, made a desperate decision. To protect their sons Robert and Gérald from persecution, they placed them in the care of others. The boys were eventually confined to a municipal nursery run by Antoinette Brun in Grenoble, France. After the war, Brun’s refusal to return the children to their relatives led to protracted court proceedings, rendering what came to be called the Finaly Affair, the most highly publicized post-war custody case in France. This thesis will analyze how the press coverage …

Translating The Enlightenment: Women Translators In Eighteenth-Century France, Marissa Gavin

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines women translators in Enlightenment France for their strategies to achieve publication. Elite, French Enlightenment women appropriated oppressive structures and norms, redeploying them to expand their own roles. This paper examines Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Louise d’Epinay, and Anne LeFevre Dacier as exemplars of elite women translators who exploited gendered assumptions to gain access to print. Each of these women came from differing backgrounds, received differing levels of support from their patriarchal relations and expressed differing societal concerns through their writing. Despite such differences, Riccoboni, Dacier and d’Epinay all utilized similar strategies alongside translation to disseminate their concerns. Operating within …

Interpreting The Socio-Symbolic Value Of Jet And Amber Artifacts As Markers Of Religious Transformation In Early Christian Britain, Rachel C. Strohl

Theses and Dissertations

During the Medieval period in Britain, changes in the lived materiality of religion aided in the reinforcement of new ideologies. Christian missionaries and foreign invaders introduced new religious structures and cultural paradigms from the Continent that included novel symbolic forms and material markers. In pre-Christian contexts, jet and amber are thought to have been used for religious purposes due to their presumed magical properties, such as burning and generating a static charge. These materials also served as lucrative exports throughout Europe and beyond before the introduction of Christianity. Textual records from the Mediterranean as well as archaeological evidence for the …

Adolf Wissel: Compliant Dissidence, A Nonbinary Reading Of Work Executed From 1933 – 1941, Jeremy Lyn Schrupp

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast amount of scholarship devoted to the Nazi era, there is very little dedicated to the analysis of its works of art. This paper aims to rectify that, by analyzing the work of Adolf Wissel. Aside from its didactic use amongst academia, there is only one academic analysis of his work. The intent of the present analysis is to build from that foundation and provide an additional layer of contextualization to an era that is relatively unexplored within our field. This analysis will establish that Adolf Wissel maintained specific subject, compositional, and stylistic choices that subtly opposed NSDAP …

Alexandre Cabanel's St. Monica In A Landscape: A Departure From Iconographic Traditions, Rebecca Ann Kidd

Theses and Dissertations

The iconography employed by Alexandre Cabanel in the 1845 work St. Monica in a Landscape drastically deviates from the established artistic tradition utilized in other depictions of St. Monica in Christian art. Cabanel’s work depicts a female saint accompanied by a derelict young child. This thesis considers an alternative identity for this female saint, proposing that St. Elizabeth may be the definite subject of the work, accompanied by a young St. John the Baptist. The visual content of St. Monica in a Landscape is analyzed in conjunction with other works depicting St. Monica, as well as St. Elizabeth with a …

A New Brand Of Men: Masculinity In French Republican Socialist Rhetoric, Randolph A. Miller

Theses and Dissertations

Social theorist and activist, August Blanqui, used his appearance before court in 1832 to lay out an argument that condemned the present political and economic system and demanded emancipation of the male worker. During his monologue, along with his devastating portrayal of worker misery and systemic corruption, Blanqui made comparisons between the male bourgeoisie and the male proletariat. Recounting the recent overthrow of Charles X for his audience, Blanqui described the “glorious workers” as six feet tall, towering over a groveling bourgeoisie who praised them for their “selflessness and courage.” According to Blanqui, the workers, unlike the aristocracy of wealth …

Lux Occidentale: The Eastern Mission Of The Pontifical Commission For Russia, Origins To 1933, Michael Anthony Guzik

Theses and Dissertations

Although it was first a sub-commission within the Congregation for the Eastern Churches (CEO), the Pontifical Commission for Russia (PCpR) emerged as an independent commission under the presidency of the noted Vatican Russian expert, Michel d’Herbigny, S.J. in 1925, and remained so until 1933 when it was re-integrated into CEO. The PCpR was given authority over the spiritual and material mission to Soviet Russia, including refugees who had fled the Bolshevik Revolution. While most studies concerning the Catholic Church and Russia are religious or political histories which focus, respectively, on martyrdom or the contest between the so-called free world and …

Gender Reflections: A Reconsideration Of Pictish Mirror And Comb Symbols, Traci N. Billings

Theses and Dissertations

The interpretation of prehistoric iconography is complicated by the tendency to project

contemporary male/female gender dichotomies into the past. Pictish monumental stone sculpture

in Scotland has been studied over the last 100 years. Traditionally, mirror and comb symbols

found on some stones produced in Scotland between AD 400 and AD 900 have been interpreted

as being associated exclusively with women and/or the female gender. This thesis re-examines

this assumption in light of more recent work to offer a new interpretation of Pictish mirror and

comb symbols and to suggest a larger context for their possible meaning. Utilizing the Canmore

database, …

Utterly Confused Categories: Gender Non-Conformity In Late Medieval And Early Modern Western Europe, Marissa Crannell

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that gender non-conforming individuals in the late medieval and early modern periods were influenced by cultural examples of "deviant" gender behavior including cross-dressers, religious figures, women with male characteristics, literature, and popular entertainment. The thesis also argues that the fragmented approach historians have previously taken when examining the lives of gender non-conforming individuals has been inadequate and could be improved by envisioning the individuals not as individual anomalies or aberrations, but as participants in a long cultural tradition of gender non-conformity and transgression throughout western Europe.

Geometry Of Faith: A Stereotomic Reconstruction Of Sainte-Anne-La-Royale In Paris, Giuseppe Mazzone

Theses and Dissertations

Planned during the XVIIth century by the Italian architect Guarino Guarini, the church of Sainte-Anne-la-Royale was supposed to be built in Paris to honor the French Queen Anne of Austria. In an unfortunate twist of fate the church was only partially realized and later destroyed. Present history's only memory comes in three engravings by Guarino Guarini himself: a plan, a transversal section, and the main elevation.

An example of Italian Baroque Architecture, the building shines for its intriguing plan and complex system of vaults. Its execution was supposed to be realized according to the refined techniques of French stereotomy. Faithful …

Painting Lucretia: Fear And Desire : A Feminist Discourse On Representations By Artemisia Gentileschi And Tintoretto, Amy Lynne Endres

Theses and Dissertations

The myth of the Roman heroine, Lucretia, celebrates feminine ideals of virtue and chastity and is considered pivotal to the establishment of the Roman Republic. Yet, her rape and suicide is also the fulcrum of uncomfortable tension about notions of female sexuality, morality, patriotism and heroism.

My thesis is a comparative discussion of two intriguing and radically dissimilar paintings of Lucretia: Tarquin and Lucretia by Tintoretto and Lucretia by Artemisia Gentileschi. These paintings function as visual counterpoints that reflect the diverse literary and historical interpretations of her legend.

Tintoretto and Gentileschi depict two different, yet pivotal and dramatic moments in …

Anabaptist Masculinity In Reformation Europe, Adam Michael Bonikowske

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the connections between the Anabaptist movement during the Protestant Reformation and the alternative masculinities that developed during sixteenth-century Europe. It argues that Anabaptist men challenged traditional gender norms of European society, and through their unique understanding of the Reformation's message of salvation, these men constructed new ideas about masculinity that were at odds with Protestant and Catholic culture. Anabaptist men placed piety and ethics at the center of reform, and argued for the moral improvement of Christians. In separation from Catholics and mainstream Protestants, Anabaptists created a new culture that exhibited behavior often viewed as dangerous. The …