History Commons^™

Maine Literature 101: A Course For High School Seniors, Courtney Hawkes

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In various schools across the state of Maine are teachers devoting their classroom time to exploring the rich history of Maine. At the high school level, many schools now offer at least an elective course in “Maine Studies” and Maine state standards require that local history is covered to a certain extent in high school history. Missing from these courses, however, is a study of Maine’s literature. Literature puts a realistic face to the events of history in a way that helps students see through the eyes of the people from that time period. Literature reveals internal emotions and conflicts …

The Calculus War: The Ultimate Clash Of Genius, Walker Briles Bussey-Spencer

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Dynamics Of War: Culture, Society, Environment, And Pedagogy, Breanne Jacobsen

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

War is an ever-present feature of human civilization. Nearly all cultures and societies show accounts of human conflict. This portfolio seeks to provide both a multidimensional analysis of war and a means of instructing students to appreciate its significance as a driving force of history using three different components.

The syllabus project provides a long-term view of how the various wars and conflicts came to be and progressed in Western Civilization in the modern era.

The chapter-length paper shows the ravaging effects that war and conflict can have on a physical landscape and the environment in which the conflict takes …

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 …

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 …

Gustave Vogt's Musical Album Of Autographs: A Scholarly Edition, Kristin Leitterman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Gustave Vogt (1781–1870) was the most famous oboist in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century. Throughout his career he played with the best orchestras in Paris, toured Europe widely, and also taught the next generation of oboists at the Paris Conservatoire from 1802–1853. Although many of the details of his life have been lost to history, he did leave behind a record of the esteem in which he was held. This is preserved physically in the form of an album of short musical compositions honoring Vogt, collected between 1831 and 1859. The album has never been published, and is in the …

Recognizing Freedom: Manumission In The Roman Republic, Tristan Husby

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Roman manumission was at the center of three different groups: the Roman state, Roman slave-owners, and freeborn Romans who did not own slaves. I draw upon G.F.W. Hegel, Orlando Patterson, Judith Butler, and Pierre Bourdieu to describe Roman manumission as a ritualized practice that transforms a slave’s life from unlivable to livable. The term “unlivable” comes from the philosopher Judith Butler, who developed it in conversation with Hegel’s master/slave dialectic and the term “social death,” which sociologist Orlando Patterson used to describe slavery. Hegel and Patterson’s thoughts on the movement and experience of freedom are useful for theorizing Roman slavery …

Bill Owens: A Us Craft Beer Pioneer, 1982-2001, Patrick Walls

Theses

Bill Owens is a pioneer in the United States craft brewing industry through his efforts as an advocate, writer, publisher, brewer, and entrepreneur who created a lasting legacy by influencing generations of brewers and beer fans. Owens wrote the first book on homebrewing equipment (How to Build a Small Brewery: Draft Beer in Ten Days in 1982). He opened the third brewpub in the country (Buffalo Bill's Brewery in Hayward, California in 1983) where, in 1985, he introduced the first commercial pumpkin beer among other beer style firsts. Owens published numerous brewery-focused magazines that featured many illustrious beer writers. …

Stitched Together: The Singer Manufacturing Company And Its Employees In Revolutionary Russia, 1914-1930, Jenna Elizabeth Himsl

Theses and Dissertations

In 1914, the Russian Empire was the largest foreign market of the Singer Manufacturing Company. Following the Russian Revolution, Singer’s Russian subsidiary, Kompaniya Singer, was nationalized in a piecemeal fashion. Singer’s employees were forced to adapt to the new order or attempt to leave Soviet Russia. This thesis addresses the ways in which Kompaniya Singer and its employees built, used, fostered, and hampered national and institutional identities during the chaotic period from 1914 to 1930 in their quests to respond to the shifting political foundations of Russian society. As it became impossible for Kompaniya Singer and its cosmopolitan, managerial employees …

Forgetting The Lynching Of Jesse Washington: Manifestations Of Memory And The "Waco Horror", Kurt A. Terry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After a horrible historical injustice reemerged into public discourse in 1998, the citizens and civic leaders of Waco, Texas wrestled with the idea of whether to continue to forget the event or to acknowledge, apologize, and reconcile the past. At the center of the debate, a lynching of a seventeen-year old African American named Jesse Washington in 1916. Also known as the “Waco Horror,” the lynching disappeared from public conversation in Waco shortly after its occurrence. For nearly a century, the lynching remained relegated to anti-lynching movements, academic study, and the fringes of society. After the lynching’s reappearance into public …

Technology And The Police, Oceane Tanny

Undergraduate Honors Theses

“Technology and the Police” primarily seeks to underline the importance of the role technology plays when it comes to law enforcement. As agents of law enforcement, police are needed to protect and defend society. From the use of DNA to video surveillance and tracking tools, technology helps police officers achieve their goal. Furthermore, technology may also serve as a means of control to make sure police are doing their job effectively. Another purpose of “Technology and the Police” is to show that unlike popular belief, the study of history does not start and ends in the past. It is a …

Le Sacre Du Printemps: The First Rite (An Exploration Of Modern And Aerial Dance As Storytelling), Whitney Bates

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Le sacre du printemps, a ballet choreographed in 1913 by Vaslav Nijinsky, played an important part in changing the way the world thought about choreography. Since, modern choreographers such as Graham and Taylor have followed in the tradition of creating their own versions of Le sacre. This thesis outlines the significance of Le sacre. It also describes how Bates created a choreographic project using Nijinsky, Taylor, and Graham influences, and also combining modern dance floor techniques with aerial choreography.

Displays Of Power In English Tudor Painting, Laura Meisner

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

History passes down the visages of Tudor monarchs and their contemporaries through paintings that attempt to show us more than their mere likenesses. The faces of these monarchs reveal not only individual physiognomies of appearance, but also characteristics of the times. Painting in Tudor England, up to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1485-1558) reflected, and at times contributed, to shifting political and social structures in England. Patrons exercised great influence on the kind of art created and brought into England, and a study of this and how patrons utilized art as a means of propaganda reveals the way that …

The Aggravating Alloy: Mercury Amalgam’S Role In The Relationship Between The Educated And Non-Educated Dental Professional In The Nineteenth Century, Gracen Dunn

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

In the early 1830’s, a pair of European ‘dentists’ brought a novel material for filling teeth into the United States. It was far less expensive and far easier to use than competing materials. This new potential ease at which some could practice dentistry put pressure on a situation of conflict between the educated dental professional, and the uneducated dentist. Quacks were the bane of the existence of an educated, gentleman dentist. They were openly condemned in private circles and in the press but the dental ‘charlatan’ was not the only person in the line of fire. Those who used mercury …

To Stand Against The Company: A Study Of The British Honourable East India Company And Piracy In The Indian Ocean World, Circa 1680-1760, John Ridge

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to explore the multi-faceted challenges and hindrances brought upon the British East India Company by piracy in the Indian Ocean World. European and American pirates in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries influenced economic, political, and social factors in the Indian Ocean. The Angrians in the eighteenth century did the same, constituting an indigenous piratical threat. These forms of piracy encouraged the British East India Company to gradually bolster military strength to mobilize against them. With their own built up strength, Royal navy support, local Mahratta allies, and internal-conflict within the Angres, the British East India …

Britain's Green Fascists: Understanding The Relationship Between Fascism, Farming, And Ecological Concerns In Britain, 1919-1951, Alec J. Warren

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between fascism, fascist ideas, and environmental consciousness in Britain during the pre- and post-World War II decades. In examining this topic, two main questions arise. First, why did fascist intellectuals support environmentally conscious ideas, and how did they relate these positions to their political ideologies? Second, why were many environmentally conscious thinkers during this period attracted to fascism? This thesis will also address several related issues regarding fascism and environmental consciousness. These issues include what role environmental concerns played in the British Union of Fascist’s platforms and in fascism’s public appeal, and how that role …

Panorama Of Popular Haitian Music And Folklore, Jean Wilner S. St Jean

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Haitian music has been influenced by the people who lived on the island from the native before the Columbus discovered Haiti to the United States occupation. This country is rich in culture which has impacted by the Creole identity. The overview of the different kind of Haitian music by categories and subcategories from the beginning to now. The government, the religion, the social class, and population play an important role in the popularity and acceptance of certain music.

Vermont's Sacred Cow: A Case Study Of Local Control Of Schools, Michael Steven Martin

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

ABSTRACT

When it comes to school governance, the concept of "local control" endures as a powerful social construct in some regions of the United States. In New England states, where traditional town meetings and small school districts still exist as important local institutions, the idea of local control is still an important element of policy considerations, despite increasing state and federal regulation of education in recent years.

With its small school districts and myriad governance structures, Vermont represents an extreme case example of the intersection between participatory democracy and the local control of schools. With nearly 285 school boards composed …

Fashion And Court-Building In The Sixteenth-Century Florentine Ducal Court: Politics, Agency, And Paleopathology In The Wardrobes Of Eleonora Di Toledo And Giovanna D'Austria, Leah Rachel Jeffers

Scripps Senior Theses

Fashion in the Renaissance became intensely political, highly gendered, and anatomized (i.e. emphasizing human anatomy rather than masking it). Court culture placed a particular emphasis on the body of the courtier, as skills such as dancing and dressing fashionably became crucial to political success in states throughout Europe. In sixteenth-century Florence, the Medici attempted to install a duchy in what was at the time a republican city (with strong republican heritage). Florentine fears of foreign domination and resentment towards non-republican forms of government made the Medici’s task nearly impossible. Fashion became a primary pillar of the Medicean political agenda, as …

How The Willowbrook Consent Decree Has Influenced Contemporary Advocacy Of Individuals With Disabilities, Kristen S. Addessi

Student Theses

The existence of the Willowbrook State School was a culmination, of over a one-hundred-year history of Western society’s attempts to provide adequate care, and treatment for individuals with disabilities. The residents housed there, suffered violations of their human and civil rights in various forms of severe abuse, neglect, and violence. Following a three-year legal battle in 1975, as a result of the travesties that occurred, the legal doctrine known as the Willowbrook Consent Decree was written. The Consent Decree was implemented to ensure that the residents’ human and civil rights are met and protected. The Willowbrook State School and the …

The Great Terror: Violence, Ideology, And The Building Of Stalin's Soviet Empire, Michael David Polano

Wayne State University Theses

“The Great Terror: Violence, Ideology, and the Building of Stalin’s Soviet Empire” is a study of the confluence of terror and ideology in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. I argue that an intersection of Soviet ideology and geopolitical circumstances caused the Great Terror. The Stalinist variant of Soviet ideology evolved from Leninism and Marxism. It consisted of both a vision of an ideal socialist society and explicit practices and policies designed to realize the vision. It was the geopolitical circumstances, both foreign and domestic, that activated this ideology, compelling Stalin and his inner circle to initiate and employ practices …