History Commons^™

"There Is Power In Being Out": A Three Article Approach Celebrating The Experiences Of Queer University Leaders, Andrew R. E. Lorenzana

Dissertations

Institutions of higher education were historically built to serve a wealthy, White, straight male student population and the leaders of these institutions still largely reflect these demographics. This project specifically aims to celebrate and amplify the life and career of university administrators who identify within the LGBTQ community. Mainly through the use of a portraiture methodology, this three-article study attempts to examine the ways in which LGBTQ identity and career influence one another.

Worldmaking and narrative will be used as a theoretical frame to help analyze the ways in which the telling of a queer individual’s story makes the world …

An Intergenerational Photo Exploration Of Self Care Actions In Self-Identifying Strong Black Women, Vanessa Patrice Goodar

Dissertations

The current study sought to expand upon the Giscombé Superwoman Schema (2010) specifically exploring the role of vulnerability resistance and help obligation as potential barriers to changing comprehensive self-care health commitments in self-identifying Strong Black Women (SBW). The Superwoman Schema characteristics of vulnerability resistance and help obligation along with socio-economic factors of income, religious affiliation and marital status were assessed in the project using a visual-ethnography approach to Photo Voice methods and five intergenerational focus groups of SBW's born between 1946 and 2002. The collective self-care knowledge of these eighteen participants was analyzed using a participatory action research discussion framework …

From Roundabout To Roundabout: Tahrir Square (1869- 2021), Mariam Abdelazim

Dissertations

Tahrir Square not only represents a symbol of liberation but also reflects the modern history of Egypt. Its several physical changes signify the rise and fall of the monarchy, colonialism, modernism, nationalism, capitalism, echoing a constantly changing definition of the Egyptian public space. And while the surrounding façades physically define the square, either the authorities or the public control its activities.

Khedive Ismail founded the square around 1869 as a roundabout on his “Paris along the Nile” modern city. Between 1882 and 1947, the site became the barracks’ location for the British troops who colonized Egypt. In 1952, an Egyptian …

An Inferentially Robust Look At Two Competing Explanations For The Surge In Unauthorized Migration From Central America, Nick Santos

Dissertations

The last 8 years have seen a dramatic increase in the flow of Central American apprehensions by the U.S. Border Patrol. Explanations for this surge in apprehensions have been split between two leading hypotheses. Most academic scholars, immigrant advocates, progressive media outlets, and human rights organizations identify poverty and violence (the Poverty and Violence Hypothesis) in Central America as the primary triggers responsible. In contrast, while most government officials, conservative think tanks, and the agencies that work in the immigration and border enforcement realm admit poverty and violence may underlie some decisions to migrate, they instead blame lax U.S. immigration …

You Are Resilient: Trauma-Informed, Strengths-Based Treatment For Low-Ses, Urban Youth, Courtney Molina

Dissertations

The focus in this review was to explore the benefits and optimal use of trauma-informed, strengths-based care for the therapeutic treatment of low-socioeconomic status (SES), urban youth. Specific focus was given to evidence-based research on the treatment of emotional and behavioral dysregulation among low-SES, urban youth. The review was guided by the following research questions: How can emotional and behavioral dysregulation be symptoms of trauma among low-SES, urban youth; What makes trauma-informed and strengths-based care optimal for the treatment of low-SES, urban youth with dysregulation; and What are clear guidelines for providing trauma-informed, strengths-based care to low-SES, urban youth with …

G.I. Jane Fem Etran Goes Corporate: An Exploration Of Post-9/11 Female Combat Veterans Transitioning To A Civilian Career, Tumona Austin

Dissertations

Purpose: The purpose of this multiple-case study was to explore the experiences of post- 9/11 female combat veterans transitioning from military service to civilian careers, using the Schlossberg transition model factors of situation, self, social support, and strategies.

Methodology: This multiple-case study identified and interviewed post-9/11 female combat veterans transitioning from active-duty to civilian career. Respondents were purposively chosen based on specific criteria and expert panel recommendations.

Findings: Examination of case-study interview data and artifacts from the 3 post-9/11 female combat veterans indicated nine major findings:

1. The factor of situation clearly outweighed the other Schlossberg factors in impact.

2. …

Positionality Matters: School Choice Decisions Based On Ethnographic Accounts Of African American Parents, Dr. Stacy L. Thomas

Dissertations

This research delves into experiences with reasoning and selected criteria for choosing the right school for their children. Beginning with a series of vignettes that assist with recognition of parental empowerment, this research archives acknowledgement of their own positionality when it comes to making life changing decisions. As selected parents of African American children grapple with the strategic balance and possibilities of educational outlets, family and finances, they offer ethnographic accounts of their successes and failures with school choice. Individual accounts of parental school choice decisions posing as data ascertained from interviews provided research that explored the critical frequencies and …

The Rebel Made Me Do It: Mascots, Race, And The Lost Cause, Patrick Smith

Dissertations

Public memory is commonly tied to street names, toponyms, and monuments because they are interacted with daily and are often directly associated with race, class, and regimes of power. Mascots are not thought of in the same manner although they are present as part of everyday life. The childish or sometimes comedic nature of the mascot discounts it from many considerations of its influence, symbolism and history. Nonetheless this research focuses on the term “Rebel” as a secondary school mascot. The term possesses the trappings of race because the American vernacular ties the word to the Confederate States of America …

Forward Myth: Military Public Relations And The Domestic Base Newspaper 1941-1981, Willie R. Tubbs

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the evolution of domestic military base newspapers from 1941-1981, a timeframe that encapsulates the Second World War, Korean War, and Vietnam War, as well as interwar and postwar years. While called “newspapers,” the United States military designed these publications to be a hybrid of traditional news and public relations. This dissertation focuses on three primary aspects of these newspapers: the evolution of the format, style, and function of these papers; the messages editors and writers crafted for and about the “common” soldier and American; and the messages for and about members of the non-majority group.

Sometimes printed …

The Behavioral Revolution In Contemporary Political Science: Narrative, Identity, Practice, Joshua R. Berkenpas

Dissertations

The behavioral revolution of the 1950s and early 1960s is a foundational moment in the history of political science and is widely considered to be a time in when the discipline shed its traditional roots by embracing its identity as a modern social science. This dissertation examines reference works published between 1980 and 2012 in order to gauge the contemporary significance of the behavioral revolution. The behavioral revolution is discussed in many foundation narratives throughout reference works like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks. After sixty years, why does the behavioral revolution still figure centrally in the way political scientists remember their …

Emotional Intelligence And Self-Efficacy In Military Leaders, Kelly A. Hudson

Dissertations

\Purpose: This quantitative study was conducted for the purpose of determining the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-efficacy in military leaders.

Methodology: This quantitative, correlational study measured emotional intelligence and self-efficacy in military leaders to determine the relationship between them. The study involved differentiating between non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers in order to determine if a difference exists between the types of leaders in the military.

Findings: The findings from this research illustrate that there is a relationship between the leaders’ emotional intelligence and self-efficacy.

Conclusions: The study supported the hypothesis that the higher a leader’s emotional intelligence, the higher …

John Bruce, Jr. : A Sixty-Nine Year Leadership Journey Throughout Change In The United States Army, Joseph Rakocy

Dissertations

Problem and Purpose

The U.S. Army has changed radically in the 68 years since World War II ended, from uniforms to vehicles, from weaponry to organizational changes. While still the Army, its workforce has changed greatly in gender, ethnic, and age composition. John Bruce, Jr. saw many of these changes during his 69-year career as both soldier and executive. How this leader responded to the changes in the U.S. Army over nearly seven decades was the problem I explored. The purpose of the study was to describe how 94-year-old John Bruce, senior executive at the U.S. Army’s Tank-automotive and Armaments …

Unnecessary Evil: An Examination Of Abu Ghraib Torture Photographs As Postcolonial Resistance Rhetoric, Patrick Gerhardt Richey

Dissertations

The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the rhetorical nature of visual artifacts in a postcolonial context. In order to examine the nature of visual artifacts as a form of resistance against static ideologies and prevailing power structures, the author uses both media and cultural artifacts created in response to photographs taken of abused prisoners at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib Correctional Facility. The dissertation adds to scholarly knowledge of communication by addressing the intersections of iconographic visual communication and postcolonial resistance rhetoric. The dissertation provides a scholarly review of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, as well as of literature explicating …

Jimmy Carter’S Post-Presidential Rhetoric: Faith-Based Rhetoric And Human Rights Foreign Policy, Daniel Eric Schabot

Dissertations

Former President James Earl Carter is well known for his rhetorical efforts to promote human rights. Carter’s human rights advocacy is motivated and sustained by his belief that God duty-bounds him to assist those less fortunate than himself. Scholars generally concede, however, that as president, Jimmy Carter’s human rights accomplishments were minimal and that he failed to develop or institute consistent policies. This dissertation compares and contrasts Carter’s presidency and postpresidency with respect to human rights accomplishments, arguing that he was better able to serve an advocacy role when out of office. Carter, free of separation of church and state …

Faithful Remembering: Constructing Dutch America In The Twentieth Century, David E. Zwart

Dissertations

The people of the Dutch-American community constructed and maintained a strong ethnoreligion identity in the twentieth despite pressures to join the mainstream of the United States. A strong institutional completeness of congregations and schools resulted from and contributed to this identity. The people in these institutions created a shared identity by demanding the loyalty of members as well as constructing narratives that convinced people of the need for the ethnoreligious institutions.

The narratives of the Dutch-American community reflected and reinforced a shared identity, which relied on a collective memory. The framing, maintaining, altering, and remodeling of the collective memory from …

Full Court Press: How Mississippi Newspapers Helped Keep State College Basketball Segregated, 1955-1973, Jason Ashley Peterson

Dissertations

During the civil rights era, Mississippi was cloaked in the hateful embrace of the Closed Society, historian James Silver’s description of the white caste systems that used State’s Rights to enforce segregation and promote the subservient treatment of blacks. Surprisingly, challenges from Mississippi’s college basketball courts brought into question the validity of the Closed Society and its unwritten law, a gentleman’s agreement that prevented college teams in the Magnolia State from playing against integrated foes. Led by Mississippi State University’s (MSU) basketball team, which won four Southeastern Conference championships in a five-year span, the newspapers in Mississippi often debated the …

How Politics, Economics, And Technology Influence Evaluation Requirements For Federally Funded Projects: A Historical Study Of The Elementary And Secondary Education Act From 1965 To 2005, Maxine R. Eversley-Gilling

Dissertations

Program evaluation does not take place in a vacuum. Its context is the interaction of political, economic, and technological developments that influenced the formation of federal policies for mandated evaluation requirements. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 established policies to provide “financial assistance to local educational agencies serving areas with concentrations of children from low-income families to expand and improve their educational program” (Public Law 89-10—Apr. 11, 1965). This legislation also had another consequence: it helped drive the establishment of educational program evaluation and the field of evaluation as a profession.

The purpose of this study is …

Libel In Mississippi, 1798-1832, Muriel Ann Everton

Dissertations

The Mississippi Territory officially became part of the United States in 1798. The territory was to be governed under the rules of the Northwest Ordinance, but those who went to govern the area found a culture that required the use of common law to settle the disputes arising from prior governments under other nations. With no precedents on which to rely, disputes led, at first, to dueling and then to libel cases. Both common law and common sense prevailed while many of the disagreements were aired publicly in newspapers. Mississippi’s first printer, Andrew Marschalk, using his First Amendment rights, wrote …

“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers” An African Centered Historical Study Of The Selfethnic Liberatory Education Nature And Goals Of The Poetry Of Langston Hughes: The Impact On Adult Education, Sarah E. Howard

Dissertations

The purposes of this historical study were to 1) document the Selfethnic Liberatory adult education nature and goals of the poetry of Langston Hughes (from 1921 to 1933); and 2) to document the impact this poetry had on members of the African Diaspora. In addition, the goal of this research was to expand the historical knowledge base of the adult education field, so that it is more inclusive of the contributions of African Americans.

This study addressed the problem that the historical and philosophical literature of the field does not to any significant degree include the intellectual and adult education …

Recipes For Reform: Americanization And Foodways In Chicago Settlement Houses, 1890-1920, Stephanie J. Jass

Dissertations

During the late nineteenth century as tens of thousands of immigrants flooded American cities, public debate among reformers--who tended to be middle-class, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants--began to center on the best ways to assimilate these foreigners into American society. Although some Americanization groups stressed language and citizenship training, two major reform movements focused on foodways as an important tool of assimilation.

This dissertation examines how both the home economics and settlement house movements attempted to Americanize ethnic food practices. It describes why reformers saw foodways as a viable and meaningful avenue for reform, as well as the varied responses that reformers …

Perspectives On Power: John F. Kennedy And U.S.-Middle East Relations, April R. Summitt

Dissertations

A study of President John F. Kennedy's policy toward the Middle East illustrates the agency and unexpected power wielded by so-called "third world" countries during the Cold War era. In spite of careful planning in Washington, Middle East leaders often manipulated and directed Kennedy's approach to the region. Regional actors used American fears of Communism to gain increased financial aid, military support, and influence in the United Nations. Although seeming to submit to Western pressures in exchange for such support, these leaders played both superpowers against each other and shaped policy according to local needs. While this relationship meant a …

Caroline Bartlett Crane And Progressive Era Reform: A Socio-Historical Analysis Of Ideology In Action, Linda J. Rynbrandt

Dissertations

This dissertation is a sociohistorical analysis of women and social reform in the Progressive Era. Until recently, the role of women has been virtually invisible in accounts of Progressive social reform. While this is no longer the case, considerable questions remain. Using the archival records of one woman, Caroline Bartlett Crane (1858-1935), which document her professional, intellectual and personal life, I describe her contribution to social reform and early sociology. I analyze how her life and work reveals a greater understanding of current feminist debates and other social, historical and political questions.