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Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw May 2022

Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.


The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby May 2022

The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.


The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill May 2022

The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a close reading of Civil War pedagogy in Alabama and Virginia with special attention given to Black history during the Civil War era. Through an examination of Civil War history, it is evident that slavery was the main cause of the War. The development of the Lost Cause narrative, a reaction to Blacks gaining Civil Rights that aimed to prove the Confederate war effort was honorable, is still promoted in southern schools. Alabama and Virginia both provide state standards, outlines of the minimum required knowledge to be obtained on a given subject by the end of the …


The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer May 2022

The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper assesses why two projects with the same name, concept and intent of forming cultural consensus, the Freedom Trains, took such different forms between the postwar "consensus" (1947-1963) and detente (1963-1979) phases of the Cold War. It argues that organizers Attorney General Tom C. Clark (1947), Ross Rowland (1975), and their corporate backers articulated histories based on perceived common values of limited rights (1947), cultural pluralism (1975) and consumption (both) that attempted unity, but resulted in silences. The reception to each train, and the organizers' responses to those reactions, showed the limitations of a unifying consensus, but varied between …


Silver, Ships And Soil: Gift-Giving In Medieval Icelandic Sagas, Emma Eubank Apr 2022

Silver, Ships And Soil: Gift-Giving In Medieval Icelandic Sagas, Emma Eubank

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Through applying anthropological theory to gift exchange in medieval Icelandic sagas, we can uncover a wealth of information about the construction and reinforcement of gender, power, and value. This study incorporates Mauss, Sahlins, and Graeber alongside other theorists to analyze how the narrators of Egil's Saga, The Saga of Grettir the Strong, and Gisli Sursson's Saga perceived a past Iceland.


“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller Apr 2022

“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The presence of Confederate symbols and other reminders of white institutional power in courtrooms introduces a risk that impermissible factors such as implicit bias, conscious prejudice, and sympathy for white supremacy will harm litigants’ rights. I compiled data for 210 of 328 courts (64%) in the Commonwealth and found that there are more than 617 portraits on display in Virginia courtrooms. At least 357 portraits depict white men, six depict Black men, fifteen depict white women, and twenty-eight depict people who served in the Confederacy, either in the government or the Confederate States Army (CSA). At least fourteen different courts …


“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks May 2021

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …


Uniting Interests: The Economic Functions Of Marriage In America, 1750-1860, Lindsay Mitchell Keiter Jan 2016

Uniting Interests: The Economic Functions Of Marriage In America, 1750-1860, Lindsay Mitchell Keiter

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This dissertation, "Uniting Interests: Money, Property, and Marriage in America, 1750-1860," examines how marriage was an essential economic transaction that responded to the development of capitalism in early America. Drawing on scholarship on the history of economic development, household organization, law, and gender, I argue that families actively distributed resources at marriage as part of larger wealth management strategies that were sensitive to regional and national economic growth. I focus particularly on women's property holding and how families deployed the legal protection of women's property as bulwarks against financial disaster. This project restores the family and women to the narrative …


Relationships, Credit, And Value: Analyzing Money As A Social Institution In Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Amanda White Gibson Jan 2016

Relationships, Credit, And Value: Analyzing Money As A Social Institution In Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Amanda White Gibson

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo Jan 2015

Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Promoting Tourism, Selling A Nation: The Politics Of Representing National Identity In The United States 1930-1960, Sarah Elizabeth Mclennan Jan 2015

Promoting Tourism, Selling A Nation: The Politics Of Representing National Identity In The United States 1930-1960, Sarah Elizabeth Mclennan

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

Promoting Tourism, Selling a Nation: The Politics of Representing National Identity in the United States 1930-1960, focuses on tourism and public culture in the United States, examining how institutions and public sites interpret their history, and the impact these representations have on community and national identity. The project centers on the United States Travel Bureau, the first federal agency tasked with promoting U.S. tourism on a national scale. Through its publicity campaigns, the Bureau attempted to distill the diversity of communities and traditions in the United States into a cohesive vision of American identity and heritage---one it promoted both at …


Afro-Barbadian Foodways: Analysis Of The Use Of Ceramics By Freed Afro-Barbadian Estate Workers, Camille Lois Chambers Jan 2015

Afro-Barbadian Foodways: Analysis Of The Use Of Ceramics By Freed Afro-Barbadian Estate Workers, Camille Lois Chambers

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


'Tavern' By The Saltpan: New England Seafarers And The Politics Of Punch On La Tortuga Island, Venezuela, 1682-1782, Konrad A. Antczak Jan 2014

'Tavern' By The Saltpan: New England Seafarers And The Politics Of Punch On La Tortuga Island, Venezuela, 1682-1782, Konrad A. Antczak

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Technique Of The Poquoson-Style Log Canoe, David Andrews Moran Jan 2014

The Technique Of The Poquoson-Style Log Canoe, David Andrews Moran

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Possessing The Holy Land: The Palestine Exploration Fund And The American Palestine Exploration Society, Ashley M. Irizarry Jan 2014

Possessing The Holy Land: The Palestine Exploration Fund And The American Palestine Exploration Society, Ashley M. Irizarry

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Exhorting Or Extorting?: George Whitefield's Financial Controversies, Kristen Elizabeth Beales Jan 2014

Exhorting Or Extorting?: George Whitefield's Financial Controversies, Kristen Elizabeth Beales

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


From "Lying Low" To "Harmonious World": Changes In Chinese Foreign Policy From The 1970s To The 2000s, Charles Monahan Murray Jan 2014

From "Lying Low" To "Harmonious World": Changes In Chinese Foreign Policy From The 1970s To The 2000s, Charles Monahan Murray

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Reynolds Affair, Party Politics And Sexuality In The Early Republic, Alexandra Marie Gross Jan 2014

The Reynolds Affair, Party Politics And Sexuality In The Early Republic, Alexandra Marie Gross

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Formation Of The Russian Medical Profession: A Comparison Of Power And Plagues In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Samuel Otto Schuth Jan 2014

The Formation Of The Russian Medical Profession: A Comparison Of Power And Plagues In The Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries, Samuel Otto Schuth

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Ontological Blackness: A N Investigation Of 18th Century Burial Practices Among Captive Africans On The Island Of Barbados, Brittany Leigh Brown Jan 2013

Ontological Blackness: A N Investigation Of 18th Century Burial Practices Among Captive Africans On The Island Of Barbados, Brittany Leigh Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Schoolteacher And The Secretary: The Newspapers And Community Of A Revolutionary French-American, 1754-1784, Katherine S. Madison Jan 2013

The Schoolteacher And The Secretary: The Newspapers And Community Of A Revolutionary French-American, 1754-1784, Katherine S. Madison

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


"A Medley Of Contradictions": The Jewish Diaspora In St Eustatius And Barbados, Derek Robert Miller Jan 2013

"A Medley Of Contradictions": The Jewish Diaspora In St Eustatius And Barbados, Derek Robert Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

During the 17th and 18th century a number of Jews settled on the English island of Barbados and the Dutch island of St. Eustatius. The Jews on both islands erected synagogues and a number of key structures essential for a practicing religious community. Although they had strong connections that spanned across geo-political boundaries, the synagogue compounds on each island became key places for the creation and maintenance of a Jewish community. I argue that these synagogue compounds represented diasporic places that must be understood through a tri-partite model that explores the relationships between the Jewish community and its hostland, other …


The Nottoway Of Virginia: A Study Of Peoplehood And Political Economy, C.1775-1875, Buck Woodard Jan 2013

The Nottoway Of Virginia: A Study Of Peoplehood And Political Economy, C.1775-1875, Buck Woodard

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

This research examines the social construction of a Virginia Indian reservation community during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Between 1824 and 1877 the Iroquoian-speaking Nottoway divided their reservation lands into individual partible allotments and developed family farm ventures that mirrored their landholding White neighbors. In Southampton's slave-based society, labor relationships with White landowners and "Free People of Color" impacted Nottoway exogamy and shaped community notions of peoplehood. Through property ownership and a variety of labor practices, Nottoway's kin-based farms produced agricultural crops, orchard goods and hogs for export and sale in an emerging agro-industrial economy. However, shifts in Nottoway …


"Here Stands A High Bred Horse": A Theory Of Economics And Horse Breeding In Colonial Virginia, 1750-1780; A Statistical Model, Lily Kleppertknoop Jan 2013

"Here Stands A High Bred Horse": A Theory Of Economics And Horse Breeding In Colonial Virginia, 1750-1780; A Statistical Model, Lily Kleppertknoop

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Merrymaking At The Madisons': Feasting, Alcohol, And Political Strategy, Christine Hope Heacock Jan 2013

Merrymaking At The Madisons': Feasting, Alcohol, And Political Strategy, Christine Hope Heacock

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Derogatory To The Rights Of Free-Born Subjects: Racialization And The Identity Of The Williamsburg Area's Free Black Population From 1723-1830, Rebecca Anne Schumann Jan 2013

Derogatory To The Rights Of Free-Born Subjects: Racialization And The Identity Of The Williamsburg Area's Free Black Population From 1723-1830, Rebecca Anne Schumann

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney Jan 2013

Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

The half-century marked by the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a critical period of cultural, social, and economic transition for African Americans in the southern United States. During the late nineteenth century, while African Americans were rebuilding communities and networks disrupted by enslavement and the ensuing Civil War, several settlements developed between Williamsburg and Yorktown on Virginia's lower peninsula. One of the settlements, Charles' Corner, is an optimal case study for understanding the gradual process of community building during a particularly challenging period of African American history dominated by systemic racism and …


The Making Of A Boxer, Ronald Schechter, Liz Clarke Jan 2013

The Making Of A Boxer, Ronald Schechter, Liz Clarke

Arts & Sciences Book Chapters

Inspired by the resounding success of Abina and the Important Men (OUP, 2011), Mendoza the Jew combines a graphic history with primary documentation and contextual information to explore issues of nationalism, identity, culture, and historical methodology through the life story of Daniel Mendoza. Mendoza was a poor Sephardic Jew from East London who became the boxing champion of Britain in 1789. As a Jew with limited means and a foreign-sounding name, Mendoza was an unlikely symbol of what many Britons considered to be their very own "national" sport. Whereas their adversaries across the Channel reputedly settled private quarrels by dueling …


I'M Really Just An American: The Archaeological Importance Of The Black Towns In The American West And Late-Nineteenth Century Constructions Of Blackness, Shea Aisha Winsett Jan 2012

I'M Really Just An American: The Archaeological Importance Of The Black Towns In The American West And Late-Nineteenth Century Constructions Of Blackness, Shea Aisha Winsett

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Ideal Marriage: Reactions To Marie Stopes' "Married Love", 1918-1935, Shannon E. Goings Jan 2012

The Ideal Marriage: Reactions To Marie Stopes' "Married Love", 1918-1935, Shannon E. Goings

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.