History Commons^™

Soft Power And Polite Propaganda: Public Diplomacy In The Early Cold War, Coby Aloi

Departmental Honors Projects

In the Aftermath of the Second World War, the United States and The USSR stood as the only true superpowers. Both states held their own spheres of influence, with interests in spreading that influence. With the fear of nuclear war and the still looming shadow of global conflict, a new brand of diplomacy began to take hold as the preferred method of international relations between adversarial states. Soft power was beginning to become an influential means to accomplishing the goal of nations abroad.

The careful curation of print media, literature, and informational campaigns became an important element to how the …

Drag Magazine: A Study Of Community, Olivia Austin

Departmental Honors Projects

This research aims to understand the trans/drag community and its relationship to political activism and the lesbian and gay community in the 1970s and early 1980s. I aim to answer the following questions: How did Drag perceive the relationship between the gay/lesbian community and the trans/drag community? How did Drag function in the trans/drag community? How did Drag benefit its readers? Transgender individuals and drag queens were at the forefront of activism in the1960s during the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot and the Stonewall Inn Riots. Recently, there has been more attention to the critical transgender activism by Marsha P. Johnson and …

Just What The Doctor Ordered: Treatment Methods Of Homosexuality In Minnesota, 1920-1950, Paige Daniels

Departmental Honors Projects

In Minnesota, throughout the 19th century, the concept of homosexuality was associated with sin/illegality due to the strict religious ordinances and legislation passed with the intent to criminalize homosexuality. However, influenced by European notions, this correlation of morality and legality started expanding to a more medicalized perception. With a push to decriminalize homosexuality, much of the United States began to adopt the philosophy of homosexuality’s existence either as or because of an illness. While other studies have explored treatment methods practiced in the U.S. and Europe, this research focuses only on Minnesota history and its practices. An analysis of Minnesota …

Samuel Huntington's Clash Of Civilizations And Its Allure For The Past Thirty Years, Michaela Munda

Departmental Honors Projects

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington wrote, taught, and advised on United States defense and foreign policy for over fifty years. The 1996 book, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is by far the most prominent of Huntington’s works. Though the work pertained to the world order following the collapse of the Soviet Union, his urging to understand factors that would set up the next stages of world conflict seem to hold truth throughout the last thirty years, and even in the present. Huntington argues that culture and identity will be at the forefront of global conflict. …

The Battle Over The Canal: The Dispute Between Sister Cities That Shaped The Future Of The Twin Ports, Parker Bertel

Departmental Honors Projects

In 1870 two towns emerged on the northwestern head of Lake Superior. Both sought to take advantage of the only sandy and protected bay on the great northern lake. Superior WI, on the southern end of the bay, was situated at the only natural entrance to the harbor. In the fall of 1870 the residents of Duluth, MN, located on the northern Minnesotan shore, began digging a canal to rival Superior’s entrance. The result was a dispute between the two towns that lasted several years. Both towns fought tirelessly to fulfill what they saw as their destiny to become the …

The Italian American Community’S Responses To Discrimination During World War Two., Gillian P. Molland

Departmental Honors Projects

This research covers the treatment and internment of Italian American residents during the Second World War to lay bare infringements of civil rights by the United States Government. During this time, Italian American residents were subject to persecution in the form of job discrimination, censorship, detainment, and internment. The scholarly work surrounding the topic thus far primarily discussed the causes and details of Japanese internment, only referencing the treatment of Italian or German Americans. The research on the treatment of Italian American residents during the war centers around the idea of the secret history and try to understand what legislation …

The Washburn-Crosby Company: Cadwallader Washburn’S Vision For Minneapolis Flour Milling, Alex Schmidt

Departmental Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth century, Minneapolis underwent a dramatic transformation and became known as the flour milling center of the world. Powered by the Falls of St. Anthony on the the Mississippi River, aided by technological advancements, and promoted by the expansion of railroads, dozens of flour mills were built, including those of the Washburn Crosby Company. This company, under the leadership of Governor Cadwallader Washburn of Wisconsin, exemplified many of the developments that had brought the Minneapolis industry to renown. Several historians such as William Edgar, Lucile Kane, Robert Frame, and Charles Kuhlmann have published works on the significance …

The Controversial Passage Of Proposition 227, Erin E. Kinney

Departmental Honors Projects

When Proposition 227 passed in 1998, it essentially ended a thirty-year program of bilingual education in California of students with limited English proficiency, and replaced it with a controversial, year-long, intensive English-immersion program. Paying close attention to how each side of the debate was framed in televised programming and local newspapers, this paper examines why such a controversial law was able to pass by popular ballot. After researching the popular opinions of the previous program of bilingual education as well as the narrative of the state concerning how it views its immigrant populations, with the children of Latin American immigrants …

The Katyn Massacre: Cover-Up, Suppression, And The Politics Of War, From An American Perspective, Joe Grundhoefer

Departmental Honors Projects

Abstract

In the spring of 1940, roughly twenty two thousand Polish officers, the cream of Poland’s intelligentsia, were executed in Katyn forest. While the Soviet Union blamed Nazi Germany for the massacre, in the past seventy years all gathered evidence including documents from the Soviet archives, point out to the Soviet Union as responsible for the killings. However, the British and American governments, who had knowledge of the Katyn Massacre, were engaged in a suppression of the truth, during the war and into the early years of the Cold War, even while they confronted the Soviet Union over Poland’s independence. …

Verbatim: Henry Kissinger, The Yom Kippur War, And The Legacy Of The United States In The Modern Middle East, Nathaniel Schumer

Departmental Honors Projects

Henry Kissinger deeply influenced the foreign policy of the United States for much of the latter half of the Twentieth Century. This was especially true during the Yom Kippur War of 1973. On October 6, Egypt and Syria launched a combined invasion of Israel that caught Israel by surprise. As Secretary of State, Kissinger was heavily involved before the conflict in talking to Egypt, Syria, Israel, the Soviet Union and others to prevent the conflict. After the fighting started, Kissinger continued to leverage United States influence to end the conflict and advance the United States’ interests. His influence was even …

"Waste Not, Want Not": Farmers' Reactions To The New Deal In Minnesota, Kacie Phillips

Departmental Honors Projects

By the time of the Stock Market Crash in 1929, farmers in America were already in financial trouble with the drop in demand after World War I. With poverty and malnourishment rampant, the motto of the Great Depression became “waste not, want not.” The government focused on alleviating human suffering in President Franklin Roosevelt’s “Hundred Days” of 1933 and instituted numerous legislative acts for relief, with special attention paid to farmers. As the rest of the nation fell into economic hardship, the government gave unprecedented attention to agriculture and developed relief programs to aid farmers and their families. Some historians …

The Lady On Angel Hill: Mary Jane Folsom And Movement In The Nineteenth Century St. Croix River Valley, Taylor M. Yetter

Departmental Honors Projects

Mary Jane Folsom’s life in the St. Croix River Valley demonstrates the previously uninvestigated complexities of life on the American Frontier in the nineteenth century. Previous scholars of the Frontier have all assumed the traditional East to West model of movement, but this model fails to recognize the many directions people took to reach their final destinations or the influences they brought with them. Before further research is conducted on the American Frontier, scholars must answer the question of how people, objects, and ideas actually travelled through the Frontier. This paper uses Mary Jane’s correspondence with her family to investigate …