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Full-Text Articles in History

Not So Set In Stone: A Digital History Of The Macalester College Campus, Andie Walker May 2023

Not So Set In Stone: A Digital History Of The Macalester College Campus, Andie Walker

Individually Designed Interdepartmental Major Honors Project

College communities are constantly in flux, as students typically remain in school for only four years. However, parts of the physical environment of a college campus might last for centuries. This project investigates the evolution of Macalester College’s campus and asks the following questions: What has guided the design decisions for new buildings and structures at Macalester throughout its history? How have people interacted with, manipulated, and potentially subverted these spaces and places? How is settler colonialism physically embodied at Macalester? These questions have illuminated the ways that people have attempted to control the space and place that makes up …


Creating Cowboys And “Playing Indian”: Football And White Supremacy From 1890-1980, Lily B. Denehy Jan 2022

Creating Cowboys And “Playing Indian”: Football And White Supremacy From 1890-1980, Lily B. Denehy

History Honors Projects

This honors thesis argues that football is a location of leisure which reinforces and (re)creates a comforting white male supremacist American empire through its use of imaginary frontiers, distortion of Native imagery and culture, and its development of mythic cowboy-heroes— which serve as escapes from ubiquitous national anxieties. I use textual and visual analysis of primary sources from the 1890s, 1920s, and 1970s to describe how football developed as a comforting space of leisure for white people in the face of national crises of masculinity, rights movements, and disillusionment with America’s empire.


Tales Of The Great Jewish Migration: Memory, Assimilation, And Unsettled Matrimony, Natasha Holtman Jan 2019

Tales Of The Great Jewish Migration: Memory, Assimilation, And Unsettled Matrimony, Natasha Holtman

History Honors Projects

Between 1880 and 1910, over a million Russian Jews left the Pale of Settlement for the United States in a life-altering wave of immigration. What changes did immigration bring about, and how? To answer these questions, I considered diverse voices of immigrants found in letters, memoirs and short stories, approaching each source as a new layer of interpretation. I found patterns in immigrants' aims, personal commitments and newcomer needs. These patterns affected individuals' decisions to change or preserve tradition. Particularly in the area of matrimony, immigrant partnerships were marked by restless uncertainty.


Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi Apr 2015

Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi

American Studies Honors Projects

My project re-examines dominant historical narratives of Christopher Columbus and assimilation of southern Italian immigrants to the United States. Arguing that such narratives partly result from historic anxiety surrounding southern Italians’ unstable whiteness, I challenge masculinist, white-washed histories by centering and contextualizing a history of Italian immigrant garment worker and labor leader Angela Bambace (1898-1975). By weaving my own exploration of my Italian immigrant ancestors’ pasts throughout, I ultimately encourage other white descendants of European immigrants to explore their histories in a critical and loving way that "resurrects" histories without sanctifying historical figures or their white descendants to racial innocence.


Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen Apr 2014

Roosevelt, Boy Scouts, And The Formation Of Muscular Christian Character, Gordon J. Christen

Religious Studies Honors Projects

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, many prominent Christians and political leaders saw a degenerative influence in industrializing America. For them, urban culture had eroded gender roles, personal strength, and moral fiber. So-called “Muscular Christians” prescribed physical exertion and wilderness experience to cure these ills. I argue that these values were embodied in idealized characters such as Theodore Roosevelt, Jesus, and the Boy Scout to give a form to cultural remedies. In the process, they became the terms upon which proper Americanism, and proper Christianity, were constructed.


A War Within World War Ii: Racialized Masculinity And Citizenship Of Japanese Americans And Korean Colonial Subjects, Jeffrey Yamashita May 2011

A War Within World War Ii: Racialized Masculinity And Citizenship Of Japanese Americans And Korean Colonial Subjects, Jeffrey Yamashita

History Honors Projects

Even though the Pacific Ocean stands as an aqueous wall between Japan and the United States, World War II exposed the shared relationship between these two nations in their utilization of racial minority populations for the war effort. I interrogate the intersections of gender identity, race, and citizenship of Japanese Americans and Korean colonial subjects in the Japanese Empire during World War II. Specifically, I compare Japanese Americans—soldiers of the segregated Japanese American100th/442nd Regimental Combat Team, draft resisters from Heart Mountain, and prisoners of war—with Korean colonial subjects—soldiers who fought for the Imperial Japanese Army— and hope …


A Tale Of Two Freedmen: Comparing Black Self-Determination In Atlanta And Salvador, Caitlin Wells Apr 2009

A Tale Of Two Freedmen: Comparing Black Self-Determination In Atlanta And Salvador, Caitlin Wells

Latin American Studies Honors Projects

After emancipation, African-Americans in Atlanta, Georgia, sought self-determination through formal political means, whereas Afro-Brazilians in Salvador da Bahia pursued self-determination through cultural expression. To determine why, I have synthesized secondary sources into an original comparative narrative based in the different experiences of slavery, the different emancipation processes, and the different post-emancipation socio-political situations of each region. These contrasting histories led Afro-Brazilians in Bahia to organize much in the ways they had under slavery, whereas African Americans in Georgia were drawn into formal politics through opportunities presented under Radical Reconstruction. Unfortunately, white supremacy was quickly restored in Georgia under Redemption, leaving …


New Rhetoric, Old Practices: Combining Old And New Diplomacy In 1919, Natasha M. Leyk Jan 2009

New Rhetoric, Old Practices: Combining Old And New Diplomacy In 1919, Natasha M. Leyk

History Honors Projects

The idea of a "new world order" based on peace, justice and democracy is not unique to the post-Cold War era. President Woodrow Wilson utilized the same rhetoric when discussing the end of World War I and the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Wilson's "new world order" provided a foundation to his conception of New Diplomacy. Yet 1919 was not the start of a "new world order" based on New Diplomacy. The Treaty of Versailles, negotiated at the Paris Peace Conference, became considered a harsh treaty that was not based on New Diplomacy. How did New Diplomacy fail in 1919, …


St. Paul's Indian Burial Mounds, Paul Nelson May 2008

St. Paul's Indian Burial Mounds, Paul Nelson

Staff Publications

No abstract provided.


U.S. Decision-Making In The Korean Conflict: "Lessons Of History" From Munich To Clinton, Roland D. Mckay May 2005

U.S. Decision-Making In The Korean Conflict: "Lessons Of History" From Munich To Clinton, Roland D. Mckay

History Honors Projects

This paper examines U.S. policymakers' use of historical memory in the decision-making process during three moments characteized by high tension: the U.S. response to the North's invasion of South Korea in 1950, the U.S.S. Pueblo crisis of 1968, and the successive nuclear standoffs of 1993-1994 and 2002-2003. Using government records and interviews with U.S. officials, I demonstrate how diverse "lessons of history" help constrain the formulation and implementation of some policy options while enabling others by shaping (1) the diplomatic and military options presented to policymakers, (2) policymakers' responses to setbacks on the ground, and (3) the extent of U.S. …