History Commons^™

Acadian In The Southern Imagination: Race And Identity In Reconstruction Louisiana Newspapers 1862-1877, Jessica Dejohn Bergen

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The emergence of Acadian identity as a reaction to Southern imagining has received little attention from historians of Louisiana Acadian history. Many scholars align with a narrative that centers American cultural adaptation which describe a process that begins with a split along class, not race lines, to form a Cajun identity which becomes, like other American immigrant stories, an element of American identity. The dominant historical narrative suggests that all elements of Acadian are incorporated into the overarching American identity. The Acadian-to-Cajun-qua-American-assimilation narrative implies and reinforces that the Cajun-American identity is superior and more socially acceptable than the Acadian identity. …

The Shaping Of Ethnic Mexican Identity In The Segregated Schools Of Presidio, County, Texas, 1867-1947, Aurelio Saldana

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The work conducts a sociological analysis of the historical record documenting segregated school settings in a rural area from 1867 to 1947 using socialization theory. The sociological theory of schemas will provide a lens from the Americanization process students in the U.S., specifically ethnic Mexican students, underwent to shape "American" identity. The analysis ventures into the intersectionality created by the social constructs of gender, sex, race, and class and how these factors combined as part of the Americanized socialization of ethnic Mexican students. Gender inequality, or patriarchy, was a leading factor in shaping the contested U.S.-Mexico borderlands and U.S. society. …

Scientific Islanders: Pacific Peoples, American Scientists, And The Desire To Understand The World, 1800-1860, Roberto Jesus Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Between 1800 and 1860, Pacific Islanders sought answers to questions about the mechanics and origins of the universe, just as Americans did. But the systems of thought created by Natives addressing these matters generally would not have been considered "scientific" by Americans. Pacific Islanders and Americans, nevertheless, created extensive scientific traditions to systematically perceive, understand, and explain the nature of existence. These systems were rooted in religion, social dynamics, and other cultural norms, and manifested themselves in writing, artwork, explorations, and technologies that benefited their societies. Thus, this Thesis argues that the practice of scientific methods was not simply a …

From Buffalo Soldiers To Redlined Communities: African American Community Building In El Paso's Lincoln Park Neighborhood, Miguel Juárez

Departmental Papers (History)

No abstract provided.

Aquí Se Habla Español: Cultural Identity And Language In Post-World War Ii Puerto Rico, Joanna Marie Camacho Escobar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The following study seeks to understand the process in which language and culture were linked together in order to institutionalize Puerto Rican cultural nationalism. In the decades after 1898, Puerto Ricans went through a U.S.-imposed process of Americanization. What the U.S. originally had in mind was that Puerto Ricans would become American colonial subjects through U.S. control over the curriculum that made English the language of instruction in public schools. With a vague explanation from the U.S. of what Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans meant to the U.S. American nation, Puerto Ricans from various backgrounds debated Americanization practices. However, after …

From The Fangs Of Monsters: Gender, Empire, And Civilization In The Pacific, 1800-1850, Michael David Chavez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

As the nineteenth century commenced, contact between Pacific Islanders and Anglo-Americans increased as did the concern for what resulted from those interactions. In the United States, antebellum restrained men––those who upheld their Protestant faith, self-reliance, and familial values––used ideals of gender to combat the perceived “savagery” of Pacific Islanders and the corruption of American sailors among them. In the mission field, restrained men consciously sought after Anglo-American women’s influence often believing them to be the moral authority of a softer form of empire. This particular form of empire was not government led; nor did it entail the immediate conquest of …

"Only Steers And Queers Come From Texas": The Texas Sodomy Statutes And The Making Of An Other, 1860-1973, Jecoa Ross

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis explores the history of sodomy as it has been conceptualized through the creation and enforcement of the Texas sodomy statutes between 1860 and 1973. In analyzing state court cases, legislative records, and newspaper accounts, I argue that the evolution of the concept of sodomy from its inception as a broad criminal category in the 1860 Texas sodomy statute to its more-narrow conceptualization by Texas legislators as a behavioral characteristic of homosexual status in the 1973 homosexual conduct statute was a political and historically contingent process. This process was political firstly in that it allowed for the construction of …

The Tigua Indians Of Ysleta Del Sur: A Borderlands Community, Scott C. Comar

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation offers a broad community history of the Tigua Indians of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo from colonial contact to their federal recognition in 1987. Considering Tigua history in a Borderlands context, it explores the interaction between community and identity. Here I argue that the Tiguas persisted through Spanish, Mexican, and American colonization because various identity markers involving place, interaction, and shared culture enhanced their community identity as an Indigenous people. This Dissertation also examines how social upheaval, migrations, and land dispossession impacted the Tiguas in various contexts, as well as some of the ways in which they adapted to …

"What, To A Prisoner, Is The Fourth Of July?": Mumia Abu-Jamal And Contemporary Narratives Of Slavery, Luis Omar Ceniceros

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Writing from a specifically Black postmodern perspective, former death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal composes his multimedia slave narrative as a postmodern Neo-slave narrative. From the Atlantic slave-trade to the United States prison-industrial complex, from Quobna Ottobah Cugoano to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the slave narrative exists as a critique against oppressive State powers and a collective affirmation of interiority and embodied significance. For Abu-Jamal, his incarceration is indicative of an ever-pervasive capitalist power-structure that in the past has, in the present is, and in the future will control designated groups of made marginalized masses in order that preeminent capitalist beneficiaries preserve elite …

Classical Pseudonyms As Rhetorical Devices In Response To Jay's Treaty, Nancy Anne Hill

American Name Society

No abstract provided.

Unspoken Prejudice: Racial Politics, Gendered Norms, And The Transformation Of Puerto Rican Identity In The Twentieth Century, Cristóbal A. Borges

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Dissertation uses border theory to craft a comparative study that explores the promotion of the white jí­baro in Puerto Rico throughout the twentieth century and the challenges to that racialized identity that emerged simultaneously. Through a biographical approach that examines the lives of José Julio Henna (1848-1924), Arturo Alfonso Schomburg (1874-1938), Muna Lee (1895-1965), Juano Hernández (1896-1970), Ruby Black (1896-1957), Luis Muñoz Marí­n (1898-1980), Pura Belpré (1899-1982), Inés Mendoza (1908-1990), and Roberto Clemente (1934-1972) as symbols of Puerto Ricanness and contributors to its definition, the Dissertation analyzes the racial and gendered inequalities that persisted during twentieth century Puerto Rico. …

“Think-Talk-Write Texas Centennial In 1936”: Historical Memory And The Texas Centennial In El Paso And The Border Region, Abbie Weiser

Student Papers (History)

This paper explores the 1936 Texas Centennial in El Paso.

Lobos Y Perros Rabiosos: The Legacy Of The Inquisition In The Colonization Of New Spain And New Mexico, C. Michael Torres

Student Papers (History)

No abstract provided.

Mexican Immigrants´ Foodways In El Paso, Texas, 1880-1960s: Identity, Nationalism, And Community, Juan Manuel Mendoza Guerrero

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Although food for Mexican immigrants in El Paso has been through history, with their differences in time, a very important element of their culture, while site that has influenced identity, sense of nation and community, academic studies for this geographic area and for this specific group, are almost nil. This dissertation aims to contribute something to fill this gap. Here, it discusses the historical changes and continuities of Mexican food from 1880 to 1960s, during which time retention, cultural assimilation, and inventive were part of the many processes experienced for Mexican immigrants in their relation with food. The most important …

Natural Rights And Equality: The Case Of Injustice In The Senate, Adrian Acosta

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This thesis seeks to demonstrate that the Senate, as it is composed, goes against America's basic ideas of equality. First it examines the foundation of America's ideas of justice and natural rights. This is done by examining both Hobbes and Locke and how they helped influence America's ideals and, more specifically, how equality became a natural right. After that, it takes on whether or not these ideas are still valid to this very day. The thesis proceeds by examining the documents that helped form America and the system of government that got instituted after the second constitutional convention. Subsequently, it …

Not Far By West Texas Standards: Resources For Big Bend History At The University Of Texas At El Paso, Claudia A. Rivers

Presentations & Slide Shows

Although El Paso may be more than 200 miles from Alpine, the library at the University of Texas at El Paso still holds a number of primary source materials that support research on the Big Bend region.

From The Other Side Of The River: The Mexican Revolution In El Paso Collections, Claudia A. Rivers

Mexican Revolution Resources

The Mexican Revolution affected El Paso and the surrounding border region in many ways, and some of its first important events occurred right across the border in Ciudad Juarez. Reporters flocked to the area to photograph and report on the events, and members of Mexican political factions came to El Paso to publish and publicize their points of view. The El Paso Public Library, El Paso County Historical Society, and the University of Texas at El Paso participated in a collaborative project to make many of the historical resources relating to the Mexican Revolution on the border available in digital …

Border Physician: The Life Of Lawrence A. Nixon, 1883-1966, Will Guzmán

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation centers on the life of Dr. Lawrence Aaron Nixon, an African American physician and civil rights activist who lived in El Paso, Texas from 1910 until his death in 1966. Born in Marshall, Texas in 1883, Lawrence Nixon graduated from Wiley College in 1902 and Meharry Medical College in 1906. He then established a medical office in Cameron, Texas in 1907, but due to the racial climate and violence of central Texas he moved west to El Paso in hopes of a better life.

Although several historians have mentioned Dr. Nixon in their works, they have tended to …

The Literary Fictioning Of John Gregory Bourke's Imperial Nostalgia, Toni K. Mcnair

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Nineteenth-century Army Captain and American ethnographer John Gregory Bourke (b. 1846 - d. 1896) meticulously described and documented a vast amount of information on military life, geography, ecology, and people on both sides of the Mexican-American border, offering observations and opinions of American, Mexican, Mexican-American, Apache, Pueblo, Zuni and Plains Indian cultures. Because of his ethnographic studies of Mexican-Americans along the Rio Grande, cultural studies scholars, José E. Limón and José David Saldí­var have identified John Gregory Bourke as complicit in the U.S. government's imperialist project. Referring to Renato Rosaldo's anthropological theory of imperialist nostalgia, These authors declare Bourke's work …

A History Of El Paso's Company E In World War Ii, Jorge Rodriguez

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

For the most part, Hispanics in the U.S. military were not segregated into separate units, but there was, at least, one known exception. It is this particular story of a National Guard unit from El Paso, Texas designated as Company E that has received minimal attention by historians. This unit was unlike any other unit of the National Guard in that it consisted only of Mexican-Americans.

The Border At War: World War Ii Along The United States-Mexico Border, Winifred Baumer Dowling

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The U.S.-Mexico border, especially the shared border of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, was in many ways transformed by the effects of World War II. This study examines change or continuity brought about by the war. The border region reflected many similarities to the national reaction to the upheaval of World War II. Yet there were dramatic differences as well. Examples of continuity and change are examined through the lens of border relations, labor and the economy, Mexican Americans, border women, and health on the border.

Wartime relations between El Paso and Juarez reached a zenith of good …

Making Africans And Indians: Colonialism, Identity, Racialization, And The Rise Of The Nation-State In The Florida Borderlands, 1765-1837, John Paul A. Nuño

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

The Florida Borderlands from 1765 to 1837 was a fluid space in which established colonial and Indigenous social, political, and economic systems were in dialogue with emerging discourses associated with the market economy, nationalism, and race. Utilizing British, Spanish, and United States government documents, diplomatic correspondence, and slave claims, this work traces the racialization of diverse Indigenous and African populations. Older colonial powers and nascent nation states sought to create political and social space between individuals within these categories in an effort to better control their labor, movement, and economic status. Consequently, Seminoles and Africans resisted and adapted, depending on …

Riding The Borderlands: The Negotiation Of Social And Cultural Boundaries For Rio Grande Valley And Southwestern Motorcycling Groups, 1900-2000, Gary L. Kieffner

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Dissertation presents an analysis and interpretation of particular aspects of the social, cultural, and ideological history of motorcycling in the US-Mexican Borderlands from 1900 to 2000. It is based on interviews with historical correspondents, archival and other documents as well as thirty years of participant reflection during which the author was immersed in biker culture. The motorcycle served as a vehicle for personal and group identity, resistance, and liberation. Issues related to identity, gender, race, marginalization and resistance, imagery, and rhetoric become clearer when considering the perspective of riders. This study surveys interactive processes that occurred between historic motorcyclists, …

Rival Radical Feminists--Frances Willard And Ida B. Wells: The Rhetorical Slugfest Of Two Nineteenth-Century Queen Bees Over Lynching, Anita August

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Rival Radical Feminists considers the role of gender and race as master status determining traits and examines them as influential social markers of identity and representation within a nineteenth-century feminist social movement (FSM)--the Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Rival Radical Feminists examines how, within a FSM where gender issues understandably govern the political narrative that the philosophical core of the movement shifts into separate and competing spheres when gender issues intersect with racial prejudice? Specifically, Rival Radical Feminists argues that when both political actors are female, with one circumscribed politically by her gender, like Willard, and the other by both …

Trail To El Paso: La Jornada De Cantarrecio, Jaime Jose Fushille

Student Papers (CW)

No abstract provided.

Mexico And The Southwest: Microfilm Holdings Of Historical Documents And Rare Books At The University Of Texas At El Paso Library, Cesar Caballero, Susana Delgado, Bud Newman, W.H. Timmons

Guides to Microfilm Collections

Guide to periodicals, archives, and rare books on microfilm in the UTEP Library.