History Commons^™

Book Review: Maurice-Ernest Gillioz (1877-1962): Great Builder In America, Yves Bordet

Swiss American Historical Society Review

Maurice-Ernest Gillioz is a good example of the American dream. The son of a Swiss emigrant from the Canton of Valais who arrived in New York in the middle of the American Civil War, Gillioz started from nothing and built one of the largest public works companies in the Midwest in the first half of the twentieth century. Philippe Pierroz’ book is 164 pages, written in French, of richly illustrated and strongly documented material. The numerous illustrations and appendices can be easily understood by English-speaking readers.

Wilmington Insurrection: Race Riots, George Davis

Student Zines

This hand-drawn zine discusses the race riots in Wilmington, NC in 1898.

Military Cooperation And The Relocation Of Quapaw And French Settlements In Colonial Arkansas: A Case Study In Colonial International Relations, Morris S. Arnold

Academic Papers

A previous article made the case that the Quapaw Indians had played a role in the defense of Arkansas Post, and had entered several colonial wars on the side of the French, during the time that France had claimed sovereignty over the Arkansas country.

The purpose of the present effort is to describe and explain the origin and nature of the alliance between the Quapaws and the French, and to identify the considerations that led the tribe to conclude that it was often in its national interest to collaborate with the French in their defensive and offensive military operations. The …

Pirates And Propaganda: The Condemnation Of Piracy In The Early Modern Era, Alexandra G. Wisner

Tenor of Our Times

The modern view of pirates is shaped by their media representations, from Pirates of the Caribbean to the Pirates of Penzance. Often, they are in direct opposition to the imperial British navy, which is depicted as bumbling at best and overwhelmingly cruel at worst. The pirates in these stories, whether historical or fictional, are heroes, eking out a living on the seas. Such depictions are over simplified, and lack the nuance of what piracy meant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In addition, they glorify pirates, turning them from sailors looking to make a profit into champions of democracy and …

The Bean Pie: Black Muslims And Identity In Early Twentieth Century Detroit, Alexandra Christine Bicknell

Masters Theses

The bean pie is the product of culinary traditions set forth by the Nation of Islam. Nation members used the navy bean to whip up a custardy dessert utilizing religiously approved ingredients. Milk, eggs, brown sugar, and whole wheat flour transformed a savory, well-cooked bean into a sweet treat. Pies made from beans were not invented by the Nation of Islam, but they became symbolic of the culture and institutions established by Black Muslims in America. The Nation of Islam shaped Michigan and the midwestern region’s social and cultural identity. The Nation promoted that Black people ought to have power …

Saving Salt City: Fighting Inequality Through Policy And Activism In Syracuse, Ny, 1955-1975, Scarlett Nicole Rebman

Dissertations - ALL

"Saving Salt City: Fighting Inequality through Policy and Activism in Syracuse, NY, 1955-1975" offers an in-depth exploration of civil rights and antipoverty struggles in the Salt City between 1955 and 1975. It centers the agency of activists who built interracial and cross-class organizations through which they contested the marginalization and segregation of Black Syracusans. By examining the struggles around major issues including education, housing, police brutality, employment, and a broader vision of economic justice, "Saving Salt City" documents the alternative visions and unrealized agendas for change generated by citizens in Northern urban spaces. This project recovers Syracuse's legacy as a …

The Experience Of White Captives Among The Natives Of The Old Northwest Territory Between 1770 And 1850, Analucia Lugo

The Purdue Historian

In the late 18^th to mid-19^th centuries, hundreds of white settlers were taken captive by Native American groups across the Old Northwest Territory. Reasons for their capture varied from revenge to adoption, however, the treatment they received greatly depended on the captive’s gender. While females were more likely to be kept alive and better-taken care of, males faced a greater probability of facing violence or even death, though torture was common among both groups. Many captives undertook participatory roles within their respective captive communities, with some deciding to assimilate completely into a new way of life. Captivity narratives …

"Freedmen Not Freemen": The Freedmen's Bureau And Black Land Ownership In Arkansas, Eric Johnson

Honors Theses

When slavery ended at the close of the Civil War, there was no universal answer for where former slaves were to live. The type and quality of freedom Black Southerners would experience during Reconstruction would be largely determined by where they lived. Many freedpeople and Republicans desired for widespread Black land ownership across the South. “Forty acres and a mule” was a common phrase that spread throughout the South and represented the hope that the United States government would ensure that all former slaves would be given land to own and live on. The Freedmen’s Bureau, which was created under …

Rebranding The Native: Selling The ‘Ideal’ Indigenous Worker At The Carlisle Indian Industrial School, 1879-1918, Luke Prior

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Luke Prior ’22
Major: History/Secondary Education
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alexander Orquiza, History and Classics

The Carlisle Indian Industrial School sought to recreate the image of the Native American from the savage brute of the past and the lazy free-loader who lived off the government ration to an ‘ideal’ worker who was a productive member of the American economy. In doing so, the school stripped students of their cultures and replaced them with American ideals. A very small minority of those at Carlisle used what they learned to fight against the assimilationist mission of the school.

An Unread Colonial Diary, Brigid Mcevoy

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Brigid McEvoy ’23
Majors: History and Spanish
Minors: Business and Innovation and Latin American Studies
Mentor: Dr. Adrian Weimer, History and Classics

Through funding from a Veritas Research Grant, I deciphered the Shelton shorthand writing of the second volume of Michael Wigglesworth's diary, digitized through the New England Hidden Histories project. Wigglesworth was a famous poet and preacher in early New England. One of the chief purposes of deciphering this second volume was to create a more nuanced perspective on Wigglesworth's life and artistic career.

This diary, written from March 1658 through November 1687, includes both longhand and shorthand writing. …

Race Films & American Society, Angie Pierre

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Angie Pierre ’25
Major: Global Studies
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

This project will explore Black cinema, specifically the race film industry and its relationship to Black identity and American society. Through an analysis of a number of early race films and archival documents from the 1920s, the project seeks to reveal how these films contributed to positive political, social and economic changes in Jim Crow America. Ultimately, the successes of race film pioneers are reflected throughout Black film history and the Black films we still watch today.

Terrible Terrell: The Forgotten Story Of Carolyn Daniels, Olivia Moll

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Olivia Moll ’22
Major: History
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Alyssa Lopez, History and Classics

My thesis explores the participation of black women in the Civil Rights Movement, more specifically the contribution from Carolyn Daniels. Daniels is a mother and SNCC activist from Terrell County, and her story has yet to be told. I am here to tell Daniels’s story; her success towards the SNCC voting registration project that took place in the summer of 1962. The beauty of the Civil Rights Movement is that everyone’s story and activism matters, especially the story of women.

Dorrite Prisoners Of War, Russell J. Desimone

Dorr Scholarship

Following two failed armed attempts in May and June 1842 by Thomas Wilson Dorr, the People’s governor, to establish the People’s government in Rhode Island, the opposing Charter government’s legislature enacted Martial Law throughout the state. During a period lasting several weeks forces allegiant to the Charter government and its governor, Samuel Ward King, commenced an all-out effort to arrest more than 260 pro-Dorr citizens. Some of Dorr’s followers fled the state to avoid arrest but those arrested appeared before a commission formed to interrogate the prisoners. Listed here are the actual accounts of each interrogation providing the reader with …

"They Would Do As They Pleased, As They Had The Power": Gender Violence And The American Settler-Colonial Project, 1830-1890, Noelle Iati

Women's History Theses

This thesis investigates the role of gender violence and sexual terror in westward settler expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century. I posit that gender violence was not simply a symptom of war and colonization, but an integral piece of the American colonization strategy. Using studies of three locations during three different periods, I have found that the local, territorial, state, and federal governments all actively deployed sexual assault and other forms of gendered terror as methods of removing Indigenous peoples to reservations and rancherías, opening their lands to settlement and resource exploitation for the purpose of acquiring …

American Government 3e, Glen Krutz, Sylvie Waskiewicz

Open Access Textbooks

American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and …

American Exceptionalism And Individualism: "It Won't Happen To Me, And If It Happened To You, It's Your Own Fault!", Beck O. Adelante

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

2020, and everything leading up to it, has been overwhelming. As we face a national election with unprecedented consequences, it is time we reflect and think about how and why we ended up here, and what we can do moving forward.

"The Twilight-Colored Smell Of Honeysuckle:" William Faulkner, The South, And Literature As A Site Of Memory, Emily Innes

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines the intersection of literature and historical memory, focusing on William Faulkner’s literature and the construction of memory and identity in the 1920s-1930s American South. Understanding the basic objective of memory as using the past to consolidate a social consciousness rooted in a shared identity and future, I examine how literature contributes to and enriches this process. I argue that because memory is deeply embedded in the social frameworks of a population, and dependent on the population’s cultural, political, and social identity, it is a fundamental component of understanding cultural identity. By interpreting literature through the lens of …

Our Shared Vision: Representations Of The Trans-Mississippi American West, Joshua D. Koenig

Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role played by museums in shaping our understanding of the American West. The history of the American West holds a place in American popular culture, evidenced by music, movies and television shows, novels, art, architecture, clothing, and numerous other examples. However, such examples raise questions of authenticity depending on medium and setting, Representations of the American West depict certain images or beliefs held by society. At the same time, the United States houses nearly 1,500 historic sites and museums focusing on the American West. These museums and sites are found scattered throughout thirty-eight states, in addition …

Joining White America: How The Irish Achieved Racial Assimilation, Benjamin Baddorf

Honors Projects and Presentations: Undergraduate

One of the hallmarks of British colonial oppression was the establishment of social control over the native Irish population. In the case of Ireland, the tool that was utilized the most effectively to establish this social control was racialized oppression. According to Theorodore Allen, in his monograph The Invention of the White Race , the hallmarks of racial oppression include an “assault on tribal affinities, customs, laws, and institutions,” all of which describe the systematic disempowerment campaign against the Irish people carried out throughout the majority of the period from the 16th century to 19th century. However, racialized control was …

Pestilence And Poverty: The Great Influenza Pandemic And Underdevelopment In The New South, 1918-1919, Andrew Kishuni

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study examines the "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 in the U.S. South, using case-studies of Jacksonville, Savannah, New Orleans, and Nashville to sculpt a "Southern flu" more identical to the Global South and the developing world than the rest of the U.S. I examine poverty and political and economic paralysis in the years between the end of Reconstruction and 1918, and the poor results of political indifference on public health and disease control. I also analyze the social and institutional racism against persons of color that defined high infectious disease mortality in Southern cities.

I argue that Southerners faced …

American History I: Colonial Period To Civil War (Gordon State College), J. Franklin Williamson, Thomas Aiello

History Open Textbooks

This text from Dr. Franklin Williamson and Dr. Tom Aiello from Gordon State University contains all modular text content used in the LMS implementation of their American History I (HIST 2111) courses. American History 1 covers topics ranging from the colonial period to the Civil War.

The text was created under an Affordable Learning Georgia G2C Pilot Grant, taking place from Spring 2018 until Fall 2019. Topics include:

• The Colonial South / The Colonial North
• 18th Century Colonial Life
• American Revolution
• Jeffersonian Era
• Slavery and Southern Life
• Western Expansion
• Sectional Conflict
• American Civil War

Steam Vs. Stem: A Study And Program Proposal For Monticello, Micaela Deogracias

Honors Projects

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and art programs have long been struggling for dominance in the education system. This fight overshadows the fact there are synergistic educative capabilities when these two schools of thought are combined, allowing scientific and artistic persons to work in tandem and be exposed to a wider variety of problem-solving options and opinions. This study aims to focus on museum education practices specifically and how implementing STEAM programs (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) versus STEM could raise the perceived value of arts in society, as well as create a more enriching educational experience by …

The Narrative Of Revolution: Socialism And The Masses 1911-1917, Stephen K. Walkiewicz

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to situate The Masses magazine (1911-1917) within a specific discursive tradition of revolution, revealing a narrative pattern that is linked with discourse that began to emerge during and after the French Revolution. As the term “socialism” begins to resonate again within popular American political discourse (and as a potentially viable course of action rather than a curse for damnable offense), it is worthwhile to trace its significance within American history to better understand its aesthetic dimensions, its radical difference, and its way of devising problems and answers. In short, this thesis poses the question: what ideological structures …

American Government 2e, Glen Krutz, Sylvie Waskiewicz

Open Access Textbooks

Since its founding, the United States has relied on citizen participation to govern at the local, state, and national levels. This civic engagement ensures that representative democracy will continue to flourish and that people will continue to influence government. The right of citizens to participate in government is an important feature of democracy, and over the centuries many have fought to acquire and defend this right. During the American Revolution (1775–1783), British colonists fought for the right to govern themselves. In the early nineteenth century, agitated citizens called for the removal of property requirements for voting so poor white men …

The Evolution Of Sunset Magazine's Cooking Department: The Accommodation Of Men's And Women's Cooking In The 1930s, Jennifer Hoolhorst Pagano

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The Western regional magazine Sunset has been published under a series of owners and publishers since 1898. In 1928, Sunset was purchased by Lawrence Lane, a Midwestern magazine executive who transformed it from a failing turn-of-the-century, general interest publication about the West, into a successful magazine about living in the West for the Western middle-class. Sunset had always been a magazine for men and women, and one that appealed to both male and female intellectuals at the time Lane purchased it. Lane and his editors attempted to interject more rigid middle-class ideals into a magazine that had espoused ideas that …

Developing And Sustaining Political Citizenship For Poor And Marginalized People: The Evelyn T. Butts Story, Kenneth Cooper Alexander

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This study tells the deep, rich story of Evelyn T. Butts, a grassroots civil rights champion in Norfolk, Virginia, whose bridge leadership style can teach and inspire new generations about political, community, and social change. Butts used neighbor-to-neighbor skills to keep her community connected with the national civil rights movement, which had heavily relied on grassroots leaders—especially women—for much of its success in overthrowing America’s Jim Crow system of segregation and suppression. She is best-known for her 1963 lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1966 decision to ban poll taxes for state and local elections, a democratizing event …

Remembering An Invasion: The Panama Intervention In America’S Political Memory, Dave Nagaji

Senior Theses

In December of 1989, the United States launched Operation Just Cause, a military invasion of the country of Panama, capturing Manuel Noriega and overthrowing his government. This research project examines how Colin Powell, Richard Cheney, James Baker, and George H.W. Bush presented Operation Just Cause in their memoirs. It attempts to determine how these senior leaders’ depictions of this invasion incorporated it into the Bush administration’s overall foreign-policy strategy. The research finds that their general approach was to present the Panama intervention as an isolated incident which had no intentional link to other major events at the time, was not …

U.S. Presidential Leadership And Crisis Rhetoric, Robert Mccabe

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

My capstone project seeks to determine what are U.S. presidents attempting to accomplish in (or with) their speeches? This matters because presidential responses to crises can reflect how a president’s leadership abilities are perceived by the people he serves. This perception plays a large role in determining how much political strength the president has to accomplish his agenda. I address this research question by analyzing four different speeches: President Kennedy’s Address to the American Society of Newspaper Editors on the Bay of Pigs, President Kennedy’s Address on the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Bush’s National Cathedral Speech after the September 11th …

Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story: A Case Study Of Hamilton: An American Musical To Understand The Effect Of Engaging The Past In The Culture Of Today, Adrianna C. Halsey

Selected Honors Theses

This thesis is a look into how Alexander Hamilton has been portrayed on stage in the musical Hamilton: An American Musical, written by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The goal of this research is to show that this musical is not history, but rather a commentary on current culture through one of America’s favorite stories (that of the Revolution.) In this show, past figures have been used to discuss the issues of modern America, and that is now being sold as history. This has been discovered through the analysis of primary and secondary sources of the time period, as well as through a …

German And American Transnational Spaces In Women's And Gender History, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

Books Reviewed:

Michaela Bank. Women of Two Countries: German-American Women, Women’s Rights, and Nativism, 1848–1890. New York: Berghahn Books, 2012. vi.+ 192 pp. ISBN 978-0-85745-512-3 (cl).

Karen Hagemann and Sonya Michel, eds. Gender and the Long Postwar: The United States and the Two Germanys, 1945–1989. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014. vii. +397 pp. ISBN 978-1-4214-1413-3 (pb).

Lynne Tatlock. German Writing, American Reading: Women and the Import of Fiction, 1866, 1917. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2012. ix.+ 347 pp.; ill. ISBN 978-0-8142-1194-6 (cl).