History Commons^™

Scientific Collaboration And The Cold War: 1945-1970, Autumn Wyland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is an examination of scientific collaboration between 1945 and 1970, covering the end of World War II and through the early stages of the Cold War. Prior to the Second World War, scientific collaboration was frequent and necessary to development and research. World War II created a new atmosphere of secrecy, preventing scientists from collaborating as they once had. This paper examines what that collaboration looked like, how it was derailed and why, how some scientists sought to return to collaboration, sometimes at personal expense, and finally what those effects looked like throughout the Nuclear Age and Space …

Exodus Arena: Cashman Field And The (Re)Development Of Sports And Recreation In Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada, Ryan Browar

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Cashman Field is a minor league sport stadium one-mile north of the world famous “Fremont Street Experience” in Downtown Las Vegas, Nevada. Minor league sports stadiums are microcosms of their communities, and Cashman Field’s history is Las Vegas’s history. Although the city’s first permanent sports venue, the stadium endured numerous cycles of colonialism, stadium building, successful operation, neglect, decay, and abandonment. Now at the end of another cycle, Cashman Field is being forgotten as Las Vegas transitions into a major league sports town. Sports stadiums reveal the social, cultural, and economic factors that define twentieth-century American history, but Cashman Field’s …

“Who Says Lowriders Are Only For Men?”: Lowriders In Las Vegas, Nevada, Alejandra Herrera

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Since its creation, Las Vegas, Nevada, has been associated with casinos, nightlife, drinking, and neon lights. Las Vegas is not associated with Lowriders. Historically, lowrider vehicles are associated with crime, gangs, and male drivers. When lowriding comes to mind, Lowriders are associated with major cities in California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Colorado. Lowriders are not usually visualized as having female participants or as being present in Las Vegas. This thesis highlights members of the Lowrider community (especially Christal Leyva, Ivelys Franco, and Juanita Salazar) through the use of oral interviews and personal correspondence. The Lowriders interviewed for this thesis …

Policing Sin City: The Creation And Impact Of The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, 1973-1985, Richard Kim

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis examines the creation of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department in 1973 and its impact on the War on Crime. The first chapter examines the significance of race and policing in Las Vegas from the early twentieth century until the consolidation of the Clark County Sheriff’s Office and Las Vegas Police Department in 1973. Chapter 2 then analyzes how the federal government’s so-called War on Crime played out at the local and state level in Nevada from 1973 to 1985. The thesis argues that this period witnessed a punitive turn in policing that had long-term consequences for Las …

In The Image Of… Towards A Trans Talmud, Laurence Myers Reese

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In the Image of... (towards a Trans Talmud) is a body of work by artist Laurence Myers Reese that works to examine Jewish paradigms of gender through the transgender lens. Reading the archive diagonally, he examines historical Jewish writings, from poet and Rabbi Kalonymous Ben Kalonymous to “false Messiah” Shabbatai Tzvi. Contextualizing contemporary Jewish with notable exhibitions from the Jewish Museum New York and Spertus Museum, Chicago, In the Image of… draws from artists, writers, and Rabbis who use a gendered lens to interrogate Judaism. These include Yael Kanarek, who has worked to re-gender the entire Torah, Rena Yehuda Newman, …

Promoting Paradise: The Recruitment Of Volga German Immigrants To The American Midwest, 1870-1900, Kassidy N. Whetstone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 1762 and 1763, Russian tsarina Catherine II issued manifestos encouraging foreign immigration throughout Russia, and received an overwhelming response from German farmers. These farmers, who would later be known as Russian Germans, Mennonites, or Volga Germans, quickly gained a reputation for their successful farming skills. As a result, following the Homestead Act of 1862, United States recruiters used promotional land advertisements to entice the farmers to migrate to the Midwest. The posters often depicted “open,” abundant lands in paradise. Upon arrival, however, the Volga Germans faced a reality starkly different from what the advertisements had promoted. This paper analyzes …

The Spark That Lit The Match: The Use Of Petitions And The Emergence Of Antislavery Politicians In The Movement To Abolish Slavery In The District Of Columbia, 1816-1829, Timothy Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The United States capital, Washington, D.C., became the focus of antislavery advocates in their quest to eliminate the domestic slave trade and slavery. By the War of 1812, the domestic slave trade was thriving in the capital. However, many saw it as particularly embarrassing to a nation predicated on the concept of freedom. This embarrassment was even felt by proslavery Southerners. Beginning in 1816, an attempt to restrict the trade in the Capital occurred when Virginia Congressman John Randolph called for the destruction of the domestic slave trade there. Despite being proslavery, he argued that the federal government, as the …

The Frontier Of The Labor Movement: Latinas And The Longest Strike In Twentieth-Century Las Vegas, Maribel Estrada Calderón

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After the mid-twentieth century, the American labor movement began to decline. Across the U.S., Union memberships and the rate of work stoppages decreased. In the hospitality-industry-driven city of Las Vegas, Nevada, however, the Culinary Workers Union Local 226 more than doubled its membership. In 1989, the Elardi family purchased the Frontier Hotel and Casino and began to eliminate workers’ benefits. Led by the Culinary Union, workers went on strike on September 21, 1991, beginning one of the longest strikes in twentieth-century Las Vegas. Latina workers played critical roles in organizing and maintaining this successful, six-year-long battle against the Elardis. Positioning …

The Economy Of (Dis)Honor In The Americas: A Transnational Rupturing Of American Literature Through Faulkner, García Márquez, And Silko, Clayton Neil Cobb

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Honor is misunderstood within popular culture, but it is also misunderstood within academic contexts. This is due to a decoupling of the term from its long historical significance, a significance that must not be ignored. That is because honor in the Americas is a structure of the hemisphere’s colonial legacy, its manifestation in the cultural fabric a result of the invasion of the continents by European settlers and colonizers. In the case of history, philosophy, and social science, the study of honor is beginning to undergo appropriate theorization to recognize that legacy; however, within literary studies disciplines, critical understanding of …

Madres, Hijas, Y La Frontera: An Analysis Of The Relationship Between Mexican Mothers And Mexican-American Daughters, Arianna Gabriela Razo

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The goal of this thesis is to investigate the role Mexican mothers play in raising their children and how the border affects their abilities as mothers, looking specifically into the Mother-Daughter relationship, broken down even further into the Mexican mother versus the Mexican-American daughter. To explore this concept, I examine Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo, looking at all the mothers, but specifically into the Reyes matriarchs, and Aaron Bobrow-Strain, The Life and Death of Aida Hernandez, to show how the border has influenced Mexican mothering styles, along with juxtaposing how Mexican immigrants were treated in the 20th century to how politicization of …

Resisting ‘Raid-And-Rescue’: Capturing The Ideograph Of Victimhood In Nevada Law A.B. 166, Samantha Thies

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Critical rhetoricians and legal communication studies scholars have long recognized that rhetoric and ideology are inherent to legal structures, shaping legislation and impacting the lives of those such laws are meant to address. Fewer look to, not just civic discourses, but also the vernacular discourse surrounding such institutions, shaping the ideologies that support it. There is a need, however, for the study of outlaw discourses to both help define ideographs and challenge their very existence through contrasting outlaw and hegemonic logics. Thus, this thesis examines debates over A.B. 166, a Nevada state law meant to alleviate sex trafficking, by establishing …

Words As Weapons And Wisdom, Barbara Paige

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement were two seminal eras in American history. The Renaissance also referred to as the New Negro Movement was a literary artistic, and cultural movement, centered in Harlem in which writers produced large bastions of literary works. African descended people began to identify with their African past and intellectuals adopted Black Nationalist and Pan-Africanist methodologies to overcome oppression. Their efforts laid a foundation for the Civil Rights movement. The Black Arts Movement, an era of intense literary artistic activism begun with the assassination of Malcolm X. Artist/intellectuals responded to a more hostile environment …

Beyond Suffrage: Intermarriage, Land, And Meanings Of Citizenship And Marital Naturalization/Expatriation In The United States, Shiori Yamamoto

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation investigates how the laws of marital naturalization/expatriation, namely the Citizenship Act of 1855, the Expatriation Act of 1907, and the Cable Act of 1922 and its amendments throughout the 1930s, impacted the lives of women who married foreigners, especially in the American West, and demonstrates how women directly and indirectly challenged the practice of marital naturalization/expatriation. Those laws demanded women who married foreigners take the nationality of their husbands depending on the race of women and their husbands, making married women’s citizenship dependent on that of their husbands. Particularly under the Expatriation Act of 1907, all American women …

Case Study: Armenian And Cuban Ethnic Interest Groups In American Foreign Policy, Harry H. Terzian

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Current academic research has moved away from comparative models as a mechanism by which to assess and understand socio-political as well as historical phenomena. In addition, comparative analysis when it comes to addressing ethnic lobbies is almost nonexistent within contemporary research. This work implements a comparative framework and as a result has unlocked a new approach when addressing ethnic advocacy organizations. The purpose of this research is to assess and document the history and impact of both Armenian and Cuban ethnic interest groups within the United States. Specifically, focusing upon the Armenian National Committee of America and the Cuban American …

"The Only People Who Can Get Aids-Are People": The Aids Crisis In Mainstream Crisis, 1981-1995, Franklin Howard

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the representation of the AIDS crisis and People with AIDS (PWAs) in comics produced by mainstream publishing companies in America. Between 1988 and 1995, mainstream comic artists at DC Comics and Marvel Comics used their art to offer social commentary on the crisis. This commentary focused primarily on social issues like violence against PWAs and social ostracizing instead of the critiques of the Reagan Administration and medical institutions found in similar comics produced by activists in the queer communities. They provided education and advocated acceptance through their character’s actions and dialogue as well as in their own …

Power And Authority Of Royal Queen Mothers: Juxtaposing The French Queen Regent And The Ottoman Validé Sultan During The Early Modern Period, Reneé N. Langlois

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Women and their relationship to sovereignty, during the early modern era has become a rapidly growing topic, given that during this period an unprecedented number of women rose to high positions of power. This paper aims to compare the lives of the queen regents in France with their counterparts, the validé sultans in the Ottoman Empire, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when both groups of royal women acquired substantial power. Although these women were prohibited from ruling in their own right, the paper explores the ways in which queen regents and validé sultans used both official …

The Acute Effects Of Cupping Therapy On Hamstring Range Of Motion Compared To Sham, Matthew Schafer

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Context: Flexibility is an important aspect of physical performance and when deficient can result in an increased opportunity for injury. Cupping therapy is an ancient technique that has recently seen a growth in popularity in Western Orthopedic medicine as a soft tissue mobilization technique. Most cupping therapy research explores the use of cupping therapy for treating headache, herpes zoster, asthma, cough, and other non-orthopedic pathologies. Cupping therapy has had positive results on an injured population for increasing flexibility. Objective: To identify if cupping therapy applied passively for 10 minutes results in an increase in flexibility, and to identify if there …

A Historical Case Study Of Title Ix In Nevada: An Excellent Investment In Our Youth, Jason Clark

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this study was to examine and document the history of Title IX in the American West, specifically at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), and at Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, Nevada. This thesis contends that since the late nineteenth-century, women have utilized sports as a method to shed discriminatory stereotypes, fight for inclusion, and promote gender equality. In addition, the progressive actions of educational administrators and community leaders regarding Title IX make both UNR and CCSD exceptional institutions for gender equality. This thesis contains six chapters including the introduction and conclusion. Chapter 1 …

The Transformation Of American Federalism, 1848-1912, Lance Sorenson

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

United States expansion following the Mexican-American War served as the catalyst for a reinvention of American Federalism. While much of the historiography traces the accretion of sovereign power in the national government to events caused by the divisions between northern states and southern states, there is an important and understudied East to West component of the process by which sovereign boundaries changed. The American West is a legal space where the hazily defined and capacious concept of federalism received fuller form and clearer definition. During the late nineteenth century and first few years of the twentieth century, the United States …

Grand Solo Op.14 & Rondo Op2. N3: The Sonority Of The Classical Era, Hugo Maia Nogueira

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

During the early nineteenth-century, the writing for classical-guitar elevated the instrument to

the solo concert stage. The appearance of the six-string guitar changed guitar writing.1 With this new

instrument, guitarists had an array of new possibilities to explore in terms of sound and technique.

Fernando Sor (1778-1839) and Dionisio Aguado (1784-1849) were the main artists promoting and

advocating the six-string guitar as a serious concert instrument in Spain.2

This document will focus on two guitar masterworks: Fernando Sor's Grand Solo Op.14 and

Dionisio Aguado's Rondo Op2. N3. It will explain why Grand Solo Op.14 and Rondo Op2. N3 can

synthesize …

Songs Of The Cajuns: A History And Analysis Of Joie De Vivre: Five Impressions Of Acadian-America, Wendy Kay Moss

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

My exploration of Cajun song, from its origins as a French ballade into popular American song, will reveal the musical characteristics of Cajun music. My study’s purpose is to increase ones understanding of the history of Cajun song and its music, and then determine why it is missing from the canon of American song repertoire. My study will include an analysis, performance and recording of Cajun song settings composed and arranged by Arles Estes. My investigation will research five traditional Cajun songs as they pertain to Estes’ settings in order to broaden the roots of American song literature and enhance …

Reaching Across Land And Ocean: Daughters Of Bilitis, Minorities Research Group, And Resistance Formation In The International Lesbian Network, Linsey Scriven

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

From 1964 to 1972, the lesbian rights organizations, Daughters of Bilitis and Minorities Research Group, shaped the resistance of lesbians in North America and Europe by providing a platform to challenge harmful narratives about lesbianism in their magazines, The Ladder and Arena Three. This thesis is the first to examine the close relationship of the Daughters of Bilitis and Minorities Research Group, and how their collaboration helped lesbians in the international lesbian network move from the shadows onto the international stage years before Stonewall. More often than not, DOB and MRG leaders could not agree on what was “best” for …

Homeland, Homestead, And Haven: The Changing Perspectives Of Zion National Park, 1700-1930, Sara Black

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Zion National Park is a landscape that the American public celebrates as a unique and beautiful wilderness. However, Zion is much more culturally layered than what most tourists perceive. Numerous Native American cultures have ties to the canyon, including the Southern Paiutes, who used and interacted with this area on a regular basis for at least the last 500 years. For them, it served both substantive and cultural roles in their communities that reinforced their understandings of themselves and their place in the world. For Mormons, who came into the area in the 1860s and quickly dominated the landscape, Zion …

From Access To Excess: Agribusiness, Federal Water Programs, And The Historical Roots Of The California Water Crisis, Tracy Marie Neblina

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The purpose of this paper is to show the link between water use, land consolidation, agribusinesses, and the water crisis that California began to experience in 2011. In order to better understand the relationship between the growth of agribusiness in the state and the evolution of water policy, this paper explores the historical context of land policy, the growth of farming in the San Joaquin Valley, and the development of federally funded water projects in the Central Valley. Years of expanding farmland and use of surface and underground water with limited regulation played an important role in exacerbating California’s water …

Nindanishinaabewimin: Ojibwe Peoplehood In The North American West, 1854-1954, Margaret Huettl

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Anishinaabeg Peoples maintained sovereignty via peoplehood in the context of Settler colonial programs intended to confine and ultimately eliminate Indigenous sovereignty and identity. Although scholars have usually considered the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—defined by confinement, dispossession, and marginalization—as the nadir of Indian history, I explore the persistence of Anishinaabe sovereignty. Eschewing race and nationhood, ways of thinking embedded in Western European epistemologies, I rely on “peoplehood,” a theory developed by American Indian Studies scholars, to articulate Ojibwe sovereignty. Anishinaabeg, like many of the names Native Americans use to identify themselves, means “the people.” Inherent in peoplehood is sovereignty, …

“The Ground You Walk On Belongs To My People": Lakota Community Building, Activism, And Red Power In Western Nebraska, 1917-2000, David Christensen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Framed by histories of Lakotas in the twentieth century, American Indian Activism, and the “long civil rights movement,” this dissertation seeks to provide new perspectives on the American Indian civil rights movement. Although the United States government removed Lakotas from western Nebraska in the late nineteenth century, some returned to a portion of their homeland, settling and working in the border town of Gordon and the region’s two largest towns, Alliance and Scottsbluff, in the twentieth century. Between 1917 and 2000, Lakotas living in off reservation communities in western Nebraska created a grassroots reform movement, whose goals differed from the …

"Mother, I Will": Female Subjectivity And Religious Vision In The Brontës Novels, Amanda Scott

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Anne, Charlotte, and Emily Brontë have long attracted sustained critical attention, in

large part because of their strong female protagonists. These strong-willed women self-assuredly reject oppression and model new paradigms for the Victorian woman to empower her subjectivity. This subjectivity serves, in turn, not only as the ability to form and express views counter to outworn social prescriptions, but it also serves as the centralized interior focus that allows their protagonists to think of themselves as the foremost subjects of their lives, rather than see themselves as pawns to be moved about in the games of patriarchal hierarchy. This study …

Family, Housing, And The Political Geography Of Gay Liberation In Los Angeles County, 1960-1986, Ian M. Baldwin

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This study examines the gay liberation movement in Los Angeles County through the lens of housing rights. It illustrates how sexual justice activism evolved in tandem with the fates of the welfare state and urban politics. Like racial minorities, queers have been stymied by economic barriers. Beginning in the 1930s, federal housing agencies established “family” requirements to housing subsidies, which the state defined through biology or marriage. In L.A. County, activists worked to overcome this heteronormative barrier at the grassroots and within the political establishment. Binding gay liberation to economic and family justice, queers opened housing shelters and social service …

An Examination Of Sagebrush Rebellion Communications Using Narrative Policy Framework, Amber Overholser

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Despite being rich in resources, a growing population and open spaces, the Old West has often erupted into the “Angry West” (Lamm, R. D., & McCarthy, M. 1982), as individuals, interest groups and political leaders throughout the West have demanded the turnover of select lands within the region for local control, development and/or private sale. One of the most well-known and heated public lands debates took place during the late 1970s and was called the Sagebrush Rebellion. Rebellion leaders gained national attention as they emphasized the need for autonomy, resource development and equality with Eastern states through the turnover of …

Nevada Legal Services: The Legal Services Corporation Restrictions And The Diminishing Capacity Of Access To Justice For The Poor, William Todd Ashmore

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The lofty idea of equal justice for all is not the reason legal aid began in the United States. Legal aid was born from the indignation over injustices committed against the poor. Unable to afford an attorney, the poor could not effectively assert their rights within the criminal and civil justice system. Without access to justice through the courts, the extralegal activities required to defend oneself and exact justice such as personally forcing an employer to pay rightful wages, are deemed criminal in most cases. By providing legal resources to the poor, legal aid not only brought order to society …