History Commons^™

Claiming Citizenship: Las Vegas' Conventional Women's Organizations Establishing Citizenship Through Civic Engagement, Cynthia Cicero

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many historians of American women portray women's organized civic engagement and work to attain social, economic, and legal equality as feminism. American feminism has been expanded and applied in scholarship. The American feminists of the 1960s wanted to alter the male power structure and redefine conventional notions of womanhood. However, many middle-class women who participated in community and civic organizations valued their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, expressing their citizenship and community work as an extension of these roles. Their motivation in pursuing equality was to gain full citizenship status.

In this thesis, I argue that viewing women's civic …

Captivity, Adoption, Marriage And Identity: Native American Children In Mormon Homes, 1847-1900., Michael Kay Bennion

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Indigenes of North America's Great Basin developed a way of life based on the available resources the Basin provided. Their culture and customs provided a stable means of understanding and interacting with nature and men. Their myths elaborated on expectations, hopes, and fears, in real and metaphorical ways, as evidenced by stories of the trickster Coyote. As Great Basin bands contacted Europeans, they adjusted their resource gathering based on new technologies, such as horses and guns, as well as their myths to cope with change. This process entailed some adjustment in their perceptions of the world around them and …

Buffalo Bill's Wild West In Germany. A Transnational History., Julia Simone Stetler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines European and especially German responses to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show during its two European tours in 1890-1891 and 1906. It argues that the different European countries creatively adapted the content and message of the show according to their own specific cultural values and needs. By considering Buffalo Bill's Wild West within the specific cultural contexts of the nations it toured, we are able to better explain reactions to it, including Germany's astoundingly positive response. The show was an entertaining event for American and European audiences alike with its exoticized figures, spectacular stunts, and colorful drama; however, …

Migration, Community, And Stereotype: Shaping Racial Space In The Twentieth-Century Urban West, Stefani Evans

Psi Sigma Siren

African Americans who migrated to western cities in the twentieth century encountered a polyglot mix of Euro Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Native Americans. Diverse western populations dictated that western racial contests over space and power would evolve differently from those in the North or the South. This paper examines the discourse on white, Latino and African American racial landscapes in western cities through themes of migration, community formation, and white stereotypes and community responses to those stereotypes in seven key monographs and two articles published between 1993 and 2005.

The Colonial Dynamic: The Xhosa Cattle Killing And The American Indian Ghost Dance, Aaron Mcarthur

Psi Sigma Siren

In 1856, a fourteen year old girl named Nongqawuse (non-see) had a vision on the banks of the Gxarha River in southern Africa. Entranced, she saw dearly departed ancestors, their cattle hiding in the rushes, and she heard other cattle underground waiting to come forth. She was told that if her people would but kill all their cattle, their ancestors would arise from the dead, the cattle lowing in the subterranean passages would come forth, and all the whites would be swept into the sea. Nongqawuse’s prophecy provoked the colonially embittered Xhosa (cōe-săh) people to rise up and kill their …

Life After Civil Death: Felony And Mormon Disenfranchisement In The U.S. West (1880-1890), Winston A. Bowman

Psi Sigma Siren

Pomeroy’s understanding of the nature of the franchise may seem foreign to many present-day Americans, but this vision is the one to which most nineteenth-century jurists, scholars, and politicians subscribed. It is worth noting that Pomeroy wrote these words in the aftermath of the post-Civil War rights revolution and half a century after the expansion of the franchise under the auspices of Jacksonian democracy. This attitude toward voting rights was not abandoned following the passage of the reconstruction amendments. Instead, the idea of a limited franchise was affirmed time and again in the post-bellum era. Pomeroy’s franchise (one in which …