History Commons^™

A United Failure: The Failure Of The United Nations, United States, And Global Community In Preventing And Responding To The 1994 Rwandan Genocide, Josh Ratsch

Honors College Theses

The Rwandan Genocide represents a glaring failure of the global community to provide humanitarian protection to targets of ethnic violence and slaughter. The complete indifference displayed by the United Nations provided extremist Hutu leaders with an environment for killing without a threat of foreign intervention. Calls by the leader of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR), Roméo Dallaire to reinforce the mission both before and during the slaughter fell upon deaf ears as UN leaders attempted to justify their inaction. Accounts from Rwandan representatives, who at the start of the genocide held a position on the UN Security …

A Persecuted Minority To Wealthy Merchants And Planters: A Study Of A Huguenot Family And Shifts In Identity, Garrett Gay

Honors College Theses

This project takes a look at an interwoven system of familial, religious, social, and economic ties known as the Protestant International. By analyzing genealogies, correspondence, business records, and transactions of the Mazyck Family from the early eighteenth century, it is seen that these international connections often led to the further material success of these families. This project also takes a look at how the Protestant International aided in shifting the vast majority of Huguenots’ identity from being religiously persecuted refugees to being wealthy merchants and planters who formed trade relations both domestically and internationally.

Children’S Advertisements In The Youth’S Companion From 1890 To 1910, Maya Noonan

Honors College Theses

This paper shall demonstrate that at the turn of the 19th century, the advertising strategies used in children's advertisements published in The Youth’s Companion reflected the rise of childhood consumerism and formation of the ideology of childhood innocence. The years 1890 to 1910 were characterized as years of reform and the period is most often recognized for its role in the rise of consumerism in part due to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution worked as a catalyst to force children into a new role in society. The mass availability of disposable income led to a decrease in the need …

The Contradiction Of The Welfare Dictatorship: The Stasi’S Role In Preserving And Undermining East German Human Rights, Mallory Wooldridge

Honors College Theses

Constructed four years after WWII in a kind of pendulum swing response to the Third Reich, the German Democratic Republic (GDR) was an experiment in socialism. Under the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (The Socialist Unity Party of Germany, SED) no East German was to go hungry, unemployment would be eradicated, housing guaranteed, women treated as equals, and human rights interwoven into the fabric of this socialist society. However, SED socialism in practice did not conform to this original vision and would eventually represent the disillusionment with the socialist project as a whole.

This project seeks to understand human rights in the …

The Forgotten Activists Of Georgia: The Black Women Of Savannah, Emily Zanieski

Honors College Theses

Historians of the Civil Rights Movement in Georgia have primarily focused on how the national movement unfolded in the city of Atlanta. More recent scholarship has highlighted the role Martin Luther King Jr. played in Albany; however, many of these analyses focus on figures within the larger movement rather than focusing on local, grassroots organizers. Additionally, their primary focus tends to be on the role of Black men, leaving behind the voices of Black women who led alongside them. Through a Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM) approach, I argue that Black women in Savannah, Georgia played an instrumental role in …

"Shakedown Street: The Grateful Dead And The Commodification Of Hippie Culture", Zachary A. Graham

Honors College Theses

The Grateful Dead were one of the most successful and enduring bands to come out of the original hippie counterculture of the late 1960’s. Beginning as a small, experimental blues-rock group with no desire to pursue commercial success, fame and fortune nonetheless found the Dead over the course of their three decades on the road. Through constant touring, a consistent level of apathy towards business and making money, and with the help of arguably the most dedicated fanbase in music history, the Grateful Dead became more than just a band, they were the face of a new cultural phenomenon that …

Egyptian Etiquette: A Historical Rebuttal To The Genealogy Of Morals, Noah C. Evans

Honors College Theses

In his book Genealogy of Morals, German philologist and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche posits an understanding of the origin and development of morality that stood in stark contrast to the common understanding of his day. Rather than presuming the existence of some metaphysical, objective reality to morality, Nietzsche outlines a natural development and evolution to the concepts of "Good," "Bad," and "Evil" throughout a nebulously defined period of history, focusing primarily on the psychological conditions surrounding the advent of morality. Following this, he wrote The Antichrist, in which he provided a far more specific historical framework within which the …