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Full-Text Articles in History
Stoking A White Backlash: Race, Violence, And Yellow Journalism In Omaha, 1919, Nicolas Swiercek
Stoking A White Backlash: Race, Violence, And Yellow Journalism In Omaha, 1919, Nicolas Swiercek
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
The “Red Summer of 1919” marked the nadir of interracial violence that characterized urban America during the post-World War I era. Of the more than twenty-five cities that experienced so-called “race riots” that year, Omaha, Nebraska on 28 September 1919 witnessed a vigilante mob of white youth and adults numbering in the thousands destroy the county courthouse, attempt to lynch Omaha’s mayor, and brutally execute an African American man named William Brown. The violence in Omaha and places as disparate as Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Longview, Texas occurred in communities coping with dramatic internal migrations, urban spatial tension, job competition, …
Duncan Hines’ Consumption Community And The Geography Of American Gastronomy, 1936-1956, Damon Talbott
Duncan Hines’ Consumption Community And The Geography Of American Gastronomy, 1936-1956, Damon Talbott
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Food historian Harvey Levenstein has argued that in the early 20th century “the sorry state of American gastronomy was best typified by Duncan Hines,” then the first restaurant critic of national stature. While Hines’ bestselling guidebook of the 1930s–1950s, Adventures in Good Eating, was not adventurous by contemporary culinary standards, it nevertheless encouraged a self-identified community to articulate its tastes, as subsequent listings were compiled and revised mostly by Hines’ readers. This “freemasonry of motorists” constructed a gastronomic geography of America in an era when cars, roads, and the spatial reorganization of work and leisure developed roadside dining into a …
Enticing The Iron Horse: The Unexpected Effects Of Railroads On Town-Building In The Great Plains, Robert Voss
Enticing The Iron Horse: The Unexpected Effects Of Railroads On Town-Building In The Great Plains, Robert Voss
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Town building in the Great Plains during the 19th century centered on railroads. Railroads were promoted as the means for fiscal success through direct and ancillary sources. When railroads did not transpire in the manners expected, towns sometimes resorted to drastic measures to lure railroads. These drastic measures could, and did, backfire as in the case of Brownville, Nebraska.
Located in southeastern Nebraska, Brownville offers an interesting study in the manner railroads affected town development. Planning, attempting and ultimately failing to entice railroads proved devastating to the town. The actions taken to get an effective railroad eventually led to lawsuits, …
Americanization Versus Open Society: Answering The Challenge Of Multicultural Education, Svetlana Rasmussen
Americanization Versus Open Society: Answering The Challenge Of Multicultural Education, Svetlana Rasmussen
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
American education theory in the twentieth century is characterized by a split between proponents of assimilation, Americanization, and conformity, on the one hand, and proponents of diversity, cultural pluralism, and open society, on the other. The Progressive movement of the turn of the twentieth century espoused an American cosmopolitanism built on the basis of Anglo-American culture, yet ironically its simultaneous support for the equality of the cultures of immigrants made possible the further development of pluralist ideas. Horace M. Kallen in the 1920s introduced the idea of preservation of differences, a pluralism of cultures as opposed to cosmopolitanism, that presumed …
Communities Of Comfort: Quilts To Comfort The Families Of America’S Fallen In The Afghanistan And Iraq Wars, Jonathan Gregory
Communities Of Comfort: Quilts To Comfort The Families Of America’S Fallen In The Afghanistan And Iraq Wars, Jonathan Gregory
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Beginning in 2003, grassroots quiltmaking projects were founded in the United States in response to Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Marine Comfort Quilts, founded by Jan Lang, Operation Homefront Quilts, founded by Jessica Porter, and Home of the Brave Quilt Project, founded by Donald Beld, each endeavor to make and give memorial quilts to each family of America’s fallen in these wars. Each project involves a community of volunteers scattered across the nation, many who have never met each other but who communicate through various communications technologies.
Oral history interviews were conducted with the founders of the three …
Revisiting Elwyn B. Robinson’S History Of North Dakota: How The State’S History Created A Community, Jennifer Heth
Revisiting Elwyn B. Robinson’S History Of North Dakota: How The State’S History Created A Community, Jennifer Heth
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
In his History of North Dakota, Elwyn B. Robinson described six themes of North Dakota’s history: remoteness, dependence, radicalism, a position of economic disadvantage, the Too-Much Mistake, and adjustment. Robinson also concluded that these six themes of the state’s history influenced the state’s people and produced the North Dakota character, which included such traits as pride, stubbornness, and radicalism. Robinson’s scholarship did much to illuminate the complexities and interconnectedness of the state’s history, geography, and society, and his History of North Dakota is considered to be the cornerstone of North Dakota historical discourse. But given changes in approaches and …
Ken Saro-Wiwa’S Africana Womanist Vision Of Environmental Justice, Julie Iromuanya
Ken Saro-Wiwa’S Africana Womanist Vision Of Environmental Justice, Julie Iromuanya
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
My paper examines the feminist poetics of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s methodology of protest. Utilizing a gendered pathos, Saro-Wiwa evoked the female body as a metaphor, signaling a connection between the colonization of the land, indigenous peoples, and women in his speech. In the organization of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), he also utilized traditional West African systems that valued a complementary Africana womanist vision of community. In addition, the demonstration he is most remembered for is distinctly patterned after traditional West African female methods of protest. During the 1990’s, already as an established writer, Saro-Wiwa honed his …
“Hired Hands From Abroad”: The Populist Producer’S Ethic, Immigrant Workers, And Nativism In Montana’S 1894 State Capital Election, Brian Leech
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Although many scholars study state history and most states have long-running history magazines, few write explicitly about state identity. This is surprising, given that many people identify with their state as often as they identify with their region or nation. This presentation will encourage research into this area with an investigation of how Montanans used the 1894 election for the state capital to describe who and what they felt best represented their state. Based on research into newspapers and political propaganda for both towns competing in the election for the state capital, this presentation investigates Montanans’ ideas about immigration, labor, …
Indians, “Esquimaux,” And Race: Identity And Community In The Lands West Of Hudson’S Bay In The Eighteenth Century, Strother Roberts
Indians, “Esquimaux,” And Race: Identity And Community In The Lands West Of Hudson’S Bay In The Eighteenth Century, Strother Roberts
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
This paper proposes that a cross-tribal sense of belonging, similar to modern conceptions of racism, facilitated the formation of multi-ethnic communities among the Indian populations living to the west of Hudson’s Bay in the eighteenth century.
Based upon observations made over the course of a century by employees of the Hudson’s Bay Company regarding the attitudes held by their Native American trading partners towards the region’s Inuit populations, this paper concludes that Indians living to the west of Hudson’s Bay in the eighteenth century constructed an inclusive trans-Indian sense of identity based, at least in part, on the exclusion of …
Lonely Sounds: Sonic Self Sufficiency, Personal Control, And Social Shields, Chris Rasmussen
Lonely Sounds: Sonic Self Sufficiency, Personal Control, And Social Shields, Chris Rasmussen
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
In the winter of 1979 Sony introduced a hand-held cassette player called the Walkman—a device that catered to a mass culture that had come to demand personal control over the musical experience. The Walkman’s mobility allowed for unprecedented individual control over the environment: a barrier that kept unwanted sounds or unwanted others out. In the post World War II era, loneliness and recorded popular music became linked. For both the performer and audience, the musical experience had become more solitary and mediated over time. This separation occurred in the context of a historically individualistic culture that was placing ever-greater emphasis …
Uncle Sam’S Farm: Congress And Free Land Policies In The Nineteenth Century, Tonia M. Compton
Uncle Sam’S Farm: Congress And Free Land Policies In The Nineteenth Century, Tonia M. Compton
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
This paper explores the community of the U.S. Congress and its various approaches to the dispersal of the public domain over the course of the nineteenth century. Congressional decisions stand not only as the work of a community of lawmakers, but also, through individual votes, reflect the values and beliefs of the communities represented by individual legislators. This paper seeks to understand how the Congressional community understood the various issues related to free land legislation, beginning with preemption acts in the early nineteenth-century, and various other legislative efforts to govern the dispersal of the public domain. The paper will examine …
Uncertain Transformation: The Role Of Asceticism In Death In The Sayings Of The Desert Fathers, Paul Ferderer
Uncertain Transformation: The Role Of Asceticism In Death In The Sayings Of The Desert Fathers, Paul Ferderer
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Between the second, third and fourth centuries the Christian Church produced biographies chronicling the pious undertakings of monks. These hagiographies borrowed from preexisting Greek biographies to distinguish the Christian monk from the pagan holy man. Patricia Cox Miller’s Biography in Late Antiquity: The Quest for the Holy Man demonstrates how hagiographers adaptation of Greek biographies allowed them to create idealized portraits of Christian holy men and distinguish them from their pagan counterparts. This paper applies Cox Miller’s method to examine portions of The Saints Lives, The Lausiac Histories and The History of the Monks of Egypt in order to …
The Unl Botanical Seminar: Establishing A Scientific Community At The Turn Of The Century, Susannah Hall
The Unl Botanical Seminar: Establishing A Scientific Community At The Turn Of The Century, Susannah Hall
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
This is an online work cataloguing the history of the UNL Science Departments. It has several pages focusing on digital collections, as well as some written analysis. To date the collection includes the Chemistry Department and Life Sciences Departments, although data for additional departments are currently being assembled from the Love Library Archives & Special Collections. Special emphasis is placed on lists of faculty and detailed timelines for each department. Additionally, the groups and clubs associated with each department, including the Chemistry Club and Botanical Seminar, are of particular interest as scientific communities which shaped the departments, university, and field. …
Community Of Coercion And Compliance: Scientific Agriculture At Lake Andes, South Dakota, In The 1920s, David Nesheim
Community Of Coercion And Compliance: Scientific Agriculture At Lake Andes, South Dakota, In The 1920s, David Nesheim
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Riding the crest of a wave that peaked in the 1920s, governmental officials in and around Lake Andes, South Dakota, sought to reorder its cultural and physical landscape. Lake Andes, like so many other communities on the Great Plains, straddled two realities, as it fell within the boundaries of the Yankton Sioux Reservation and, after 1905, was home to a privately developed town. Despite following a relatively uniform impulse, officials from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with commercial and educational interests, implemented distinct programs.
Using reports from the BIA farm …
Protestant England Revisited: A Study On English National Consciousness Between 1540 And 1559, Ramazan Hakki Oztan
Protestant England Revisited: A Study On English National Consciousness Between 1540 And 1559, Ramazan Hakki Oztan
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
This paper will primarily call into question the components of the ‘commanding’ vernacular religious culture in Reformation England between the years 1540 and 1559 and relate them to the strengthening of English ‘national consciousness’. The analysis will take into consideration early Anglican sermons as examples of this vernacular religious culture. The preachers whose sermons will be put into question in this analysis are Hugh Latimer and Thomas Lever whose motives to preach in the way they did will also be elucidated by other important documents. As for the starting assumptions of the concepts of ‘nation,’ ‘nationalism,’ and ‘national sentiment or …
War And Memory: The Creation Of The American Memory Of The Atomic Bombings And The End Of The War In The Pacific, Michael Mishler
War And Memory: The Creation Of The American Memory Of The Atomic Bombings And The End Of The War In The Pacific, Michael Mishler
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
Much has been written about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, however, an element often overlooked in the history of these events is the way in which an official narrative of them was created in the minds of the American public. This paper examines how this official narrative and consequently memory of the bombings was formed. To do this newspaper articles were analyzed from the first published reports of the bombings in the American press up to recent stories regarding the bombings. Through the analysis of these reports it becomes clear that American memory of the bombings have three …
Pine Ridge Reservation Fairs: Building Intercultural Communities Through Play, Elisabeth Saunders
Pine Ridge Reservation Fairs: Building Intercultural Communities Through Play, Elisabeth Saunders
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
The consolidation of Native American groups onto reservations often resulted in the formation of new communities that developed a collective identity from the shared experience of forced assimilation and occupation. Rarely do historians associate the reservation border towns as extensions of this community. The racial, social, and cultural differences between reservation and white populations are often perceived to be too divergent to have fostered a regional community. Indeed, for most intercultural interactions this assumption holds true. Thus the reservation fairs held in the early twentieth century offer a unique instance in which rural populations on and off the reservation came …
The Historical Community And The Digital Future, Brent M. Rogers
The Historical Community And The Digital Future, Brent M. Rogers
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
The historical community is undergoing change. Computers, digital tools, the Web, and online resource repositories have created a revolution in teaching, research, scholarship, outreach, and thought. How the digital age impacts history remains a looming concern. This paper will explore the digital age and the serious myriad questions facing the historical community now and in the future. With unfettered access to countless historical resources via online archives and databases, the Web provides an exceptional space for historians to research, discover teaching aides, and develop new thought. Fluid in content and form, the dynamic digital media changes the way we teach, …
Nurses, Patients, Physicians, And Science: Changing Nursing Ideals In The United States, 1924-1955, Lisa Schuelke
Nurses, Patients, Physicians, And Science: Changing Nursing Ideals In The United States, 1924-1955, Lisa Schuelke
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
White nurses employed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) between 1924 and 1955 were particularly attracted to scientific methods of nursing practice and medical research. The rising emphasis on science in early twentieth-century America shaped the ways that nurses carried out procedures and responded to demanding jobs. Science, however, also represented excitement, a journey into a new world, and an opportunity to challenge old ideas about nurses’ place on the medical ladder. As new women, they were less likely to accept male physicians’ notions of superiority, and they demonstrated this by pushing the boundaries between nursing practice and physicians’ …
Newsworthy: Implications Of Gender And Class In The January 12, 1888, Blizzard, Heather Stauffer
Newsworthy: Implications Of Gender And Class In The January 12, 1888, Blizzard, Heather Stauffer
James A. Rawley Graduate Conference in the Humanities
In January of 1888, the residents of Nebraska, Dakota Territory, Montana, Kansas, Wyoming, and even Iowa, Minnesota, and Texas were faced with a snowstorm unlike any they had seen before. Striking the majority of the region at the time school was dismissed, many students and teachers were caught long distances from home as the temperature dropped well below zero and visibility diminished. Striking the majority of the region at the time school was dismissed, it has become known as The Schoolchildren’s Blizzard. The disaster was forever ingrained in the minds of those who lived through it. By exploring different perspectives, …