History Commons^™

"In The Footsteps Of Hercules": The Influence Of Classical Antiquity On Eighteenth-Century Militaries, Scott Madere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project examines the pervasive influence of ancient Roman and Greek figures, historical events, literature, and military methods on the leaders and practitioners of eighteenth-century warfare. Rulers, generals, military theorists, and officers frequently consulted classical histories and literature for solutions to the common military problems of the period – tactical, operational, and strategic – showing remarkable faith in ancient military methods despite their growing dependence on gunpowder weaponry and related technologies. This dissertation examines why this was the case and concludes that classical antiquity not only maintained the credibility of its wisdom in the context of modern warfare, but also …

Death, Dreaming, And Diaspora: Achieving Orientation Through Afro-Spirituality, Liz Johnston, Jaime Elizabeth Johnston

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Enslavement, colonization, and the systems that uphold racial injustice were and still are a series of new, unfathomable, and challenging experiences that prompt individuals within the diaspora to seek orientation. How does a human cope with centuries of attempts at the systematic destruction of their humanity, culture, and identity? How can they reclaim that identity, especially when so much of it seems lost? I address these questions by utilizing texts from the expansive body of work regarding ethnographic-historical-religious studies on Afro-spiritual practices to better analyze instances in literature in the ongoing practice of diasporic orientation. In this project, I argue …

Sportsman's Paradox: Conservationism And Social Progress In Modern Louisiana, Jacob T. Gautreaux

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, sportsmen increasingly identified Louisiana as a destined paradise due to the abundant flora and fauna. Confirmed in the legendary visits of Theodore Roosevelt in the early 1900s, the conception soon served a dual purpose as individuals like the Tabasco Sauce patriarch, E. A. McIlhenny, coopted the visualization as a lure for business investment into the nascent industrial interests within the coastal region of the state. However, it should be noted that in the 1930s and beyond, cultural conservationists like McIlhenny and Caroline Dormon preserved elements of under-documented cultures throughout the state, although usually …

Privilege, Power, And Patronage: Examining The Lives And Afterlives Of Three Tudor Noblewomen, Caroline Elizabeth Armbruster

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses the lives of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk; Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset; and Jane Guildford, Duchess of Northumberland to examine various aspects of their experiences as noblewomen and as members of privileged family groups. By focusing on these three women, whose lives and careers spanned eight decades, this dissertation demonstrates the centrality of such women to Tudor politics. Catherine, Anne, and Jane were born into powerful, landowning families. Their successful marriages allowed them to climb the ranks of the Tudor aristocracy and paved the way for their entry into the Tudor political arena. They served as …

World War Ii, Displacement, And The Making Of The Postwar Ukrainian Diaspora, 1939-1951, Jennifer Lauren Popowycz

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

As a result, in an effort to expand the literature on the Ukrainian DP experience, this dissertation will specifically examine how foreign occupation, forced labor, and displacement impacted the construction of Ukrainian cultural nationalism between 1939 and 1951. Using a variety of memoirs written by Ukrainian DPs, published primary sources, as well as archival material from the online Interview Archive of Forced Labor 1939-1945, Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the United Nations Archive, and the online Archive of Ukrainian Periodicals it will argue that cultural nationalism not only served as a common link that united Ukrainians, but also served …

Time And Tide: Sixteenth-Century Expressions Of Temporality In The Writings Of Richard Hakluyt, Jennifer Hope Tellman

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Richard Hakluyt the Younger (c. 1553-1616) was the most famous English promoter of overseas expansion of his age and in English history. His most renowned publication, Principal Navigations (1598-1600), a massive three-volume series, detailed English exploration, expansion, and trade history. With a focus on inciting the English to act in order to achieve their Providential Empire, Hakluyt’s works carry in them the expressions of time and temporality permeating the late-1500s. In a period of history where new learning, discoveries, and technologies began to transform life, time was called into question. Concerns about how the perception and acceleration of time and …

Lewd And Lascivious: French Quarter Clean-Up Campaigns By Business And Civic Organizations In 1950s New Orleans, Fernando Rodriguez

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

On January 1, 1950 Nashville tourist Robert Dunn died after a long night of drinking on Bourbon St. An investigation ruled the death a homicide. That determination marked the beginning of a decade-long effort by prominent New Orleans residents, civic, and business organizations to pressure Mayor deLesseps S. Morrison and the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) to rid the French Quarter of those deemed “undesirable.” Reformers aimed to make the French Quarter friendly for residents, tourists and businessmen who attended conventions. Throughout the 1950s, three committees were created that were comprised of local residents and businessmen to investigate the issues …

The Arena Players, Inc.: The Oldest Continuously Operating African American Community Theatre In The United States, Alexis Michelle Skinner

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Hay (1994) gave the Arena Players the moniker, “the oldest continuously operating African American community theatre company” in the U.S. But, if Black Theatre is increasingly found in mainstream venues in regional theatre and Broadway while Black Drama is relegated to syllabi, where is the living practice of African American, or black, community theatre? And what guarantees its survival? Craig (1980) and Fraden (1994) give voice to black critics, like Locke (1925), in co-creating objectives for black theatre during the FTP which took stage as the Negro Little Theatre continued. Hill & Hatch (2003) solidify the geographical and ideological connections …

Garden Of Ruins: Military Occupation And State Power In Civil War Louisiana, Johnathan Matthew Ward

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Using Civil War Louisiana as its focus, I argue that military occupation and expansive state power during the US Civil War served the primary mechanisms by which national states fought the war, stabilized order, and shaped a postwar nation. While many histories of the war separate frontline combat from the domestic home front and distinguish between the policy decisions of high politics and everyday decisions on the ground, this dissertation connects the political decisions of war to the daily acts of governance and resistance in occupied Louisiana. Union occupation officials and Confederate state authorities made contingent decisions throughout the war …

Free People Of Color In West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, Evelyn Lenora Wilson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

“Free People of Color in West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana” documents the presence, land ownership, business development, and personal relationships of free people of color in a rural Louisiana parish. Beginning with how free people of color came to be in the parish, it shows an absence of segregation by skin color in home ownership, business relationships, and friendships. Free people of color found themselves accepted in a community that valued their talents and skills and disregarded the color of their skin.

Free people of color bought and sold homes in whatever part of the parish suited them. Most lived surrounded …

Protestant Experience And Continuity Of Political Thought In Early America, 1630-1789, Stephen Michael Wolfe

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The debate on the continuity of American political thought from the 17^th century Puritan settlements to the 18^th century American founding assumes a bipolar spectrum, ranging from strong continuity to strong discontinuity. The degree that scholars recognize distinctively Christian, theological, or Protestant ideas operating in the founding era determines where they are placed on the spectrum. The most popular view today is the “amalgam” thesis, which is a moderate view, resulting from decades of debate. Amalgam theorists argue that the founders' political theory relied on a variety of sources, from classical to Protestant. The current debate centers on …

Reshaping An Earthly Paradise: Land Enclosure And Bavarian State Centralization (1779-1835), Gregory Devoe Tomlinson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Abstract

The Electoral state of Bavaria was reformed through a comprehensive project of land-based allodification (the creation of a distinction between privileged titles and property designations) through the process of “redemption” beginning in 1799. This process was previously impeded by the strength of landholding estates that included notables and the Catholic Church. In addition, Electoral Bavarian leaders lacked centralized control. Civil servants, known as cameralists, mediated political and economic interactions between these estates. The economy was based on subsistence and the productive capacity of Gutsherrschaft, a manorial system based on regional jurisdiction and rent collection by notables who largely did …

Between The Judean Desert And Gaza: Asceticism And The Monastic Communities Of Palestine In The Sixth Century, Austin Mccray

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation focuses on the religious culture of Christian monasticism in sixth-century Palestine. Rather than see the monastic communities of the Judean Desert, just to the east of Jerusalem, and those around Gaza as two independent monastic regions, as much scholarship has done, the dissertation focuses on the common threads that can be seen in the monastic teachings and idealized ascetic practices in the literature of the area. This dissertation reveals ways to redefine the boundaries between the monastic communities of Palestine during the sixth century as well as emphasizes the continuities between the monks of the Judean Desert and …

James I: Monarchial Representation And English Identity, Elizabeth Maria Taylor

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This work unpacks James’s representational performance and the issues he faced in assimilating himself into English identity during him time on the English throne. He implemented tropes he previously utilized in Scotland, presenting himself as Solomon, David, Constantine, a philosopher-king, and Rex Pacificus. James relied upon print for his public representation, he was an avid writer and seems to have thought of himself as something of a theologian, for he frequently commented upon religious doctrine and paid acute attention to sermons. This dissertation explores his entrance to England, the union debates, the Gunpowder Plot and its remembrance, James’s religious …

Eleanor Lansing Dulles And The Fate Of Berlin: 1953-1989, Chad Everett Shelley

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

At the end of the Second World War, Berliners lived in a war-ravaged city and faced occupation under Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States. The occupation of Berlin and Germany became a competition between capitalism and communism. East Germany became a communist nation while West Germany recovered under the supervision of capitalist nations. In the 1950s West Berlin found a new ally in the director of the Berlin Desk at United States Department of State, Eleanor Lansing Dulles.

Eleanor Dulles came from a privileged family who participated in American diplomacy at the end of the nineteenth …

Women Of The Edward J. Gay Family As Textile And Dress Consumers In Louisiana, 1849-1899, Lindsay Danielle Reaves

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Economic, social, and cultural historians have studied and analyzed consumption behaviors throughout the 20^th century and into the 21^st century. Decorative household textiles and dress items are two product categories that follow the consumption process. American consumption behaviors during the introduction of mass-produced textiles and dress items throughout the 19^th century have not been well documented.

The purpose of this research is to expand the knowledge of Southern planter-class women’s consumer behavior in relation to decorative household textiles and dress items. Arnould and Thompson’s (2005) Consumer Culture Theory and Belk’s (1988) research into possessions and the extended …

Will To Remember: Counter-Archives In The Work Of Alvarez, Danticat, And Díaz, Megan Elizabeth Feifer

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues the essays, fiction, non-fiction, and non-profit work of authors Julia Alvarez, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Díaz produce counter-narratives that when assembled, create a counter-archive of the Rafael Leonidas Trujillo dictatorship and its lasting effects. To support this claim, I analyze the various genres and medias they employ throughout the late 20^thand early 21^st centuries as redressing not only the “official” state history of the dictatorship, but also the overarching construction of history with a capital “H”. Through a close reading of form and the thematic concerns present in their work, I demonstrate how they …

Jews And The Sources Of Religious Freedom In Early Pennsylvania, Jonathon Derek Awtrey

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Historians’ traditional narrative regarding religious freedom in the colonial period and early republic focuses on Protestants and sometimes Catholics to the exclusion of other religious groups; the literature also emphasizes the legal dimensions of freedom at the expense of its cultural manifestations. This study, conversely, demonstrates that Jews, the only white non-Christian minority group in early Pennsylvania, experienced freedom far differently than its legality can adequately explain. Jews, moreover, reshaped religious freedom to include religious groups beyond Protestant Christians alone. But such grassroots transformations were neither quick nor easy. Like most of the Anglo-American world, William Penn’s “Holy Experiment” excluded …

Precarious Democracy: "It Can't Happen Here" As The Federal Theatre's Site Of Mass Resistance, Macy Donyce Jones

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The scholarly consensus of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP) is that it was a massive undertaking set to employ theatre professionals during the Great Depression. That undertaking resulted in vibrant, relevant theatre that helped to build a theatre audience across the nation. Outside of the overview-style scholarship, specialized studies have delved into the FTP as a community-building enterprise, a site of racial/ethnic study, and an essential new play creator.

My scholarship fills a hole that previous FTP scholarship has left open. The FTP was a political machine engaged in producing pro-American propaganda. That aspect of production has been largely left …

Viking Nobility In Anglo-Saxon England: The Expansion Of Royal Authority Through The Use Of Scandinavian Accommodation And Integration, Lauren Marie Doughty

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project seeks to understand the transformative period in Anglo-Saxon England between the ninth to eleventh centuries. During these centuries, Anglo-Saxon kings extended their royal power through the manipulation of Scandinavian ethnicity by using the mechanisms of accommodation, integration and appeasement as well as the incorporation of female royal power. Anglo-Saxon kings such as Alfred the Great, Æthelræd the Unræd, and Cnut were challenged by various hindrances from expressing their full royal authority, including the rise of an independent nobility, economic difficulties and invasions. Despite intrinsic limitations on their rule, kings such as Alfred, Æthelræd and Cnut sought to expand …

Televising The American Nightmare: The Twilight Zone And Postwar Social Criticism, David Brokaw

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone (1959-1964) emerged during a period of American history which has since become something of myth, legend, and lore. Popularly portrayed as a kind of golden age when middle class aspirations were within reach, suburban housing affordable, and the nuclear family perfectly contented, postwar America was more accurately characterized by profound cognitive dissonances. At a time when the Cold War was understood to be first and foremost a battle of ideas, psychological marketing promoted many different facets of the American Dream. While market researchers plumbed the depths of American minds and explored their subconscious desires and insecurities …

Bonaparte's Dream: Napoleon And The Rhetoric Of American Expansion, 1800-1850, Mark Ehlers

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1800 and 1850, the United States built a continental empire that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. As scholars have come to realize over the past three decades, this expansion was not a peaceful movement of American settlers into virgin wilderness. Instead, it involved the conquest and subjugation of diverse peoples in Louisiana, Florida and the northern provinces of Mexico, and forced the United States to interact aggressively with the European empires of Great Britain, France, Spain, and eventually Mexico. My work helps to explain how Americans in the early republic reconciled this militant expansion with …

An Elusive Peace: The Foreign Policy Challenges Of The Clinton Administration In A Post-Cold War World, Jennifer Perrett Galiouras

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT In modern US history, the 1990s are often regarded as “The Decade of Peace and Prosperity.” Though the liberalization of markets and a technology boom fueled American prosperity, expectations of post-Cold War peace remained elusive. The purpose of this study is to observe how in the moment when the US became the world’s superpower, it also began to retreat from a position of active leadership. Elected in 1992, President Bill Clinton looked towards the United Nations as the answer to keeping peace around the globe. His administration’s policies of democratic enlargement and aggressive multilateralism aimed to combine the spread …

A Vast Injustice: The Public Debate And Legislative Battle Over Compulsory Eugenic Sterilization In Louisiana, 1924 -- 1932, Adelaide Hair Barr

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

From 1924 to 1932, Louisiana lawmakers considered five bills that would have granted superintendents of state institutions and some private hospitals the authority to forcibly sterilize their patients. Based on similar legislation passed in thirty-six other states, the bills cited eugenics as evidence that stripping these patients of their ability to reproduce would prevent the conditions such as feeblemindedness from passing on to the next generation. Although none of the bills passed both houses of the Louisiana legislature, a couple of them came dangerously close to becoming law. The debate among legislators, professionals, and social reformers provides a greater understanding …

Policies Of Loss: Coastal Erosion And The Struggle To Save Louisiana's Wetlands, Rebecca B. Costa

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1930s, Louisiana has lost approximately 1,800 square miles of land due to the subsidence of the state’s coastal wetlands. By the early 1970s, public officials and private citizens were starting to become aware of the crisis on the coast, and a broad agreement developed among state and federal representatives that action was needed to address the problem. Over the course of nearly forty years, policymakers in Louisiana and Washington, D.C., implemented a series of laws and regulations meant to protect vulnerable ecosystems like the state’s wetlands. In the 1980s, officials also started crafting policies to help restore Louisiana’s …

Buying In And Selling Out: African-American Ownership Of Record Labels In The Twentieth Century, Stuart Lucas Tully

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout the twentieth century, African-American owned record labels seemingly served as embodiments of entrepreneurialism’s capacity to generate social uplift for the race as well as wealth. However, an examination of Black Swan Records, Motown, and Def Jam Records, demonstrates how this assertion is undermined by the actions of their owners. Harry Pace founded Black Swan Records in 1921 not only to showcase black artists, but also prove the African-American audience was capable of appreciating classical music and other high culture. However, faced with financial pressures, Pace expanded the genres recorded on Black Swan to include jazz and other genres deemed …

Challenging Roman Domination: The End Of Hellenistic Rule And The Rise Of The Parthian State From The Third To The First Centuries Bce, Nikolaus Leo Overtoom

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the influences of systemic pressures and spatial perspectives on state decision-making through a multi-layered study of the rise of the Parthian state within the Hellenistic Middle East (3rd-2nd centuries BCE) and of the military conflicts within the Hellenistic Near East (1st century BCE) in two parts. By examining domestic policy and international relations in this period through this theoretical and methodological approach, this study clarifies the process by which the Parthians and Romans became the two remaining powers of the ancient world and eventual rivals. It uses two major research strategies: (1) a reevaluation of the available …

Wrestling With Neptune: The Political Consequences Of The Military Inundations During The Dutch Revolt, Robert Tiegs

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Over the course of several centuries during the High and Late Middle Ages the people of Holland developed a vast water-management infrastructure to protect themselves against flooding. Enormous sections of the province lay at or below sea-level, so it was only through constant diligence that they kept their lands dry. They found that the best way to maintain these flood defenses was through cooperation and consensus forming at the local and regional level. Those who would be affected an inundation were given a chance to participate in the decision-making process about how to prevent floods from occurring. These environmental influences …

White Manhood In Louisiana During Reconstruction, 1865-1877, Arthur Wendel Stout

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Economic, political, and social landscapes changed for white men in Louisiana after the Civil War. Suffering displacement, business interruption, property confiscation, and lower social and political standing vis-à-vis the former slaves, white men’s standing in every realm seemed diminished, including their core identity as men. It was important to them and to their families for white men to regain a sense of competence as men. Using letters, diaries, and court cases involving white people with strong connections to Louisiana during the Reconstruction era, this dissertation analyzes the gendered problems that white men and their families sought to resolve. Newspaper articles, …

Empire Of Faith: Toleration, Confessionalism And The Politics Of Religious Pluralism In The Habsburg Empire, 1792-1867, Scott Michael Berg

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

The issues of religious toleration and confessionalism are complex, with deep roots and unresolved, enduring legacies. This project takes a look on one sustained attempt to tackle this problem by looking at the Habsburg Empire after the death of Joseph II (r. 1780-1790), whose far-reaching reforms established extensive state control over the Catholic Church and introduced toleration for Protestants, Orthodox Christians and, in a more limited way, to Jews. Yet ultimately, religious toleration was one of the many factors that caused Joseph’s reign to end in failure. In addition, the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars created conditions that promoted confessionalism, …