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Full-Text Articles in History
The Mass Lynching Of Italians In 1891 New Orleans: Marking Italians As Racially "Dago", Nicholas Borkowski , '14
The Mass Lynching Of Italians In 1891 New Orleans: Marking Italians As Racially "Dago", Nicholas Borkowski , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper contextualizes the 1891 mass lynching of Italians in New Orleans as a moment in which Italians in New Orleans are marked as racially “Dago.” This paper draws from historical scholarship on race and nativism to explore how the lynching manifested racial, and to a smaller degree nativist, prejudice towards Italians from everyday mindsets in New Orleans at the time.
Knowing Nothing: Labor, Nativism, And Class Divisions In Turn-Of-The Century Pittsburgh, Jay Kober , '14
Knowing Nothing: Labor, Nativism, And Class Divisions In Turn-Of-The Century Pittsburgh, Jay Kober , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper examines the labor movement in Pittsburgh between the years 1892-1919. The labor movement at the turn of the century met new challenges as a new wave of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe flooded the industrial sector. Organization was difficult due to class division, nativist depictions of immigrants, and management’s concerted effort to keep labor disorganized. These factors coupled with the extensive reach of management’s influence helped prevent any significant gains for organized labor.
Critical Politics In A Neoliberal Institution: Gay And Lesbian Organizing At Swarthmore College, 1988-1993, Ali Roseberry-Polier , '14
Critical Politics In A Neoliberal Institution: Gay And Lesbian Organizing At Swarthmore College, 1988-1993, Ali Roseberry-Polier , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper studies gay and lesbian organizing at Swarthmore as part of national trends of neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and queer politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Students in this period achieved numerous concrete gains and institutional resources, particularly the establishment of an annual gay and lesbian studies conference and the Intercultural Center. In the process, they entered into new coalitions with each other, changing the way that students conceptualized identity and engaged with the school. Change was limited due to Swarthmore's corporate priorities and the challenges of achieving cultural transformation, but the process of organizing marked a valuable way …
Detroit, Theory, Practice: The League Of Revolutionary Black Workers And Black Power At The Point Of Production, 1967-1971, Kate Aronoff , '14
Detroit, Theory, Practice: The League Of Revolutionary Black Workers And Black Power At The Point Of Production, 1967-1971, Kate Aronoff , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper examines the work of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as it developed out of the Detroit Rebellion of 1967, the city’s prosperous auto industry, the labor movement and the Black Freedom struggle. Heavily influenced by personal experiences in the civil rights and Black Power movements as well as the work of James and Grace Lee Boggs, the League’s leadership cadre created an organizing program unique from that of the Black Panther Party that can provide contemporary activists with an example of intersectional mass movement building informed by a careful attention to conditions and strategy.
The Space Between "Justice" And "Expediency" In Woman’S Suffrage Speech, 1870-1920, Heather Lane , '14
The Space Between "Justice" And "Expediency" In Woman’S Suffrage Speech, 1870-1920, Heather Lane , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper explores the rhetoric of the woman suffrage movement from a historical perspective. It maintains that suffragists were making arguments about justice and rights much more often—and for longer--than previous historians believed, and that such arguments appear to have been relatively useful in arguing for suffrage. It focuses on the late 19th through the very early 20th century, a period in which previous historians have claimed the “justice” argument was growing thin.
In Radical Defense Of Themselves: Women Prison Organizing In The 1975 Raleigh Revolt, Andrea Jácome , '14
In Radical Defense Of Themselves: Women Prison Organizing In The 1975 Raleigh Revolt, Andrea Jácome , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
As an intervention in the limited, male-centric historiography of prisoner organizing in the 1970s, this paper focuses on a weeklong revolt in the North Carolina Correctional Center for Women in 1975 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Developing out of the legacy of North Carolina’s homegrown tradition of Black armed resistance throughout the rise and wane of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the women of the Raleigh Revolt challenged the respectability politics of earlier, dominant forms of Black women’s activism. The women inmates at NCCCW understood and articulated the modern day emergence of mass incarceration as a form of systemic …
The Evolution Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In American Cinema And Culture, Patrick Hackeling , '14
The Evolution Of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder In American Cinema And Culture, Patrick Hackeling , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper traces the emergence and progression of cultural representations of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the United States from 1976-1988, as well as their impact on the present day. Due to the ambiguities left behind by the Vietnam War, American cinema became both a coping and exploratory vehicle for the population in the years that followed. Artistic and allegorical at first, the medium quickly shifted to commercially and patriotically driven with the election of President Reagan in 1981. As a result, this history was ostensibly rewritten. However, today, society has matured to a degree where it can look …
Seward Collins As Provocateur: A New View On Collins’S Fascism And The American Review, Tyler Becker , '14
Seward Collins As Provocateur: A New View On Collins’S Fascism And The American Review, Tyler Becker , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper explores a new view of Seward Collins, the publisher of the 1930s journal known as the American Review—as a provocateur par excellence. Normally labeled a “fascist” in historical literature, this paper tries to understand the nuances behind this position. Collins’s supposed fascism presents a historical and epistemological problem for historians, and the paper proposes changing Collins’s label to that of provocateur.
Native American Military Participation In World War 1: What Kind Of Victory?, Abigail R. Lipnick , '14
Native American Military Participation In World War 1: What Kind Of Victory?, Abigail R. Lipnick , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper questions the supposed linkage between Native Americans’ military service in World War 1 (1914-1918) and the Native American Citizenship Act of 1924 that granted citizenship to the remaining 125,000 noncitizen Native Americans living within the territorial limits of the United States. Historians tend to cast the Citizenship Act as a ‘boon,’ a legislative move that advanced Native Americans’ social and political rights and rewarded them for their courageous acts on the battlefield. Within the Native American context, however, citizenship was fraught with far more complex and conflicted meanings than the secondary literature often suggests. Despite Native Americans’ outward …
The Pennsylvania County Fair: A Snapshot Of America At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Sarah Duda , '14
The Pennsylvania County Fair: A Snapshot Of America At The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Sarah Duda , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper explores the controversial popularity of horse races at Pennsylvania agricultural fairs at the turn of the twentieth century. While the excitement of horse races and the gambling that surrounded them attracted large crowds to fairs, agriculturists were angered by their detraction from agricultural exhibits and moralists mortified by the gambling.
Immigration, Nationality, And Xenophobia In Late-19th Century Marseilles, Patrick Mcneill , '14
Immigration, Nationality, And Xenophobia In Late-19th Century Marseilles, Patrick Mcneill , '14
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper investigates the “Vêpres Marseillaises,” a June 1881 anti-Italian riot in Marseilles, in order to discuss the intersection of working class nationalism, immigration, and French political and social discourses. The event is more than a simple manifestation of xenophobic nationalism; it is both a moment that illustrates the unique place of Marseilles as well as the inaugural expression of a discourse that sought to bring the working class under the French republican banner.
Into A Great Nation: Mennonites And Nationalism In Imperial Germany, 1871-1900, Benjamin W. Goossen , '13
Into A Great Nation: Mennonites And Nationalism In Imperial Germany, 1871-1900, Benjamin W. Goossen , '13
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
Historians of the early Kaiserreich have often linked the rise of modern nationalism to the assimilation of minority groups into the new German nation state. In the case of Mennonites, the assimilation narrative tells only half the story. German nationalism served not only to Germanize many Mennonites living in the Empire; it also spurred the parallel formation of a transnational Mennonite consciousness akin to the development of Jewish Zionism. Using a wide variety of sources ranging from newspapers and letters to children’s stories and congregational address books, this thesis tracks Mennonites’ changing attitudes toward ethnicity, geography, education, historiography, and festival …
This Little City': Constructed Colonialism At The 1922 Colonial Exposition Of Marseille, Allison Ranshous , '13
This Little City': Constructed Colonialism At The 1922 Colonial Exposition Of Marseille, Allison Ranshous , '13
Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards
This paper explores the intersection of race and French colonial policy at the 1922 National Colonial Exposition of Marseille, which occurred in the midst of Europe's "exposition fever," during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I posit that the Exposition introduced the paradox of formal, constructed colonial exhibits that were posed against the backdrop of a thriving French city reaping the economic benefits of its colonial exploitation. I also address the question of whether or not native colonial workers, artists, and artisans could be considered truly "modern" if they were continually provincialized and racialized by French colonialists during the …