History Commons^™

Peculiar Students Of A Peculiar Institution: A Historical Analysis Of Racial Minority Students And Race Relations At Brigham Young University As Presented In The Banyan From 1911-1985, Grace Ann Soelberg

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the yearbook for Brigham Young University which ran from 1911-1985. It analyzes the ways in which white students not only asserted and defended their whiteness, but how they superimposed narratives and identities upon other groups. Black students were largely ignored and their inclusion depended upon the schools need to defend itself against accusations of racism and for white students to remain in racial innocence. White students also exhibited various anti-Black behaviors in an attempt to distance themselves from blackness to attain whiteness. Native American students were homogenized and forced to fit into the white students and administrations …

Musical “Conquest”: The Spanish Use Of Music In The Spiritual Conquest Of The Nahua Peoples Of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, John Richardson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Historians have grown more interested in Spanish Conquest and colonialism in the last century. While earlier historians saw the conquest through a more euro-centric lens, recent historians have tried to take a more nuanced approach to understanding the conquest. Within this research, historians are questioning traditional narratives of the "spiritual conquest," or the conversion of native peoples to Christianity. Scholars have shown that "conquest" is not the best term for this process, as there was much more give and take at play.

My research seeks to strengthen this narrative of religious accommodation through the lens of music. The transmission of …

Solidarity And Solitude: Disrupted Memories Of Aids In The Hemophilia Community, William Hubbert

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper uses subaltern accounts of the hemophilia community's experiences with AIDS to more fully understand the extent, causes, and aftereffects of HIV in the blood supply. It argues that these accounts have been partially hidden by actors who would prefer to obfuscate their involvement in the creation and distribution of contaminated blood products, and uses that deliberate denial of the past as a starting point to consider the significance and ongoing legacy of the tainted factor crisis.

The Enslaved People And The Tylers Too: Why It Is Imperative To Discuss Slavery In Public History, Meredith Jackson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper focuses on the intersection of slavery and public history in the present day, specifically researching how the Tyler family perpetuated slavery and the Lost Cause and the enslaved people at Sherwood Forest Plantation as a microhistory.

Revisiting British Zionism In The Early 20th Century, Benjamin Marin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Long considered irrelevant and unimportant to Zionist history, British Zionists played a necessarily important role in the movement in the early 20th century leading up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration and into the 1920s. Historical narratives that have embraced a reductive view of Zionist history that championed Dr. Chaim Weizmann's prominent role during this period have largely shaped this perspective. In this paper, I examine several British Zionists such as Moses Gaster, Leopold Greenberg, Leonard Stein, Frederick Kisch, and Alfred Mond and the roles they played during this pivotal period for Zionism.

The Republic Of Happiness: James Wilson, Political Thought, And The American Revolution, Kevin Diestelow

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The moral quantity of “happiness” provides an organizing principle for understanding the political thought of James Wilson. By using happiness as a metric for understanding his thought, the Revolution can be conceptualized as an intervention in favor of human improvement. In his political thought, Wilson supported an actively empowered government which could take steps needed to support citizens’ moral and material advancement and ultimately, their happiness.

“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …

"Summer's Gone:" Rethinking The History Of The Beach Boys, 1961-1998, Grant Wong

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis rethinks the history of American rock band The Beach Boys from 1961-1998 in terms of how its members tapped into the zeitgeists of the sixties, seventies, and eighties to create successful music and branding. In its analysis, it draws upon methods of cultural history, business history, and biography in order to dispel popular myths surrounding the band and consider the meaning of its impact within United States history and American popular culture as a whole. The Beach Boys, in recording innovative music and marketing a winning brand, created a durable pop cultural institution that defined its times just …

The Female Kirk: Women's Participation In The Early Scottish Presbyterian Church, Lydia Mackey

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Presbyterianism’s founder, John Knox, wrote his infamous The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women in 1558 arguing against female monarchs. Despite early modern Presbyterianism’s restriction of women’s formal religious roles, women used often conflicting rhetoric from the pulpit to negotiate a degree of power and autonomy. Rather than only being passive members of the Presbyterian Church, women often played an active role in the development and expansion of Presbyterianism between 1550 and 1690. This thesis will demonstrate how a study of women’s interactions with the Presbyterian Church outside of the kirk sessions, namely in their …

"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …

Unmasking Murder: Reconciling The Twin Depictions Of Viscount Castlereagh, Robert Warrick

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Viscount Castlereagh is typically depicted in one of two ways. The traditional depiction is of a repressive, anti-liberal demon while the modern depiction is of a Machiavellian chess master who only adopted certain values to ensure his goal of British security. This thesis argues that the modern depiction has gone too far in removing ideology from Castlereagh's diplomacy. While he certainly desired British security, he was motivated by a fear of groups he considered to be "radical."

John Dickinson: The Development And Deployment Of A Legal Mind: 1754-1774, Sophie Rizzieri

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis argues that John Dickinson’s political thought is best described as legal-minded. I define Dickinson as broadly “legal-minded,” with his use of statute-based arguments conveyed with oratorical skill, and his articulation of constitutional principles of natural rights and balanced government. Dickinson’s work during the period from 1764 to 1774 was concerned with deploying measured arguments and constitutional principles to convince American colonists to preserve their rights against encroachments from Great Britain. Using the letters he wrote to his parents while studying law at the Middle Temple in London in the 1750s, and various public writing and speeches from the …

A Voice From The Convent: Arcangela Tarabotti In Tridentine Venice, Zoe Connell

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 1617, at the tender age of 13, Arcangela Tarabotti was forced by her family to leave their home and enter the Venetian convent of Sant’Anna. As an advocate not only of gender equality, but female superiority, Tarabotti fought on behalf of women who suffered under Venice’s patriarchal institutions that robbed them of their liberty. This study aims to examine the intersection between the time and space in which Tarabotti lived and her experiences as expressed through her writings. In this thesis, I will examine the manner in which the contents of her writings — emotions, tone, self-image, and beliefs …

"Ten Tongues And One Lie: Turco-Roman Relations C. 552-650'', Jackson Melvin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In 62 7 CE, a nomadic army exploded through the Caspian Gates and into the northernmost lands of the Sasanian Empire (in present day Dagestan and Azerbaijan). Our principal historian, Movses Dasxuranc'i (also called Movses Kagankatvac'i) calls them Khazars, and he may well be correct. 1 But they were certainly a part of the Western Turkic KJ1aganate, invading at the behest of the great TongYabghu Khagan. According to Movses, the attack was exceedingly brutal, with the Turks, in their "universal wrath," slaughtering men. women, and children "like shameless and ravenous wolves."2 This was no random attack. It was the opening …

"A Visit To Thirteen Asylums For The Insane: Pliny Earle, European Asylums And American Psychiatry", Miranda Smith

Undergraduate Honors Theses

On March 25, 1837, a recent medical school graduate boarded a ship which, unbeknownst to him, would carry him into his future career. The ship was the Virginian, a sailing-vessel, traveling across the Atlantic Ocean from New Yark to Liverpool.1 The graduate was Pliny Earle, a twenty-seven year old Quaker from rural Massachusetts, who would become one of the most well-known and well-respected psychiatrists of the nineteenth century, as well as a prolific writer on the subject.

Mothers, Morals, And Godly Motivations: Conservative Women’S Activism From Anticommunism To The New Christian Right, Kaitlyn C. Phillips

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The modern conservative movement cannot be understood without investigating women’s activism. Women’s political participation sustained the transformation of the Republican party from an emphasis on economic issues to a focus on social issues, especially throughout the mid-late twentieth century. One key point of transformation was in the 1950’s, when Communism posed a very serious danger. Conservatives claimed that in Communist countries, women gave their children to government funded programs and went to work.1 This policy took women away from their assigned roles as wives and mothers. Another important turning point was in the 1960’s, when the United States saw sweeping …

Robert The Bruce Fights For Scottish Independence Once Again: The Influence Of Nationalism And Myth In Scotland's Modern Pursuit Of Independence, Claire Hintz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306-1329, led the Scottish to victory in the Wars of Independence against England. Today, the fight for Scottish Independence is alive and being led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) as they push for a second independence referendum. The first, in 2014, failed with 45% of Scots voting YES and 55% voting NO. Since Brexit, however, support for Scottish independence has consistently risen; polls in 2020 showed sustained majority support for Scottish independence for the first time in recent Scottish history. Nationalism, or the constructed ideology that is politically used to uphold a …

Imagining A New Nation: Patriotism And National Identity In The Writing Of Late-18th Century American Women, Aysia S. Brenner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Benedict Anderson defined the nation as “an imagined political community” that is “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The research for this paper began with a desire to know how American women in the time leading up to, during, and immediately after the American Revolution and War of Independence did or did not imagine themselves as members of the newly emerging political community eventually known as the United States of America. As tensions between the Colonies and Great Britain increased, as tea was dumped in Boston harbor, and as independence was declared in 1776, how did women make sense …