History Commons^™

Angel Babies Ascending To Heaven A Family Saga Of Death Across Cultures, Heidi Riboldi

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a microhistory focused on infant death and burial practices in Spain and Argentina at the turn of the twentieth century. The study uses primary sources from biographical journal pages, vital records, and notarial documents. The biographical journal pages are eleven loose pages written by Pablo Montaña that provide information about his family's births, marriages, and deaths, for four generations. Vital records for birth, marriage, and death events were found in the local parish and municipal archives in Cañizo, Spain, and the Catholic Diocese Archive in Zamora, Spain, Archivo Histórico Diocesano de Zamora. Notarial records like wills …

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 …

“Women Thus Educated”: Transnational Influences On Women’S Arguments For Female Education In Seventeenth-Century England, Miranda Jessop

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis explores the intellectual history of proto-feminist thought in early modern England and seeks to better understand the transnational elements of and influences on proto-feminist theorists’ arguments in favor of women’s education in the late seventeenth century. A close reading of Bathsua Makin and Anna Maria Van Schurman’s essays in relation to one another, and within their social and historical context, reveals the importance of ideas of religion and social order, especially class, in understanding and justifying women’s education. The metaphysical foundation of Makin’s arguments in favor of women’s education is that the true nature of women, including their …

Forgetting The Mine Wars: Erasing Insurrection In West Virginia History, Samuel Heywood

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the concerted effort in the West Virginia school system to forget a massive labor movement in the early 20^th century. Business leaders and government leaders turned to the classroom to try and control the memory of future generations to ensure a positive perception of the coal industry and avoid any more violent confrontations. After a brief summary of the Mine Wars for context, this thesis uses textbooks to analyze how the authors omitted the conflict and instead used patriotic propaganda to create loyal citizens. Although the Mine Wars have since been included in state history textbooks, …

Midwifery And Society: A Comparative Analysis Of The Uk And Ussr From 1920-1950, Melissa Scott

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this project is to analyze the changes made in midwifery policy and practices in the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom from 1920-1950. The changes made were essentially the following in both countries: required state certification, standardization of pay and schooling, and combating tradition in rural areas. Although they made similar changes, their political ideology and rhetoric was significantly different from one another. The rhetoric used in the Soviet Union in discussing midwifery policies and responsibilities was nationalistic while the rhetoric used in the United Kingdom was much more functionalistic. There were also additional political and societal …

“‘The Paternal Care Of A Patriot Legislature’: Legislative Instructions, Rhetorics Of Representation, And The Contested Boundaries Of The Political Nation In Revolutionary War-Era Ireland, 1779-1785”, Ian Mclaughlin

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper revisits a long-neglected controversy over the use of legislative instructions during the Irish Free Trade crisis and explores its impact on the debate over Parliamentary reform in the first years of Grattan’s Parliament. I argue that the episode exposed significant tension between the Parliamentary and popular wings of the Patriot movement—one that most accounts of this era fail to note—while also leading to a major rethinking of traditional notions of representation. Importantly, Irish constituents went beyond defending their simple right to author instructions (as their American and English counterparts had done before), instead advancing them as a novel …

Legal Supremacy: The Translation Between Tsarist And Communist Constitutions And Criminal Codes, Jennifer Kimball

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis examines the constitutions and criminal codes which appeared at the end of the Tsarist regime of Nicholas II and the beginning of the new regime of the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. It contrasts the constitutions and criminal codes of each regime to demonstrate the changes between state ideologies and laws, but also highlight the similarities between the two in terms of their concerns for the state. It shows that despite the changes that occurred in the written law, each regime was primarily concerned with establishing the supremacy of the ruling government.

Public Art And Alberta's Regionalism, Amanda Buessecker

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis is a case study of two contemporary, regionalist public artworks in Alberta: Untitled, by Fraser McGurk, and Alberta Bound Panorama, by Jason Carter. The province’s economic history is outlined as an important background factor to understanding contemporary public artworks. The two artists use symbols such as the train, compass, and grain elevator to connect a contemporary audience with Alberta’s past, reminding today’s residents of the province’s tradition of success. Even in locations that target “tourists,” these paintings use local symbols to emphasize a message of prosperity and unity to the local people of Alberta.