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Full-Text Articles in History
Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi
Ways We Remember: Rethinking Symbols Of Italian American History And Imagining Alternative Narratives, Kathryn N. Anastasi
American Studies Honors Projects
My project re-examines dominant historical narratives of Christopher Columbus and assimilation of southern Italian immigrants to the United States. Arguing that such narratives partly result from historic anxiety surrounding southern Italians’ unstable whiteness, I challenge masculinist, white-washed histories by centering and contextualizing a history of Italian immigrant garment worker and labor leader Angela Bambace (1898-1975). By weaving my own exploration of my Italian immigrant ancestors’ pasts throughout, I ultimately encourage other white descendants of European immigrants to explore their histories in a critical and loving way that "resurrects" histories without sanctifying historical figures or their white descendants to racial innocence.
"Too Young To Fall Asleep Forever": Great War Commemoration And National Identity In Interwar England And Germany, Angela Clem
"Too Young To Fall Asleep Forever": Great War Commemoration And National Identity In Interwar England And Germany, Angela Clem
History Honors Projects
This thesis compares English and German commemorative practices after the Great War. In England, commemoration strengthened national identity by giving value to communal suffering and creating an almost-mythical figure in the Unknown Warrior, an anonymous soldier buried in Westminster Abbey. In contrast, German commemoration met with political instability, hyperinflation, and the infamous “war guilt clause” of the Versailles Treaty, which rejected a national mode of commemoration. Despite these differences, both countries constructed a new “language of loss” physically (through memorials) and metaphorically (through war literature), forever shaping their respective national identities and collective memories.