History Commons^™

I Pledge Allegiance: Language, Information, And How The American Far-Right Forms Its Identity, Joshua Marvine

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

This study examines how the modern “alt-right” converged with mainstream Conservative politics following the election of Donald Trump. It explores how in the 21st Century, as in the past, right-wing social movements use language to prompt violence from their adherents. While far-right information networks have existed for decades, this study explores the ways in which modern networks allow for a greater convergence between disparate movements on the right, creating a more unified information web and understanding of reality. This convergence contributes to extremist ideas gaining larger and more mainstream platforms, granting them a global reach and significant influence in domestic …

Media Erasure: A 1904 Lynching In St. Charles, Arkansas, Mary Hennigan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As Americans grew increasingly interested in historic racial violence following the Black Lives Matter movement in 2021, select news publications chose to publish apologetic editorials and articles that addressed their failure of inclusive reporting for the last century (Lancaster, 2021; Fannin, 2020). In the theme of acknowledging past mistakes, the Printing Hate project emerged to investigate the power white-owned papers had in influencing lynching incidents in the county (Capital News Service, 2021). The present study examines one Arkansas lynching in 1904 St. Charles. The incident includes the death of 13 Black men. Findings from a content analysis of 70 original …

A Song Of The Bluff: The Phoenix Of Pine Bluff Arkansas - Documentary, Neba Evans

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Pine Bluff, Arkansas has long grappled with a reputation as a town riddled with crime and violence. Once a thriving agricultural center of the state, Arkansas residents tend to score the town’s successes as relics of the past. Economic decline, negative migration systems like white flight and brain drain, and racial disparities ties to the city’s roots has continued to take its toll on the city. Nonetheless, the community of Pine Bluff knows excellence has and continues to prosper there. A Song of the Bluff is a 15-minute documentary that seeks to flip the negative narrative by confronting these stereotypes …

The Passion Of Ken Williams: The Double Life Of A Mayor, The Newspaper That Brought Him Down, And The Story Of Journalism In America, Michael Adkison

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In November 2007, a team of reporters from the Benton County Daily Record published an expose revealing that Ken Williams, the mayor of Centerton, Arkansas, had been living a double life. In his former life as Don LaRose, he was a preacher in the Northeast, who one day vanished without a trace. His wild saga includes Satanists, truth serums, and a supposed murder. The Benton County Daily Record confronted the former reverend several times before he finally confessed to his double life. The next morning, he resigned as mayor, saying that the decisions he made were for the protection of …

Ancestral Pursuits: A Multicultural Celebration Of Identity & Race, Charlotte Cates Castro

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using critical historical rhetorical methods along with critical race and decolonial theory, this project situates ancestral pursuits as a communication-centered discursive formation by investigating the rhetorical strategies modern biotech and genealogy companies utilize to influence contemporary discourse around identity and belonging and narrate ethnicity and genealogy as acts of consumption. Through direct-to-consumer DNA testing and complimentary services, modern day biotech and genealogy companies like Ancestry and 23andMe market personalized insights into ancestry, genealogy, inherited traits, and health data that promise to connect users to their past, as well as to situate them in present-day society, through a deeper understanding of …

The Jordanian Novel In Postmodern Context, Hamed Alalamat

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the Jordanian culture is gradually impacted by the globalization process of late capitalism, this study argues that many Jordanian novels exhibit a number of postmodern characteristics, such as blurring boundaries and disrupting hierarchies, the use of pastiche as a compositional technique, formal fragmentation, and the weakness of utopian imagination. Adopting Fredric Jameson’s theory of postmodernism as a framework, the study explores ten Jordanian novels written between 1986 and 2016 to demonstrate that the modernization process and the cultural changes in the Arab world, in general, and in the Jordanian society, in particular, have increased the density of postmodern features …

Memory And Rememory: Critically Cultivating An Appropriate Response Through A Storied Approach To Listening, Katie W. Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues for a storied approach to listening from the perspective of a white Southern woman. To do this, I carefully followed the work of two community groups. One, the Washington County Community Remembrance Project, is working to install a marker venerating Aaron, Anthony, and Randall, three enslaved people who were lynched in our area in 1856. The other, the James H. Berry United Daughters of the Confederacy, is responsible for installing a Confederate statue on the Bentonville Square in 1908 that was removed in 2020. As illustrated by the use of archival research and embedded participation in interracial …

In His Name: White Evangelicals, The Republican Party, And Their Support And Endorsement Of Donald Trump – Documentary Podcast, Matthew Moore

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to provide historical context to the rise of White Evangelicals political involvement in the United States and how it evolved to support and endorse Donald Trump for president in the 2016 election. Three major factors led to this: White Christian Nationalism, traditional family values, and racial resentment. The podcast is a story told in three parts, addressing the history of these elements starting before America was even a nation to today. This project seeks to address the past, acknowledge what led to Donald Trump’s election in 2016, and reckon with White Evangelicals ought to …

Archive And Repertoire Of The Esala Perahera Performance In Sri Lanka, Hashintha Jayasinghe

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the archive and the repertoire of the Esala Perahera in Sri Lanka and charts the ideological and cultural implications of the performance. The archival analysis begins with the interrogation of the historical chronicles and the recorded history of the performance in the Sinhala and English texts. Thereafter, travel literature and the dissemination of cultural knowledge on the Perahera are discussed. The study of the repertoire and the photographic archive explores key performances in the Esala Perahera in 2016 and 2017. Postcolonial theory, theories on cultural anthropology, and performance theory are used to analyze the archive and the …

Periodicals In Transition: Politics And Style In Victorian Higher Journalism, David Blaine Walker

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Covering a period roughly from the mid-1820s through the early-1880s, this dissertation investigates transformations in the style and substance of political discourse practiced in British organs of “higher journalism.” Animating certain key moments and figures along the way, it explains the shift from a periodical market dominated by the anonymous, lengthy treatises found in quarterly reviews like the Edinburgh Review (f. 1802) and its rivals, to an industry dominated by monthly reviews that generally eschewed both the anonymity of its contributors as well as the prohibitive length of its predecessors. In exploring this transition from the “Age of the Quarterlies” …

The Dialectics Of The Community: Mexican Production Of Death, Blanca Judith Martinez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work attempts to provide a discussion of the current waves of violence present in the northern border of Mexico. The country became a neoliberal state during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. The external debt and the historical corruption of the Mexican government placed Mexico in a vulnerable stage leaving its sovereignty with a fissure before the eyes of international circles of power. The adoption of a neoliberal economic system has impacted all the social tissue. The euphoric discourse of advancement and opportunity was spread by ideological apparatus, and people in constant need accepted positively the system. The …

How The University Of Arkansas’ Change In Conference Affiliation Set Off Realignment In Intercollegiate Athletics, Matthew Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The era of realignment within the conferences that make up the largest football-playing division of the National Collegiate Athletic Association can be traced to one event.

In the 1984 Supreme Court case NCAA v. Board of Regents, the court ruled the NCAA had violated antitrust laws by not allowing individual colleges to negotiate their own TV contracts for football games. The decision nulled and voided existing TV contracts with the NCAA, allowing a free market for colleges. Many programs partnered with the College Football Association to negotiate TV contracts in the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Five years after the Supreme …

Treasonous Patriot: A Comparative Content Analysis Of The Media's Portrayals Of Daniel Ellsberg And Edward Snowden, Kaylin Mcloud

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

On June 9, 2013, the world was introduced to Edward Joseph Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contractor and the man responsible for the biggest leak of classified government documents in American history. Almost immediately, comparisons were drawn between Snowden and another famous whistleblower--Daniel Ellsberg, the man behind the 1971 release of the Pentagon Papers. The overwhelming rhetoric surrounding the comparison was that Ellsberg was a true American patriot and that Snowden was nothing like him, that he was a traitor. Despite Ellsberg's own claims that he and Snowden are exactly alike, the media still finds Snowden lacking when comparing him with …

Media Focus In Afghanistan News Coverage, Abdul Qahar Jawad

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explored the Media Focus in Afghanistan News Coverage to examine what categories of Afghanistan-related news received the largest amount of coverage during periods from 2010 to 2012. This study covered reports in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Daily Outlook Afghanistan, a national Afghan news outlet, as a sample within a period of three months over three years (June 2010, July 2011, and August 2012). The 147 news stories' headlines of the four news organizations were studied to find what categories (process: peace talks, negotiation, and economic development; conflict: violence and military action; …

The Price Of Dissent: Freedom Of Speech And Arkansas Criminal Anarchy Arrests, Jamie Leto Kern

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Following World War I and the Bolshevik Revolutions, America's Red Scare began, inciting fanatical patriotism and an alleged threat of anarchy that gripped a nation with fear. Paranoia about communists, Socialists, and anarchists divided the country and resulted in many states, including Arkansas, passing criminal anarchy laws. Since a majority of those accused of anti-American activities were involved in labor disputes, Arkansas makes for an interesting case study; not only did it have a relative lack of labor disputes, it still passed anti-Bolshevik laws. The purpose of this research is to develop an understanding of the ways in which dissenters …

Remembering Arkansas Debate: The Use Of Collective Memory In Analyzing The Role Of Intercollegiate Debate At The University Of Arkansas, Barry John Regan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As one of the most successful organizations on campus for nearly a century, the University of Arkansas debate team created many memories and stories from their time in competition. According to the framework of collective memory, the production and dissemination of these stories is what connects the past, present, and future of a debate team together.

I first reconstruct the history of debate at universities, beginning with development of debate at the University of Cambridge and University of Oxford. I then detail the history of debate and argumentation at American universities, including the first intercollegiate debate in 1881. I then …