History Commons^™

"To Avoid The Unimaginable": Neoliberalism And The Struggle For American Democracy Since The 1960s, Dawson Barrett

Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the structural, tactical, and strategic legacies of 1960s era activism on subsequent American social movements. Specifically, this project explains how the ascendancy of neoliberal policies on both national and global scales has dramatically shifted opportunities for social change. Case studies for these developments include Earth First! and the punk rock movement during the 1980s, the Student-Farmworker Alliance in the 1990s, and a variety of anti-war organizations in the 2000s.

The Price Of Change: Historiographical, Fiscal, And Demographic Considerations Of The Milwaukee Movement, 1966, Jonathan Charles Bruce

Theses and Dissertations

The work presented in this thesis argues for a new schema with which to approach the civil rights literature. Arguments for the necessity of this new approach utilize Milwaukee as a case study, analyzing the texts considered canonical to the city and offering a critique that will begin to break away from a lionized individual in favor of an egalitarian approach to history, specifically through the use of non-traditional methods such as quantitative analysis. Perhaps most important to the literature, this thesis addresses a fundamental, long-ignored aspect of the Civil Rights Movement by analyzing fiscal realities that face a grassroots …

Hume, Skepticism, And Induction, Jason Thomas Collins

Theses and Dissertations

This paper concerns the following interpretative problem: Hume's most explicit arguments in both the Treatise and the Enquiry strongly suggest that he is a skeptic about inductive reasoning. This, indeed, has been the traditional interpretation. And yet, Hume engages in and explicitly endorses inductive reasoning throughout his works. I examine two prominent attempts to reconcile these features of Hume's position. One group of commentators, the descriptivists, argues that Hume is not concerned with whether we ought to accept inductive beliefs; he is only concerned with the psychological causes of such beliefs. Because Hume is not concerned with the normative epistemic …

Sedimenting Solidarity: Signs From The Madison Protest, Melissa Deann Seifert

Theses and Dissertations

The 2011 Wisconsin protest inspired the wide ranging production of handmade and commercially-produced signage. Five hundred signs were collected and preserved by the Wisconsin State Historical Society and others were obtained by the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Art historians and prominent art institutes have dismissed the aesthetic qualities of handmade signs, instead cataloging them as ephemeral historical artifacts. I argue that signs work similarly to other art forms in the modern era, such as advertisements and poster art, which have gained scholarly attention. This project uses the Madison protest as a case study in order to track the often …

Anabaptist Masculinity In Reformation Europe, Adam Michael Bonikowske

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the connections between the Anabaptist movement during the Protestant Reformation and the alternative masculinities that developed during sixteenth-century Europe. It argues that Anabaptist men challenged traditional gender norms of European society, and through their unique understanding of the Reformation's message of salvation, these men constructed new ideas about masculinity that were at odds with Protestant and Catholic culture. Anabaptist men placed piety and ethics at the center of reform, and argued for the moral improvement of Christians. In separation from Catholics and mainstream Protestants, Anabaptists created a new culture that exhibited behavior often viewed as dangerous. The …

Western Swing In Transcription: Who's Sorry Now? By Milton Brown And His Musical Brownies (Decca 5158-B), Madeline Olson Dietrich

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents a full-score transcription of a recording of a string band performing a Tin Pan Alley song. Context is established through a review of events leading up to the recording, focusing on contributions by key personnel. Decca 5158-B, Who's Sorry Now? by Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies is today regarded as westerns swing, but the

style is hardly comparable to the slick, highly arranged sound of western swing orchestras from the late 1940s and early 50s. The Brownies were a Texas fiddle band playing mostly pop and jazz standards, not the cowboy and western themed repertory of …

“Finn And The Man In The Tree” Revisited, William Sayers

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

When he takes refuge in a tree along with animal familiars, Derg Corra, the fugitive in the anecdote "Finn and the man in the tree", not only positions himself between culture and nature but also extemporizes a world tree, complete with various insignia of the tripartite cosmos as conceived in early Irish thought. Thus sacralizing the tree, he hopes to escape Finn’s retribution through the creation of a personal sanctuary.

The Congress For Cultural Freedom, La Musica Nel Xx Secolo, And Aesthetic "Othering": An Archival Investigation, Shannon E. Pahl

Theses and Dissertations

Between 1950 and 1967, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization of anti-totalitarian intellectuals funded by the United States government, hosted conferences and festivals regarding the pursuit of intellectual freedom. In 1952 and 1954, the Congress for Cultural Freedom hosted two music events. While the first festival has been researched considerably, the 1954 conference has not been documented comparably. While unexplored, this conference has been the cause of much speculation on the political connotation of dodecaphonic and avant-garde techniques in postwar Europe. This project explores archival evidence related to the 1954 conference, with a focus on internal memoranda, correspondence, program …

The War To End All Germans: Wisconsin Synod Lutherans And The First World War, Stephen Scott Gurgel

Theses and Dissertations

The First World War came to the United States to the consternation of many of its citizens, especially its German Americans. On the home front, government officials required complete adherence to the war effort. This also included religious adherence. The Wisconsin Synod Lutherans, a German-speaking religious group, met tremendous difficulties during the war years. In addition to the crusade against all things German, the synod faced religious persecution because it doctrinally abstained from religiously sanctioning the war aims and programs of the United States. The repression of the synod came from both patriotic citizens and government agents who typically misunderstood …

A Celtic Invocation: Cétnad Naíse, Ernst F. Tonsing

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Very little has been written about the baffling text of the Celtic invocation, the Cétnad nAíse, for the reason that it is abstruse, and the allusions in it resist sure explication. Despite the obstacles to interpreting the Cétnad nAíse, however, a close examination of the poem can yield some clues as to its sources, purpose, and, perhaps, authorship. To do this, the lines of the prayer will be treated in three groups: the four "invocations," the "petitions," and the "I am" sayings. It can be concluded that, contrary to some analysts, the content of the poem is derived …

From No Choice To Forced Choice To School Choice: A History Of Educational Options In Milwaukee Public Schools, James Kenneth Nelsen

Theses and Dissertations

Americans cherish freedom and value local control of education. The issue of "school choice," a movement that supports publicly funded tuition vouchers for students who attend private schools, appeared on the public agenda in the 1980s and has remained a controversial topic into the twenty-first century. Milwaukee had one of the first and most expansive school choice programs in the United States. If one is to understand school choice, one must understand its origin in Milwaukee. Milwaukee moved through three eras of choice--the eras of "no choice," "forced choice," and "school choice." The Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) followed a "comprehensive" …

An Improvised World: Jazz And Community In Milwaukee, 1950-1970, Benjamin Barbera

Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at the history of jazz in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1970. During this period Milwaukee experienced a series of shifts that included a large migration of African Americans, urban renewal and expressway projects, and the early stages of deindustrialization. These changes had an impact on the jazz musicians, audience, and venues in Milwaukee such that the history of jazz during this period reflects the social, economic, and physical landscape of the city in transition.

This thesis fills two gaps in the scholarship on Milwaukee. First, it describes the history of jazz in Milwaukee in a more comprehensive …

Never Stop Working: Examining The Life And Activism Of Howard Fuller, Sarah Barber

Theses and Dissertations

Howard Fuller, a long-time community activist born in Shreveport, Louisiana and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has become a nationally renowned advocate for school choice. Coming from humble beginnings, Fuller learned from his tight-knit community growing up that he could be anything he wanted to be if he worked hard enough and focused on his education. Wanting future generations of black Americans to have the same opportunities he had, Fuller would dedicate his life work to uplifting his people through education. How Fuller approached that work, however, led to seemingly contradicting approaches and ideas. This thesis attempts to make sense of …

The 1868 St. Landry Massacre: Reconstruction's Deadliest Episode Of Violence, Matthew Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

The St. Landry Massacre is representative of the pervasive violence and intimidation in the South during the 1868 presidential canvass and represented the deadliest incident of racial violence during the Reconstruction Era. Southern conservatives used large scale collective violence in 1868 as a method to gain political control and restore the antebellum racial hierarchy. From 1865-1868, these Southerners struggled against the federal government, carpetbaggers, and Southern black populations to gain this control, but had largely failed in their attempts. After the First Reconstruction Act of March, 1867 forced Southern governments to accept universal male suffrage, Southern conservatives utilized violence and …

The War Of The Tea Houses, Or How Welsh Heritage In Patagonia Became A Valuable Commodity, Geraldine Lublin

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

The present article will explore how globalization and its economic implications have resulted in the commodification of Welsh heritage in Gaiman, a small town in the Argentine province of Chubut, with a special focus on the collectivity-defining custom of 'Welsh Tea' as offered by the local tea houses. After providing some background on the history of the Welsh community in Patagonia, the discussion will consider how the surge in heritage and culture tourism and tourism-related services has added new value to Welsh Patagonian culture and encouraged the positioning of Welsh cultural products and other aspects of heritage as marketable commodities, …

Manx Language Revitalization And Immersion Education, Marie Clague

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

The Manx language is currently enjoying a period of revitalization. The decline of the Manx language as the native vernacular language of the Isle of Man and the subsequent language shift to English are discussed in the first part of this paper. The paper then goes on to consider the revitalization of the language, with the emphasis on Manx-medium immersion education. The results of a questionnaire enquiring into parental motivations for choosing immersion education, and the linguistic backgrounds of the children are then examined in some detail.

Online, Offline And Beyond: The Social Imaginary In A Scottish Diasporic Online Group, Charles A. Hays

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This project uses the method of depth hermeneutics to examine how a group of relatively technologically unsophisticated online discussion participants innovate in the formation of a social imaginary, as defined in Thompson's (1990) explication of the use of media to facilitate social interaction. By deploying a diverse range of technologies with which they are competent, the group avoids the uncertainties of new modalities of social networking such as those represented by Second Life, MySpace and Facebook, while pursuing their goal of discursively negotiating a Scottish cultural identity both online and offline.

The Celtic Legacy Of The Gaita In Galician Music, Xosé Lois Foxo

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

The paper focuses on the traditional music of Galicia with special emphasis on the gaita, or bagpipe, its persistence throughout the centuries as a symbol for the region, and its strong similarities with the instruments of Celtic regions such as Scotland, Brittany and Ireland. Samples of musical melodies from Galicia are included and compared to these areas, and their similarities are discussed.

Analysis Of A Celtiberian Protective Paste And Its Possible Use By Arevaci Warriors, Jesús Martín-Gil, Gonzalo Palacios-Leblé, Pablo Matin Ramos, Francisco J. Martín-Gil

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This article presents an infrared spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction analysis of residue adhering to a Celtiberian pottery sherd of late Iron Age date from the Arevacian site of Cerro del Castillo, in Ayllón (Segovia, Spain). This residue may be a paste used since antiquity for protective aims. Orange-sepia in colour, made from crushed bones and glue, the paste was used by Greeks and Romans and later in the construction of the cathedrals and monasteries of Europe to confer a warm colour to the stone and to protect it against environmental deterioration. In this article we also suggest a possible ritual …

Transplanted Traditions: An Assessment Of Welsh Lore And Language In Argentina, Maria Teresa Agozzino

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

For more than a hundred years, Welsh language and culture have survived in the Chubut province of Patagonia, Argentina. While the various stages of Welsh settlement have been well recorded in English, Welsh and Spanish, little or no research has been published concerning the folklore of the pioneers' descendants who have clung to their Welsh heritage while unreservedly accepting an Argentine identity. During May and June of 1999, I spent five weeks immersed in the Welsh communities in order to test my hypothesis of survivals and/or marginal survivals of Welsh folklore. However, traditional Welsh elements are waning as active-bearers age …

Of Demolition And Reconstruction: A Comparative Reading Of Manx Cultural Revivals, Breesha Maddrell

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This paper accesses Manx cultural survival by examining the work of one of the most controversial of Manx cultural figures, Mona Douglas, alongside one of the most well loved, T.E. Brown. It uses the literature in the Isle of Man over the period 1880-1980 as a means of identifying attitudes toward two successive waves of cultural survival and revival. Through a reading of Brown's Prologue to the first series of Fo'c's'le Yarns, 'Spes Altera', "another hope", 1896, and Douglas' 'The Tholtan' – which formed part of her last collection of poetry, Island Magic, published in 1956 – the differing nationalist …

This Could Have Been Mine: Scottish Gaelic Learners In North America, Michael Newton

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

The Scottish Gaelic learners' movement is a recent development in North America that parallels the mainstream Scottish heritage movement in some ways, but is strongly oppositional to it in others. This essay describes characteristics of this phenomenon by analyzing the range of people involved, their motivations for learning, their goals, the creation of community among learners, the interaction between language learning and discourses of ethnicity, and the interface between Gaelic learners in North America and native Gaelic communities in Scotland and Cape Breton Island.

Jacobite Past, Loyalist Present, Michael Newton

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This article is the first analysis of Gaelic sources relating to the involvement of Scottish Highlanders in warfare in North America from the opening of the French and Indian War to the end of the American Revolution. A careful reading of these primary sources — almost totally unknown to historians — can provide a unique window on the sentiments and reasoning of Highlanders regarding these conflicts. This analysis of contemporary Gaelic poetry demonstrates that there is a high degree of continuity and consistency in the ideological framework of the lines of political argumentation from the Jacobite era through the end …

Iron Age Chariots And Medieval Texts: A Step Too Far In "Breaking Down Boundaries"?, Raimund Karl

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Analysing “Celtic” chariots by using Iron Age archaeological material and Early Medieval Irish texts might seem to be more than just one step too far in breaking down boundaries. Considering the huge chronological and geographical gaps between the sources, the objections raised against the concept of “Celticity” by Celtosceptics, and the antinativist school of thought in Irish literature, such an approach might look like outright nonsense to many archaeologists and scholars in medieval literature alike. Using a “functional” method according to the new Viennese approach to Celtic Studies, to allow cross-disciplinary comparison of archaeological, historical, iconographic, legal, linguistic, literary and …

“Becoming Cold-Hearted Like The Gentiles Around Them”: Scottish Gaelic In The United States 1872-1912, Michael Newton

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

Historians have occasionally recognized the presence of Scottish Gaelic-speaking immigrants in the United States, but no previous study has attempted to determine the relationship between the Gaelic-American community and their language in detail. This article makes use of evidence available in contemporary periodicals to examine the attitudes of Scottish Gaels resident in the United States towards their native language from 1872 to 1912, and attempts to assess the efforts made to maintain that language. The failure of Gaelic to thrive in the United States is evident in the lack of development of effective strategies to buttress the language. The evidence …

Breton At A Crossroads: Looking Back, Moving Forward, Lenora A. Timm

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

This paper examines the changing status of the Breton language over time, with particular emphasis on developments in the past century. Diglossic and oppositional relationships with French are discussed, as well as the shift in symbolic value accorded Breton in recent decades, the opposition between neo- and traditional Breton, and prospects for its persistence in the new century and millennium.

Vanishing Point: An Examination Of Some Consequences Of Globalization For Contemporary Irish Film, Sean Crosson

e-Keltoi: Journal of Interdisciplinary Celtic Studies

In the following article, some films produced with the support of Bord Scannán na hÉireann (The Irish Film Board) since its reconstitution in 1993 are examined in light of the work of global anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and his theory of global cultural flows. I suggest that cinema, primarily of Hollywood origin, has had a notable influence on the development of Irish society and Irish film. Contemporary Irish film itself also reflects the failure of Irish history to excite the imagination of Ireland’s youth as effectively as the seductive depictions of America’s past as mediated through the Western and gangster films. …

Chief For Life: Harold Breier And His Era, Ronald Howard Snyder

Theses and Dissertations

Harold Breier served as Milwaukee's Chief of Police from 1964 until 1984. His tenure occurred during a time of cultural upheaval in the United States, marked by the turmoil of the civil rights movement, the peace movement, and a youth rebellion against traditional societal values and norms. Many people perceived Breier as an opponent of cultural or political change. He was accused of tolerating excessive police force, especially when minority citizens or counterculture youth were involved, and presiding over a racially segregated police department. Others credited him with making Milwaukee one of the safest cities in the country and protecting …

Life's Work : The Accidental Career Of Laura Margolis Jarblum, Julie L. Kerssen

Theses and Dissertations

Laura Margolis Jarblum has been largely overlooked by history, but her story is an important one. She worked for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee throughout four decades, serving around the world in places including Europe, Israel, Cuba, and China. Her dedication to the welfare of her fellow Jews led her into chaotic and sometimes dangerous situations, even resulting in time spent in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. She is given credit for saving thousands of lives, both during and after the period of World War II. This paper uses letters, reports, oral histories, and other sources to reconstruct her life. …