History Commons^™

Finding A Community Niche: Rethinking Historic House Museums In Oregon, Liza Julene Schade

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis discusses current preservation and public history in the field of historic house museums in Oregon, looking at two case studies that are undergoing processes of reinterpretation. The first chapter provides a brief history of heritage preservation in the United States, describes the spectrum of historic homes, and presents a key framework of four factors that need to be addressed when evaluating sites today. Current methodology refers to reinterpretation of sites to be more diverse, working with collections, doing research and restaging, along with innovating new programs. Public access and engagement pertain to finding a unique niche in the …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

The Jamaican Maroons Of The 17th And 18th Centuries: Survivalists Of The New World, Lance J. Parker Jr

Dissertations and Theses

The Jamaican Maroons, in the beginning, served as fugitive slaves avoiding captivity and liberating other enslaved people. To stop the Maroons from liberating other enslaved people, the British granting them freedom on the condition that they stop freeing slaves and even return runaways. Historians portray the Maroons as either freedom fighters or collaborators, sometimes even both. I argue that both narratives were a part of Maroon history, but I want to introduce them as survivalists. My research's significance is that I am exploring how the Maroons transitioned from freedom fighters to collaborators through notions of cultural identity. This project aims …

The Modern Formulation Of Chinese Art History And The Building Of A Nation In Early Twentieth-Century China, Chennie Huang

Dissertations and Theses

At the dawn of the twentieth century, the Chinese formulation of art history underwent dramatic changes. It moved away from the traditional narratives that did not follow a strict chronology to adopt the Western linear model which emphasizes progress and national identity. Based on the premodern tradition, the modern formulations of Chinese art history began as a political strategy for nation building amid the political upheavals, including military attacks on China that led to the end of Qing imperial rule and the beginning of the Republican era (1912-1949).

In the early 1900s, while exiled in Japan, Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873-1929), …

(Re)Presenting Peoples And Storied Lands: Public Presentation Of Archaeology And Representation Of Native Americans In Selected Western U.S. Protected Areas, Cerinda Survant

Dissertations and Theses

Every year, hundreds of thousands of people visit the Native American ancestral lands in the western United States developed for tourism and recreation. The stewards of these lands seek to engage visitors and enrich their experience, and simultaneously to protect the lands' natural and cultural resources. To achieve their mission, protected areas regularly use interpretation -- materials and experiences that aim to educate visitors about resources and see them as personally meaningful. However, there is little literature on interpretive content in protected areas, few qualitative studies of interpretation as constructed by visitors and interpreters, and little literature on the representation …

A Christian Nation: How Christianity United The People Of The Cherokee Nation, Mary Brown

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Jesuits In The Philippines: Politics And Missionary Work In The Colonial Setting, Francis B. Galasi

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

"Imagining The Haitian Nation-Family From Domestic Patriarchalism To State Authoritarianism", Emmanuel Lachaud

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Irish Families In Portland, Oregon, 1850-1880 : An Immigrant Culture In The Far West, Michael Kazin

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is an attempt to begin an examination of the social history of immigrant families in the cities of the West Coast. I chose to study Irish families in particular because they were the first group of migrants to come in large numbers to the United States from a primarily peasant culture, and because studies of Irish in the cities of the East have emphasized their resistance to assimilation into the dominant Anglicized Protestant society.

The Historical Imagination Of Francesco Petrarch: A Study Of Poetic Truth And Historical Distortion, Sally Scholz

Dissertations and Theses

In the continuing debate among historians over the nature, if not the actual existence, of the Italian Renaissance, the life of Francesco Petrarch has played a major role. Petrarch was an outspoken critic and commentator on the state of fourteenth-century society. His opinions have been cited by all scholars interested in the origins of the “Renaissance Mind.”

The Origin Of Property In Land: Paul Vinogradoff And The Late Xixth Century English Historians, Caroline Phillips Stoel

Dissertations and Theses

One of the problems which has intrigued English historians for over a hundred years is that of the position of the common man in early England. Was he a freeman working land held communally by the village, or was he a serf laboring upon the land of an overlord? Since this question of freedom is inextricably interwoven with landholding concepts the problem may also be stated another way: Did private property in land exist from the earliest times, or is that institution the result of centuries of appropriation by individuals of land originally belonging to the commmunity as a whole? …