History Commons^™

Maine Bisexual People's Network (Mbpn), Kat Hartford

POP 101: Queering the Archives

This presentation attempts to construct a history of the Maine Bisexual People’s Network (MBPN), drawing from primary sources from USM’s Special Collections, specifically from the LGBTQ+ Collection in the Jean Byers Sampson Center. Information includes when, why, and how the MBPN was founded, who founded the organization, important events in the MBPN’s history, and the experience of bisexuality for Mainers. Also included are images of the primary sources, such as clips from Our Paper: Serving the Alternative Community, a publication that served queer Mainers. While the MBPN was just one of several examples from Maine’s history of LGBTQ+ organizations, the …

The Editor And Les Travailleurs: How Albert Tenney Championed The Rights Of The French-Canadian Mill Workers During The 1886 Diphtheria Epidemic In Brunswick, Maine, Laura Mosqueda Almasi Ma

All Student Scholarship

This thesis explores the devastating diphtheria epidemic that rocked the small Midcoast community and how Albert Tenney, through his weekly editorials, championed for the French immigrants and called attention to not only the shocking living conditions of the Cabot Mill‟s housing, but also convinced the Maine Board of Health that there was in fact an epidemic decimating the population. It is a story of passion, courage and partnership in acting upon what is right regardless of race, religion or nationality.

I Am Adele Bloch-Bauer, I Am Hester Prynne, Laurie Lico Albanese Mfa

All Student Scholarship

I AM ADELE BLOCH-BAUER, I AM HESTER PRYNNE is a compilation of fiction and nonfiction. This cross-genre thesis includes two excerpts from historical novels with female protagonists, and an essay on women’s historical fiction. For the study and creation of female-centered historical fiction I researched and wrote in a wide range of areas, both intellectual and temporal. First, I read and traced the emergence of female-focused American historical fiction that began with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and continues today with historical fiction based in fact such as Lily King’s Euphoria and Paula McClain’s The Paris Wife and Circling the …

"The Struggle For The Supremacy Of The Coast": Baseball And Identity In Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Christopher G.F. Hoffman Ma

All Student Scholarship

During the summer months of the first decade of the twentieth century, the Boothbay Harbor region was invigorated with baseball fever. By 1900, Americans had come to understand baseball as its national game, and Boothbay Harbor discovered and nourished the game in the final decades of the nineteenth century. But as the twentieth century began, baseball became more than a game: it was a business, a spectacle, and an opportunity for inhabitants of the region to define themselves based upon the team they supported.

The Devil In The Details: Evidence For The Affliction Of Lyme Disease In Seventeenth Century Massachusetts, Mary Drymon Derose Ma

All Student Scholarship

This study looks for evidence that Lyme disease is an old affliction that predates its "discovery" in Connecticut in the nineteen seventies. It analyzes the role that Lyme disease may have played in the history of English settlement in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. Early settlers at Plymouth and in the Boston area described sicknesses that they suffered from at contact as being the result of starvation and scurvy. In 1692, the residents of the Salem Village area were describing physical and mental afflictions that they felt were caused by witchcraft. Some of the seventeenth-century symptoms are very similar to …

Silk And Society: Silk Manufacturers And Users 1870-1930. Based On A Study Of The Haskell Silk Company, Westbrook, Maine, Jacqueline Field Ma

All Student Scholarship

This thesis makes several contributions to the history of American silks. It shows that some of the most exemplary and well known U.S. silks were manufactured by Haskell despite its location at the far periphery of the major Mid Atlantic silk manufacturing region. It traces the changes in the domestic silk product over time and argues that changing consumer tastes and lifestyle exerted a major influence on what was made and sold.

Fin De Siecle Diana: The New Woman Discovers The Maine Woods, Nan Cumming Ma

All Student Scholarship

Women's roles were in flux during the late nineteenth centuury and early twentieth century. Faced with neurasthenia and other health problems, many upper and middle class women accepted the suggestions of doctors and social reformers that they take more exercise, usually in the form of calisthenics and bicycling.The quest for genuine experience in the increasingly artificial and overpopulated cities brought many male sports to Maine's untamed woods and, by 1890, women joined them in increasing numbers.

This study explores the attraction that the Maine wilderness held for upper and middle class Victorian women.

A Late Nineteenth - Century Rural Community: Three Homesteads In Sebago, Maine, Edward S. Allen Ma

All Student Scholarship

This thesis examines three homesteads in the small inland farming community of Sebago, Maine. The homesteads are analyzed in terms of architecture and landscape, along with documentary sources such as census returns. Set against the backdrop of the history of the town, and northern rural New England in general, the story of these three houses offers insights into the soacial history of Sebago during this period.

Simply Shaker: The Rise And Development Of Popular Images Of The Shakers, Scott F. De Wolfe Ma

All Student Scholarship

Generations of Americans have been fascinated by a small religious group known as the Shakers. This thesis traces the evolution of the Shaker image through time. Much of the paper centers on the current view of the Shakers as a simple agrarian and non technological movement whose members live a stress free life.