History Commons^™

"One Major Step Short Of War:” Jimmy Carter, The Soviet Invasion Of Afghanistan, And The Last Chapter Of The Cold War, George Uriah

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the foreign policy of Jimmy Carter and his Administration in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. The study is based on newly declassified documents from the Jimmy Carter Presidential in Atlanta, Georgia as well as published material by and about Jimmy Carter.

The thesis challenges the popular caricatures of Jimmy Carter, that he was ineffective in matters of foreign policy and that he was largely concerned with establishing a legacy as a peacemaker. The thesis contends that Jimmy Carter was a much more cunning Cold Warrior than …

A Peculiar Diversion: The Social Ramifications Of Quarter-Racing In The Eighteenth-Century Tidewater Virginia, Tollie Jean Banker

Masters Theses

Virginia's horse culture combined with the colonists' obsession with immediate gratification created the perfect ingredients for the formation of quarter-racing. Not only did short racing afford the ideal outlet for tidewater Virginians' independence, competitiveness, and materialism but it also functioned as a tool to police social order. Consequently, seventh and eighteenth-century tidewater Virginians embraced their new innovation, transforming it from an ad hoc drag race into a formalized competition complete with specially made race courses, racing covenants that stipulated the how, when, and where of the race, and even public notices announcing upcoming events.

As a result Quarter-racing became one …

From Triumph To Tragedy: African American Soldiers Fight For Citizenship And Manhood In The Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War, Le'trice Danyell Donaldson

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study is to provide a re-examination of the black soldier in the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War. Specifically, by adding a gender analysis, this study will demonstrate that black soldiers fought in the war for two principle reasons: first, it was a means of exercising their citizenship; and secondly, it was a means of demonstrating that they were real men. Reflecting on an era when proving one's manhood was a national obsession--this thesis provides a critical window through which we can reconstruct their motivations for fighting in America's first overseas war.

From Death, Life: An Economic And Demographic History Of Civil War Era Knoxville And East Tennessee, Steven Bradley Davis

Masters Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the economic/demographic impact of the American Civil War on Knoxville, Tennessee and the greater East Tennessee region. It is the contention of this work that the Civil War served as an economic/demographic catalyst, accelerating (although certainly not completing) the process by which both city and region were transformed from a rural, pre-modem economy based predominantly on subsistence agriculture to a more modem, industrializing economy based on manufacturing, resource extraction, and limited commercial farming.

Baseball And Boosterism: Henry W. Grady, The Atlanta Constitution, And The Inaugural Season Of The Southern League, David A. Martin

Masters Theses

This study will examine the ways in which southern civic boosters fused the inaugural season of the Southern League of Professional Baseball with the promotion of their respective cities in 1885. Evidence for this work comes primarily from the Atlanta Constitution, the Chattanooga Daily Times, and the Nashville Banner. Articles from these newspapers are put into context with Paul Gaston’s The New South Creed (1970). Henry Grady is the primary focus, as he was the archetypical New South booster.

Unholstered And Unquestioned: The Rise Of Post-World War Ii American Gun Cultures, Angela Frye Keaton

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the historical roots of America's contemporary fascination with firearms. America's gun cultures reached new heights in the era after World War II due to a renewed focus on the family and national heritage and a growing preoccupation with defending traditional gender roles. In addition, the research reveals that America does not have a monolithic gun culture. Instead, multiple subcultures that flourished in the Cold War era, including one stemming from childhood play, one among recreational gunners and sport hunters, and one that flourished as a result of civil and military defense efforts. …

White Collar Radicals: New Deal Labor And Red Scare Communists In The Tennessee Valley Authority, 1935-1955, Aaron D. Purcell

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation follows the lives of fifteen former TV A employees, focusing on their 1930s activities and the subsequent 1940s and 1950s investigations into their perceived radical deeds. Collectively referred to in this dissertation as the "Knoxville Fifteen," this group includes Mabel Abercrombie, Forrest Benson, Bernard "Buck" Borah, Howard Bridgman, Katherine "Kit" Buckles, Christine Eversole, John Frantz, Howard Frazier, Henry Hart, Elizabeth Winston McConnell, David Stone Martin, William Remington, Muriel Speare, Merwin Todd, and Burton Zien. As binding criteria for the group, these fifteen individuals worked for TV A during the 1930s, had not reached 35 years of age, held …

The Propoganda Of Endurance: Identity, Survival, And British Trench Newspapers In The First World War, Neal Alexander Davidson

Masters Theses

This study explores the newspapers produced by British officers and men on the Western Front during the First World War. Although subject to censorship, significant scope was granted to the writers and editors of trench journals to express a seemingly strange combination of piety, humor, anger, and sadness concerning the course of the war. Trench newspapers therefore functioned as a cultural space in which the privations and competing desires of military life could be mediated. Through the juxtaposition of varying tones and views of the war, trench newspapers ultimately served to reinforce the hegemonic culture and values of the British …

Cultural Consensus, Political Conflict: The Problem Of Unity Among German Intellectuals During World War I, Benjamin Taylor Shannon

Masters Theses

When World War I erupted in 1914, German artists, writers, and academics seemed to be united behind a shared belief that the military struggle of World War I was actually the manifestation of a deeper and more ferocious spiritual or cultural war (Kulturkrieg). Using propagandistic wartime writings, they invoked the idea that Germany’s unique spirit of community and idealism (Kultur) was under assault by Allied individualism and materialism (Zivilisation). Many were convinced that defeat in this conflict meant the total destruction of the German way of life, while victory would propel the German nation …

Hitlerian Jurisprudence: American Periodical Media Responses To The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial, 1945-1948, Mcmillan Houston Johnson

Masters Theses

Since its conclusion, jurists, legal scholars, and historians have heralded the Nuremberg Trial as a landmark in international jurisprudence. Scholars have highlighted Nuremberg’s prosecution of those responsible for the Holocaust, and applauded the trials’ conviction of war criminals. These precedents have continued to inform discussions of war crimes and international law for the last sixty years. More recently, commentators have invoked Nuremberg’s positive legacy in support of the prosecution of Slobodan Milosevic and attempts to create an international criminal court.

This paper examines popular periodical responses to the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial between 1945 and 1948. It describes the nature …

The Transformation Of The King's Mountain Victors, Michael Lynch

Masters Theses

Hank Messick’s 1976 book on the backwoods militia’s victory over a large Tory force at King’s Mountain is not what most historians would consider to be a full-scale, academic treatment. Lightly documented but vibrantly written, King’s Moutain: The Epic of the Blue Ridge “Mountain Men” in the American Revolution falls squarely in the category of popular narrative. But Messick’s account is as firmly situated in a particular body of interpretation as the most rigorous historiographical work. The most interesting portion of King’s Mountain is the introduction, in which Messick explains his motives in devoting an entire volume to the Whig …

Reviving Germany: The Political Discourse Of The German Fatherland Party, 1917-1918, Troy Christopher Dempster

Masters Theses

This study will inspect the propaganda of the German Fatherland Party found in rightist newspapers published in Berlin, the capital of the German Empire. This propaganda explained the goals of the party, which included a desire to win a Siegfrieden (Victory Peace), to increase the Siegeswillen (Will for Victory) within the German population, to annex vast territory in the East and West, and to create a unified block of citizens within Germany by reviving the ancient myth of Deutschtum or an essential "Germanness." In response to this new nationalistic party, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (S P D) organized …