History Commons^™

Liza Williams Interview, Jennifer Thomson

Bucknell: Occupied

Jennifer Thomson, assistant professor of History at Bucknell University, interviews Liza Williams, visiting assistant professor of Political Science at Bucknell University. Williams discusses the history of immigration regulation in the United States and the policies which resulted in detainment and deportation practices. Williams also outlines the Acts of Congress, events (including 9/11), and actions of the Presidential administrations of Bush, Obama, and Trump that affect immigration regulation.

Archiving The Stories Of The 2018 West Virginia Teachers' Strike, Ian Harmon

Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference

In February of 2018, teachers and school personnel across West Virginia went on strike, shutting down schools in all 55 of the state’s counties. As the school year ended, teachers began to reflect on their experiences, and many expressed the desire to have their stories recorded. To answer this need, an interdisciplinary group at West Virginia University began developing a digital exhibit that provides the strike’s participants with a platform where they can share their stories by contributing photos, videos, oral recordings, social media exchanges, and written accounts of the events. This exhibit provides both researchers and the public with …

The Spanish Civil War Memory Archive: Creating Access To International Exchange, Andrea R. Davis

Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference

The Spanish Civil War Memory Project consists of over one hundred audiovisual testimonies of victims, militants, survivors, and witnesses of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and Francoist repression (1939-1975). The testimonies were recorded by graduate student researchers between 2006 and 2010 as part of an initiative of UC San Diego in collaboration with several human rights associations in Spain. To make the archive that resulted from this collaboration a more user-friendly and media-rich experience, we are now in the process of training student researchers to digitally enhance the collected testimonies with the web-based system OHMS. In these efforts we aim …

Representing Wilderness In The Shaping Of America's National Parks: Aesthetics, Boundaries, And Cultures In The Works Of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, And Their Artistic Contemporaries, Alana Jajko

Master’s Theses

This project studies the works of James Fenimore Cooper, John Muir, and their artistic contemporaries in relation to the shaping of America’s national parks and what it means for the parks and their attending wilderness to be symbolic of the nation. It seeks to reveal the national parks as artistic representations of a constructed wilderness, while also emphasizing the physical experience of the natural world as a means of supplementing our subjective views. Through the lenses of aesthetics, boundaries, and cultures, I narrow my study to focus on three distinct perspectives by which we can understand the national parks and …

Splitting Hair: Reviving The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical In The 1970s, Bryan M. Vandevender

Faculty Journal Articles

When Hair premiered on Broadway in 1968, the musical garnered attention

for its reflection the current cultural moment. Critics acknowledged

this congruence of form, content, and zeitgeist as the production’s greatest

asset. This alignment with the Vietnam era proved a liability nine

years later when Hair received its first Broadway revival, particularly

when the musical’s authors replaced many of the libretto’s cultural references

with allusions to the 1970s, further illuminating the musical’s

inherently time-bound qualities.

Midwifery Anatomized: Vesalius, Dissection, And Reproductive Authority In Early Modern Italy, Jennifer Kosmin

Faculty Journal Articles

Although Vesalius, like his contemporaries, had only extremely limited opportunities to examine or dissect the human gravid uterus, it is the image of the anatomist laying bare the (un)pregnant female body and revealing its secrets that graces the title page of the 1543 edition of De humani corporis fabrica. This essay focuses on the implications of Vesalius’s and his followers’ anatomical discoveries for the practice and professional status of early modern Italian midwives. In particular, the essay focuses on three venues in which the authority to understand the female body and the processes of reproduction were contested. A close …

Destruction, Reconstruction, And Remembrance: Exploring 'Memory' And 'Environment' Through Pennsylvania World War I Memorials In France, Amy Collins

Honors Theses

After examining the substantial efforts at land reclamation and environmental mitigation accompanying the State of Pennsylvania’s construction of memorials after World War I in France, I discovered a strong relationship between post-war memorialization and environmental mitigation in the areas in which the environmental consequences of WWI continue to affect humans and wildlife. My research illuminates how cultural impulses to build memorials that acknowledged the vast losses, acts of valor, and victories heavily influenced mitigation of France’s ecologically damaged Western Front. Many of France’s former battlefields, particularly in the devastated area known as the Red Zone, weren’t accessible to visitors before …

French Colonialism In Algeria: War, Legacy, And Memory, Haley Brown

Honors Theses

Over the course of my research for my honors thesis project, I sought to better understand the history of French colonialism in Algeria in addition to how it is remembered today. I theorized that the legacy of this history impacts issues of immigration exclusion, islamophobia, racism, and social discrimination faced by Algerians in modern day France. These issues have become important topics of discussion and investigation in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks carried out by descendants of North African immigrants in the heart of hexagonal France. Through the study of primary and secondary sources, as well as a …

Lang And Law: Analyzing Representations Of Law, Justice, And Violence In The Films Of Fritz Lang, Dante Fresse

Honors Theses

This thesis analyzes the representations of Law, Justice, and Violence in the German and American films of Fritz Lang. Through an overview of legal and social unrest in Germany and courtroom drama, criminal conviction, mob violence, and police corruption in America, Lang challenges the legitimacy of Law and shows how it is subverted by outside forces. At other times, Lang shows Law working in collusion with criminal agencies or against the interests of the public. In doing this, Lang’s films present images of legal decay in the urban sphere, prompted by anxieties which come about through spatial alienation, city structure, …

Listening To An/Other Voice: Gender, Creativity, And The Divine In The Works Of Female Christian Mystics And Women Surrealists, Stephanie Garboski

Honors Theses

This thesis will compare two groups, Christian women mystics and women surrealists, by analyzing select works by Hildegard of Bingen, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning. This analysis will involve a comparative, theoretical approach that draws connections between the way in which both groups utilize varying literary and artistic forms, symbols, and polyglottery. I will utilize Bourdieu’s terms of cultural production as a framework in which to better understand how women of both fields are used for their creativity and supposed connection to an/other, which is the source of inspiration native to each field, God and the unconscious. …

Waters Of Labor, Waters Of Leisure: An Environmental History Of Lake Memphremagog, Katherine Tucker

Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to examine the transition from traditional resource extractive industry to seasonal tourism industry around Lake Memphremagog, a mid-sized freshwater lake that is situated across the USA/ Canada border in northern Vermont and southern Quebec. Reading sources primarily from the decades 1860-1890, this research examines changing conceptualizations of nature that link to specific land use trends. Northern Vermont was left with a decimated landscape following the decline of the logging and agricultural industries by the mid-nineteenth century. Meanwhile, nature centered tourism began to emerge in the same area. The new tourism economy catered to the wealthy urban elite, …