History Commons^™

Sana Sana: Unlearning Generational Expectation Through Performance, Jalen R. Ash

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My work is an exploration of identity as a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, Person of Color) body traversing through the generational histories of my family and the struggle of cultural loss to our assimilation of Whiteness. Through the multi-faceted medium of performance, my work uses physical and mental spaces of self and technology to understand how the body functions as a screen. Our bodies house projections of generational expectations that have trickled down from the past into the present. These projections shape our own unique identities along with the personal experiences we gather as we move through the various spaces of …

Reclamation: The Crown Of African American Identity, Lindsey Kellogg

English MA Theses

African American voices have been the main sources of influence on society and culture. For this reason, it is important that African Americans speak up and reclaim their voices. Not only are their voices important, but the stories that lie behind the voices are what need to be amplified. With the application of postcolonial theory, this thesis takes modern stories located in North America depicting racist behavior towards African Americans from the year 1970 to present-day New York City in order to fully amplify the process of social struggle. As these narratives are passed down through generations serving as a …

Morkovcha [Korean Carrot Salad], Lidiya A. Kan

Theses and Dissertations

Morkovcha, Korean Carrot Salad is a short documentary that tells a story of ethnic Koreans from Russia and the post-Soviet territories making their new home in New York City. The history of the diaspora is told through conversations with my mother, personal stories, fragmented memories, and my family photo archive. This very personal film is my attempt to revisit the 160-year history of the Russian Korean diaspora and to record and preserve our unique fusion of cultures in the melting pot that is the United States. Its purpose is to help to process and accept the tragic past of my …

How The Franks Became Frankish: The Power Of Law Codes And The Creation Of A People, Bruce H. Crosby

Honors College Theses

During the fifth century, many Germanic peoples in Roman service assumed control over vast swathes of the Western Empire. Among these peoples were the Franks, who lend their name to the modern European nation of France. Thus, a question arises regarding how this came to be: how did illiterate tribes from Germania create a culture of their own that supplanted the Romans? Through an analysis of Frankish legal texts like the Lex Salica and the Capitularies of Charlemagne, this paper argues that the Franks forged their own identity by first formalizing their Germanic customs in the early sixth century …

Mahmudkhuja Behbudiy As A Leader Of Jadid Reforms, Muminjon Xujaev

The Light of Islam

We are witnessing that the ideas of our Jadids, who tried to raise Turkestan through enlightenment to the level of world civilization at the beginning of the 20th century, and who showed modern education as a solution to the problems of that period, have not lost their signifcance today. In this sense, the study of the works of the famous orientalist Mahmudkhodja Behbudi based on new scientifc criteria plays an important role in the study of issues of interethnic communication, peaceful coexistence, education, culture, and religious tolerance. M. Behbudi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries began a systematic …

“Give Me Some Beautiful Holy Images That Are Colorful, Play Music, And Flash!” The Roma Pilgrimage To Csatka, Hungary, István Povedák

Journal of Global Catholicism

This study introduces the Csatka pilgrimage, which is one of the most significant festive events for Roma in Central and Eastern Europe. Csatka, a small and secluded village, became one of the most important pilgrimage sites for Roma since the mid-20th century. Tens of thousands of Roma, entire families from Hungary and the surrounding countries arrive to the feast on Nativity Day at the beginning of September. For them, however, the rite is not only about religious actions, but also about their powerful role in strengthening Roma ethnic identity. Through the analysis of the rite, we can gain a good …

Breaching Boundaries: Homogenizing The Dichotomy Between The Sacred And Profane In Csíksomlyó, Zsofia Lovei

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines how a Marian shrine in Csíksomlyó, Transylvania acts as a Foucauldian heterotopia for Magyar speaking individuals, residing in the Carpathian Basin, and beyond in the diaspora most especially during the annual Pentecost pilgrimage. Following introductory remarks on the site and my stance, I turn to methodology, and Hungarian scholarship on the topic. Afterwards, I provide a “thick description” of fieldwork I conducted on-site in May of 2015. I then turn to various theoretical ties, which I support with emic analysis. Lastly, I turn to ideas of heterotopias, and provide a brief formal analysis. My main incentive is …

Overview And Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Shock And Awe, Sectarianism, And Violence In Iraq Post-2003, Sarim Al-Rawi

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The violence systematically deployed upon the prosperous nation of Iraq in 2003 was directly influenced by the Shock and Awe doctrine set forth by Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade in their 1996 book Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance. The experimental methods of warfare and violence outlined in the text describe methods for the systematic destruction of every major aspect of a nation and society, militarily, economically, and socially. In the wake of the US Invasion of Iraq, we saw the direct implementation of these methods by the occupation forces, setting off a brutal cycle of violence that …

Mice Meet World: How Disney And Nintendo Allowed Consumers To Escape From, Re-Enter, And Later Re-Envision A War Torn World, Samantha Constantine

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines how Disney and Nintendo appealed to consumers in both the United States and Japan by celebrating ideals that spoke to consumer’s existing perceptions of national identity and national exceptionalism, particularly the dream of upward mobility. This thesis highlights four character traits that both the Japanese and Americans found heroic and that comprised the wider dream of upward mobility: hard work, perseverance, tenacity, and kindness. Through the immersive experiences that Disney and Nintendo provided, consumers became the heroes of their own journeys and brought these characteristics to life both in the fantasy worlds each company created and in …

Perceptions And Identity: Poverty In 19th Century Rockingham County, Kayla Heslin

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The historical analysis of poverty has lain silent for nearly two decades, with only recent authors, such as Nancy Isenberg and Kerri Leigh Merritt, broaching the topic. While several others have taken a deep dive into understanding the causes and effects of contemporary poverty, it seems to me a great deal has yet to be written on the identity of those impoverished and their active endeavors to define themselves in economic circumstances largely beyond their control. Until we truly explore the complexity of economic dearth and its relation to collective identity, we cannot fully understand the topic of “poverty.”

In …

Immigrants: A Threat To The Economy Or Cultural Identity? A Case Study Of Haitian And Venezuelan Immigrants In Chile, Erin Geist

Honors Theses

Historically, countries often faced the difficult task of favoring one immigrant group over another. Typically, this is in response to their inability to support those immigrants due to an unstable economy. However, some scholars argue that during times of economic prosperity, excluding immigrants may be the result of the group’s incapacity to assimilate to the nation’s “cultural identity”. Since Chile’s conception as a nation and as one of the most prosperous Latin American countries, they have received notably minuscule immigration rates. As a result, Chileans prides themselves as a relatively homogeneous country. Consequently, in 2018, President Sebastián Piñera differentiated visas …

Tổi Là Người Viet (I Am Vietnamese): The Construction Of Third-Wave Vietnamese Identity In The United States, Eric Pham

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper focuses on the third wave of Vietnamese migration to the United States, which occurred from the 1980s to the 1990s, and how this group of immigrants constructed their identity in a new country. From a Western perspective, particularly an American one, it is easy to categorize all Vietnamese immigrants under the same umbrella. Although there are similarities among all three waves, one significant element that differentiates the third wave from the other two is the United States’ enactment of the Amerasian Homecoming Act of 1987, which facilitated an influx of Vietnamese Americans to the U.S. mainland. This allowed …

“The Spirit Of Turbulence”: East Indian Political Imaginaries In Early 20th Century British Guiana, Faria A. Nasruddin

Honors Projects

After the abolition of slavery, the Colonial Office instituted an indentured labor scheme that lasted from 1838 to 1917, in which they brought East Indians to the plantation colonies as laborers under five year contracts. Due to the planter class’ desire for permanent sources of labor in British Guiana, the Colonial Government incentivized East Indians to permanently settle. East Indians thus dominated the British Guiana’s agricultural landscape and became the single largest ethnicity in the Colony by 1920. This thesis explores the early negotiations of the meaning of diaspora and diasporic citizenship for East Indians in British Guiana. They comprised …

Seventeenth-Century Spanish Colonial Identity In New Mexico: A Study Of Identity Practices Through Material Culture, Caroline M. Gabe

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation explores how seventeenth-century Spanish colonial households expressed their group identity at a regional level in New Mexico. Through the material remains of daily practice and repetitive actions, identity markers tied to adornment, technological traditions, and culinary practices are compared between 14 assemblages to test four identity models. Seventeenth-century colonists were eating a combination of Old World domesticates and wild game on colonoware and majolica serving vessels, cooking using Indigenous pottery, grinding with Puebloan style tools, and conducting household scale production and prospecting. While assemblages are consistent in basic composition, variations are present tied to socioeconomic status. This blending …

Getting Located: Queer Semiotics In Dress, Callen Zimmerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The body, a long contested site of identity construction, has been used by historically by queers to convey desire, build affinity and transgress norms. Looking at the fashioned queer body, this capstone takes the form of a proposal for an art exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Seeking to engage with objects, performance and film which approximate, provide proxy for or depart from the body as a site, it explores the social and political quagmire of getting dressed. Comprised of contemporary art that looks at the rupture of legible bodily semiotics, this show wonders what …

Tanks And Tinsel: The American Celebration Of Christmas During World War Ii, Samantha Desroches

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

“Tanks and Tinsel: The American Celebration of Christmas during World War II” is an examination of the American celebration of Christmas during World War II. As the first comprehensive investigation into the most well-known holiday in Western culture and its role in shaping Americans’ experience and understanding of the war, it contributes to historical scholarship in three ways. First, it continues the trend of blending analyses of society into military-focused narratives of the war, and it expands the scope of this by fusing the literature of War and Society with that of Holiday History. Second, it challenges traditional views of …

Zycie W Ameryce: Life In America (Poster), Brett A. Cotter

Summer Research Program

Poster complementing author's summer research project exploring the history of the Polish-American community of Worcester, Massachusetts centered on the parish of Our Lady of Czestochowa and how its members responded to the forces of Americanization. Research in area archives such as the Worcester Historical Museum, the Worcester Public Library, and at Our Lady of Czestochowa’s rectory and its parish school of Saint Mary’s, as well as oral history interviews with past and longtime members of the community test the assumption that the story of Worcester’s Polish community is one of loss and decline. On the contrary, Polish-American efforts to preserve …

Zycie W Ameryce: Life In America, Brett A. Cotter

Summer Research Program

My project explores the history of the Polish-American community of Worcester, Massachusetts centered on the parish of Our Lady of Czestochowa and how its members responded to the forces of Americanization. Like many ethnic groups new to America, Polish-Americans and Polish immigrants in the twentieth century had to adapt in a world that demanded conformity in exchange for social mobility and departure from tradition and community. Over eight weeks, I conducted research in area archives such as the Worcester Historical Museum, the Worcester Public Library, and at Our Lady of Czestochowa’s rectory and its parish school of Saint Mary’s, as …

When We Were Monsters: Ethnogenesis In Medieval Ireland 800-1366, Dawn Adelaide Seymour Klos

Master's Theses

Ethnogenesis, or the process of identity construction occurred in medieval Ireland as a reaction to laws passed by the first centralized government on the island. This thesis tracks ethnogenesis through documents relating to change in language, custom, and law. This argument provides insight into how a new political identity was rendered necessary by the Anglo-Irish. Victor Turner’s model of Communitas structures the argument as each stage of liminality represents a turning point in the process of ethnogenesis.

1169 marked a watershed moment as it began the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland. English nobles brought with them ideas of centralized power. In …

'Gifts From Amin': The Resettlement, Integration, And Identities Of Ugandan Asian Refugees In Canada, Shezan Muhammedi

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Given the current climate of the global refugee crisis it is vital to investigate why and how Canada has admitted refugees in the past. Prior to the creation of formal refugee policy, several notable resettlement initiatives occurred within the country in the postwar period including the arrival of Hungarian and Czechoslovakian refugees. This is the first academic study on the resettlement, integration, and identities of Ugandan Asian refugees who arrived in Canada between 1972 and 1974. They were the largest group of non-European and predominately Muslim refugees to arrive in Canada before the official creation of formal refugee policy in …

Encountering Greek American Soundscapes, Anthony Shay

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

For this chapter I will look at Greek American music making through the eyes of a non-Greek, my younger self, who enjoyed and sought out this musical tradition for over fifty years, primarily as a folk dance enthusiast. For the international recreational dancer of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, Greek music has rich melodic lines and many different rhythmic patterns (5/8; 7/8; 9/8, etc.) that attracted many individuals of Anglo American background like me to learn these dances, especially in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s when recreational and performance folk dance constituted a major leisure-time activity for hundreds of thousands …

Indigenous Helpers And Renegade Invaders: Ambivalent Characters In Biblical And Cinematic Conquest Narratives, L. Daniel Hawk

Journal of Religion & Film

This article compares the role of ambiguous character types in the national narratives of biblical Israel and modern America, two nations that ground their identities in myths of conquest. The types embody the tensions and ambivalence conquest myths generate by combining the invader/indigenous binary in complementary ways. The Indigenous Helper assists the invaders and signifies the land’s acquiescence to conquest. The Renegade Invader identifies with the indigenous peoples and manifests anxiety about the threat of indigenous difference. A discussion of these types in the book of Joshua, through the stories of Rahab and Achan, establishes a point of reference by …

Embattled Communities: Voluntary Action And Identity In Australia, Canada, And New Zealand, 1914-1918, Steve Marti

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines voluntary mobilization during the First World War to understand why communities on the social and geographical periphery of the British Empire mobilized themselves so enthusiastically to support a distant war, fought for adistant empire. Lacking a strong state apparatus or a military-industrial complex, the governments of Australia, Canada, and New Zealand relied on voluntary contributions to sustain their war efforts. Community-based voluntary societies knitted socks, raised funds to purchase military equipment, and formed contingents of soldiers. By examining the selective mobilization of voluntary participation, this study will understand how different communities negotiated social and spatial boundaries as …

From Socialist To Post-Socialist Cities: Narrating The Nation Through Urban Space, Joshua Hagen, Alexander Diener

Joshua Hagen

The development of post-socialist cities has emerged as a major field of study among critical theorists from across the social sciences. Originally constructed under the dictates of central planners and designed to serve the demands of command economies, post-socialist urban centers currently develop at the nexus of varied and often competing economic, cultural, and political forces. Among these, nationalist aspirations, previously simmering beneath the official rhetoric of communist fraternity and veneer of architectural conformity, have emerged as dominant factors shaping the urban landscape. This article examines patterns, processes, and practices concerning the cultural politics of architecture, urban planning, and identity …

American Identity Crisis, 1789-1815: Foreign Affairs And The Formation Of American National Identity, George E. Best

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

When the Constitution was drafted in 1789, Americans did not have a sense of national identity. The process toward achieving a national identity was long and fraught with conflict. Some of the most influential events on the United States were foreign affairs. American reactions to these events reveal the gradual coalescence of national identity. The French Revolution was incredibly divisive and Americans defined their political views in relation to it. The wars spawned by it caused Great Britain and France to seize American ships believed to be carrying contraband. The American public took an active role in making its opinions …

Immigrants, Roma And Sinti Unveil The “National” In Italian Identity, Francesco Melfi

Cultural Encounters, Conflicts, and Resolutions

This essay picks up a few threads in the ongoing debate on national identity in Italy. Immigration and the intertwining of cultures locally have stretched the contours of the nation state to a breaking point. As a result, the social self has become a sharply contested terrain between those who want to install a symbolic electronic fence around an imagined fatherland and those who want a more inclusive nation at home in a global world. After discussing the views of Amin Maalouf (2000), Alessandro Dal Lago (2009), Abdelmalek Sayad (1999) and Patrick Manning (2005) on national identity and migration in …

"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.

Italianità On Tour: From The Mediterranean To Southeast Florida, 1896-1939, Antonietta Di Pietro

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Italianità on Tour is a cultural history of Italian consciousness in Italy and Southeast Florida from 1896 to 1939. This dissertation examines literary works, folktales, folksongs, artworks, buildings and urban planning as imprints and cultural constructions of Italianità on both sides of the Atlantic, with a special emphasis on the transformations experienced on that journey. The real and/or imagined geo-cultural similarities between the Mediterranean and the Caribbean encouraged pioneers in Southeast Florida to conjure in their new setting an idea of Italianità, regardless of the presence of Italians in the area. Therefore, assessing Italianità, constitutes an important feature …

More Than An "Immoderate Superstition": Christian Identity In The First Three Centuries, Edward Mason

Theses and Dissertations--History

Only recently have scholars given particular attention to the development of the racial discourse present in early Christian apologetics. This study is aimed at understanding the Latin and Greek literary antecedents to the development of a Christian discourse on race and identity and examining in detail the apex of this discourse in the work of third century apologist Origen of Alexandria. Origen’s work represented the apex of an evolving discourse that, while continuing to use traditional vocabulary, became increasingly universalizing with the growth of the Roman Empire. By understanding how Christians in the first three centuries shaped their attitudes on …