Intellectual History Commons^™

The Black Press And Late Imperial Russia, Benjamin Pierce

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

For centuries, western observers had looked to Russia and seen a place fundamentally different from their home countries. In their accounts, Russia was distinctly oppressive, a state characterized by tyranny, barbarism, and Mongolian influence. But these accounts were faulty. They were written by merchants, diplomats, and explorers, wealthy white men who had never experienced the kind of repression they witnessed in Russia. When Black Americans looked to Russia, however, they saw a place fundamentally similar to the United States. Both countries were large, multiethnic empires driven by territorial acquisition and fueled by forced labor. By tracing the coverage of Russia …

From Tidewater To Tennessee: The Structuring Influences Of Virginia Schemata In The Settlement Of East Tennessee, Slade Nakoff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

For over two hundred years, historians have debated the historical importance of early Tennessee migrants in shaping the state’s history. These discussions center around North Carolina's impact compared to Virginia's. By shifting discourse to the retention of migrant mentalities, the overwhelming influence of Virginia emerges through the continuity of privilege and commodification schemata. This study employs an interdisciplinary methodological approach combining schema theory, memory studies, and material culture analysis to outline the retention of mentalities from Tidewater, Virginia, to East Tennessee during the early settlement period. By utilizing the case study of John Carter of Watauga (1728-1781), the research illustrates …

Breaking And Setting The Pattern: European Influences On Early Catalan Nationalism, Gabriel Black-Planas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

During the development of the Catalan nationalist political tradition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, early Catalanist thinkers drew heavily from the examples of their European and American contemporaries. As Catalonia developed an industrial base and began celebrating its linguistic and cultural heritage during the nineteenth century, it increasingly looked outwards. Seeing themselves as more European than Spanish, Catalanist desperately wished to modernize their region and nation. To this end, Catalanists developed a very specific and Eurocentric standard for civilizations that they thought critical for national development. This work traces the development of this model, what it entailed, how it …

"In The Footsteps Of Hercules": The Influence Of Classical Antiquity On Eighteenth-Century Militaries, Scott Madere

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This project examines the pervasive influence of ancient Roman and Greek figures, historical events, literature, and military methods on the leaders and practitioners of eighteenth-century warfare. Rulers, generals, military theorists, and officers frequently consulted classical histories and literature for solutions to the common military problems of the period – tactical, operational, and strategic – showing remarkable faith in ancient military methods despite their growing dependence on gunpowder weaponry and related technologies. This dissertation examines why this was the case and concludes that classical antiquity not only maintained the credibility of its wisdom in the context of modern warfare, but also …

The Art And Mystery Of Pragmatic History, David Hardin

History Theses

This thesis considers how we make meaning in our individual lives and in practice as historians. From an initializing question —Why do people believe things that have either been proven false or shown improbable?— born out of historical discourse in the liminal space between mythology and history, this thesis embarks on a inquiry into meaning that is both deeply philosophical and practical. The work develops a historical method that falls within the tradition of Pragmatism, and then turns this method toward two case studies (Pedro Huízar and Señora Candelaria) from San Antonio, Texas. The aim is to explore two myths …

“Principles Which Constitute The Only Basis Of The Union” : Virginian Beliefs During The Nullification Crisis, 1832-1833, Sean Elliott Kellogg

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

Preceding the American Civil War by three decades, the Nullification Crisis is often overshadowed by that larger conflict. It tends to be thought of only as an event in which the two sides of the war, pro-union and anti-union, coalesced around divisive issues. This perspective obscures the complex ideological loyalties that were in conflict during the crisis. These disagreements were on especially clear display in the influential border state of Virginia, which hosted many different opinions about the relevant issues. The state ultimately chose to steer a middle course. In January 1833, it adopted a set of resolves that rejected …

Isocrates's Place In Postmodern Advertising, Christopher Barkley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study in communication and rhetoric seeks to ascertain constructive applications for distinct advertising practices by examining Isocrates’s work and place in postmodern advertising. The focus uses 5 principles known to Isocrates which are: 1) commonwealths of households, 2) integration of reputation, elegance, substance and style, 3) education and public discourse, 4) phronesis and praxis, and 5) truth and verisimilitude. These 5 principles can form a constructive and practical advertising approach. This study is important. It examines Isocrates through the lens of advertising and extends the research done about him by leading Isocrates scholars who have looked primarily at his …

Virility And Defeat: Masculinities In Italy Between Fascism And The Sexual Revolution, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is the history of how masculinity evolved in a postfascist western European country. Militaristic virility was a core tenet of fascist Italy. World War Two weakened it profoundly, as men’s and women’s conceptions of their own sexual identities were fundamentally reshaped by violence and defeat. At the same time, consumer culture, exemplified by American GIs and expanding continuously through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged the emergence of a new kind of man, only for this type, too, to be contested in turn in the wake of the New Left rebellions of 1968 and through the tumultuous 1970s. In all …

Printing Devotion: Sufi Books And Their Transregional Networks In An Age Of Print, Mariam Elashmawy

Theses and Dissertations

The production of printed books in the Muslim world is a story that encompasses an array of actors, spanning centuries, and taking place in remote, yet connected locales. This thesis provides an intellectual history of Ṣūfī print production of Islamicate mystical works in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries by examining three overlapping genres: poetry, Ṣūfī histories (hagiography), and litanies (aḥzāb). Texts such as the Dīwān of devotional poetry by Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1234), the litany of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), Ḥizb al-baḥr, and Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, a history of the Naqshbandiyya order by Fakhr …

A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines

Honors Theses

During the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went …

Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration To Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911, Gregory Jany

Student Work

A 2020-2021 Williams Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Gregory Jany (Jonathan Edwards, '21) for his essay submitted to the Department of History, “Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration to Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911" (Denise Ho, Assistant Professor of History, advisor).

Gregory Jany’s thesis, “Imperial Crossings: Chinese Indentured Migration to Sumatra's East Coast, 1865-1911,” is elegantly written, deeply researched in multiple archives—British materials, Dutch archives, and Qing documents—and uses several languages beyond English: Bahasa Indonesia, Dutch, Chinese, and Classical Chinese. Grounded in the literatures of the late imperial China, the Chinese diaspora, and colonial Southeast Asia, …

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

Auto®Ficción Latinx De Nueva York (1999–2020), Jacqueline Herranz Brooks

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research on the intersection of Literary Criticism, Latino Studies, Persona Studies, and Performance Studies has led me to question the accepted definitions of autoficción (Doubrovsky, Gasparini, Alberca, Casas, Schlikers) and expand that definition into a more multifaceted and operational term. Hence, I created auto®ficción, a new term describing the hybrid creations of a group of underrepresented contemporary Latinx authors living/producing/circulating their work in New York City, during the first two decades of the 21^st Century. For these authors, their life experiences and quotidian uses of this city’s spaces are the subjects of their work. Auto®ficción draws attention …

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 …

Bloodied Hearts And Bawdy Planets: Greco-Roman Astrology And The Regenerative Force Of The Feminine In Shakespeare’S The Winter’S Tale, Christina E. Farella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a new reading of William Shakespeare’s late play The Winter’s Tale (1623), positing that in order to understand this complex and eccentric work, we must read it with a complex and eccentric eye. In The Winter’s Tale, planets strike without warning, pulling at hearts, wombs, and blood, impacting the health and emotional experience of characters in the play. This work is renowned for its inconsistent formal structure; the first half is a tragedy set in winter, but abruptly shifts to a comedy set in spring/summer in its latter half. What’s more, is that planets, luminaries, and …

Audio Quality As Content: Everyday Criticism Of The Lo-Fi Format, Elizabeth Newton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the matter of authenticity with respect to audio recordings. In the early 1990s, the term “lo-fi” (“low-fidelity”) emerged as a label used to categorize many different types of popular music, indicating widespread fascination with what I call audio quality, the perceived character of an audio recording. I define audio quality as the relationship between content and mediation, which varies greatly by circumstance. My archival research of zines, press releases, and correspondence examines this relationship in three case studies: Wu-Tang Clan, Bratmobile, and Elliott Smith. I posit the lo-fi format as a critical structure that emerged in …

Paper House: The Revolution, The Disappeared, And The Historicity Of Lebanon, Elsa Saade

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will be an attempt to reenact events in relation to the disappeared and the Lebanese civil war, with the help of newspaper cuts, oral history, theories on historical writing, memories, and books on Lebanon. As a prospective historian, the writer will be tapping into the internal event of thought processes and meaning of the past, as advised by R. G. Collingwood in The Idea of History. (Collingwood, 1946 ) That critical inquiry will only be at the service of understanding the present from the lens of a self-reflecting inquisitor that has faced many silences in a past …

“The Amazing Iroquois”: Haudenosaunee History In Myth And Memory, 1776–1955, John C. Winters

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project is a history and memory study of Iroquois exceptionalism. This is an idea that shaped our understanding of the Iroquois as the “most studied” Indian nation and that they, as the debunked Iroquois Influence Thesis claimed, influenced the structure and scope of the U.S. Constitution. My study examines the lives of four related (by blood and by claim) Seneca leaders: Red Jacket, Ely S. Parker, Harriet Maxwell Converse, and Arthur C. Parker. These four stand out because each was one of the most famous Native Americans of their generation who worked within and against American colonial society and …

"The Twilight-Colored Smell Of Honeysuckle:" William Faulkner, The South, And Literature As A Site Of Memory, Emily Innes

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines the intersection of literature and historical memory, focusing on William Faulkner’s literature and the construction of memory and identity in the 1920s-1930s American South. Understanding the basic objective of memory as using the past to consolidate a social consciousness rooted in a shared identity and future, I examine how literature contributes to and enriches this process. I argue that because memory is deeply embedded in the social frameworks of a population, and dependent on the population’s cultural, political, and social identity, it is a fundamental component of understanding cultural identity. By interpreting literature through the lens of …

(Re)Reading Fanon: Tracing Revolutionary Negotiations Within The Algerian Colonial Dialectic, Nina Zietlow

Scripps Senior Theses

A critical rereading of Fanon within the Algerian colonial context.

"Black Colorism And White Racism: Discourse On The Politics Of White Supremacy, Black Equality, And Racial Identity, 1915-1930", Hannah Paige Mcdonald

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The following study unravels how Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists understood the race problem and its solution between 1915 and 1930. The racial identity and experiences of these three distinct groups, each informed how they understood the race problem and its solution. The divergent notions about the source of and solution to the race problem coalesced with colorism, sowing seeds of intraracial and interracial conflict and cooperation between the Garveyite black nationalists, black integrationists, and Virginian white supremacists as they navigated how to redress white supremacy and black equality. According to black integrationists and Garveyite black …

The New British Christianity Of C.S. Lewis, Thomas Kemp

LSU Master's Theses

The emergence of C.S. Lewis as a popular author known for Christian content during the second half of the twentieth century provides an ideal case study for the transformation of religiosity within Britain. As religious behavior shifted from institutional adherence to private experience, Lewis became a ‘popular theologian’ who represented Christianity both for Christians – who looked to him for spiritual inspiration– and for non-Christians – who treated his views as representative of contemporary Christianity. By analyzing the reception, representation, and use of Lewis (his figure and his work) throughout the twentieth-century and into the twenty-first, it becomes clear that …

Creating An Indigenous Multicultural Faith: The Russian Orthodox Mission In Alaska And The Centrality Of Cosmology, Niklaus Von Houck

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper applies letters, journals, history interviews, government-company contracts, international treaties, theological works, and images to examine the convergence of Russian Orthodox Christianity and Alaskan Indigenous shamanism cultures to explicate the harmonizing of an Indigenous multicultural Christian faith in nineteenth-century Russian Alaska. Central to this examination is the evaluation of effects of Orthodox Christian missiology on native Alaskans and the Indigenous religio-cultural response to Russian missionaries. Not merely a historical overview of contact between natives and missionaries in Russian Alaska, this paper harmonizes the commonality of cosmology between native Alaskan shamanism and Orthodox Christianity. It analyzes the impacts of comparatively …

Nationalized Bodies: Kuroda Seiki And The Birth Of The Nude In Meiji Japan, Ziyan Wang

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project Submitted to The Divisions of Arts and Languages and Literatures of Bard College.

Breaking And Remaking The Mason-Dixon Line: Loyalty In Civil War America, 1850-1900, Charles R. Welsko

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Between 1850 and 1900, Americans redefined their interpretation of national identity and loyalty. In the Mid-Atlantic borderland of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia this change is most evident. With the presence of a free state and slave states in close proximity, white and black Americans of the region experienced the tumult of the Civil War Era first hand. While the boundary between freedom and slavery served as an antebellum battleground over slavery, during the war, the whole region bore witness to divisions between the Union and Confederacy as well as to define what loyalty and nation meant. By exploring …

Alternative Marriage Practices Of Wartime Urban China In Discourse And Practice (1937-1949), Charlotte Cotter

Student Work

A 2017-2018 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Charlotte Cotter (Grace Hopper College '18) for her essay submitted to the East Asian Studies Program, "Alternative Marriage Practices of Wartime Urban China in Discourse and Practice (1937-1949)” (Peter C. Perdue, Professor of History, advisor).

Charlotte Cotter’s thesis, “Alternative Marriage Practices of Wartime Urban China in Discourse and Practice (1937-1949)” is an excellent study of how women in Shanghai during wartime explored different modes of intimate life, including alternate forms of marriage, when the upheaval of war tore apart families and disrupted personal relations. Throughout …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The Confluence Of Evangelical And Enlightenment Thought In British America, Brandon S. Durbin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

Death And Taxidermy: How The Process Of Taxidermy Ties In To Modern Society’S Discomfort With Death, Caitlin Monroe

History Undergraduate Theses

“Death and Taxidermy: How the Process of Taxidermy ties in to Modern Society’s Discomfort with Death” examines the relationship between current western discomfort with taxidermy and the strengthening relationship of companion animals with humans. This strengthening of the relationship is facilitating the rising level of grief that comes with losing a pet thus allowing that loss to equate to the loss of a family member. By dispelling the mystery surrounding the process by which a taxidermy specimen is made, where it comes from and why these specimens are vital to educational advancement in the museum, we can discuss why society …