Intellectual History Commons^™

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 …

Bread And Repression, Too: The Battle For Labor’S Memory And The Lawrence Textile Strike Of 1912, Andrew Hubbard

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the historiography of the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912 as representative of a larger trend of repression of American labor narratives. It draws from oral history accounts, news coverage and analysis from 1912, resources at the Lawrence History Center collected throughout the city’s process of memorialization, secondary historical accounts of the event, and formative works of labor history.

The first chapter introduces the American labor narrative, the history of repression by authority, the efforts of labor historians to memorialize suppressed history, and the role that monuments, historians, and popular fictional accounts play in the formation …

Nature And Human Flourishing In The Laws Of Manu And The Daodejing, Qijing Zheng

Honors Theses

By comparing the interpretation of dharma in the ancient Indian Laws of Manu (Manusmṛti) with the concepts of dao in the Chinese classic, Daodejing, this thesis discusses that, despite the plausible perception that the former represents despotic, hierarchical governance while the latter promotes freedom (and even anarchy), the two texts in fact share a similar envision of human flourishing through the following of one's nature, as well as a foundational belief that both laws and political ideals emerge from nature.

Euler E271 : A Link Between Mathematics Of Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow, Sarah Ann Nelson

Honors Theses

The major focus of this departmental thesis was to complete t he first English translation of E271 Arithmetic Theorems Proven by a New Method, a mathematical treatise published by Leonhard Euler in Latin in 1761. Most importantly, E271 contains Euler's generalization of Fermat's Litt le Theorem and an exploration of the properties of (n). Altogether, this paper includes an Abstract, Introduction, Note to the Readers, Translation of Arithmetic Theorems Proven by a New Method, Epilogue, and References. More specifically, the Introduction is about the historical background of the mathematics and applications leading up to E271 and the key corresponding mathematicians. …

Folly In The Garden: The Religious Satire Of Erasmus And Voltaire, John M. Beller

Honors Theses

In his introductory editorial comments on Erasmus' letters, literary critic Robert M. Adams commented that "Like Voltaire, with whom it's commonplace to compare him, Erasmus was a prodigious correspondent." Erasmus and Voltaire shared much more than an affinity for writing letters. A list of their similarities reads much like one of those supposedly eerie lists of coincidences between the presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. The dates of their respective births remain uncertain. Both may have been illegitimate during times when ancestry mattered a great deal, and neither was born noble. Both rose above their beginnings by means …