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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This is the first study of countermajoritarianism in the House of Representatives. Although the House is considered a majoritarian institution, intrastate malapportionment remained rampant prior to the 1964 Wesberry decision; the three-fifths clause drove systematic antebellum differences in the number of free people in northern and southern House districts; and widespread voter discrimination in the South led to systematically different levels of turnout. Combined, these factors potentialized roll calls in which the chamber’s majority did not actually represent more free individuals, voters, or electoral supporters than the minority. Using three separate measures, I characterize such outcomes as countermajoritarian. I find …
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis is a close reading of Civil War pedagogy in Alabama and Virginia with special attention given to Black history during the Civil War era. Through an examination of Civil War history, it is evident that slavery was the main cause of the War. The development of the Lost Cause narrative, a reaction to Blacks gaining Civil Rights that aimed to prove the Confederate war effort was honorable, is still promoted in southern schools. Alabama and Virginia both provide state standards, outlines of the minimum required knowledge to be obtained on a given subject by the end of the …
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.
The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This paper assesses why two projects with the same name, concept and intent of forming cultural consensus, the Freedom Trains, took such different forms between the postwar "consensus" (1947-1963) and detente (1963-1979) phases of the Cold War. It argues that organizers Attorney General Tom C. Clark (1947), Ross Rowland (1975), and their corporate backers articulated histories based on perceived common values of limited rights (1947), cultural pluralism (1975) and consumption (both) that attempted unity, but resulted in silences. The reception to each train, and the organizers' responses to those reactions, showed the limitations of a unifying consensus, but varied between …
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The presence of Confederate symbols and other reminders of white institutional power in courtrooms introduces a risk that impermissible factors such as implicit bias, conscious prejudice, and sympathy for white supremacy will harm litigants’ rights. I compiled data for 210 of 328 courts (64%) in the Commonwealth and found that there are more than 617 portraits on display in Virginia courtrooms. At least 357 portraits depict white men, six depict Black men, fifteen depict white women, and twenty-eight depict people who served in the Confederacy, either in the government or the Confederate States Army (CSA). At least fourteen different courts …
“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks
“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks
Undergraduate Honors Theses
I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …
Relationships, Credit, And Value: Analyzing Money As A Social Institution In Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Amanda White Gibson
Relationships, Credit, And Value: Analyzing Money As A Social Institution In Late Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Amanda White Gibson
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Uniting Interests: The Economic Functions Of Marriage In America, 1750-1860, Lindsay Mitchell Keiter
Uniting Interests: The Economic Functions Of Marriage In America, 1750-1860, Lindsay Mitchell Keiter
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation, "Uniting Interests: Money, Property, and Marriage in America, 1750-1860," examines how marriage was an essential economic transaction that responded to the development of capitalism in early America. Drawing on scholarship on the history of economic development, household organization, law, and gender, I argue that families actively distributed resources at marriage as part of larger wealth management strategies that were sensitive to regional and national economic growth. I focus particularly on women's property holding and how families deployed the legal protection of women's property as bulwarks against financial disaster. This project restores the family and women to the narrative …
Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo
Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Promoting Tourism, Selling A Nation: The Politics Of Representing National Identity In The United States 1930-1960, Sarah Elizabeth Mclennan
Promoting Tourism, Selling A Nation: The Politics Of Representing National Identity In The United States 1930-1960, Sarah Elizabeth Mclennan
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Promoting Tourism, Selling a Nation: The Politics of Representing National Identity in the United States 1930-1960, focuses on tourism and public culture in the United States, examining how institutions and public sites interpret their history, and the impact these representations have on community and national identity. The project centers on the United States Travel Bureau, the first federal agency tasked with promoting U.S. tourism on a national scale. Through its publicity campaigns, the Bureau attempted to distill the diversity of communities and traditions in the United States into a cohesive vision of American identity and heritage---one it promoted both at …
Exhorting Or Extorting?: George Whitefield's Financial Controversies, Kristen Elizabeth Beales
Exhorting Or Extorting?: George Whitefield's Financial Controversies, Kristen Elizabeth Beales
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
The Reynolds Affair, Party Politics And Sexuality In The Early Republic, Alexandra Marie Gross
The Reynolds Affair, Party Politics And Sexuality In The Early Republic, Alexandra Marie Gross
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Possessing The Holy Land: The Palestine Exploration Fund And The American Palestine Exploration Society, Ashley M. Irizarry
Possessing The Holy Land: The Palestine Exploration Fund And The American Palestine Exploration Society, Ashley M. Irizarry
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney
Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
The half-century marked by the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a critical period of cultural, social, and economic transition for African Americans in the southern United States. During the late nineteenth century, while African Americans were rebuilding communities and networks disrupted by enslavement and the ensuing Civil War, several settlements developed between Williamsburg and Yorktown on Virginia's lower peninsula. One of the settlements, Charles' Corner, is an optimal case study for understanding the gradual process of community building during a particularly challenging period of African American history dominated by systemic racism and …
Merrymaking At The Madisons': Feasting, Alcohol, And Political Strategy, Christine Hope Heacock
Merrymaking At The Madisons': Feasting, Alcohol, And Political Strategy, Christine Hope Heacock
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
"Here Stands A High Bred Horse": A Theory Of Economics And Horse Breeding In Colonial Virginia, 1750-1780; A Statistical Model, Lily Kleppertknoop
"Here Stands A High Bred Horse": A Theory Of Economics And Horse Breeding In Colonial Virginia, 1750-1780; A Statistical Model, Lily Kleppertknoop
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
The Schoolteacher And The Secretary: The Newspapers And Community Of A Revolutionary French-American, 1754-1784, Katherine S. Madison
The Schoolteacher And The Secretary: The Newspapers And Community Of A Revolutionary French-American, 1754-1784, Katherine S. Madison
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
The Nottoway Of Virginia: A Study Of Peoplehood And Political Economy, C.1775-1875, Buck Woodard
The Nottoway Of Virginia: A Study Of Peoplehood And Political Economy, C.1775-1875, Buck Woodard
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This research examines the social construction of a Virginia Indian reservation community during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Between 1824 and 1877 the Iroquoian-speaking Nottoway divided their reservation lands into individual partible allotments and developed family farm ventures that mirrored their landholding White neighbors. In Southampton's slave-based society, labor relationships with White landowners and "Free People of Color" impacted Nottoway exogamy and shaped community notions of peoplehood. Through property ownership and a variety of labor practices, Nottoway's kin-based farms produced agricultural crops, orchard goods and hogs for export and sale in an emerging agro-industrial economy. However, shifts in Nottoway …
Sexual Indiscretions In Virginia's Colonial Capital, Sarah Rebecca Schmidt
Sexual Indiscretions In Virginia's Colonial Capital, Sarah Rebecca Schmidt
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Race News: How Black Reporters And Readers Shaped The Fight For Racial Justice, 1877--1978, Frederick James Carroll
Race News: How Black Reporters And Readers Shaped The Fight For Racial Justice, 1877--1978, Frederick James Carroll
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Between 1877 and 1978, black reporters, publishers, and readers engaged in a never-ending and ever-shifting protest against American racism. Journalists' militancy oscillated as successive generations of civil rights activists defined anew their relationship with racism and debated the relevance of black radicalism in the fight for racial justice. Journalists achieved their greatest influence when their political perspectives aligned with the views of their employers and readers. Frequent disputes, though, erupted over the scope and meaning of racial justice within the process of reporting the news, compelling some writers to start alternative publications that challenged the assimilationist politics promoted by profit-minded …
The Ideal Marriage: Reactions To Marie Stopes' "Married Love", 1918-1935, Shannon E. Goings
The Ideal Marriage: Reactions To Marie Stopes' "Married Love", 1918-1935, Shannon E. Goings
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
The Death Of John Pierce And The Political Culture Of The Early Republic, Jennifer Leigh Petrafesa
The Death Of John Pierce And The Political Culture Of The Early Republic, Jennifer Leigh Petrafesa
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
"I Will Commence With My News": Elite Youth Culture And Communities Of Knowledge In Early Nineteenth Century Williamsburg, Holly Nicole Stevens
"I Will Commence With My News": Elite Youth Culture And Communities Of Knowledge In Early Nineteenth Century Williamsburg, Holly Nicole Stevens
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Towns In Mind: Urban Plans, Political Culture, And Empire In The Colonial Chesapeake, 1607--1722, Paul Philip Musselwhite
Towns In Mind: Urban Plans, Political Culture, And Empire In The Colonial Chesapeake, 1607--1722, Paul Philip Musselwhite
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation charts the contested political and cultural meaning of urbanization in the emerging plantation societies of Virginia and Maryland. Scholars have long asserted that Chesapeake planters' desire for lucre led them to patent huge tracts of land, disperse across the landscape, and completely dismiss urban development. However, through 17 pieces of legislation, colonists, governors, and London administrators actually encouraged towns in the Chesapeake through the seventeenth century. Despite the environmental and agricultural constraints of tidewater tobacco, both colonies wrestled with a perceived need for towns, which consistently appeared to represent the best means to engineer the region's political economy …
The Spectacle Of Citizenship: Halftones, Print Media, And Constructing Americanness, 1880--1940, Sarah Lucinda Grunder
The Spectacle Of Citizenship: Halftones, Print Media, And Constructing Americanness, 1880--1940, Sarah Lucinda Grunder
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Advances in photography and conceptions of national identity proceeded side by side during the nineteenth century. The introduction of halftone reproductions marks the beginning of an information revolution and is an important moment not only in media history, but in studies of nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history and studies of national identity. Visual representation of differences between people and places was one means by which people identified and validated Americans' belonging because photographs were infused with authority: they seemed to be truthful, to provide infallible evidence of events and of people. as the nineteenth century gave way to the …
The Rise Of Modern Richmond And The Fall Of Electric Transit, Earl Ferdinand Glock
The Rise Of Modern Richmond And The Fall Of Electric Transit, Earl Ferdinand Glock
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
A Shop In The Back Street: Late Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Through The Ledgers Of Blacksmith James Anderson, Kathleen Marie Child
A Shop In The Back Street: Late Eighteenth Century Williamsburg Through The Ledgers Of Blacksmith James Anderson, Kathleen Marie Child
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, And The Empire For Liberty, Sean Patrick Harvey
American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, And The Empire For Liberty, Sean Patrick Harvey
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
"American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, and the Empire for Liberty" is a study of knowledge and power, as it relates to Indian affairs, in the early republic. It details the interactions, exchanges, and networks through which linguistic and racial ideas were produced and it examines the effect of those ideas on Indian administration. First etymology, then philology, guided the study of human descent, migrations, and physical and mental traits, then called ethnology. It would answer questions of Indian origins and the possibility of Indian incorporation into the United States. It was crucial to white Americans seeking to define their polity and …
Utopian Spaces: Mormons And Icarians In Nauvoo, Illinois, Sarah Jaggi Lee
Utopian Spaces: Mormons And Icarians In Nauvoo, Illinois, Sarah Jaggi Lee
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Nauvoo, Illinois was the setting for two important social experiments in the middle of the nineteenth century. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormons, made this city their headquarters of their rapidly expanding church from 1838 until 1846. Only three years after the departure of the Mormons, a group of Frenchmen calling themselves Icarians came to the same spot to realize a system of communal living and brotherhood that lasted in Nauvoo until 1856. While several studies have been devoted to these groups, as yet none have combined a study of the two communities …