Social History Commons^™

His 242.C301 – Contemporary European History From The Global South / Third World Perspective, Soheil Asefi

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus for HIS 242: Contemporary European History builds on a course taught in Lehman College’s History Department in 2025 and has been revised for Fall 2027. It approaches European history from the French Revolution to the present through Global South perspectives, emphasizing empire, class struggle, migration, anti-colonial movements, gender, and sexuality. Combining primary sources, scholarship, digital archives, and multimedia, the course encourages historical analysis through discussion and student presentations. Developed through the Open Knowledge Fellowship, this Zero Textbook Cost syllabus brings together open educational resources, open-access materials, and CUNY library resources.

The Grizzly, October 29, 2026, Sidney Belleroche, Adam Denn, Cora Johnson, Nathaniel Nerone, Samantha Zwergel, Erik Groff

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

MontCo Tuition Aid Program Expanded • New Look for Homecoming Draws Praise • Behind the Curtain: "Small Enchantments" • It's a Hard Season, Let's Be Kind • So You Think You Know Sports? • Opinion: Shane Gillis - You're Not Funny, You're Just a Misogynist • Ursinus Men's Basketball Preview • Ursinus Sports Make Homecoming History

From Courtship To Competition: Dating And Youth Culture In Twentieth-Century America, Gaege Gobezie

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This review critically examines Beth Bailey’s From Front Porch to Back Seat to examine changing paradigms in twentieth-century dating culture. In this book, Bailey successfully describes the impetus behind the transformation of courtship into modern dating. The ascendancy of distinctive youth culture and institutions was a catalyst for changing social dynamics among America’s adolescents. Traditionally, dating relationships were pursued under the aegis of the home and family. The emergence of this distinctive youth culture and the automobile displaced dating relationships from the home to the public sphere. This changing cultural attitude towards relationships created the “dating-rating” complex, in which adolescents …

Silk And Authority: The Political Meaning Of Elite Women's Fashion In Europe, Kaylee S. Rupasinghe

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Fashion for women has not always been about personal style and fashion trends, but women's fashion among the elite has served in ways to express a woman's identity, authority, and wealth to the public. By analyzing Elizabeth I, Marie Antoinette, and Victoria, noticeable differences and outcomes occur based on what they wore, how they wore their clothing, and the self-portraits they released to the public. This analysis suggests that elite women in European history went beyond fashion trends with their clothing choices and shaped a society with the clothing they wore.

No New Lessons: The Impact Of World War 2 On The American Fire Service, Brady L. Hutchison

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Large loss of life fires occurred with terrifying regularity in 1940s America. While overseas, the nation’s military waged a war on tyranny and oppression abroad, at home, the country faced an enemy every bit as deadly. Tradition in the fire service has held the notion that the 1940s saw so many deadly fires due to the nation being at war. The war, it is believed, drained fire departments of manpower, dramatically increased the call volume for departments, and led departments to cut or suspend fire inspections owing to lack of manpower. With that, the consensus is that fire codes in …

The Many Lives Of Benjamin Franklin: A Historiographical Examination Of America’S First Self-Made Man, Michael W. Cunningham

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This paper explores how Benjamin Franklin's historiography has changed over time. It argues that Franklin has been reinterpreted throughout American history and that these reinterpretations say just as much about America as they do about Franklin. Instead of taking a chronological approach to Franklin's life, this study explores how historians have thought about Franklin over time, starting with eighteenth-century writers and ending with historians writing in the twenty-first century. The life of Franklin has been used to exemplify upward mobility, middle-class virtues, and republican success stories, but has more recently been the subject of revisionist scholarship focused on slavery and …

All That Glitters Is Not Gold: Consuelo Vanderbilt And Transatlantic Marriages In The Gilded Age, Katie M. Cassady

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Between 1865 and the onset of World War I, wealthy American women increasingly married titled European men. These marriages played a critical role for both parties: the newly moneyed elite asserted its claim to social status, and depleted European nobility regained the funds so essential to their longevity. By 1915, 454 American heiresses had married into the European aristocracy. In one famous example, Consuelo Vanderbilt was forcibly wed to the ninth Duke of Marlborough. As the Vanderbilt family labored to assimilate themselves into old-money New York society, the opportunity to tie their family name to English nobility could catapult the …

The Grizzly, October 8, 2026, Sidney Belleroche, Adam Denn, Saniya Jeter, Laela Stackhouse, Cora Johnson, Samantha Zwergel, Caitlin Cunnane, Erik Groff

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Launches "Go Global" Program • Myrin Renovations Finally Complete • Myrin Wasps Exterminated, Identified • The Lantern is Inevitable • Ursinus Graduate Program • Opinion: The Printing Situation • What's Behind Ursinus Football's Hot Start? • Ursinus Opens New Outdoor Gym

Piercing The Veil In Sinners: Theological Insights From The Juke Joint, Antonio D. Sison Cpps

Journal of Religion & Film

Celebrated as a critical and commercial success, Ryan Coogler’s genre-defying opus Sinners has also been considered as one of the most culturally significant films of 2025. It also promises to be one of the most theologically resonant films of the year. This is evinced not only in its thematic and literary bases but, importantly, in its very audiovisual language and grammar, its stylistic strategies qua film. As reasoned in this essay, Coogler’s film is a rich locus theologicus, a nexus for theological discovery and insight.Sinners kindles the hermeneutical impulse to dialogue with African American/Pan-Africa theologies exemplified by the …

Bibliography For "Commemorating The American Revolution 250 Years Later" Display, Victoria Perez, Sally Park

Library Displays and Bibliographies

A bibliography created to support a display about the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution in fall 2026 at the Leatherby Libraries at Chapman University.

Powerful Pulpits: Black Preachers As Cultish Leaders In The Axman Murders, 1909-1912, Lauren N. Henley

Interdisciplinary Journal of Leadership Studies

Southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas experienced a series of disturbingly similar ax murders from November 1909 to August 1912. In nearly every case, a black family living within a mile of the Sunset Limited line of the Southern Pacific Railroad was brutally slaughtered in their own home, victims of a surreptitious assailant. Eventually, a young black woman would take credit for some of the crimes, ushering in the language of “religious fanaticism” as a potential motive. This confession sparked an intense period of criminalization of black male preachers, with a particular focus on Pentecostal leaders in southwestern Louisiana. This article …

The Grizzly, September 24, 2026, Sidney Belleroche, Adam Denn, Saniya Jeter, Sam Zwergel, Laela Stackhouse, Gianna M. Scotto, Nathaniel Nerone, Erik Groff

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Bats Found in BWC • Police Chief Discusses Flock Cameras • Okay, But What is APEX? • St. Joe's Coach Reflects on Ursinus Past • Fresh Dining Hall Hours Changes • Opinion: No, You are Not "Apolitical" • Ursinus Introduces Flag Football as Varsity Sport • Field Hockey Fends Off Competition to Begin Season

Archives As Activism: Using Cuny Archives To Examine And Analyze Social Change, Marci Littlefield

Open Educational Resources

Archives as Activism uses CUNY archival materials to help students examine the relationship between activism, social issues and social change. Students will analyze primary sources such as flyers, newsletters, photographs, student newspapers, and institutional documents and connect them to contemporary social issues. CUNY’s history of activism around, race, gender, educational access, women’s organizing and institutional power provides students with an opportunity to investigate questions about power, collective action, intersectionality and social change.

From Source And Summit To Parish Practice: A Qualitative Analysis Of Eucharist And Social Outreach, Erik Sorensen S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

A small-scale qualitative study in a Catholic parish situated in Ottawa, Canada, offers insights into the complex relationship between that community's worship and its commitment to social justice. This article brings the lived theology of this community into dialogue with the academic and magisterial perspectives on the Eucharist as the source and summit of Christian life. The dialogue is framed by the Theological Action Research Network's four voices of theology: operant, espoused, formal, and normative. This framework helps to center the marginalized theology of the faithful in the pews. In this case, the parish offered a dynamic theology of welcome …

“Ite Missa Est”: How Can The Altar Alter Attitudes And Actions?, Ebenezer Akesseh

Journal of Global Catholicism

This paper brings into focus the relationship between personal agency and so-

cial structure, demonstrating that what we celebrate on the altar forms within

us the proper dispositions that can help prevent the occurrence of corruption.

The first part examines corruption from a socio-cultural perspective and ex-

plains the incidence and effects of corruption. The second part discusses the

relationship between worship and the formation of actions and attitudes. It

highlights the need to embody the social implications of our celebrations. Using

responses from interviewees, the third part illustrates that the celebration of the

Eucharist shapes the commitments and conduct …

The Lived Liturgical Experience Of Non-Catholic Participants In The Roman Catholic Mass: Tactical Ecumenism In Overlapping Ritual Systems, Sarah Kathleen Johnson

Journal of Global Catholicism

In religiously diverse social contexts, liturgical practices anchored in one reli-

gious tradition often gather diverse communities. In such contexts, it is wise to

assume that people who are not Catholic may be present at any Roman Cath-

olic Mass. This article explores the lived liturgical experience of non-Catholic

Christians who participate routinely in the Roman Catholic Mass through a

mixed-methods study of a religiously diverse treble vocal ensemble that sings

weekly at Mass on a Catholic university campus. It describes how Catholic and

non-Catholic Christian singers interpret practices surrounding the eucharistic

meal in contrasting ways: non-Catholic Christians experience the …

La Santa Muerte And The Characteristic Damage Of Canonization, Ellen Webber

Journal of Global Catholicism

Devotion to La Santa Muerte, a Mexican folk saint who personifies Death, has

been condemned by the Catholic Church for its affiliation with Mexican drug

cartels. This article challenges mainstream interpretations of La Santa Muerte

devotion using the theological framework of characteristic damage, as defined

by Lauren Winner and Paul J. Griffiths. This framework understands liturgy

as celebrated by sinners in a damaged world, and therefore necessarily damaged

itself. As much as liturgy and Christian practice form us for good, they also per-

petuate damage. I argue that the sins present in La Santa Muerte veneration are

an expression of …

Negotiating Plurality: Korean Catholic Funerals As Lived Religion, Jieun Han

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines Korean Catholic funeral rites through the lenses of ritual

guidebooks and lived religion, arguing that Catholic funerary practice in Korea

has emerged through sustained engagement with Confucian and Buddhist tradi-

tions as well as modern nationalism. Focusing on Catholic manuals such as the

Sangjang yesik [Rites for Mourning and Funerals] and related texts, it traces how

officially sanctioned liturgical forms coexist with, accommodate, and reinterpret

indigenous ritual logics surrounding mourning, burial, ancestor veneration, and

care for the dead. Rather than viewing Korean Catholic funerals as a simple

localization of Roman rites, the article conceptualizes them as a …

Editor's Introduction, Brent H. Otto S.J.

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

From Humanitarian Aid To “Counterrevolution”: Foreign Assistance To Pentecostals In Soviet Ukraine And Its Criminalization By The Gpu–Nkvd, 1932–1935, Oleksandr Korotaiev

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article examines foreign assistance to Pentecostal communities in the Ukrainian SSR and the mechanisms of its criminalization by Soviet state security agencies in 1932–1935. Drawing on GPU–NKVD criminal investigation files, secret police reports, party-state documentation, personal correspondence, and memoir sources, the study reconstructs transnational channels of humanitarian support, practices of resource distribution, and the transformation of survival strategies into objects of political repression.

Particular attention is devoted to two distinct models of foreign assistance. The Odessa case demonstrates a centralized system connected to the former leadership of the All-Ukrainian Union of Christians of Evangelical Faith and transnational Pentecostal networks …