United States History Commons^™

Active Religion: James Ireland, The Separate Baptists, And The Great Awakening In Virginia, 1760-1775, Cooper Pasque

Masters Theses

In the mid-eighteenth century, the religious fervor of the Great Awakening entered Virginia. Evangelical Baptists soon threatened to undermine the authority of the Anglican Church and its planter patrons. Despite their efforts to quiet the Baptists, evangelical religion took root in Virginia by the end of the American Revolution. Historical works on these events offer valid but incomplete explanations. Puzzling dynamics in the Virginian context require a more complex interpretation. The life of James Ireland provides a unique window into possible answers. His autobiography provides evidence for what appears to be the most fundamental reason for evangelicalism's successes in Virginia. …

"Up Ewig Ungedeelt" Or "A House Divided": Nationalism And Separatism In The Mid-Nineteenth Century Atlantic World, Niels Eichhorn

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation explores the experiences of a group of separatist nationalist from the Dano-German borderland with special emphasis on the 1848 uprisings in Schleswig-Holstein, the secession crisis in the United States, and the unification of Germany. Guiding this transnational narrative are three prominent members of the Schleswig-Holstein uprising: the radical nationalists Theodor Olshausen and Hans Reimer Claussen and the liberal nationalist Rudolph Schleiden. Their perceptions, actions, and writings in the years leading up to 1848 and during the first Schleswig-Holstein war (1848-1851) advance the understanding of separatist nationalism during this period in general and the Schleswig-Holstein uprising in particular. Following …

In-Group Bias—Coloring Public Opinion And Spurring Public Backlash: A Comparative Analysis Of Affirmative Action And Title Ix, Samuel Joseph Knehans

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

The Civil Rights and Women’s Rights Movements were two parallel rights revolutions in American history. Each spurred noteworthy social change for a disadvantaged group, through affirmative action for African Americans and through Title IX programs for women. However, when one looks at the college enrollment data, it becomes clear that these programs achieved success at different rates—at least in higher education. This thesis is an attempt to explain why these seemingly analogous programs produced such disparate results. It attempts to answer the question: Did in-group bias influence public opinion and public backlash in the form of Supreme Court litigation, impacting …

Wartime Art: A Study Of Political Propaganda And Individual Expression In American Commercial And Combat Art During World War Ii, Jennifer M. Wilcott

History Theses

This thesis will explore the mediums and functions of American art during World War II. The purpose of exploring art during World War II is not simply to provide an overview of the multiple media of art produced during the war, but to investigate the role that commercial artwork and combat soldiers’ artwork had on the lasting interpretation of the war. Themes addressed are propaganda, the role of posters, comic books, and cartoons along with their influence on American society at the time. Further analysis examines the role of three artists: Howard Brodie, Edward Reep, and Robert N. Blair. Their …

Fraunces Tavern Museum: Revolutionizing Collections Care In A Small Museum Environment, Suzanne Prabucki

History Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to present a comprehensive history of the Fraunces Tavern Museum and its collection along with an official catalogue comprising approximately 5,000 artifacts. It documents the Museum’s own experience with the collections care remediation process so that other institutions may use this Museum’s success story as a model for their own collections care issues.

The Fraunces Tavern Museum, located in New York City, is best known as the site where George Washington bade farewell to his officers at the end of the American Revolutionary War. The lineage group, the Sons of the Revolution in the …

Cold War Battleground In Africa: American Foreign Policy And The Congo Crisis, January 1959 - January 1961, Souleyman Saleh Souleyman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the late 1950s, the Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union turned the Congo as one of the most volatile regions of the Third World. Because of Belgium's failure to effective decolonize the Congo, and because of the secession of two of the richest provinces of the Congo, the country would quickly fell into chaos and a civil war that would force its former colonial power to maintain its economic and military influence in the region. This neocolonial attitude induced Congo's Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, to request a military assistance from the Soviet Union. In …

Feet In The South, Eyes To The West: Fort Smith Enters The Sunbelt, Adam Morrison Carson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the political realignment of Fort Smith, Arkansas and argues that the standard historiographical argument about the process of realignment does not explain what occurred in this city. Much of the historiography of political realignment currently revolves around the belief in a white backlash against the federal government and the national Democratic Party for their support of African American civil rights. Though historians have moved toward a "suburban synthesis" that downplays the backlash thesis, historians still argues that many white southerners moved to the suburbs to avoid integration.

I argue that this process did not occur in the …

Woes Of The Arkansas Internationalist: J. William Fulbright, The Middle East, And The Death Of American Liberalism, Mitchell Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Contemporary scholarship has shown that J. William Fulbright's defeat in 1974 was due to a plethora of reasons including his opposition to America's involvement in Vietnam, lackadaisical attitude towards the monolithic threat of Communism, connection to the Washington establishment amidst the Watergate scandal, and old age. Scholars, however, have not paid enough attention to the role Fulbright's Middle Eastern stances played in his final election campaign. I seek to place the voice of Arkansans in the national and international political discussions and show that, despite their relatively unfocused interest in Middle Eastern affairs (and perhaps because of that lack of …

Victims Of Liberty: Virginia's Response To Loyalists And Loyalism In Williamsburg, 1770-1781, Stephanie Anne Seal

Master's Theses

In June, I 776, when Richard Henry Lee proposed a discussion about independence at the Second Continental Congress, ideas about political loyalty and royal ism in Virginia changed drastically. Almost overnight, there was a general consensus throughout most of the colony on the creation ofa Virginia exceptionalism: the idea that Virginia- as the largest, richest, and most populous colony- should be the leading voice of the upcoming American Revolution. This thesis argues that the ways Virginians perceived their place in the Revolutionary struggle was, in many ways, mirrored in their treatment of loyalists in the state. By examining publications on …

Researching North America: Sir Humphrey Gilbert’S 1583 Expedition And A Reexamination Of Early Modern English Colonization In The North Atlantic World, Nathan Probasco

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s 1583 expedition to North America was the first attempt by an Englishman to colonize beyond the British Isles, and yet it has not been subject to thorough scholarly analysis for more than seventy years. Although it is often overlooked or misinterpreted by scholars, an exhaustive examination of the voyage reveals the complexity and preparedness of this and similar early modern English expeditions. Gilbert recruited several specialists who expended considerable time and resources while researching and otherwise working in support of the voyage. Their efforts secured much needed capital, a necessary component of expensive private voyages, and they …

Adapting To A Changing World: An Environmental History Of The Eastern Shoshone, 1000–1868, Adam R. Hodge

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Using the Eastern Shoshone Tribe as a case study, this dissertation argues that the physical environment must be considered integral to processes of ethnogenesis. It traces the environmental history of the people who became known as the Eastern Shoshone over the course of several centuries, exploring how those Natives migrated throughout and adapted to a significant portion of the North American West – the Great Basin, Rocky Mountains, Columbia Plateau, and Great Plains – prior to the reservation era. In examining that history, this project treats Shoshones, other Natives, and Euro-Americans not as people who simply used the environment, but …

Freedom Indivisible: Gays And Lesbians In The African American Civil Rights Movement, Jared E. Leighton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This work documents the role of sixty gay, lesbian and bisexual individuals in the African American civil rights movement in the pre-Stonewall era. It examines the extent of their involvement from the grassroots to the highest echelons of leadership. Because many lesbians and gays were not out during their time in the movement, and in some cases had not yet identified as lesbian or gay, this work also analyzes how the civil rights movement, and in a number of cases women’s liberation, contributed to their identity formation and coming out. This work also contributes to our understanding of opposition to …

Claiming Citizenship: Las Vegas' Conventional Women's Organizations Establishing Citizenship Through Civic Engagement, Cynthia Cicero

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Many historians of American women portray women's organized civic engagement and work to attain social, economic, and legal equality as feminism. American feminism has been expanded and applied in scholarship. The American feminists of the 1960s wanted to alter the male power structure and redefine conventional notions of womanhood. However, many middle-class women who participated in community and civic organizations valued their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers, expressing their citizenship and community work as an extension of these roles. Their motivation in pursuing equality was to gain full citizenship status.

In this thesis, I argue that viewing women's civic …

Economic Growth And Recovery In The United States, 1919-1941, Alexander J. Field

Economics

The first part of this chapter provides an overview of what lay behind record productivity growth in the US economy between 1929 and 1941. The second part considers the role of rigidities and other negative supply conditions in worsening the downturn and slowing recovery. While arguing consistently that the overarching explanation of the Great Depression will and should continue to emphasise a collapse and slow revival in the growth of aggregate demand, the chapter spends relatively little time on what drives this. The emphasis of the chapter is on aggregate supply—both the broad array of positive shocks that propelled potential …

A Progressive Mind : Louis D. Brandeis And The Origins Of Free Speech., Elizabeth Diane Todd

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study argues that Associate Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis played a key role in shaping the jurisprudence of free political speech in the United States. Brandeis's judicial opinions on three freedom of speech cases in the post-World War I era provide the evidence for this argument. This thesis demonstrates how the Espionage and Sedition Acts of World War I allowed Brandeis the opportunity to reflect and rule on the Founding Fathers' meaning of free speech in a political democracy. Chapter I offers a detailed historiography of the Progressive Era and World War I. Chapter II provides a biography …

Propositions For Reform, Brett Vigil

All Theses

In the decades immediately following the Civil War, the impetus for
industrialization and technological development which had helped propel the Union
to victory began to dramatically pick up speed, engendering staggering changes in
almost every facet of American economic and social. Indeed, by the end of the
century, such changes had helped precipitate the closing of the frontier, the United
States' emergence onto the international scene as a major imperialist power, and the
rise of the populist movement, which climaxed in the great realigning Presidential
election of 1896. The last of these was particularly significant in that it was arguably …

Black Women In The "Black Metropolis" Of The Early Twentieth Century: The Case Of Professional Occupations, Robert L. Boyd

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Little research has examined the employment of Black women as teachers, nurses, and librarians in the urban Black communities of the early twentieth century. The present study fills this void, analyzing Census data on the largest urban Black communities at the start of the Great Migration to cities. The results show that, in spite of the supposed advantages of the northern "Black Metropolis," Black communities in the urban North were relatively limited in their potential to offer opportunities for Black women to enter pursuits that were, at the time, mainstays of a nascent class of Black professional women.

"An Ample Provision For Our Posterity": Transportation, Ceramic Diversity, And Trade In Historic Arkansas, 1800-1930, Katherine Rose Cleek

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I present a method to study transportation using ceramic diversity and access to transportation infrastructure. Ceramic tableware richness, or the number of types present, is analyzed over time as a proxy for access to local transportation infrastructure at seven sites in Arkansas, dating from approximately 1800 to 1930. Previous efforts to look at trade in historical archaeology including Adams (1976), Riordan and Adams (1985), and Adams, Bowers, and Mills (2001) have not thoroughly assessed transportation as a means of trade. This dissertation looks at the many ways of assessing diversity in archaeology, biology, business, and economics, as …

For Want Of Sloops, Water Casks, And Rum: The Difficulties Of Logistics In The Canadian Theater Of The Seven Years War, Daniel Bazan

Masters Theses

The thesis examines the various difficulties with logistics the British needed to overcome in Canada during the Seven Years War and those who helped . Without the necessary supplies and provisions for frontier campaigning, Britain would have lost the war. The thesis provides primary accounts of the geography during the war, various logistical factors, and the men that helped provide the necessary materials for the successful outcome of the British offensive in Canada.

The Impacts Of Colonial And Environmental Processes On Ceramic Plainware At Salinas Province, New Mexico, Lindsey Elizabeth Daub

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis investigates whether Spanish demands on native time, labor and diet resulted in changes to the plainware ceramics used by the Salinas Pueblo Indians of New Mexico from the early 1600s to the 1670s. Increased pressures on native women's time may have resulted in a decline in the quality of the ceramic pastes, an increase in the presence of mend holes, changes in household size and composition that may have resulted in changes in the sizes of cooking vessels, and a decrease in food availability that may have resulted in decreased sizes or quantities of storage jars. While the …