Medieval Studies Commons^™

The Economy: The Heart Of The Brazilian Quilombo, Benjamin Passey

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Over Centuries of slavery in Brazil, thousands escaped enslavement in search of freedom and a new life. Fugitive slaves seldom survived more than a few days on the run before they were captured and returned to their masters. Those who avoided capture made their way to one of the many fugitive slave settlements called quilombos, hidden throughout the Brazilian countryside.

Karl May's Amerika: German Intellectual Imperialism, Seth Cannon

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

What is America? European misconceptions with regard to the Americas can be traced back to the beginning of transoceanic contact in 1492. From Columbus to the Spaghetti Westerns of the 20th century, Europeans have taken America, their "West," and manipulated and sculpted ic. A plethora of contradictory voices have contributed to the construction of a complicated and paradoxical Western mych. Each voice offered a different vision of the West. The versions are grounded in a shared Western setting, but the stories are dramatically different, even foreign. Such transnational perceptions of the American West have attracted the attention of several contemporary …

Elmer: The Shepherd Statesman, Cathy Hulse

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Plato quoted Socrates when he said that "The unexamined life is not worth living," He referred to self-examination for the purpose of self-improvement. In a broader sense, it is also important to study the lives of others to identify ways to improve ourselves. Life is a shared experience no matter where or in what era our individual paths lie. Today's society is often fascinated by extreme heroics or infamous people. It gives unbalanced attention to glamorous, athletic, or wealthy celebrities. Despite this trend, valuable wisdom can be learned from the lives of common folks.

Foreword, Taylor Rice

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Last year I had the distinct privilege of serving as an editor for this fine publication. As the year was brought to a close, Elise Peterson, last volumes Editor-in-Chief, asked me if I would like to stay on with the 7hetean and be its next Editor-in-Chief. I readily agreed, though I was not convinced I was fully qualified. Elise left big shoes to be filled.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Recognizing Traps And Frightening Wolves: Foxes And Lions As A Representative Of Machiavellian Political Ideology In Shakespeare’S Comedies, Grace A. Powell

Student Scholar Showcase

While William Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets have been discussed time and time again over the past few centuries, one topic that has been less traversed is the connection between his Comedies and Niccolò Machiavelli’s political ideologies. This project will explore references of lions and foxes in Shakespeare’s Comedies and the leaders and monarchs within them to determine how beliefs about Machiavelli’s political ideology influenced Shakespeare’s literature and became symbols for leadership and power. This project will be important for gaining historical context on Machiavellian political discourse and how it was represented in the contemporary dramatic literature of William Shakespeare. I …

Orpheus And The Harrowing Of Hell In The Tale Of Beren And Lúthien, Giovanni Carmine Costabile

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Critics have observed that Beren and Lúthien’s tale is a Christian retelling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. The “Harrowing of Hell” tradition is widespread in Italy as attested by the mosaic of San Marco among others, but it is in France that the Ovid Moralized reconnects it to Orpheus who descended into the Underworld to save Eurydice (an already late antique parallel) and therefore attests a happy ending version of the story that can be found in medieval England and also in various classical sources, perhaps even in the original legend of Orpheus. The apocryphal Harrowing is also …

2024 Conference Program, Georgia Southern University

South East Coastal Conference on Languages & Literatures (SECCLL)

2024 Conference Program

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

The Persistence Of "A Simple Melody": Acceptance Of Irving Berlin's Music In The 1920s, Alina Vanderwood

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

"Nobody appreciates more than I do how bad some of my lyrics are in the matter of technical details," said the 32-year-old composer Irving Berlin in 1920 during an interview with American Magazine. "Some of the biggest hits I've written were songs I was so ashamed of that I pleaded with the heads of music houses not co publish them." Yet in all of its imperfection, his music became so popular and influential that American composer Jerome Kern famously wrote, "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." Just nine years prior to this 1920 interview, …

Birthing Contention: Conflict Between Black And White Health Officials In Southern Midwife Training In The Mid-Twentieth Century, Ruth Hyde Truman

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

"You can go right now and start talking to somebody about my age and Iil older and quite a bit older. They'll say, 'I was delivered by a granny midwife.' A black woman, a granny midwife." These words, spoken by Onnie Lee Logan in her book, Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story, illustrate the important role that black women played in childbirth in the South in the mid-twentieth century. In the South, hospitals were located far from rural communities, and women were much more likely to give birth in their own homes and enlist the aid of a black midwife than …

"Moloch Of The Present Mode": Women's Short Hairstyles In Nineteenth-Century American Society, Jack Tingey

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

An article from Indianapolis journal in 1883 reported on the phenomenon of women cutting their hair short in the name of fashion, describing the process of a woman cutting off her long hair as akin to sacrificing virtue to the "Moloch of the present mode." Today, short hairstyles are more commonly associated with the bob of the Roaring Twenties, an era historians and popular culture recognize as one of excess, social change, and new innovations. But short hair on women was by no ~ans new in the 1920s. The bob was not the first short hairstyle in the United States …

Losing "The Jewels In Her Crown": Latter-Day Saint Women And Pregnancy Loss In The Nineteenth Century, Karen Mackay Moss

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In her journal entry for the morning of May 27, 1849, Zina D. H. Young recounted her morning's work in assisting Margaret Alley, a fellow wife of Brigham Young, during a sickness which had begun over a week earlier after Margaret had "over done" herself. Young wrote that while she stayed home from church meetings that day, Margaret "was relieved of a two month sickness-perfect form occasioned by a hurt." Margaret Alley had experienced a miscarriage. Taking to her journal again that evening, Young stated that her day had been quite busy, full of "little events" including Margaret's "misfortune," a …

From President To Dictator: Anastasio Somoza Debayle's Fall From Grace In The American Press, Kara Molnar

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

When news of Anastasio Somoza Debayle's Assassination in Paraguay reached Nicaragua, the reigning Sandinista government announced over radio that its citizens should "celebrate with joy the execution of Anastasio Somoza." Nicaraguans obeyed this command in force, dancing in the streets, filling downtown bars, and setting off fireworks late into the night. While U.S.-based journalists did not face this turn of events with such glee, they eagerly provided their own renditions of what precisely had transpired the morning of September 17, 1980, as well as the legacy Somoza would leave behind. Condemnations of the former Nicaraguan ruler as a "dictator" were …

Maya-Catholic Theologian: The Influence Of Maya Theology On Catholic Doctrine In The Morley Manuscript, Travis Meyer

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1576, at the height of Catholic evangelization in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, an unnamed Catholic preacher met regularly with a congregation of indigenous Maya to teach them the doctrine of Christianity. He taught them about the biblical creation, as well as the nature of God and the devil, all from his own original doctrinal instructional manual. This preacher was also a Maya himself Between the years 1500 and 1800, only about 1,100 European-descended Catholic friars ministered to the tens of millions of Maya in Mesoamerica. Because there were so many natives and so few friars, they could not …

"Yearning To Breath Free": American Policy's Impact On The Experience Of Imprisoned Migrants, 1980-1989, Samuel Johnson

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The evidence against the Immigration and Naturalization Service was clear. "The agent grabbed me by the arm and twisted it behind my back. He threw me against the van and held me by the arms while a second agent cook out his revolver and struck me very hard in the face, twice. I began to bleed profusely from the nose and mouth," recalled plaintiff Crosby Orantes Hernandez. "He told me that I would be placed in a cell with men, leaving me with the impression that I would be sexually molested," testified fellow plaintiff Dora Elia Estrada. Jose Sanchez Flores …

The Wolfenden Report: The Key To The English Gay Rights Movement, Ryan Hollister

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The history of homosexuality in Great Britain is long and complicated, extending all the way back to the Roman conquest. Romans had a tradition of homosexuality, but when Rome fell, churches became the authority on homosexuality, leading to numerous movements to fight against it. King Henry the 8th of England outlawed buggery, a term for anal intercourse, in 1533, and there are suspicions chat King James had homosexual relationships, but the scope of English history cannot be fully summarized in a paper of this length. Instead, this paper will focus on the British decriminalization of homosexual practices in the 1950s …

Abraham Smoot: Complexity In Context, Molly Hansen

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 2019, a Salt Lake Tribune article described pieces of Abraham O. Smoot's slaveholding past. The article raised controversy over the administration building on BYU campus, which bears Smoot's name. After that Salt Lake Tribune article brought Smoot's negative history into a more public eye, outcry from the general public, the BYU community, the Latter-day Saint community, and the Smoot family themselves erupted. Questions like 'Why do we have buildings that honor slaveholders?' and 'Was he even a slaveholder?' and 'Do we unname or rename the Abraham Smoot Building at BYU?' were raised, and are still being asked in public …

Left In The Dust: Byu's Reluctant Response To The Rise Of The Automobile, Caleb Child

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Although Brigham Young UNiversity students and faculty have changed throughout the years, one issue has managed to unite all members of the campus community for almost a century: campus parking lots. As a student in 1946 wrote,

"It goes without saying that we don't like muddy shoes and don't like bad roads; bur what can we do? The natural solution to the problem is to let the school go back to the horse. No parking problem, no roads to worry about. Just put the feed bag on old Dobbin and !er him roam rill school's out. Then a quick whistle, …

"Hiding By Showing": Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors As A Eucharistic Tableau, Katharine Davidson Bekker

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Liturgical cloths and hangings have been a ubiquitous part of the Eucharistic experience for Christian churchgoers for much of the Catholic Church's religious history. While often overshadowed or displaced in religious images by the drapery of individual figures, altar cloths and frontals are occasionally featured, as in the Master of the Aachen Altar's images of The Mass of St. Gregory (figs. I and 2). A similar green cloth to those in the St. Gregory images is seen in the background of Hans Holbein the Younger's 1533 portrait of The Ambassadors (fig. 3). Though much has been said about many of …