Digital Commons Network^™

Exhibiting Prejudice: How Twentieth-Century Museums Promoted The Eugenics Movement, Anna Wachtel

Museum Studies Theses

This research illustrates the impact museums have on social, political, and educational systems through the exploration of the eugenics movement in American museums. Museum professionals promoted racial hierarchies and eugenic ideologies at World’s Fairs through the exploitation of “exotic” peoples and contests designed to judge and categorize racial differences based on an individual’s physical and mental characteristics.

Following World’s Fairs, museums began displaying eugenic themed exhibits. Prominent museum professionals and government officials of the early twentieth century used their position of authority to promote the eugenics movement in National and regional American museums through educational exhibits using approachable science-based exhibit …

The Presentation Of Race At Mark Twain Historical Sites In Hannibal, Missouri, Anthony Wayne Birch

Graduate Research Papers

Hannibal, Missouri may not be among the top five or even the top three places to visit, but it is surely getting its share of tourist and revenue. Each year an estimated 350,000 tourists from across the United States and many from around the world visit Hannibal, Missouri to pay homage at the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum Annex. The Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum is located on 206-208 Hill Street, and has been accessible to the public as a museum since 1912, and has been registered as a National Historic Landmark since December 29, 1962.¹ In …

Beyond The Big Top: The Legacy Of John Ringling And The American Circus, Casey L. Nemec

Graduate Masters Theses

Beyond the Big Top: The Legacy of John Ringling and the American Circus is a focused interpretation of the impact of the American circus post-Civil War through present day, most particularly that of circus impresario, corporate magnate, and philanthropist John Ringling, in what was once a quiet Florida fishing village named Sarasota. It is my observation that John Ringling, through moving the winter quarters of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey to Sarasota, investing in a sizable amount of real estate, and spearheading a campaign to bring a world-class art museum and school to the area, played a key …

Allisyn Casper Family History, Allisyn Casper

Your Family in History: HIST 550/700

Allisyn Brielle Casper authored this family history as part of the course requirements for HIST 550/700 Your Family in History offered online in Fall 2019 and was submitted to the Pittsburg State University Digital Commons. Please contact the author directly with any questions or comments: [email protected]

The Family History Of Meghan Redmon, Meghan Redmon

Your Family in History: HIST 550/700

Meghan Redmon authored this family history as part of the course requirements for HIST 550/700 Your Family in History offered online in Spring 2020 and was submitted to the Pittsburg State University Digital Commons. Please contact the author directly with any questions or comments: [email protected]

Full Issue

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Canidia: Meta-Muse Of Anti-Elegy, Hanna Seariac

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Judahite Aniconism: A Determining Factor In Tensions Between The Am HāʾĀreṣ And The Haggôlāh, Jacob Fuge

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Pomegranate Imagery: A Symbol Of Conquest And Victory, Makayla Bezzant

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Greatest Among Gods And Men: The Reception Of Xenophanes’S Theology By Anaxagoras And Diogenes, Zakarias D. Gram

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

A Samaritan Temple To Rival Jerusalem On Mount Gerizim, Jolynne Minnick

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Comparing Greco-Roman Uterus Votives And Byzantine Uterus Amulets, Heta Björklund

Studia Antiqua

No abstract provided.

Menander: A Greco-Buddhist King?, Jacob Kolodny

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Ever since western scholars became aware of the Buddhist text the Milindapanha, where a Greek king conversed with a Buddhist monk, a debate has raged over whether Menander, the IndoGreek king identified with the king in the work, did what his counterpart was said to have done and converted to Buddhism. While numismatic and textual evidence has allowed for the placement of Menander to within the middle of the second century BCE, where the elements for such a conversion would have existed, those same sources do not allow for any clear picture on the matter. The lack of verifiable information …

The Use Of The Birth Control Movement As A Eugenics Weapon, 1920'S-1960'S, Peyton P. Holstein

Young Historians Conference

While Margaret Sanger made great strides in the crusade for legalization and open access to birth control for women, groups paired her work with ideologies such as Social Darwinism to arm the eugenics movement throughout the Twentieth-century. The eugenics movement was a culmination of racism and newly found scientific theories which led a crusade to purify the American population through reproductive cherry-picking on the basis of race. One of the primary ways that this group attempted to weed out “undesirable” races within the American population was through birth control as well as sterilization. These two movements - birth control and …

Cairo Under Isma'il Pasha: A Divided City, Chloe N. Moehling

Young Historians Conference

The creation of the Suez Canal, in November of 1869, created an opportunity for Isma’il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, to reintroduce the world to a new, Europeanized Cairo. His vision required spending millions of British pounds to welcome international travelers who came to celebrate the opening of the canal. Isma’il Pasha’s “Europeanization” of the western side of Cairo from 1866 to 1879 ushered his country into decades of economic and political turmoil. While Isma’il’s extravagant spending created European inspired hotels, parks, cafe’s, and the Khedivial Opera House, these expenditures left Egypt indebted to European countries, particularly Great Britain, and international …

Is That Media Literacy?: Israeli And Us Media Scholars’ Perceptions Of The Field, Ornat Turin, Yonty Friesem

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Sixty-nine media scholars from Israel and the Unites States responded to an online questionnaire aimed to identify the boundaries of media literacy. The participants received a list of thirty-two potential titles for a final paper and were asked to rate the relevancy of each topic for an undergraduate media literacy course. While the statistical analysis showed no significant difference in the ranking, deviations and distributions demonstrate disagreements as to what is important or marginal in the field. Protectionist topics were ranked high as well as topics involving children, digital media, and popular culture. It also appears that media education has …

"Let Us Look Into The Future": Representations Of Upward Social Mobility In Soviet Space Culture, Richard Higginbotham

Departmental Honors & Graduate Capstone Projects

Beginning in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik, the world’s first artificial satellite, the Soviet Union initiated what would come to be known as the Space Age. This scientific endeavor produced an enormous and unprecedented cultural phenomenon identified by historians today as “space culture,” or “cosmic culture.” This “space culture” permeated both official and popular discourse in the Soviet Union from the time of Khrushchev to the fall of Communism in 1991, and an examination of how space exploration was represented in the USSR is critical to understanding the society more broadly. Most historians have understood the Khrushchev Era as …

The Grizzly, April 23, 2020, Kevin Leon, Ellie Lafountain, Madison Rodak, Kim Corona, Skylar Haas, Jen Joseph, Michael Stanziale

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Keeping up in the Quarantine • The Career and Post-Graduate Development Office Adjusts to Online Campus • New UCSG President Elected • Student Literary Magazine, The Lantern, Launches Online • Tiger King and the Spectacle of the Redneck • "Now Batting for the Ursinus College Bears, Number 21, Alex Mumme"

Exhibit Review: “Traveling The Silk Road” At The Natural History Museum Of Los Angeles, Shawn Martinez, Stephanie Reilly, Charmaine Galley Galley

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

African History, Western Perceptions, Development, And Travel In Kenya, Moriah Schnose

History in the Making

No abstract provided.

Holocaust Ghettos, Rebecca Parraz

History in the Making

In Nazi Germany, the Jewish people were forced into segregated areas that would ultimately evolve into “Holocaust ghettos.” Thousands of these ghettos were built across Europe, and within these ghettos Jews were under complete control and forced to follow severe regulations. These ghettos soon became overpopulated, and resources became scarce. By the end of WorldWar II, thousands of Jews had died within the walls of the ghettos. Causes of death ranged from starvation to disease, and even murder. It is evident that as the war progressed, the Nazis began to use the ghettos as a tool in the Final Solution. …

Mao Zedong And Mohandas Gandhi: Revolutionary Pragmatists?, Kevin Wheeler

History in the Making

Before 1949, both China and India experienced protracted struggles to gain freedom from their respective governing bodies. Although the Chinese and Indian Revolutions occurred during the same time period, and on the same continent, little energy has been spent on comparing the two in any appreciable manner, even less so when it comes to the leaders of the movements themselves. Granted, the reasoning for this is due to the belief that Mao Zedong and Mohandas Gandhi are too dissimilar for any fruitful analysis to be obtained by juxtaposing them, but this paper’s focus is on proving that they are far …

Art And Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung In Relation To The Red Army Faction, Joanie Lange

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the …

Evolutionary Bioethics Advanced By Ernest Everett Just: Implications For Biology, Ethics, And Theology, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941) is an acknowledged “pioneer” in biology, being honored with a Black Heritage postage stamp in 1996. Here we discover that Just also made pioneering contributions to general evolutionary bioethics (distinct from special medical bioethics) by advancing a cell-biology-rooted theory of the origin and continuing evolution of ethical behavior influenced by the “law of environmental dependence.”

See especially “The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior (1941, unpublished book manuscript) by Ernest Everett Just and Hedwig Schnetzler Just, discovered in 2018 among the collected papers of E.E. Just at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University.

Accordingly, evolution is …

An Analysis Of The Debate Over Creation, Evolution, And The Timeline Of The Universe At An Ecumenical Christian University, Mason Pohlman

Honors Scholars Collaborative Projects

Throughout a significant portion of history and within modern culture, the fields of science and religion appear to be competing for the same holds in a person’s belief system. Universities are where academics and the sciences are the prevailing held truth, while in churches, the Bible reigns as supreme authority. However, in a Christian academic setting, the predominate school of thought in belief systems might turn into a little more of a melting pot. By analyzing gathered personal data (via surveys and interviews), one can begin to piece together the predominate thoughts on the apparent conflict between religion and science …

Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future, Marcella Alexis Ernest

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing the master narratives. The project tracks how film and photography—historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism—are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. The project shows how multidisciplinary artists use technology to remix audiovisual archives from a specific time in American history: portrait photography and ethnographic filmmaking at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood’s frontier representations of Indianness in twentieth-century motion pictures, social guidance classroom films from the 1950s, and digital …

2020-04-06 Newsletter, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.

Staff Congress Records

Staff Congress newsletter for April 6, 2020.

2020-04-06 Minutes, Morehead State University. Staff Congress.

Staff Congress Records

Staff Congress meeting minutes from April 6, 2020.

The Bare Bones Of Paleontology, Thomas Keely

Transformations: Research Papers

When discussing an occupation such as paleontology, we imagine professional people with PhDs and a knack for getting a little dirty in the pursuit of discovery. Never do we imagine cutthroat tactics and destruction for the sake of discovery. The professionalism of paleontology has gone through both of these stages from its humble beginnings as early as the sixth century B.C.E. to the modern day. “The Bare Bones of Paleontology” examines how paleontology became a professional career with distinguished scientists rather than scientists who only wanted glory. This paper examines this change in professionalism with the backdrop of “The Bone …