Digital Commons Network^™

Grassroots Consumption: Ontario Farm Families’ Consumption Practices, 1900-45, Andrea M. Gal

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Popular culture and academic perceptions typically view farmers of the past in one of two ways. On the one hand, we tend to emphasize their roles as producers of agricultural commodities, and marginalize or underemphasize their roles as consumers. On the other, we might believe that farmers were simply the passive recipients of broader societal trends and developments, and think that they followed in the footsteps of their urban counterparts. A small but growing number of scholars are engaging with these views, as they examine the consumption practices of rural North America. This historiography, however, is largely centered in the …

Boxing Men: Ideas Of Race, Masculinity, And Nationalism, Robert Bryan Hawks

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Abstract: Jack Johnson and Joe Louis were African American boxers who held the title of world heavyweight champion in their respective periods. Johnson and Louis constructed ideologies of African American manhood that challenged white hegemonic notions of masculinity and nationalism from the first decade of the twentieth century, when Johnson held the title, through Joe Louis’s reign that began in the 1930's. This thesis investigates the history of white supremacy from the turn of the twentieth century when Johnson fought and does so through several lenses. The lenses I suggest include evolving notions of masculinity, Theodore Roosevelt’s racially deterministic agendas, …

The 1979 Ottawa Conference And It's Inscriptions: Recovering A Canadian Moment In American Rhetoric And Composition, Louise Wetherbee Phelps

English Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph] In May 1979, Aviva Freedman and Ian Pringle hosted an international conference on "Learning to Write" at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, featuring a concentrated assemblage of eminent scholars as speakers and respondents. Those present sensed immediately that they were part of a momentous and historic event. Janet Emig, who delivered her famous "Tacit Tradition" speech at the conference, remembered it later as "the single most electric professional meeting I ever participated in" (Emig 1983, n.p.). Many delegates saw it as the rightful successor to the landmark Dartmouth Conference of 1966, and when Anthony Adams, the closing speaker, …

Building The Patent Knowledgebase With Life-Size Patent Models, Barbara J. Hampton

Librarian Publications

Teasing out the evidence from inventors’ drawings, descriptions, and claims in patent records is something librarians at Patent and Trademark Resource Centers do with expertise and pride. Another important source for our understanding of inventions, the patent models illustrating the function of an invention, were created and submitted with patents between 1790 and 1880.1 The models show the invention in three dimensions (maximum size allowed: 12” x 12” x 12”) and even include some working parts.

The Language Of Race In Revolutionary France And Saint-Domingue, 1789-1792, Jeffery L. Stanley

Theses and Dissertations--History

This project studies the historical development of racialist language during the French Revolution as politicians, free people of color, and colonial whites debated the political status of France’s free people of color population. It examines the negotiation of a racialist language that bolstered colonial racial hierarchies with an egalitarian language that sought to level the corporate structures of the Old Regime. I look especially at the ways that language served as a management device to articulate and legitimize new relationships of power in the political culture of the French Revolution. I connect developments in France to the colonies by showing …

Ordered Eating: Food And Social Structures, Bobbi Sutherland

History Faculty Publications

Article is a review essay of Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari and Food and Identity in England, 1540-1640: Eating to Impress by Paul S. Lloyd.

In the last few decades, food history has gone from being an unusual side-study viewed as outside the realm of academic history proper to one of the most popular sub-fields of social, economic, and cultural history – if not a field in its own right. Pre-modern historians have welcomed this development as one that expands our limited sources by opening new ones to us and providing us another method for …

La Identidad Ecuatoriana A Través Del Humor De Miguel Antonio Chávez, Luis Enrique Yanez

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

This thesis project provides a close reading of the literary work of Ecuadorian author Miguel Antonio Chávez. The analysis in this work discuses how the author use humor to criticize the discourses that have been produced in order to represent indigenous and Afro-descendants in the country, as well as the fragility of social and political institutions such as the church, the state, and the country's educational system in the pieces La puta madre patria, La kriptonita del Sinaí, and El electroshock nuestro de cada día. This thesis analyses humor as a narrative tool with its function to reproduce and criticize …

King James' Daemonologie And Scottish Witchcraft Trials, Kelsee Shearer

All Master's Theses

This study examines the impacts of King James’ Daemonologie on how witches were identified, prosecuted, and executed in Scotland during the early modern period. It is an analytical look at how the intervention of King James during the North Berwick trials influenced the writing of Daemonologie and how Daemonologie set a framework for future witchcraft prosecutions.

The Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition And Seattle's Health Modernization, Shannon J. Rodman

All Master's Theses

This study examines the impacts of modernization in Seattle, Washington during the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century. Using Seattle as a case study, this thesis looks at how modernization was presented at the Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition (AYPE) in 1909. During Seattle’s modernization phase, public health, sanitation, and racial fears associated with disease were of utmost importance. By looking at Seattle and its relationship with the AYPE, it becomes clear that the exposition forced Seattle to modernize to become the premier city in the West.

The Horrible Life Of Gladiators: Revisionist History And The Violence Of Roman Gladiatorial Games, George Evans

Vulcan Historical Review

pp. 185-189

How New York City Invented The Holiday Season: The Rise And Fall Of The World’S First Global Holiday, Ronald J. Brown

New York School for Career and Applied Studies (NYSCAS) Publications and Research

Jesus may have been born in Bethlehem, but it was the city of New York that transformed the traditional day of his birth, December 25, into a national and eventually global holiday season. The evolution of the Christian religious holiday of Jesus’ birth into a secular global holiday that embraces all religions, cultures, and traditions is a unique example of the emergence of a global culture. Little did Clement Clarke Moore realize when he transferred the holiday of St. Nicholas from December 6 to the 25th, nor Macy’s Department Store when it organized its first Thanksgiving Day Parade, that they …

Tigers, Flies, And Longines: The Chinese Corruption Crackdown And Its Effect On Conspicuous Consumption, Kayla Smith

Honors Theses

Through the analysis of Elle China magazine articles and annual financial reports, the researcher sought to find if the 2012 Xi Jinping campaign against corruption, extravagance and graft had an effect on luxury sales. The researcher has found that the campaign has little to no effect on the luxury consumption preferences of the upper and middle class in China, only effecting officials and luxury purchases made for gifting. To offset loses from the crackdown on gifting, luxury brands have begun selling more affordable high-end liquors and watches.

The Giant In A Thousand Years: Tracing Narratives Of Gigantism In The Hebrew Bible And Beyond, Brian R. Doak

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

"This essay is an attempt to organize the Bible’s giants by category and to continue to elevate these figures as a rightful object of scholarly attention."

Facts Are Stubborn Things: The Foundation Of Alfred Russel Wallace's Theories, 1823-1848, Sabrina Rae Cervantez

LSU Master's Theses

Alfred Russel Wallace, a Victorian naturalist, firmly believed that based on his own extensive research there were theories that could effectively provide a means of studying the natural world and improving society. Although he became a respected naturalist his interests in mesmerism, socialism, and spiritualism disconnected him from the mainstream scientific community. Following the tradition of early nineteenth-century naturalists, Wallace was self-trained and self-educated, traits that allowed him to study multiple fields of interests and conduct personal experimentations. In these formative years, he was influenced by British popular culture, interactions with the working class and the latest trends of intellectual …

My Father, The Christmas Doctor, And The Danish Nurse Who Saved His Life, Tom Weber

The Bridge

My father, Dr. John Peter Weber, was born to German immigrants in Creston, Iowa in 1888. At the age of eleven he realized he wanted to become a doctor. After finishing the eighth grade in 1904, sixteen-year-old John rode the rails to Montana to help lay railroad tracks, intending to save his wages in order to continue his education. Treated brutally by his foreman, he left the railroad construction job and traveled to Portland, Oregon, searching for work in the lumber industry. The young man from Iowa fell victim to a pickpocket on the streets of Portland. All his savings …

Memories From Rudbøl, 1923-1927: My Teaching At Rudbøl Danish School, M.R. Mikkelsen

The Bridge

All four of my grandparents emigrated from Denmark in the 1890s. The first time any member of my immediate family visited Denmark was almost a century later, when my wife Marge and I, together with our two sons David and Philip, went over to spend an eight-month sabbatical leave from Iowa State University in Denmark in 1981.

Bound For Beaumont: Eleanor Roosevelt's 1939 Train Trip Through East Texas And Beyond, Mary L. Scheer

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Ethj Vol-54 No-2

East Texas Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Allies To Enemies: Popular Xenophobia During The Seventeenth Century Anglo-Dutch Wars, Adrian T. Van Der Velde

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the excoriating pamphlet literature of both Dutch and English origin during the three Anglo-Dutch Wars of the seventeenth century. The Dutch Republic of this time was in the midst of its Golden Age, while England was on its ascent to eventual predominance in world affairs. By looking at concepts such as staartmannen [tail-men], Duivelskind [Devil's child], or "Hollandophobia," themes of mockery, religion, and xenophobia in popular printed works - including the engraved illustrations which accompanied the texts - are observed. Ultimately the thesis argues that the pamphlet literature bolstered the regional identity of Hollander in the Dutch …

The Color Of Memory: Reimagining The Antebellum South In Works By James Mcbride Through The Use Of Free Indirect Discourse, Janel L. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the use of interior narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse and internal monologue in two of James McBride’s neo-slave narratives, Song Yet Sung (2008) and The Good Lord Bird (2013). Very limited critical attention has been given to these neo-slave narratives that illustrate McBrides attention to characterization and focalized narration. In these narratives McBride builds upon the revelations he explores in his bestselling memoir, The Color of Water (1996, 2006), where he learns to disassociate race and character. What he discovers about not only his mother, but also himself, inspires his re-imagination of the people who …

Antithetical Commentaries On X, Y And The Disruption Of Being, Eva Rocha

Theses and Dissertations

Through discursive essays and poetic narrative, Antithetical Commentaries on X, Y and the Disruption of Being explores the tenuous relationship between modes of measurement and the struggle for human relevance in the post-contemporary digital age. In the introductory essay, “Not the Feather, but the Bird”, I give an overview of the inherent problems of object-oriented ontology, and how it relates to aesthetics and social issues of our times. In the Developmental Overview, I detail how I developed my installation approach and techniques, particularly with regard to the three-way dynamic of the artist:work:viewer relationship and how it can encourage …

"Life Under Union Occupation: Elite Women In Richmond, April And May 1865", Amanda C. Tompkins

Theses and Dissertations

This paper crafts a narrative about how elite, white Richmond women experienced the fall and rebuilding of their city in April and May 1865. At first, the women feared the entrance of the occupying army because they believed the troops would treat them as enemies. However, the goal of the white occupiers was to restore order in the city. Even though they were initially saddened by the occupation, many women were surprised at the courtesy and respected afforded them by the Union troops. Black soldiers also made up the occupying army, and women struggled to submit to black authority. With …

Deserts Will Bloom: Atomic Agriculture And The Promise Of Radioactive Redemption, Chris Fite

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the rhetorical and visual strategies used in marketing atomic agriculture to the American public from the 1940s to the 1960s. The term “atomic agriculture” refers to various agricultural research programs that used radioactive materials, particularly radioisotope tracing and mutation breeding. In print and on screen, atomic boosters from government and industry offered the promise of a better world made possible by applying atomic energy to agriculture. I argue that the proponents of atomic agriculture combined futurism and nostalgia to create a techno-pastoral vision. They hearkened back to the nineteenth century while simultaneously imagining a bright postwar future. …

A History And Bibliography Of Articles Published In The Utb-Utrgv Studies In Local History Series, Milo Kearney

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Everyday Farm Life In The Moxee Valley 1915-1950: Historical Ethnography, Terri Towner

All Master's Theses

This study collected oral histories of those who lived or worked in the Moxee Valley, within the greater Yakima Valley of Washington State from 1915-1950. It documents and records the historical and cultural processes of farm life and its evolution for people living in this foremost hop-growing region of the United States. The larger goal is to characterize the community and social processes for use as primary source documentation to create historically accurate programs at the Gendron Hop Ranch-Living History Farm near Moxee. Nineteen participants were interviewed. Topics addressed in the study include farming in the Valley, the household, roles …

Food And Slave Communities In The Antebellum South, Jessica Rose

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Comrades In Arms?: Russian & Muslim Soldiers In The Red Army During World War Ii, Daniel Bradfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the perceptions of Muslims soldiers regarding their military service during World War II. To thoroughly analyze Muslim soldiers' attitudes, the thesis explores the total experience of Muslim military service through the Soviet Union's and Red Army's policies toward Muslims and how Russian soldiers viewed their Muslim counterparts. To achieve this, the thesis summarized current scholarship on Soviet and Red Army policies toward Muslims. The thesis analyzed the oral histories and written accounts of Muslim soldiers and Russian soldiers to understand the perceptions of Russians and Muslim soldiers. A hierarchy of cultural backwardness underlined Soviet policies in …

Native Milwaukee, Bryan C. Rindfleisch

History Faculty Research and Publications

No abstract provided.

Food Rebellion: Contemporary Food Movements As A Reflection Of Our Agrarian Past, James Gordon

Pomona Senior Theses

This thesis considers the influence of agrarian thought on contemporary food movements.

In Six Days: The Creation Study Committee And The Pca's Struggle For Consensus On Anti-Darwinism, Michael Calhoun Wilkerson

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the historic struggle and development of the American Evangelical community to form a unified front against naturalistic evolution during the twentieth century: focusing on the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) as a microcosm in the battle for a general consensus. Conservative six-day creationists who felt threatened by more liberal views within the denomination over the issue pressured the 1998 PCA General Assembly to appoint a special Creation Study Committee. The outcome of the work of the committee only broadened acceptable views within the denomination, much to the chagrin of the conservative elders who pushed for the Committee's …