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Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 23, No 2, Spring 2024, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Waring Library Society Newsletter, Spring 2024, Waring Library Society, Waring Historical Library, Medical University Of South Carolina, Anna Marie Schuldt, Robert Ball, Joann Livingston Zeise, Tabitha Samuel, Kathryn Glorioso

The Waring Library Society Newsletters

The Spring 2024 issue of the Waring Library Society Newsletter is available now. In this issue, Waring Library Society President Dr. Robert Ball gives his first remarks as WLS President for the newsletter; JoAnn Zeise discusses Louis R. Agassiz’s time at the Medical College in 1849; Tabitha Samuel announces the new additions to MEDICA@MUSC; and Kathryn Glorioso provides insight into one MUSC lab intersection with history and Francis Peyre Porcher.

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Sister Gabriella Lohan, Kensley Dieckow

COPS/Metro

In the oral history interview of Sr. Gabriella Lohan, she discusses San Antonio’s social and political history, as well as the role COPS / Metro Alliance has played in reaching marginalized communities across the city. Over time, COPS / Metro has adapted to new issues like education and fair banking, reflecting changing community needs while staying true to its core mission of empowering citizens and promoting democracy. Throughout the interview, Sr. Lohan explored the role her faith has played throughout her life’s work in social justice.

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Linda Davila, Theresa Pohl

COPS/Metro

Linda Davila spoke about the impact that COPS has had on the city of San Antonio and the surrounding neighborhood. The topics included storytelling, involvement, disagreements, community impact, and more.

Resistencia Artística Bajo Dictaduras En Argentina Y España A Través De La Lente De Las Teorías De Comunicación, Adrian Self, Adrian Self

World Languages and Cultures Student Papers and Posters

Under dictatorships in Spain and Argentina, artists used their mediums to criticize the actions of the Catholic church and oppressive conditions enforced by the government, using allegories, metaphors, and symbolism in their art. While many artists tried to create works that fell within authoritarian guidelines, others intentionally created cinema and literature criticizing the Argentine and Spanish governments, values, and practices, knowing the works would be banned. This investigation uses examples of cinema and literature created and published deliberately to be prohibited or censored under the regimen of Francisco Franco from 1939-1975 in Spain or the last civil-military dictatorship from 1976-1983 …

La Traducción Política: El Silenciamiento Narrativo Y La Traducción Inglés-Español Bajo Francisco Franco, Avery Austin

World Languages and Cultures Student Papers and Posters

We tend to live under the assumption that translations will always attempt to be faithful to their original texts, blindly believing in the infallibility of the translator. However, in doing so, we ignore how translation can be used to take advantage of the reader – how can one know that a change has occurred in a translated work if they have no knowledge of the text’s original language? This paper studies the power dynamics of translation, and how it can be used as a tool to aid censorship. By focusing on translated literary works under the Franco regime, this work …

Reflections About The Academy And Its Centennial, Marco Aldi, Woodward S. Bousquet

Virginia Journal of Science

Brief reflective essays from members of the Virginia Academy of Science were solicited as part of the Academy's centennial commemoration in 2023. The essays received demonstrate the many and varied ways in which the Academy has fostered collegiality, encouraged research, supported science education, and shaped the course of science in Virginia during the organization's 100-year history.

“An American Versailles:” Cold War Diplomacy And The Branding Of The American National Image Through The Fashion Of First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Holly Carew

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

HIS 490 History Honors Thesis

Reconsidering Dorothy Day: The Distinctly American Catholic, Emma Strempfer

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Dorothy Day’s (1897-1980) life and work fell during a period of rapid social change in America. She lived as a bohemian radical and a self-proclaimed anarchist when she entered the political scene as a journalist for The Call. Disillusioned with hypocrisy and censorship on far-left socialist media, she explored and deepened her faith. Following conversion to Catholicism, Day founded the Catholic Worker. She worked to publish stories on as many different individuals as possible, even sometimes for her story, living alongside them for weeks. When aiding the poor directly, her approach was individual-based. She stressed financial freedom, and …

Plath Fostered It, Women Are Nurturing It: Cycles Of Existential And Confessional Women's Writing In The Mid-20th Century And Beyond, Sophie Elisabeth Conrad

Senior Theses

During the mid-20th century, a wide-ranging yet topically focused genre of women’s writing began to emerge in earnest, currently categorized as existential and confessional. Works like Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex (1949) and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963) offer explanations of why an ineffable feeling of malaise permeated the lives of 20th-century women and led them to adopt these methods of writing and thinking. However, existential feelings akin to that of the 20th-century female malaise have returned to stake their claim on the minds of 21st-century women, evidenced in popular contemporary works such as Otessa Moshfegh’s My Year …

A Covenant People: Providentialism In Seventeenth-Century New England And Its Impact On The Development Of The Salem Witch Trials, Gracie L. Vess

Senior Theses

This project explores the New English Puritan ideology of providentialism from the first settlement of New England in 1620 to the Salem Village witch trials in 1692. During this period New England watched its motherland experience civil war, the overthrow of the monarchy, the installation of a commonwealth, the failure of the Puritan Reformation, the restoration of the monarchy, and the Glorious Revolution. These events influenced the way New Englanders saw England’s relationship with God as well as the meaning behind their providential purpose by allowing them to believe God had turned his wrath on England, so the colonists needed …

Unilateralism And Strategic Ambiguity In American Foreign Policy: Contextualizing The Taiwan Relations Act, James L. Landers

Honors College Theses

The goal of this thesis is to examine the unique historical context surrounding the enactment of the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act in order to demonstrate how congressional unilateralism, a core component of enacting the TRA, led the United States to strengthen a policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan and China. As a result of its enactment, the TRA has been criticized by the mainland Chinese government as an example of foreign policy that is contrary to the traditional values promoted by the United States. This study examines the creation of the TRA through government documents, legislation, and speeches and aims …

Bringing About Modernity: A Comparative Study Of Urban Development In Korea That Connects East Germany And The Two Koreas, Junghyun Kim

Masters Theses

This study builds upon the theories of architectural modernism advocated by the International Congress of Modern Architects (CIAM) and Le Corbusier as well as previous studies regarding East German experts being sent abroad to assist in urban development and modernizing schemes of non-European countries. This study examines the East German assistance in the reconstruction of the North Korean city of Hamhung and how North Korea absorbed the ideas of urban modernization advocated by the Soviet Bloc architects. Then the study will shift in focus to look across the border in South Korea which was influenced by a similar idea which …

Distortion And Subversion: Punk Rock Music And The Protests For Free Public Transportation In Brazil [Book Review], Mariel Acosta

Publications and Research

Around the year 2003 some friends and I from “el way,” the self-referential youth slang the alternative music scene and subculture members used in the Dominican Republic, started attending meetings for the youth political group Juventud Rebelde at the borrowed backyard of the left-wing political party Fuerza de la Revolución. The yard had a gazebo-like structure with a cemented floor and a zinc roof under which foldable chairs were arranged in a circle. There we participated in multigenerational study groups to discuss radical communist and anarchist texts in relation to current political issues, we heard talks and report backs …

A Performative Model For Conducting Critical Race Analysis: Josephine Baker, Modern Dance, And Utilizing Narrative To Transform Legal Doctrine, Patrick C. Brayer

Faculty Works

This article proposes a performative model for analyzing the relationship between race and law by integrating narrative, modern dance, and performance as interpretive tools. Focusing on Josephine Baker’s activism and her 1952 return to St. Louis, the paper demonstrates how storytelling and artistic expression can expand legal scholarship and transform understandings of racial injustice. By bridging legal studies with performance, African American history, and cultural analysis, the work illustrates how embodied expression provides new pathways for confronting structural racism, transgenerational trauma, and the pursuit of social justice.

Georgia’S Deportation Of The Creeks And Cherokees: A Prelude To The Trail Of Tears, Sean Michael Ahearn Ii

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This thesis follows the story of the forced deportation of two Native American groups, the Creeks and the Cherokees, from the state of Georgia. The Creeks were completely removed from Georgia by January of 1828, two years before Andrew Jackson’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, effectively commencing the removal of all Native Americans to lands west of the Mississippi River, now known as the Trail of Tears. William McIntosh, a Lower Creek chief, worked alongside his cousin, George Troup, the governor of Georgia from 1823 to 1827. McIntosh worked alongside Troup and negotiated land sale deals, known as the Treaties of …

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Christina Castro, Theresa Pohl

COPS/Metro

Christina Castro spoke about the impact that COPS has had on the city of San Antonio and the surrounding neighborhood. The topics included; housing, corporate meetings, flood control, community impact, and more.

A Memoir Of My Reading, Bennett B. Gilbert

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

Surveying nearly seven decades of habitual and obsessive reading, I consider how my character and psychology used reading to shape philosophical questions that move me into forms in which I could pursue them by reading. This became both the method and the substance of my philosophical work. It preserved some core emotional issues but also gave me the way to integrate them into scholarship and into my life.

Impact Of Nato Enlargement On Eastern Europe Security: Case Study Of Ukraine War, Heeyoung Chae

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

In a situation where Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, the role and the major dilemma of NATO is rediscovered. The blame is that while NATO had expanded its power towards the East European countries, it had provoked Russia to react to the threat of the NATO enlargement process. Within this background, this research’s objective is to examine the impact of the NATO enlargement in Eastern Europe related to the case of the Ukraine war, within the lens of Eastern European citizens’ perception of their security and NATO. The research aims to answer the role of NATO in securing the preservation …

A Latter-Day Disease: Mormons And Cholera In The Nineteenth Century, Alexandra L. Wein

Student Publications

Nineteenth-century America saw the emergence of two seemingly parallel entities - the epidemic disease of cholera and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormon faith. To understand the intersection of Mormons and cholera, one must look within the interdisciplinary framework of Civil War-era history, religion, and epidemiology. Cholera epidemics in 1832 and 1849 coincided with the mass Mormon migration west, causing great suffering and death for Mormons traveling by land and sea. While their westward exodus exposed them to cholera, their religious teachings also contributed to why they contracted the disease. The Word of …

Presentation Of Culture: Framing History In Us And Italian Museums, Fiona G. Cheyney

Student Publications

National legacies drastically impact museum work and archaeological ethical practices in the US and Italy. My research question asks, to what extent and how are ethical considerations of museum professionals shaped by nationalism and evolving perceptions of how museums should serve the public in these two different national contexts? Data collected from semi-structured interviews with academics in the field reflects that museums must be transparent about the history of the topics exhibited and their methodological practices; this is supported by many findings suggested in previous scholarship (Garoian 2001; Gazi 2014; Falcucci 2021). Particular moments in US and Italian national histories, …

Fatally Flawed: D.D. Kosambi’S Grave Missteps In The Study Of Indian History, Vivek K. Rallabandi

Student Publications

D.D. Kosambi, a multifaceted historian in late colonial and post-colonial India, has been acclaimed for his scholarship. However, this paper argues that Kosambi's Marxist ideology caused him to interpret Indian history in a way that conformed with his ideological presuppositions. Such an approach, this paper posits, led to critical historical inaccuracies in Kosambi's work.

Little Flower Church And School: A Digital History Of Westside San Antonio's Spirituality And The Dedication Of The Community, Ashton Jeffers

Capstone Projects

This project utilizes digital and oral history methods to present a collective narrative on the Little Flower Basilica and School. It begins with the origins of the parish on the Westside of San Antonio to the present day, showing how the parish presents its history to the public. Using a StoryMap to create a digital exhibit, this multi-media project includes a comprehensive historical narrative along with primary source documents and photographs of the development of the parish and its school over time. The StoryMap also includes an oral history audio of Diane Gonzales Bertrand, a former member of the Little …

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Robert Mueller, Theresa Pohl

COPS/Metro

Robert Mueller spoke about the impact that COPS has had on the city of San Antonio and the surrounding neighborhood. The topics included; gun control, corporate meetings, community impact, how COPS works, and more.

A Historical Analysis Of Health Institutions, Professionals, And Advocates In The Civil Rights Movement In Columbia, South Carolina, Anusha Ghosh

Senior Theses

From 1900 to 1970, widespread racism severely restricted healthcare access for Black citizens in the South, leading them to establish and staff alternative healthcare institutions to support their community.

Such institutions faced debilitating issues such as chronic financial shortages and patient overflow. Despite these problems, oral histories, media, and primary written sources show that Black healthcare workers in alternative healthcare institutions demonstrated a greater ability to meet the health needs of Black patients due to cultural understanding and external community involvement.

Dr. Matilda Evans was an African-American woman physician who became a leader in medicine, public health, and education in …

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

A Tale Of Two Conferences, Sierra Smith

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In April 1945, the United States was in the thick of the Second World War. In Europe, Allied powers were on the offensive, slowly gaining back ground lost to the Axis while the war in the Pacific raged on. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin, representing the "Big Three" countries of the Allied powers, were in the midst of postwar reorganization negotiations and discussions. It was a crucial time for determining the balance of world power, including relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. At this critical moment, Roosevelt …

The Tree Of "Bitter Fruit": Why Anarchism Failed In Transylvania, Richard Bruner

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Today, the word "anarchy" conjures images of bombs, anti-government protests, and chaos. Achough that may be the modern perception of anarchy, the image did not begin like that. The term has existed for ages, only evolving toward its modern connotation during the nineteenth century. The Greek meaning of the term is "contrary to authority or without a ruler." Anarchy existed as a loose term for the lack of government, or to describe chose who opposed government-often with a derogatory meaning attached to it. Then, in the 1840s Jean-Pierre Proudhon adopted the term to describe his political and social philosophies. Simply …

Casar Public Lecture: "Women & Stem Education In Egypt & The Us: Stepping Into A Man's World Of Science & Technology", The Prince Alwaleed Center For American Studies And Research Casar, Yasmeen El Ghazaly, Mark W. Deets

Performances, Events, and Presentations

In celebration of International Women's Day this Month, we held a public lecture titled: "Women & STEM Education in Egypt & the US : Stepping into a Man's World of Science & Technology " on Thursday March 28th, 2024 from 12:15 pm to 1:15 pm (assembly hour) – Conference and Visitor Center, Mary Cross Hall AUC New Cairo Despite a plethora of advances made by women in the world we live in today, they are still woefully underrepresented in the realm of STEM education and the associated career paths. At this event, we uncovered the history, reasons & challenges women …

Retention Strategies: A Mixed Methods Research Study On Factors That Motivated Black Educators To Stay And Teach At A K-12 School During A National Crisis, E Jean Pemberton

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this research study was to improve retention of Black educators of K-12 schools during a national crisis. To do so, this research study investigated Black educators of K-12 schools to determine factors that motivated them to stay and teach during a national crisis. This research used Herzberg's Two-Factor Theory of Motivation- Hygiene for its theoretical framework. A convergent mixed-methods design was used to collect the qualitative and quantitative data, analyze the data separately, and then merge the data to determine the findings from this research study (Creswell, 2018). The data collected was from Black educators of K-12 …