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The Great Battle Of The Books Between The Cultural Evolutionists And The Cultural Relativists, From The Beginning Of Infinity To The End Of History, Kevin Fernlund

History Faculty Works

The idea that societies or cultures can evolve and, therefore, can be compared and graded has been central to modern history, in general, and to big history, in particular, which seeks to unite natural and human history; biology and culture. However, while extremely useful, this notion is not without significant moral and ethical challenges, which has been noted by scholars. This article is a short intellectual history of the idea of cultural evolution and its critics, the cultural relativists, from the Age of the Enlightenment, what David Deutsch called the “beginning of infinity,” to the neo-Hegelianism of Francis Fukuyama. The …

Ua1b3 Confederates In Our Attic - Discussion Guide, Wku Naming & Symbols Task Force

WKU Administration Documents

Guidelines created by the WKU Naming & Symbols Task Force for conversations regarding naming of buildings for Confederate sympathizers.

Ua1b3 Confederates In Our Attic - Discussion Guide 2, Wku Naming & Symbols Task Force

WKU Administration Documents

Short discussion guide created by the WKU Naming & Symbols Task Force for use in consideration of renaming buildings honoring Confederate sympathizers.

Female Cartographers: Historical Obstacles And Successes, Eva Llamas-Owens

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

For much of history, women have lived in male-dominated societies, which has limited their participation in society. The field of cartography has been largely populated by men, but despite cultural obstacles, there are records of women significantly contributing over the past 1,000 years. Historically, women have faced coverture, stereotypes, lack of opportunities, and lack of recognition for their accomplishments. Their involvement in cartography is often a result of education or valuable experiences, availability of resources, a supportive community or mentor, hard work, and luck regardless of when and where they lived.

This research divides women before and after the turn …

The Colonial Gaze In Aotearoa New Zealand: Origins, Residue, And Means For Mitigation, Juliet Levesque

History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

Gifford Pinchot's Legacy: America's Great National Forests, Char Miller

Eastern Sierra History Journal

Gifford Pinchot, the founding chief of the US Forest Service, had a profound impact in California and more broadly across the US west. After all, the Forest Service manages upwards of 193 million acres, many of which are located west of the Mississippi River. Yet it was California, which he visited in 1891, that rocked his perceptions of America the Beautiful.

Ua37/44 Faculty Personal Papers Gordon Wilson, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Personal papers of Gordon Wilson.

An Ethnic Cultural Landscape: German Breweries And Social Institutions In Covington, Kentucky, 1860-1920, Andrew Jones

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

A useful marker for recognizing the impact that ethnic groups make to the social and cultural characteristics of a city are the institutions and material landscapes created by those groups. In northern Kentucky, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, German immigrants and their descendants in the city of Covington established institutions such as breweries, saloons, social associations, and churches that became the heart of ethnic neighborhoods and shaped the form of the landscape. This research examines institutional and cultural landscape markers of German cultural identity in the city of Covington, Kentucky, from 1860 to 1920. Demographic and spatial data …

Crawl Space: Driving Over The Anthropocene In A Jeep, Michael Pesses

CGU Theses & Dissertations

The automobile has long been directly and indirectly connected to human conceptions of nature, yet few studies linger with the act of driving as a practice that contributes to how nature is experienced. I argue that a more nuanced understanding of automobility is necessary for any scholars who study both social practices and environmental sustainability. Following the work of the human geographer Doreen Massey, I explore how relations between humans and non-humans, the social and the natural, ideology and practice work together to produce places specific to space and time. I also argue that American automobility is not simply transportation, …

Symbolic Franco: Spain’S Dictator In The American Conservative Imagination, 1950-1980, Sean Patrick Buchanan

CGU Theses & Dissertations

In the postwar period in the United States, conservative political ideology shifted its primary focus from isolationism and New Deal opposition to strict anti-communism. The conservatism of the 1920s through the 1940s, under the leadership of Robert Taft, would give way to a more modern conservatism influenced by a variety of Catholic and anti-communist intellectuals. As a result of the effort to demonstrate fervent anti-communist sentiments, modern conservatives highlighted and supported anti-communist leaders and figures across the US and worldwide. One particular anti-communist leader that American conservatives openly supported was the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.

The new catholic conservatives identified …

"An Environmental Sleight Of Hand:" Trash, Activism, And Urban Finance In Detroit, 1970-1990, Chelsea Denault

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the political, economic, and environmental choices that led city officials in Detroit to build the world's largest waste incinerator. in the 1970s, Detroit officials €“ led by Mayor Coleman Young €“ confronted the difficult financial realities of the urban crisis alongside the rise of a new environmental issue €“ the garbage crisis. a single solution to these dual crises seemed to present itself in €œresource recovery,€ the burning of municipal waste in an incinerator to produce steam and electricity. in the context of the energy crises of the 1970s, the logic of resource recovery was compelling to …

Space And Colonial Alterity: Interrogating British Residential Segregation In Nigeria, 1899-1919, Bright Alozie

Black Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

The policy of segregation is undoubtedly a resented feature of colonial rule in Africa. However, discussions of the residential racial segregation policy of the British colonial administration in Africa invariably focus on “settler colonies” of South, Central, and East Africa. British colonial West Africa hardly features in such discussions since it is widely believed that these areas, which had no large-scale European settler populations, had no experience relevant to any meaningful discussion of multi-racial colonial relationships. Some studies even deny the existence of racially segregated areas in places other than the settler colonies. Despite evidence that residential racial segregation formed …

Pestilence And Poverty: The Great Influenza Pandemic And Underdevelopment In The New South, 1918-1919, Andrew Kishuni

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study examines the "Spanish" influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 in the U.S. South, using case-studies of Jacksonville, Savannah, New Orleans, and Nashville to sculpt a "Southern flu" more identical to the Global South and the developing world than the rest of the U.S. I examine poverty and political and economic paralysis in the years between the end of Reconstruction and 1918, and the poor results of political indifference on public health and disease control. I also analyze the social and institutional racism against persons of color that defined high infectious disease mortality in Southern cities.

I argue that Southerners faced …

Alfred Russel Wallace Notes 10: The Impact Of A.R. Wallace's Sarawak Law Paper Resurrected, Derek Patridge, Charles H. Smith Editor

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Six assertions that relate to the impact of Wallace’s Sarawak Law paper1 on the development of evolution theory have been proposed and analyzed by John van Wyhe.2 He concluded that they were all erroneous. The analysis presented a valid criticism of some casual and over-confident pronouncements with respect to interpretations of history. More significantly, it is a misguided attempt to expose “original historical meanings,” and thereby dismiss all other interpretations as necessarily incorrect. A re-analysis reveals that, contrary to van Wyhe’s analysis, much of the conventional wisdom is plausibly correct, and it remains the case that “the past is a …

Between History And Geography, Karen M. Morin, Mike Heffernan

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Putting California On The Map: Von Schmidt’S Lines, David Carle

Eastern Sierra History Journal

When Allexey Waldemar von Schmidt lived in California, from 1849 through 1906, the young state developed a reputation as a society of innovators and energetic problem-solvers. Von Schmidt was a surveyor and civil engineer, an involved citizen of San Francisco, a father and husband, and a pioneer whose triumphs and tragedies enlarged the California Dream. Historian David Carle argues here that this pioneering surveyor literally took California’s measure and documented every step of the way.

The Troupes Coloniales: A Comparative Analysis Of African American And French Colonial Soldiers In The First World War, Matthew Patsis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis examines the service of African American soldiers during World War I in comparison with the service of French Colonial soldiers from Africa. This thesis argues that African Americans existed as colonial subjects of the American Empire and served as the colonial army of the United States just as soldiers from Africa did for France. The scope of this thesis covers ideologies of race in the United States and France, as well as racial policy and the implementation of racial hierarchy within the French and American armies during World War I. Through comparative analysis, this research reveals the relationship …

Rawah, Rawah, Brandi Kilmer

TSOS Interview Gallery

No abstract provided.

The “Humanitarian Mystique:” Tracing The Rhetoric And Politics Of Aid In Southeast Asia From The Age Of The Civilizing Mission To The Present, Elizabeth M. Holland

Honors Theses

In contemporary Western popular culture, humanitarian action often serves as the ultimate expression of altruism, compassion, and moral obligation. This research historicizes humanitarianism to understand the assumptions that underlie its affective appeal. Oversimplified narratives of aid work frequently fail to acknowledge the historical and geopolitical context in which this work occurs. I argue that humanitarianism, as both a discursive tool and code of practice, makes visible some legacies of the ‘civilizing mission’ – the ideology used to justify colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An exercise in comparative history, this research consists of three spatially and temporally …

"They Shall Be A Kosmos:" Alexander Von Humboldt And The Ecopoetics Of Walt Whitman, Benjamin Theyerl

Honors Theses

Places the naturalist Alexander Von Humboldt's proto-ecological ideas in conversation with Walt Whitman's poetry to show how the poet developed an ecopoetics in conversation with the natural sciences of his time, with specific attention to Von Humboldt's theory of the "kosmos" - by which Whitman's poetic persona self-identified. These recognitions are combined with how Whitman's idealized version of the American poet as a “kosmos” creates a political ecology in Whitman’s work, placing his ecopoetics into environmental discourses that resonate from their origin in the nineteenth century to our present ecological moment today.

Growing More Than Coffee: Global Narratives And National Reconciliation Within The Rwandan Coffee Industry, Katie Grandelli

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the Rwandan coffee industry following the genocide of 1994. The two major questions that are asked of the Rwandan coffee industry are the roles that it plays in reconciliation efforts and in global perception. The data examined in this thesis ranges from the marketing strategies of internationally popular coffee brands to an interview at a local coffee shop that specializes in Rwandan coffee products. This research engages in discussions of consumable goods as economic stimulants in post-conflict situations and indicators of neoliberal buying behavior on the part of consumers. Final analysis within this thesis suggests …

The Last Step To Whiteness : American Jews, Civil Rights, And Assimilation, 1954-1988, Eric Morgenson

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the relationship between American Jews and African Americans through the prism of evolving Jewish whiteness. In the post-World War II period, American Jews were an outsider group that were moving into the mainstream. American Jews interested in assimilating tied themselves to the cause of African American civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s. This was partially motivated by a desire to help an oppressed minority work towards equality in the United States. However, it was also motivated in part by a desire to aid in their own assimilation process. The idea of creating a colorblind American society …

French Canadian Heritage In New England, Emmanuel Kayembe Phd

Original Research

Readings on French culture and history in Canada and the United States.

‘To Awaken The Medical And Hygienic Conscience Of The People’: Cultivating Enlightened Citizenship Through Free Public Healthcare In Haiti From 1915–34, Elliott M. Reichardt

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty publications

This paper addresses the relative scholarly oversight of the history of public health in Haiti through a close examination of the colonial public health system constructed and operated by the United States (US) during its occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934. More than simply documenting a neglected aspect of Caribbean history, the paper offers the US occupation of Haiti as a remarkably clear example of a failed attempt to use a free public health service to cultivate a health conscientiousness among the Haitian citizenry through the aggressive treatment of highly visible ailments such as cataracts and yaws. I argue …

Trickle Down Nationalism: Interactions Between Liberal Nationalism And Colonialism In The Raj And Nigeria, Aaryaman Sheoran

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of nationalism and colonialism has remained understudied in academia, despite the important interaction between the two phenomena. European ideas bled over into their colonial empires and began to fill the power vacuum created by colonial enterprises. This study analyzes the impact of British colonialism on the development of national identity in British India and Nigeria.

British influences included large scale economic disruption, cultural reform through ‘westernizing’ the population and abolishing local customs, and creating a new set of institutions to replace traditional power centers. Inevitably, these factors created a nationalist surge across both the Raj and Nigeria, as …

Visualizing Participatory Politics: The Communal Power Of Street Art In Revolutionary Egypt, Warring Syria, And Divided Lebanon, Erin Baranko

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the role of street art in the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 in order to investigate the extent to which the political struggle was also a visual struggle. Through analysis of murals and graffiti, it seeks to address how revolutionary politics are created, consumed, and witnessed in images. In Egypt, protesters created street art that coopted public space in order to circumvent the state’s authority and subvert the state’s legitimacy. Due to its accessible nature, street art also democratized the protest process, facilitating a truly popular revolutionary movement. In Syria, citizens used …

The Form Of The Content: The Digital Archive Nahuatl/Nawat In Central America, Laura Matthew, Michael Bannister

History Faculty Research and Publications

The digital archive “Nahuatl/Nawat in Central America” (NECA) assembles and makes publicly available a growing corpus of Nahuan-language documents produced in Spanish Central America. Many are fragments within larger Spanish-language documents and difficult to locate in the archive. NECA has succeeded in bringing attention to this understudied corpus but has so far failed to attract users to its transcription and translation tool. We consider the reasons for this creative failure based on user data, and suggest that the specialized skills and distinct academic communities needed to move this project forward require other workspaces, including the non-digital, in advance of online …

History And Humanities Reader: The Modern World Ii 1850 To The Present, Gary K. Pranger

College of Arts and Cultural Studies Faculty Research and Scholarship

This is a compilation of ORU Humanities & History materials that ORU faculty have produced over the decades as lecture materials or as scripts for audio-visual class presentations. Here they are now articles for educational use by anyone who is interested.

Between The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea: An Analysis Of The Consequences Of 20th Century American Imperialism And Nuclear Testing Upon The Marshall Islands And Its Inhabitants, Michelle Hahn

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This thesis could not have been accomplished without the support of my family, friends, and peers who have cheered me on the entire way throughout my tenure as a master’s student at Claremont Graduate University (CGU). I would especially like to thank my mother who has had the patience of a saint throughout this journey. At my lowest moments, she reminded me of my strengths as a scholar and encouraged me to keep going, even when I thought this thesis would fall apart. I love you very much, thank you for always being my cheerleader. This project has undergone several …

Fiction And Science: A Plausible World In The Early Modern Period Through The Writings Of Francis Godwin And Margaret Cavendish, Robert Wilson Macleod

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Exploring the use of fiction—and science fiction—as an opportunity for "Scientific Outsiders" to present their knowledge and questions about the natural world by analyzing the themes presented in Francis Godwin’s The Man in the Moone and Margaret Cavendish's The Blazing World.