Digital Commons Network^™

Bringing Back Stories: Indigenous Peoples And Gettysburg College, Juliana L. Swanson

Student Publications

History and storytelling are beautifully intertwined—every country, culture, community, and person has a tale of creation, conflict, and prosperity. The tragedy of stories, however, is that many things may never be recorded, may be lost in archives and memories, and may never be revisited again. Beginning August 2023, I’ve conducted archival research which centers around the connection and intersectionality between Indigenous peoples and Gettysburg College. My initial research project expanded and has cultivated into a story-telling presentation of the history of Native Americans in the United States, termination of federal recognition of tribal nations, the creation of the National Indian …

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.

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 …

Marie Curie: The Quantum Matriarch, Diptiman Das

Student Publications

Entitled “Marie Curie: The Quantum Matriarch,” this paper illuminates the extraordinary life and enduring legacy of Marie Curie, whose groundbreaking work in radioactivity revolutionized the scientific landscape. Born as Maria Skłodowska in the heart of Warsaw, Curie’s odyssey from Poland’s clandestine Flying University to the hallowed halls of Paris’ Sorbonne epitomizes her tenacious quest for enlightenment amidst the shackles of societal norms. In collaboration with her spouse, Pierre Curie, she discovered the elements polonium and radium, thereby introducing the concept of “radioactivity” to the world and securing Nobel accolades in both Physics and Chemistry. This paper ventures into her intimate …

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 …

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.

Informal Family Archives & Oral History, Nichole M. Shippen

Open Educational Resources

Informal Family Archives & Oral History was modeled on and meant to complement the Oral History in Interdisciplinary Community College Pedagogy Funded by NEH for 2023-2025. Therefore, the description is taken from the NEH description except I modified my class to be focused on informal family archives. Students picked a family member they wished to interview for this project. They started with a cultural object exercise and built from that starting point. The class was inspired by Nairy Abdelshafy’s Informal Archives: Capturing Family Memories.

“Oral history is an interactive method and inquiry process on a topic, as well as …

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Rose Araujo-Iracheta, Barbara Ortiz

COPS/Metro

Rose Araujo-Iracheta shared some of her experiences with COPS/Metro advocating for community needs, focusing on persistence, collaboration and resilience. She emphasized the role that social justice plays in her motivation to assist co-workers, neighbors, school districts and all communities of San Antonio.

Paul Celan And The Processes Of Survival In Post-Shoah Jewish Writing, Ari Savage

Theses

The following is a study of the poetry of Paul Celan as a representation of psychological and social processes present in the written works of Shoah survivors. It begins with an analysis of the place of writing in Jewish culture, then identifies three primary processes which operate in sequence: alienation, individuation, and integration. By examining Paul Celan’s highly personal and autobiographical texts in the context of his life experience as a Shoah survivor it is possible to discern the social and psychological forces at work which compel survivors to express their traumas in written form, and to gain a better …

Ursinus Magazine, Spring 2024, Robyn E. Hannigan, Ed Moorhouse, David Eberle, Ben Seal, Talia Argondezzi

Ursinus Magazine, 1995–Present

Out of this world • Freedom fellow • Teachers mentoring teachers • Standout students • Above and beyond • Top Bear • Reimagining Main Street • Bear bites • Cape crusader: Molly Serfass-Carr '14 discovers Delaware parks' true treasures • School of thought: Student and faculty researchers from across academic disciplines advance our knowledge of the brain • Wall Street dreams • A source of hope • Congrats, Class of '24 • Digitizing Gilot • Neverland reimagined • On view at the Berman • National stage • Rolling out the red and gold carpet • Introducing the Athletics Advisory Council …

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.

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 …

Cops/Metro Alliance-Stmu Oral Histories With Steve Mendoza, Theresa Pohl

COPS/Metro

Steve Mendoza spoke about the impact that COPS has had on the city of San Antonio and the surrounding neighborhood. The topics included; Project QUEST, youth involvement, disagreements, community impact, and more.

The Place Of Nuclear Weapons In Russian Identity: An Ontological Security Analysis, Peter Ernest Yeager

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

On May 9, 2008, Russia’s Victory Day, four 14-wheeled MAZ-7917s drove through Red Square carrying Topol intercontinental ballistic missiles. This was the first time nuclear weapons had been paraded through Moscow since before the end of the Cold War. The previous August, Russia had resumed nuclear-capable bomber patrols, and in January, 2007, President Putin acknowledged Russia had begun to build new nuclear weapons. These remarkable events were met with little acknowledgement in the West, as if they were completely normal. Instead, they represented a major evolution in the bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia. Sixteen years of fitful …

Thomas Jefferson "Papa" Shuman

African American Funeral Programs

Thomas_Jellerson--Papa--Shuman.pdf - Funeral program for Thomas Jefferson Shuman

Aaron Sylvester Cone, Sr "Buster"

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Janie Lou Tremble

African American Funeral Programs

Janie_Lou_Tremble.pdf - Funeral program for Janie Lou Tremble

Book Review: Manchester, William, And Paul Reid. Ihe Last Lion, Winston Spencer Churchill· Defender Of The Realm, Carson Teuscher

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In the darkest days of World War II, when Germnay had conquered most of mainland Europe and the future looked bleak for those who opposed Hider and his armies, the world relied upon the decisive leadership and action of men like Winston Spencer Churchill. After painful defeats at the war's outset, Churchill's spirited rhetoric inspired Britons to rally together like a lion to resist the Axis Powers. Churchill, of course, believed that his people had "the lion heart"; but as Paul Reid wrote, Churchill "supplied the roar."

Immortality Through Obliteration: Buddhist Influences On Juche Thought, Christian Curriden

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

North Korean Juche philosophy has come to be considered a quasi-state religion. Since its inception in the mid-192os as a slogan encouraging selfsufficiency and anti-Japanese struggle, it has undergone a series of changes. First, the focus of animosity changed from the Japanese to the Americans during the Korean War. During the 1960s, it morphed into a more comprehensive nationalist ideology emphasizing political independence, economic autarky, and military self-defense. With the addition of the "political-social body" concept in 1986, it evolved yet again into a quasi-religious metaphysical worldview, asserting that the leader, party, and people were all organs of an immortal …

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 Smallpox Revolution, Sierra Marchand

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Samllpx was one of the most feared diseases in colonial North America during the eighteenth century. This fear was caused by "the suddenness and unpredictability of its attack, the grotesque torture of its victims, the brutality of its lethal or disfiguring outcome, and the terror that it inspired, which [made] Smallpox unique among human diseases." People who contracted the disease had a thirty to fifty percent chance of survival, and if they survived the painful illness, many victims lost their eyelashes, had permanent facial scaring and pitting, or even sometimes went blind. This made smallpox survivors the subjects of social …

Coal In Modern Japanese History, Tomoki Shimanishi

Japanese Society and Culture

This study investigates the relationship between coal and the modern Japanese economy from a historical perspective. Because Japan has utilized coal since the dawn of industrialization, we focus on various aspects, such as a primary energy source, a trade good, and a substance of environmental burden.

(1) Coal was not only an export good but also the most important primary energy source for Japan’s industrialization. However, coal imports grew after WWI. After all, the amount of imported coal surpassed domestic coal production in the late 1960s. (2) In the end of the 19th century, major coal mines abandoned the butty …

The Grizzly, March 28, 2024, Marie Sykes

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

This is an April Fool's parody edition of the Ursinus College Grizzly newspaper entitled "The Goofly."

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 …

A Personal Autobiographical Essay On The Origins And Beginning Years Of Genocide Studies, And Some Reflections On The Field Today, Israel W. Charny

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Unveiling Estrangement: The Ambivalence Of Iranian Cultural Identity In Documentary Films, Vahid Valikhani

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines estrangement within Iranian society as depicted in Iranian documentaries, which, I argue, regularly suppress the complexities of Iranian cultural identity. While Iranian narrative cinema has been studied in this context, documentaries have received less scholarly attention, despite their potential to illuminate the shortcomings of conceiving Iranian cultural identity. I examine three documentaries: Tehran Today (Ahmad Faroughi Ghajar, 1962), Newcomers (Kianoush Ayari, 1979) and Tehran Without Permission (Sepideh Farsi, 2009). Through this analysis, I uncover various forms of estrangement, including those induced by westernization, gender oppression, and the political control of what Hamid Naficy calls “mediawork.” Drawing on …

Feminization Of Responsibility In Community Recovery: Rethinking Disaster Justice Through The Lens Of Care, Kaira Zoe; Alburo-Cañete

Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints

In the Philippines women are increasingly recognized for their crucial roles in disaster recovery. While not against participation per se, thisarticle troubles assumptions tied to women’s participation, which are based on constructions of women’s altruism and care responsibilities. Drawing from a qualitative case study in post-Yolanda Tacloban, it contends that instrumentalizing women’s care-based practices in disasters may inadvertently worsen gender inequalities. To achieve gender justice in recovery, thearticle advocates addressing the confinement of care to women and emphasizes integrating an ethics of care into disaster justice frameworks to combat pervasive injustices that contribute to gendered vulnerabilities during disasters.KEYWORDS: DISASTER JUSTICE …

Preserving Linguistic Diversity In The Digital Age: A Scalable Model For Cultural Heritage Continuity, James Hutson, Pace Ellsworth, Matt Ellsworth

Faculty Scholarship

In the face of the rapid erosion of both tangible and intangible cultural heritage globally, the urgency for effective, wide-ranging preservation methods has never been greater. Traditional approaches in cultural preservation often focus narrowly on specific niches, overlooking the broader cultural tapestry, particularly the preservation of everyday cultural elements. This article addresses this critical gap by advocating for a comprehensive, scalable model for cultural preservation that leverages machine learning and big data analytics. This model aims to document and archive a diverse range of cultural artifacts, encompassing both extraordinary and mundane aspects of heritage. A central issue highlighted in the …

Lanthorn, Vol. 58, No. 15, March 25, 2024, Grand Valley State University

Volume 58, August 7, 2023 - April 15, 2024

Lanthorn is Grand Valley State's student newspaper, published from 1968 to the present.

Vietnam Wacs: An Exploration Of Women’S Military Service During The Sociopolitical Upheaval Of The Vietnam War Era, Carmen M. Latvis

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Women’s military service has often been relegated to the footnotes of history in the larger discussion of war and military service. Despite this, women have served the United States through every major conflict since the Revolutionary War with no expectation of recognition or reward. Such service raises questions regarding patriotism, gender roles, and citizenship. This research explores those questions during the Vietnam War era, one of the most defining moments in American society and culture and argues that women’s military service was shaped during those turbulent years through persistent quiet integration, defining political intervention, and military necessity. An investigation of …