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Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

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"They Could Not Guard Against It": The Failed U.S. Policy Response To German Sabotage At Black Tom Island, Benjamin Smith

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In the early morning hours of 31 July 1916, German agents successfully detonated a storage facility on an island in New York Harbor named Black Tom. The facility was filled with munitions meant for the Allied powers fighting against Germany in World War I. It was at that time the single most destructive subversive act ever perpetrated on U.S. soil. But it is not surprising that such an act occurred: the United States had no specialized counter-espionage agency and the area had relatively little protection. The remarkable thing is the miniscule amount of attention Black Tom, along with other instances …

Beyond Bakke: Explaining The Anti-Affirmative Action Movement Of The 1990s, Austin Brayley

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

America's long history of racism testifies that despite major reform efforts, American society is not yet egalitarian. Minority racial and ethnic groups emain underrepresented in a number of professional fields such as law, medicine, white-collar business and instructors of higher education. Americans today cannot deny their heritage of discrimination based on race or nationality. In the past, the white majority has denied racial minorities' equal access to these prestigious fields, either through legislation, court rulings or overt resistance.

Profiles In Influence: Shaping American Perceptions, Attitudes, And Policy Towards China, Benjamin Merritt

Masters Theses

Pearl Buck, Henry Luce, Edgar Snow, and Richard Nixon have profoundly influenced Sino-American relations throughout the 20th century. Their impact on American perceptions, attitudes, and foreign policy has played a pivotal role in shaping the current state of relations between the United States government and the People’s Republic of China. Pivotal historical events such as WWI & WWII, the Sino-Japanese War, China’s Civil War, and the Soviet-Sino conflict—among other events—have also significantly influenced the dynamics of Sino-American relations. Despite their importance, there is a notable absence of studies that comprehensively explore the collective impact of these individuals and events. Understanding …

America’S Favorite Fighting Frenchman: Marquis De Lafayette In American Pop Culture, Joshua Neiderhiser

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Popular culture has become as engrained within American society as the proverbial grandma’s apple pie. Due to the explosion of the internet, popular culture has become easier to find and share. For the historian this has created a cornucopia of research opportunities but has also created a massive problem: popular culture often comingles fact, fiction, and myth, making it more difficult for the historian to decipher the truth. The Marquis de Lafayette has been as affected by this as any other. His character and his legacy have been misrepresented in American popular culture. There has been a distinct divide between …

The Protestant Vatican: Black Churches Involvement In The Nashville Civil Rights Movement 1865-1972, Samuel Dingkee Momodu

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Black churches played a significant role in the Long Civil Rights Movement in Nashville, Tennessee, from Reconstruction to the early 1970’s. A more detailed study of the history of the movement and the role that Black churches played needs to be done at the local level, to gain a better understanding of how the Nashville Civil Rights Movement developed logistically and ideologically. This dissertation assesses how the Black Church, as an institution of African American life in Nashville, shaped and directed civil rights activism in that city. Black churches provided the headquarters that established two of the most influential civil …

The Nuclear Threat: A Homeland Security Perspective, Renae Katherine Harvey

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

On December 8, 1987, the United States and Russia signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Since then, it has been a common misconception that this solidified the end of the Cold War and the Nuclear Arms Race. To this day, nuclear installations are plaguing bordering countries within the European Union. As a result, severe transnational issues become evident as transnational crime groups grow and technological advancements of terrorist groups continue to gain ground within the nuclear power threshold. Furthermore, countries within the Asian Peninsula and the Middle East continue to demonstrate nuclear prowess via mass media attention as a sense …

Never Forget Czechoslovakia: The Prague Spring And The Crushed Opportunity For A New Czechoslovak Identity, Brittany Hardy

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

With Soviet guns locked on the government buildings in Prague, Czechoslovakia was transformed from a nation of autonomous communism to one under full control of the Soviet Union. On 22 August 1968, amidst the chaos of the Warsaw Pact invasion, an unnamed university student left behind a plea via audio recording, asking the world for help saying, "The only way that you can help us is this: not to forget Czechoslovakia. Don't forget Czechoslovakia." His plea calls into question what defined the national identity of Czechoslovakia and what built the foundation for establishing such an identity. Historians such as Carol …

"A Few Spare Ribs": Female Immigration To Gold Rush California, Rachel Belk Moyar

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In September on 1848, subscribers of the New York Herald read a fanciful description of a place that had "rivers whose banks and bottoms [were] filled with pure gold," and made the legendary El Dorado seem nothing "but a Sand bank." The work sounded easy, and the potential returns appeared limitless. A bucket of dirt "with a half hour's washing in running water" would produce "a spoonful of black sand, containing from seven to ten dollars' worth of gold." This golden country was California. Beginning in 1848, similar accounts of the gold discoveries in California began to appear in numerous …

Review Of “Varsity’S Soldiers: The University Of Toronto Contingent Of The Canadian Officers’ Training Corps, 1914-1968” By Eric Mcgeer, Joel Watson

Canadian Military History

Review of Varsity’s Soldiers: The University of Toronto Contingent of the Canadian Officers’ Training Corps, 1914-1968 by Eric McGeer

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques Of Citizenship Politics In Northeast India, Samarth Vachhrajani

Masters of Environmental Design Theses

Authorizing Violence: Spatial Techniques of Citizenship Politics in Northeast India studies the spatial and legal instruments through which Hindu Nationalism and its political front, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), operates in Northeast India. I document the means through which authoritarian power has been introduced into a democratic structure of governance. Emphasizing the role of architecture and spatial knowledge, I attend to how the violence of disenfranchisement and dispossession is legitimized under the force of law.

For this, Chapter 1, entitled 'Legislating Containment,' turns to the legal instrument of citizenship and studies the Goalpara detention center and multi-purpose criminal …

From Revolution To Laïcité: How Anticlericalism Has Defined Modern France For Muslim Women, Jake T. Mcardle

Senior Theses

This paper explores the developing definition and approach to secularism, referred to in France more strictly as laïcité, and its disproportionate impact upon French Muslims, in particular, Muslim women. The French roots of anticlericalism and resulting Revolution provide necessary context as to why the French are so apprehensive about religion, which led to the establishment of a secular state in 1905. Exploring relevant literature on the topic of French secularism, with a particular focus on the development of the headscarf debate in France from 1905 to 2023, context is provided regarding why the French care so deeply about the wearing …

Echoes Of Imperialism: The Philippines And America In The South China Sea, Victoria Elise Ruiz Sogueco

Senior Theses

This paper provides an overview of the conflict between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea, Philippine history following its liberation from Spain to its independence from America, and the continuing impacts of American imperialism on the modern day Philippines. While it is argued that American military intervention on behalf of the Philippines is necessary in order to protect its territories in the South China Sea, this would only strengthen its legacy of imperialism on the Philippines. By analyzing case studies of sexual assaults perpetrated by US troops, such as the Jennifer Laude case and the Subic rape …

The Perpetual Foreigner: Modeling Cycles Of Asian American Discrimination, Philip Min

Honors Projects

Through an Asian American perspective catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, this research investigates the concept of the state of the perpetual foreigner for Asian Americans and the subsequent cycling of race-related tensions. To define the state of foreignness for Asian Americans, this is understood first through Kim’s model of Racial Triangulation, which intends to model the relationships of racial groups in the United States – namely between Black, White, and Asians – through concepts of civic ostracization and relative valorization that relate directly to foreignness and hierarchy. This is then further expanded upon through the creation of a separate model, …

Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman

Master's Theses

Colonialism is deeply and violently embedded in Western knowledge formation—dominant power structures produce epistemes that uphold and perpetuate colonial narratives. This kind of knowledge production forecloses other possibilities. Western discourse of truth becomes universalized to the point that other worldviews, other knowledges that do not conform to hegemonic norms, are suppressed or silenced. This thesis examines three areas of hegemony and erasure: art, gender, and land. First, the history of art clearly marks a delineation between Western elitist artistic masterpieces and non-Western ethnographic artifacts. Eurocentrism of art in the academy determines what counts as art and how art is categorized. …

Radio At Saint John's University: Antennas To Long-Playing Legacies, Bonnie Finn

Libraries Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

"Brothers In Christ?" The Dynamics Of Slavery And Catholicism In Brazil, Jaime Toiaivao Alley

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

In 1946, Frank Tannenbaum provoked the ire of American historians by claiming that slavery in Brazil was more humane than in the United States. Observing the laws, religious pronouncements, and social trends related to Brazilian slavery, he concluded in his book Slave and Citizen that the presence of the Catholic Church in Brazil mitigated the normally brutal nature of slavery. This religious climate, he asserted, accounted in large part for the difference in slaves' experiences in Brazil and in the United States. In reality, however, the position of the Catholic Church towards slavery was neither simple nor one-dimensional and does …

The Life Of Edward J. Logue And The Rebuilding Of America's Cities After Wwii, Lizabeth Cohen

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Let's cut right to the chase: what's a social historian like me doing writing a biography of a dead white man named Edward J. Logue? I've never written a biography before. My two previous books, Making a New Deal and A Consumers' Republic, have made contributions to twentieth-century United States history by giving agency to social groups often considered powerless, such as industrial workers, first-generation immigrants, rank-and-file supporters of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, African American consumers, new suburbanites, and female consumer activists. I have made my reputation as a twentieth-century U.S. historian by arguing that ordinary Americans have been …

The Holocaust's Legacy: Influencing Jewish Political Identity, Jordan Eskew

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis addresses the intricate relationship between the historical persecution of the Holocaust and its enduring influence on contemporary Jewish political engagement, a subject of significant contemporary relevance in political and international relations. Despite broad recognition of the Holocaust’s impact, the specific ways in which its memory affects Jewish political attitudes and actions around the world in the modern day have not been sufficiently thoroughly examined. Utilizing qualitative methods, including interviews with 20 individuals—public figures, Holocaust survivors, their descendants, and broader members of the Jewish diaspora— this study focuses on understanding the interplay between historical trauma, community cohesion, and the …

Full Issue

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

It's Not Whether You Win Or Lose, It's Who Reports The Games: American Media And The Summer Olympics Of The 1950s, Benjamin G. Hardcastle

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Upon their return from the London Olympic Games in 1908, President Theodore Roosevelt hosted the United States Olympic athletes at his Oyster Bay, New York retreat. The London Games had been rife with rivalry between the American team and its British hosts, causing the British press to question the sportsmanship of the American athletes after a number of heated events. The US athletes, upset by the accusations, were reassured by the words of Roosevelt. "We don't need to talk," he exclaimed upon receiving them, "we've won!"

Preface, Julie Harris

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

Each year, the Beta Iota chapter of Phi Alpha Theta publishes The Thetean as an outlet for student papers. We as a staff hope that this year's volume will encourage students to take their scholarly endeavors beyond the classroom, and to revise and refine their term papers as if they were preparing articles. We also hope that the selections in this year's Thetean adequately reflect the BYU History Department faculty's efforts to teach us to think, research, and write critically.

Front Matter

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

No abstract provided.

Imagination, Performance, Expression: Unraveling Global Pakistani Identity, Omaer Naeem

Senior Honors Papers / Undergraduate Theses

Expressions of Pakistani identity are presently being flattened out by both the state and global West, dominantly being explored through religion. This project argues that gender is used domestically and internationally to present a multifaceted resistance to the state’s idea of the national identity. This project interrogates the creation of global Pakistani identity through examining the historical antecedents in imagining Pakistan, resistance to the state’s identity- construction process demonstrated in performing Pakistan, and transnational expressions of identity. This project argues that gender, while leveraged by the state in a top-down construction of national identity, has been used bottom-up to reconfigure …

Going Beyond The Margins: Photographs By Ming Smith, Isis A. Serna

Art & Art History ETDs

Ming Smith is a photographer who has been creating images since the early 1970s and trained with the artist collective Kamoinge Workshop. Throughout most of her career, Smith has been marginalized by art historians, critics, and museum curators. Since the early 2000s, Smith has only been included in museum exhibitions highlighting African-American female artists from 1960 to the present. Before this surge of interest in her work, the art world ignored and silenced her. However, Smith’s creative process allowed her to see and experience going beyond the struggle by being consistent in her strategy to do what she wanted on …

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

History In The Present Tense: News And History On The Radio, 1924-1944, Steven R. Kostelecky

History ETDs

This dissertation addresses questions about the contested claim to an authoritative historical voice on American radio from its earliest days in the 1920s to its role in the Second World War in the 1940s. My major arguments involve, first, how the development of radio news in the 1930s took on the nature of “history in the moment” with live event programming—something its rival, the newspapers could not do. Secondly, with the press of world events, I argue, history and the news increasingly seemed to dovetail into the other on the radio, and the American Historical Association debated the most effective …

Pleas For Toleration Against The Call Of Treason: The 1890 Shanghai Protestant Missionary Conference And The Controversy Over Chinese Rites, Joseph Seeley

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

On May 7,1890, a colorful assortment of Western Protestant missionaries, stationed in all corners of late Qing-dynasty China, gathered in Shanghai for a thirteen-day mission conference. Some came to the conference clad in native Chinese dress, complete with Manchu-style ponytails or queues, while others were dressed more formally in the proper Victorian garb preferred by their non-missionary Western counterparts. Regardless of perceived differences in dress or ecclesiastical affiliation in the multi-denominational assembly, all sought to enjoy what was later described by conference organizers as "an occasion of the highest social enjoyment... as well as spiritual profit." As over four hundred …

"Concern For ... South Africa Must Not Impel Us To Commit Acts Of Economic Suicide", Michael Milendez

The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly Historical Writing

The early 1970s marked the gradual end of the silent era in the antiapartheid movements in South Africa. The Black Consciousness movement along with other internal anti-apartheid movements began to gain strength and a greater voice. At the same time, the U.S. government continued to ignore, for the most part, South African affairs. This changed with the Angola Conflict in 1975 and the heightening of internal strife of South Africa, which began with the Soweto Uprisings in 1976. The conflicting economic and strategic interests of the U.S. Government led to policies, which allowed apartheid to survive in South Africa throughout …