Digital Commons Network^™

The Shelburne Line Allowed Up To 200 Airmen To Get Back To England To Fly Against Nazi Germany, Kellian Clink

Library Services Publications

The Shelburne Line, facilitated by Military Intelligence, Section 9, was something like the American Underground Railroad, but in this case, it was developed during the waning days of World War II to help evading or escaping aircrew to get back to fly against the Nazis. Wherever the airmen went down, they were first housed in Paris, then were accompanied to a small town in Brittany, where a BBC announcement would alert the helpers to start conducting the airmen to “la maison d’Alphonse” atop a Nazi patrolled promontory. From that house, they would have to descend a steep cliff, wait anxiously …

Book Review - Black Folk: The Roots Of The Black Working Class, Michael Bean

LWLC Faculty Research

Blair Kelley's Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class offers a comprehensive examination of the experiences of working-class African Americans from the Reconstruction era to contemporary times. The book challenges prevailing stereotypes associated with the working class, particularly the imagery that often excludes black Americans, and emphasizes their central role in labor movements and the quest for dignity in work. Through extensive historical research and personal narratives, Kelley highlights the struggles faced by newly emancipated African Americans, who encountered devaluation of their labor and systemic discrimination in the workforce. The narrative intertwines individual stories with broader themes of …

Reviewers And Referees

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Editorial History

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Are Economic Gender Differences The Same Everywhere? Cross-Societal Comparisons In The Early 21st Century, Joyce P. Jacobsen

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

Are gender differences in economic outcomes the same everywhere? Using the most recent available data (generally from the 2021–2023 period), I consider the patterns for these gender differences and provide an annotated list of statistical sources for students and researchers to use in exploring these differences. Overall, women still work less than men in paid work, work more than men in unpaid household work, and make less than men; however, these patterns have converged somewhat, with some narrowing of work and pay gaps relative to the last part of the 20th century, and with women rapidly closing the educational-attainment gap …

Mission And Editorial Policy

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Statement From The Indiana Academy Of The Social Sciences And Board Of Directors

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Editor's Note

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Volume 27, Issue 1 Full Contents

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

Author Biographical Notes

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of U.S. Air Force Close Air Support Of The Army On Joint Doctrine And The Battlefield 1943 - 2003, Nathan Andre Pierre Bachand

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

In American military historiography, the primary focus has often been on strategic bombing, large-scale infantry and armor maneuvers, asymmetrical warfare, the horrors of war, and the romanticized imagery of air-to-air combat. Historians rarely decide to delve into the impact of a specific type of mission and its evolution over time within the broader context of American wars throughout the 20th and early 21st Centuries. However, in an era of rapid technological and doctrinal changes, it is essential for historians to explore which specific missions have had the most significant impact on American military operations. One of the most impactful missions …

Shine A Light Into The Darkness: Illuminating The Battles Fought By Civil War Prisoners Of War, Marybeth Allison

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

Four hundred thousand Union and Confederate soldiers found themselves imprisoned by the enemy during the American Civil War. Of that number, over fifty-six thousand captives died in the prison camps while their comrades endured unspeakable conditions. The amount of misery and suffering inside these prisons is undeniable, and the history of Civil War prisons encompasses a dark chapter in American history. Much scholarship exists on the prisons and the conditions of the prisons; however, this work focuses on the prisoners’ experiences in their own words. Prisoners continued fighting battles, and most of all, they battled to find light in the …

Fairy Tales In Service Of Political Projects: “Hansel And Gretel” In Changing Political Regimes, Polona Tratnik

Marvels & Tales

The production of fairy tales depends on political interests. The tales’ regimes of production and anticipated reception condition their inscribed ideological inclinations and erasures. I examine how Kinder- und Hausmärchen by the brothers Grimm contributed to nation-building and, focusing on “Hansel and Gretel,” how the changing regimes of production required omissions in the translations of the Grimms’ tales into Slovenian. I argue that the sui generis appropriation of the tale titled “Janko and Metka” by the writer France Bevk helped build a socialist nation. Finally, the article comments on some issues in capitalist regimes of fairy-tale production.

The Holodomor: Death By Hunger, Marco Spann

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The Holodomor was a man-made famine used by Stalin’s regime against the nation of Ukraine. This deliberate famine was both politically and ethnically motivated for the purpose of progressing the Communist Revolution. Stalin believed there was a growing issue of separatism in Ukraine which threatened the unity of the Soviet Union. Stalin’s regime used collectivization, a system of violent seizure of land, people, and resources, to boost industrialization within the Soviet Union as well as to terrorize Ukrainians into submission. The Soviet Union enacted strict censorship of the Holodomor, setting back conversations on it by decades. The attack on the …

Gender And Genocide: Rape As A Weapon Of War In Darfur, Ella Woods

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In instances of genocide, gender and ethnicity intersect in such a way that women of a persecuted group undergo a distinct experience from men. This is evident in the case of Darfur, where women of the region have been subjected to rape, forced pregnancy, and more by the Janjaweed and Sudanese government. This gendered violence is not unique to the genocide in Darfur, but examining its details reveals how the international community can better protect not only women in Darfur, who continue to face violence to this day, but also women who are victims of genocide throughout the world.

Everyday Postsocialism In Eastern Europe: History Doesn't Travel In One Direction, Jill Massino, Markus Wien

Central European Studies

The collapse of state socialism ushered in dramatic political and economic change, producing new freedoms and opportunities, but also new challenges and disappointments. Focusing on laborers, professionals, youth, women, sexual minorities, foreign students, and emigrants, Everyday Postsocialism in Eastern Europe explores these multifaceted changes and people’s varied experiences of them. The featured narratives complicate hegemonic representations of transformation, revealing ruptures and continuities, progress and reversals. Highlighting the multi-directionality of change over the last thirty years, the book reappraises 1989 as an epochal event for all.

2024-2025 Ursinus College Course Catalogue, Office Of The Registrar

Ursinus College Catalogues, 1869-Present

A digital copy of the 2024-2025 Ursinus College Catalog. It contains details of the curriculum, departmental requirements and courses of instruction as well as the Open Questions core requirements, experiential learning and the Common Intellectual Experience (CIE). Academic policies, special opportunities and scholarships, off-campus programs and graduation requirements are also outlined.

Emmanuel Mounier’S Four Books On Communitarian Personalism: Engaging With Existentialism, Marxism, And & Teilhard De Chardin, Joe Holland

The Journal of Social Encounters

No abstract provided.

Cosmic Partnership: Hildegard Of Bingen’S Vision Of An Integral Ecology, Almut Furchert

The Journal of Social Encounters

Though Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), Benedictine Abbess and polymath, canonized and proclaimed Doctor of the Church in 2012, has been named a patron of ecology, only fragments of her ecological philosophy exist. This article attempts to introduce Hildegard’s polyphonic work by outlining her theology of viriditas as the green thread that connects her cosmological, anthropological, and ethical theory and to show how it constructs the relationship between humanity and creation as a cosmic partnership. Hildegard's striking visual style is not only inspired by her appreciation of the natural world, but deeply grounded in her theology. This theology entails an ethical …

Effects Of Climate Change On Women’S Security Dynamics In Baragoi, Samburu County, Kenya, Rehema Zaid Obuyi

The Journal of Social Encounters

The paper unearths how climate change influences women’s security dynamics in fragile and conflict-affected contexts in Baragoi Samburu County Kenya. It provides an opportunity to rethink security. Security responses must be at par with evolving security underlying forces. One of the precursors is that individuals and groups that were traditionally excluded from combat both as participants and targets such as women and children have now become prime targets. This demands a shift in strategy by not only focusing on traditional threats but also getting more specific linking our approaches to gendered non-traditional security threats. Alternative soft power approaches to addressing …

No Back Door: Integrating Wofford College, 1964-1994, Dwain C. Pruitt

Library Exhibits

This exhibit explores the first 30 years of racial integration at Wofford College. It is made possible in part by a Network for Vocation in Undergraduate Education “Reframing the Institutional Saga” grant supported by the Council of Independent Colleges and the Lilly Endowment.

Editor's Note, Joseph Drew Editor-In-Chief

Comparative Civilizations Review

Although the International Society for the Comparative Study of Civilizations was formally launched in 1961 via a scholarly conference convened in Salzburg, Austria, which brought together many of the world’s leading experts on the subject under the sponsorship of the Austrian government and UNESCO, regular annual meetings for those interested in comparative civilizations have been held subsequently by the society variously in North America, South America, Asia or Europe almost every year since that time.

Is Donald Trump A Modern-Day Catiline?, Jamie González-Ocaña

Comparative Civilizations Review

Could the story of a failed Roman politician who organized a plot to seize the Roman republic in 63 BCE be a metaphor for Donald Trump’s political persona — his initial presidential run against the establishment, his rhetorical effort to overthrow the status quo and the natural order of things in national politics, the love affair Trump has always had with the struggling working-class voters (with the “forgotten” Americans), his constant testing the Constitutional limits of our republican system of government? Could both figures be symptoms of times when a republic is in crisis and reminders of the perils that …

Seventeen Crises In Western Civilization That Have Arisen Since The Dark Ages: A Cognition Science-Oriented Approach, Andrew Targowski

Comparative Civilizations Review

The purpose of this article is to synthesize those crises in the unfolding of Western civilization that are controlled by human knowledge and wisdom. The methodology is transdisciplinary, utilizing a cognitive science-oriented, big-picture view of civilization and main conflicts. The crises are investigated across three time periods; the Dark Ages (from the fifth to the fourteenth century), Modern Times (from the fifteenth to the twentieth century), and the present century. The findings reveal that today Western civilization faces seventeen significant crises. Knowledge is not sufficient to solve these crises; we need to employ knowledge-based wisdom. This approach presents a new …

End Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

The Sociology Of Crisis: Pitirim Sorokin’S Scholarly Legacy And Current Problems, Resilience, And Community, Emiliana Mangone

Comparative Civilizations Review

In his writings on crises, Sorokin highlighted their complexity and their multiple consequences on a personal, cultural, and social level. In this paper, crises in the 21st century are analyzed from Sorokin’s incisive perspective. The significant points include:

1. the study of crises cannot be enclosed within the confines of individual disciplines but rather must incorporate interdisciplinary approaches.
2. the category “crisis” does not encompass only those conditions that are the consequences of specific disastrous events such as natural disasters, wars, and terrorism but also all those phenomena that produce the conjunction of harm to human beings and social disturbances.
3. successive crises …

Divergence Between The Teachings And Practice Of Islam: A Civilizational Analysis Of Muslims In Indonesia, Hisanori Kato

Comparative Civilizations Review

Indonesia is a country of cultural as well as religious diversity. Even before the advent of Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism were widespread in the region. Some think that Islam in Indonesia spread to the archipelago through interaction with local civilizations. Although Islam has become a majority religion in Indonesia today, long-standing local cultural traditions, ones that have existed throughout its recorded history, are often still maintained and practiced widely in Indonesia. These pre-Islamic traditions have a profound association with nature, and the people tend to appreciate animistic entities.

Full Issue

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

"White Slaves Of California": Race, Religion, And The Railroad In Maria Amparo Ruiz De Burton's The Squatter And The Don, Katie Buonanno

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In The Squatter and the Don (1885), Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton depicts the decline of the Alamars, a patrician Californio family, in the years after California was annexed by the United States. This thesis explores the different rhetorical maneuvers Ruiz de Burton makes to place the Californios in a broad, enfranchising Anglo-American national paradigm. The novel negotiates the messy, competing histories of Spanish, Mexican, and American colonialism, ultimately making the case for the enduring presence of Spanish missionization in the region, as well as the cultural assimilability of the Californio population. While the novel has frequently been read as …

Building Networks, Producing Spaces For Play: Local Geographies And National Organizing In The History Of Adventure Playgrounds In The United States, 1949-1999, Reilly B. Wilson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation provides an historical analysis of repurposed material adventure playgrounds in the United States between 1949 and 1999. Three microhistories of adventure playgrounds (The Yard, in Minneapolis, M.N., and several playgrounds in New York City, N.Y., and Houston, T.X.) are framed against the wider socio-economic changes that shaped more than thirty-five adventure playgrounds in the United States over the period of study. By focusing on the relationships mobilized by adventure playground advocates at different scales and across different points of view, and how these networks shaped the local production of spaces for play, this dissertation's method underlines the importance …