Digital Commons Network^™

The Role Of Religion In The Exoduster Movement, Rachel E. Mulick

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Religion occupies a significant role in the Exoduster movement and how scholars talk about it. References to the Biblical exodus of Egypt, Israelites, and Canaan appear time and time again. An exploration of primary and secondary sources pertaining to the movement indicates that religious language and institutions played a significant role in motivating migration and supporting migrants on their journeys. However, though religion acted as a support for many, its presence was not universal, nor did its influence rival more practical push and pull factors. Migrants were first and foremost propelled by deplorable conditions in the South; their motivations were …

The Egyptian Discovery Of The Rising Sun: Re-Evaluating The Pan-Asianist Rhetoric Of Mustafa Kamil And Trans-Imperialism, Hung Pan (Eric) Li

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Mustafa Kamil (1874–1908) is widely celebrated in modern historiography as a founding father of modern Egypt for his contributions to Egyptian nationalism. It is conventionally understood that he achieved mastery in "speaking back to the Occident" by leveraging both domestic and international support, reconciling his nationalist agenda of self-determination with Pan-Asianist rhetoric and international solidarity against Western imperialism. One of the most frequently cited pieces of evidence for this position can be found in his 1904 work on Japan, The Rising Sun, in which he praised Japan's modernization and its resistance to the West, and encouraged Egyptians to follow …

The Impossibility Of Anti-Capitalist Protests In Liberal Discourse: A Study Of Media Rhetoric During The Piquetero Movement In Argentina, 2003-2007, Grant C. Himes

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Around the turn of the twenty-first century, the piquetero movement in Argentina expanded the political sphere in Argentina by forming new coalitions of unions, the unemployed, and leftist parties in the midst of an economic crisis. However, media coverage of the protests often flattened the category of protester in a category discrete from that of the public, which more closely resembled the media’s middle class, apolitical audience. Through this rhetorical separation between the piquetero and the “public,” the newspapers Clarín and La Nación focused their discourse on the “violent” tactics of the protests, ignoring their economic demands and the struggle …

'A Hundred Times A Man': Chastity, Martial Culture And Manhood In Franco's Spain, Ava M. Golde

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Using the military as a case study, this essay seeks to understand how chastity became a symbol of complete regeneration for Spanish society, both in terms of a physical revival of a soldier’s health but also a moral and spiritual reawakening of the Catholic soul. In analyzing military magazines, instructional pamphlets, and the memoirs of soldiers, this paper unpacks the relationship between enforced male chastity and Francoist military masculinity, demonstrating how ideas of manhood were deliberately altered to fit a nationalist project of regeneration. Finally, I place this conception of the “New Spanish Man” within the broader context of militarized …

Getting A Special Education: Parents, Lawyers, And The Politics Of Disability In Postwar Pennsylvania, Emma Gabriel

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

This paper explores the relationship between white parent advocates in Pennsylvania and public interest lawyers, whose litigation efforts legitimized the construction of an implicitly white disabled class in the mid-twentieth century. This analysis sheds light on the ways in which school reform became a key element in the simultaneous construction and renegotiation of intellectual disability and race in the postwar era, and foregrounded the adoption of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) in 1975.

"World War I Memorials", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Explanation of the World War I Memorials in North Alabama (Lauderdale County), including the Memorial Amphitheatre on the campus on the University of North Alabama.

The document includes two pages. However, both pages are remarkably similar and appear to be subsequent drafts of the same article.

Digitized images of the Memorial Amphitheatre are available in the University Architecture Collection To access the images, click the link, and use the search bar, located on the left side of the screen, to search the collection. In addition, an illustration of the design for the memorial amphitheater is accessible in the William Lindsey …

"Yellow Fever Epidemic", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Draft of text for the historical marker in Tuscumbia, Alabama honoring those who died of the yellow fever epidemic in the fall of 1878.

The current historical marker for the yellow fever epidemic in Tuscumbia can be viewed on the Historical Marker Database.

"Wilson Park", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Article about the creation and naming of Wilson Park, originally called the Town Walk, in Florence, Alabama.

"A Yankee Patient At Pope's Tavern", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article relates the story of Private Oglvie E. Hamblin, a union soldier and one of the last patients to be treated at Pope's Tavern when it served as a Civil War hospital.

"The Yankee Connection", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article summarizes the impact of the Negley family in North Alabama, including the construction of the Negley Hotel.

Union Brigadier General, James Scott Negley entered North Alabama on May 13, 1862, and through a series of skirmishes began to occupy Florence. Later, his relative, Major Albert Gallatin Negley arrived in East Florence, Alabama in response to the industrial boom.

"Wesleyan Hall, An Alabama Landmark", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

A history of Wesleyan Hall, on the Campus on the University of North Alabama.

Digitized images of Wesleyan Hall are accessible in the University Architecture Collection and William Lindsey McDonald Image Collection. To find the images, simply click on a collection link, and use the search bar, located on the left side, to search for the images.

The Tragicomedy Of C. S. Lewis The Bald: Reflections On An Unpublished Play, Jahdiel Perez

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"Within the pages of a Vice-President’s Register (1920–1984), held in the Old Library archives of his Oxford College, Lewis handwrote, in mock Shakespearean English, 'The Tragicomicall Briefe Reigne of Lewis the Bald.' As far as we know, this is the only complete play in his corpus. Mostly unpublished until the recent release of C. S. Lewis’s Oxford (2024) by Simon Horobin, this piece has yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. In what follows, I seek to address this gap through a close analysis of portions of the text and its broader implications for Lewis’s approach to writing."

Tracing Sehnsucht: Longing For The "Hidden Country", Charlie Reeder

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"This thesis will argue that Lewis employs a consistent set of literary themes and biblical echoes to articulate longing throughout his career, and that his early non-Christian, and often anti-Christian, poetry, such as Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (1919) and Dymer (1926), plays a formative role in shaping his later depictions of Sehnsucht. Although his theological commitments and vocabulary evolve significantly after his conversion, an engagement with a predominantly Judeo-Christian literary inheritance is apparent from the outset. A central focus here will be Lewis’s use of place. In his early poetry, recurring biblical resonances, conceptual images, and spatial …

C. S. Lewis, The Expert Communicator, Steven A. Beebe

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"What evidence supports the claim that Lewis is an expert communicator? He remains a popular author, one of the most read authors of all time. He was a professional communicator; he earned his living communicating: teaching, writing, and speaking. And, as this essay has documented, he was a professor of communication. He made insightful observations about the role, nature, and function of communication throughout the corpus of his work. Although his planned book with J. R. R. Tolkien, “Language and Human Nature,” was never published, his initial ideas found in the draft of the partial opening chapter, coupled with a …

Screwtape In Wartime, Joe Ricke

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"This essay looks closely at the connections between Lewis’s wartime message to his listeners in his now famous, but then unlikely, sermon, “Learning in Wartime,” on 22 October 1939 and his wartime novel, The Screwtape Letters. It will range widely from biography to history to literary influences and to close reading of the texts to help reflect on its place not only in Lewis’s oeuvre but in his life and the lives of all those who, then and now, attend to the distinction between what Lewis (and, surprisingly, Screwtape) makes between the local wars of time and space and the …

Signifying Nothing? Narnia, Inanity, And A. L. Rowse, Michael Ward

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"This essay explores the origins of the word Narnia, the name that Lewis gave to the fictional kingdom in which his seven Chronicles of Narnia are mostly set. How did he come by it? What, if anything, does the word mean?...I will be pursuing two lines of enquiry and two sets of intriguing connections that strike me as potentially illuminating. What follows is more of a theory for consideration than a hard-and-fast conclusion for acceptance. But though I write with a degree of tentativeness, I hope, nonetheless, to shed some light upon Lewis’s statements about his naming
of Narnia and …

"Expressing The Great Myths": Hugo Dyson And Shakespeare In C. S. Lewis's Conversion Narrative, Sarah R. A. Waters

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"The conversations that took place on the night of 19 September 1931 in Addison’s Walk might, as David Downing has put it, “be considered the defining moment in Jack’s life.” And Lewis’s letters to Greeves are recognized to be a key source in this narrative, with Alister McGrath noting, for instance that these letters “explain the events of the night and their significance for his reflections on religious faith.” Often ignored in accounts of these conversations, however, is the importance of Dyson in the story, and often ignored in these letters are Lewis’s reflections on his current reading matter, including …

"Lewis Dodged": T. S. Eliot's Silence, C. S. Lewis's Critique (1931 - 1947), Hannah F. Roux

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"Most agree that Lewis’s critique of Eliot’s work is important to his literary scholarship—whether they think that critique changes or not. There is no academic book of Lewis’s from the 1930s and 1940s in which he does not at some point engage with Eliot by name. The opposite question—whether Lewis’s work was important to Eliot—is comparatively neglected. This paper investigates this neglected question."

What Did Tolkien Really Think About Narnia?, Holly Ordway

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

"We are presented with two questions: “what did Tolkien really think about Narnia?” and “how did the idea that Tolkien hated Narnia become accepted as common knowledge?” In this essay, I will address both questions and conclude by suggesting why they matter for Inklings scholarship. At the outset, I will merely observe that since Tolkien and Lewis are two of the greatest fantasy writers of the twentieth century, it is worth knowing what one of them thought of the other’s work. …I have drawn my primary evidence from Tolkien’s published Letters (in the Revised and Expanded Edition), unpublished letters, and …

Frontmatter (Volume 19 Issue 2), Bruce R. Johnson

Sehnsucht: The C. S. Lewis Journal

No abstract provided.

"Robert Pain And The Legacy Of Leadership", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Robert Paine was the first president of LaGrange College, the earliest predecessor of the University of North Alabama. The article gives a brief overview of Paine's leadership.

"T.S. Stribling" And "T.S. Stribling's Ties To Lauderdale County", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The articles offer an overview of Pulitzer-prize winning author and Florence Normal College alum T.S. Stribling, as well as his connections to Lauderdale County, Alabama.

"The Story Of The Shawnees At The Muscle Shoals", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

A brief overview of the Shawnees in Northwest Alabama.

"The Sounds Of Handy's Music On The Tennessee River", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

William Christopher Handy "the father of the blues" was raised in Florence, Alabama. The article offers a synopsis of the connection between Handy, his music, and the Tennessee River.

More information about W.C. Handy and a digitized image gallery is available at the William Christopher Handy Collection.

"A Story Of The Beginning Of Old Brick Presbyterian Church", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article provides a general overview of the origins of the Presbyterian denomination and a history of the establishment of local Presbyterian churches in North Alabama.

"Sweetwater: The Story Of East Florence", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Research article that depicts the story of various portions of East Florence, Alabama industrial district, resulting from the resource of the "sweet water" spring. The subheadings that McDonald uses are as follows:

• Sweetwater Plantation, pg. 1
• A Second Plantation Called "Sweetwater", pg. 1
• Early Water Powered Mills on Sweetwater Creek, pg. 3
• The Industrial Section of Florence Called Sweetwater, pg. 3
• Early Iron Furnaces at East Florence, pg. 4
• The Florence Wagon Works, pg. 6
• The East Florence Cotton Industry, pg. 7
• Cherry Cotton Mill, pg. 7
• Ashcraft Cotton Mill, pg. 9
• The Broadus Mill, pg. 10
• Gardiner Warring Knitting …

"A Renowned Slave In The Early Life Of Florence", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Dred Scott, the plaintiff in Dred Scott v. Sanford, was a confirmed resident of Florence, Alabama in the 1820s-1830s. The article gives an overview of Dred Scott's life, including his time in Lauderdale County.

Restoration Of Cannon Cemetery, William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

The article discusses the restoration of the Cannon Cemetery near the Natchez Trace Overpass on Waterloo Road. Among the individuals buried at the cemetery are the grandparents of Pulitzer-prize winning author and Florence Normal School (predecessor to the University of North Alabama) alum T.S. Stribling's grandparent's James and Lydia Waits.

"Salt Cave On The Doublehead Reserve", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

A salt cave located on the previous site of the Chief Doublehead Reserve and current location of Lauderdale County, Alabama is now covered by the backwaters of the Wheeler Dam. The article discusses the oral history and local folklore related to the cave.

"The United States Post Office And Courthouse At Florence", William Lindsey Mcdonald

Research Articles

Brief depiction of the architecture of the Florence, Alabama Post Office and Courthouse Building and the heritage of the architect that designed it, John Robie Kennedy, Jr. Images of the Florence Post Office and Courthouse can be accessed at the William Lindsey McDonald Image Collection. To find the images, simply search the gallery via the search bar located on the left side.