Digital Commons Network^™

B17 Aircraft, Known As “Denny Boy”, Yvon Bordet

Swiss American Historical Society Review

The B17 “Denny Boy” took off from the British base at Thurleigh (England) on the night of Saturday, July 15 to Sunday, July 16, 1944. Objective: To bomb the BMW factories in Munich (Germany).

The aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft fire near its target, then again on the return to Mulhouse. Smoke filled the cockpit, an engine failed and the plane lost altitude. The captain decided to attempt a landing in neutral Switzerland. But it was in a small field, near a chapel, that he miraculously managed to land the bomber, in the commune of Féternes... in France, just a …

Swiss American Historical Society Annual General Meeting: October 3–4, 2025, New York City

Swiss American Historical Society Review

We are pleased to offer members a tour of the United Nations Headquarters building on the afternoon of Friday, October 3rd. The building is closed to visitors that day, but thanks to the staff at the Swiss Consulate, they have arranged a guided tour for us at 4:00 PM! If you want to do the tour, there is a question on the required registration Google Form that is linked on the next page (and it has also been sent by email to all members). The cost is $20.00 per person and we can take a maximum of 20 people on …

Iberian Origins Of New Mexico's Community Acequias, Jose A. Rivera Ph.D., Thomas F. Glick Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

When Spanish officials first entered the northern region of New Spain in the late sixteenth century, they realized that irrigation would be a necessary development in the establishment of permanent communities. To sustain the early settlements, they built irrigation systems following the Iberian model, itself an extension of Arabo-Berber traditions from north Africa and the Middle East.

Re/Inventing Desire: Asexuality As A Tool For Utopian Intimacies, Amaranta Martinez Martinez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Asexuality became widely known in 2001 when David Jay, launched the Asexuality, Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), however, it’s been just throughout the last decade that it has gained popularity among LGBTQ studies. This thesis explores asexuality beyond its conventional framing as a sexual orientation, positioning it instead as a theoretical framework with the potential to challenge hegemonic understandings of sexuality. It does so by tracing the historical construction of sexual desire through the discipline of sexology, demonstrating how its discourses helped reinforce compulsory sexuality—the expectation that individuals must experience and act upon sexual desire (Emens 2014). Building upon this …

The Incubus: Bourgeois Social Control And The White Racial Identity Theodore W. Allen’S Ontological Critique And Epistemological Breakthrough 1965-1975, Sean I. Ahern

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Theodore W. Allen (1919-2004) was a proletarian autodidact, former coal miner, and member of the Communist Party from 1939-1958. Deeply influenced by the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements and his reading of W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction in the early 1960s, Allen developed a critique of what he termed the “White Blindspot” in the eyes of most U. S. labor historians who had omitted the Black chattel laborers from the proletariat. This omission on the part of both Marxist and non-Marxists constituted, in Allen’s view, the original sin of U. S. labor historiography, which had inadvertently inhibited …

Podcast: One To Grow On – Why Black Studies Matter When Working And Living In Black Communities, Celia E. Ceballos

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper examines the transformative potential of Black Studies in enhancing community work within Black and Brown communities in New York City. The research is driven by the author's firsthand experiences and the realization of the importance of Black Studies, which was largely absent from earlier education. Through the interdisciplinary approach of the Graduate Center’s MALS program, the author has gained a deeper understanding of key topics such as the legacy of slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, the Harlem Renaissance, the Black Arts Movements, and the ongoing struggle for racial justice. This journey inspired the creation of a capstone project, …

American Utopia: The Evolution Of David Byrne’S Viewpoint Of America From 1977 To Present, Morgan A. Prince

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

David Byrne is a multimedia artist known primarily as the lead singer and main songwriter for the new wave band Talking Heads. Throughout Byrne’s career he has continually written about America and Americans. This thesis traces his writings about America from the beginning of Talking Heads to his most recent projects. In doing so, the thesis puts forward that Byrne’s opinion on America has changed from one that is centered on the American people to one that is instead focused on American institutions. Additionally, the thesis traces how Byrne’s work has evolved from idealization to realism, as his early work …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

Guardians Of The Iranian Revolution: Clerical Authority, Bonyads, And The Irgc In Iran's Economic Landscape, Chase M. Toscano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the ideological and institutional foundations of Iran's post-revolutionary political economy, focusing on the triumvirate of clerical authority, bonyads (charitable foundations), and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Drawing on Kevan Harris’s “subcontractor state” framework, this study argues that Iran’s political economy is simultaneously a decentralized yet state-dominated system, where semi-public institutions like the bonyads and the IRGC act as key subcontractors, enabling the Islamic Republic to further economic development and circumventing Western sanctions. This analysis examines the development of Iran’s political economy from the 1979 revolution to identify the influence of left-wing Islamic ideologues like Ali Shariati …

Issues Of Religious Dominance: The Temple Mount/Haram Al-Sharif And The Western Wall At The Center Of Islam, Judaism, And Failing British Mandatory Responses (1917-1931), Kyra Young

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper explores how religious space and symbolism became central to Arab and Jewish nationalist identities in Mandatory Palestine, focusing on the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and the Western Wall during the transition from Ottoman to British rule. It argues that the collapse of Ottoman sovereignty, alongside British support for a Jewish national home, transformed Islamic institutions into arenas for political expression. Muslim notables, particularly the Husayni family, strategically engaged with British colonial notions of “tradition” to reassert influence, exemplified by the politicization of the Nebi Musa festival. At the same time, Zionism—both political secular and religious—began to attach renewed …

Counter-Hegemony In The Captive State: Recasting Katrina’S Carceral Legacy Through Conjuncture, Joseph S. Muratore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the historical development and contemporary manifestations of carceral power in Louisiana, arguing that racialized systems of control—from slavery and convict leasing to mass incarceration—have been sustained through shifting alliances of political and economic elites. Using The Historic New Orleans Collection (HNOC) and its exhibit Captive State: Louisiana and the Making of Mass Incarceration as a foundational timeline, this study demonstrates how Bourbonism forged a regional bloc that institutionalized racial domination through incarceration and labor exploitation, later reconstituted through neoliberal policies of abandonment, privatization, and militarization. I chose to focus on Hurricane Katrina because its aftermath reflects many …

Emulating Empire: Washington’S Preoccupation With British Counterinsurgency In Malaya And U.S. Commitment To Vietnam, Wen-Qing Ngoei

Research Collection College of Integrative Studies

This essay examines how Washington’s deep preoccupation with the British-Malayan counterinsurgency tactics–tactics that routed the guerilla fighters of the Malayan Communist Party–shaped US commitment to Vietnam. This US preoccupation, stoked by Britain’s (and Malaya’s) promotion of their counterinsurgency knowledge to US leaders, also influenced the lessons that US analysts and thinkers absorbed from the United States’ defeat in Indochina. Most studies of British-Malayan counterinsurgency and its connection to the Vietnam War fixate upon debating the relevance of the former to the latter and how this bears on US failures in Indochina. However, this essay focuses on the understudied fervor with …

Tradwives: The Housewifization Of The Girl Boss, Gagan Kaur

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the reemergence of a particular performance of domesticity in the post-pandemic era, focusing on the rise of the "tradwife" (traditional wife) movement alongside the normalization and spread of Alt-Right ideology through popular social media platforms. It argues that the tradwife is not a return to tradition, but a commodified performance of domesticity built on the erasure of social reproductive labor. Tracing the lineage of the “housewife” from the enclosure of the commons to imperial domesticity and from the “girl boss” to tradwife influencer culture, this project situates the tradwife within a longer history of "housewifization"—wherein women's labor …

A Symbol For The Masses: Sergei Chakhotin And The Modern Crisis Of Propaganda, Benjamin J. Diehl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an intellectual biography of Sergei Chakhotin, a Russian biologist whose most famous work, The Rape of the Masses (1939), represented an insightful, pioneering analysis of modern propaganda as it arose during Europe’s “Age of Catastrophe” (1914-1945). In this work and others, Chakhotin used the psychological theories of Ivan Pavlov to develop a system of thought that emphasized the scientific possibilities and political inevitability of mass conditioning through propaganda. In addition to Pavlov’s theory, Chakhotin also used other intellectual frameworks, such as Taylorism and microbiology, to buttress his own firsthand experience during World War I, the Russian Revolution, …

Returning Into The Deep Forest--A Methodological Practice Around Memory, Asianness, And Speech, Yu Ye

Masters Theses

">">The title of this thesis is borrowed from the Tang dynasty poem Deer Enclosure by Wang Wei: “Empty mountain, no one in sight—only the echo of voices. Returning sunlight slips into the deep forest, shining once more on moss.” I feel like my essay is responding to this kind of sensation: light does not shine head-on, but folds back, glancing sideways through dense branches, illuminating what is often overlooked. In that gesture of return—quiet, angled, persistent. This thesis unfolds in three chapters, each following a distinct path—image (Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes), movement (The Rings of Saturn by …

Collaus Taylor

African American Funeral Programs

Collaus_Taylor.pdf - Funeral program for Collaus Taylor

Mrs. Jimmie Lee Canty

African American Funeral Programs

Mr_Jimmy_Lee_Canty.pdf - Funeral program for Jimmie Canty

Embodied Archives, Emerging Futures, Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Masters Theses

Fifty years after the end of the U.S.–Vietnam War, this thesis reflects on the entangled relationship between the two nations, inspiring hope while challenging dominant representations of trauma and tragedy. Drawing from autobiography, family history, folk art traditions, colonial photographs, hierarchies within art history, archives of student activism, and key geopolitical events, the work explores the complex intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives. Combining research-based inquiry with time- and labor-intensive processes, it reimagines historical materials to construct alternate possibilities for the future.

Missionary Ernestine Wilson-Frazier

African American Funeral Programs

Missionary_Ernestine_Wilson_Frazier.pdf - Funeral program for Ernestine Frazier

Hazel Davis Moore

African American Funeral Programs

Hazel Davis Moore.pdf - Funeral program for Hazel Moore

The Silk Butterfly Effect: Japan And The United States 1853-1941, Melodee Birlew

Dissertations and Theses

This study examines the rise and fall of the silk industry in both the United States and Japan in the first half of the twentieth century. While silk had been a valuable commodity for millennia for royalty, aristocrats, and the extremely wealthy, the opening of Japan's ports in 1853 soon made silk more accessible to lower classes around the world.

Consequently, Japan's newfound wealth catapulted her status among other rich and powerful nations. Japan's military might, financed in large part by the silk trade and displayed by her victory over Russia in 1905, earned her even more prestige on the …

The Rainbow War: Ballot Measure 9 And The Fight Over Gay Rights In Oregon, Patrick Douglas Lasalle

Dissertations and Theses

On November 3, 1992, Oregonians were asked to vote on Ballot Measure 9, an amendment to Oregon's constitution that would prohibit anti-discrimination protections for homosexuals, prohibit the use of public funds and facilities to "promote" homosexuality, and require schools to actively discourage homosexuality as "abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse." In this narrative history, I will explore Measure 9 and the ways in which it divided the state, beginning with its introduction in May 1991. I examine the history and reasoning of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, the Christian Right organization behind the measure, as well as the gay and lesbian community’s …

Dr. Daniel Brantly Sr.

African American Funeral Programs

Dr_Daniel_Brantley_Sr.pdf - Funeral program for Daniel Brantley

Mother Belinda Simmons Jones

African American Funeral Programs

Funeral program for Belinda Jones. Service was held on May 30, 2024 in Statesboro, Georgia

Considering The Ethics Of Conserving American Art: White Nationalism And The Evolving Meanings Of Nineteenth-Century Genre And Landscape Painting, Evan M. Crocker

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the stylistic and conceptual qualities of American genre and landscape painting from the antebellum period and how these qualities acted in service to establishing white nationalism before the Civil War. The intricate and calculated system of typing in genre painting presented carefully crafted idealizations of quintessential Americans, defined by their whiteness and maleness. Landscape painters of the early- to mid-nineteenth century endowed their compositions with a sense of wondrous opportunity which justified and upheld westward expansion under Manifest Destiny. At the intersection of genre and landscape practices sits plantation paintings—specifically house portraits—in which the plantation serves as …

Editor's Note, Robert Rabe

Journal of 20th Century Media History

Editor's column for Vol. 3, Issue 1

The Finest Orientalism: "The Orient" And Empire In 19th Century Romantic Poetry, Nathan D. Banfield

Graduate Masters Theses

This project seeks to interrogate the way that nineteenth-century Romantic authors incorporated tropes and depictions of the Near East in their poetry, and the relationship that their use of these tropes has to furthering the British Empire’s imperial aims. Drawing from the theory of “Orientalism” articulated by Edward Said, and his theoretical underpinnings in Michel Foucault’s theory of discourse analysis, I consider four major Romantic poets whose works articulate different versions of “The Orient” as a discursive entity. Said postulates that the “The Orient,” rather than being an inaccurate depiction of an existing geopolitical region, is a fabrication which is …

Inez Lucille Loadholt Jenkins

African American Funeral Programs

No abstract provided.

Disability: A Dirty Word? How Language Historically Perpetuates Exclusion And Systemic Oppression, Kelly E. Imm

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1990, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marked a pivotal moment in the American disability rights movement, which began in the 1960s and sought to secure civil rights for people with disabilities. Despite this monumental achievement, this thesis considers how the language used throughout American history and culture to describe people with disabilities, even within the confines of progressive legislation like the ADA, remains deeply rooted in ableist and oppressive historical attitudes. At the heart of this issue, this thesis demonstrates how the medicalization of disability, which has dominated American culture for centuries, continues to frame …

2025-05-23 Message From The President, Morehead State University. Office Of The President.

Staff Congress Records

A message sent by the Office of the President to the campus community on May 23, 2025, regarding upcoming events on campus, personnel updates, and summer programs.