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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.

Gladys Mitchell House Collection, Dan Bonenberger, Jaclyn Panter, Katherine St. Amand, Ian Tomashik, Kate Zorn

Digital Heritage Preservation Collection

This collection explores the life of Gladys Mitchell and the home she shared with her family on Detroit's Eastside. Gladys and her husband, Ossian Sweet, lived with her parents Benjamin and Rosella in a residence on 9322-24 Cairney Street from 1922 to 1925 before moving to the now-historic bungalow at 2905 Garland Street, located about a mile southeast. In 1925, when the Sweets moved into an all-white neighborhood, their experience led to a landmark Supreme Court case that affirmed African Americans' rights to homeownership, including the right to defend their private property.

Benjamin Mitchell and his wife, Rosella, rented the …

Rights Of Nature: The Indigenous-Led Movement For Sovereignty And A Sustainable Future, Kathryn Schug, Ted Gordon

The Journal of Social Encounters

The rights of nature movement works to grant legal rights to beings other than humans. Led by Indigenous communities across the globe, the movement is grounded in commonly shared Indigenous beliefs that regard non-human beings as are our relatives and as deserving of the same legal rights as humans. Grounded in Indigenous worldviews, the rights of nature movement pursues the twin goals of creating an environmentally sustainable future and enshrining legal protections for Indigenous values and practices. This article explores how the White Earth Nation, a federally recognized Ojibwe tribal government in Minnesota became the first in the United States …

Enhancing History Education With Google Notebooklm: Case Study Of Mary Easton Sibley’S Diary For Multimedia Content And Podcast Creation, Paul Huffman, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

This article explores new features of Google’s NotebookLM, an AI-powered tool designed for advanced document analysis and educational content generation. Tested on the 92-page transcribed diary of Mary Easton Sibley, the founder of Lindenwood University, NotebookLM effectively generated FAQs, a study guide, a table of contents, a briefing document, and an audio overview in podcast format. By transforming static historical documents into dynamic learning materials, the document-based AI model provides a user-friendly interface for educators and students, especially those without experience in audio editing or podcasting. While successful in creating study guides and audio formats, the tool faced challenges in …

Ephemera As A Versatile Primary Resource: A Case Study Of The Nancy Tucker Postcard Collection, Dylan J. Mcdonald, Jennifer Olguin, Monika Glowacka-Musial

Journal of Western Archives

Ephemera are rich primary sources too often overlooked within archival materials and at collecting institutions. This case study argues that archivists and librarians should recognize ephemera, specifically postcards, as powerful historical documents worthy of scholarly investigation. By analyzing a sample set of digitized postcards held at the New Mexico State University Library, we show how scholars can use postcards to develop evidence-based arguments. Through the images, printed texts, and hand-written inscriptions found on these early 20th century postcards, we demonstrate how researchers can examine the pro-development messages found in southern New Mexico postcards.

Scla 521 Ai In Society, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides access to information resources on societal impacts of artificial intelligence from multiple libraries databases covering multiple disciplines including government information resources.

In Defense Of Identity: A Comparative Analysis Of Indigenous Self-Defense Movements In North America, Chloe Cairncross, Dana Dougherty

The Microdynamics of Mass Atrocity Working Paper Series

This paper conducts a comparative analysis of two significant historical events of Indigenous resistance in North America: the Northwest Rebellion of 1885 in Canada and the Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 in the United States. The Métis during the Northwest Rebellion and the Lakota Oglala along with American Indian Movement activists during the Wounded Knee Occupation both sought to assert their rights against encroaching government policies and settler expansion. By examining the actors, agendas, actions, and outcomes of these movements, the paper explores the nuanced nature of self-defense within a settler-colonial context. Comparative analysis highlights the persistent efforts of Indigenous …

A Southern War On Predators: How Bounty Laws, Environment, European Thought, And Wolves And Other Predators Influenced Colonial South Carolina, Andrew J. Hubbard

All Theses

During the colonization of South Carolina, the natural landscape was altered significantly by European colonists. Bounty laws targeting the native predatory species were one-way humans facilitated this change. These bounty laws were created and enforced throughout much of the colonial period in South Carolina and permanently removed most of the region’s natural large predators. This thesis contends that South Carolina’s laws tell a story unique among colonial bounty laws provide a unique perspective on Euro-American attitudes toward predators, creating precedents later used in the United States’ westward expansion and war on predators. European bias and stereotypes permeate South Carolina’s culture …

On An Unshakeable Foundation: An Archaeological Investigation Of The Postemancipation Black Community Of Bass Street, The Church They Built, And The Lasting Identity They Formed In Nashville, Tennessee, Clélie Elizabeth Cottle Peacock

Master's Theses

The Bass Street Community lived along the northern base of St. Cloud Hill in Nashville, just below the Civil War-era Union fortification, Fort Negley. The fort was built and defended by conscripted free, enslaved, and self-emancipated Black/African Americans and soldiers from the U.S. Colored Troops; some of whom stayed, built residences, founded a church, and established a shared community identity. The objects they left behind reflect a time of transition in the postemancipation urban South.

The former Bass Street Community enclave is a subset of the Fort Negley archaeological site (40DV189). My thesis examines artifacts from the Bass Street Baptist …

Patriots Or Rebels: Ethical Debate Behind The American Revolution, Nicolette Falvo

History Department Theses

This paper, "Patriots or Rebels: Ethical Debate Behind the American Revolution," critically examines the justification and historical significance of the American Revolution. It argues that the motivations behind the revolutionary war and the colonists' outrage against British policies were complex and multifaceted, prompting scrutiny of the legitimacy of their actions. Central to this analysis is the colonists' deliberate choice to establish a democratic republic, diverging from the English monarchy, and an evaluation of the contemporary state of American governance. Drawing on Gordon S. Wood's "The Radicalism of the American Revolution," which highlights its transformative impact on American society and political …

The Memory-Keeping Daughter: Exploring Object Stories And Family Legacies From America's Modern Wars, Susan R. Grayzel

History Faculty Publications

This essay demonstrates how wartime objects can have a special resonance in families as keepers of memory, and it especially explores the role of daughters of military participants in preserving the artifacts of their veteran fathers. Using several case studies from a recent public history project collecting objects and object stories in the American southwest, it argues that a focus on daughters as caretakers of family military history offers a new way to engage with descendants' histories by showing how the work of such women can contribute to our understanding of modern war and its legacies.

Land, Labor, And The Railroad In Industrial Appalachia: How The Baltimore And Ohio Railroad Engineered Space, 1843-1872, Lillian R. K. M. Austin

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

During the nineteenth century, the Baltimore and Ohio railroad reshaped the social, political, and physical environment of the mid-Atlantic around the needs of the industrial economy. The creation of industrial space, and the proliferation of communities to populate it, is seen retrospectively as an inevitable consequence of technological innovation, but engaging with contemporary corporate records reveals that this space, like the railroad, was engineered. In order to design a supply chain that would make industrialization economical, the railroad and coal industries engaged in political and social engineering to design the new locales of industrialism, exemplified in the Allegheny Mountains by …

“She’S On Her Way Up”: A Case Study Of Mercy Otis Warren And The Gendered Politics Of Commemoration, Sara Ann White

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 2001, a statue of eighteenth-century Bill of Rights advocate Mercy Otis Warren was erected on the Barnstable County Superior Courthouse lawn in Barnstable, Massachusetts. The story of the statue’s eventual placement is a fascinating case study of how the gendered politics of commemoration can play out over time in local communities. The saga of Warren’s commemoration is inextricably bound up with the history of efforts to commemorate Warren’s brother, James Otis Jr., and eventual arguments that Warren’s work deserved recognition in its own right. We first see gendered politics at play as Warren’s real accomplishments were consistently overshadowed by …

Charles H. Schaffer: “Alger County Charcoal King”, Thomas J. Straka

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

One of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula’s earliest industries was iron production. Iron furnaces (smelters) were part of that industry; these were primarily fueled by charcoal, produced in hundreds of charcoal kilns scattered across the Upper Peninsula. Charcoal burning was a major industry in its own right, and one person, Charles H. Schaffer, came to dominate it, earning the name “Alger County Charcoal King.” His empire began when the Detroit, Mackinac and Marquette Railroad expanded east from Marquette and was centered on charcoal kilns at the Onota station in Alger County. When wood supplies near Lake Superior declined, he expanded his charcoal …

America, Dreaming., Sarah Meftah

Masters Theses

There is a version

of America

that exists

only in dreams,

a kind of folklore,

shrouded in images,

technicolor interiors,

wrapped in plastic,

ghosts of recent past

to haunt and guide;

a constant reminder.

Wishful thinking

a constructed imaginary,

one I can hold in my hand.

Popular culture and spectacle, America and the domestic ideal, capitalism and the collective unconscious of a national identity. As an artist, I am interested in the myriad images that manifest for a viewer when they think of the spectacle of American pop culture, its domestic archetypes, and the material worship it revolves around. My …

The Rocky Road To Statehood: Colorado Statehood And The Contested Election Of 1876, Matt Bergh, Susan Schulten

DU Undergraduate Research Journal Archive

This thesis will explore Colorado’s path to statehood. It begins with a summary of the election of 1876 to set up the research question: why did Colorado, a Republican-territory, become a state in a critical election year when the Democrats controlled the House of Representatives? Next, it covers the historiography to gain insight into how scholars view Colorado statehood and its relationship to the election of 1876 given that both happened in the same year and that coincidences in politics are rare. A follow up will occur with an explanation of the differences between a state and a territory to …

The World After: Central Virginia In The Wake Of The Civil War, Harry Caldwell

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis examines the situation in Central Virginia following the surrender of Appomattox. Its primary focus is on the Federal Provost Guard who were sent back into the region in the month following the Surrender. It begins in March 1865, introducing the world that the Provost will be thrown into that summer, and it will go month to month until January 1866, when the Provost have fully departed from the region and power was fully turned over to civilian authorities. This research is primarily built of the General Orders that were printed in the Lynchburg newspaper, The Daily Virginian, …

The Claude Neal Lynching: Race, Memory, And A Southern County's Violent History, Travis Patterson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the historical memory of the Claude Neal lynching, which occurred in Jackson County, Florida in October of 1934. The Neal lynching was a particularly gruesome public spectacle. After executing Neal at a local farm, vigilantes transported his body to the county courthouse and displayed it for hundreds of white onlookers. After 1934, civil rights activists, journalists, government officials, community leaders, and ordinary residents kept the memory of Claude Neal alive in public discourse. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, individuals invoked the Claude Neal lynching to draw attention to contemporary manifestations of racial violence and inequities in …

The Biltmore Forest School And The Establishment Of Forestry Education In America, Dan Barry Croom

Journal of Research in Technical Careers

The Biltmore Forest School, despite its unusual existence within the affluent Biltmore Estate, played a crucial role in the early 20th-century American forestry movement. Founded by Carl A. Schenck and supported by George Vanderbilt II, the school aimed to educate foresters and promote sustainable forest management. However, many aspects of the Biltmore experiment failed due to the new and untested nature of forestry science in America. This experiment exposed a fundamental divide in forestry education, with Gifford Pinchot advocating for conservation-centered teaching while Schenck believed in the economic viability of lumber production. Ultimately, the Biltmore Forest School offered valuable vocational …

Aguaaaa!!!, Cory Villegas

Theses and Dissertations

“AGUA” is a call for new models of learning and sharing, celebrating the diasporic as a place of global revolution. Salsa, rooted in Latin American and Afro-Caribbean histories, is choreographer Cory Villegas’s expression of cultural legacy. As an Afro-diasporic dance, Salsa carries the wealth and variety of African and Indigenous roots. Villegas contextualizes her thesis event “Las Leyendas: An Afro Cuban Suite,” presenting herself and her troupe Soul Dance Co. as evidence that contradicts the erasure of Latin & Caribbean Culture in US dance history. The paper uses English and Spanish, written, visual, and oral materials with an accompanying webpage.

Bengal Memory, Fahim Hamid

Theses and Dissertations

Bengal Memory is a documentary short film, told through an expository and personal lens, about a forgotten genocide that occurred in Bangladesh during its Liberation War, the controversial role that the U.S. government played in it, and how the lives of Bengali people in both the homeland and in the American diaspora were shaped by these events. As a Bangladeshi American and narrator of this story, I traveled to my native country to investigate. My father, Mohammed, had lived through the 1971 war and recounts his memories of the atrocities committed by West Pakistan, which claimed the lives of a …

Mixed Feelings: The Emotional Appeals Of Zitkala-Ša’S American Indian Stories, Kayla Joan Baur

Publications and Research

Zitkala-Ša (Lakota: Zitkála-Šá, meaning Red Bird) was among the first to write about the experiences of Native American children in the U.S. Indian boarding school program to an English-speaking audience. As a writer and political activist, Zitkala-Ša uses emotional appeals and cultural ideas she learned through her white education to expose the very boarding school institutions that taught her. In American Indian Studies (1921), Zitkala-Ša critiques the violence that the Indian boarding school system inflicts on young Native Americans. She presents these critiques through emotional appeals that take two forms: one, a more traditional sentimental appeal associated with middle-class white …

"Female Faithfulness Encouraged": Gendered Piety In Early American Print, Kadienne Sizemore

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Following the American Revolution, membership in Baptist churches grew exponentially and the influence of the Baptist persuasion was significant. As one of the fastest-growing Protestant denominations in early America, Baptists and their interests were often indicative of larger trends in religiosity. Conceptions of piety, including beliefs surrounding submission, faithfulness, and duty, were central to the structure of Baptist congregations and their proximate communities. This paper explores the role of gender in the discussion, presentation, and justification of Baptist notions of piety in their publications during the Early American Republic. To build on the work of historians exploring female autonomy in …

Make America(N Cinema) Great Again: The Rhetoric Of Nostalgia In Trump Era Cinematic Multiplicities, Courtney J. Dreyer

Department of Communication Studies: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation investigates the rhetoric of nostalgia in politics and popular Hollywood cinema during the Trump era. I argue that MAGA Cinema, the contemporary trend of reboots, remakes, and sequels related to properties from the late 1970s to early 1990s, both respond to and strengthen attachments to an imagined version of the 1980s. However, this illusory golden age more closely reflects the world as depicted in the cinema of the 1980s rather than the reality of American in the years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Through a close analysis of David Gordon Green’s Halloween Reboot series, Top Gun: Maverick, and …

War In The Borderlands: St. Tammany Parish In The American Civil War 1861-1865, Nicholas Gagliano

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Bedeviled Beauty: My Journey Through White American Theater Institutions, J'Aila C. Price

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Game console: Oculus Quest

World: American Theater Institutions

Player: Minority

Place: United States

Level: “Ain’t no way.”

This thesis explores the contrast between the Westernized philosophies ingrained in my education and my identity as a Black female artist. It sheds light on the difficulties of pursuing higher education in the arts and the gaps that arise from limited exposure to culturally diverse Black resources, revealing the systemic issues in Western performance education. The paper also discusses the insights gained from my journey as a Black female artist, focusing on my thesis performance of Blood at the Root, which is …

Review-Charleston Horse Power: Equine Culture In The Palmetto City, Blake Denton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The U.S. Greek Cypriot Community: An Oral History From 1974, Diana Violaris Minakakis

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

The 1974 occupation of Cyprus has been discussed and analyzed by government officials, political scientists and diplomatic relations experts for half a century but a substantial, documented narrative history is lacking. An oral history of those who journeyed to the United States during this time has not been collected. This paper includes interviews with members of the Greek Cypriot Community in the United States who were willing to share their stories for the purposes of documenting their experiences as part of an oral history. For the purposes of this thesis, Turkish Cypriots were not sought for participation.

In addition to …

Breaking Down The “Heritage Not Hate” Movement’S Origin, Usage, And Effect On Race Relations In The Post Civil War Era, Laith Kewan

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

When the Confederacy first formed, its governmental symbolism and ideology mirrored that of the northern United States. The two Constitutions were incredibly similar – minus the South’s adjustments to further enhance the rights of states and slaveowners – with the Confederate government installing a Legislative Branch, an Executive Branch, and a Judicial Branch. In addition to this Constitutional similarity, the Confederacy also created a flag that looked similar to the United States’ that Confederate troops had trouble differentiating the two in combat. Following a chaotic Battle of Bull Run in July of 1861, General Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard pushed for the …

Reconstructing The Narrative Of Slavery In The United States: Acknowledging The Complex Exploitation Of Forced, Free, And Semi-Free Labor Beyond Race And Ethnicity And The Several Communities Who Endured Systemic Labor Exploitation And Injustice In The United States, Amma Terrece Sims

Theses (2016-Present)

This thesis explores the deconstruction and modernization of the narrative surrounding slavery in the United States by recognizing the multifaceted exploitation of labor beyond racial limitations. Through an assessment of representations and historical instances of forced, free, and semi-free labor in the United States, this study explores various forms of systemic subjugation and discrimination endured by diverse communities of immigrants. Specific consideration is given to examples such as indentured servitude of the colonial era and the experiences of “new immigrants” of the industrial period in challenging the established racial paradigm correlated with slavery. The experiences of specific European ethnic sub- …