Digital Commons Network^™

"We Were At Our Journey's End" : Settler Sovereignty Formation In Oregon, Katrine Barber

History Faculty Publications and Presentations

For too long, Oregon history has been captive to the mid-nineteenth-century’s rambling wagon trains. Settler stories of motivations, hardships, and achievements, preserved in diaries, letters, and memoirs, are compelling and deserving of the attention lavished on them. But more is necessary. Oregon’s Euro-Americans were intimately tied to national and international events that saw the rise of White, European colonial expansion into the colored word. Alongside that expansion was the development of a framework of domination, justified by claims of superiority and destiny, that conflated the ability to control with the right to do so. Placing Oregon history in this larger …

Blasting The Farm: Chemical High Explosives And The Rise Of Industrial Agriculture, 1867-1930, Patrick Benjamin Swart

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Factionalism In The Democratic Party 1936-1964, Seth Manning

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The period of 1936-1964 in the Democratic Party was one of intense factional conflict between the rising Northern liberals, buoyed by FDR’s presidency, and the Southern conservatives who had dominated the party for a half-century. Intertwined prominently with the struggle for civil rights, this period illustrates the complex battles that held the fate of other issues such as labor, foreign policy, and economic ideology in the balance. This thesis aims to explain how and why the Northern liberal faction came to defeat the Southern conservatives in the Democratic Party through a multi-faceted approach examining organizations, strategy, arenas of competition, and …

Cohen, Joanna. Luxurious Citizens: The Politics Of Consumption In Nineteenth-Century America. Philadelphia: University Of Pennsylvania Press, 2017., Jacob Bruggerman

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

To what extent should consumption reflect local and national interests? Joanna Cohen has written an excellent book at the intersection of intellectual, economic, and cultural history about how this question was asked and understood in the period extending from the American War for Independence to the post-bellum era. She demonstrates how citizens in the early republic struggled to understand the consumer’s place in the constellation of America’s national interest, asking questions such as, “’Who [should have] access to foreign goods?’ and “Who should shop and how[?]” (52). Although the Constitution roughly framed the relationship between the American government and consumers, …

Scientific Islanders: Pacific Peoples, American Scientists, And The Desire To Understand The World, 1800-1860, Roberto Jesus Diaz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Between 1800 and 1860, Pacific Islanders sought answers to questions about the mechanics and origins of the universe, just as Americans did. But the systems of thought created by Natives addressing these matters generally would not have been considered "scientific" by Americans. Pacific Islanders and Americans, nevertheless, created extensive scientific traditions to systematically perceive, understand, and explain the nature of existence. These systems were rooted in religion, social dynamics, and other cultural norms, and manifested themselves in writing, artwork, explorations, and technologies that benefited their societies. Thus, this Thesis argues that the practice of scientific methods was not simply a …

Beyond Colonizing Epistemicides: Toward A Decolonizing Framework For Indigenous Education, Samuel B. Torres

LMU Theses and Dissertations

American schooling and Indigenous peoples share a coarse relationship mired by devastating periods of forced removal, indoctrination, and brutal assimilation methods. Over the course of more than a century of failed education policy—though often veiled in good intentions—Indigenous peoples have yet to witness a comprehensive Indigenous education program that fundamentally honors the federal trust responsibility of the United States government. On the contrary, with a contemporary approach of apathy, invisibility, and institutionalization, it is not difficult to see the legacy of settler colonialism continuing to wield its oppressive influence on Indigenous communities. Wolfe’s (2006) claim that “invasion is a structure, …

Prairie Imperialists: The Indian Country Origins Of American Empire, Kate Bjork

Hamline Faculty and Staff Books and Publications

Traces the arc of American expansion by showing how the Army's conquests of what its soldiers called "Indian Country" generated a repertoire of actions and understandings that structured encounters with the racial others of America's new island territories following the War of 1898. Bjork follows the colonial careers of three Army officers from the domestic frontier to overseas posts in Cuba and the Philippines. The men profiled - Hugh Lenox Scott, Robert Lee Bullard, and John J. Pershing - internalized ways of behaving in Indian Country that shaped their approach to later colonial appointments abroad. Scott's ethnographic knowledge and experience …

Space, Power, Policy, And The Creation Of The “Illegal” Migrant At The United States Boundary With Mexico, Catalina J. Biesman-Simons

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis discusses the relationship between space (physical and figurative) and sovereign power, with respect to the history of the United States' immigration and boundary policy. It examines spatial organization as a social product, and simultaneously a producer of mainstream associations of illegal activity at the border with Mexico. It begins with a brief introduction to a spatially informed analytical framework, a history of relevant United States' immigration policy. The paper then uses newspaper coverage from the 1970s and 1980s to examine the local and national rise of xenophobia in the United States, and the normalization of boundary control and …

Tangled Twilight. Destiny, Horror, And Transformation In Nature: American Culture Of Progress During The Vietnam War 1965-1975, Alexander Newkirk

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

This work is an exploration of shifting American attitudes toward key cultural myths during and after the Vietnam War from 1965-1975. Using sources such as memoir, film, and relevant historiography of the time this thesis emphasizes an exploration of the shifting attitudes of Americans during the Cold War. An epoch defined by a “utopian” vision of American history that was codified in a Post War period. This included a tradition of enlightenment values, liberal consensus, a technocratic order, and a deep abiding myth in progress. While this period has been extensively studied, I suggest there has not been enough attention …

Breaking And Remaking The Mason-Dixon Line: Loyalty In Civil War America, 1850-1900, Charles R. Welsko

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Between 1850 and 1900, Americans redefined their interpretation of national identity and loyalty. In the Mid-Atlantic borderland of Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia this change is most evident. With the presence of a free state and slave states in close proximity, white and black Americans of the region experienced the tumult of the Civil War Era first hand. While the boundary between freedom and slavery served as an antebellum battleground over slavery, during the war, the whole region bore witness to divisions between the Union and Confederacy as well as to define what loyalty and nation meant. By exploring …

“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the …

Lessons Of Resilience From Our Founding Mothers: An Examination Of Women From 1776 To 1830, Jody A. Kunk-Czaplicki

Journal of Research, Assessment, and Practice in Higher Education

The role of women in American society during its first 50 years (1776-1830) varied. Women, however, built and maintained the Republic but were not granted access to the Academy (Nash, 2005, Kerber, 1997). At the threshold of the Revolutionary War, women served not only their home, family, and husbands, they began to serve the broader country. In the first third of the 19^th century, white women of wealth engaged in political acts of service and in acts of disruption (Kerber, 1997). The rest of this paper examines how women leaders of early America laid the foundation for women’s access …

Abraham Shushan: In The Shadow Of Huey Long, Brad J. Burke

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Abraham L. Shushan worked in the shadow of Huey P. Long. Long’s political machine ran on the force of his personality with political power given as a reward to those he considered loyal. Shushan was one such lieutenant who benefited from his unwavering loyalty to Long. Shushan served within the New Orleans political scene helping Long achieve his goals including building the Shushan Airport on the city’s lakefront as well as being instrumental in the construction of the seawall protecting New Orleans along the shoreline of Lake Pontchartrain. By the time he started working for Long, Shushan was already a …

Contemptible Cravens And Dumb Beasts: The Story Of The Wiggans Patch Massacre, Kevin Cranney

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

On the evening of December 9, 1875, around forty masked men broke into the boardinghouse of the elderly widow Margaret O’Donnell in Wiggans Patch, a mining town outside of Mahanoy City, and killed her pregnant daughter and her son, an alleged Molly Maguire. The perpetrators of the Wiggans Patch Massacre literally got away with murder. One of the most brutal crimes of a particularly violent era was soon forgotten, especially when the Molly Maguire trials began the following month. How did this happen? Why was the Wiggans Patch Massacre forgotten when within the next few years (1876-1879) twenty men were …

Sets And Sensibilities: The Excavation Of Ideology In Upstate New York, Christopher P. Barton, Kyle Somerville

Northeast Historical Archaeology

A growing literature on the archaeology of farmsteads and rural domestic sites has examined commodity consumption as the means by which rural families created and maintained social networks and identities. During the nineteenth century, rural areas were increasingly influenced by the practices and values of the urban middle classes, although not every farmstead would, or could, participate in the same way. This paper examines a matching teacup and saucer recovered from the Spring House, a former commercial farmstead and hotel located southeastern Monroe County, Western New York State. The tea set is decorated with transfer print depictions of Faith, Hope, …

Whose Monster? A Study In The Rise To Power Of Al Qaeda And The Taliban, Nicholas Kotarski

History Theses

This thesis seeks to determine which factors and parties were most responsible for the transformation of the Mujahedeen who pushed the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan into what would eventually become al Qaeda and the Taliban in the 1990s. First brought to America's attention due to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, they would gain increased notoriety as the decade progressed due to the Taliban's treatment of Afghan women, and finally culminating in the tragic terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001.

Associational Republicanism: Antifederalism In Context, 1790 - 1830, Ashley Jordan

Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Measuring Rural Revolutionary Mobilization: The Militiamen, Soldiers, And Minutemen Of Fauquier County, Virginia 1775 - 1782, Jason Fackrell

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The story of the rural soldiers and militiamen of Virginia that served in the American Revolution remains open to historical research and exploration. Recent scholarship of Virginia’s military contribution to the Revolution focuses heavily on relationships of power among social groups that operated within the colony’s hierarchy, concluding that a lack of white, lower-class political and economic representation disabled mobilization among the Old Dominion’s more settled regions. My study emphasizes the revolutionary backcountry’s story by using Fauquier County, Virginia as a case study.

A study of Rural Virginia during the Revolution presents scholars with significant challenges. Literacy rates among the …

The Challenges Faced By The Freedmen’S Bureau Agents Of Deep East Texas, Jacy D. King

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The years following the Civil War proved to be tumultuous for the nation and caused great social and economic upheaval in the South. Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in 1865 to provide a smoother transition in former Confederate states and to guard the liberties of the former bondsmen. The agents of the Freedmen’s Bureau in Deep East Texas faced the same challenges and hardships as their counterparts in other areas of the state and throughout the South. Numerous historians have written on Reconstruction and the Freedmen’s Bureau in Texas, but in a broader sense.

This …

The Rise Of The Baptists In South Carolina: Origins, Revival, And Their Enduring Legacy, Steven C. Pruitt

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Baptists have played an important role in the development of the religious landscape in the United States since the First Great Awakening. This religious sect’s core of influence eventually migrated south around the turn of the nineteenth century. A battle over the soul of the South would be waged by the Baptists, along with the Methodists, and Presbyterians also moving into the area. This Protestant surge coincided with the decrease in influence of the Episcopal (Anglican) Church after ties with England were severed. In many ways, this battle for the future would occur in the newly settled backcountry of South …

A Voyage Into The Abyss – A Look Into The First Year Of The Jamestown Settlement, Austin Valentine, Austin Valentine Jr.

Student Scholarship & Creative Works

A brief introduction into the first year at the Jamestown settlement and the troubles the settlers faced upon arrival to the New World.

Mackinder And The Arctic's Emerging Geopolitics: Recommendations For The U.S. And Its Nato Allies, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

This presentation shows how Halford Mackinder (1861-1947) described Canada and the Arctic region in his geopolitical writings. It goes on to stress how the Arctic is becoming increasingly important in international geopolitical policymaking due to its significant oil and natural gas resources, how warming temperatures are increasing international access to its waters, and the how countries as diverse as Canada, China, Russia, and the U.S. see the Arctic region in their strategic policymaking. It concludes by stressing that the Arctic can no longer be viewed as a region immune from international conflict and presents recommendations for the U.S. and its …

A “Self-Made Town”: Semi-Annual Furniture Expositions And The Development Of Civic Identity In Grand Rapids, 1878–1965, Scott St. Louis

Peer Reviewed Articles

In the later decades of the nineteenth century, prominent business figures in the city of Grand Rapids had reason to be both ambitious and optimistic. Striving to pull every last cent of profit out of available resources, they rationalized production workflows and integrated the latest technologies into their factories. They also perceptively discerned that a maturing railroad network connecting Grand Rapids to an emerging Victorian consumer economy would empower the city to achieve new levels of prosperity and fame through an industry on the verge of unprecedented growth: domestic furniture production.

These entrepreneurs acted upon their hopes for the community’s …

“Higher” School: Nineteenth-Century High Schools And The Secondary-College Divide, Amy J. Lueck

English

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender African American students, this article reminds us of how these institutional types have been situated, socially inflected, and structured in relation to broader political and power structures that transcend explicit pedagogical considerations. As a result, I argue for the recognition of high schools as historically significant sites in the history of …

The Distant Early Warning Line: Geographies, Infrastructures, And Environments Of Warning, Jordan Steingard

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line was a Cold War era project aimed at providing advanced warning of incoming Soviet attack via the northern periphery of Canada and the United States. The Line was comprised of radar stations across the 69th parallel, spanning from Western Alaska to Baffin Island, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Academic institutions and research labs, private corporations, and military entities collaborated to develop the DEW Line.

The domes used to shield the radar from the extreme terrain were designed by architectural icon Buckminster Fuller, who was elaborating upon a symbolic language of security …

Merchant Seamen, Sailortowns, And The Shaping Of U.S. Citizenship, 1843-1945, Johnathan Thayer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that merchant seamen, because of their inherent transience, diversity, and the unique nature of their work, occupied a marginal position in U.S. society, and that that marginalization produced a series of confrontations with shoreside people, communities, institutions, and the state, most specifically over the nature and definition of citizenship. This argument is developed through examination of a series of encounters and negotiations that merchant seamen provoked from the piers, back alleys, and boardinghouses of the nation’s “sailortowns” from the 1830s through World War II, including: 1) nineteenth century maritime ministry projects in the Port of New York …

"The Right To Play" The Establishment Of Playgrounds In The American City, Kyle James Fritch

Graduate Masters Theses

The Right to Play is focused on the development of playgrounds in America at the end of the 19th century. This overall development is shown through a focus on Boston, the city that instituted the first playground in the country and mirrors the similar rise of playgrounds in other cities. Throughout the 1800s children in cities played in the streets or any abandoned lot they could find. However, parents wanted what they believed to be a safer and healthier environment for their children to play. Along with this, reformers believed that these mostly immigrant and poor children were in need …

Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, And The Rise Of The New Economy In The San Diego Borderlands, Daniel Elkin

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Both the rise of conservatism as well as the neoliberal turn of the twentieth century have received much scholarly attention in recent decades. Often, these two subjects are examined separately, with the former focusing on questions of party realignment in the United States and the latter on global economic shifts toward privatization, finance, and the segregation of labor types across international boundaries. As a result, efforts to trace the dual movement between questions of domestic politics and international economy are left underdeveloped. “Zona Libre: Conservatism, Urban Growth, and the Rise of the New Economy” remedies this gap by exploring the …

The Cruel Consequences Of War: Life In Fauquier County, Virginia, 1861-1863, Madeleine Forrest Ramsey

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

“The Cruel Consequences of War” describes how the American Civil War came to Fauquier County, Virginia, a border area in northern Virginia, and examines the effects of the conflict on the county’s black and white residents from 1861 – 1863. Scholars have been writing community studies since the 1960s, but few have examined the region of northern Virginia. While the “traditional” war in Virginia has been studied extensively, the home front has not received as much focus. “The Cruel Consequences of War” helps to fill this void by detailing the wartime experiences of civilians, and the soldiers who occupied the …

Counter Institution: Activist Estates Of The Lower East Side [Bibliography], Nandini Bagchee

New York State City & Regional

In the midst of current debates about the accessibility of public spaces, resurfacing as a result of highly visible demonstrations and occupations, this book illuminates an overlooked domain of civic participation: the office, workshop, or building where activist groups meet to organize and plan acts of political dissent and collective participation. Author Nandini Bagchee examines three re-purposed buildings on the Lower East Side that have been used by activists to launch actions over the past forty years. The Peace Pentagon was the headquarters of the anti-war movement, El Bohio was a metaphoric “hut” that envisioned the Puerto Rican Community as …