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Murderess Row: Selling Morals To 1920s America, Rachel Goldsmith

Schultz-Werth Award Papers

Genevieve Forbes-Herrick gave her thoughts on Maurine Watkins’ new play “Chicago” in the October 16th, 1927, edition of the Chicago Tribune. Forbes-Herrick requested that the management reserve a block of seats for a few local women who “tarried on the fourth floor of the building at Dearborn Street and Austin Avenue long enough to get themselves into a play”. In Forbes-Herrick’s opinion, Beulah Annan should have been given an aisle seat for her incredible beauty, inspiring the character named Roxie. The next best seat should have gone to the incredibly stylish Belva Gaertner to witness the characterization of Velma. Moonshine …

Un-Writing American History: Reimaging What Constitutes Evidence In The Historical Method, May Kotsen

History Honors Papers

No abstract provided.

China Lake, The Most Important Place You’Ve Never Heard Of, Tristan M. Bollenbaugh

Emerging Writers

How can one small community centered around a naval base in the middle of California's Mojave desert have had an enormous impact on critical geopolitical events of the twentieth century, such as the Cold War, while being largely absent from the shared knowledge of the citizens of the United States? China Lake has been the United States Navy's premier weapons research and development laboratory since its establishment in 1943. For 80 years, it has produced such systems as the Sidewinder air-to-air missile that helped to keep the nation of Taiwan safe from a Chinese invasion and the Polaris submarine-launched nuclear …

Doris Stevens: A "Fascist" Feminist? Stevens, The Inter-American Commission Of Women, And The Unión Argentina De Mujeres, 1936-1939, Jeannette Hunker

Scripps Senior Theses

Doris Stevens (1888-1963) was a U.S. feminist, suffragist, and member of the National Women’s Party. After the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1920, Stevens, among other U.S. feminists, involved herself in Latin American politics, working to pass women’s suffrage legislation in multiple countries. Stevens was chair of the Inter-American Commission of Women (IACW) from 1928 to 1939. Eventually, a number of Latin American feminists, as well as members of the Roosevelt administration, sought to remove her from the IACW when her political tendencies posed a threat to both. Accused of being a “fascist,” Stevens was voted …

Mainstream Radicalism : Labor Organizing In Schenectady 1886-1906, Catherine M. Haag

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This dissertation examines the roots of radicalism among workers in Schenectady, New York, from 1886 to the 1906 sit-down strike organized by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). As early as the 1880s, the city’s workers embraced the inclusive industrial union methods of the Knights of Labor. After the decline of the Knights, Schenectady’s workers joined the more conservative American Federation of Labor (AFL) yet showed their support for radical direct action methods within the AFL. The roots of Schenectady’s active and militant labor community stretched back to the days before Thomas Edison established the foundations of General Electric …

Boundary Lines Crossed? Seeking Honor After The Vietnam War Took Their Sons, Hannah Ackerman

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

On June 3 1969, a Navy destroyer, USS Frank E. Evans DD-754 and seventy-four Evans sailors who were serving on her were killed in an accident with the Australian aircraft carrier, HMAS Melbourne, in the South China Sea. Family members would later discover their names were not inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. due to criteria which disqualified them. Facts of the Evans case to determine if the names of 74 Evans sailors rightfully belong on the Wall are examined. Continuing legislative efforts by the Evans Association to put the names on the Wall and other …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2023

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Letter From The Editors, Brandon Neely, Emily Jumba, Danielle S. Russell

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

A Peculiar Institution: White Supremacy And The Black Guides Of Mammoth Cave, Seth Garcia

Libraries Award for Undergraduate Scholarship

Intensive tourist operations at Mammoth Cave began in 1838 when Frank Gorin purchased the cave property. He brought with him Stephen Bishop, an enslaved person who would become famous across the Western world for his explorations of the cave and his knowledge of its geology. Gorin would also lease Nicholas and Matterson Bransford, and these three men would begin a 100-year history of black guides at Mammoth Cave. This essay utilizes source material written by white visitors in diaries, guidebooks, and travelers’ accounts to better understand white supremacy during the mid to late 19th century. The guides were in a …

The Stateless Agent: A Multidisciplinary Analysis Of Transboundary Air Pollution In The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez Region Of The U.S.-Mexico Border, Elizabeth Hernandez

CMC Senior Theses

The El Paso-Ciudad Juárez (EPJ) region has a history of nonattainment for ozone and particulate matter. Given transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region is not confined to the U.S.-Mexico border, it is important to implement a transnational response that accounts for the health and safety of everyone, including marginalized communities in EPJ. This thesis assesses the state of air quality and transboundary air pollution in the EPJ region through a multidisciplinary perspective that focuses on issues of data monitoring, environmental governance, and transnational environmental justice. Analysis of the quantity and placement of ambient monitoring stations reveals EPJ residents near …

“Laugh, When I Gives You A Joke”: The Forms And Functions Of Humor In The Great War, Samuel Sakoulas Griffin

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In today’s popular memory, the First World War experience is not well-known for its humor. Yet during and after the war, soldiers produced a small but significant wave of wartime joke books and humorous war-story collections, in part to cope with their experiences in terrible, industrialized war, and also as a way to interpret, commemorate, and remember the war. These humorous interpretations and memories of the war clashed with the dominant literary reaction to the war, that of the mutilation of bodies and pointless deaths. But humor appeared in the midst of the slaughter, and today serves as an opening …

“Why Invest In Racism?”: Anti-Apartheid Activism At The University Of Illinois, 1977-1987, Shane Smith

Student Honors Theses

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of prison a free man after being held captive for over 27 years. Crowds roared with joyfulness as their beacon of hope pumped his right fist in the air triumphantly. The international community watched the occasion with hope and a feeling of success after the assistance in the struggle to bring down the brutal regime of apartheid. This inspiring movement took decades of unified activism from both South Africans and local, grassroots organizations to bring the system down. Amidst the ongoing Cold War politics and other international issues, dismantling apartheid proved to …

The Reconstruction Era: As Taught In United States History, Tahj Frazier

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..8

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..39

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..50

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………….57

V. Bibliography………………………………….....77

Where The Fruit Grows, We’Ll Start Over: Rethinking The Great Migration’S Limitless Impact, Luna Flores-Ramirez

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay……………………………….2

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes……….20

III. Textbook Critique…………………………….33

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………36

V. Bibliography…………………………………...19

Want To Be A Cowboy? The Struggle For Identity In Rodeo, Colton Wagner

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis examines the identity struggle for cowboys and competitors in rodeo from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century in North America. The evolution of rodeo is a rich topic as various people sought a space within its competitive sphere. The sport of rodeo often reflects the dominant social movements within the United States, but it intermittently allowed marginalized groups a public space to exist and fight against the erasure of their ideas and culture. The origins of rodeo as a sport, from the foundations of horsemanship and ranching to the rise of performativity in the West, provide …

The Hands Of God And The Glittering Sword: A Theological History Of John Brown, Christian Chiakulas

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

The political praxis of American abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) furnishes an example of practical liberation theology. This work advances an experimental historiographic model, termed theological history, which combines the central insights of Christian liberation theology and Marxist historical materialism to draw both historical and theological conclusions about its subject, John Brown.

The foundational work of Gustavo Gutierrez and James Cone suggests that history and praxis are central to liberation theology, and that Marxist epistemology and ontology are necessary for historical conclusions drawn from liberation theology to be valid. This work extends this contention, arguing for an even greater fusion …

“A Colony Of Our Choice”: Black Baltimoreans And Emigration To Trinidad, Mars Mcleod

Undergraduate Research Awards

Black American history is a narrative characterized by a struggle for rights, including rights to self-preservation and self-determination, for all Americans. Exemplified throughout all four centuries of Black America’s creation, Black resistance to white supremacy has appeared in the form of protests, violence, emigration, and social movements, as well as more accommodationist theory and practice. Black Americans have been the primary force in building out and enforcing revolutionary the ideas presented in the Declaration of Independence, ensuring that those words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator …

The Forced Effeminization Of Male Chinese Immigrants And The Consequences Of This Process, Hailee Brandt

Undergraduate Research Awards

The aim of this paper is to uncover and highlight the forced effeminization of male Chinese immigrants and the consequences of this process during the Chinese Exclusion Act Era. The Chinese Exclusion Act Era is defined by a period of time within American history in which strict and scrutinizing laws were created with the aim of restricting access to the United States for Chinese people. Additionally, these laws aimed to restrict the freedom the Chinese people might have had whilst living their lives in America if they ever were to make it through such oppressive borders. The most notable of …

Taken: Slavery, Forced Migration, And Environment In The Early United States, Christopher L. Leadingham

Theses and Dissertations--History

This work examines the development and collapse of the slave trade in Kentucky. It pushes readers to think about the slave trade in an environmental context. The development of the slave trade in the state depended on the violent acquisition of Indigenous lands. The networks of credit and capital that settler colonists established—wealth concentrated in land, stock, crops, and people—fueled the development of a slave system west of the southern mountains. That system increasingly relied on the forced movement of enslaved people in and through Kentucky. The state’s legal system and other institutions worked to support slave trading companies especially …

'Grave Fears Of Collision' : James Beecher And The Administration Of Freedmen's Bureau Policy In Reconstruction South Carolina, Cameron Sauers

Theses and Dissertations--History

As an agent of the Freedmen’s Bureau and military officer, James Beecher embodied Federal power in the South Carolina Lowcountry. During Presidential Reconstruction, Beecher became a key administrator of Order No.15 that promised formerly enslaved peoples’s “40 acres and a mule” that formerly belonged to white plantation owners. Beecher, despite his antebellum abolitionist politics, was remarkably unsympathetic to freedpeople’s desire for independent landholding. Beecher believed that freedpeople were unfit for immediate citizenship and should sign labor contracts to return to plantations where they might be inculcated with Northern free labor values. Amid epidemic disease, famine, and white paramilitary violence, James …

"Any Changes, Eh?": Party Defection, Party Switching, And Shifting Allegiances In Antebellum America, 1830-1860, Jacob Wood

Theses and Dissertations--History

Political party ties hardened during the Second Party System period, most noticeably in the transition from the Federalist and Democratic-Republicans to the Democratic and Whig parties. “Any Changes, Eh?” argues that politically-minded Americans still found ways to leave their political parties and support another, even in the face of social and political ostracism. As party ties grew stronger, party defection shifted from direct to indirect methods to challenge political system. Sometimes these movements were permanent conversions, other times they were a protest vote only to make a point to their home party. Party defection took a variety of forms beyond …

The Kids Were Alt-Right: Radical Right Youth Activism And The Origins Of The White Power Movement, 1960-1980, Austin Zinkle

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation explores the young people—primarily young men—involved and weaponized within the radical racist Right during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. This project argues that young people were an active bedrock of support within racist and antisemitic organizations such as the American Nazi Party, the National Alliance, the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and others, and created a unique coalition that ultimately developed into a revolutionary racist Right and eventual white power movement by the 1980s. This dissertation makes a significant intervention in scholarship on the radical Right’s development over the past sixty years and serves …

Orphans, White Unity, And The Charleston Orphan House, 1860-1870, Ruth Poe White

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation explores the ways the Charleston Orphan House, a nineteenth-century whites-only benevolent institution, promoted white unity in South Carolina between 1860 and 1870. Just as it had during the antebellum era, the Orphan Home knit together white society by providing poor white families a source of social security, middling white families a source for cheap labor in the form of indentured service, and elite whites an opportunity to display social prominence. Yet, maintaining this delicate balance throughout the siege of Charleston and the Home’s eventual evacuation to Orangeburg, South Carolina was no easy feat. The Chairman of the Board …

Enduring The Elements: Civil War Soldiers’ Struggles Against The Weather, Cameron Boutin

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation is an environmental history that studies the variety of ways that soldiers in the American Civil War experienced the pressures of weather over the course of their military service. For the troops of the U.S. and Confederacy, the weather was more than simply a passive backdrop to their time in the military, but a central preoccupation. This dissertation analyzes how weather intersected with some of the most central experiences of soldiering – tent camping and winter quarters, marching, bivouacking, manning sentry posts and field fortifications, and fighting in battles. Life in Civil War armies consisted of all of …

Understanding American Nationalism And White Supremacy Through The Legacy Of Christopher Columbus, Júlia Da Silva

Capstone Showcase

Christopher Columbus’ landfall in 1492 was a pivotal historical event which set in motion several political, economic and social processes. Despite the horrors and atrocities instigated by his actions, Columbus continues to be celebrated across the world, particularly in the United States. Although there has been a recent rise in critical scholarship on Columbus, his legacy remains an intrinsic part of the construction of American nationalism. I argue that American national identity and the representations of Christopher Columbus are intertwined, as they have sustained each other across time and collectively reinforce colonial tools.

The Final Straw: The Battle For Puerto Rico, Samantha N. Marrero

Theses and Dissertations

The Common Wealth of Puerto Rico has undergone tremendous amounts of oppression. The capstone will evaluate the policies imposed on the commonwealth by the United States, and the actions revolutionaries or independentistas took to have a liberated Puerto Rico

Bibliography, Christy L. Spurlock

Faculty/Staff Personal Papers

Bibliography of publications by Christy Spurlock.

War On The Bay: Determining The Existence Of Watershed Moments Within The Shipyards In Tampa, Florida During World War Ii, Connor E. Farley

Graduate Thesis and Dissertation 2023-2024

With the Great Depression on one side and prosperity on the other, historians of World War II have debated its effects on American society and have asked if it represented a watershed moment. While the war clearly disrupted American life and opened new opportunities for many, its role as a transformative event remains contested. This examination of the Tampa shipyards utilizes the theoretical and methodological lenses of social history to facilitate an analysis based on a chronological approach. This analysis centers on the situation in Tampa before, during, and after World War II, and in doing so it assesses the …

Generational Leadership In The American Revolution And Early Republic, 1763-1800, Kevin Cassidy

All Master's Theses

This thesis examines the Loyal Twenty-Seven, a group of Massachusetts revolutionaries, and their importance in the American Revolution using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods combined with traditional historical research, to attempt to show that there was a generational shift in leadership between the revolutionaries who led early British protests, and those who led the Revolutionary War and the Early Republic. This thesis is based off an original work, the United States Colonial Dataset, made up of 416 individuals divided into three groups, the Framers, Prominents, and Loyalists, and 215 unique attributes for these individuals, such as their occupation, …

Women’S Bodies, Government’S Vessels: Control Of Women’S Reproductive Capacity In U.S. Policy, 1837 - 1924, Shana Clapp

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the changing boundaries of women’s property rights in the nineteenth and early twentieth century with a critical eye on the intentions of white male policymakers. I analyze the development of laws regarding married women’s property rights, homesteading, and workplace relations to understand how lawmakers and judges viewed white women's reproductive capacity as a state policy tool in varying ways. The expansion of women’s property rights in the U.S. revolved around women’s reproductive labor and funneled women into their assumed roles of wives and mothers. Weaving together historical moments across a century of great advancement for women, I …