Digital Commons Network^™

"The Engine Of Free Expression": The Political Economy Of Copyright In The Colonial British Atlantic And Early National United States, Nora Slonimsky

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1985, the Supreme Court of the United States concluded that copyright was included in the Constitution in order to serve as the “engine of free expression.” By providing economic incentive to drive artistic and scientific innovation, the nation received essential information and other tools of learning necessary to make sound political decisions. However, transnational copyright disputes, then and now, frequently resulted in complex and often contradictory understandings of free expression. The formation of copyright in America was thus a far more complex story, and it is that story that forms the basis of this project.

Amidst the many moving …

A Reformers' Union: Land Reform, Labor, And The Evolution Of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860, Sean G. Griffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Reformers’ Union: Land Reform, Labor, and the Evolution of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860” offers a critical revision of the existing literature on both the early labor and antislavery movements by examining the ideologies and organizational approaches that labor reformers and abolitionists used to challenge both the expansion of slavery and the spread of market relationships. Extending the timeframe of the antislavery and labor movements backwards to the 1790s, this dissertation situates the origins of the pre-Civil War labor movement in republican ideology and currents of transatlantic radical thought, and traces the rise of agrarian and communitarian labor reform against the …

Owing And Owning: Zubayr Pasha, Slavery, And Empire In Nineteenth-Century Sudan, Zachary S. Berman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Mahdist revolt provides a quandary: why did Africans revolt against imperialism in defense of slavery? This study approaches the issue by analyzing the life of Zubayr Pasha, most well-known of Sudanese slave-traders in the decades leading to the Mahdist Revolt. What I found in interviews with him, parliamentary debates over him, articles about him, and proclamations concerning him, was that the emotional responses to his story show different perspectives on the processes of overlapping imperialisms, voluntary slavery, and a host of integrated issues. To himself he was a trader, a businessman working within the letter of the law; to …

The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason, Timothy Scott Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of the French Revolution as an explanatory device for discussing the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). Anticolonial intellectuals in France invoked the French Revolution to explain their reasons for supporting colonial reform as well as their solidarity with Algerian nationalist aims. Through an examination of intellectuals’ public interventions alongside French and Algerian historical narratives, I examine the ways in which historical alignment signaled political and cultural distance between France and Algeria. Making an independent Algeria analogous to eighteenth-century revolutionary France lent political and conceptual legitimacy to Algerian claims to an independent national identity while also reinforcing the …

Interstate Alliances Of The Fourth-Century Bce Greek World: A Socio-Cultural Perspective, Nicholas D. Cross

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation offers a reassessment of interstate alliances (συμμαχία) in the fourth-century BCE Greek world from a socio-cultural perspective. Although there are a number of studies of ancient and modern alliances that approach the topic from a politico-military perspective, this is the first to apply a socio-cultural perspective to classical Greek alliances. By considering the subject in its own context, from the primary literary and epigraphic sources rather than modern theoretical models, this study aims to identify how contemporaries understood and represented their collaborative activities with other poleis. This approach leads to insights that challenge the widespread notion that classical …

On The Appearance Of The Comedy Lp, 1957–1973, David Michael Mccarthy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Many observers of contemporary comedy in the United States during the 1960s referred to musical aspects of extra-musical performances. Comedy LP records furnish important artifacts for the study of the musical appearances these observers produced for themselves. Where contemporaries described appearances characterized by printable words and polemics as “satirical,” the musical appearances discussed in this dissertation can instead be described as “comic”: instead of mocking persons or ideas, they show people and things becoming involved with one another in absurdly triumphant ways. These two different sorts of appearances correspond to two different uses for comedy in a class society, one …

Assembly And Association: Mapping The Development Of The Public Sphere In 19th Century Columbia County, Ny, Christopher L. Meatto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to investigate the development of the Habermasian public sphere in Columbia County, NY, during the rapid expansion of railway transportation from the middle- to the late-19^th century, by gathering and presenting information about the proliferation of railway stations and select public institutions between 1840 and 1900. In charting the spread of area libraries, newspapers, post offices, and churches during this period, this project utilizes and combines methodological approaches taken by a number of landmark recent studies in historical geography and digital history; in so doing, it prototypes the research and pedagogical value and promise of incorporating …

Geographies Of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, And The Militarization Of Hawai'i, Laurel Turbin Mei-Singh

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Geographies of Desecration: Race, Indigeneity, and the Militarization of Hawai‘i develops a genealogy of military fences and their relationship to Hawaiian struggles for self-determination and national liberation. Military occupation has transformed entire ways of life on the islands by altering Hawaiian land tenure systems through displacement, disruption of subsistence practices, and environmental degradation. Hawaiian mo‘olelo (stories, history) also structure life in a highly militarized place, centering interconnectivity between human and nonhuman realms while impelling grassroots efforts that shape its landscape.

This dissertation develops in-depth case studies of militarized sites on the Wai‘anae Coast of O‘ahu, where military bases occupy 34% …

Centralized, Decentralized, Distributed: Disruptive Technology In Distance Education From "Sunrise Semester" To Present-Day Moocs, Rosanna Flouty

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Lessons from early academic television courses from the 1950s guide an assessment of current disruptive technologies that shape Massive Open Online Courses (known as MOOCs) and other informal online learning opportunities today. This dissertation explores some of the unique contributing factors that led to the creation of Sunrise Semester (1957-1982), a popular network television program co-produced by New York University and CBS that offered college credit to viewers. Despite the fact that the show aired at dawn and rarely included one-on-one interactions with professors, Sunrise Semester aired for nearly twenty-five years and attracted a devoted viewership of over two million …

Saving: Stem Cell Science, Christian Adoption, And Frozen Embryo Potential In The United States, Risa Cromer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the controversial fates of frozen human embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures and frozen for future in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Stem cell researchers covet human embryos as wellsprings of biovalue for curing human diseases and generating new forms of wealth. At the same time, pro-life Christians target excess embryos for rescue as adoptable orphans and mobilize the frozen unborn within legal strategies to redefine personhood. As a comparative ethnography, this dissertation reveals what these putatively opposing solutions share in common by examining why and how frozen reproductive remainders …

A Dark Record: Criminal Discourse And The African American Literary Project, 1721-1864, Brian Baaki

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A Dark Record charts the emergence and traces the evolution of a central figure in American culture, the myth of the black criminal. It does so both to explore the ideological effects of print, and to present an alternative history of African American literature. Historians have long maintained that the association of African Americans with crime solidified in our national culture during the post-Reconstruction period, the nadir for African American civil rights, with a corresponding rise in the over-policing of black individuals and communities. For its part, my study looks back from the post-Reconstruction period, and examines the role earlier …

Immigrants In The Sexual Revolution: Perceptions, Participation, And Belonging, The Netherlands And Denmark, 1960s-80s, Andrew D.J. Shield

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an historical study of first-generation immigrants in Denmark and the Netherlands in the 1960s-80s and their perceptions of the 'Sexual Revolution.' Foreign workers and post-colonial immigrants arrived during the same decades when laws regarding women's equality, contraception and abortion, homosexuality, pornography, adultery and divorce were challenged and reformed, in many cases in the context of intensive social movement activism. This research explores immigrants' perceptions of the dramatic changes in sexual and gender relations transforming Europe in the 1960s-80s, and the instances of immigrant solidarity with, and participation in, networks for social justice, women's equality, and sexual liberation.

Part …

Social-Ecological Resilience In The Viking-Age To Early-Medieval Faroe Islands, Seth Brewington

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation aims to evaluate the development and maintenance of social-ecological resilience during the settlement-period (ca. 9th through 11th centuries CE) in the Faroe Islands. In particular, the core objectives include the identification of the key social and natural variables involved, the examination of how these variables contributed to overall resilience, and the investigation of the initiation of the Faroese domestic economy.

This research focuses primarily on an analysis of the 9th through 13th century archaeofaunal assemblage from the site of Undir Junkarinsfløtti, located on the island of Sandoy. This analysis represents the first detailed study of the Faroese settlement-period …

/N/:/R/ Correspondences In Albanian Dialects: Understanding The N>R Sound Change, Katie Albany

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Albanian language is an Indo-European language that constitutes a separate branch in the Indo-European language family. There are two major dialects, Geg and Tosk, spoken in present day Albania that are mutually intelligible. There are morpho-syntactic differences between the two dialects and shared words provide evidence for a number of sound changes applying in certain contexts in Tosk. The focus of this paper is n > r sound change in Tosk applying to the nasal /n/ in an intervocalic position followed by an unstressed vowel. The lenition rule has been prolific diachronically, but stopped applying some time between the 13 …

Accessing Medicinally-Relevant Scaffolds Via Organocatalyzed Cascade Reactions, Joshua Hadley Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The field of asymmetric catalysis embodies the efforts of chemists to mimic the stereoselectivity routinely achieved by biological systems. Asymmetric organocatalysis, a sub-field of asymmetric catalysis, is broadly based on the catalytic activity of non-transition metal, small molecules that transmit chirality to substrates. This dissertation describes experimental work towards the construction of versatile, medicinally-relevant molecular scaffolds using chiral, diarylprolinol silyl ether organocatalysts. Specifically, these catalysts were used in 1-pot, iminium-enamine catalyzed cascade reactions to functionalize α,β-unsaturated aldehydes. A comprehensive review of iminium and enamine organocatalysis is provided, including its development towards iminium-enamine cascade reactions. This review provides background for the …

Equations Over Hyperbolic Groups, Alexander Kai-Chi Taam

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

We show that the Diophantine problem, for quadratic equations over a non-elementary torsion-free hyperbolic group, is NP-complete. Furthermore, given a finite system of equations over a torsion-free hyperbolic group $\Gamma$, there is an algorithm which constructs a canonical $Hom$-diagram and a complete set of induced $\Gamma$-NTQ systems, for $\Gamma_{R(S)}$. Finally, the class of $\Gamma$-limit groups is the same as that of iterated generalized doubles over $\Gamma$.

Imperial Priests And Martyrs: Pretexts For State Violence And Religious Change In France, 1848-1871, Benjamin Tyner

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the lives and political significance of five French Catholic priests who were murdered between 1848 and 1871. Using French newspapers, printed religious texts and pamphlets, hagiographic biographies and other sources, I show the many ways in which French priests were wittingly and unwittingly used by the French Second Republic (1848-52), Second Empire (1852-70) and the Paris Commune (1871) and Third Republic (1870-1940). Archbishop of Paris Denis Auguste Affre (1848), Saint Augustin Schoeffler (1851), Archbishop of Paris Marie-Dominique-Auguste Sibour (1857), Saint Théophane Vénard (1861), and Archbishop of Paris Georges Darboy (1871) were all killed more for their relationship …

Death And Photography In East Asia: Funerary Use Of Portrait Photography, Jeehey Kim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation expands and elaborates upon my 2009 project, 'Korean Funerary Photo-Portraiture,' which examined the uses of portrait photography in funerals and ancestor worship in Korea. By extending the geographic scope of the earlier project to encompass East Asia, its aim is to investigate how funerary photo-portraiture is intertwined with geopolitical issues across the region.

In order to explore the historical and socio-political layers of vernacular photography in East Asia, this dissertation compares the practice of funerary photo-portraiture in five countries by examining the basic concepts underpinning it. China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Vietnam all incorporate portrait photography into funerals …

The Print Portfolio And The Bourgeoisie In Fin-De-Siècle Paris, Britany Lane Salsbury

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In fin-de-siècle Paris, the print portfolio experienced a popularity that was unprecedented over the course of its long history. Adapted sporadically by graphic artists from the Renaissance onward, prints were produced as series in greater numbers and by a wider range of artists than ever before between 1880 and 1900, and symbolized new, bold, and varied aspirations for the graphic arts as an original and experimental medium. In addition to its stylistic value, artists valued the print portfolio for the subject matter it could cultivate. A growing number of works produced at this time highlighted social issues and expressed political …

Protecting The Stranger: The Origins Of Us Immigration Regulation In Nineteenth-Century New York, Brendan P. O'Malley

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From 1847 to 1890, a state authority--not a federal one--oversaw the entry of most immigrants arriving in the United States. The New York State Board of the Commissioners of Emigration supervised the landing of over eight million newcomers in nation's busiest entry point, the Port of New York, during the second half of the nineteenth century. Most were processed at the Board's Castle Garden Emigrant Depot in Battery Park, which opened in 1855. This study demonstrates why and how New York State developed a complex regulatory regime well before the federalization of immigration authority in 1882.

The establishment of this …

Luti Masculinity In Iranian Modernity, 1785-1941: Marginalization And The Anxieties Of Proper Masculine Comportment, Robert Joseph Bell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper offers a genealogy of changing conceptualizations and performances of masculinity in 19^th and early to mid-20^th century Iran, and examines in particular a unique group of masculine subjects known as the lutis. The first component of the analysis traces the historical lineage of these lutis, situating their emergence out of Persian Sufi brotherhoods, bandit clans ('ayyar), and guild-like organizations (futuwwa) from the period of the 15th to the 19th century CE. This section provides an account of the most pertinent and distinguishing rites, attitudes, and practices of the …

Blessed Disruption: Culture And Urban Space In A European Church Planting Network, John D. Boy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

New Protestant churches are being founded in cities around the world. They are the product of a conscious effort on the part of evangelicals to found, or ``plant,'' new churches in urban areas. Behind this effort are a whole host of actors, including denominations, churches, seminaries, and parachurch organizations, who come together in church planting networks to establish theologically conservative churches that will speak to young urban professional audiences. The hope is that these efforts will scale up and turn into a movement bringing about religious revival among culturally influential groups. Among the focal areas for these efforts are European …

Black Migrant Literature, New African Diasporas, And The Phenomenology Of Movement, Christopher Ian Foster

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Black Migrant Literature, New African Diasporas, and the Phenomenology of Movement examines immigration, diaspora, and movement in late twentieth and twenty-first century African literature. "Migritude" describes the work of a disparate yet distinct group of contemporary African authors who critically focus on migration within the context of globalization, emphasizing that the "past" of immigration is irreducibly entangled with colonial processes. These writers often refashion the politics or discourses of earlier movements within the black radical tradition, such as Négritude or pan-Africanism, as a way to engage immigration in the present. I argue that although immigration as a system developed as …

New York City Street Theater: Gender, Performance, And The Urban From Plessy To Brown, Erin Nicholson Gale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation investigates the ordinary, public performances of fictional female characters in novels set on the streets of Manhattan during the years of legal segregation in the United States. I examine a range of actions from bragging to racial passing, and I argue these ordinary performances are central to our ability to interpret race, gender, and class relations. I detect race, class, and gender-based impulses to segregate and exclude others that overlap with the motives guiding the national, legal edict to segregate people by race. These guiding inclinations, legible through the history of Manhattan's grid, zoning laws, and the city …

The Incidence And Evolution Of Palatalized Consonants In Latvian, Linda Zalite

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis traces the evolution of the palatalized rhotic /r^j/ in Baltic languages with focus on the continuation of this segment in Latvian and its recent neutralization with /r/. Historical, phonological, phonetic, and synchronic data is gathered as evidence to further our understanding of the Latvian palatalized rhotic and its near-disappearance in the 20^th century. Previous typological works of Endzelīns (1922, 1951), Dini (1997), Rūķe-Dravņia (1994) and Ābele (1929) were considered intending to answer three central questions. Was the Latvian palatal rhotic a palatalized segment or a true palatal? What factors played a role in the depalatalization …

Maude I. Kerns: Overlapping Interpretations Of Art And Pedagogy In The Northwest And Along The Pacific Coast, 1890–1932, Mary Helen Burnham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Maude Irvine Kerns (1876-1965) was first active as an artist and educator during the early decades of the twentieth century in multiple locations along the Pacific Coast, including her home state of Oregon where she was primarily based. Limited considerations of her career have yet to examine the dynamic nature of the dual roles she assumed during these critical years and therefore fail to account for her significance to the later artistic and cultural growth of the region.

This first reading of the initial phase of Kerns's lengthy career centers on her activities between approximately 1890 and 1932. Through key …

On The Fringe Of Italian Fascism: An Examination Of The Relationship Between Vinicio Paladini And The Soviet Avant-Garde, Christina Brungardt

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Vinicio Paladini's career as an artist, architect, and cultural critic illuminates the paradoxes of the Italian avant-garde between the World Wars. He emerged as an early proponent of communist-Futurism in 1922 and attempted to integrate futurist techniques with the Marxist theories of Antonio Gramsci. In addition, Paladini provided a direct point of contact between the Russian and Italian avant-garde, traveling to Moscow and reporting to the Italian public on Soviet artists' developments in film, photomontage, and architecture. Yet he struggled to merge his leftist ideology with his artistic practice as Fascism spread throughout Italy. Although he has been largely neglected …

Changing Identities In A Changing Land: The Romanization Of The British Landscape, Thomas Ryan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will examine the changes in the landscape of Britain resulting from the Roman invasion in 43 CE and their effect on the identities of the native Britons. Romanization, as the process is commonly called, and evidence of these altered identities as seen in material culture have been well studied. However, the manifestations of this process in the landscape have been less well examined. Applying current theories in landscape archaeology, the Selsey peninsula oppidum of the Atrebates and two hillforts of the Durotriges, sites that have been well excavated and examined, will be the focus of this thesis. The …

Civilizing Settlers: Catholic Missionaries And The Colonial State In French Algeria, 1830-1914, Kyle Francis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that between 1830 and 1914, with increasing intensity over time, French Catholic missionaries sowed divisions among the European population of French Algeria. The French government initially welcomed missionaries to cater to religiously devout Spanish, Italian, and Maltese settlers in Algeria and to foster their loyalty to the colonial state. Missionaries, however, incited the professional jealousy and personal animosity of the territory's generally less devout French population, who saw Catholicism and missionaries as little different from Islam and the "fanatical" Muslim population. Throughout this period, missionaries thus occupied a liminal space in the racialized hierarchy of colonial rule. …

The New Deal In Puerto Rico: Public Works, Public Health, And The Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration, 1935-1955, Geoff G. Burrows

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the 1930s, Puerto Rico experienced acute infrastructural and public health crises caused by the economic contraction of the Great Depression, the devastating San Felipe and San Ciprián hurricanes of 1928 and 1932, and the limitations of the local political structure. Signed into law by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935, the Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration (PRRA) replaced all other New Deal activity on the island. As a locally-run federal agency, the PRRA was very unique and yet very representative of the "Second" New Deal in the United States--which attempted to move beyond finding immediate solutions to the most critical problems …