Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Latin word virago, in its simplest definition, means “a man-like, warrior woman.” For Christian men and women in the Patristic era and the central Middle Ages, the virago represented a woman who denied all biological characteristics of her womanhood, fiercely protected her virginity, and fully embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity. The virago paradigm of female sanctity, a creation of male writers, reconciled a pervasive fear of the female sex with an obvious admiration for holy women. Additionally, the virago model maintained the supremacy of masculine virtues, upheld a patriarchal hierarchy, and created a metaphorical space that validated …

Spider In The River: A Comparative Environmental History Of The Impact Of The Cache La Poudre Watershed On Cheyennes And Euro-Americans, 1830-1880, John J. Buchkoski

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis is a case study of the Cache la Poudre watershed in Colorado in the mid-nineteenth century and how it contributed to cultural transformations of both Cheyennes and Euro-Americans. This research follows the relationship that developed between Cheyennes and rivers since they inhabited Mille de Lacs in Minnesota in the seventeenth century. It examines the creation of settler-colonialism through the formation of boundaries and colonies in Colorado through the use of rivers. This further illustrates the connectedness of both Euro-Americans and Cheyennes to the rivers and argues that there were battles over these rivers and not only over the …

Racialized Nationality: Mexicans, Vaqueros, And U.S. Nationalism In Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Pablo A. Rangel

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The development of the vaquero, as he appeared in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West performances and other shows, mirrors the experiences of Mexicans and Mexican-descent people in the United States at the end of the nineteenth-century and the beginning of the twentieth century. This thesis explores and analyzes the history of the vaquero in the Wild West show through an analysis of the principal performers and their experiences. Chapter one explores the history of the Wild West show with an emphasis on the vaqueros. This chapter will also explore the origins of the vaqueros. Chapter two explores how the Wild West …

Community, Power, And Memory In Díaz Ordaz's Mexico: The 1968 Lynching In San Miguel Canoa, Puebla, Kevin M. Chrisman

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

On September 14th, 1968, approximately 1,000 enraged inhabitants wielding assorted makeshift weapons formed a lynch mob that brutally murdered four people and injured three others in San Miguel Canoa, Mexico. According to the generally accepted account, Canoa’s inhabitants feared that recently-arrived Universidad Autónoma de Puebla employees, in town on a weekend mountain-climbing expedition, were in actuality communist agitators threatening the town’s social order. The lynching in Canoa received limited press coverage and was subsequently overshadowed by the much larger government orchestrated Tlatelolco massacre that occurred in Mexico City, on October 2, 1968. While Tlatelolco remains an important historic event from …

Death Became Them: The Defeminization Of The American Death Culture, 1609-1899, Briony D. Zlomke

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Focusing specifically on the years 1609 to 1899 in the United States, this thesis examines how middle-class women initially controlled the economy of preparing the dead in pre-industrialized America and lost their positions as death transitioned from a community-based event to an occurrence from which one could profit. In this new economy, men dominated the capitalist-driven funeral parlors and undertaker services. The changing ideology about white middle-class women’s proper places in society and the displacement of women in the “death trade” with the advent of the funeral director exacerbated this decline of a once female-defined practice. These changes dramatically altered …

The Cultural Significance Of Precious Stones In Early Modern England, Cassandra Auble

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Sixteenth and seventeenth century sources reveal that precious stones served a number of important functions in Elizabethan and early Stuart society. The beauty and rarity of certain precious stones made them ideal additions to fashion and dress of the day. These stones also served political purposes when flaunted as examples of a country’s wealth, bestowed as favors, or even worn as a show of royal support. Lapidaries and medical texts advised readers to use stones in myriad ways ranging from the subtle and common, to the bizarre and mystical.

Stones and gems are excellent tools for studying diverse aspects of …

Empire Of The Young: Missionary Children In Hawai'i And The Birth Of U.S. Colonialism In The Pacific, 1820-1898, Joy Schulz

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Hawaiian by birth, white by race, and American by parental and educational design, the children of nineteenth-century American missionaries in Hawai‘i occupied an ambiguous place in Hawaiian culture. More tenuous was the relationship between these children and the United States where many attended college before returning to the Hawaiian Islands. The supposed acculturation of white missionary children in Hawai‘i to American cultural, political and religious institutions was never complete, nor was their membership in Hawaiian society uncontested. The tenuous roles these children played in both societies influenced the trajectories of each nation in surprising ways. Similarly, the children’s cultural experiences …

Smoke And Mirrors: A History Of Nagpra And The Evolving U.S. View Of The American Indian, Lindee R. Grabouski

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While paintings of Native Americans and Europeans exchanging goods and cultural values adorn the walls of museums around the United States, actual Native/non-Native interaction over the past 500 years has been one of illusion, not cooperation. Until recently, legislation “protecting” Native Americans appeared altruistic on the surface, but, instead, served only as a facade for keeping Native artifacts in the hands of scientists and collectors. Even the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the most recent legislative attempt to reconcile the past mistreatment of Native Americans, is riddled with obstacles and optical illusions.

Certainly, NAGPRA demonstrates the most …

Self-Advocacy Of Women In Sexualized Labor, 1880-1980s, Kim Marie Matthews

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The purpose of this study is to centralize, into women's history, the marginalized historical voices of women activists working in sexualized labor (and/or those using sexualized economic strategies). This thesis situates the work of Josie Washburn, a former madam who turned self advocate in 1907, squarely within the Progressive Era debate on prostitution, By centralizing women's voices of sexualized lahor, it provides a means to track the long-term evolution of the intersections between women's sexualized labor choices, traditional labor choices, self-advocacy, popular media, and social/political movements on behalf of women. This study asserts that a majority Progressive Era working women …

“A Small Revolution”: The Role Of A Black Power Revolt In Creating And Sustaining A Black Studies Department At The University Of Minnesota, Jared E. Leighton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the Morrill Hall Takeover of January, 1969, and the creation of the Afro-American Studies Department at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. Further, it follows the process of sustaining a black studies department including acquiring qualified professors, maintaining student interest, negotiating the relationship to the black community and overcoming funding shortages, as well as other bureaucratic difficulties. The events at the University of Minnesota are placed in the larger context of the long-term development of black studies, the rise of the Black Power Movement and Minnesota’s tradition of liberalism. This work draws on reports from the University of …

Redeeming The Time: Protestant Missionaries And The Social And Cultural Development Of Territorial Nebraska, Robert J. Voss

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in May of 1854 formally opened a new region of the United States to settlers. Hundreds came with news of the creation of Nebraska Territory, but not in comparable numbers to the major western migrations that would follow after the Civil War. Instead, the initial small waves of Nebraska settlers would cling to the Missouri River and its settlements establishing communities on the eastern edges in the newly opened territory. These first settlers set the foundations for culture and society in Nebraska.

From 1854 until 1860, pioneers claimed lands near the Missouri, with few …

Acculturation Among Swedish Immigrants In Kansas And Nebraska, 1870-1900, Terrence Jon Lindell

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Contemporary observers and many historians have maintained that Swedish immigrants rapidly assimilated into American society. This dissertation examines this conclusion by focusing on rural Swedish settlements in the Great Plains--the Lindsborg community in McPherson and Saline counties in Kansas and Burt, Phelps, Polk, and Saunders counties In Nebraska.

These immigrant communities, all founded in the two decades following the Civil War, typically were estabIished by Swedes who had spent some time in states east of the Great Plains and had thus already begun to assimilate. All of the settlements developed congregations of various denominations--either through religious schism or immigration by …

The Wpa Federal Writers' Project In Nebraska, Richard C. Witt

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Economic conditions during the 1930s caused unprecedented problems for the American people. The most obvious feature of the Depression--high unemployment--was particularly discouraging since no group of workers was spared from the realities of hard times. After experiencing relatively prosperous and comfortable lives during the Twenties, thousands of professionals and service personnel joined blue-collar workers in soup lines and charity programs.

This study concerns itself with one response the federal government made to deal with jobless white-collar personnel during the depression decade. As part of the Works Progress Administration's program to hire unemployed persons in the fields of art, music, theater, …

The Society For The Propagation Of The Gospel In Foreign Parts And The Assimilation Of Foreign Protestants In British North America, Anne Polk Diffendal

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts from its foundation in 1701 to the beginning of the American Revolution attempted to minister to non-English white settlers in the North American colonies. The Society sent clergymen to Dutch, to Germans, to Swedes, and to French Huguenots in various provinces, gave financial help to foreign ministers, and distributed books to foreign churches. Anglican religious services were open to foreigners living near the Society's missions. These activities have been chronicled in 1952 in a dissertation by William A. Bultmann, who published two articles from that paper. One is a …

The Czechs Of Butler County, 1870-1940, Clarence John Kubicek

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Czechs and their descendents make up one of the large groups that settled and developed the State of Nebraska. While every county of Nebraska may have a few Czechs within its confines, the largest numbers are found in Douglas, Saline, Colfax, Saunders, and Butler Counties.

It is the purpose of this thesis to deal with the Czechs of Butler County. A racial group, Slavic in origination and since the first World War, properly called the "Czechs." The term "Czech" is to be applied, not only to those whose ancestry goes back to Bohemia, but also to those who originally …