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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

‘The Healing Hand Laid On A Great Wound:’ The Elberfeld System And The Transformation Of Poverty In Germany, Britain, And The United States, Rebekah O'Zell Mcmillan Aug 2019

‘The Healing Hand Laid On A Great Wound:’ The Elberfeld System And The Transformation Of Poverty In Germany, Britain, And The United States, Rebekah O'Zell Mcmillan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a transnational analysis to focus on historical perceptions of poverty and the development of private and public welfare in the modern era. This research places the emergence of early poverty relief schemes within a broader transatlantic context by studying the relationships among social reformers in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. This work has two primary objectives. First, it focuses on the Elberfeld Poor Relief System a nineteenth and early twentieth century German innovation emphasizing local poor relief and community responsibility, which transformed poor relief into an efficient structure. Second, the Elberfeld System was instrumental in …


Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures: Anti-Semitism, Hopelessness, And The Rise Of The Nazi Party, Benjamin E. Bruster Apr 2018

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures: Anti-Semitism, Hopelessness, And The Rise Of The Nazi Party, Benjamin E. Bruster

Geifman Prize in Holocaust Studies

This paper explores the rise the Nazi Party (NSDAP) as a function of compounded poverty, unemployment, economic stagnation, and long-tenured anti-Semitism. In doing so, I aim to understand the Nazis and their supporters not as demons, but as products of their unique historical situation. This perspective offers a greater understanding of Nazism's rise, and it also offers helpful means of thinking about possible fascist regimes in the future.


The Elberfeld System: Poor Relief And The Fluidity Of German Identity In Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany, James Willis Aug 2016

The Elberfeld System: Poor Relief And The Fluidity Of German Identity In Mid-Nineteenth Century Germany, James Willis

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Elberfeld System is synonymous with the development of the welfare state in the German Empire. Historians underscore the Elberfeld System’s “Germanness” because of its adoption by numerous nineteenth-century Prussian industrial cities. Their interpretation is useful for understanding the development of the welfare state in the German Empire, but fails to appreciate the Elberfeld System within its own context. This thesis explores the social and economic reasons that the Elberfeld System succeeded when and where it did. Elberfeld was one of the earliest industrialized centers in continental Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century. Industrialization created class stratification …


The Economy, Representation, And Revolt: Social Unrest In Florence In The Wake Of The Black Death, Jacob David Brannum May 2016

The Economy, Representation, And Revolt: Social Unrest In Florence In The Wake Of The Black Death, Jacob David Brannum

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.


"Torn From Their Mother's Breasts": The Battle For Impoverished Souls In Ireland, 1853-1885, Kristin V. Brig Apr 2016

"Torn From Their Mother's Breasts": The Battle For Impoverished Souls In Ireland, 1853-1885, Kristin V. Brig

Madison Historical Review

A world history analysis, this paper examines the struggle between Protestant governmental and Catholic private philanthropy in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland, exploring how each side waged a war of political and religious misunderstanding in an effort to gain control over the Catholic Irish poor. Ireland’s philanthropic scene in this period became a battleground on which the British government fought for political control and Catholics for religious control; however, neither group understood what the other fought for, waging a war of cross-purposes. Through an examination of this battle for control, this paper depicts the emergence of modern Irish welfare from the famine era …


The Plague, The Poor, And The Problem Of Medicine, Celina Muñoz Jan 2014

The Plague, The Poor, And The Problem Of Medicine, Celina Muñoz

Western Libraries Undergraduate Research Award

In 1665, the city of London did not bustle with its usual activity. Streets were uncharacteristically vacant of its citizens, the unholy plague on the minds of all. “But Lord, how empty the streets are, and melancholy,” citizen Samuel Pepys observed.1 London residents were locked behind hundreds of shut doors, hastily detailing death records or helplessly succumbing to the plague themselves. Some declared that the disease could affect anybody, yet informed readers that it originated in poor regions of the city. Others preached religious calls to action, claiming that sins had caused God to place the plague upon them. It …