Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Suppression Of National Identities: Ukrainian And Baltic Cultures In The Soviet Union, Jonathan H. Mastman

Master's Theses

This thesis defines the formation and consummation of Soviet Bolshevism as another imperialist force rather than its stated objective of freeing the people of the United Soviet Socialist Republics from the clutches of an inequitable elite. Through the policies and objectives of the Soviet government the workers and citizens of Ukraine and the Baltic republics were not liberated or given autonomy over their lives and labor, as Marxist-Leninism would have them believe. I review the Russification efforts found first in the Tsarist Russian Empire and then continued by Soviets in the nature of pursuing or denying cultural, political, and economic …

The Women Of Justice: Narratives Of Women Attorneys In California During The 1960s And 1990s, Sarah Zion

Master's Theses

This thesis interviews two women attorneys who have not previously shared their stories to relate their experience of going to law school and entering the field after graduation. The study of women lawyers and their stories is not a new topic, however, there is a focus in the scholarship to only explore the tales of the women who reached the big firsts, such as first female lawyer or first female judge. By providing interviews of women who have not reached these big accomplishments, the field gains a more rounded understanding of the history of female lawyers. The two women interviewed …

Reconstructing Identity: Carlton Burgan, Patient Zero In The Development Of Plastic Surgery, Civil War Through World War I, Teresa M. George

Master's Theses

Plastic surgery has played an integral role in helping people achieve societal expectations of appropriate physical appearance since its inception. Through the story of Carlton Burgan, a Union soldier during the American Civil War, who suffered severe facial trauma by mercury poisoning, this thesis hopes to reconstruct the conversation around plastic surgery’s origins as it is influenced by societal standards of the day. Specifically, this thesis argues that the seminal moments leading to plastic surgery being seen as a worthwhile medical specialty was during the Civil War, not World War I as so many scholars have put forth. Violent acts …

Los Zetas, Neoliberalism, And Popular Opposition: A Study In Linkages, Gina R. Lyle

Master's Theses

Los Zetas are considered by security analysts to be a transformative force within transnational criminal organizations (TCO), exporting their unique model throughout Mexico. Los Zetas’ idiosyncratic interventions include their diversification of criminal operations, professionalization of TCO security, sophisticated use of media and technology, extreme forms of violent coercion, and decentralized command structure. This project aims to complicate the narrative that Los Zetas emerged because of top leaders’ sadistic tendencies or due to an inherently violent culture in Mexico by reframing the group’s evolution within historical processes. Moving beyond Los Zetas, this project examines how persons affected by Los Zetas’ indiscriminate …

Upending The "Racial Death-Wish": Black Gay Liberation And The Culture Of Black Homophobia, Kailyn Pope

Master's Theses

This thesis analyzes the origin and impact of Black homophobia found in activist spaces of mid- to late-twentieth-century American society. Black gay Americans were subjected to intersecting forms of systemic and cultural oppression that were exceedingly hard to escape due to both the homophobia in Black spaces and the racism in gay spaces. Black gay activists and artists thus had to create their own avenues of expression where they and others could fully embrace what it meant to be Black and gay. This work utilizes a Black feminist framework to explore the roots of Black homophobia and how this type …

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

The Irish Republican Army: An Examination Of Imperialism, Terror, And Just War Theory, Avery R. Barboza

Master's Theses

Analysis of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and their actions in the 1970s and 1980s offer insight into their use of just war theory in their conflict with the British government and ultra-loyalist Protestant forces in Northern Ireland. The historiography of Irish history is defined by its phases of nationalism, revisionism, and anti-revisionism that cloud the historical narrative of imperialism and insurgency in the North. Applying just war theory to this history offers a more nuanced understanding of the conflict of the Troubles and the I.R.A.’s usage of this framework in their ideology that guided their terrorism in the latter …

Abalone Fishermen, Changing Management Practices, And The Creation Of A False Dichotomy, Tyler G. Hoyt

Master's Theses

This thesis traces the history of the abalone fisheries on the California Coast and how those fisheries have been understood and shaped by humans over time. An overarching interest that guides this effort is how indigenous populations used abalone and otters (as well as other marine resources) purposefully for millennia prior to European arrival. However, this work is not entirely focused on prehistory. Instead, it shows how a lack of understanding of this prehistory shaped the conservation efforts of the California Department of Fish and Game and its ultimate decision to close the commercial fishery in 1997. In this sense, …

The Yanks Are Striking: Kern County, The 1921 Oil Strike And The Discourse On Americanism, Peter F. Hussey

Master's Theses

In the fall of 1921 oil workers of the San Joaquin Valley faced a post-war economic slump, wage cuts across the board and an increasingly hostile attitude of oil operators towards consultation with the federal government on labor relations. They voted to strike, and the next day eight thousand workers walked off the fields. Strikers crafted an image of “patriotic unionism,” underpinned by a faith in the federal government and the ideology of the American Legion. The strike did not end in gruesome class warfare like had been seen months earlier in the coal mines of West Virginia, but rather …

Custodians Of Memory: A History Of American Archival Science With Suggestions For Future Digital Preservation Efforts, Courtney Thompson

Master's Theses

The archive and the historian are symbiotically dependent on one another. The archive relies on the historian to make use of the records it houses, and the historian looks to the archive to reconstruct history. But can a historian responsibly reconstruct history when the archive is fraught with relativity and bias? This thesis serves two purposes; one, pulling from seminal archival science and collections management texts, it chronicles the monumental, intellectual changes to American archival sciences, theories, and institutions, and two, it shows how these early conversations pertaining to archival theories are both not far removed from digital preservation efforts …

New England Slave Trader: The Case Of Charles Tyng, Paul J. Michaels

Master's Theses

Charles Tyng has been heralded as an American hero after the posthumous publication of his memoir, Before the Wind: The Memoir of an American Sea Captain, 1808-1833, in 1999. Recent research involving British Treasury report books from the nineteenth century suggest otherwise – that Tyng actively promoted and was engaged in the illicit trade of African captives. A Boston Brahmin, Tyng applied the lessons of his time at sea with Perkins & Company, the opium trading firm, to his occupation as an agent of notorious slave trading firms in Havana. This paper uses as evidence records of the captures …

Modifying Succession: A History Of Vegetation Alliances On Swanton Pacific Ranch, Jill Wilson O'Connor

Master's Theses

This thesis conducts historical research into Swanton Pacific Ranch in the County of Santa Cruz, an interdisciplinary facility for education and research managed by Cal Poly’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. The study seeks to determine whether there have been discernable changes in vegetation alliances (communities), spatially or in type, within a 110-acre Study Area from the early twentieth century to the present day and how the changes compare with other similar historical analyses in California. Historical farming and ranching uses of the area are researched, and two family case studies are presented as paradigms of potential changes …

Women With A Cause: Art, Representation, And Feminist Progress In Eighteenth-Century France, Darby Marie Leahy

Master's Theses

Throughout the eighteenth century the Age of Enlightenment transformed public discourse across Western Europe. In France, the salons of Paris became the primary institutions of Enlightenment thought. Hosted by women, the salons possessed a unique atmosphere in which men and women were regarded as intellectual equals. My thesis focuses on the role the female hostesses, salonnières, had in initiating French movements for gender equality that continued with great momentum throughout the French Revolution. By using popular artwork, literature, and memoirs I show how the efforts of French women to achieve gender equality helped give early rise to feminism.

"For All Such, A Country Is Provided": Choctaw Removal, Slave Trading, And Law In Southwestern Mississippi, 1800–1841, Anthony Albey Soliman

Master's Theses

At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were few white settlers in the Mississippi Territory. Over the course of two decades, the United States used treaties to force the indigenous inhabitants, the Choctaw, out of this area by the United States to lands west of the Mississippi River. The United States’ goal in the region was to create a plantation economy in the Mississippi Valley based on the production of short-staple cotton sustained by enslaved African American labor. Focusing on the removal of the Choctaw and the subsequent installation of a plantation regime in the Mississippi Valley, this thesis …

Let's Talk Story: Waikiki And Its Social Displacements In Oral Histories And Print, 1901–1935, Alika Bourgette

Master's Theses

The everyday experiences of Waikiki’s residents of color often escaped official and semi-official records of historical events. When concerning Native Hawaiians and other nonwhite peoples, haole elite journalists and policymakers viewed their land, possessions, and bodies as opportunities for the cultural commodification, sexualization, and reimagination. As part of the redevelopment efforts of the Waikiki shoreline in the early twentieth century, state and commercial actors worked to affect the systematic erasure of Native Hawaiian and resident Asian spaces. This study utilizes extensive collections of oral histories from marginalized Waikiki residents of color to provide counterpoint to notions of indigenous passivity and …

"Ye Sons Of Mars": British Representations Of The Sudan Campaign In Print Culture, 1884–1899, Crystal E. Smith

Master's Theses

From 1884 to 1885 the British were first engaged with the Mahdist forces of Sudan in an effort to first rescue the inhabitants of Khartuom, and later to rescue the rescuer Charles “Chinese” Gordon. The affair played out both in Parliament and the newspapers as journalists became the cheerleaders for Empire. My thesis focuses on Britain’s 1884-1890 Sudan Campaign through print culture using political debates, journalism, literature, memoirs, and art. I show how the activism of the press and the romanticism of the larger media reinforced ideas about imperialism and the British role within the Empire at large.

Pharaonic Occultism: The Relationship Of Esotericism And Egyptology, 1875–1930, Kevin Todd Mclaren

Master's Theses

The purpose of this work is to explore the interactions between occultism and scholarly Egyptology from 1875 to 1930. Within this timeframe, numerous esoteric groups formed that centered their ideologies on conceptions of ancient Egyptian knowledge. In order to legitimize their belief systems based on ancient Egyptian wisdom, esotericists attempted to become authoritative figures on Egypt. This process heavily impacted Western intellectualism not only because occult conceptions of Egypt became increasingly popular, but also because esotericists intruded into academia or attempted to overshadow it. In turn, esotericists and Egyptologists both utilized the influx of new information from Egyptological studies to …

Pacifying Paradise: Violence And Vigilantism In San Luis Obispo, Joseph Hall-Patton

Master's Theses

San Luis Obispo, California was a violent place in the 1850s with numerous murders and lynchings in staggering proportions. This thesis studies the rise of violence in SLO, its causation, and effects. The vigilance committee of 1858 represents the culmination of the violence that came from sweeping changes in the region, stemming from its earliest conquest by the Spanish. The mounting violence built upon itself as extensive changes took place. These changes include the conquest of California, from the Spanish mission period, Mexican and Alvarado revolutions, Mexican-American War, and the Gold Rush. The history of the county is explored until …

Una Legua Cuadrada: Exploring The History Of Swanton Pacific Ranch And Environs, Jeanine Marie Scaramozzino

Master's Theses

Swanton Pacific Ranch is an educational and research facility owned by the Cal Poly Corporation and managed by the Cal Poly State University (Cal Poly) College of Agriculture, Food and Environmental Sciences. Located about 180 miles north of campus and just 14 miles north of Santa Cruz, California on Highway 1, the property was first leased to and then donated to Cal Poly by the late Albert E. Smith in 1993. The rancho’s original inhabitants included Native Americans, Spaniards, Mexicans, as well as various European immigrants and their descendants; currently, the staff, faculty, and students of Cal Poly occupy the …

The Mexican American Vietnam War Serviceman: The Missing American, Teresa Moreno Jimenez

Master's Theses

The Vietnam War brought many changes to society in that it soon became one of the most controversial wars in United States history. There was a tremendous loss of life as well as a rift in the nation with the rise of anti-war protest. Those drafted for the war primarily came from low-income and ethnic minority communities. While all who served deserve to be recognized, there is one group that has gone largely unrepresented in the history of the war. Mexican American serviceman served and died in large numbers when compared to their population. In addition, they also received high …

Gods And Gurus In The City Of Angels: Aimee Semple Mcpherson, Swami Paramananda, And Los Angeles In The 1920s, Amy Hart

Master's Theses

This project focuses on two case studies as representative examples of Los Angeles’ progressive tolerance in the period of the 1920s: The Pentecostal mega-church of Aimee Semple-McPherson, and the Vedanta Ashram of Swami Paramananda. Both religious institutions opened in Los Angeles in 1923, just thirteen miles away from each other, and continued to thrive side-by-side throughout the twentieth century until present day. Each religious figure spoke to a part of the growing Los Angeles population: McPherson’s staunchly Christian, emotionally-driven, Hollywood-style ministry appealed to a large number of Los Angeles natives and newly-arrived immigrants, rocketing the emerging Pentecostal denomination into nationwide …

Women And The Second Estate In 16th Century Zambezia: Gendered Powers, A 'Puppet' African Queen And Succession In Vakaranga Society, 1500–1700, George G. Levin

Master's Theses

Women in vaKaranga society of the 15th to 17th centuries have been portrayed as oppressed by an "extremely patriarchal" system, but the reality, while still fitting the simple classification of a 'patriarchal' monarchy, indicates quite a bit more negotiation of gendered powers than women, as a class, experienced in the Mediterranean or East Asia. The vaKaranga were the architects of Great Zimbabwe, the capital of a growing state, colonizing their cousins of the Zambezi river, which their Kusi-Mashariki Bantu forefathers had traversed southward a millennium before. Civil war had (apparently) split one nation into two states, Mutapa (Monomotapa) and Khami …

Madonna Inn: A Hotel In Context, Galadriel Bree Highhouse

Master's Theses

This paper examines the political, economic and social influences that contributed to the development of the Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo. I provide a brief history of the hotel industry and place the Madonna Inn within the historiography and argue that the nexus of three elements in the 1950s and 1960s led to the growth and popularity of the Madonna Inn: fear of nuclear war, growth of the middle class, and the rise of automobile culture in America.

The Gendered Geography Of War: Confederate Women As Camp Followers, Rachael L. Ryen

Master's Theses

The American Civil War is often framed as exclusively masculine, consisting of soldiers, god-like generals, and battle; a sphere where women simply did not enter or coexist. This perception is largely due to the mobilization of approximately six million men, coupled with the Victorian era which did not permit women to engage in the public sphere. Women are given their place however, but it is more narrowly defined as home front assistance. Even as women transitioned from passive receivers to active participants, their efforts rarely defied gender norms. This thesis looks at Confederate female camp followers who appeared to defy …

The Collapse Of Yugoslavia And The Bosnian War: The Impact Of International Intervention In A Regional Conflict, Jeffrey Scott Passage

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the role of international intervention in the area formerly known as Yugoslavia during its collapse in the first half of the 1990s (1991-1995). The Cold War had just ended, and the United Nations (UN), NATO, and the nations they represented were reevaluating their roles in a world without competition between two superpowers. The collapse of Yugoslavia and ensuing civil war presented these international bodies with an opportunity to intervene and show that they were ready to take charge in future conflicts in pursuing and achieving peace. However, what followed revealed them to be short-sighted and ill-prepared for …

Learning To Fly: The Untold Story Of How The Wright Brothers Learned To Be The World's First Aeronautical Engineers, Daniel Lawrence Slusser

Master's Theses

This paper examines the education, events, and experiences of the Wright brothers in order to determine how they developed the necessary skills to engineer the first viable aircraft. Without high school diplomas, and with no advanced formal education, the Wright brothers were able to develop aircraft that far exceeded the capabilities of aircraft designed and built by professional engineers that had worked on the problem of flight for much longer and with substantially larger research budgets. I argue that the Wright brothers’ success resulted from their experiences in the printing and bicycle industries as well as their formal and informal …

Mirages Solidified: Myth, Beautification, And Tourism In The Creation Of Santa Barbara's El Pueblo Viejo Landmark District, Michael D. Orth

Master's Theses

A number of books and articles have been written on the social movement to reimagine Southern California’s past in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While many of the pageants, parades, and public displays that defined this regional movement now reside in the pages of history, some architectural examples from this period are still visible today. In many cities, these examples are scattered throughout the community; while in others like Santa Barbara, they represent the centerpiece of the city’s architectural distinctiveness.

Santa Barbara’s architecture challenges urban scholars to successfully garner an accurate sense of the past. More importantly, such historic …

Growing Conflict: Agriculture, Innovation, And Immigration In San Luis Obispo County, 1837–1937, Douglas P. Jenzen

Master's Theses

The history of San Luis Obispo and its surrounding areas is complex. Agriculture, innovation, and immigration have all contributed to the formation of the region. The Spanish, Mexican, and early American periods established the framework successive waves of immigrants had to live within. Native Americans and immigrants from China, Portugal, Switzerland, Japan, the Philippines, and other regions of the United States have all toiled in the fields and contributed to America’s tables at various points throughout county history. Many contingencies determined the treatment of successive waves of immigrants. Growth and development are taking place at exponential rates on the very …

Losing The Colonies: How Differing Interpretations Of The British Constitution Caused The American Revolution, Brian M. Flint

Master's Theses

Faced with an economic crisis following the French and Indian War, the British Parliament, along with a young and inexperienced King George III changed its longstanding policy towards the North American colonies. Prior to 1763, Parliament allowed the colonies to generally govern themselves. After 1763, Parliament began to pass legislation aimed at increasing revenue received from the colonies. As the colonies protested these new taxes on constitutional grounds Parliament began a process of implementing and repealing different attempts at controlling the economic system in the colonies. Due to differing interpretations of the British Constitution regarding Parliament's authority over the colonies, …

Glorious Constructions: The Struggle To Preserve Salvation-Themed Visionary Art Environments, Molly Elaine Sheehan

Master's Theses

Salvation-themed art environments are a roadside rarity, built out of a strong visionary dedication to God, but the sites are disappearing simply because the work is misunderstood. The historiography on the subject is sparse, trending more toward coffee table books with big glossy pictures than real scholarly endeavors, but the consensus among all has been clear. The sites are a valuable part of the recent American cultural landscape, crossing several scholarly fields - art, architecture, and history - and uniting them into a cohesive preservation movement. On a series of trips to visit, see, and experience five of these sites, …