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History

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Theses/Dissertations

Women

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Postkoloniale Solidarität: Alltagsleben Von Ddr-Bürgern In Mosambik, 1979-1990, Katrin Bahr Sep 2020

Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster Nov 2017

Beyond The Boundaries Of Childhood: Northern African American Children's Cultural And Political Resistance, 1780-1861, Crystal L. Webster

Doctoral Dissertations

Notions of childhood as a distinct developmental period of life were concretized during the nineteenth century. Features of children’s lives including innocence, play, and exclusion from labor became markers of ideal childhoods as part of the racialized modernization of childhood. This dissertation uncovers the ways in which modern constructions of childhood attempted to subjugate northern African American children throughout the nineteenth century and highlights the means by which black children and conceptualizations of black childhood became agents and sites of resistance. In doing so, it demonstrates both how African American children experienced age-based forms of subjugation as well as their …


“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal Jul 2016

“If There Are Men Who Are Afraid To Die, There Are Women Who Are Not”: African American Women's Civil Rights Leadership In Boston, 1920-1975., Julie De Chantal

Doctoral Dissertations

Since the 1980s, narratives surrounding the Boston Busing Crisis focus on South Boston white working-class’s reaction to Judge Arthur W. Garrity's forced desegregation order of 1974. Yet, by analyzing the crises from such narrow perspective, the narratives leave out half of the story. This dissertation challenges these narratives by situating the busing crisis as the culmination of more than half a century of grassroots activism led by Black working-class mothers. By taking action at the neighborhood and the city levels, these mothers succeeded where the National Association for the Advancement of the Colored People and the Urban League had failed. …


“Nantucket Women”: Public Authority And Education In The Eighteenth Century Nantucket Quaker Women’S Meeting And The Foundation For Female Activism, Jeffrey D. Kovach Aug 2015

“Nantucket Women”: Public Authority And Education In The Eighteenth Century Nantucket Quaker Women’S Meeting And The Foundation For Female Activism, Jeffrey D. Kovach

Doctoral Dissertations

“NANTUCKET WOMEN”: PUBLIC AUTHORITY AND EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY NANTUCKET QUAKER WOMEN’S MEETING AND THE FOUNDATION FOR FEMALE ACTIVISM MAY 2015 JEFFREY D. KOVACH, B.A., FRANKLIN AND MARSHALL COLLEGE M.A., WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barry J. Levy The women’s monthly meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers, on Nantucket in the eighteenth century regulated the private lives of its members, particularly matters of marriage and sexuality. This regulation inhibited the behavior of female Friends, but it also served to create a culture of education and public authority for the island’s …


A Stitch In Time: The Needlework Of Aging Women In Antebellum America, Aimee E. Newell Feb 2010

A Stitch In Time: The Needlework Of Aging Women In Antebellum America, Aimee E. Newell

Open Access Dissertations

In October 1852, Amy Fiske (1785-1859) of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, stitched a sampler. But she was not a schoolgirl making a sampler to learn her letters. Instead, as she explained: “The above is what I have taken from my sampler that I wrought when I was nine years old. It was w[rough]t on fine cloth it tattered to pieces. My age at this time is 66 years.” Drawing from 167 examples of decorative needlework – primarily samplers and quilts from 114 collections across the United States – made by individual women aged forty years and over between 1820 and 1860, this …


Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel May 2009

Before The Second Wave: College Women, Cultural Literacy, Sexuality And Identity, 1940--1965, Babette Faehmel

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation follows career-oriented college women over the course of their education in liberal arts programs and seeks to explain why so many of them, in departure from original plans of combining work and marriage, married and became full-time mothers. Using diaries, personal correspondences, and student publications, in conjunction with works from the social sciences, philosophy, and literature, I argue that these women's experiences need to be understood in the context of cultural conflicts over the definition of class, status, and national identity. Mid twentieth-century college women, I propose, began their education at a moment when the convergence of long-contested …