Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Digital Face Of Airpower: Asymmetry, Artificial Intelligence And Intimate Combat In The Twenty-First Century United States Air Force, Jordan Bolster

Masters Theses

Remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) operators have been at war for over twenty-years using unmanned aerial vehicles to kill combat enemies half-a-world away. Their emotional experiences provide an opportunity to examine intimacy in warfare which can be compared and contrasted with conventional pilots and traditional rifle-bearing ground troops. By comparing and contrasting specific emotions felt across various combat environments and technologies, it is possible to answer the question of whether or not RPA operators are legitimate warriors or legitimated assassins. The implementation of RPA operators in combat zones and the proliferation of unmanned technology on the battlefield open up new questions …

Guerres, Individus, Systèmes : Problématiques De L’Écriture Martiale Dans Le Roman Américain Du Xxème Siècle, Julien Brugeron

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

This article aims at reassessing the long 20^th century American war novel and its inherent and hitherto seldom addressed problematics. Borrowing from both French, American and English critical standpoints, it aims at clarifying the definitional, ethical, political and aesthetic aspects of war writing by putting on an equal footing classic works of the genre (Dos Passos, Mailer, Heller, Herr) and left-aside writers (La Motte, Boyd, Hasford) as well as contemporary novelists (Powers). It is critical in American literary history, and to literary history in general, to seize what is at stake in war writing, as this particular kind of …

Lords Of Retinue: Middle English Romance And Noblemen In Need, James Trevor Stewart

Doctoral Dissertations

This study shows how medieval poets adapted the romance genre to address contemporary concerns about the regulation and exercise of noble power. Analyzing romances alongside chivalric chronicles, medieval didactic texts, and modern historical studies of the English nobility, this dissertation explores the ideals and practices of chivalry in medieval England from the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) through the deposition of Richard II (1399). Chapters on Guy of Warwick (c. 1300), Ywain and Gawain (mid-fourteenth century), and Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale (c. 1388) argue that Middle English poets promote ideals of both prowess and lordship in their narratives of chivalric heroism.

Privileged Killers, Privileged Deaths: German Culture And Aviation In The First World War: 1909-1925, Robert William Rennie

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines aviation’s influence on German cultural and social history between 1908 and 1925. Before the First World War, aviation embodied one of many new features of a rapidly modernizing Germany. In response, Germans viewed flight as either a potentially transformative tool or a possible weapon of war. The outbreak of war in 1914 moved aviation away from its promised potential to its lived reality. In doing so, the airplane became a machine which compressed time and space, reordered the spatial arrangement of the battlefield, and transformed the human relationship with killing. Germany’s fliers initially served as observers, noting …

Experiencing Defeat, Remembering Victory: The Army Of Tennessee In War And Memory, 1861-1930, Robert Lamar Glaze

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Civil War in the South by examining white Southerners’ perceptions of the Army of Tennessee from 1861 to 1930. While scholarship on the war’s memory is immense and growing, little of this literature examines the memory of the Confederacy's war effort in the western theater—the area of operations military historians now deem central to the war's outcome. This project rectifies that oversight by examining white Southerners’ memory of the Army of Tennessee in the post-war decades. Unlike Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederacy’s primary western field army suffered a near …

Portrayals Of Chechen Identity During The Second Chechen War, Desiree Dube

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

“Una Caja De Plomo Que No Se Podía Abrir”: Una Crítica Del Sistema Militar Estadounidense En Puerto Rico Durante La Época De La Guerra De Corea, Ashton Monks

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

George's Last Stand: Strategic Decisions And Their Tactical Consequences In The Final Days Of The Korean War, Joseph William Easterling

Masters Theses

This historical analysis concerns the final ground combat engagement of the Korean War from 24-27 July 1953 at the outpost known as Boulder City. During this period, Marines from George Company, 3^rd Battalion, 1^st Marine Regiment withstood a continuous assault by a reinforced Chinese regiment. The purpose of this analysis is twofold. First, this battle provides a single case descriptive case study as to the linkages between the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels of war. By providing the full Strategic, Operational and Tactical context to this battle, the second purpose of this analysis is to clarify the historical …

"Is This The Fruit Of Freedom?" Black Civil War Veterans In Tennessee, Paul E. Coker

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Civil War in the South by examining the experience of Tennessee’s black Union army soldiers and veterans from the 1860s through the early twentieth century. Today historians almost reflexively agree that the black military experience took on an “ever larger meaning” in American society, but few scholars have given sustained attention to black soldiers’ lives in the postwar South. My dissertation finds that the black military experience profoundly disrupted Southern hierarchies and presented black men with unprecedented opportunities to elevate their political, economic, and social status; however, these aspirations rarely went uncontested. Nearly …

“Tentative Relations: Secession And War In The Central Ohio River Valley, 1859-1862”, Timothy Max Jenness

Doctoral Dissertations

In the fall of 1859, John Brown launched a raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, and in so doing arguably fired the first salvo of the Civil War. That his raid occurred in the border area between North and South should come as no surprise because it was in that area where Americans were the most divided. Citizens across the border state region–that area that comprised the lower North and upper South–soon found themselves caught between two hostile sections. Based on an analysis of letters, journals, newspapers, and public documents, this dissertation is a study of one …

Conspicuous Publicity: How The White House And The Army Used The Medal Of Honor In The Korean War, David Glenn Williams

Masters Theses

During the Korean War the White House and the Army publicized the Medal of Honor to achieve three outcomes. First, they hoped it would have a positive influence on public opinion. Truman committed to limited goals at the start of the war and chose not to create an official propaganda agency, which led to partisan criticism and realistic reporting. Medal of Honor publicity celebrated individual actions removed from their wider context in a familiar, heroic mold to alter memory of the past. Second, the Army publicized the Medal of Honor internally to inspire and reinforce desired soldier behavior. Early reports …

Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, And The Ostjuden Under German Occupation: 1915-1918, Tracey Hayes Norrell

Doctoral Dissertations

“Shattered Communities: Soldiers, Rabbis, and the Ostjuden during Occupation: 1915-1918" addresses the interethnic experience in Poland during the German occupation of 1915-1918. This dissertation demonstrates that the German design for 'modernization' of the East began with the First World War, which envisioned the Jews as a critically vital component, rather than an obstacle to their success. The German military made its connection to the peoples in the East via its own army rabbis and Jewish administrators. This work examines the role of the German Army rabbis, in 1915, in establishing a Jewish press and Jewish schools, along with Jewish relief …

Modernity, Capitalism, And War: Toward A Sociology Of War In The Nineteenth Century, 1815-1914, Eric Royal Lybeck

Masters Theses

The academic discipline of Sociology has rarely broached the subject of war and its recursive relationship with society. This paper addresses three major approaches in several disciplines that can be deemed ‘economically deterministic’: Marxist, Liberal, and Realist. These approaches can be useful for certain questions, but also leave out, or cloud other non-economic variables in understanding war – notably culture and military variables themselves. By using Karl Polanyi’s thesis regarding the “Myth of the Hundred Years’ Peace” (1815-1914) as a foil, the historical case of war in the nineteenth century is used to highlight the nature of war in European …

Public Women In Public Spaces: Prostitution And Union Military Experience, 1861-1865, Danielle Jeannine Cole

Masters Theses

This study examines prostitution in Union-occupied cities during the American Civil War. During the war, the visibility of urban prostitution triggered contentious public debates over appropriate forms of sexuality and over the position of sexualized women in public areas. Union commanders posted in occupied cities had an especially difficult time dealing with prostitution since their garrison troops had money, were not preoccupied by marching and fighting, and expected urban pleasures in an urban environment. For example, military authorities in Washington, D. C., Norfolk, Virginia, and New Orleans, Louisiana, unsuccessfully struggled to control or eliminate public prostitution using traditional legal systems. …

Through The Lens Of Ed Westcott: A Photographic History Of World War Ii's Secret City (Exhibition Catalogue), Sam Yates, Baldwin Lee

Ewing Gallery of Art & Architecture

Catalogue of the 2005 exhibition made possible through a partnership between the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, The University of Tennessee, and the American Museum of Science and Energy, Oak Ridge.

The inaugural showing of this exhibition was held jointly at the Downtown Gallery, The University of Tennessee, and at the American Museum of Science and Energy, Oak Ridge, as a component of the 2005 Tennessee Valley Homecoming.