Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Telling The Whole Store: Native Americans And The Development Of Urban Spaces, Paul T. Fuller

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

This paper places the subject of urban Indians in North America within the historical reality of their existence and emphasizes the need to rework current assumptions about Native peoples. Not only were Native peoples intimately involved in the act of building up villages, forts, and trading posts – which would eventual evolve into the cities that dot the continent today – but they have also very much been a part of the urban scene in major cities since the middle of the twentieth century. The cities around Puget Sound would not have been able to exist without the direct aid …

American Indian Activism And The Rise Of Red Power, Rachael Guadagni

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

Recent historical scholarship has determined that the socio-political environment of post-World War II America provided the necessary catalyst for Native American activism which when combined with the socio-political atmosphere of the civil rights era lead to the development of the Red Power Movement. In the thirty or so years immediately following World War II America witnessed profound social and political change. Initial fear of communism lead to strict, pro-capitalist Indian legislation resulting in the termination of hundreds of tribes and the relocation of countless Indian people. From this same environment rose strong leaders, including many veterans, influenced by Cold War …

Crowdsourcing Transcriptions Of Archival Materials, Aaron G. Noll

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

Crowdsourcing is a method that has been effectively used to pool the knowledge and skills of large numbers of online volunteers for the creation of information resources utilized by historians, genealogists, and scientists. In recent years, archivists have begun to crowdsource the transcription of their handwritten records. Transcription of such records has traditionally been completed by professional transcribers who are skilled in reading multiple handwriting styles, knowledgeable about the creators and historical context of the records, and can interpret varying record formats and genres. However, increasingly limited resources of time and money have made traditional transcription more difficult to accomplish. …

Born Digital: Event-Driven Archives, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The growth of the internet has brought numerous tools and opportunities for archivists to both enhance their collections and reach out to potential patrons. Archives across the globe have begun immense digitization efforts to bring collections into the digital age and make them accessible to a broader audience. But what challenges face new archives whose collections are born-digital? How do these archives prove that they are indeed an archival facility and not simply a memory institution? These questions have risen around numerous digital archives born in the past decade to document and commemorate social events and tragic disasters, including the …

The Power Of Fission: How The Discovery Of Fission Adversely Affected Us/Soviet Relations, Kathy Shinnick

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

In 1940 FDR told the leading Western scientists that they were not responsible for the way science was being used to perpetuate oppressive world domination. He went on to convince them that while they could not trust Hitler to use their knowledge towards positive means, they could trust the United States to forward the values of world peace.

In light of the events that followed from that speech in 1940 to the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945, without informing the Soviet Union, this pivotal moment insights a series of questions concerning the ways in which the United States’ …

The Human Flesh Search Engine: Democracy, Censorship, And Political Participation In Twenty-First Century China, Vincent Capone

Graduate History Conference, UMass Boston

The Human Flesh Search Engine is a recent, unique phenomenon on the Chinese internet. Comprising of thousands of forum, micro-blog, and entertainment websites and mobilizing the overwhelming number of Chinese internet users, or netizens, the search engine is able to quickly find obscure information and identify seemingly anonymous internet personalities. These websites allow netizens to have their voices heard in an otherwise restrictive government, however these websites also become a hotbed for dissent, with web users highlighting stories and figures which they deem harmful to society. Through clever investigative work, netizens hunt down an individual's identity with the goal of …