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"Know-Nothingism, Abolitionism, And Fanaticism:" An Analysis Of The Collapse Of The Second Party System In Maine, Justis Dixon Jan 2023

"Know-Nothingism, Abolitionism, And Fanaticism:" An Analysis Of The Collapse Of The Second Party System In Maine, Justis Dixon

Honors Projects

The 1850s were a tumultuous period in American politics, with a complete partisan realignment fundamentally shifting the balance of power away from the status quo and toward possibilities for change. This paper focuses on the collapse of the Second Party System in Maine, and understanding how we can explain this stunning and rapid shift. The varying factors can be placed into two broad categories First, ethnocultural issues were primarily responsible for much of the growing turmoil within and between the major parties throughout the 1840s, and accelerating greatly in the early 1850s with rising levels of immigration and the increasing …


Is Faith The Ultimate Divider?: The Intersections Between Religion And Political Behavior In The United States, Ryan Supple Jan 2023

Is Faith The Ultimate Divider?: The Intersections Between Religion And Political Behavior In The United States, Ryan Supple

Honors Projects

This thesis examines the complex relationship between religiosity and voting behavior in the United States. In a country where religion has diminished in importance over time, it seems rather fascinating that it still plays such a large role in the inner-workings of American politics. Chapter One analyzes the varying ways in which scholars have approached emergent political trends between religious groups, particularly with regards to political parties, voting behavior, and government representation. Chapter Two extends this analysis to the American National Election Studies (ANES), a national survey distributed to random samples of Americans during election seasons. The information from the …


Growing Pains: Toward A Coalition-Based Theory Of State Land Use Policy, Patrick Rochford Jan 2023

Growing Pains: Toward A Coalition-Based Theory Of State Land Use Policy, Patrick Rochford

Honors Projects

In the decades following World War II, mass suburbanization remade the American landscape. While suburbs accounted for 83% of the nation’s growth between 1950 and 1970, cities bled their populations and natural resources dwindled. Treating the postwar era as a critical juncture, this thesis examines the political history of twentieth-century state land use policy to illuminate how competing interests have shaped policy outcomes across the United States. Specifically, the paper seeks to explain the passage of statewide growth management and smart growth programs. After providing a history of American suburbanization, the paper considers an emergent challenge to the postwar growth …


From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne Jan 2023

From “This Revolution Is Neither Communist Nor Capitalist!” To “Long Live The Socialist Revolution:” The Deterioration Of U.S.-Cuban Relations From 1958-1961, Julia Lyne

Honors Projects

This thesis studies the deterioration of U.S.-Cuban relations from 1958-1961. Mainly drawing from primary sources from the National Archives, it seeks to answer and understand how and why relations deteriorated so rapidly. It pushes against the common belief that U.S.-Cuban relations were doomed from the start, instead highlighting in Chapter One Fidel Castro’s rise to power (and Fulgencio Batista’s fall from power) and revealing that the U.S. government was not entirely against Castro’s seizure of power. Chapter Two explores Castro’s first year in power and the (futile) attempts made by both governments to keep relations alive. Finally, it closes with …


Building Home In Diaspora: New York’S Jewish Left And The History Of The Bronx Housing Cooperatives, Micah Benjamin Wilson Jan 2022

Building Home In Diaspora: New York’S Jewish Left And The History Of The Bronx Housing Cooperatives, Micah Benjamin Wilson

Honors Projects

This thesis investigates three predominantly Jewish housing cooperatives that emerged in the Bronx in the late 1920s. The Amalgamated Housing Cooperative, the United Workers Cooperative Colony (the “Coops”), and the Sholem Aleichem Houses offered garment workers utopian retreats from the drudgery of Lower East Side tenements where Jewish immigrants arrived in droves between 1890-1920. With each cooperative housing a distinct faction of the Jewish Left––from socialists to communists to Yiddish nationalists––the Bronx housing cooperatives, more than experiments in communal living, were the site of a highly contested battle over competing Jewish cultural and political worldviews across the 1930s and 1940s. …


Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck Jan 2021

Jigs, Reels, And “Realness”: An Investigation Of Ideas Of Authenticity And Tradition In New England French Canadian Music, Lowell Ruck

Honors Projects

Franco-American culture is increasingly recognized as an integral part of the heritage of Maine and New England, and has attracted growing academic attention in recent years. But while many scholars and cultural promoters focus on the French language in their work on this subject, few studies have considered the position of traditional music in Franco-American communities in the 21st century. This thesis examines French Canadian traditional music as it is played in New England and the ways in which musicians think about authenticity and tradition in their art. Using material from ethnographic interviews, it illuminates how musicians draw from …


Promises Unfulfilled: Integration And Segregation In Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009, Nina Nayiri Mckay Jan 2021

Promises Unfulfilled: Integration And Segregation In Metropolitan Philadelphia Public Schools, 1954-2009, Nina Nayiri Mckay

Honors Projects

Even though Brown v. Board of Education outlawed segregation in public schools in 1954, many American children still attend schools that are racially and, increasingly, socioeconomically segregated. Philadelphia, a northern city that did not have an explicit policy of segregating children on the basis of race when Brown was decided, nevertheless still has entrenched residential segregation that replicates in public schools. The metropolitan area became a segregated space in the years around World War II, when housing discrimination, employment discrimination, lending discrimination, suburbanization, and urban renewal started the years-long trajectory of growing white suburbs surrounding an increasingly non-white and under-resourced …


Brutal Encounters: Primitivity, Politics, And The Postmodern Revolution, Archer Thomas Jan 2021

Brutal Encounters: Primitivity, Politics, And The Postmodern Revolution, Archer Thomas

Honors Projects

The switch from late modernism to postmodernism in Western aesthetic theory and criticism took place in the mid-to-late 20th century, radically changing the face of cultural criticism. Much has been written on how postmodernism broke from modernism, but what factors paved its way in the decades following the Second World War? This paper argues that postmodernism represents both a reaction to and a necessary evolution of late modernism, specifically as it manifests in architecture, politics, and the politics of architecture. It focuses on the crisis of confidence among Western left-wing circles following the upheaval of the Second World War and …


White Southerners Respond To Brown V. Board Of Education: Why Crisis Erupted When Little Rock, Arkansas, Desegregated Central High School, Abby Elizabeth Motycka May 2017

White Southerners Respond To Brown V. Board Of Education: Why Crisis Erupted When Little Rock, Arkansas, Desegregated Central High School, Abby Elizabeth Motycka

Honors Projects

What was the impact of Brown v. Board of Education on the United States and how did pro-segregationists in the South respond? In order to answer this question, I argue three key arguments over the course of three chronological chapters. In chapter one, I argue that segregationists from southern states responded to Brown by fighting to preserve segregation in order to protect a racial hierarchy they believed was essential. This racial hierarchy is magnified in the southern capital of Little Rock, Arkansas, which I argue in chapter two exposed segregationists’ political defiance and poor organization around racial integration of public …


Reconsidering Operation Condor: Cross-Border Military Cooperation And The Defeat Of The Transnational Left In Chile And Argentina During The 1970s, Georgia C. Whitaker May 2014

Reconsidering Operation Condor: Cross-Border Military Cooperation And The Defeat Of The Transnational Left In Chile And Argentina During The 1970s, Georgia C. Whitaker

Honors Projects

In this study of the roots of Operation Condor, I track the development of this unusual military alliance forged by six Southern Cone governments (Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Paraguay) during the 1970s, as well as the push-and-pull relationship between the transnational migration of political militants and the military’s impetus for collaboration. While most accounts of Condor focus on the United States as the operation’s primary orchestrator, I contend that initial motivation for the type of cooperation that Condor would later formalize was driven not by the U.S., but by the Southern Cone militaries’ perception that Marxism had to …


A "Peculiarly American" Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, And The Big Dory, James W. Denison Iv Jan 2014

A "Peculiarly American" Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, And The Big Dory, James W. Denison Iv

Honors Projects

A “Peculiarly American” Enthusiasm: George Bellows, Traditional Masculinity, and The Big Dory investigates the portrayal of masculinity in the oeuvre of the much-lauded yet enigmatic American painter George Bellows (1882-1925). Rather than relying on Bellows’ urban works for source material, a significant portion of this investigation is conducted via a case study of Bellows’ 1913 panel The Big Dory, a scene of fishermen pushing a boat into the North Atlantic off Monhegan Island, Maine that the artist painted during a sojourn on the island in the months after his involvement in the landmark Armory Show in New York. The …


Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein May 2013

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …