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Articles 1 - 20 of 20
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
'Our Sacred Rights': The Southern Baptist Convention And The Rhetoric Of Oppression, 1845 And Present Day, Katlyn Durand
'Our Sacred Rights': The Southern Baptist Convention And The Rhetoric Of Oppression, 1845 And Present Day, Katlyn Durand
Masters Theses
My master’s thesis focuses on the endurance of white supremacy and patriarchy in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), founded in 1845 and currently the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. I look at two moments in the SBC’s history and place these moments within their broader contexts to elucidate the political and cultural characteristics that shaped these moments: its founding in 1845 upon proslavery partisanship, as well as its current sexual abuse scandal. I argue that the Nullification Crisis of 1828-1834 and the cult of domesticity greatly influenced SBC policy and culture at its origins. Additionally, I examine the …
Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez
Imagining The “Day Of Reckoning”: American Jewish Performance Activism During The Holocaust, Maya C. Gonzalez
Masters Theses
Scholars of American Jewish history have long debated the complicity of the American Jewish community in the loss of six million Jewish lives in Europe during the Holocaust. After Hitler took power in 1933, American Jewish leaders took to the streets to protest the Nazi Party’s abuse of German Jews. Two central figures in this history are Reform Rabbi Stephen Wise and Revisionist Zionist Ben Hecht because of their wide-reaching protest movements that operated in competition with each other. Although the historiography presents Wise and Hecht's inability to unite as the product of difference, my examination of their protest performances …
Cut Out Of Place: The Geography And Legacy Of Otto Ege's Broken Books, Melanie R. Meadors
Cut Out Of Place: The Geography And Legacy Of Otto Ege's Broken Books, Melanie R. Meadors
Masters Theses
Otto Ege cut apart hundreds of medieval manuscripts during the first half of the twentieth century, claiming to do so to provide wider access to them. His destruction resulted in the loss of provenance, material history, and context of these manuscripts. Moreover, he made mistakes when identifying and dating the manuscript leaves he cut, and the loss of the bindings and front matter of the manuscripts makes it difficult to correct these. Much of the research concerning Ege focuses on his identity as a biblioclast, yet even scholars who denounce his book-cutting admit he allowed for places and people to …
Benjamin Smith Lyman: Geologist At The Intersection Of Hokkaido, Japan, And The United States, Benjamin Ashby
Benjamin Smith Lyman: Geologist At The Intersection Of Hokkaido, Japan, And The United States, Benjamin Ashby
Masters Theses
Benjamin Smith Lyman was a geologist from Northampton, Massachusetts, who was contracted by the Japanese government in 1872 to carry out coal surveys on the island of Hokkaidō 北海道. What started out as a standard geological survey, quickly evolved into a lifelong interest in Japan for Lyman. The large collection of letters, books, photographs, and other documents housed under the Benjamin Smith Lyman Collection at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, serve as a primary source on both early relations between the Japanese and the West and the beginnings of the large network of academic writings which today can be classified …
“A Constant Surveillance”: The New York State Police And The Student Peace Movement, 1965-1973, Seth Kershner
“A Constant Surveillance”: The New York State Police And The Student Peace Movement, 1965-1973, Seth Kershner
Masters Theses
Historians recognize that there was an increase in political repression in the United States during the Vietnam War era. While a number of accounts portray the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the primary driver of repression for many groups and individuals during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly those on the left, historians typically overlook the role played by local and state law enforcement in political intelligence-gathering. This thesis seeks to advance the study of one aspect of this much larger topic by looking at New York State Police surveillance of the Vietnam-era student peace movement. Drawing extensively on State Police …
The Art Of Not Seeing: The Immigration And Naturalization Service’S Failed Search For Nazi Collaborators In The United States, 1945-1979, Jeffrey Davis
Masters Theses
From 1945 to 1979, the Immigration and Naturalization Service was responsible for identifying and prosecuting Nazi collaborators and potential war criminals in the United States. It failed in this task for a number of reasons. The first of these was that the agency was severely disorganized and mismanaged. Reliance on interagency cooperation, lack of manpower and resources, and lack of institutional support for “Nazi hunters” posed further problems. Morale crises among employees and the legal difficulties of actually prosecuting Nazi collaborators also hampered the agency’s effectiveness. Most importantly, the agency was overwhelmingly focused on policing the southern border and preventing …
Treating The Revolution: Health Care And Solidarity In El Salvador And Nicaragua In The 1980s, Brittany Mcwilliams
Treating The Revolution: Health Care And Solidarity In El Salvador And Nicaragua In The 1980s, Brittany Mcwilliams
Masters Theses
Health care played an important role in the revolutions of El Salvador and Nicaragua. Both the Sandinistas and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) prioritized popular health throughout the 1980s. Clinics and hospitals served as sites of revolution that drew healthcare solidarity activists from the United States. These health internationalists worked to build community-level networks that relied upon trained medical volunteers. In both El Salvador and Nicaragua, women comprised a bulk of the community health workers. These women chose to interact with revolution by building on radical promises of universal healthcare access. Healthcare solidarity activists trained community volunteers and …
“Nothing Material Occurred”: The Maritime Captures That Caused Then Outlasted The United States’ Quasi War With France, Emma Zeig
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the French maritime seizures during the eighteenth-century US Quasi War with France (also called the half war, or the United States’ undeclared war with France), encompassing events on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in France, the United States, and the Caribbean, particularly Haiti. The analysis focuses on the captured ships, telling the stories of seamen who feared for their lives and merchants who lost their ships. This point of view allows the thesis to explore an area of the Quasi War that are less documented in other histories: how civilian participants experienced violence and the indifference …
Interpreting Access: A History Of Accessibility And Disability Representations In The National Park Service, Perri Meldon
Interpreting Access: A History Of Accessibility And Disability Representations In The National Park Service, Perri Meldon
Masters Theses
This thesis illustrates the accomplishments and challenges of enhancing accessibility across the national parks, at the same time that great need to diversify the parks and their interpretation of American disability history remains. Chapters describe the administrative history of the NPS Accessibility Program (1979-present), exploring the decisions from both within and outside the federal agency, to break physical and programmatic barriers to make parks more inclusive for people with sensory, physical, and cognitive disabilities; and provide a case study of the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site (HOFR) in New York. The case study describes the creation of …
Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner
Wanderers Of Empire: The Tropical Tramp In Latin America, 1870-1930, Jack Werner
Masters Theses
U.S. public and private imperial interests confronted the problem of labor and labor power in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as the U.S. empire expanded into Latin America and the Caribbean. The question of how to make an empire work spurred the creation of new labor regimes reliant on black West Indians who traveled to work in the Panama Canal Zone and on United Fruit Company (UFCO) banana plantations. Just as importantly, new labor regimes engendered new categories for troublesome laborers. One of these classifications, “tramp,” surfaced in the United States after the U.S. Civil War as a …
Springing Forth Anew: Progress, Preservation, And Park-Building At Roger Williams National Memorial, Sara E. Patton
Springing Forth Anew: Progress, Preservation, And Park-Building At Roger Williams National Memorial, Sara E. Patton
Masters Theses
The process of local preservation, urban renewal, and national park building at Roger Williams National Memorial in Providence, Rhode Island, reveals important facets of the urban park idea. In 1958, the Providence Preservation Society and the Providence City Plan Commission jointly released the College Hill Study, which called for renewal of the College Hill neighborhood through preservation of the architecturally significant homes, selective demolition, and the creation of a new National Park Unit dedicated to Providence’s founder, Roger Williams. The new park, established in 1965, went through a lengthy planning process before opening in 1984. The planning process revealed concerns …
The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll
The Economy Of Evangelism In The Colonial American South, Julia Carroll
Masters Theses
Eighteenth-century Methodist evangelism supported, perpetuated, and promoted slavery as requisite for a productive economy in the colonial American South. Religious thought of the First Great Awakening emerged alongside a colonial economy increasingly reliant on chattel slavery for its prosperity. The records of well-traveled celebrity minister and provocateur of the Anglican tradition, George Whitefield, suggest how Calvinist-Methodist evangelicals viewed slavery as necessary to supporting colonial ministerial efforts. Whitefield’s absorption of and immersion into American culture is revealed in his owning a plantation, portraying a willingness to sacrifice the mobility of the disfranchised for widespread consumption of evangelical thought. A side effect …
"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti
"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti
Masters Theses
This thesis analyzes the editorial content of a popular regional newspaper from the Shenandoah Valley, the Spirit of Jefferson, during the height of the Civil-War Era (1848-1870). The newspaper’s editor during most of the period, Benjamin F. Beall, was a white, southern slaveholder of humble origins, who spent time serving in the Confederate military. Beall, however, had also quickly established himself as one of the preeminent Democrats in his home county of Jefferson, as well as both the Shenandoah Valley and the new state of West Virginia. Beall firmly believed in the institution of racial slavery and fought to …
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Cat On A Hot Tin Roof: 60 Years Of American Dialogue On Sex, Gender, And The Nuclear Family, Amy Brooks
Masters Theses
This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; …
Combating Slavery And Colonization: Student Abolitionism And The Politics Of Antislavery In Higher Education, 1833-1841, Michael E. Jirik
Combating Slavery And Colonization: Student Abolitionism And The Politics Of Antislavery In Higher Education, 1833-1841, Michael E. Jirik
Masters Theses
During the early 1830’s, the nascent American Antislavery Society needed support at the local level. This thesis argues that college and seminary students were a crucial demographic that helped garner support for, and spread, abolitionism. Examining the proliferation of radical abolitionism at three locations, Lane Seminary, Andover Theological Seminary, and Amherst College, reveals that students developed intellectual and moral arguments to justify their abolitionist sentiments. Typically, student abolitionists rhetorically battled with faculty, administration, and other students, who all supported colonization, over competing solutions to the problem of slavery. At all three locations, faculty and administration sought to suppress student abolitionism …
An Eerie Jungle Filled With Dragonflies, Sniper Bullets And Ghosts: Changing Perceptions Of Vietnam And The Vietnamese Through The Eyes Of American Troops, Matthew M. Herrera
An Eerie Jungle Filled With Dragonflies, Sniper Bullets And Ghosts: Changing Perceptions Of Vietnam And The Vietnamese Through The Eyes Of American Troops, Matthew M. Herrera
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the changing perceptions of Vietnam’s landscape and the Vietnamese in the eyes of American troops throughout the Vietnam War. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Vietnamese were depicted as a people misguided by the French and in need of political mobilization by the American media and government. Following heavy investment and a rigged election in 1956, South Vietnam was painted as a beacon of democracy in Southeast Asia and an example of what American aid is capable of. As an increasing American military presence was being established in South Vietnam in the early 1960s, American …
"Who's Hiring The Indochinese Worker? Your Competition, Probably": Work, Welfare Dependency, And Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement In Lowell, Massachusetts, 1975-1985, Janelle Bourgeois
"Who's Hiring The Indochinese Worker? Your Competition, Probably": Work, Welfare Dependency, And Southeast Asian Refugee Resettlement In Lowell, Massachusetts, 1975-1985, Janelle Bourgeois
Masters Theses
This Master’s thesis uses the Indochinese Refugee Foundation of Lowell, Massachusetts, a federally funded social service provider, as a case study in the local politics of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement. I argue that the Foundation’s archives offered an opportunity to study the local implementation of the “economic self-sufficiency” mandate of the 1980 Refugee Act, which led the Foundation to increasingly scramble to get refugees off of the welfare rolls and in the labor market as quickly as possible. I conclude that this served to push refugees into low-wage, unskilled, insecure positions such as electronics assembly, and also led to an …
Mishoonash In Southern New England: Construction And Use Of Dugout Canoes In A Multicultural Context, Jacob M. Orcutt
Mishoonash In Southern New England: Construction And Use Of Dugout Canoes In A Multicultural Context, Jacob M. Orcutt
Masters Theses
This thesis examines the history of New England’s dugout canoes – a history that can be traced from 8500 BCE to the twenty-first century. The historical record and archaeological evidence surrounding dugout canoes suggests that the use of dugout canoes changed significantly over time, and that their form varied considerably in different regions of New England. While historians have claimed that these varied forms represent European and colonial influences, I argue that the Eurcolonial influence on dugouts was much more visible in the way the canoes were used than in the shape the vessels took. In addition to analyzing the …
The Politics Of Psychiatric Experience, Shuko Tamao
The Politics Of Psychiatric Experience, Shuko Tamao
Masters Theses
This paper examines the correspondence, manuscripts, and speeches of ex-mental patient activists. I chronicle the activities of the emergent psychiatric survivors movement from its beginnings in the early 1970’s focusing on the work of the Boston based activist, Judi Chamberlin (1944-2010). This paper examines how mental patients in post-war America began to organize in order to have their voices included in the process of their own recovery. I present Chamberlin’s experience as a mental patient as being representative of the “rootlessness” that many post-war women experienced. Chamberlin’s work as an ex-patient activist presented one aspect of the overall struggle on …
Against The Odds: Accounting For The Survival Of The Berkshire Athenaeum, John Dickson
Against The Odds: Accounting For The Survival Of The Berkshire Athenaeum, John Dickson
Masters Theses
Comparative approaches in historic preservation usually involve two or more different buildings. The old Berkshire Athenaeum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts allows for a comparative approach with the same building, but in two different eras: one where the clamor to replace the library building came close to resulting in its destruction (1960s); the other, 35 years later, where the question of the building’s survival was never in doubt, never even raised (2000s). From its earliest days, serious design and workmanship flaws have plagued the structural integrity of the monumental Victorian Gothic building that stands in the center of Pittsfield. Its grand space …