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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
The People's House?: Countermajoritarianism In The House Of Representatives, Andrew Hoffman
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This is the first study of countermajoritarianism in the House of Representatives. Although the House is considered a majoritarian institution, intrastate malapportionment remained rampant prior to the 1964 Wesberry decision; the three-fifths clause drove systematic antebellum differences in the number of free people in northern and southern House districts; and widespread voter discrimination in the South led to systematically different levels of turnout. Combined, these factors potentialized roll calls in which the chamber’s majority did not actually represent more free individuals, voters, or electoral supporters than the minority. Using three separate measures, I characterize such outcomes as countermajoritarian. I find …
"The Unlucky Rebel": William Claiborne And The Evolution Of The Kent Island Dispute, Adam Pleasants
"The Unlucky Rebel": William Claiborne And The Evolution Of The Kent Island Dispute, Adam Pleasants
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis attempts to present a more complete view of the often-overlooked conflict over Kent Island between the merchant and early Virginian politician William Claiborne and the Lords Baltimore by presenting it in the evolving cultural context of the Atlantic world.
“Pass The Pickles”: Viewing Class And Dining In Virginia City, Nevada Through The Pickle Castor, Sage Boucher
“Pass The Pickles”: Viewing Class And Dining In Virginia City, Nevada Through The Pickle Castor, Sage Boucher
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis employs a material culture methodology, which understands people through the objects that they interacted and applies it to the study of the pickle castor; this 19th-century American dining object represents an intersectionality between the unique social and economic space of Virginia City, Nevada in its silver rush Bonanza (1859-1882) and 19th century dining processes. The study will first walk through the history of the pickle castor itself, showing the food culture it is connected to, and the production processes. It will then pivot to setting this historical stage of Virginia City, Nevada in the silver rush, showing it …
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
The Journey Of Unlearning: A Close Reading Of Civil War Pedagogy In Alabama And Virginia, Michaela Hill
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis is a close reading of Civil War pedagogy in Alabama and Virginia with special attention given to Black history during the Civil War era. Through an examination of Civil War history, it is evident that slavery was the main cause of the War. The development of the Lost Cause narrative, a reaction to Blacks gaining Civil Rights that aimed to prove the Confederate war effort was honorable, is still promoted in southern schools. Alabama and Virginia both provide state standards, outlines of the minimum required knowledge to be obtained on a given subject by the end of the …
From Necessity To Novelty: Historic Trades In Colonial Williamsburg, Cecelia Rose Eure
From Necessity To Novelty: Historic Trades In Colonial Williamsburg, Cecelia Rose Eure
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Colonial Williamsburg is a living history museum in Virginia that hosts a large program interpreting and preserving eighteenth-century craft methods. Using ethnographic research methods, this paper evaluates the value of the historic trades program as a means of preserving otherwise lost skills, producing knowledge, and engaging the public in history. I argue that historic trades interpretation connects with audiences more than traditional exhibits, particularly highlighting specialized interpretation, on-the-job discoveries, representation of identity groups, and the ability to utilize online video platforms. Additionally, I address the divide between modern consumption and production, and how visitors can find historic trades that were …
Divided We Stand: An Investigation Of America’S Dual Psyche And The Fbi’S War On Anti-Americanism, Laura Mills
Divided We Stand: An Investigation Of America’S Dual Psyche And The Fbi’S War On Anti-Americanism, Laura Mills
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In periods after war, the U.S. has a tendency to feel insecure amidst a changing world order. Reassuring narratives of American exceptionalism often emerge, as well as reactive vilification of the un-American “Other.” This thesis explores the split in American identity that occurs in times of heightened national insecurity, a division that awards labels of Americanism or deviant anti-Americanism to the broader citizenry. To explore the tie between security and identity, a case study approach is taken with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the FBI. From its establishment in 1908, the FBI carefully built itself under the expectation that …
Disappearing Smoke: Why Black Pitmasters Are Being Left Behind By Commercialization Within North Carolina Whole Hog Barbecue, Charlotte Lucas
Disappearing Smoke: Why Black Pitmasters Are Being Left Behind By Commercialization Within North Carolina Whole Hog Barbecue, Charlotte Lucas
Undergraduate Honors Theses
In North Carolina, there is only one Eastern whole hog establishment left that is owned by black pitmasters. As a result of historical context, black pitmasters have been left behind by the recent trend of commercialization within North Carolina whole hog barbecue. This exclusion can be explained by examining the history of whole hog barbecue, the struggles black entrepreneurs face in the restaurant industry, and the role that the media has played in ignoring black pitmasters. Historical background dives into the history of the whole hog from the plantation era to the Civil Rights movement and beyond in North Carolina …
"But A Contraband Is A Free Man:" Civil War Literature And The Figure Of The "Contraband", Mary A. Kardos
"But A Contraband Is A Free Man:" Civil War Literature And The Figure Of The "Contraband", Mary A. Kardos
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores Civil War popular literature related to "contraband" individuals by Black and white authors. In May 1861, those who escaped from enslavement to Union territory were deemed "contrabands of war," a label placing them between freedom and property. This purgatorial category delayed freedom and depicts formerly enslaved persons as both intellectual and literal property of white America. Across various poems, essays, speeches, novels, illustrated envelopes, and sketches, Civil War authors debated the function of the “contrabands” within the American social order. Consequently, this thesis explores the patterns through which the uniquely transitory nature of the “contraband" allowed the …
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Cultivation Through Excavation: Performing Community And Partnership In The Historic First Baptist Church Project, Eleanor S. Renshaw
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores the relationships and partnerships developing around the First Baptist Church -- Nassau Street Archaeology Project in Colonial Williamsburg. Exploring the defining of "descendant community" and the contributions of tourists through the lens of Erving Goffman's stages and participant frameworks, this project looks at the past, present, and future of this project.
The Rails That Bind: America's Freedom Trains As Reflections Of Efforts To Form Cultural Consensus And Indicators Of The Weakness Of Cold War Memory, Daniel Speer
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This paper assesses why two projects with the same name, concept and intent of forming cultural consensus, the Freedom Trains, took such different forms between the postwar "consensus" (1947-1963) and detente (1963-1979) phases of the Cold War. It argues that organizers Attorney General Tom C. Clark (1947), Ross Rowland (1975), and their corporate backers articulated histories based on perceived common values of limited rights (1947), cultural pluralism (1975) and consumption (both) that attempted unity, but resulted in silences. The reception to each train, and the organizers' responses to those reactions, showed the limitations of a unifying consensus, but varied between …
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
The Bodies Politic: Sex, History, And The Promise Of A Black Queer America, Jonathan Newby
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This essay examines and critiques the ways in which Black, Queer, and Black Queer people's culture, politics, and lived experiences are experienced in the United States, historically and in the present day. The Bodies Politics calls for American history and culture to be reoriented to acknowledge and center the contributions of Black Queer people to the nation.
Paradoxical Toleration: Southern Antisemitism In The Nineteenth Century, Jason Blau
Paradoxical Toleration: Southern Antisemitism In The Nineteenth Century, Jason Blau
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis explores antisemitism in the nineteenth century South. It seeks to demonstrate the relative paucity of religious prejudice directed towards Jews by white southern gentiles until the late nineteenth century, despite the virulence of anti-black racism in white southern society at the time. This “paradox,” contrary to modern assumptions that disparate prejudices run together as has been documented by social psychologists, attracts attention. Historically, scholars made similar claims without much substantiation. Other researchers, such as Leonard Dinnerstein in “A Note on Southern Attitudes toward Jews,” challenged the possibility of southern Jewish acceptance relative to northern mores, pointing out an …
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
“A Sea Of White Faces”: How Courtroom Portraits Undermine Justice In Virginia, Lauren Miller
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The presence of Confederate symbols and other reminders of white institutional power in courtrooms introduces a risk that impermissible factors such as implicit bias, conscious prejudice, and sympathy for white supremacy will harm litigants’ rights. I compiled data for 210 of 328 courts (64%) in the Commonwealth and found that there are more than 617 portraits on display in Virginia courtrooms. At least 357 portraits depict white men, six depict Black men, fifteen depict white women, and twenty-eight depict people who served in the Confederacy, either in the government or the Confederate States Army (CSA). At least fourteen different courts …
Machines On The Farm: Capitalism And Technology In Midwestern Agriculture, 1845-1900, James Jonathan Rick
Machines On The Farm: Capitalism And Technology In Midwestern Agriculture, 1845-1900, James Jonathan Rick
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Farming people in the Midwestern United States and in Ontario began using new machines throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. These included machines related to the production of grain crops—including threshers, reapers, and drills—as well as machines related to the production of the farm household— such as sewing and washing machines. In their use, maintenance, and alteration of machines within the natural and social contexts of their farms, rural people produced new technological systems of industrial agriculture. They also struggled with machine manufacturers and their agents for control of those systems—both as individuals and through farmer’s organizations. This …
The Enslaved People And The Tylers Too: Why It Is Imperative To Discuss Slavery In Public History, Meredith Jackson
The Enslaved People And The Tylers Too: Why It Is Imperative To Discuss Slavery In Public History, Meredith Jackson
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This paper focuses on the intersection of slavery and public history in the present day, specifically researching how the Tyler family perpetuated slavery and the Lost Cause and the enslaved people at Sherwood Forest Plantation as a microhistory.
The Republic Of Happiness: James Wilson, Political Thought, And The American Revolution, Kevin Diestelow
The Republic Of Happiness: James Wilson, Political Thought, And The American Revolution, Kevin Diestelow
Undergraduate Honors Theses
The moral quantity of “happiness” provides an organizing principle for understanding the political thought of James Wilson. By using happiness as a metric for understanding his thought, the Revolution can be conceptualized as an intervention in favor of human improvement. In his political thought, Wilson supported an actively empowered government which could take steps needed to support citizens’ moral and material advancement and ultimately, their happiness.
“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks
“Garden-Magic”: Conceptions Of Nature In Edith Wharton’S Fiction, Jonathan Malks
Undergraduate Honors Theses
I situate Edith Wharton’s guiding idea of “garden-magic” at the center of my thesis because Wharton’s fiction shows how a garden space could naturalize otherwise inadmissible behaviors within upper-class society while helping a character tie such behavior to a greater possibility for escape. To this end, Wharton situates gardens as idealized touchstones within the built environment of New York City, spaces where characters believe they can reach self-actualization within a version of nature that is man-made. Actualization, in this sense, stems from a character’s imaginative escape that is enabled by a perception of the garden as a kind of natural …
"Summer's Gone:" Rethinking The History Of The Beach Boys, 1961-1998, Grant Wong
"Summer's Gone:" Rethinking The History Of The Beach Boys, 1961-1998, Grant Wong
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis rethinks the history of American rock band The Beach Boys from 1961-1998 in terms of how its members tapped into the zeitgeists of the sixties, seventies, and eighties to create successful music and branding. In its analysis, it draws upon methods of cultural history, business history, and biography in order to dispel popular myths surrounding the band and consider the meaning of its impact within United States history and American popular culture as a whole. The Beach Boys, in recording innovative music and marketing a winning brand, created a durable pop cultural institution that defined its times just …
"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks
"Epic Poems In Bronze": Confederate Memorialization And The Old South's Reckoning With Modernity In The Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries, Grace Ford-Dirks
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Scholars of the American South generally end their studies of Confederate memorization just before World War 1. Because of a decline in the number of physical monuments and memorials to the Confederacy dedicated in the years immediately following the war, scholars appear to regard the interwar era as a period separate from the Lost Cause movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, to fully understand the complexity of developing Southern identities in the modern age, it is essential to expand traditional definitions of Confederate memorialization and the time period in which it is studied. This paper explores …
John Dickinson: The Development And Deployment Of A Legal Mind: 1754-1774, Sophie Rizzieri
John Dickinson: The Development And Deployment Of A Legal Mind: 1754-1774, Sophie Rizzieri
Undergraduate Honors Theses
This thesis argues that John Dickinson’s political thought is best described as legal-minded. I define Dickinson as broadly “legal-minded,” with his use of statute-based arguments conveyed with oratorical skill, and his articulation of constitutional principles of natural rights and balanced government. Dickinson’s work during the period from 1764 to 1774 was concerned with deploying measured arguments and constitutional principles to convince American colonists to preserve their rights against encroachments from Great Britain. Using the letters he wrote to his parents while studying law at the Middle Temple in London in the 1750s, and various public writing and speeches from the …
The Intersection Of Activism And Black Memory: Space, Memory, And Resistance In John Mitchell, Jr.’S Woodland Cemetery And Remembering Emancipation In Hampton Roads, 1917-1963, Timothy Allen Case
The Intersection Of Activism And Black Memory: Space, Memory, And Resistance In John Mitchell, Jr.’S Woodland Cemetery And Remembering Emancipation In Hampton Roads, 1917-1963, Timothy Allen Case
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
“Emancipation is an Act, Freedom is a State of Being”: Remembering Emancipation in Hampton Roads, 1917-1963. This paper traces the centralized organization and an activist turn in the commemoration of emancipation in the Hampton Roads region of Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina. While considerable scholarship exists on African American freedom commemorations from the Civil War through its semi-centennial, the story told of twentieth-century emancipation memory is mostly one of marginalization and decline. Accounts of these celebrations in the local Black press reveals their persistence well into the twentieth century. Jim Crow and racial violence haunted the celebratory culture of …
A School For Leaders: Continental Army Officer Training And Civilian Leadership In The Trans-Appalachian West, David Lawrence Ward
A School For Leaders: Continental Army Officer Training And Civilian Leadership In The Trans-Appalachian West, David Lawrence Ward
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This paper investigates the Continental Army’s junior leaders (sergeants, ensigns, lieutenants, and captains) who moved westward postwar and used the abilities acquired during military training in their new communities in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio. This skill set included leading diverse individuals under arduous conditions, functioning within a bureaucracy, performing managerial tasks, and maintaining law and order in nascent communities. The Continental Army’s leadership development program for junior leaders centered on Baron von Steuben’s Regulations for the order and discipline of the troops of the United States, better known as the Blue Book. Unlike other contemporary military manuals, the Blue Book …
"By The Dear, Immortal Memory Of Washington"/The Baptists, Culture, And The Law In Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Douglas Breton
"By The Dear, Immortal Memory Of Washington"/The Baptists, Culture, And The Law In Eighteenth-Century Virginia, Douglas Breton
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
"By the Dear, Immortal Memory of Washington" Americans have long used the Founding Fathers as symbols of patriotism, invoking their names and using their images whenever they wish to demonstrate that a particular way of thinking or acting is true to American ideals. The vague patriotic image of the founders tends to eclipse their actual character, allowing diverse and competing movements to all use them. This has been especially true of George Washington, who long enjoyed a preeminent and almost mythic status among the founders. During the 1860s, both secessionists and unionists claimed him as their own in order to …
Bound Among Nations: Labor Coercion In The Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, Casey Schmitt
Bound Among Nations: Labor Coercion In The Seventeenth-Century Caribbean, Casey Schmitt
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation uses bound labor as a lens for understanding the development of law, identity, and imperialism in the early seventeenth-century Caribbean. The Spanish, English, and French depended on bound labor, especially for their Caribbean possessions. However, the geographic proximity of their colonies and frequent warfare forced Europeans to negotiate across imperial boundaries to develop regional slave systems. at the heart of these negotiations, and the law of nations that they drew from, was the issue of reciprocity. I argue that Europeans in the Caribbean, especially the English and the French, created a transnational legal understanding that protected their ability …
Community And Culture: Material Life In Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1750-1850, Sarah E. Thomas
Community And Culture: Material Life In Shenandoah County, Virginia, 1750-1850, Sarah E. Thomas
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation explores material life in the northern Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from 1750 to 1850 through extant objects and those found in the documentary record. In the process, it highlights diverse processes of community formation that took place among artisans in Shenandoah County. This work provides three different perspectives on the processes of community formation in Shenandoah County, focusing on the impermanent buildings of early settlers, the growth of permanence at an ironworking community at Redwell Furnace and Pine Forge, and cultural markers in the furniture and material life of artisans Godfrey Wilkin and Johannes Spitler. The project brings …
Dolly Parton And Southern Womanhood / Race, Respectability, And Sexuality In The Mid-Century South, Madalyn Bell
Dolly Parton And Southern Womanhood / Race, Respectability, And Sexuality In The Mid-Century South, Madalyn Bell
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
“There is No Such Thing as Natural Beauty”: Dolly Parton’s Cinematic Performances and Concepts of Southern Womanhood Despite the influx of scholarship surrounding popular film and gender in recent years, little to no studies focus on one star’s impact on concepts of identity. The existing scholarship tends to investigate how types of films influence spectators’ understanding of the identities represented on screen. For instance, a study of female friendship films would argue that the spectators’ concepts of relationships and female to female interaction would be influenced. This paper aims to study one actress whose multiple representations of the same identity, …
Fear, Foreigners And Federalism: The Naturalization Act Of 1790 And American Citizenship/Foundering Friendship: French Disillusionment After The Battle Of Yorktown, Cody Nager
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
The Naturalization Act of 1790’s requirements of residency and “good character,” reveal that the First Congress set the limits on the access of immigrants to citizenship to mostly restrict European foreigners, rather than African Americans or Native Americans. These residency and “good character” clauses resulted from a combination of concerns regarding foreigners that came to prominence during the Confederation Period. Among these fears were the perceived abilities of immigrants to the gain control over land in the trans-Appalachian West and control over political influence in the unstable political order after the American Revolution. These worries about national stability were inflamed …
Native Citizens And French Refugees: Exploring The Aftermath Of The Haitian Revolution, Frances Bell
Native Citizens And French Refugees: Exploring The Aftermath Of The Haitian Revolution, Frances Bell
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
“Native Citizens!” Citizenship, Family, and Governance During the Haitian Revolution, 1789-1806 Given the upheaval of the Haitian Revolution, and first head-of-state Jean-Jacques Dessalines’s insistence on divesting Haiti from all French influence, it is unsurprising that many historians have depicted Dessalines’s rule as a dramatic rupture; the end of an old state, and the beginning of a new one. However, despite Dessalines’s stated desire to divest from French influence, he continued to use the language of citizenship in legal texts, speeches, and proclamations, despite its strong association with French republicanism. By examining legislative texts and proclamations from 1793 to 1806, I …
Masters Of Light And Flight/ ”This Most Republican Amalgamation”, James Jonathan Rick
Masters Of Light And Flight/ ”This Most Republican Amalgamation”, James Jonathan Rick
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Masters of Light and Flight: The Spectacle of Invention in fin-de-siècle U.S. Popular Culture, 1876-1917 Popular fascination with inventors in U.S. popular culture was at a high point in the decades surrounding the turn of the twentieth century. This paper analyzes the discourse surrounding inventors in the aviation and aeronautics industries: including Thomas Alva Edison, Nicola Tesla, Glenn Curtiss and Wilbur and Orville Wright. By analyzing invention as a spectacle, it sheds light on the relationships between the spectacle of invention and industrial modernity. On the one hand, inventors became popular symbols of control over the process of labor and …
“Defenceless Wives” And “Female Furies” / Botany And The Early American Family, Holly Gruntner
“Defenceless Wives” And “Female Furies” / Botany And The Early American Family, Holly Gruntner
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
“Defenceless Wives” and “Female Furies”: Late Eighteenth Century Periodicals’ Depictions of Frontier Women The frontier had a firm hold on late eighteenth century popular imagination, trailing through newspapers and magazines of the era, which included, time after time, prominent accounts of the women who had made their homes on the outskirts of the “settled” colonies and early republic. My project examines the ways in which eighteenth century newspapers and magazines discussed frontier women’s experiences. Periodicals sought through their representations of women to illustrate the perils of the frontier by dramatizing women’s tales of trauma and woe, appropriating them in order …