History Commons^™

La Perception Et La Représentation Du Corps Des Femmes Africaines Par Rapport À La Colonisation Française, Mofiyinfoluwa Tunji-Ekundayo

Honors Theses

The thesis proposes an analysis of the perception that the French colonizers had towards the bodies of black women in France, women from northern Africa, and women from western Africa. Then, the work evaluates how this perception manifests in current French and francophone media. Furthermore, it traces how much influence these perceptions have on the depiction and representation of African female bodies. This influence could manifest as a reinforcement or an opposition to colonial perceptions.

Socialist Legality On Trial: The Purge Of The Ukrainian Nkvd, 1938-1943, Reide Petty

Honors Theses

In the winter of 1938, Grigorii Iufa was put on trial in a Soviet court for the violation of socialist legality, a charge alleging that he had manipulated Soviet legal processes and undermined the rule of law during his work. Prior to his arrest, Iufa had worked in the Moldavian division of the NKVD, the Soviet Union’s state security agency. In that capacity, he had played a significant role in the Great Terror, which was a highly concentrated campaign of mass violence conducted by the Soviet Union between 1937-1938 against perceived enemies among its own citizenry. This campaign primarily consisted …

Moctezuma And The Emergence Of Sixteenth-Century New Spain’S Historical Dialogue., Charlie Tabor

Honors Theses

In August 1521, Hernan Cortés entered the city of Tenochtitlan, declared it conquered, and announced the creation of the new colonial territory New Spain. Over the course of the subsequent sixteenth century Spain would rapidly expand its influence across the American continents.

Spanish colonialism in the Americas is historically distinct for a rapid process of globalization which linked previously isolated European and indigenous societies. Analysis of chronicles documenting the Conquest of Mexico written in the later half of the 1500’s reveal that colonialism corresponded to new ways of thinking informed by, but also distinct from, Aztec and Spanish world views. …

Between Ausländer And Almancı: The Transnational History Of Turkish-German Migration, Michelle Lynn Kahn

History Faculty Publications

Although he had anticipated feeling happy in his homeland, Erdem was “shocked” to find himself the target of discrimination when he visited Turkey in 1991. A second-generation Turkish migrant born and raised in West Germany, the longhaired 21-year-old who played in a garage band called Apocalyptica stuck out from the local Turks. “You can’t imagine how crazy these people were,” he recalled. “They had an olfactory sense. They could smell that I was from Germany.” Twice, this prejudice turned to violence. Erdem was “lynched,” in his words, once at a discotheque and once while strolling along the sea- side. In …

The Long Arm Of Medicine: Creation Of The Turkish Medical Infrastructure, Legitimacy, Governmentality, And The Rockefeller Foundation, Eric Bossert

Honors Theses

During the early Turkish Republic, a goal of the new government was to set up systems that would help develop the country. One of these systems was their medical infrastructure which included medical education, public health, and hospitals. Ever suspicious of foreign investment since the events leading to the decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Turkish government decided to employ the help of the American aid organization, the Rockefeller Foundation because of their seeming lack of imperialistic goals. Turkish government and the Rockefeller Foundation sought to further their aims through cooperation. The Turkish government sought to gain legitimacy for its …

For Whose Greater Good? The Case Of Hero-Making: Girch And Darius, Gražina Kristina Sviderskyte

Heroism Science

This article reviews an investigation into the case of Stanley Girch (aka Girėnas) and Stephen William Darius as (multi)transfigured and transforming heroes and seeks to examine a two-fold assumption that has emerged in heroism science, namely that people create heroes mostly for the better and that learning from the past can help assess which heroes are needed. We argue that it may be beneficial to shift the focus of the analysis and follow the reverse course of a hero’s journey, tracing the impact, evolution and origin of the heroic status ascribed to the historical figures, whether individual or collective. Presuming …

Book Review: Unlikely Heroes: The Place Of Holocaust Rescuers In Research And Teaching, Stephanie Fagin-Jones

Heroism Science

Representing the first in a new series, Contemporary Holocaust Studies, from the University of Nebraska Press, this valuable book is the result of a collection of papers presented at the Sommerhauser Symposium on Holocaust Education in April 2017 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This biennial symposia, generously supported by third-generation survivor siblings Peter Sommerhauser and Eileen Sommerhauser-Putter, along with The University of Nebraska, focuses on the integration of research and teaching of Holocaust scholarship. The editors thus seek to address an urgent need to bring past and present academic knowledge on the subject of Holocaust rescue into the classroom …

Future And Past Anxieties : A Look At The Origins Of The British Welfare State Through Wwii, Emily Maanum

Honors Theses

The scope of this project focuses particularly on how members of Parliament and the media, specifically newspapers, understood the establishment of the welfare state. My use of the term “Britons” reflects political rhetoric used by MPs to illustrate unity within the public sphere and to shape the terms of debate. Their instrumentalist rhetoric was meant to unify the community, stop fascism and honor citizens. It is important to study the political rhetoric because these discussions within Parliament led to social policies and the eventual establishment of a welfare system. How MPs started early debates affected the structure of later debates …

’Sans Artifice Est Ma Simplicité’: Sincerité Et Vertu Dans Les Regrets Et Astrophil And Stella, Anthony P. Russell

English Faculty Publications

Dans le présent essai, j'aimerais avancer l'hypothèse que ce recueil original et insolite a eu, sur le développement de la poésie lyrique anglaise, un impact bien plus significatif que ce qui a été admis jusqu’à ce jour. Je souhaite spécifiquement examiner l'éventuelle importance pour Philip Sidney, clans son Astrophil et Stella, de la complexité avec laquelle Du Bellay a abordé la vertu de la sincérité. Que l'on prenne au sens littéral ou non les engagements de sincérité personnelle et de liberté esthétique de Du Bellay clans les Regrets, on ne peut nier que le poète ait choisi de présenter la …

Learning To Live With The Other Germany In The Post-Wall Federal Republic, Kathrin M. Bower

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

After forty years of separation, neither the West Germans nor the East Germans were prepared for the impact of reunification. But had the peoples of the two countries developed separate cultural identities to such an extent that the dissolution of the border represented merely the illusion of a return to sociocultural community? Since the collapse of the East German state in 1989 and the subsequent suturing of divided Germany in 1990, scores of books and articles have been published on the economic and political conditions that led inexorably, or less so, to the demise of the GDR, as well as …

Britain's Failed Attempt At Fascism : The British Union Of Fascists, Years 1933-1934, Katherine L. Collier

Honors Theses

This honors thesis examines how and why Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists (BUF) tried to present itself as a viable political entity to mainstream British society in the years 1933- 1934. Though the BUF admired Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, this thesis argues that they sought to create their own distinctly British version of these Fascist movements. The BUF promised that Britain would again thrive, but only under strong fascist leadership which would provide an economic restructuring of government and a cohesive society, free from selfish individualism, decadence, and foreigners. The BUF promised to …

Berlin Opera Wars : Institutional And The Quest For German Identity, Rebecca Robinson

Honors Theses

In October 2000, Berlin’s Minister of Culture Christoph Stölzl proposed a merger of the city’s opera houses. In the midst of German reunification, Berlin was struggling financially and the cost of three separate opera houses was too much for the city to bear. This proposal to combine the former East-German Staatsoper Berlin and Komishe Oper with the former West-German Deutsche Oper under the administration of “The Opera Stages of Berlin” was met with public backlash. Newspapers all over the world reported daily as the directors of both the Staatsoper and Deutsche Oper—Daniel Barenboim and Christian Thielemans— fought bitterly for their …

"Will The Sun Come Up In The Morning?" : The 1999-2000 Conflict Between Summerhill School And The British Department For Education And Employment, Emily Kerwin

Honors Theses

On March 23, 2000 a group of school children sat in the Royal Courts of Justice in London and voted to accept an agreement between Secretary of State for Education David Blunkett and their school, Summerhill School in Leiston, Suffolk. This vote ended a year-long fight to keep the school from closing. Carmen Cordwell, the chair of that meeting later remarked, "This is our charter for freedom. After 79 years, this is the first official recognition that A.S. Neill's philosophy of education provides an acceptable alternative to compulsory lessons and the tyranny of compulsory exams. With this one bound, we …

'Fors Clavigera', The Young Women Of Whitelands College, And The Temptations Of Social History, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

On the first of May each year from the 1880s onward the young women at Whitelands teacher training college in London celebrated by throwing to the wind the timetable that normally dictated how their every moment would be spent. Instead, they adorned the college in flowers, donned in white dresses, and spent the day dancing, singing, and reading poetry. The tradition of May Day helped to poke a hole in the rather dour institutional regimen of Whitelands, which opened the way for many smaller, everyday acts that gradually reworked the ethos of the college.

"A Home For Poets": The Emergence Of A Liberal Curriculum For Elementary Teachers In Victorian Britain, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

In this article I explore student culture beyond the classroom to argue that there existed an informal liberal curriculum which embraced a general spirit of intellectualism and the pursuit of a wide range of knowledge dealing with the human condition and the state of society. I also offer a new reading of the formal curriculum at training colleges by examining the formal curriculum alongside student accounts of their experiences of it, student responses to assignments, commonly used textbooks, and educationalists’ discourses about teachers’ training. While acknowledging that the formal curriculum emphasized rote memorization and was narrow, I argue that there …

Morale Maintenance In World War Ii Us Army Ground Combat Units : European Theater Of Operations, 1944-45, Kevin Kane

Honors Theses

This paper examines how both the Army as an organization and its small unit leaders attempted to maintain the soldiers’ morale in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Morale was critical to the Allied victory in the war, yet the morale of frontline GIs was often neglected. This occurred with such frequency that many combat soldiers suffered from a new category of wound known as “combat exhaustion.” Through an examination of what influenced combat soldiers’ morale, a clearer understanding of what the Army did well and how it failed to support combat GIs emerges, as does an …

“‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.”: The Power Of Place And The Rhetorical Life Of A Cold War Map, Timothy Barney

Rhetoric and Communication Studies Faculty Publications

In 1951, the American Federation of Labor produced a map of the Soviet Union showing the locations of 175 forced labor camps administered by the Gulag. Widely appropriated in popular magazines and newspapers, and disseminated internationally as propaganda against the U.S.S.R., the map, entitled “‘Gulag’—Slavery, Inc.,” would be cited as “one of the most widely circulated pieces of anti-Communist literature.” By contextualizing the map’s origins and circulation, as well as engaging in a close analysis of its visual codes and intertextual relationships with photographs, captions, and other materials, this essay argues that the Gulag map became an evidentiary weapon in …

Queen Elizabeth’S Leadership Abroad: The Netherlands In The 1570s, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

In 1576, after Edmund Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, presumed to lecture Queen Elizabeth on the importance of preaching and on her duty to listen to such lectures, his influence diminished precipitously, and leadership of the established English church fell to Bishop Aylmer. Grindal’s friends on the queen’s Privy Council, “forward” Calvinists (or ultra-Protestants), were powerless to save him from the consequences of his indiscretion, which damaged the ultras’ other initiatives’ chances of success. This paper concerns one of those initiatives. From the late 1560s, they urged their queen “actively” to intervene in the Dutch wars. They collaborated with Calvinists on …

A Victorian Class Conflict? Schoolteaching And The Parson, Priest And Minister, 1837-1902, Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

Building on his previous work on the history of education and Methodism, John T. Smith’s new monograph explores clerical attitudes toward and involvement in nineteenth-century English elementary education, particularly the office of the teacher. Though Smith also pays attention to the attitudes of teachers toward clerics and examines how teachers experienced heavy-handed clerical management of elementary schools, Smith is at his best and is most original when writing from the clerical perspective. The result is a welcome new take on clerical-teacher relations, which historians of education have tended to write from the perspective of the teacher, often with little sympathy …

The Identity Of Late Barbarians: Goths And Wine, Walter Stevenson

Classical Studies Faculty Publications

Wine, symbol of civilization in the Mediterranean for millennia and still a profound cultural marker in Europe today, is not often associated with the Goths.¹ But there is evidence allowing us to add this Northern European barbarian people to the tapestry of ancient wine production² at the same time that they were beginning to cultivate the first European barbarian literature with the translation of the Bible into the Gothic language.

Girls' Secondary Education In The Western World: From The 18th To The 20th Century (Book Review), Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

This edited collection traces the development of girls’ secondary education over three centuries in a way that highlights national peculiarities without losing sight of ideas and debates that cut across borders. Contributors follow very similar formats, exploring historiography and key themes: religion, coeducation, the ideal of domestic motherhood, and politics. The greatest single overarching theme is what the editors describe as “the dialectic between education as a conservative force and as a force for change as expressed in both democratic and authoritarian political agendas across Europe” (p. 2). Political battleground that it was, however, there emerges from the essays as …

Educating Women: Schooling And Identity In England And France, 1800-1867 (Book Review), Christopher Bischof

History Faculty Publications

Christina de Bellaigue’s Educating Women: Schooling and Identity in England and France, 1800-1867 explores stereotypes about women’s boarding schools on both sides of the English-French Channel. In the process de Bellaigue identifies the basis in reality which many of the most widespread stereotypes had, including: the socially grasping schoolmistress; the schoolmistress as a gentlewoman fallen on hard times; the short-lived nature of many schools; the stress laid on the teaching of “accomplishments”; and the idea that preparing women for their domestic role was the ultimate goal of an education. However, she also simultaneously undermines these stereotypes by supplying nuance and …

Changing Magic : Evolving Conception Of Witchcraft In Essex County, Elizabeth Kiel Boone

Honors Theses

In 1579, a court in Essex, England arraigned thirteen-year-old Thomas Lever for acting as an assistant to William Randall, a conjurer suspected of leading a group of male witches. The court claimed young Thomas “mixed potions and was familiar with all [of Randall’s] workings.”1 Yet for Raphael Holinshed, the commentator on the trial, the case was unique only in the age of the defendant. Holinshed gives a stark example of a common view of the witch trials by noting “That her Majesty is sore oppressed by these witches and devil- mongers is now common knowledge, but that a child should …

Defender Of The Faith? : Anti-Heresy Policy And The Consolidation Of Ecclesiastical Authority Under Henry Viii On The Eve Of The English Reformation, Daniel James Rudary

Honors Theses

In March 1521, Catholic Europe was on the brink of rupture. It had been more than three years since Martin Luther had posted his Ninety-Five Theses in the university town of Wittenburg, and what had been a mere invitation to a public disputation concerning the power and efficacy of ind ulgences had gone on to embroil Christian Europe in an unprecedented doctrinal conflict. The political and religious significance of Luther's revolt was certainly not lost on Rome, which had by this point responded to Luther's December 1520 bonfire fueled by copies of Leo X's excommunication bull and books of canon …

Dis-Manteling More, Peter Iver Kaufman

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, winner of the prestigious 2009 Booker-Man award for fiction, re-presents the 1520s and early 1530s from Thomas Cromwell's perspective. Mantel mistakenly underscores Cromwell's confessional neutrality and imagines his kindness as well as Thomas More's alleged cruelty. The book recycles old and threadbare accusations that More himself answered. "Dis-Manteling" collects evidence for the accuracy of More's answers and supplies alternative explanations for events and for More's attitudes that Mantel packs into her accusations. Wolf Hall is admirably readable, although prejudicial. Perhaps it is fair for fiction to distort so ascertainably, yet I should think that historians will …

Joan Of Arc And The Crusade: Memorizing Medieval Examples To Improve A Renaissance King, Lidia Radi

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

In 1518, Le Penser de royal memoire was published in Paris by Guillaume Michel de Tours.²Thanks to the pioneering research conducted by Anne-Marie Lecoq in her monumental book Francois I^er imaginaire, this allegorical text has recently caught the attention of scholars as part of an important moral and political literary production that was published under the reign of King Francis I (r. 1515-1547). Lecoq's study and subsequent works, such as the critical edition of Jean Thenaud's Triomphe des Vertus by Titia Schuurs-Janssen, shed new light on the literature of propaganda addressed to Francis I, the king …

[Introduction To] Meat Matters: Butchers, Politics, And Market Culture In Eighteenth-Century Paris, Sydney Watts

Bookshelf

In eighteenth century Paris, municipal authorities, guild officers, merchant butchers, stall workers, and tripe dealers pledged to provide a steady supply of healthful meat to urban elites and the working poor. Meat Matters considers the formation of the butcher guild and family firms, debates over royal policy and regulation, and the burgeoning role of consumerism and public health. The production and consumption of meat becomes a window on important aspects of eighteenth-century culture, society, and politics, on class relations, and on economic change. Watts's examination of eighteenth-century market culture reveals why meat mattered to Parisians, as onetime subjects became citizens. …

[Introduction To] Epic Revisionism: Russian History And Literature As Stalinist Propaganda, David Brandenberger, Kevin M. F. Platt

Bookshelf

Focusing on a number of historical and literary personalities who were regarded with disdain in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution - figures such as Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Mikhail Lermontov - "Epic Revisionism" tells the fascinating story of these individuals' return to canonical status during the darkest days of the Stalin era. An inherently interdisciplinary project, "Epic Revisionism" features pieces on literary and cultural history, film, opera, and theater. It pairs scholarly essays with selections from Stalin-era primary sources - newspaper articles, unpublished archival documents, short stories - to provide students and …

The Marketing Of Mussolini : American Magazines And Mussolini, 1922-1935, Anthony F. Ambrogi

Master's Theses

Until the Halo-Ethiopian War, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and the American press had a symbiotic relationship. Mussolini used his charisma and journalistic skills to put himself in the limelight of the American foreign press, and whether they loved him or hated him, American periodicals relished the constant flow of news and sensationalism from Rome. This analysis examines the rise of Fascism and Mussolini in Italy and his efforts to market himself to the press, especially the American press. It then reviews American magazines from 1922 until Italy's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 and their varying attitudes toward II Duce. Popular …

The Creative Intelligentsia And The Rise Of Official Russocentrism Under Stalin, David Brandenberger

History Faculty Publications

In the mid-to-late 1930s, Soviet society witnessed a major ideological about-face as party propaganda and mass culture assumed an increasingly patriotic, Russo-centric orientation. Heroes, imagery, and legends from the Russian national past were deployed to bolster the legitimacy of the Soviet state and provide a complement to the reigning Marxist-Leninist ideology, then in a trend threatening to eclipse the stress on revolutionary class consciousness that had characterized the Soviet experiment for nearly two decades.

This shift away from proletarian internationalism toward Russo-centric etatism has been a source of considerable scholarly controversy. Some have linked this phenomenon to nationalist sympathies within …