History Commons^™

A Conscious Image Of Liberation: Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Eta) In The Late Franco Regime, Through The Lens Of The Press, Sebastian De Lasa

Honors Projects

The rise of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) in the early 1970s coincided with the rise of national liberation movements across Europe, which largely were inspired by notable examples of resistance throughout the Global South in the decades prior. ETA’s growth over this period, and in the years prior, was heavily dependent on the image created of the organziation in the local, domestic, and international press, including through documents distributed by the group itself. By comparing ETA’s external presence to the group’s internal strife, it becomes clear that ETA made efforts to align itself with the popular revolutionary language of the …

Rabbits And Hogs And Bears, Oh My! Monstrous Births And Control Over Pregnant Bodies, Elizabeth Klein

Undergraduate Research Awards

Monstrous birth stories occupied early modern European society between the 16th and 18th centuries. These stories depicted gruesome and fantastical births influenced by the imaginations and ill virtue of pregnant women, and the tales were the subject of much interest within the intellectual and medical community. The discussion of these births that took place among the male members of such communities were particularly revelatory of the way female bodies were viewed and controlled in early modern Europe. These conversations are evidenced in the writings of 16th and 17th-century European physicians about the power of women’s imaginations over their pregnant bodies, …

Seeing Forced Isolation Through New Eyes: Covid-19, Anne Frank, And The Violence Of The Nation-State, Anna Raines

CMC Senior Theses

In my senior thesis, I explore the social, political, and cultural effects and consequences of forced isolation. Forced isolation is a strategy adopted by governments in order to deal with a range of issues in contemporary history, often resulting in exclusionary practices, the redefinition or assertion of national sovereignty and nation-state boundaries, contagion, detention, and imprisonment. As a consequence of these varied processes and actions, when an individual or a social group is forced into an isolated space and ostracized from society, they are cast out of routine socialization, and the effects of this can endure even if a return …

The Chosen One?: Reflections On Mid-Century Egyptian Nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser's Charismatic Leadership, And The Suez Crisis Of 1956, Owen P.S. Hobbs

Honors Theses

This thesis considers Gamal Abdel Nasser's 1956 nationalization of the Suez Canal and the subsequent Suez Crisis in the broader context of the histories of nationalism and charismatic leadership in a decolonial setting. Chapter one synthesizes the works of notable scholars into a cohesive historiography of nationalism's emergence in Egypt and Nasser's unique role within mid-century Egyptian society. Chapter two examines the direct causes of the Suez Crisis within the previously established context of nationalism and charismatic leadership, drawing new conclusions from memos, telegrams, and the Egyptian Government's 'White Paper on the Nationalization of the Suez Canal Maritime Company' -- …

A Prosaic People? Literature, Propaganda, And National Identity In Second World War Britain, William L. Maines

Honors Theses

During the early years of the Second World War, a typically unofficial and loose coalition of British newspapers, publishers, propagandists, and booksellers mobilized Britain’s imagined literary past and present as a part of the war effort. They defined the nation through its imagined literary proclivities— its penchant for literary production and consumption, and its “unique” attitude toward literary freedom— and in opposition to the literary tyranny of Nazi Germany. Marshaling the nation’s mythological literary heritage, they enlisted Shakespeare and Milton in the war effort, portraying them as temperate and civilian English heroes. While the rhetoric of “British bookishness” hardly went …

The Bittersweet Tooth: Understanding French Identity Through The Colonial Empire, Commodity Fetishism, And Pâtisserie, Clarisse D. Allehaut

Honors Theses

This thesis argues that patisserie and the French relationship with dessert are a part of national identity. The historical context of patisserie runs parallel to the growth and power of the French colonial empire. Patisserie feels removed from the empire, and yet the two show how gastronomy, luxury, and exploitative power in the form of empire are components of French history and identity. Marx’s theory on commodity fetishism serves as the backbone for this argument. This theoretical idea supposes that value is an objective concept and society attributes importance and perceived meaning. Patisserie exemplifies commodity fetishism as a good with …

Left To Blind Destruction: An Exploration Of Post-Punk Britain Through The Lens Of Manchester's Own Joy Division (1973-1980), Emily Wingfield

Capstone Showcase

This thesis explores the UK post-punk movement, looking at how the movement emerged within the political and social climate of 1970s and early 1980s Britain and the key characteristics of the genre. I also provide a deeper exploration of the movement through a case study of Joy Division. The central questions within my research are: What was the social and political climate of Britain during the 1970s and 1980s? How did this influence the emergence of the post-punk movement? What are the complexities and nuances of Joy Division and its place in the Manchester music scene? How do these earn …

Theodor Eicke And His Contributions To The Nazi Party: An Essay On The Development Of The Nazi Concentration Camp System And Ss-Totenkopfdivision, Erin Jackson

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project will focus on Theodor Eicke, and how he shaped the Nazi Party. Eicke is responsible for many key identifiers of the Nazi Party: the concentration camp system, the punishment system within concentration camps, the usage of prisoner labor, Shutzstaffel [SS] formations and indoctrinations, and other organizational schemes of the Nazi Party. This essay will examine Eicke’s background and his contributions to the Nazi Party as Dachau Camp Comandante, Camp Inspectorate, and Commander of the Waffen-SS Death Head Division, and how each of these components contributed to greater Nazi violence and the Final Solution.

History, Memory, And National Identity; The Formation Of The Russian Nation After The Katyn Massacre, Juliana Messina

Scripps Senior Theses

The Katyn Forest Massacre is one example of an event where the recorded history and collective memory do not align. At times when events are misrepresented through media and intentional deception, those who remember what actually took place pass on the knowledge collectively, allowing a collective understanding that spites the historical record. These intersections are defining moments for national identity, where the image a state presents to the world conflicts with how their actions are actually perceived. This is true for Katyn. For decades, the event was denied and misrepresented by the Soviet Union who denounced accusations and convinced foreign …

Enlightenment As Global History: The Reception Of Confucianism In Eighteenth-Century France, Rachel Yang

Honors Projects

While the Enlightenment was once seen as a unique product of Western intellectual heritage, recent scholars have started to challenge this Eurocentric notion with the concept of a “global Enlightenment” by considering how it was shaped by cross-cultural encounters. To contribute to this body of scholarship, I trace the reception history of Confucianism in eighteenth-century France and examine how Chinese philosophy played a part in shaping and stimulating Enlightenment discourse. My research starts with the Jesuit missionaries who served as the intellectual intermediaries between China and Europe. Through a close reading of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, a Latin translation of …

British Literature I, Justin Shaw

Syllabus Share

What does it mean to belong? What does it mean to have an identity? This course serves as an entry point to the study of early British literature and its historical contexts. We examine texts written from the 7th to the 17th Centuries that comprise a portion of what we call British literature. This survey engages poetry, prose, and drama that reimagine the complexities of intersectional identity, render the nation as part of a global stage, and challenge conventions of sexuality and gender. It traces early texts written by and about people on the margins of “Britishness” and "Englishness" such …

England's Fairest Creatures, Madison Hart

MSU Graduate Theses

Set in 1616 Jacobean England, surrounding a tragic chamber pot incident, the place setting of the small fishing town of Lechlade, England, begins our story. From generations of fisherman, Elias Eaton, is the first Eaton not to bear a son. Instead, his fierce daughter in her mid-twenties, Julia, our protagonist, helps her father at the docks daily. Although Julia is a champion for women of her time, she dreams of there being something more out there for her than the town that has shackled Eatons for centuries. Julia’s mother, Sybil, is the daughter to the town baker. Her literate father …

The Era Of The Great War, Barbara Syrrakos

Open Educational Resources

This is a draft template syllabus for "The Era of the Great War", an upper-level course offered in a department of history. The syllabus provides a core set of readings and links, with plenty of room for the adopter to add or subtract materials, and to craft their own assignments. The course focuses on the wider period of the war, including art and literature, women and war, a peek into two cases from the colonies, a re-visiting of the Arab revolt and Lawrence, and a larger dimension of the mixing of historiography and the value of primary sources, including contemporary …

Preliminary Report 2021: Coring And Excavations At Hof In Hjaltadalur, John M. Steinberg, Zachary N. Guttman, Guðný Zoëga

Andrew Fiske Memorial Center for Archaeological Research Publications

This report outlines the 2021 work at Hof as part of the Hjaltadalur Archaeological Survey Project (HASP). The results of soil coring suggest that the site of Hof is relatively small compared to other settlement farms. The footprint of the farmstead expands substantially after the 11^th Century. The midden from the 11^th and 12^th centuries appears to be located just north of the main farmhouse (Hof 1). Cores from this area show an abundance of midden on either side of the white AD 1104 tephra. There is a notable absence of post-1300 midden deposits. The excavation unit …

Barbarians & Heretics: Anti-Greek And Anti-Latin Sentiments In Crusade-Era Chronicles, 1096-1204, Ryan Saputo

Honors Theses and Capstones

Historians have debated the role of stereotypes and hostile language in the diversion of the Fourth Crusade to Constantinople mostly through the outdated "Clash of Civilizations" lens. This work investigates the role of hostile stereotypes in both Western and Byzantine narrative histories discussing the first four crusades through a deep textual and literary analysis. This work argues that contemporary narrative histories from the first four crusades demonstrate that virulently hostile attitudes abounded in both Byzantine and Western sources, and that these attitudes greatly affected diplomatic and political decision making during Byzantine-Crusader interactions from 1096-1204. This work's close textual examination of …

The Loyalty Of The Lords Of Albret: An Investigation Of The Gascon Rolls At The Outset Of The Hundred Years War, Jason Delaney

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

This thesis will examine the juxtaposition of the duchy of Gascony's importance to the Plantagenet Crown with the difficulties administering the region and protecting it from French interference during the late-thirteenth and early-fourteenth centuries, resulting in the necessity of securing the loyalty of Gascon nobles for assistance. The lords of Albret were powerful allies under Edward I (1272-1307), and their defection to the French under his son, Edward II (1307-1327), put Plantagenet Gascony in a vulnerable position when the Hundred Years War began in 1337. Resecuring the loyalty of Albret – and other powerful Gascon lords – was crucial for …

Workers, Mothers, And Françaises: The French Communist Party And Women In The Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Elizabeth Klements

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A survey of the first two decades of the French Communist Party's propaganda reveals a wide range of female imagery, from the androgynous, Soviet-style militant of the 1920s to the fashionable, feminine figure of the 1930s. Earlier scholars noting this discrepancy argued that the Party first adopted the Soviet "new woman," based on the Marxist principle of absolute gender equality but rejected it just over a decade later in order to broaden their appeal to the French masses. These studies, however, were restricted by the limited access to the French Communist Party's interwar-era archives. Using recently-digitized Party meeting records, reports, …

Living In The Ruins Of Utopia: The Collapse Of The Soviet Union And The Formation Of Russia's Postcolonial Identity, Erik G. Livingston

Senior Independent Study Theses

No abstract provided.

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

The Path From Paramilitary To Politics: Gerry Adams, Sinn Féin, And The Good Friday Agreement: 1986-1998, Brenann Hamilton

Dissertations and Theses @ UNI

Although the Troubles often have been written about by historians through a nationalistic or cultural context, pitting the Irish Catholic Nationalists against the Protestant British loyalists, much of the action took place within the political sphere, as the Nationalists’ and Unionists’ representatives fought for concessions and control. Rather than focusing on the religious differences or the ethnographic backgrounds of the people living in Northern Ireland, this thesis examines through a political context how the leaders of Sinn Féin shaped popular opinion and gained support through nonviolent means. While the national identity and cultural differences between the Nationalists and Unionists inform …

Russian Women Emigres After The Revolution, Kaelen Sauriol

All Master's Theses

Revolution, civil war, and the eventual victory of the Bolshevik Party unsettled millions of Russian intellectuals, forcing many abroad. Defining and sustaining Russian intellectual culture outside of Russia through art, prose, politics, religion, and literature was a mission that men and women of the émigré intelligentsia shared. As the Soviet Union strengthened its identity, the émigrés also hoped to create a distinction between Soviets and Russians, as well as a distinction between European and Russian. They hoped to protect “true Russianness” for those who remained in the Soviet Union, and they dreamed of returning to Russia themselves. In the event, …

The Holocaust In Slovakia: The Deportation Of 1942 Through The Prism Of Oral History, Peter Salner

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

On October 28, 1918, after the end of the Great War, Slovakia became part of the Czechoslovak Republic. Two decades later, on October 6, 1938, the country’s political leadership declared autonomy, and within a few months, on March 14, 1939, the Slovak National Assembly voted for the establishment of an independent state. Already during the period of autonomy, the government adopted anti-Jewish legislation (this trend would continue throughout the brief lifespan of the new state) aimed at gradually shutting Jews out of social and economic life. This state-sponsored persecution of the Jews culminated in mass deportations which began in 1942. …

Enemies, Allies, And Opportunities: The Politics Of Noblewomen’S Lawsuits In Early Modern Piedmont, Catherine Ferrari

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation considers early modern law courts as political venues in which noble families not only asserted claims to wealth, property, and inheritance but also sought to enhance their reputation and influence. By studying the archives of elite families in Piedmont from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries, I argue that noblewomen used the law to gain a political voice, defending their legal claims against other family members in highly visible conflicts in which not only their property but their standing at the court of the duke of Savoy was at stake. These women exploited legal procedures and drew on …

A Case Study Of Poland Regarding The Utility Of Strategic Culture, Christian Pierce Griffith

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

From the Cold War until today, researchers and strategists have worked to find better ways of understanding the strategic decisions of other countries. Many diplomats and international decision makers subscribed to the idea that countries always acted rationally with a rational, cost-benefit analysis approach to problems that laid before them. Others, however, wished to explain the seemingly irrational actions countries have taken, and proposed that not all countries share the same objective values and goals. Academic authors and political strategists claimed that countries have Strategic Cultures, defined as frameworks that policy makers operate within where they are influenced by cultural …

Building An Imperial World: Ideologies Of Imperialism And The Tariff Reform Movement In Britain, 1900-1914, Kevin Jennings Luginbill

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation examines the imperial rhetoric and ideologies articulated during the tariff reform controversy in Edwardian Britain. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the British statesman Joseph Chamberlain organized a new movement, dubbed tariff reform, to enact a series of commercial policies that would integrate the British and colonial economies and, he argued, lay the foundation for the development of a unified imperial federation. Chamberlain’s proposals were controversial and divisive, resulting in years of political debate over the merits of tariff reform. While the tariff reform campaign has been studied in numerous histories, its imperial dimensions have been ignored …

U.S.-Ukraine Relations And The Concept Of Strategic Partnership, Khrystyna Pelchar

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

A strategic partnership has become particularly relevant in the wake of the Russian war in Ukraine. Most studies focus on the historical perspective of particular special relations leaning toward the long-standing nature and stability of those relations. Others describe interstate partnerships as dynamic developments rather than static phenomena. Conventionally, strategic partnerships are multifaceted, including the spheres of economic cooperation, military assistance and partnership, and democracy promotion. Scholars also single out cultural proximity as an important factor facilitating mutual trust and feasibility of strategic partnership.

This thesis will discuss the historical background of the U.S.-Ukraine economic, socio-political, and military cooperation and …

“A Certain Brauch:” German-Georgian Palatine And Rhenish Immigrant Houses In Columbia County, New York And Their Vernacular Architectural Roots, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this archaeological and architectural survey of 18th Century Palatine and Rhenish immigrant houses in New York's Hudson Valley, specifically in Columbia County, I track the development of three houses from their earliest vernacular forms to those touched by the Georgian influence. The Georgian worldview, stemming from European Enlightenment ideals, began permeating colonial American society in the 18th Century. It's influence first began to touch the wealthy and elite most connected with mother Europe, and then trickled into more common society. I chronicle and analyze Germantown, NY's Reformed Sanctity Church Parsonage, Germantown, NY's Simeon Rockefeller House, and Clermont, NY's "Stone …

Accommodation And Coping In Medieval Catholic England: A Historical Dramaturgy Casebook For The Chester Mystery Cycle’S Play 14: Christ At The House Of Simon The Leper, Christ And The Moneylenders, And Judas’ Plot, Andrew J. Roberge

Senior Projects Spring 2022

In this historically focused dramaturgy casebook for the medieval Catholic Chester Mystery Cycle's Play 14, Christ at the House of Simon the Leper, Christ and the Moneylenders, and Judas’ Plot, I offer suggestions for Play 14's production as it might have appeared in the cycle's final year of performance, 1575. I contextualize and grapple with the play's antisemitisms, and also offer a brief history of antisemitism in medieval Europe. I also analyze Play 14 and the Chester Mystery Cycle for their rhetorical appeals to the medieval vernacular language, contexts, and events, as well as their anachronistic temporal and geographic …

The Spark Of Revolution: Lenin And Luxemburg On Spontaneity And The Revolution Of 1905, Maria Julia Hernandez Saez

Senior Projects Spring 2022

My project explores the debates between Lenin and Luxemburg on how to organize the working masses for revolution. I focus on the way they regard the spontaneity of the masses in this process. I analyze the ways their theory was put into practice, and proven right or wrong, in the Revolution of 1905.

History, Ritualization, And The Rhetoric Of Legitimacy In Decem Libri Historiarum And Wei Shu, Bo Wen (Kent) Zheng

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Historical scholarship since the Second World War has, in general, successfully challenged the nationalist notion that ethnic identities are essential and stable markers of self-hood. One of the most influential entries from this bibliography is Benedict Anderson’s seminal study on the “horizontal” affect of the nation-state, Imagined Communities(1983), wherein the author identifies print capitalism and mass literacy as key contributors to the birth of “national communities” in the modern parlance. Less well defined in Anderson’s story of the nation, however, is the potential effect of pre-modern historical experiences on trajectories of modern state-formation. In response, this thesis explores the …