History Commons^™

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

The Political, The Personal, And The Personified: 18th Century British Political Caricature Art And The Formation Of The British Empire’S Identity, Sarah Johns

History Honors Papers

An image is often capable of communicating a number of things to a viewer, and political caricature in the eighteenth-century British metropole is one clear example of this. Political caricature became a useful tool for the wealthy—especially white men—to engage in discussions about the power of the British Empire as it continued to expand and grow in strength in comparison to other European Empires at the time. Even so, with the coming of the American conflict, things changed. No longer could these men be sure of what a British identity entailed. A family fractured, changing gender norms, evolving concepts of …

Women’S Advocate Or Racist Hypocrite: Gertrud Scholtz-Klink And The Contradictions Of Women In Nazi Ideology, Mary C. S. Frasier

Student Publications

The Reichsfrauenführerin, Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, led the National Socialist Women’s League from 1934 until she went into hiding in 1945. During her career in the Nazi Party, she created a female focused sector of the party that promoted pronatalist propaganda, discouraged women from engaging in politics, and urged women to only perform gender-suitable work. In contradiction to her message, Scholtz-Klink was the highest-ranking female political figure and a divorcee, who regularly chose her political career with the Nazi Party over her duties in the private sphere. Although she had little to no political power in the inner circle because of her …

“Let Him Be Tried Before An English Jury; Let Him Be Tried Properly”: Race, Blackness, And English Justice In Mid- To Late-Victorian England, Hugo F. Stack

Student Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Centering The Black Woman As A Subject Of Portraiture In Nineteenth-Century French Art, Llyleila Richardson

XULAneXUS

Until the 19th century, artistic depictions of black women by European artists were rare. Often they were relegated to the background as domestic attendants to European noblewomen, serving as symbols of the latter’s colonial wealth and further provide contrast with the darkness of their skin against the aristocratic fairness of their white mistresses. The transition into the 19th century was a turbulent period in European history, especially for France, as the country saw multiple revolts and governmental changes at home. Simultaneously colonization overseas continued to expand, creating previously unheard-of access to foreign cultures and ideas.

Black women became an interesting …

The Color Of Desire: Contradictions Of Race, Sex, And Gay Rights In The Federal Republic Of Germany, Christopher B. Ewing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that the current artificial dichotomy between European and Islamic sexual mores is rooted in competing impulses in German homosexual rights movements to seek solidarity with communities of color while simultaneously exoticizing their members. Interdisciplinary scholars of contemporary Europe have examined the many ways in which white Europeans have imagined Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynistic, rendering it incompatible with Western Europe's purported commitment to LGBT rights. My research historicizes this work by showing how, in the struggle against legal persecution and discrimination, homosexual West Germans turned to anti-racism as a political tool while simultaneously seeking out "exotic" …

Crusader Orientalism: Depictions Of The Eastern Other In Medieval Crusade Writings, Henry Schaller

Summer Research

This paper examines the ways in which different texts (crusade chronicles, French epic poems, and crusade sermons) written during the early Crusades and Crusader States created a coherent portrait of the East. It compare the ways Edward Said’s Orientalism, which examines colonial texts, and the effect their portrait of the East had on European identity, with texts of the Crusades. These texts cast the Orient into a place that was the antithesis of Christendom, defining what it meant to have a Christian, European white identity. This was done through representations of: threatening sexuality, skin color, unlimited wealth, and a fictional …

Belonging To The Imperial Nation: Rethinking The History Of The First World War In Britain And Its Empire, Susan R. Grayzel

History Faculty Publications

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014–18, the British government set aside funds for a range of commemorative activities. These included a number of “engagement centres” that aimed to bring together academics and local community members in addition to providing separate arts-related programming.1 The Imperial War Museum reworked its main First World War galleries, which opened with great fanfare at the centenary’s start. This denotes a kind of publicly sanctioned interest in a war that Britain had won, after all, but that popular memory had enshrined as something quite different, something that required …

Pre-Occupied Spaces: Remapping Italy's Transnational Migrations And Colonial Legacies [Table Of Contents], Teresa Fiore

Sociology

By linking Italy’s long history of emigration to all continents in the world, contemporary transnational migrations directed toward it, as well as the country’s colonial legacies, Fiore’s book poses Italy as a unique laboratory to rethink national belonging at large in our era of massive demographic mobility. Through an interdisciplinary cultural approach, the book finds traces of globalization in a past that may hold interesting lessons about inclusiveness for the present.

Fiore rethinks Italy’s formation and development on a transnational map through cultural analysis of travel, living, and work spaces as depicted in literary, filmic, and musical texts. By demonstrating …

The Hunt For Lost Blood: Nazi Germanization Policy In Occupied Europe, Bradley Jared Nichols

Doctoral Dissertations

Throughout the Second World War, the National Socialist regime enacted a wide-ranging campaign to enhance the German nation by assimilating conquered populations into its demographic structure. At the axis of this multifaceted enterprise stood the Re-Germanization Procedure, or WED – a special program designed to absorb “racially valuable” foreigners into the German body politic by sending them to live with host families in the very heart of the Third Reich. The following dissertation provides the first ever study of the Re-Germanization Procedure and examines the momentous influence this initiative exerted over Nazi policy-making in occupied Europe. It is a story …

Developing Little England: Public Health, Popular Protest, And Colonial Policy In Barbados, 1918-1940, Brittany J. Merritt

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes struggles over the development of Barbadian health and sanitation during the period between the world wars. In doing so, it examines how the British Empire tried to use development policies to maintain its power overseas during the interwar years. During this period, British policymakers sought to improve health and sanitation to pacify restive Barbadian laborers influenced by transnational pan-African and socialist ideas following the First World War. However, white Barbadian elites, influenced by ideas of eugenics and population control, opposed metropolitan efforts to develop health and sanitation in the colony. Rather than repairing the colonial relationship, British …

The Language Of Race In Revolutionary France And Saint-Domingue, 1789-1792, Jeffery L. Stanley

Theses and Dissertations--History

This project studies the historical development of racialist language during the French Revolution as politicians, free people of color, and colonial whites debated the political status of France’s free people of color population. It examines the negotiation of a racialist language that bolstered colonial racial hierarchies with an egalitarian language that sought to level the corporate structures of the Old Regime. I look especially at the ways that language served as a management device to articulate and legitimize new relationships of power in the political culture of the French Revolution. I connect developments in France to the colonies by showing …

A Conquering Race: The Birth Of Social Darwinism In Pre-War Germany, Andrew T. Murphree

Andrew T Murphree

Popular opinion suggests that certain political and military leaders throughout history are the primary agents for change in civilization; however, such a conclusion represents a serious oversight regarding the powerful potential of emerging worldviews to dictate epochal moments throughout mankind. Certainly, dynamic figures rise to prominence to lead movements of conservatism, progression, and moderation, but the conduit of ideas serves as the essential catalytic force that ignites and sustains these patterns. The Great War of the twentieth century was a complex global conflict of immense proportions, unlike anything the world had ever known. Historians perhaps express the greatest perplexity in …

“El No Murio, El Se Multiplico!” Hugo Chávez : The Leadership And The Legacy On Race, Cynthia Ann Mckinney

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

“Chávez, Chávez, Chávez: Chávez no murio, se multiplico!” was the chant outside the National Assembly building after several days of mourning the death of the first President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. This study investigates the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his legacy on race as seen through the eyes and experiences of selected interviewees and his legacy on race. The interviewees were selected based on familiarity with the person and policies of the leadership of Hugo Chávez and his legacy on race. Unfortunately, not much has been written about this aspect of Hugo Chávez despite the myriad attempts …

The Gendering Of Space In Colonial Burma : Race, Sex, And Power On The Road To Mandalay 1888-1948, Michael Zaborowski

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This thesis contends that British colonials reproduced Victorian ideas about separate roles and spaces for the genders in Burma during the period of British rule from 1888 to 1948. This reproduction affected and was affected by issues of race, sex, power, and identity in the ruling British class and the subject Burmese population.

What Should We Do With The Social Construct Of Race?, Jason A. Gordon

Senior Theses and Projects

Today, race is something that many people still consider to be an essential component of their identities. Even though race has been proven to be nothing more than a social construct, it still is in many regards something that the people living in our society tend take for granted. In this paper, the concept of race will be critically examined and analyzed. The history of race will be closely followed and it will be discussed as to whether or not this social construct is something worth preserving.

Feeble To Effeminacy: Race And Gender In The British Imperial Consciousness 1837-1901, Brett Linsley

Grand Valley Journal of History

Scholars of British imperialism have given ample attention to European concepts of race and gender during the Victorian era. Much of the literature has vaguely suggested a symbiotic relationship between the concepts, but failed to assert any definitive theories. The following attempts to fill this gap by putting forward a critical interpretation of the roles that race and gender played in the imperial consciousness during this epoch. The paper demonstrates that the perceptions of race that were rampant on the imperial periphery were the unique synthesis of evolving gender identities in the Victorian metropole.

Whose Britain Is This Anyway: Questioning Race, Class, Immigration And Nationality In Great Britain Between 1948 And 2011, Christina Jayne Cruce

Senior Independent Study Theses

This work discusses how questions of race, class, immigration and nationality have changed since 1948. To answer it I looked at the 1981 Brixton race riot and the 2011 UK urban youth riots. I argue that, despite improvements in black and white race relations, British society has continued to discriminate against black-Brits on multiple levels. I have also found that since the 1980s there has been a governmental and, more generally, a societal neglect of the working-class population as a whole. In regards to the findings of other scholars and historians, my work looks at both urban, poor blacks and …

Ethnicity, Race, And Nationalism, Rogers Brubaker

Rogers Brubaker

This article traces the contours of a comparative, global, crossdisciplinary, and multiparadigmatic field that construes ethnicity, race, and nationhood as a single integrated family of forms of cultural understanding, social organization, and political contestation. It then reviews a set of diverse yet related efforts to study the way ethnicity, race, and nation work in social, cultural, and political life without treating ethnic groups, races, or nations as substantial entities, or even taking such groups as units of analysis at all.

Race And Redemption: Racial And Ethnic Evolution In Rudolf Steiner's Anthroposophy, Peter Staudenmaier

History Faculty Research and Publications

With its origins in modern Theosophy, Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy is built around a racial view of human nature arranged in a hierarchical framework. This article examines the details of the Anthroposophical theory of cosmic and individual redemption and draws out the characteristic assumptions about racial and ethnic difference that underlie it. Particular attention is given to textual sources unavailable in English, which reveal the specific features of Steiner’s account of “race evolution” and “soul evolution.” Placing Steiner’s worldview in its historical and ideological context, the article highlights the contours of racial thinking within a prominent alternative spiritual movement and delineates …

Germany, Afterwards, Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann

Human Rights & Human Welfare

A review of:

Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Postwar Germany and America. By Heide Fehrenbach. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.

and

The Holocaust and Catholic Conscience: Cardinal Aloisius Muench and the Guilt Question in Germany. By Suzanne Brown-Fleming. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.

and

A Woman in Berlin. By Anonymous. New York: Henry Holt, 2000.

and

Johanna Krause, Twice Persecuted: Surviving in Nazi Germany and Communist East Germany. By Carolyn Gammon and Christiane Hemker. Waterloo, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2007.

Beyond 'Identity', Rogers Brubaker, Frederick Cooper

Rogers Brubaker

No abstract provided.