History Commons^™

In Response To Totalitarianism: The Hawkish Cold War Foreign Diplomacy Of The Europeans Kissinger And Brzezinski During American Détente, D'Otta M. Sniezak

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Despite historians describing the 1970s as a time of détente, both National Security Advisors that dominated America’s foreign policy pursued harsh stances against the Soviet Union. Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski sabotaged peace talks in order help the United States keep its edge against the other world superpower. Most historians point to the similarities between these two men, but what is most often left out of the narrative is that both men witnessed persecution at the hands of totalitarian governments: Kissinger by the Nazis and Brzezinski by both the Nazis and the Soviets. This influence is strong in their first …

Arab Nationalism In Interwar Period Iraq: A Descriptive Analysis Of Sami Shawkat’S Al-Futuwwah Youth Movement, Saman Nasser

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Abstract

Historiography of Iraqi Arab nationalism has studied the Iraqi Futuwwah Youth Movement of the interwar period in relation to the European fascist youth model of the post-World War I era. Moreover, the futuwwah is limited by linking its objective to training high school students of Iraq in the area of paramilitary exercises. By re-reading the futuwwah lectures of Sami Shawkat, the Director General of Education and founder of the futuwwah in Iraq, this thesis demonstrates how the movement was rather at the core of Iraqi Arab nationalism. The lectures appear in Shawkat’s book Hadhihi Ahdafuna (These are Our Goals), …

One Great And Noble Source: The Development Of Democratic Thought In Early America, 1776-1787, Kelly Coats

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

It had been a long summer, filled with hot and muggy forecasts with temperatures ranging from the low 60s to the high 90s. One can imagine what it must have felt like, anywhere between forty and fifty men crowded into the small chamber at Independence Hall in Philadelphia over the course of the summer which was described by many to be “hot and oppressive.” For the past four months and change, delegates to the Federal Convention had come together to accomplish what, at the beginning of the summer, seemed to be an impossible task: to form a new government. Perhaps …

Did Hollywood Take Theatre "By Hook Or By Crook?", Catherine S. Wright

MSU Graduate Theses

Hollywood and Theatre have been partners in producing entertainment for over 100 years. The relationship was fruitful for both parties, but Hollywood moguls and playwrights battled over ownership of the work and crafting of its creative nucleus, story and character. Theatre was the dominant entertainment right before the rise of motion pictures. Once Hollywood’s talkies closed the curtain on silent films, playwrights had a high creative worth to movie makers. In the cinema, story and dialogue were essential for its survival and growth. Playwrights were courted by the Hollywood studio heads but were not offered equal partnership as they were …

A Tangled Web: Quakers And The Atlantic Slave System 1625 – 1770., Kate Freedman

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation re-contextualizes the Quakers’ history as anti-slavery pioneers by exploring the crucial economic role that the slave-based economies of the British West Indies played in establishing the Quakers as a powerful sect in the seventeenth and eighteenth century Atlantic world. Quakers were driven by their faith to foster a spirit of equality inside and outside of their meetings. They were among the first European religious sects to allow women to preach, to oppose violence and war, and, beginning in the middle of the eighteenth-century, to ban the practice of enslaving other human beings within their membership. Yet the Quakers …

The American Whig Party And Slavery, Mitchell Rocklin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explains why the American Whig Party consisted of the most anti-slavery and pro-slavery segments of American politics during the Second Party System (1834 to 1854), as well as why it broke up. I argue that slavery was a major reason for the creation and continuation of the party, particularly in the South. A common Whig political culture – economically capitalistic while also emphasizing the integrity of the “social fabric” over individualism – helped spur both northern and southern Whigs to oppose Democrats over slavery from opposite perspectives. Southern Whigs honestly and understandably saw themselves as more pro-slavery, prioritizing …

The Passing Away Of Nature: Two Essays On Natural History, Domenic Hutchins

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis begins by examining the natural-historical character of Theodor Adorno’s thought and corpus, 1931–1969, by way of engaging the centennial of the October Russian Revolution. In the first three chapters we attempt to read Adorno’s corpus as écriture or writing whereupon unconscious writing of history is transcribed. This literary-driven approach to Adorno’s work highlights the primacy of history for his thought, whence his late-Marxism issues that culminates in what we call a politics of experience. Given the historical experience we seek to make legible heretofore, in chapter four we briefly turn to the hyper-object of ongoing and future anthropogenic …

Bread And Repression, Too: The Battle For Labor’S Memory And The Lawrence Textile Strike Of 1912, Andrew Hubbard

Honors Theses

This thesis focuses on the historiography of the Lawrence Textile Strike of 1912 as representative of a larger trend of repression of American labor narratives. It draws from oral history accounts, news coverage and analysis from 1912, resources at the Lawrence History Center collected throughout the city’s process of memorialization, secondary historical accounts of the event, and formative works of labor history.

The first chapter introduces the American labor narrative, the history of repression by authority, the efforts of labor historians to memorialize suppressed history, and the role that monuments, historians, and popular fictional accounts play in the formation …

Alternative Marriage Practices Of Wartime Urban China In Discourse And Practice (1937-1949), Charlotte Cotter

Student Work

A 2017-2018 William Prize for best essay in East Asian Studies was awarded to Charlotte Cotter (Grace Hopper College '18) for her essay submitted to the East Asian Studies Program, "Alternative Marriage Practices of Wartime Urban China in Discourse and Practice (1937-1949)” (Peter C. Perdue, Professor of History, advisor).

Charlotte Cotter’s thesis, “Alternative Marriage Practices of Wartime Urban China in Discourse and Practice (1937-1949)” is an excellent study of how women in Shanghai during wartime explored different modes of intimate life, including alternate forms of marriage, when the upheaval of war tore apart families and disrupted personal relations. Throughout …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

Literarische Filmsimulation: Heinrich Eduard Jacobs Medienphilosophische Filmästhetik In "Blut Und Zelluloid", Paula Vosse

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Heinrich Eduard Jacob´s novel Blut und Zelluloid was published in 1929 and therefore mostly reviewed as a critical artwork regarding European film-propaganda before the outbreak of the Second World War. This thesis provides the interested scholar with a different approach: It discusses Jacob´s media-philosophical method to simulate the upcoming medium film in literature. With his implicitly and explicitly organized systems of diverse media, he circumvents constraints of the Paragone-discourse and offers a well-balanced literary construction.

Jacob´s method is compared with Pinthus´ Kinobuch and Pirandello´s Shoot!, while Simmel and Benjamin provide the thesis with a fundament to support Jacob´s theoretical approach. …

Counter Currents: Arthur Lower, Lincoln Colcord, And Ideological Isolationism In Interwar Canada And The United States, James Spruce

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a comparative study of the ideology of isolationism in interwar Canada and the United States. It proceeds with that comparison using an individual subject from each country as a case study. For Canada, the subject is the historian and social scientist Arthur R.M. Lower; for the United States, it is the journalist and fiction author Lincoln Ross Colcord. Both men are worthy of study as individual isolationists of note, but they are also appropriate for the comparison because of the similarity of their isolationist positions and due to their personal backgrounds. Through the 1930s, Colcord and Lower …

The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The Confluence Of Evangelical And Enlightenment Thought In British America, Brandon S. Durbin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

Symbols Purely Mechanical: Language, Modernity, And The Rise Of The Algorithm, 1605–1862, Jeffrey M. Binder

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In recent decades, scholars in both Digital Humanities and Critical Media Studies have encountered a disconnect between algorithms and what are typically thought of as “cultural” concerns. In Digital Humanities, researchers employing algorithmic methods in the study of literature have faced what Alan Liu has called a “meaning problem”—a difficulty in reconciling computational results with traditional forms of interpretation. Conversely, in Critical Media Studies, some thinkers have questioned the adequacy of interpretive methods as means of understanding computational systems. This dissertation offers a historical account of how this disconnect came into being by examining the attitudes toward algorithms that existed …

Towards An Agreed Definition Of Sustainability: Exploring The Concept Of Sustainability In Amherst, Massachusetts, Babatunde Ajao

Capstone Collection

Many educators agree that to learning about sustainability and discussing it’s implications on values, ethics and the role of humans are essential. With so many moving parts it is difficult to determine a sustainable assessment to encompass the changing world. The time has come for us to ask reflective questions about what exactly sustainability means. How has the term sustainability been used worldwide? What was the goal of sustainability and what is the result? Is there a better alternative to achieving this goal? By identifying the characteristics of best practice for sustainability, we take a step towards understanding the concept …

Death And Taxidermy: How The Process Of Taxidermy Ties In To Modern Society’S Discomfort With Death, Caitlin Monroe

History Undergraduate Theses

“Death and Taxidermy: How the Process of Taxidermy ties in to Modern Society’s Discomfort with Death” examines the relationship between current western discomfort with taxidermy and the strengthening relationship of companion animals with humans. This strengthening of the relationship is facilitating the rising level of grief that comes with losing a pet thus allowing that loss to equate to the loss of a family member. By dispelling the mystery surrounding the process by which a taxidermy specimen is made, where it comes from and why these specimens are vital to educational advancement in the museum, we can discuss why society …

Rescinding Rancière: An Investigation Into The Conservative Tendencies Of A Leading Proponent Of Radical Democracy, And A Reconstruction Of The Participatory Democracy Of Ancient Athens, Tyler J. Olsen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis advances a critique of the political theory of Jacques Rancière, focusing on the problems that arise as a result of its rigid form combined with its narrow content. I argue that Rancière gets caught in a practice of immanent critique that merely presupposes bourgeois abstract right; and that his ontological and pragmatic commitments prohibit him from projecting a norm that would transcend the liberal order. I trace these ontological and pragmatic commitments in detail by examining the intellectual milieu from which Rancière’s project emerged, the post-foundational political philosophy of the 1980s, with particular attention given to Claude Lefort. …

Greedy Bastards, Nathaniel Vergoz Carlsen

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

"Contra Haereticos Accingantur": The Union Of Crusading And Anti-Heresy Propaganda, Bryan E. Peterson

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study assesses the intersection of crusading and heresy repression in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The event that encapsulates this intersection was the Albigensian Crusade, a two-decades long conflict that befell the south of France, or Occitania. The papacy, aligned with northern lords and other willing Christians, took up arms to defend the Church from the Cathar heresy’s corrupting influence. This conflict marked a new development in Christian acts of violence. While the Church had crusaded against many different enemies—even branding some as heretics—before 1209, the Church had never called a crusade for the explicit purpose of …

South Side, World Wide: The Fusion Of History And Literature In Richard Wright And James T. Farrell's Chicago, Malachi Zachary Hayes

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies and The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Helene Stöcker, Weimar Germany And Prophylactics: An Investigation Into The Context And Effects Of The Reichsgesestz Zur Bekämpfung Geschlechtskrankheiten, Joshua Stern

Dissertations and Theses

This paper investigates German gender studies in the Weimar Era. It looks at a specific law, passed regarding contraceptive devices. It seeks to show how women were presented with a guise of freedom, while living in a truly paternalistic society.

The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis interrogated the relationship between abolition and the evangelical revival in Britain through the life of John Newton. Newton, though not representative of every abolitionist, was a vital figure in the movement. His influence on Hannah More and William Wilberforce along with his contributions to the Parliamentary hearings made him a key aspect of its success. How he came to fulfill that role was a long and complex journey, both in terms of his religion and his understanding of slavery. He began his life under the spiritual direction of his pious, Dissenting mother, became an atheist by nineteen, and …

The Political Nature Of The Paris Commune Of 1871 And Manifestations Of Marxist Ideology In The Official Publications Of The Central Committee, Emily M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Historians originally claimed that the 1871 Paris Commune was inspired by Karl Marx. Since the 1960s, however, this assertion has been rejected by scholars who either claim that Marx had no influence over the Paris Communards or do not address the possibility that this influence existed. Many scholars have also claimed that the Commune was not political in any way, but was a rebellion inspired by patriotism, bitterness for the Versailles government’s capitulation of Paris to Prussia, or a spontaneous reaction to hostility from the national army’s attempt to disarm the indignant, rapidly organizing Parisian workers who called for municipal …

Paul Piccone’S Providential Moment: Phenomenology, Subjectivity, And 20th Century Marxism In Telos, Jacob A. Ulmschneider

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the intellectual history of editor, writer, and philosopher, Paul Piccone and Telos, an independent journal of contemporary critical theory, which he founded in 1968. Born in Italy, Piccone lived most of his life in the United States, earning his Ph.D. in philosophy at SUNY-Buffalo in 1970. Piccone served as Telos’ editor and a major contributor from 1968 to 2004. This thesis follows the trajectory of his thought by contextualizing his writing within the broader world of Marxist, and eventually post-Marxist, political philosophy. Telos also concerned itself with modern interpretations of historical dialectics and early 20^th-century …