History Commons^™

Time Machine Research And Approach, Tarek Bouraque

Theses and Dissertations

Time Machine is a hybrid documentary that explores the logics of enslavement, colonialism, eurocentrism and their interconnectedness in our globalized world. Mustapha Azemmouri, born in 1502, undertakes a journey to the 21st century to recount his own story of enslavement and exploration, and reflects on a collective puzzle of 500 years of hidden history.

Polish Organizations And Chicago's Polonia, 1880-1930, Anna Kathleen Leska

Theses and Dissertations

Despite a large, growing amount of literature on the Polish community in Chicago, there remains a lack of information about organizations in the Polish communities. Organizations in the Polish community are generally spoken about in one of two ways. Either one organization is spoken about in great depth or organizations are barely touched upon. This work seeks to bridge both of those types of work by focusing both on small organizations and large organizations and connecting them through the Poles who were members.

The Oral History of Chicago’s Polonia project, 1880-1930, is used in this work to limit the number …

The Performativity Of Indigenous Protest: Vernon Bellecourt And The First Encounters Exhibition, Robert Olive Little Jackson

Theses and Dissertations

At the Science Museum in St. Paul, Minnesota, Vernon Bellecourt of the American Indian Movement came to protest the arrival of the First Encounters: Spanish Explorations in the Caribbean and the United States: 1492-1570. To Bellecourt, the false narrative of Indigenous peoples represented the reality of the Columbus narrative that all indigenous peoples suffer from today. The gestures that Bellecourt engaged in during his protest performed an historic and powerful interconnected narrative. Bellecourt meant to perform an Indigenous cultural narrative of his own over that established Columbian narrative.

This paper will locate First Encounters within a long tradition of interrelated …

I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo, Luis A. Vasquez La Roche

Theses and Dissertations

I Hope My Black Skin Don't Dirt This White Tuxedo is a series of works--sculpture, installations, and performances--that explore themes of shame, failure, commodity, ephemerality, ritual, resilience, erasure, race, and death. The research and interest in these themes stem from a page of the Trinidad and Tobago Slave Registry. I use the research that surrounds this document to highlight different moments in history, in my personal life, and to imagine near futures.

Robert Cowley: Living Free During Slavery In Eighteenth-Century Richmond, Virginia, Ana F. Edwards

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the life of Robert Cowley, a formerly enslaved man living free during slavery in eighteenth-century Richmond, Virginia. The first chapter examines Cowley’s enslaved life through the records of others. The data collectors and historians of early America did not intend to capture the truth of Black people’s American experiences, except as defined their enslavement--people in service to the wealth-building capacity of the nation. Yet the lives of Black people who lived in proximity to prominent whites can be glimpsed in a variety of records and writings from account books to deeds, from private letters to newspaper advertisements. …