History Commons^™

Working For The Benefit And Advancement Of Women: Three Women's Organizations That Commemorated The American Civil War, 1880-1920, Annette F. Guild

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the past forty years, scholars and members of the public alike have obsessed over the complex legacy of the American Civil War (1861-1865). As debates over Confederate monuments and the United States’ racial past have frequently emerged in politics, many Americans have disagreed as to how the Civil War should be remembered. In examining the evolution of Civil War memory in American society, numerous scholars have noted the important role that women’s organizations played in influencing the Civil War’s collective memory in the fifty years following the conflict. However, while scholars have noted the significance of these organizations for …

Digital Masculinity: An Analysis Of How Masculine Values Are Manifested In Online Spaces, Catherine Thompson

Honors Projects

In this research paper, I utilize previous research to demonstrate how the history of masculinity in America impacts views of social hierarchy in gendered spaces online. I describe how hegemonic masculinity affects how men view themselves and others to understand why men’s online groups like incels, pick-up artists, men’s rights activists, 4chan, and 8chan develop and thrive by providing men with groups where they can demonstrate hegemonic masculinity to other men through degrading women. Using this framework, I use a binary logistic regression model to quantify the relationship between men’s opinions surrounding internet behaviors and attitudes towards the internet with …

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at the relationship the state has with women's sexuality in the United States, specifically looking at how virginity animate the way rape trials are prosecuted.

Insane Asylums In Britain During The Nineteenth Century, Jeanna Mankins

History Theses

This thesis analyzes insane asylums, in Britain, during the nineteenth century and argues that government, society, and gender had a profound impact on insane asylums and determined the quality of care that female and male patients received as a consequence.

Taking Aim: The Evolution Of Women In Competitive Shooting Sports In The 20th Century United States, Alena Rose-Marie Buczynski

Masters Theses

Throughout history, women have been overlooked, discounted, and ignored for their skills and abilities as competitive and professional athletes. Competitive shooting sports were popular in the United States; however, men excluded women from participating in many of these activities until the early 19th century, when America saw the rise of famous markswomen such as Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, and Lillian Smith. These women challenged the masculinity of the sport of shooting and bested many of their male counterparts as they traveled and performed across the United States. In the 1970s, women found themselves entering the Olympic arena of competitive shooting …

Gender Dysphoria: The Widespread "Social" Disease Of The 21st Century, Aria Spencer

Undergraduate Research Symposium

There has been a supposed increase in the cases of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) in the past 10 years. The term ‘ROGD’ is a non medical phrase that has been widely adopted by members of anti transgender groups. This harmful classification has been the baseline for many anti transgender youth legislature that have been introduced in Americans states as recently as February of 2022. Gender dysphoria has been discredited as a ‘social media’ disease, and the fear of having LBGTQ+ people in communities has caused the harm and mistreatment of both the transgender youth and adults in America. Gender …

A Non-Normative Paradigm: Disability And Gender In Nineteenth-Century Gothic Literature, Malena Sol Pendola Biondi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Within nineteenth century society, normalcy is presented through unfeasible means of appearance and identity, leading to a rejection of the self. By exploring characters in Victorian gothic literature, who are marginalized by society, and invoking the work of Gail Weiss, Kim Hall, and others, this essay investigates the way these norms are immortalized through published representations and how they expose the lingering presence of rejection of disabled, queer, and gender-fluid bodies. Through the analysis of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, I look at the contextualization of marginalized existence compared to able-bodiedness and normalized …

Domestic Arts, Dates, Drugs, And Dress Codes: Scripps College's Early Attitudes Towards Gender, Sexuality, And Women's Education, Kathleen Mchale

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores how Scripps College's administration, faculty, and students dealt with expectations of gender roles and sexuality during the first two decades of the college's existence. It looks at the historical development of women's colleges, Scripps' curriculum and aims, architecture, residence life, rules and regulations, and applied these areas to discuss how students and other Scripps community members responded to norms about gender and sexuality.

A Workers' Paradise: Re-Integrating Newfoundland Into Colonial American History, Elena Hynes

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The island of Newfoundland is conspicuous in colonial British and North American histories, most particularly and paradoxically, in its absence, a state of affairs which this study aims to help address. Multiple factors, including a paucity of documentary sources and various historiographic trends, have traditionally contributed to Newfoundland’s marginalization within colonial historical narratives. However, developments in recent years have made Newfoundland’s potential integration into the broader colonial dialogue more feasible including the advent of the Atlantic perspective, the expansion of available sources, and the work of multiple regional historians who have challenged enduring historiographic trends characterizing Newfoundland colonial settlements as …

“What Sort Of Man Reads Playboy?”: Gender, Heterosexuality, And Reader Letters In Playboy Magazine, 1953-1963, Kess Carpenter

Major Papers

Existing Playboy scholarship overlooks the significance of magazine’s audience outside of the bachelor subculture it fathered in the 1950s. In fact, consumers fitting Playboy’s desired readership of white, financially affluent, single men formed only a small percentage of its actual subscribers. This study makes evident that students, soldiers, sailors, military servicemen, middle- and working- class men, both single and married, as well as women, made up most of its readership. To date, no historical study has been conducted of reader letters to Playboy, which reveal the magazine’s significance to this audience.

This paper argues that postwar men used Playboy as …

Oral Interview: Contextualizing The Women's Rights Movement In Tunisia Through Family History, Walid Zarrad

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

In their path towards emancipation and equal rights, Tunisian women have gone through a number of phases that seem to be directly linked to legal changes and cultural factors. In fact, the Code of Personal Status (CPS) of 1956 seems to be a milestone in the women’s movement, and its following amendments continued on this path. However, it is a lot more complex than that. A piece of legislation officially passing is not a simple determinant of the state of Women’s Rights in a country.

Through Dorra Mahfoudh Draoui’s “Report on Gender and Marriage in Tunisian Society” and my interview …

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

The Grizzly, September 24, 2020, Simra Mariam, Sam Beckman, Claude Wolfer, Layla Halterman, Shelsea Deravil, Liam Reilly, Kevin Melton, Sean Mcginley

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Celebrates the Commons Opening • A Not-so-Common Intellectual Experience • Strengthening Your Optimism Muscle • The Fringe Festival 2020 Goes Virtual • Opinion: All Students Should Have the Same CIE Experience; The Case for Pronouns • Pokemon Go Makes a Comeback • The New "Normal" for Ursinus College Athletics

Social Standards Of Imposition: Respectability And The Raj Through The Eyes Of Governess Marjorie Ussher, Erin A. Nelsen

Antonian Scholars Honors Program

The British Empire possesses a long history of imposing ways of thinking, political structures, economic structures, and social standards on their territories. From 1934 to 1940, during the final years of the Raj (British sovereignty in India), this imperialism extended to standards of beauty and respectability in Hyderabad, the capital of the Hyderabad state. These standards arise in the archived letters British governess Marjorie Ussher wrote to her family during this timeframe. Through a close reading of the letters, this thesis recognizes and reflects on Ussher’s aesthetics depictions of the people, objects, and the natural landscape around her. Within this …

"Festmachen": Männliche Zauberpraktiken Als Präventivmedicin, B. Ann Tlusty

Faculty Contributions to Books

This essay is part of a larger project examining martial magic – that is, masculine spells aimed at enlisting supernatural powers to become better fighters – as it was practiced by men in Germany between about 1500 and 1900. Here the focus is specifically on men who attempted to make themselves invulnerable using martial spells and blessings. Like many early modern magical practices, martial magic had religious overtones and often involved the abuse of sacred objects; at the same time, it drew heavily on ideas from the field of medicine.

"Between Two Fires": Gender And American Socialism In The Progressive Era, Elisia Harder

Senior Theses

The Progressive Era (1890-1920) in the United States was a time of immense change in both the political and private spheres. Movements which sought to fundamentally upend the political status quo gained in popularity, including that of socialism. Socialism promised equality for workers regardless of gender, something that appealed to many American women at the time. A myriad of upper/middle-class and working-class women were thus initially drawn to the socialist movement. These women, however, would not find the salvation they were promised. Instead, they would confront the very same misogyny they experienced in mainstream political parties, as their struggle was …

In Her Own Hands: How Girls And Women Used The Piano To Chart Their Futures, Expand Women's Roles, And Shape Music In America, 1880–1920, Sarah F. Litvin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

American girls and women used the parlor piano to reshape their lives between 1880 and 1920, the years when the instrument reached the height of its commercial and cultural popularity. Newspapers, memoirs, biographies, women’s magazines, personal papers, and trade publications show that female pianists engaged in public-facing piano play and work in pursuit of artistic expression, economic gain, self-actualization, social mobility, and social change. These motivations drove many to use their piano skills to play beyond the parlor, by studying in conservatory, working as classical and popular music performers and composers, founding and teaching at schools, working as department store …

Beach Bodies: Gender And The Beach In American Culture, 1880-1940, Margaret Elena Depond

History ETDs

This dissertation argues that American beaches, within the world of leisure and pleasure, were significant contested spaces of social change and debate. Overtime, from about 1880 to 1940, social restrictions loosened at the beach, allowing men, women, and people of color to express themselves in ways that had been previously controlled, curtailed, or proscribed. The emergence of mass popular amusements at the beach attracted a wide array of the American population. Both working-class and middle-class Americans absorbed the culture of new beach attractions, such as amusement parks, piers, boardwalks, and bathhouses. In doing so, they interacted more with each other …

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

Cuckoldry And The “Gone For A Soldier” Narrative: Infidelity And Performance Among Eighteenth-Century English Plebeians, Elias Hubbard

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project addresses existing historical arguments about the role of performance in eighteenth-century English plebeian infidelity cases, identifying some of the cultural scripts available to married men and women from popular texts in order to better understand cases of infidelity in contemporary plebeian marriages. The thesis seeks to clarify the effect of infidelity on a plebeian individual’s social standing and relationships, and to draw conclusions about the nature of plebeian infidelity, marriage, and gender in England through the long eighteenth century.

While examining contemporary public texts of cuckoldry, I address how homosocial behavior appears in narratives of cuckoldry, how the …

Co-Opted, Cults And The Classics: Highlighting The Magna Mater Cult In Rome, Janessa Reeves

Honors Projects

This paper argues for a more critical approach to classics, pushing for the de-sanctification of classical antiquity and deconstruction of ‘western civilization’ as a tool able to be co-opted by white supremacist agendas. In the latter part of the paper, I demonstrate what I hope this will look like through analysis of Roman reception of the Mother of the Gods cult, known in Rome as the cult of Cybele or Magna Mater, or the Phrygian cult, and how Roman reactions to the cult reveal xenophobic sentiments and toxic masculinity within the social fabric. Throughout this work, I engage with questions …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

Rewriting History: A Study Of How The History Of The Civil War Has Changed In Textbooks From 1876 To 2014, Skyler A. Campbell

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

History textbooks provide an interesting perspective into the views and attitudes of their respective time period. The way textbooks portray certain events and groups of people has a profound impact on the way children learn to view those groups and events. That impact then has the potential to trickle down to future generations, fabricating a historical narrative that sometimes avoids telling the whole truth, or uses selective wording to sway opinions on certain topics. This paper analyzes the changes seen in how the Civil War is written about in twelve textbooks dated from 1876 to 2014. Notable topics of discussion …

Swimming In A Sea Of No's: Controlling And Managing The New York Public Pools, Mette L. Jensen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Swimming in a Sea of No's: Managing and Controlling the New York Public Pools traces the genealogy of the regulations, surveillance, and rules employed at New York public pools. The thesis discusses the intent and implications of the spatial strategies created to order and control the environment surrounding the swimming pools, and discusses how municipal public pools as specific, local landscapes manifest broader social and cultural processes. The main focus is on the transformation of the pools during the 1980s and 1990s, two decades after the fiscal crisis in 1975, when the pools had become defunded, dysfunctional spaces. By tracing …

Race, Sexuality, And Masculinity On The Down Low, Stephen Kochenash

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In a so-called post-racial America, a new gay identity has flourished and come into the limelight. However, in recent years, researchers have concluded that not all men who have sex with other men (MSM) self-identify as gay, most noticeably a large population of Black men. It is possible that a tainted history of Black enslavement in this country that is inextricably linked with ideas of space, surveillance, subversion, and survival inform a Black male’s self-identification as being “on the down low” (DL). This begs the question: What does mainstream society view as gay-ness and how is the DL constructed …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2018

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Bas Bleus, Divorceuses, Deceitful Prostitutes Or “Live Allegories” Of Change? Parisian Working-Class Women And The Revolution Of 1848, Natasha A. Gardonyi

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis acts as both a history of the roles that Parisian working-class women played as writers, society members and insurgents during the revolutionary year of 1848, and an analysis of why they were vilified in the press as bas-bleus, divorceuses, deceitful prostitutes and more extensively as the individuals responsible for the failure of the revolution. It argues that women became “live allegories” of the changes that Paris was experiencing in the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly when a small minority of women radicalized from late April to June. These women galvanized anxieties that men and the upper …

Since The Time Of Eve : La Leche League And Communities Of Mothers Throughout History., Joanna Paxton Federico

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

La Leche League International (LLL) is the oldest and largest breastfeeding support group in the world. This thesis examines how, beginning in 1956, seven Catholic housewives from suburban Chicago built up the institutional knowledge to sustain a cohesive global network of breastfeeding mothers. It also explores how LLL managed this knowledge over time in response to developments in scholarship and changing social conditions. Based on a narrative analysis of LLL publications, this thesis argues that the League’s founders drew selectively from existing bodies of knowledge and from their own cultural perspectives to establish a sense of community among breastfeeding women. …

Southern Veils : The Sisters Of Loretto In Early National Kentucky., Hannah O'Daniel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the experiences of Roman Catholic women who joined the Sisters of Loretto, a community of women religious in rural Washington and Nelson Counties, Kentucky, between the 1790s and 1826. It argues that the Sisters of Loretto used faith to interpret and respond to unfolding events in the early nation. The women sought to combat moral slippage and restore providential favor in the face of local Catholic institutional instability, global Protestant evangelical movements, war and economic crisis, and a tuberculosis outbreak. The Lorettines faced financial, social, and cultural pressures—including an economic depression, a culture that celebrated family formation …

Single, Unwed, And Pregnant In Victorian London: Narratives Of Working Class Agency And Negotiation, Virginia L. Grimaldi

Madison Historical Review

Unmarried working women who got pregnant in Victorian London and were abandoned by the fathers were in a sticky situation. If a woman kept the baby, she would unlikely be able to provide for it, especially under the ‘Bastardly Act’ of the 1834 Poor Law, which deemed all illegitimate children under the sole responsibility of the mother. If she concealed her pregnancy and abandoned the child, or risked her life by having an illegal abortion, she would at best be held liable for infanticide, at worst, dead. One institutional option available to these vulnerable mothers was the London Foundling Hospital …