History Commons^™

Missionaries And Magic: Freed People, Conjure And Reformation During Southern Reconstruction, Sanaa Belton

Undergraduate Research Awards

I argue in the pages to follow that during the Reconstruction period, reformation efforts by white northern activists attempted to shift the perception of Conjure from a dangerous yet useful spiritual tradition that served both the enslaved and their enslavers, to a spiritual tradition representative of a savage and backwards African people. Mainstream religious movements of the 1800s, the same movements that contributed to the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s, were centered on the moral reformation of the United States. Missionary societies that branched off from these larger religious movements sent workers into southern states to …

Bitcoin And The American Conflict Over Money And Property, Jacob Smagula

CMC Senior Theses

I argue that Bitcoin is the latest expression of the recurring American conflict over who controls the terms of money and property, and that the political coalition formed around Bitcoin shares the same characteristics as earlier coalitions formed around this struggle. I review three historical cases that each produced a coalition opposing the existing monetary order: the Bank War of the 1830s, the Free Silver movement of the 1890s, and the populist backlash against the Federal Reserve during the 1979 Farm Crisis and the 2008 Great Recession. I find that Bitcoin’s architecture, which allows for self-custody, permissionless access, and an …

Creating A Modern American Piano: Antecedent, Launch, And Reinvention Of Mason & Hamlin's Piano Line Through 1905, Arian Sheets

Dissertations and Theses

The American piano industry was in a significant period of technical innovation, increased production, and standardization during the second half of the nineteenth century. This resulted in the American form of the instrument dominating the design and sound ideals still expected of the modern piano. Mason & Hamlin, a major reed organ company, entered the piano market in the early 1880s, relatively late compared to the largest, and most market-dominant companies, such as Steinway and Chickering. This thesis examines the origin and early implementation of the designs and innovations that have become standard for the modern American piano, and how …

Forging Industry: Craft Practice At The Delaware Mine Blacksmith Shop, Lucy A. Gibbs

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis examines the archaeological remains of a nineteenth-century blacksmith shop associated with the Delaware Mine Site in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Blacksmiths played an important role in early mining operations, providing the metalworking services and tool maintenance necessary to support mineral extraction. Drawing on evidence from the 2025 Michigan Technological University field school, the study investigates the shop’s operational lifespan, organization, and potential activities as it supported daily mining operations. Artifact analysis, spatial reconstruction, soil testing, and archival sources assist in reconstructing shop functions and history.

Results indicate that the shop was likely constructed during the earliest development of the …

Presidential Slaves: The Story Of Black People In The Lives Of Antebellum U.S. Presidents, Nika Davis

History Dissertations

The historical narrative about American slavery included many topics such as the African slave trade, the Middle Passage, slave culture, rebellions, religion, and abolition.  This study revealed more information to be examined in the record of American slavery relating to the presidents of the United States and their enslaved laborers.  This oversight proved prevalent during the years leading to the American Civil War from 1820-1860.  Therefore, this dissertation focused upon the enslaved and free Black people who intersected with the presidents and their friends, political acquaintances, and family.  By studying their lives, this dissertation revealed that the slaves associated with …

Fragments Of Time: The Legacy Of Luna Kaufman, Ariel Espinoza Collantes

Cohort 2025-2026

Ariel Espinoza is a Junior in the Honors Program at Seton Hall University, majoring in Political Science with a minor in Legal Studies in Business. Her project explores the life and legacy of Luna Kaufman, a Holocaust survivor, educator, and arts advocate, through archival research conducted at Seton Hall. Using a podcast format, Ariel examines how Kaufman’s experiences shaped her commitment to music, theater, and cultural preservation, and how she used the arts as a means of promoting memory, resilience, and understanding. Ariel's work highlights the role of archives as “time machines,” showing how the past continues to inform the …

Continental Violence And The "Oregon Question": George Frederick Ruxton And The Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest, Rory Orion Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper builds on recent efforts to depict Indigenous polities across North America in their international relations with European and Euro-American colonists and their centralized governments. It examines George Frederick Ruxton, a private English citizen and former army lieutenant, as he developed his response to the U.S.-British Oregon dispute while living in London in early 1846. He concluded that continental warfare was imminent and took overt steps to influence British policy, which he believed could halt U.S. expansion and definitively resolve the “Oregon Question.”

“For Rescuing His Horse”: An Anthrozoological Approach To Dissent In Seventeenth-Century New England, Richard Mcgee

Open Access Master's Theses

The seventeenth-century colonization of New England entailed varying social, political, economic, cultural, and religious processes that were driven by and impacted several peoples. However, the presence of animals is undermentioned. This thesis forms an animal history of seventeenth-century New England, explains how different peoples understood human-animal relations, and evaluates how human-animal connectivity impacted how people conceptualized and conducted settler-colonialism. This thesis especially interrogates why some Puritan colonists limited different understandings of human-animal relations in the 1600s, namely from Indigenous Peoples, Quakers, and dissenting colonists deemed criminals. This thesis proposes that some Puritans restricted different concepts of human-animal relations because those …

Green As Cure: The City Beautiful Movement And The Spatial Politics Of Health, 1870-1950, Avi Patel

Library Map Prize

At the turn of the twentieth century, Progressive Era reformers understood the American city not merely as disordered but as pathological—an environment that bred disease and eroded civic life. This thesis argues that the City Beautiful Movement (CBM), embodied in Washington's 1902 McMillan Plan, advanced a spatial logic it terms "green as cure:" the conviction that disciplined landscape design could function as a form of environmental medicine, restoring health to the urban body. Drawing on maps, planning documents, and congressional reports, the thesis shows how plans defined disorder, prescribed intervention, and embedded assumptions about race and belonging into the built …

"Queens Of Ghost-Land" 134 Years Later: Un-Masking An Appalachian Witchcraft Accuser, Aine Norris

English Faculty Publications

In 1891, newspapers across America printed a story about witches in the Appalachian Mountains and the alleged powers they possessed to control their small farming community. The article was scathing in accusation and ultimately contributed to continued othering of the women profiled, increasing their visible vulnerabilities of class, gender, and societal status. Despite an implied familiarity with the region, the article was published with initials for its byline, an act that simultaneously identified the author to locals as historian Eva Grant while offering her anonymized national protection as a subject expert. For over five years the accusations were re‐printed in …

Contesting Conservatism: Neoconservatives, Evangelicals, And Foreign Policy In The Reagan Era, Emily B. Kissel

All Master's Theses

This thesis explores how foreign policy shaped and destabilized the conservative coalition during the Reagan era. Although historians often portray the conservative movement of the 1980s as unified by anti-communism, this study argues that foreign policy debates exposed significant ideological divisions between neoconservatives, evangelical Christians, and the broader conservative base. These groups shared common goals but disagreed over the moral and strategic direction of American foreign policy. Neoconservatives and evangelical Christians wanted the same muscular assertion of American power abroad, but the factions framed foreign policy differently to appeal to their supporters. These policies and aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric struck widespread …

Contesting Conservatism: Neoconservatives, Evangelicals, And Foreign Policy In The Reagan Era, Emily B. Kissel

All Master's Theses

This thesis explores how foreign policy shaped and destabilized the conservative coalition during the Reagan era. Although historians often portray the conservative movement of the 1980s as unified by anti-communism, this study argues that foreign policy debates exposed significant ideological divisions between neoconservatives, evangelical Christians, and the broader conservative base. These groups shared common goals but disagreed over the moral and strategic direction of American foreign policy. Neoconservatives and evangelical Christians wanted the same muscular assertion of American power abroad, but the factions framed foreign policy differently to appeal to their supporters. These policies and aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric struck widespread …

Religion, Death, And Journalism In The Christian Science Monitor, 1908-1918, Natalie Hammill

All Master's Theses

The Christian Science Monitor was created in 1908 by the Christian Science Church and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy, with the goal to “injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” The question arises, how does a religion that does not believe in physical reality produce a newspaper, and how does that newspaper treat subjects like sin, sickness, and death, subjects Christian Science teaches its adherents to ignore? This thesis argues that the Christian Science Monitor used the inherent flexibility of Christian Science beliefs around physical reality in combination with popular ideas about non-sensationalism and “clean journalism” as the basis …

“Allied In Character”: U.S. And British Relations During The Russian Intervention, 1918 - 1919, Zachary J. Rubino

All Master's Theses

In 1918, the newly proclaimed Soviet Union signed a separate peace with Germany to remove itself from World War I and attend to a brewing civil war. Great Britain, France, the United States, and other Allied nations, in the thick of fighting in the West, sent a coalition force into Russia. The Allied forces would be led by the British, who hoped to force the new Soviet government to reopen the Eastern Front. The United States joined the coalition reluctantly. Consistent with his policy of national self-determination, President Wilson restricted the 339^th US Infantry Regiment to non-combat roles. However, …

Finding Aid For The Leslie H. Southwick Campaign Memorabilia Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

The Leslie H. Southwick Campaign Memorabilia Collection focuses on presidential and Mississippi political campaigns dating from 1856-2017, although the bulk of content is from 1960-2004.  Formats include pamphlets and other campaign literature, bumper stickers, textiles, posters, campaign buttons, and other candidate and political party souvenirs.

Finding Aid For The Ralph C. Kennedy Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

The Ralph C. Kennedy collection contains presidential campaign and inauguration memorabilia acquired during the course of Kennedy’s career in the U.S. Secret Service.

Finding Aid Of The James Z. George Autograph Album Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

The James Z. George Autograph Album contains signatures of members of the U.S. House of Representatives circa 1886 and a collection of signatures of delegates at the Mississippi Constitutional Convention of 1890.

Finding Aid For The Sam Lumpkin Collection

Archives & Special Collections: Finding Aids (alphabetical)

Papers, photographs, and scrapbooks of Sam Lumpkin of Tupelo, Mississippi.  He served as a Democrat in the Mississippi House of Representatives from 1932 to 1942 and as Speaker of the House from 1940-1942.  Lumpkin was Lieutenant Governor of Mississippi from 1948 to 1952.  During the 1952 presidential election, he led the faction of Democrats who supported Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Sun Valley’S 2025 World Cup Downhill Course Improves Dick Durrance’S 1939 Course, And Recaptures The Excitement Of The Classic Harriman Cup Races, John W. Lundin

Works by Local Authors

In early October 2024, the Sun Valley Resort received final approval to host the Audi

F.I.S. Ski World Cup Finals between March 22-27, 2025. Twenty five men and 25 women from

30 countries will compete in all four Alpine skiing disciplines - slalom, giant slalom, downhill

and super-G.

Women's Work And Wealth: Measuring The Impact Of Incremental Liberations, 1850-1870, Hannah Kelly

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-difference model, this project analyzes data from the IPUMS Full Count census for 1850, 1860, and 1870 at a state level for 48 states. Four models assess the impact of property laws on women's real property holdings, labor force participation, household types, and real property values.

By quantifying the impact of various legal reforms on women's economic empowerment, this project fills a gap in the understanding of the intersection between law, society, and women's economic agency during a transformative period in pre-industrial American history. These impacts can implicate the effectiveness of legislative measures in advancing …

Is Bruen The New Usery?, Tonja Jacobi, Cory Conley

Faculty Articles

In 2022, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Ass’n v. Bruen, the Supreme Court revolutionized the Second Amendment, achieving the long-held conservative goal of limiting gun restrictions by imposing an expansive, originalist view of the right to bear arms. However, within just three years, Bruen is showing cracks. Lower court judges are struggling mightily to apply it and are expressing their frustrations in exceptionally frank ways. And already the Supreme Court, in Rahimi v. United States, was forced to reconsider its approach. The Court has been here before, when it tried to revitalize the Tenth Amendment in …

Nebraska Test 2305: Claas Arion 660, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Test 2308: John Deere 9r 540 Single Turbo (Chassis Serial Numbers 1rw9540xxsx090001 And Higher), Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Test 2304: Claas Arion 630, Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Test 2310: John Deere 9rx 540 Single Turbo (Chassis Serial Numbers 1rw9540xxsx828001 And Higher), Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

Nebraska Test 2309: John Deere 9rt 540 Single Turbo (Chassis Serial Numbers 1rw9540xxsx929001 And Higher), Nebraska Tractor Test Lab

Nebraska Tractor Tests

ABOUT THE TEST REPORT AND USE OF THE DATA The test data contained in this report are a tabulation of the results of a series of tests. Due to the restricted format of these pages, only a limited amount of data and not all of the tractor specifications are included. The full OECD report contains usually about 30 pages of data and specifications. The test data were obtained for each tractor under similar conditions and therefore, provide a means of comparison of performance based on a limited set of reported data. EXPLANATION OF THE TEST PROCEDURES Purpose The purpose of …

2026 Google Earth Image, Google Earth.

Guarding Ossabaw Island: History and Archaeology of the 47th N.Y.V.I. Camp

A 2026 Google Earth Image of Ossabaw Island, Georgia.

2026 Google Earth Image, Google Earth.

Guarding Ossabaw Island: History and Archaeology of the 47th N.Y.V.I. Camp

A 2026 Google Earth Image of Ossabaw Island, Georgia.

Beyond Judicial Intent: The Agency Of The Defense Counsel In Ozawa’S And Thind’S Supreme Court Cases, Bret K. Luchs

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis seeks to examine how specific legal strategies by the defense counsel in Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), compelled the Supreme Court of the United States into a reactive and contradictory position. A re-examination of Ozawa and Thind delves deeper into the legal briefs and arguments made by Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, alongside their legal teams. These briefs, opinions of the court, past lower court cases, and personal statements by Ozawa and Thind demonstrate how they did not surrender to the confines of …

Clyde On A Cloud: Black Mass-Media Activism In 1950s Orlando, Nathan M. Pelz

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Clyde Sanders is fondly remembered by those who were fortunate enough to tune their radio dial to WLOF during the 1950s or WOKB in the ‘60s. His show played the coolest tunes for teenagers who, for the first time, could carry with them music in their pockets. Sanders served as more than a radio DJ, however. Being Black in Orlando in the midcentury was complex and often dangerous. Careful not to explicitly engage with topics of civil rights, Sanders quietly advocated toward racial justice, helped to coordinate meetings, and advance racial harmony with his show which, though intended for Black …