History Commons^™

The Story Of Jennie Steers: An Examination Of Race, Gender, And Lynching In Northwest Louisiana, Lauren Smith

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

As the nineteenth century ended, the American South entered a new century equipped with the foundations of a Jim Crow society. Through political intimidation, segregation, and racial violence—most notoriously through the practice of lynching—white Southerners reasserted white supremacist rule. Yet the lynching of Black men in this era is more often documented than the plight of Black women at the hands of white mobs and local authorities. By focusing on Jennie Steers, a woman lynched outside of Shreveport, Louisiana in 1903, this project sheds light on the violent history of Northwest Louisiana and the ways in which Black women navigated …

Acquitted By Reason Of Paroxysmal Insanity? Science And Gender In The Nineteenth-Century Murder Trial Of Mary Harris, Emmalee Morgan

History Honors Program

The acquittal of Mary Harris in 1865 demonstrates the culmination of new social and scientific ideologies through the strategy of her defense counsel and the utilization of expert medical witnesses. While at the same time, the prosecutorial strategy embodied the opinions of gender and insanity that were being phased out.

The aim of this project is to demonstrate the overlap and reciprocal influence of science, law, and society, with narratives of gender acting as consistent undertones in these three realms. The trial and acquittal seem to fall in line with the idea that the insanity plea is a sham — …

Powerful And Powerless: Reconfiguring The Agency And Supremacy Of Women In Selected Festivals In The Yoruba Town Of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958, Olusegun Olatunji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. …

The Invisible Influence: How Women And Enslaved People Shaped Colonial South Carolina, Abigail Doyle

All Theses

Colonial American studies often focus on the movements, actions and influences of white males and while their actions are significant to understanding the past, it leads to a one-sided view of history. In the colony of South Carolina, women and people of color were important figures that influenced society and made a lasting impact for future generations. Ann Drayton and Eliza Lucas Pinckney both became female planters in the absence of male figures in their life and thrived in their roles. Drayton and Lucas-Pinckney were legitimate agents of colonization and slavery. Quash/John Williams, who was a former slave of Eliza …

Amorous Poems And Passionate Letters: An Analysis Of The Contributions Of Two Female Authors To The Literary Scene Of 16th Century Italy, Ava Buchanan

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini were well known women in intellectual and public Italian society during the 16^th century. However, the history surrounding their individual impacts has often been limited due to the common practice of grouping these two women together or focusing more intently on their male connections. This thesis aims to advance women’s history on the Early Modern period by providing holistic accounts of Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini’s careers that provide a better understanding of the unique contributions that these women made to distinctly female literature in the Early Modern period in Italy. This thesis utilizes …

Women And Religion In The Mongol Empire, Karlie Barnett

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Aspects of the Mongol Empire have been well studied in academia, but these analyses, like much of our recording and analysis of world history overall, have largely excluded women. This thesis seeks to contribute to the effort to restore women to Mongol history, focusing on how the relationship between Mongol women and religion impacted the development of the Mongol Empire and Eurasian religions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With a focus on elite women due to the nature of the sources, I draw upon historical chronicles, traveler accounts, artwork, and contributions from scholars in this field to assert that …

Influence Of Jesuit Linguistic Manipulation On Guaraní Gender Norms In Colonial Paraguay, Anna Rumpz

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Language was just one of the ways that colonizers and natives had to interact in unfamiliar ways post-Columbus. Histories of colonization often emphasize the physically brutal aspects, such as disease, slavery, or warfare, but colonization is a holistically violent process that adversely impacts societies on multiple levels. In particular, this thesis focuses on the link between culture and language, with respect to Jesuit Spanish-Guaraní lexicons, as a framework to understand changes to gender roles and sexuality within the Jesuit missions of the early seventeenth century.

Wives, Warriors, And Womanhood: A Study Of Women’S War Roles, Megan Lee

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Since starting the War, Diplomacy, and Society program, my interests have included a focus on the soldier’s experience in war, women’s changing roles in war, and the study of war journalism, ranging from World War II, the Cold War, to the Vietnam War. This thesis project is a culmination of these themes.

The first article examines the crucial nature of a soldier’s connection to the Home Front by analyzing a collection of letters between a soldier and his fiancé during World War II. Filled with declarations of love and occasional expressions of insecurity, these letters reveal the importance of a …

Community In The Cell: Queer Women’S Space And Place In New Orleans, Jordan Hammon, Jordan Hammon

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines queer women’s history and space/places of community in New Orleans using spatial analysis and feminist theory to fill the silences. The Special Citizens Committee for the Vieux Carré laid the foundation for regulating queer women and transmasculine people starting in the 1950s. Even after the committee ended, New Orleans Police Department and the Vice Squad had the power to invade and harass places of community for queer women and transmasculine people. Despite this hostility, queer women and transmasculine people resisted and made a place for themselves in New Orleans. As a result of their persistence through visibility …

An Exhibition Of Women's United States Air Force Uniforms, Michelle Robinson

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

The new Women in the Air Force exhibit under development at the Hill Aerospace Museum, located at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, is long overdue. The exhibit is set to replace the existing display in order to more accurately and comprehensively represent women’s continuing legacy of service to our nation. The uniforms in the Hill Aerospace Museum collection constitute the focal point of the new exhibit. Material culture methodologies form the foundation of this exhibit work; seeking to provide greater understanding of women’s military experience and history through the analysis of their uniforms. This approach therefore utilizes uniforms, the museum’s …

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

The History Of Women At The Columbus Air Force Base: Is It A Blessing Or A Curse To Be The First?, Emma H. Potter

Merge

No abstract provided.

"'Joo Wa Dare?' Who Is The Queen?" Queen Contests During The Wartime Incarceration Of Japanese Americans, Bailey Irene Midori Hoy

Madison Historical Review

This paper examines beauty pageants held at incarceration centers during the Japanese-American internment. Although there has been literature created on beauty pageants before and after WWII, there is very little information on these war-era pageants, despite their prolific nature. Using mostly primary sources and material culture, the paper examines the coverage of the contestants, clothing, and presentation within the Center’s newspapers and in coverage by the Wartime Relocation Authority, whilst also problematizing uncritical readings of these documents. This paper highlights the difficulty in determining agency within spaces of incarceration, and calls for further research on the subject.

Teaching Abortion As A Historical Construct: The Case Of Early Twentieth-Century Brazil And Beyond, Cassia Roth

Feminist Pedagogy

Using open-access primary sources available online, this activity teaches abortion as an unstable category through a specific case study, early twentieth-century Brazil. The one-week module, although specific to one geographic region and chronological period, can serve as a lesson plan for undergraduate history courses, for disciplines that use genealogy methods, and for interdisciplinary courses. The lesson plan helps undergraduates think critically about what we think we know about abortion, and how our current understandings are not fixed but rather contingent on the society in which we live and on who is practicing abortion. Changing understandings of what constitutes an abortion …

Blue Mondays: A Woman’S Life In The East End, Rosanne Brooks

Michael Pueppke Writing Prize

No abstract provided.

‘The Harvest Is So Great And The Laborers Are So Few’: The Public Ministry Of Two Evangelical Women Preachers In Nineteenth-Century Minnesota, Lisa R. Lindell

Hilton M. Briggs Library Faculty Publications

On a Sunday morning in July 1873, worshippers gathered for church in Brother Cheatham’s grove in Utica, Winona County, Minnesota, in the heart of America’s western frontier. Conducting the service was Ruth Matilda Rowell, an Advent Christian pastor. Assisting her was Minerva Ursula Cobb, an ordained minister in the Freewill Baptist church. The participation of two female ministers that day rendered the occasion notable. Both women were experienced preachers, with Rowell’s ministry in Minnesota dating back to the mid-1850s and Cobb’s to her arrival in 1864, with prior ministry in the state of Wisconsin. By exploring the vocational paths of …

Undergraduate, 3rd Place: Little Choice In The Matter For Comfort Women: Tales Of Little Hope And Survival During The Second World War, Dayden Gardner

2023 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

During the Second World War, Japan was an imperialistic powerhouse that took over most of Southeast and South Asia during the war. In this time of conflict, Japan committed atrocities that are still being questioned to this day. One of their lesser-known war crimes was the enactment of so-called comfort stations during this war. These stations provided Japanese military men with sex from women, dubbing them “comfort women.” These stations were established widely throughout the Japanese empire after the events of the Nanking Massacre to prevent rapes of women in captured territories and to protect their soldiers from venereal disease.1 …

Graduate, 1st Place: World War I War Front And Home Front: The Correspondence That Brought Them Together, Michelle Thole

2023 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The First World War was the first time American soldiers had participated in a war at a distance from home that did not easily facilitate home furloughs. Although the United States and Europe are physically separated by more than 3,500 miles, the relative distance between American World War I soldiers on the war front and their families on the home front was minor; the correspondence between them mitigated the physical and cognitive distance.

Historians of the First World War have explored soldiers’ contact with their families while in training camps and the US military’s intentional cultivation of a balance between …

One Among Many: Charlotte Kolmitz, Assistant U.S. Attorney In Seattle, 1918–1925, Anna Synya

Digital Legal Research Lab

One Among Many: Charlotte Kolmitz, Assistant U.S. Attorney in Seattle, 1918–1925

Research poster prepared for Digital Legal Research Lab, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Disillusionment And The American Civil War: Confederate Women And Changing Self-Perceptions, Emma Hively

Senior Honors Theses

Confederate females in the antebellum South viewed themselves in light of the ideology of Southern womanhood, a series of gender norms that outlined their proper place in the home and society. The Civil War upended the social structure supporting Southern womanhood and challenged female commitment to the Confederacy, as increasing hardships and suffering led to widespread disillusionment among Confederate females. Conventional interpretations of female disillusionment maintain that it represented continuity in antebellum self-perceptions, amounting to bitterness over the forced abandonment of their way of life and an ardent desire to return to normalcy. However, the focus on the overall continuity …

Res Historica, Volume 2, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The 2023 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg. Johnathan Sorce, and Helen Smith. Cover art for this volume by Helen Smith.

The Women’S Committee Of The Council Of National Defense In Maryland, 1917-1918, Savannah Scott

Honors Projects

During World War I, the United States created the Women’s Committee of the Council of National Defense to organize and coordinate women’s war work. The Women’s Committee had a federalist structure of national, state, and local committees to organize the different levels of women’s societies in the country. This paper uses the Maryland Section of the Women’s Committee as a case study to argue how how the centralized organization of the Women’s Committee and its flexibility with the local committees led to more productive efforts at mobilizing women. It will expand on the formation and organization of the Maryland Women’s …

“A Scepter Of Terror Or A Sword Of Freedom”: Elaine Brown’S Time In The Black Panther Party, Maeve Plassche

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

This project highlights the activism of Elaine Brown, who was the only female chairperson of the Black Panther Party. It looks to enhance the way in which the Black Panther Party is remembered, by placing gender and gender relations in the center of the conversation. Even though women were crucial participants in the Party, they often did not receive the respect that their male counterparts did, and the historical scholarship, using male-centered sources, reiterates this point. While conducting research in the Dr. Huey P. Newton records, located the Stanford Libraries, I delved into the newspapers, internal Black Panther Party documents, …

Redefining Roman Women: Powerful Benefactresses & Patrons Of The Early Roman Empire, Jacqueline Elia

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The history of the Roman Empire has thus far been largely dominated by male narratives. With ancient literary sources predominantly having been written by and for wealthy male audiences, a dangerously limited scope of the Roman Empire has been perpetuated as marginalized groups such as women have been left out of the historical record. Despite what mainstream history has been led to believe by authors such as Livy and Tacitus, Roman women were not simply one-dimensional, domestic creatures who acted as passive witnesses to male dominance. Rather, middle-elite women throughout the empire frequently existed outside the bounds of the domestic …

'The Frank Exchange': A Historical Drama Novella, Ariel Finkle

Senior Honors Projects

I am an avid fan of historical fiction books such as The Royal Diaries. But given the recent popularity of more adult royal drama series like The Great, as well as impostor true crime shows like Inventing Anna, on this project I set out to create a historical fiction drama of my own. While searching for a real-life figure to base my story on, I happened to see a quick footnote at the bottom of an article on Catherine the Great that intrigued me. At the turn of the 18th century, an ordinary young Polish woman named Eva Frank managed …

“Yellow Fever” + Pornhub Statistics: A Sociological Sickness, Patricia Plachno

Audre Lorde Prize

This essay was written to explore the complexities behind "Yellow Fever," or the fetishization of Asian women. In further understanding the origins of "Yellow Fever", shining a light on historical stereotypes and microaggressions assist in problematizing this phenomenon. Pornhub's yearly statistics provide a tangible outline of the sheer volume of participants in racial fetishization.

Hi-05 Helen Dupré Moseley: Painter, Author, Roller-Coaster Fan, And Air Stewardess Of Flying Saucers, Lizzie Richards, Karen H. Goodchild Dr., Youmi Efurd Dr.

SC Upstate Research Symposium

Without having any formal training in the arts, Helen Dupré Moseley (1887-1984) made art for around fifty years of her life in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Utilizing different media and formal qualities, Moseley created fantastic works of art that forced viewers to use their imagination and make their own choices in interpretation.

In addition to works of art, she was also an avid writer and thinker, producing many short stories and unpublished children’s books. What makes her distinct is how she was formally untrained as an artist yet was not excluded from the art world, as she had the ability to …

Remembering Wenonah: Colonialism And The Power Of Representation, Adam Gaffey, Monica De Grazia, Iyekiyapiwiƞ Darlene St. Clair, Jill Ahlberg Yohe

CLASP Lecture Series

This panel explores how the lover’s leap narrative and its representation of Native American figures has been used to forge distinctive visions of public memory both in and beyond Winona, Minnesota. For most, details of the lover’s leap are reduced to Wenonah’s fatal action, specifically how she protested her family’s rigid customs of arranged marriage by jumping to her death from a bluff atop the Mississippi River. The goal of this panel is to offer a fuller account of the purposes this story has served in popular memory and the implications of its persistence for different audiences, past and present. …

To Be Necessary: The Remarkable Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Although overshadowed by her daughter, Mary Shelley, in the public imagination, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) stands as a significant figure in her time who left a significant legacy. Her writings advocating for women’s education, equal rights, and career opportunities established her as the progenitor of the modern women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft’s ideas resonated in the era of the Atlantic world revolutions and laid the foundation for later advances of women in the Western world; therefore, it is important to study her contributions in the present.

Quote Transcript, We Exist Series 5: Stories Of Education And Employment In Maine, University Of Southern Maine Digital Projects

Quotes

Accompanying materials for We Exist Series 5: Stories of Education and Employment in Maine.