History Commons^™

Sacrificing Sisters: Nurses' Psychological Trauma From The First World War, 1914-1918, Kayla Campana

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

This thesis examines psychological war trauma nurses experienced during the First World War. Psychological war trauma, or shell shock, as it was commonly known during the war, has largely been identified as a male affliction. In this thesis, I demonstrate that women too, suffered trauma and we can better understand nurses' trauma by applying some of the same analytical techniques that scholars have previously used to examine male combatant trauma. Moreover, I analyze the ways in which contemporary actors, including medical professionals and the public, imagined female trauma, specifically the way nurses' psychological trauma could be understood and articulated. Additionally, …

Workers, Mothers, And Françaises: The French Communist Party And Women In The Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Elizabeth Klements

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-

A survey of the first two decades of the French Communist Party's propaganda reveals a wide range of female imagery, from the androgynous, Soviet-style militant of the 1920s to the fashionable, feminine figure of the 1930s. Earlier scholars noting this discrepancy argued that the Party first adopted the Soviet "new woman," based on the Marxist principle of absolute gender equality but rejected it just over a decade later in order to broaden their appeal to the French masses. These studies, however, were restricted by the limited access to the French Communist Party's interwar-era archives. Using recently-digitized Party meeting records, reports, …

Farm Women As Producers & Consumers In The 20th Century U.S. South, Joseph J. Kaminski

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The intent of this thesis is to examine white, rural women of the South who were directly affected by home demonstration between 1920 - 1950 and to discuss their roles as producers and consumers in the expanding market economy. Home demonstration, a three-tiered bureaucratic agency that provided domestic education and production techniques to Southern women, played a major role in guiding women toward the expanding market economy. Agents often had to temper their programs in order to compromise with the women they served to accommodate rural restrictions on capital, capability, and confidence. By integrating rural women into a more modernized, …

Exploring The Portrayals Of Modern First Ladies In Children's Picturebook Biographies, Kaitlin N. Elmore

Honors Undergraduate Theses

No study to date has been uncovered in regard to the presence of First Ladies in children's biographies. However, related prior studies, such as a study on the effect of gender in scientific children's biographies (Owens, 2009) have stated that the portrayal of women in children's biographies has evolved over time. Therefore, I wondered how First ladies were portrayed in children's books, specifically biographies, for elementary aged students. Therefore, this study examined a collection of picturebook biographies written for children about First Ladies in order to explore how First Ladies are portrayed. For the purpose of this study, I chose …

The Rhetoric Of Transgression: Reconstructing Female Authority Through Wu Zetian's Legacy, Rachael Rothstein-Safra

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This study examines representations of Wu Zetian in the biographical tradition of the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries, as well as within the subsequent vernacular literature of the Ming and Qing periods. I analyze the traditional use and construction of female stereotypes (and female-oriented flaws and vices) in the rhetoric of official histories and fictional narratives and their application to representations of Wu Zetian. I argue that authors, anxious of discord engendered and caused by women occupying positions of political authority, sought to delegitimize Wu Zetian’s reign and subsequently cultivated a “rhetoric of female transgression.” I further argue that the …

To Be Magic: The Art Of Ana Mendieta Through An Ecofeminist Lens, Elizabeth Ann Baker

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-born American artist whose unique body of work incorporated performance, activism, Earth art, installation, and the Afro-Cuban practices of Santería. She began her career at the University of Iowa, were she initially received her degree in painting in 1969. It was not until 1972 that Mendieta shifted radically to performance art.

Though she was raised Catholic, she developed an interest in the rituals involved with Santería, a culturally predominant Cuban religion, and it deeply influenced her work in her choice of materials and settings. Santería is one of the major faith-based lifestyles of Cuba …