History Commons^™

Facing Catholic Antisemitism In Post-War France, The Finaly Affair: 1945-1953, Elizabeth Jane Spaide

Theses and Dissertations

In February 1944, Dr. Fritz and Anni Finaly, Jewish Austrians who had fled the Nazi regime for France in 1939, made a desperate decision. To protect their sons Robert and Gérald from persecution, they placed them in the care of others. The boys were eventually confined to a municipal nursery run by Antoinette Brun in Grenoble, France. After the war, Brun’s refusal to return the children to their relatives led to protracted court proceedings, rendering what came to be called the Finaly Affair, the most highly publicized post-war custody case in France. This thesis will analyze how the press coverage …

Natural Law And Radical Autonomy In Antebellum American Literature, Andrew Urban

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the tension and conflict between conceptions of the natural law and the ideal of radical autonomy in the work of the antebellum American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville. This tension and conflict was brought to the fore by the modernization of American society in the antebellum period. Modernization is here understood as the social process through which increasing recognition is given to individual autonomy, elevating the individual self, as the creator of meaning and value, above the standard provided by nature, including human nature, according to which one ought to live. This …

Appropriating The Past: Looking At Visual Evidence In The Twenty-First Century Archival Documentary, Zachariah Anderson

Theses and Dissertations

Film and documentary scholars have long debated links between images, history, and truth. The field recently began addressing epistemological questions emergent when visual sources are circulated as evidence in an age of rapid image appropriation, manipulation, and circulation. To contribute to debates about images’ digital-era evidentiary roles, I study twenty-first century archival documentaries. By archival documentary, I mean a film that primarily comprises extant images (from government archives, home movies, surveillance footage, Hollywood films, etc.), rather than footage shot for the documentary. Films scholars and critics have applied many labels to these kinds of films: compilation, found footage, remix, etc. …

Max Arthur Cohn's Serigraphs And The Progressive Legacy Of The New Deal, Mirel Crumb

Theses and Dissertations

Max Arthur Cohn (American, b. England 1903-1998) was among the first artists to create “serigraphs,” a type of silkscreen print that gained popularity in the 1940s in New York City. Cohn was a founding member of the Silk Screen Group which later became the National Serigraph Society. This thesis contextualizes Cohn’s serigraphs within the history of the medium’s development and the broader history of mid-twentieth century American art. I analyze how Cohn’s serigraphs made for demonstration democratized access to the medium, Cohn’s experimentation in serigraphy expressed the diversity of style encouraged by Popular Front, and Cohn’s serigraph prints and greeting …

Pillars Of Youth Drug Abuse Prevention: Parents, Police, And Project Dare (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), Jonathon Stuever

Theses and Dissertations

In 1983 Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officials teamed with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) health curriculum specialist, Dr. Ruth Rich, to redesign an anti-tobacco curriculum, Project Self-Management and Resistance Training (SMART), into Project Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE). In the first four years of Project DARE, local, state, and, federal government branches endorsed the program as an efficient tool in the local and national fight against youth drug abuse. Early program evaluations, conducted by the Evaluation and Training Institute (ETI), demonstrated DARE’s ability to change attitudes of students, school faculty, and parents concerning social tolerance of underage drug …

Toward Truth And Reconciliation: Public Memory, Philosophical Pairs, And The Edmund Pettus Bridge, Allyson K. Hayden

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis connects the rhetoric of Bryan Stevenson which advances truth and reconciliation for racial healing in the United States to a case study of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. I examine common cultural invocations of the bridge that support the persistence of a blurry public memory that occludes visibility of its original memorial dedication to a known white supremacist and instead celebrates it as a landmark of the civil rights movement. I also analyze arguments for both changing and keeping the name of the bridge that occurred between 2015-2020, illustrating ways in which Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s philosophical …

The Context And The Commissioner: The Effect Of Milwaukee’S Health Commissioners’ Social, Cultural, And Historical Understanding Of Milwaukee’S People During The Last Five Pandemics, Madeline O'Dea Fruehe

Theses and Dissertations

Resistance to pandemic response policies was observed globally throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. This resistance has been linked by researchers to the prolonged duration and higher mortality rate of COVID-19 compared to previous pandemics, despite advancements in modern medicine, extensive surveillance networks and record vaccine production. However, the strategies implemented by public health officials during the COVID-19 pandemic closely mirrored those successful in mitigating past pandemics. To elucidate this disparity, a historical analysis encompassing the 1918, 1957, 1968, 2009, and Covid-19 pandemics was conducted within the city of Milwaukee. By examining archival documents and over 800 newspaper articles, this research found …

“For What We Do Today Becomes The History Of Tomorrow”: A History Of The Bay View Historical Society, 1979-2015, Bradley Wiles

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation presents a history of the Bay View Historical Society (BVHS), a non-profit cultural heritage institution located in the Bay View neighborhood of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Since its creation in 1979, the BVHS has assumed numerous roles related to preservation, documentation, education, information provision, social interaction, and public appreciation around the neighborhood’s history. This study’s overarching purpose is to examine how a modern local historical society assumes and approaches its role within the community it seeks to document, preserve, celebrate, and enrich. The central contention is that such institutions are given life when a range of conditions are conducive for …

Political Commitment Of Hmong Americans: A Study Of A Grassroots Feminist Movement Against Abusive International Marriages 2007-2022., Ni Made Frischa Aswarini

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the Hmong American community-led movement against abusive international marriages (AIM) in Wisconsin as an instance of activism or resistance related to marriage-migration phenomena in the 21st century. Through an analysis of oral histories of Hmong American community activists, Hmong American community media, archival materials, born-digital sources, and other contemporary sources, this study incorporates experiences underexplored in U.S. historical scholarship. The findings unearth that the feminist movement against AIM emerged not solely as an active response to a trend of gender-based violence cases in the early 2000s but also as a resistance to the persisting stigmatization from the …

Entangled Conquest: A Study Of Cultural Hybridization And Change In Norman Ireland, Sean Mcconnel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis employs entanglement theory and new geophysical macro-analytical methods to

examine the spread of Norman culture in late medieval Ireland. The traditional theories of

Anglo-Norman conquest by mass migration, by military conquest, and by political conquest are

reviewed and compared to a more nuanced theory of Normanization, which suggests that

genetically Irish people, who spoke Irish, practiced Irish law, and pursued Irish interests were

primarily responsible for what is considered "Norman" material culture on the Island. This

dissertation presents the idea that adherence to the English king was a necessary and expedient

action on the part of Irish lords …

Let Go And Let God: An Ethnographic Study Of Overeaters Anonymous, Subjectivity, And Extreme Eating Distress, Abby Forster

Theses and Dissertations

Academic discussions regarding eating disorders have been dominated by two frameworks: biomedical and feminist. While the former explains eating disorders as a product of individual pathology, the latter asserts the cause is culture. An aspect of culture that is often suggested is neoliberalism. This ethnographic study utilizes the term “eating distress” to acknowledge the localized idioms that occur outside of the bounds of biomedical settings. The research documents the experiences of many members of Overeaters Anonymous dealing with eating distress within a social context in which their body types are stigmatized. The dissertation examines the relationship between subjectivity, Overeaters Anonymous, …

Translating The Enlightenment: Women Translators In Eighteenth-Century France, Marissa Gavin

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines women translators in Enlightenment France for their strategies to achieve publication. Elite, French Enlightenment women appropriated oppressive structures and norms, redeploying them to expand their own roles. This paper examines Marie-Jeanne Riccoboni, Louise d’Epinay, and Anne LeFevre Dacier as exemplars of elite women translators who exploited gendered assumptions to gain access to print. Each of these women came from differing backgrounds, received differing levels of support from their patriarchal relations and expressed differing societal concerns through their writing. Despite such differences, Riccoboni, Dacier and d’Epinay all utilized similar strategies alongside translation to disseminate their concerns. Operating within …

Black Autonomy As A Form Of Resistance And A Symbol Of Rebellion: A Comparative Study Of Robbins, Illinois, And Milwaukee Bronzeville (1920-1970), Nateya Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

Black towns and segregated Black neighborhoods are two examples of majority Black communities that were formed because of the racial discrimination African Americans faced. Previous research has examined majority Black communities from a deficit model; however, this paper highlights the assets of autonomy and resistance in two majority Black communities in the Midwest: Robbins, Illinois, and Milwaukee Bronzeville. This paper compares Robbins, Illinois, a Black town, and Milwaukee’s Bronzeville neighborhood, a segregated Black community, to answer the questions: How did African Americans in Robbins, Illinois, and Milwaukee Bronzeville use autonomous practices to navigate racial discrimination between 1920 and 1970? What …

Common Ground Over Common Water: Defining The Public Interest In The Milwaukee Watershed, Thomas Anthony Gentine

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation examines government and nongovernment entities’ attempts to restore and protect the use and health of the Milwaukee River and its watershed from 1960 to 2000. Under Mayor Henry Maier’s leadership, Milwaukee worked to reclaim the urban riverway to stimulate economic growth. However, state and federal representatives, after the passage of the 1965 Water Quality Act, demanded that the city government prioritize updating the combined storm and sewer system to lessen pollution in the Milwaukee River. At the same time, other groups worked to save rural areas from unplanned development and further degradation of the waterway. Influential groups included …

Ocon At War: The Oconomowoc Home Front During The Second World War, Erika L. Laabs

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

OCON AT WAR:THE OCONOMOWOC HOME FRONT DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR

This thesis will examine the local home front propaganda in and around Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (Waukesha County) during the Second World War and compare the Oconomowoc area propaganda to Wisconsin overall and to the national experience. Enlistments, war bond sales, USO events, parades, radio programs/speeches, films, music, popular books/comic books, and images, are the main types of “cultural locations” that I am using as propaganda. I have found solid examples of posters and advertisement images from local newspapers that provide a wealth of information about the way fear, love, …

Jacques Maritain And Popes Pius Xi And Xii On The Church-State Relationship, Patrice O'Rourke Linn

Theses and Dissertations

Jacques Maritain (1882-1973) was a French Catholic philosopher, acknowledged as one of the most influential non-clerical Catholics of the twentieth century. During this time, the Catholic Church was experiencing the slow process of political displacement. Maritain and the contemporary popes addressed how the Church should function within the modern context. Both began the century sympathetic to right-leaning governments and political parties that supported the Catholic Church but shifted over time to embrace a less direct approach. This thesis will demonstrate the change over time of Maritain’s position and how it paralleled the positions of Popes Pius XI and Pius XII. …

Marching To The Beat Of Her Drum: A View Into The Music Heritage Of The Women's Army Corps, Jennifer Trotnow

Theses and Dissertations

The Women’s Army Corps (WAC) Band was a unique military band that consisted of all-women soldier musicians. This study examined the stories and music education of the women who served in the WAC band. Several questions guided this study including: 1) what kind of music education did these women receive before, during, and after serving in the WAC band? 2) how were the music educations of these soldiers different throughout the various eras of war? 3) did the women continue to play their instruments after they finished serving in the Army? If so, in what capacity did they play? and …

The Roadmap To Iraq: How 9/11 Facilitated The 2003 Invasion, Michael Loren Shumway

Theses and Dissertations

The attacks of 11 September 2001 not only resulted in retaliatory attacks upon the nation of Afghanistan for its harboring of the terror cell al Qaeda but also for the later U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although initial intelligence connected the terrorist group al Qaeda to the attacks, Bush’s administration officials began assembling intelligence on Iraq’s weapons capabilities and its possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In this 2002 National Security Strategy, Bush announced his administration’s position that the United States would react pre-emptively to threats against the United States or its global interests. This pre-emptive position opened the …

Uncovering The Domesticated Spectator: Film Exhibition And Spectatorship In The Home, 1920-1950, Patrick Brame

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds on recent historical scholarship that adds complexity to apparatus theory from the 1970s by examining the experience of film exhibition and spectatorship in the American home from 1920 to 1950. While the screen, projector, and content of home exhibition influenced the spectator’s experience, so too did the domestic environment: blurring private and public spaces loaded with sociocultural tensions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Through my investigation of amateur filmmaking magazines, primarily Movie Makers, Home Movies, industry journals such as The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, and more widely read magazines like Popular Mechanics, …

Off The Press: Exploring Reproducible War Art, Emily Rose Hankins

Theses and Dissertations

Aspects of modernity, such as the news cycle and ever-changing technologies, have played large roles in the construction of the history of wars through the power of reproducible war art imagery as seen in various public spheres and contexts. These include engravings and photographs of the war in news publications, propaganda posters promoting patriotism, protest posters pleading for peace, and prints and books made by artists for display in galleries. The inundation of these images become ubiquitous with the conflict, and the artists who have a hand in creating these images also have the power to construct and reconstruct histories, …

White Resistance To Public School Integration In Milwaukee, Wisconsin And Prince Edward County Virginia, Joseph Ryan Moore

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACTWHITE RESISTANCE TO PUBLIC SCHOOL INTEGRATION IN MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN AND PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY, VIRGINIA by Joseph Moore

The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2022Under the supervision of Professor Amanda Seligman The white community demonstrated fierce resistance to the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The forms of resistance to integrated public schools varied by region, state, and locality. This study aims to compare the forms of resistance to integrated public schools that took place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Prince Edward County, Virginia between 1954-1976. I have used historical archival materials to permit comparisons between the types of resistance …

Interpreting The Socio-Symbolic Value Of Jet And Amber Artifacts As Markers Of Religious Transformation In Early Christian Britain, Rachel C. Strohl

Theses and Dissertations

During the Medieval period in Britain, changes in the lived materiality of religion aided in the reinforcement of new ideologies. Christian missionaries and foreign invaders introduced new religious structures and cultural paradigms from the Continent that included novel symbolic forms and material markers. In pre-Christian contexts, jet and amber are thought to have been used for religious purposes due to their presumed magical properties, such as burning and generating a static charge. These materials also served as lucrative exports throughout Europe and beyond before the introduction of Christianity. Textual records from the Mediterranean as well as archaeological evidence for the …

Tales From The Tooth Worm: Reconstruction Of The Historic Oral Microbiome At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Ashley Brennaman

Theses and Dissertations

Paleomicrobiological investigations of the human oral microbiome have primarily focused on samples of ancient origin, while fewer targeted studies of younger archaeological samples from the historic era have been conducted. However, the study of archaeological samples from the recent past, particularly the nineteenth century, can yield pertinent insights into the shifting temporal patterns of oral microbial diversity. For example, the sugar-rich diet associated with the Industrial Revolution of the mid-nineteenth century caused a shift in the composition of the oral microbiome towards a pathogenic state. Recent research has also demonstrated that the oral microbiomes derived from samples of modern and …

Hand-Colored Zoological Illustrations For “All Classes” Of British Society: The Publishing History Of The Naturalist’S Library, 1833-1843, Sarah Finn

Theses and Dissertations

Natural history grew in popularity in Britain among the middle class during the nineteenth century in large part due to the proliferation of cheap books and periodicals that featured illustrations of plants and animals. Prior to this period, books that featured hand-colored plates were considered a luxury that only the very wealthy could afford. Some nineteenth century naturalists like John James Audubon, continued to exclusively produce expensive folio books marketed to the upper class, but many others saw an opportunity to make more money by appealing to a popular audience by creating smaller works sold at a fraction of the …

Evidence Of Lives Not Seen: The Bioarchaeology Of Material Personhood At The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery, Catherine Rebecca Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Cadaverized individuals in nineteenth and twentieth-century America were overwhelmingly poor, indigent, institutionalized, and unidentified. Their bodies were utilized to transform medical students into professionals while they, in turn, were transformed from human to medical waste, and disposed of as such. The Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery was one such disposal site utilized from 1882-1925. Archaeological excavations at the site recovered cadaverized remains in multiple individual burial contexts. Analysis of mortuary patterns provides a richly nuanced medium through which this project examines the creation of social personhood and the formation and maintenance of community boundaries. These shared patterns, evident in burial …

Meaning Making Over A Lifetime: A Case Study Of Pat Boone, Samuel Wisneski

Theses and Dissertations

In the mid-1950s, Pat Boone was one of the most popular singers in America. Several years later, Boone’s mass appeal as a star had begun to diminish and he was left without an obvious fanbase. Yet, today 60 years later, Boone is the star of several television ads, has appeared on one of the biggest shows on television, and has recently had a song explode to over five million views on social media. In order for Boone to achieve the continued fame he enjoys today, Boone has shapeshifted his celebrity to cater to receptive audiences. Using Boone as a case …

"Neighborhood Library Modernization": Public Library Expansion In Milwaukee During The 1960s And 1970s, Madeline Brenner

Theses and Dissertations

By the second half of the 20th century, public libraries expanded their reach across American cities and transformed the urban landscape. With almost 10,000 libraries in U.S. cities by 1960, new library development was at an all-time high. Despite this success, few scholars have analyzed these critical changes. Since the historical scholarship on library development is limited, this thesis analyzes the history of public library development in Milwaukee during the 1960s and 1970s. The goals of community engagement and partnership through city-wide circulation of material guided the development of branch library construction under the Ten-Year Library Plan of 1962 to …

Weeping All The Way To Zion: Vatican Ii, Catholic Social Ethics, And The Black Freedom Struggle In Milwaukee, Samuel Cocar

Theses and Dissertations

The Second Vatican Council convened between October 1962 and December 1965. In the years immediately following, American Catholics, as well as co-religionists the world over, were left to interpret and navigate an event and literary corpus which had fundamentally recalibrated not only the dominant theological method for the Church, but also redefined its posture toward the world and social issues. The established traditions of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) as well as the paroxysms of Vatican II, figured prominently in the Milwaukee iteration of the Civil Rights Movement/Black Freedom Struggle, in which one of the most visible figures was progressive priest …

Two Cemeteries In One: An Historic Archaeological Analysis Of The Cemeteries That Comprise Today’S Liberty Cemetery In Trevor, Wisconsin, Sydne Morgan Johnson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is an historic archaeological comparison of the two cemeteries that comprise today’s Liberty Cemetery in Kenosha County, Wisconsin: the Old Cemetery (1844-1883) and the New (1885-1924). Salem, Wisconsin’s first settlers arrived in the 1830s, and shortly thereafter some began burying their dead at a place called Liberty Corners. The burial grounds continued to grow, and within a few years, the church across the street began overseeing it. The church transferred the graveyard to a private organization in 1884, and that group mixed a new cemetery—called Liberty Cemetery—into the same grounds as the old one. This thesis compares these …

From Orthodoxy To Enlightenment: Discourse, Territory, And Settler Colonialism In Siberia, 1670-1740, Jonathan Noah Adsit

Theses and Dissertations

Though many scholars argue that settler colonialism did not firmly come into practice until the late 18th century in Russia, through an analysis of both 17th century historical chronicle narratives and 18th century explorer accounts, I argue that settler colonial discourses and knowledges are already present, laying the groundwork for later settler practices. In the 17th century, chronicle narratives portrayed Siberian territory as a darkened wasteland turned radiant paradise by the presence of Russian Christians and the expulsion of indigenous non-Christians. In the 18th century, discourse changed to produce the increasing view of Siberia as an object of knowledge, great …