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Full-Text Articles in History

Distribution Struggle: Assembling A Media History Of J. Brian’S Enterprises With Court Proceedings And Public Records, Finley Freibert Oct 2021

Distribution Struggle: Assembling A Media History Of J. Brian’S Enterprises With Court Proceedings And Public Records, Finley Freibert

Faculty Scholarship

This article introduces the concept of “distribution struggle”—the panoply of cultural and industrial conflicts that must be traced and accounted for in distribution histories—to sequence a primary-sourced media history of J. Brian’s gay media enterprises. In tracing this history, primary sources are surprisingly accessible, and provide new insights into J. Brian’s industrial operations. By triangulating archival records with secondary accounts, this article provides a more nuanced cultural and industrial portrait of J. Brian. It argues that media industry historiography must frame historical narratives by accounting for the cultural and industrial struggles that culminated in the available archival sources, in this …


Byzantine Empire Economic Growth: Did Climate Change Play A Role?, Thomas E. Lambert May 2021

Byzantine Empire Economic Growth: Did Climate Change Play A Role?, Thomas E. Lambert

Faculty Scholarship

Different chroniclers of the history of the Byzantine Empire have noted various economic data gleamed from historical documents and accounts of the empire at different periods of time. Research for this paper has not uncovered any estimates of long term, annual macroeconomic data (gross domestic product (GDP), national income (NI), etc.) for the empire during its existence. Such data has been estimated to one extent or another for other nations and societies that have existed during the middle ages. This paper attempts to provide conjectures on approximate real GDP per capita trends for the empire over its existence from AD …


Making The First International: Nineteenth-Century Regimes Of Surveillance, Accumulation, Resistance, And Abolition, Christina Heatherton Jan 2021

Making The First International: Nineteenth-Century Regimes Of Surveillance, Accumulation, Resistance, And Abolition, Christina Heatherton

Faculty Scholarship

The first use of aerial surveillance in the Americas was recorded in the French colony of Saint-Domingue in the waning years of the eighteenth century. The device, a manned hot air balloon, was launched at the Gallifet plantation, a thriving center of the colony’s sugar economy. Hovering above the island’s north coast, French colonial passengers gained a sprawling vantage point from which the world could be both seen and imagined: a conquest of air to complement the conquest of land. But in 1791, things were not so clearly visible. After months of quiet planning, Haitian rebels emerged from the thick …


Distribution, Bars, And Arcade Stars: Joe Anthony’S Entrepreneurial Expansion In Houston’S Gay Media Industries, Finley Freibert Jan 2021

Distribution, Bars, And Arcade Stars: Joe Anthony’S Entrepreneurial Expansion In Houston’S Gay Media Industries, Finley Freibert

Faculty Scholarship

This article develops the concept of "gay useful media" to explore a case study of gay entrepreneurship in Houston, Texas, of the 1970s. A father and son developed a gay media empire in the city, which spanned bars, bookstores, distribution, and vending. One of the pair's key establishments was Houston's legendary gay bar Mary's at 1022 Westheimer (also known as Mary's Lounge, Mary's, Naturally, and Mary's…Naturally).