History Commons^™

Tejedoras Y Madres: Las Mujeres En El Códice Madrid, Manuel Alberto Morales Damián

Tejiendo imágenes. Homenaje a Victòria Solanilla Demestre

Se reflexiona sobre el papel social de la mujer durante el postclásico en la península de Yucatán; se utiliza como testimonio el Códice Madrid a partir de la información que ofrecen las figuras femeninas que aparecen representadas en 27 almanaques y en el cosmograma de las páginas 75-76. El porcentaje de figuras femeninas (10,15%), así como las funciones que desempeñan en las distintas escenas, indican que la mujer tiene un papel secundario, incluso pueden ser sustituidas por varones. Se muestran evidencias de un patriarcado de baja intensidad.

This paper analyses the social role of women at Postclassic Yucatan; the Madrid …

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

The Virago Paradigm Of Female Sanctity: Constructing The Masculine Woman In Medieval Christianity, Angela Bolen

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The Latin word virago, in its simplest definition, means “a man-like, warrior woman.” For Christian men and women in the Patristic era and the central Middle Ages, the virago represented a woman who denied all biological characteristics of her womanhood, fiercely protected her virginity, and fully embodied the virtues of Christian masculinity. The virago paradigm of female sanctity, a creation of male writers, reconciled a pervasive fear of the female sex with an obvious admiration for holy women. Additionally, the virago model maintained the supremacy of masculine virtues, upheld a patriarchal hierarchy, and created a metaphorical space that validated …

“She’S Been Her Own Mistress...”: The Long History Of Charlotte Dupee V. Henry Clay, 1790-1830, William Kelly

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In February 1829, Charlotte Dupee, an enslaved woman, sued for her freedom in the Circuit Court of the District of Columbia. The defendant was her enslaver, United States Secretary of State Henry Clay. Situating her as the main historical actor, this research illustrates how Dupee’s life experiences as an enslaved woman directly informed the decisive timing of her freedom suit. By expanding Dupee’s story beyond 1829 to reconstruct her life from girlhood to manumission, we also gain a greater understanding of the nuanced and precarious nature of alternative pathways to freedom.

“Against The Good Widdow No Harme We Doe Know:” Examining Aristocratic And Gentry Widows’ Roles And Influence In England From 1500-1650, Alyson D. Alvarez

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation explores how English aristocratic and gentry women utilized their widowhoods to actively craft their personal image as well as influence and alter their communities. Free from the common law principles of coverture, English widows gained new legal autonomy. Additionally, many affluent women received substantial inheritances at the deaths of their husbands thus providing them with the financial freedom.

While widowhood offered English women new independence, it was also accompanied by a multitude of expectations. Sixteenth and seventeenth century authors and scholars developed and perpetuated specific conduct deemed appropriate for widows. The behaviors for created for widowed women contributed …

Sins Against Our Soles: The Morality And Hygiene Of Nineteenth-Century Women's Shoes, Nicole Rudolph

Department of Textiles, Merchandising, and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Our understanding of the Victorian woman has long centered around the idea of the “Angel in the House,” made famous by Coventry Patmore’s 1854 poem. This mythical ideal to which a middle-class woman should endeavor can be found in endless numbers of nineteenth-century texts and has become an oft-referenced concept in modern historiography. Representations of the attributes of the ideal woman circulated widely in society, pictured in etiquette books, medical journals, and especially advertisements. They were an ever-present reminder to women of the social norms governing their roles and life trajectories. As consumers, women were responsible for the presentation of …

Constructing Helen Frankenthaler: Redefining A 'Woman' Artist Since 1960, Alexandra P. Alberda

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

This thesis addresses how academics, curators, and art writers in the popular press reviewed Helen Frankenthaler during her major retrospectives of 1960 (The Jewish Museum), 1969 (The Whitney Museum of American Art), and 1989 (The Museum of Modern Art). Included is an examination of how she has been written about after her death in 2012, with analysis of the changes in the language used to critique the artist and her work as influenced by the advent of feminist theory, social history, and gender theory. I examine recent exhibitions on Frankenthaler at the Gagosian Gallery, New York City, and the Albright-Knox …

From England's Bridewell To America's Brides: Imprisoned Women, Shakespeare's Measure For Measure, And Empire, Alicia Meyer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines the experience of largely single women in London’s house of correction, Bridewell Prison, and argues that Bridewell’s prisoners, and the nature of their crimes, reveal the state’s desire for dependent, sexually controlled, yet ultimately productive women. Scholars have largely neglected the place of early modern women’s imprisonment despite its pervasive presence in the everyday lives of common English women. By examining the historical and cultural implications of early modern women and prison, this thesis contends that women’s prisons were more than simply establishments of punishment and reform. A closer examination of Bridewell’s philosophy and practices shows how …

A Widow’S Will: Examining The Challenges Of Widowhood In Early Modern England And America, Alyson D. Alvarez

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While English women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had different social and economic circumstances, many were able to gain autonomy and power in their widowhood. Widows who were able to gain autonomy faced a number of challenges as they attempted to live and function in a patriarchal society. One of the factors that affected the challenges of a widow was her social standing. In this thesis I argue that widows of all means encountered a challenges from the patriarchal society in which they resided. The number and severity of difficulties that a widow confronted depended on several factors. I …

Death Became Them: The Defeminization Of The American Death Culture, 1609-1899, Briony D. Zlomke

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Focusing specifically on the years 1609 to 1899 in the United States, this thesis examines how middle-class women initially controlled the economy of preparing the dead in pre-industrialized America and lost their positions as death transitioned from a community-based event to an occurrence from which one could profit. In this new economy, men dominated the capitalist-driven funeral parlors and undertaker services. The changing ideology about white middle-class women’s proper places in society and the displacement of women in the “death trade” with the advent of the funeral director exacerbated this decline of a once female-defined practice. These changes dramatically altered …

Piracy, Slavery, And Assimilation: Women In Early Modern Captivity Literature, David C. Moberly

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis examines a hitherto neglected body of works featuring female characters enslaved in Islamicate lands. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, many Englishmen and women were taken captive by pirates and enslaved in what is now the Middle East and North Africa. Several writers of the time created narratives and dramas about the experiences of such captives. Recent scholarship has brought to light many of these works and pointed out their importance in establishing what was still a young, unsure, and developing English identity in this early period. Most of this scholarship, however, has dealt with narratives of the …

A Memory Forgotten: Representation Of Women And The Washington D.C. Arsenal Monument, Melissa Sheets

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

The Arsenal Monument in the Congressional Cemetery in Washington D.C. commemorates the twenty-one women who died while working as cartridge makers in the Washington Arsenal on June 17th, 1864. It utilizes both traditional and idealized memorial imagery, represented by an allegorical figure of Grief who stands atop the Monument’s shaft, as well as a realistic representation of the Arsenal explosion carved into the base. Erected only a year after the incident, the Monument can be interpreted as commemorating all twenty-one women by the inclusion of their names on the sides of the base. From this listing of names and the …

Chintz Appliqué Albums: Memory And Meaning In Nineteenth Century Quilts Of The Delaware River Valley, Carolyn K. Ducey

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examined two sub-sets of a unique style of chintz appliqué album quilt that developed in the 1840s in Delaware River Valley, specifically Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Trenton, New Jersey. The two groups provide examples of two distinct roles that the album quilts played in the lives of their makers: one acting as a literal record of familial ties, serving to preserve memory and reinforce family structure and the other representing the work of the members of the First Baptist Church of Philadelphia, providing a vehicle to recognize and appreciate dedicated service and playing a role in encouraging interest and …

Proper Women/Propertied Women: Federal Land Laws And Gender Order(S) In The Nineteenth-Century Imperial American West, Tonia M. Compton

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study explores the relationship between federal land policy and women’s property rights in the nineteenth-century American West, analyzing women’s responses to expanded property rights under the 1850 Oregon Donation Act, the Homestead Act of 1862, and the 1887 General Allotment Act, and the ways in which the demands of empire building shaped legislators’ decisions to grant such rights to women. These laws addressed women’s property rights only in relation to their marital status, and solely because women figured prominently in the national project of westward expansion. Women utilized these property rights to both engage in the process of empire …