History Commons^™

Laila: A Doll Memoir Of 1947 Partition Of India And Pakistan, Maleeha Malik, Maleeha Fatima Malik

Children's Literature (MFA) Theses

This abstract examines a creative and critical work centered on the 1947 Partition of India, which displaced approximately fourteen million people and caused one million deaths. The narrative introduces Laila, an anthropomorphized doll who functions as both witness and archive, embodying the memories and traumas of multiple child survivors. Through Laila’s journey across India, Pakistan, and the diaspora, the text explores themes of identity, belonging, loss, and intergenerational memory.

Blending personal family history with historical analysis, the author situates Laila within lived experiences of migration, silence, and religious marginalization, particularly as part of the Ahmadi Muslim community. The narrative foregrounds …

Children Past Curfew: Surveillance, Resistance, And Childhood In Philippine Martial Law Children's Literature, Krisna Marie T. Balolong

Children's Literature (MA) Theses

This paper examines how two Philippine children's books depict state surveillance and its effects on a child's perspective of family, authority figures, and childhood. Through analysis of Augie Rivera's Isang Harding Papel and Sandra Nicole Roldan's At the School Gate, this project makes a connection between children's literature and surveillance studies, offering new framework to engage with children’s literature depicting authoritarian regimes and state violence, especially in cases where children were targets of their governments. Each book is examined by their representations of state surveillance during the Martial Law era of the Philippines, as well as each characters’ individual …

Missionaries And Magic: Freed People, Conjure And Reformation During Southern Reconstruction, Sanaa Belton

Undergraduate Research Awards

I argue in the pages to follow that during the Reconstruction period, reformation efforts by white northern activists attempted to shift the perception of Conjure from a dangerous yet useful spiritual tradition that served both the enslaved and their enslavers, to a spiritual tradition representative of a savage and backwards African people. Mainstream religious movements of the 1800s, the same movements that contributed to the prohibition of alcohol in the 1920s and early 1930s, were centered on the moral reformation of the United States. Missionary societies that branched off from these larger religious movements sent workers into southern states to …

Women’S Movement And Mobility In New York City: Restriction, Rejuvenation, And Resistance In The Progressive Era, 1900-1920, Helene Martinez Erlbaum

Undergraduate Research Awards

In this thesis, I aim to explore the implications of women and girls travelling unaccompanied in New York City during the time before the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment (circa 1900-1920). By exploring specific examples of societal measures and responses to the phenomena of widespread female mobility – including responses to these original measures by both affirming and opposing parties – and increasing existence in the public sphere, I hope to discern the public attitude towards the growing social freedoms of women as they possibly move beyond the more strict Victorian or Edwardian social rules of the previous generation. Of …

Healing Communities With Police Divestment: Seeking Abolition Through Transformative Reform And Community-Government Collaboration, Jessica E. Gillson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Concerns about the efficacy and sustainability of the U.S. carceral system have persisted throughout the country’s history, recently fueling renewed activism and bipartisan calls for reform. However, proposed solutions remain divisive. This thesis first defines the current status of our prison systems, then explores collaborative alternatives to incarceration and policing that support communities and break cycles of incarceration.

Focusing on partnerships among local governments, community organizations, justice-involved individuals, and law enforcement, this study examines holistic approaches to crime prevention, reentry, and reintegration. Using an interdisciplinary framework incorporating restorative justice, community resilience, and systems theory, it investigates how community-based strategies can …

Promesas Incumplidas: The Reconfiguration Of Gendered Expectations And Relationships During The Bracero Program (1942-1964), Adriana Justo Ortiz

Undergraduate Research Awards

The Bracero Program led to the breakdown of domestic roles, disruptions of female and Braceros’ partnerships with women, and the creation of new friendships among the male Braceros themselves. After the Braceros left for their work contracts in the United States, Mexican women took on additional responsibilities that were customarily done by their husband. In contrast, the Braceros had to undertake domestic chores in their temporary labor camps that their wives would have generally done in Mexico. Because Anglo- American employers and entrepreneurs, specifically those from Tulare, California, as demonstrated by the work of historian Ana Elizabeth Rosas, had certain …

Processing Warfare And Navigating Defeat: The Mexican Narrative Constructed During The Mexican American War Of 1846-1848, Hailee Brandt

Undergraduate Research Awards

It is undeniable that the citizens of Mexico and the United States of America processed the Mexican American War as it occurred in exceedingly different ways, and wished to remember it differently. This thesis will delve deeper into the Mexican narrative that was constructed during and in the immediate aftermath of the war, about the war, and will highlight some of the most salient differences.

"Nothing In America Would Outrival Such A Spectacle": The Contested Histories Of Mount Rushmore, Western Tourism, And American Nationalism, Sophia Ciatti

Undergraduate Research Awards

Mount Rushmore, as one of the primary tourist destinations of both South Dakota and the American West in general, is an important source for an examination of American interstate tourism. However, while many scholars have discussed the physical history of Mount Rushmore, such as Gilbert Fite’s Mount Rushmore and Rex Allen Smith’s The Carving of Mount Rushmore, fewer historians have discussed the intellectual history behind the monument. The intentions imbued in the monument from its creators, and the impact the creation of Mount Rushmore had upon the American public are both worth analyzing because those two aspects ended up …

Impacts On Native American Literacy Throughout The 1800s, Alyssa Lawhorn

Undergraduate Research Awards

The literacy of Indigenous peoples of America underwent extreme transformations as the tedious attempts by descendants of colonizers to integrate aspects of white American life into Indigenous customs continued. Native American literacy exclusively consisted of oral traditions prior to the arrival of British colonizers in 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. These oral traditions were, and still are, key elements of Indigenous culture as they serve to distribute cultural lessons, record histories, and share religious legends through the generations and amongst others. As the basis of Indigenous culture these traditions were one of the primary features of Native American life that scholars …

“A Colony Of Our Choice”: Black Baltimoreans And Emigration To Trinidad, Mars Mcleod

Undergraduate Research Awards

Black American history is a narrative characterized by a struggle for rights, including rights to self-preservation and self-determination, for all Americans. Exemplified throughout all four centuries of Black America’s creation, Black resistance to white supremacy has appeared in the form of protests, violence, emigration, and social movements, as well as more accommodationist theory and practice. Black Americans have been the primary force in building out and enforcing revolutionary the ideas presented in the Declaration of Independence, ensuring that those words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator …

The Forced Effeminization Of Male Chinese Immigrants And The Consequences Of This Process, Hailee Brandt

Undergraduate Research Awards

The aim of this paper is to uncover and highlight the forced effeminization of male Chinese immigrants and the consequences of this process during the Chinese Exclusion Act Era. The Chinese Exclusion Act Era is defined by a period of time within American history in which strict and scrutinizing laws were created with the aim of restricting access to the United States for Chinese people. Additionally, these laws aimed to restrict the freedom the Chinese people might have had whilst living their lives in America if they ever were to make it through such oppressive borders. The most notable of …

Jewish Pioneers In The Service Of Christian Whiteness In The 19th-Century American West, Elizabeth Klein

Undergraduate Research Awards

In recent years, historians of American religion have contributed significantly to pushing back against the conception of America as a nation founded on religious freedom and characterized since its inception by a strong sense of pluralism. Although religious tolerance was one of the most essential American ideals, it was not always a reality for minority religious groups, and the religious pluralism that developed in the years after the Revolution was created by those outside of the Christian majority who had to fight to create space within it. This research has shown that over the course of American history, Jews have …

African American Youth-Identity, Invisible Powers & Hypnotic Blaxploitation-Themed Film Tropes: From Superfly & Drug Culture To Black Panther & Wakanda, Daniel Mitchell

Screenwriting and Film Studies Theses (MA/MFA)

This thesis project explores the most influential effect of the blaxploitation era. It is during a time shortly after the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, where black youth are still enduring identity issues. The point of departure for central discussion of this work revolves around the mesmerizing Hollywood blaxploitation film, Superfly. It arrived on the big screen in 1972. The hit movie and its soundtrack seemingly hypnotized countless young African American youth in urban areas to become drug dealers and users. This coincided with Nixon’s War on Drugs collusion with government agencies, and the secret COINTELPRO operation. They …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

The Worth Of The Black Disabled Body: An Excavation Of Black Disabled Legal History, Alyssa Mcleod

Undergraduate Research Awards

Slave law was overwhelmingly concerned with the state of individual bodies, from the earliest colonial iterations of race-based statutes through to the end of the antebellum era, becoming a key index in shaping the concept of race from that point forward. In this time, white legislators were trying to answer several burgeoning questions including: Are enslaved bodies inherently damaged, broken, criminal, or worthy of manumission? The answer, it seems, is that every enslaved person’s value was determined almost strictly on the value of their labor, and therefore, their ability to work (and thus, by implication, their value as salable property). …

Rabbits And Hogs And Bears, Oh My! Monstrous Births And Control Over Pregnant Bodies, Elizabeth Klein

Undergraduate Research Awards

Monstrous birth stories occupied early modern European society between the 16th and 18th centuries. These stories depicted gruesome and fantastical births influenced by the imaginations and ill virtue of pregnant women, and the tales were the subject of much interest within the intellectual and medical community. The discussion of these births that took place among the male members of such communities were particularly revelatory of the way female bodies were viewed and controlled in early modern Europe. These conversations are evidenced in the writings of 16th and 17th-century European physicians about the power of women’s imaginations over their pregnant bodies, …

Jewish People And Relationships With Christians In The Antebellum Us, Elizabeth Klein

Undergraduate Research Awards

In surveys of American history, the presence of Jewish people is usually not mentioned more than twice. The first time is with the late 19th-century’s major wave of Jewish immigration, and the second is with the onset of the Second World War and the Holocaust. Although discussing the history of Jewish immigration and anti-semitism in the United States is important, these stories are not the only ones that comprise Jewish American history. Little attention is paid to the Jewish population in America during the antebellum era, yet it is clear that Jewish people were here, and their presence was only …

Imagining A New Nation: Patriotism And National Identity In The Writing Of Late-18th Century American Women, Aysia S. Brenner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Benedict Anderson defined the nation as “an imagined political community” that is “imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.” The research for this paper began with a desire to know how American women in the time leading up to, during, and immediately after the American Revolution and War of Independence did or did not imagine themselves as members of the newly emerging political community eventually known as the United States of America. As tensions between the Colonies and Great Britain increased, as tea was dumped in Boston harbor, and as independence was declared in 1776, how did women make sense …

Robert The Bruce Fights For Scottish Independence Once Again: The Influence Of Nationalism And Myth In Scotland's Modern Pursuit Of Independence, Claire Hintz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Robert the Bruce, King of Scots from 1306-1329, led the Scottish to victory in the Wars of Independence against England. Today, the fight for Scottish Independence is alive and being led by the Scottish National Party (SNP) as they push for a second independence referendum. The first, in 2014, failed with 45% of Scots voting YES and 55% voting NO. Since Brexit, however, support for Scottish independence has consistently risen; polls in 2020 showed sustained majority support for Scottish independence for the first time in recent Scottish history. Nationalism, or the constructed ideology that is politically used to uphold a …

Mothers, Morals, And Godly Motivations: Conservative Women’S Activism From Anticommunism To The New Christian Right, Kaitlyn C. Phillips

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The modern conservative movement cannot be understood without investigating women’s activism. Women’s political participation sustained the transformation of the Republican party from an emphasis on economic issues to a focus on social issues, especially throughout the mid-late twentieth century. One key point of transformation was in the 1950’s, when Communism posed a very serious danger. Conservatives claimed that in Communist countries, women gave their children to government funded programs and went to work.1 This policy took women away from their assigned roles as wives and mothers. Another important turning point was in the 1960’s, when the United States saw sweeping …

Interpretresses: Native American Women Translators In Colonial America, Faith Clarkson

Undergraduate Research Awards

Underlying all the disputes and treaties between native Americans and Europeans was the need for an understanding of what the groups were saying to each other. Translation was the common denominator throughout the numerous interactions between native tribes in America and colonists coming over from Europe. In colonial America, translators were crucial to establishing relationships between native Americans and the Europeans that came to North America to create colonies. These interpreters operated in the in-between of two different cultures and they needed to be knowledgeable enough about both of them to correctly convey meaning to either side. It was also …

John Andrew Jackson: Enslaved Resistance, Uncle Tom’S Cabin, And The Downfall Of American Chattel Slavery, Alexander Ernst

Undergraduate Research Awards

John Andrew Jackson was a former slave who lived in the early-to-middle nineteenth century. After escaping slavery in South Carolina and making his way north to Massachusetts, Jackson was forced to head to Canada after the passing of the Fugitive Slave Act. Jackson lectured about his experiences as a slave after he travelled to England and he eventually returned to South Carolina after the Civil War, to the place where he was enslaved, where he worked to improve the lives of other former slaves. During his journey to Canada Jackson met Harriet Beecher Stowe, who housed Jackson and helped him …

The Sinking Of The Schooner Sofia And How It's Crew Utilized Adaptive Leadership To Survive, Kevin H. Cox

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

This is the historical account of the tall ship, or schooner, Sofia that sank on February 23, 1982, off the North Island of New Zealand, between Cape Reinga and North Cape. Of the 17 crew members on board, 16 of them made it into the life rafts. They were rescued by the Russian trawler Vasili Perov more than five days later. How the crew managed to survive in the life rafts is further examined through the adaptive leadership framework by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky. Through this examination, the Sofia’s survival leadership is compared and contrasted to the …

Growing More Than Coffee: Global Narratives And National Reconciliation Within The Rwandan Coffee Industry, Katie Grandelli

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to understand the Rwandan coffee industry following the genocide of 1994. The two major questions that are asked of the Rwandan coffee industry are the roles that it plays in reconciliation efforts and in global perception. The data examined in this thesis ranges from the marketing strategies of internationally popular coffee brands to an interview at a local coffee shop that specializes in Rwandan coffee products. This research engages in discussions of consumable goods as economic stimulants in post-conflict situations and indicators of neoliberal buying behavior on the part of consumers. Final analysis within this thesis suggests …

Rejecting Bolivarianism: Political Power In South America, Jaiya Mcmillan

Undergraduate Research Awards

By the time he was 36, Simon Bolivar had freed six countries from Spanish rule, often fighting armies of thousands with a couple hundred militia rebels. Bolivar was an incredible military strategist with a liberal approach, and went on to govern both Peru, and then-Gran Colombia, which was made up of modern-day Colombia and Venezuela. After his death in 1830, each of the countries he liberated mourned his loss, and in the almost two centuries since then, leaders have constantly used his name in order to revive his spirit and bolster their own political agendas. One such example is the …

The Practice Of Clitoridectomies: Its Influence On The Gikuyu Tribe, Kenyan National Identity, Cultural Nationalism, And British Powers, Savannah Scott

Undergraduate Research Awards

Within the Western world, the practice of clitoridectomies is infamous for its associations with infertility, hemorrhaging, and irreversible complications that affect the fertility and life of mothers and young women. In contrast, select tribes in the Eastern hemisphere uphold the practice with historical and cultural significance promoting its continuation in modern day; amongst these select tribes is the Gikuyu tribe in Kenya, Africa. The Gikuyu tribe, commonly known as the Kikuyu, has a long cultural history with clitoridectomies as the practice originated in ancestral tribal groups and is performed annually in a rite of passage ceremony called irua. Jomo Kenyatta, …

Escape From The East, Martha Marie Failinger

Children's Book Writing and Illustrating (MFA) Theses

Although a plethora of documentaries, movies, and literature surrounding the trauma of

World War II and its aftermath exist, a relative paucity comes from the German people – perhaps

due to the collective guilt and shame that surrounded the horrors of the Holocaust.

This thesis project is a middle school graphic novel memoir based on a true story of a German boy (pseudonym: Hans) during the years 1940 to 1949. Hans becomes a member of the prestigious St. Thomas Boys Choir in Leipzig and finds that Bach’s music, which he is constantly singing, helps to keep his soul alive in …

Printing Profanity: How The Homophiles Sought To Organize An American Gay Movement, Gina Wiese

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Gay history, as it is currently taught in America, centers the Stonewall Riots of 1969 as a cataclysm of social change for gay rights, and as the beginning of gay resistance. Most histories of gay resistance in America will mention efforts of early homophile organizations, and credit the Stonewall riots as a cumulation of those earlier efforts. But this is an inaccurate interpretation of gay history. The homophile movement deserves vastly more credit for how gay Americans navigate the world today than do the riots at the Stonewall Inn. This paper will identify these individuals and the several early organizations …

Mamas, Miners, & Movements: Women And Gendered Labor In Central Appalachia During The 20th Century, Devan M. Mullins

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis seeks to better analyze the contributions and experiences of women within the central Appalachian region through the work they participated in during the 20th century. It lays the foundational understandings of gender roles that crafted the society of the area and connects labor evolution for women within Appalachia and the US as a whole – highlighting similarities and differences. It also discusses Appalachian women’s move from the household to waged labor within the coal mines. Special attention will be paid to the reactions of men and other women to women coal miners to understand what gendered labor means …

Limitation, Liberation, And The Latter-Day Saints: The Establishment Of Mormon Womanhood In The Woman’S Exponent, 1872-1890, Meaghan Harrington

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Navigating the establishment of Mormon womanhood from 1872-1890 in the Exponent shows how Mormon women related to their outer world, their inner world, and themselves. This thesis analyzes the thoughts, feelings, and desires of a complex sociocultural grouping, and asks the reader to question their own attitudes towards gender and culture. The rhetoric of Mormon womanhood in the Exponent and the culture from which it stemmed have implications for understanding both “the rights of the women of Zion, and the rights of the women of all nations.”