History Commons^™

Winning At The Graduate Level Of Warfare: Six Core Factors Of A Successful Counterinsurgency Campaign And The Example Of Sierra Leone, John D. Rimann

Honors Theses

The most common form of warfare so far in the 21st Century has been insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, types of warfare which are particularly challenging for industrialized Western nations to wage effectively. This paper identifies six factors of primary importance which form the key to a successful counterinsurgency campaign. These factors are legitimacy, clarity, beneficial geopolitical factors, restraint, intellectual understanding, and an enduring commitment. This paper argues that these factors must all be present for a counterinsurgency campaign to succeed, and argues that without these factors being accounted for a counterinsurgency will fail. The British humanitarian intervention in Sierra Leone in …

Prisoner Resistance In The Auschwitz And Buchenwald Concentration Camps, Regina Coffey

Honors Theses

A great deal has been written about the Holocaust and about resistance organizations that formed in the concentration camps. Much of this literature, however, tends to focus on the contributions of a particular group of prisoners rather than on the many groups that came together to form these organizations. The purpose of this study, therefore, is to examine the resistance organizations in Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps using firsthand accounts and to come to a conclusion on how cooperation between different groups of prisoners affected the overall effectiveness of these resistance organizations.

More Sieve Than Shield: The U.S. Army And Cords In The Pacification Of Phu Yen Province, Republic Of Vietnam, 1965-1972, Robert John Thompson Iii

Dissertations

This dissertation addresses the meaning and execution of pacification during the Vietnam War in the Republic of Vietnam’s Phu Yen Province. Vietnam War scholarship never defined the term, an unsurprising fact given those that directed the war itself never agreed on a lasting interpretation. Void of an analysis of the word, pacification is erroneously discussed as a separate facet, rather than the foundation, of the war. When discussed, pacification is often seen solely as the developmental aspect of the war and one far removed from the battles waged by conventional armies. On the contrary, two dissimilar and tangentially related wars …

Bearing The Double Burden: Combat Chaplains And The Vietnam War, John Donellan Fitzmorris Iii

Dissertations

Throughout the period of the Vietnam War, soldiers and Marines of the United States Military were accompanied into the combat zones by members of the clergy who were also part of the military. These chaplains attempted to bring God to the men in the field by providing spiritual and moral support through worship services and certain counseling duties. A number of chaplains, however, believed so strongly in their ministry that they refused to simply stay “on base” and instead shouldered their packs and journeyed with their troops into the most perilous combat zones. In so doing , these combat chaplains …

Oral History With Jerome Wilson, Matthew R. Griffis

Oral History Archive

Dr. Jerome Wilson was born in Meridian, Mississippi in 1942. He attended St. Joseph’s Catholic School in Meridian from kindergarten to secondary school, whereupon he attended Dillard University in New Orleans to earn a BA in Chemistry and Mathematics.

Wilson later earned an MA in Immunology and Biochemistry from Cornell and, in 1983, earned his PhD in Epidemiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He spent much of his career as a researcher and a research administrator in the pharmaceutical industry, later transitioning to academe when he helped set up the department of epidemiology at Howard University. …

Choros N. 10 By Heitor Villa-Lobos: Analyzing The Themes And Compositional Techniques Of Brazilian Modernism, Andre Oliveira Campos-Neto

Master's Theses

Heitor Villa-Lobos (b. March 5, 1887 - d. November 17, 1959) can be considered the most important composer in Brazilian music history. Although the composer is listed as one of the most influential composers in the history of the guitar, he reached his peak in his works for piano and symphonic groups. Works such as A Prole do Bebê (1 and 2), and the series of Chôros, came out during an extremely convoluted time, where Brazilian artists engaged in seeking an artistic representation of a unique Brazilian identity. Those works not only satisfied the hunger, but pushed the movement …

The Poet's Corpus: Memory And Monumentality In Wilfred Owen's "The Show", Charles Hunter Joplin

Master's Theses

Wilfred Owen is widely recognized to be the greatest English “trench poet” of the First World War. His posthumously published war poems sculpt a nightmarish vision of trench warfare, one which enables Western audiences to consider the suffering of the English soldiers and the brutality of modern warfare nearly a century after the armistice. However, critical readings of Owen’s canonized corpus, including “The Show” (1917, 1918), only focus on their hellish imagery. I will add to these readings by demonstrating that “The Show” is primarily concerned with the limitations of lyric poetry, the monumentality of poetic composition, and the difficulties …

Mr. Jefferson's Army In Mr. Madison's War: Atrophy, Policy, And Legacy In The War Of 1812, David Alan Martin

Master's Theses

President Thomas Jefferson is a well-known figure, who is not well understood. His military policies are under-examined in the historiography. Yet, he had a tremendous impact on martial development in the Early Republic. Jefferson reshaped the military to suite his pragmatic republican ideals. His militia system expanded while the regulars were disbanded. The Navy was greatly decreased, and the remainder of his military was used for frontier exploration, riverine trade, road development, and other public works. This disrupted the precedent of strong federal military development as set by his predecessors: George Washington and John Adams. His reforms also left the …

"Black And White Together, We Shall Win": Southern White Activists In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Olivia Bethany Moore

Master's Theses

During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi has often been characterized as a simple battle of white racists against black activists. Drawing heavily on oral histories, personal publications, and Mississippi Sovereignty Commission reports, this thesis examines the unconventional stories of white southerners who transcended the segregationist environments in which they were born. As southern white activism took many forms, this work offers biographical insights to three individuals who have received little scholarly attention: journalist P.D East, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activist Buford Posey, and William Carey president Ralph Noonkester. While their contributions between 1950-1971 differed, being …

Shaken, Not Stirred: Espionage, Fantasy, And British Masculinity During The Cold War, Anna Rikki Nelson

Master's Theses

This project seeks to define and explore the development of Cold War British masculinity and national identity in response to decolonization. Following World War II, Great Britain experienced a time of political and cultural rebuilding. This project argues that following World War II, Britain had to renegotiate gender and national identity within the context of decolonization, the rise of the welfare state, and Britain’s diminished role in global politics, and the tensions within gender and national identity were expressed in Britain’s interest in espionage narratives both real and fictionalized. British spy novels by Ian Fleming, Desmond Cory, and John Le …

Reporting Rumors In The Reconstruction South: The Aftermath Of The New Orleans Riot Of 1866, Joanna L. Gunnufsen

Honors Theses

At the end of the American Civil War, political divisiveness, economic turmoil, and violence plagued the South. Riots occurred across the Reconstruction South, from New Orleans to Memphis. Though scholars have examined the causes of Reconstruction violence, this study examines the role of newspapers in promulgating fear, paranoia, and violence in Southern communities in the wake of the New Orleans Riot of 1866. This thesis analyzes nine Louisiana newspapers to investigate whether newspapers published local and national rumors of violence or potential uprisings in the first three months after the riot. Though the rise of telegraphic news aided the rapid …

Pearls And Politics: White Clubwomen’S Activism In The Postwar South, Kelly E. Liles

Honors Theses

Elite white women’s organizations, such as the League of Women Voters, the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the American Association of University Women, provide a unique perspective on history. These political women’s clubs, which range from liberal to conservative, are discussed in the context of how they responded to the postwar era of McCarthyism and the Civil Rights Movement. These women wanted to become respected political actors; however, they understood this was only achieved in a manner that was considered acceptable for women. This study begins by analyzing who these women were, including their political inclinations and motivations and …