History Commons^™

Review Of Leaders Of The Mexican American Generation: Biographical Essays Ed. By Anthony Quiroz, Harriett Denise Joseph

History Faculty Publications

Biographies of thirteen major activists of the Mexican American generation, which is defined as “bounded by the years from 1920 to 1965” (xiv), are presented in this anthology that resulted from a symposium commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the American GI Forum. Editor Anthony Quiroz notes that the work is designed not only to provide biographical overviews of these men and women who “shaped the character and identity of this generation” (xiv) but also to place them in their historical context and recognize the significance of their contributions. Overall, the volume meets these objectives.

Discovering The Plan Behind The Gordian Knot New Trends In Social And Liberal Sciences, Russell K. Skowronek

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The History Of Public Education In New Orleans Still Matters, Al Kennedy

History Faculty Publications

Ten years after the flood waters from negligently constructed federal levees inundated New Orleans, public education reformers have unhitched their narrative from the pre-Katrina history of the Crescent City. They cleverly placed the blame for the condition of the schools on the backs of the teachers--and their union. The reformers contend that New Orleans was a “blank sheet of paper” upon which they put in place a successful system of charter schools. Perhaps the reference to the “blank sheet of paper” makes more sense as an effort to paper-over a long and painful history that includes the lingering effects of …

Keynote Address: University Of Dayton's Martin Luther King Jr. Luncheon, Julius A. Amin

History Faculty Publications

Julius A. Amin, professor of history and Africana studies at the University of Dayton, offered this keynote address at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. luncheon Jan. 19, 2016, at the University of Dayton.

Why Martin Luther King’S Anti-Racism Crusade Needs To Be Renewed, Julius A. Amin

History Faculty Publications

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 years old when he was assassinated. Schools, streets and children are named in his honor in Africa. In America, he is honored with a public holiday.

All over the world, King is known as someone who fought for human causes. At a time when racial violence and arrogance in the US and elsewhere is experiencing a rapid resurgence, King’s holiday is a reminder that much needs to be done to create a more inclusive global community.

Confederates In Mexico: Lost Cause Or New South Vanguard?, Jamie Starling

History Faculty Publications

The defeat of the Confederacy, the prospect of military occupation and Republican state government, and the financial collapse of many plantations and businesses sent a number of white southerners in pursuit of life in a foreign land during the late 1860s. Between 1865 and the early 1870s approximately five thousand white and black southerners trekked to Mexico (28, 37).1 Todd W. Wahlstrom examines this resettlement by studying colonies in the Texas border state of Coahuila. Much of The Southern Exodus to Mexico chronicles the rise and fall of ambitious colonization plans of such ex-Confederates as Matthew Fontaine …

The Environmental Historiography Of The Maritime Peninsula, Brian Payne

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sakharov's Dilemma: Pursuing Nuclear Disarmament During The Human Rights Revolution, Paul Rubinson

History Faculty Publications

The Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, a veritable human rights icon, maintained his whole life that the world’s priority must be nuclear disarmament. But during the 1970s, the pursuit of nuclear disarmament was the hallmark of détente between the superpowers. Détente offended human rights activists because it appeared to legitimize the Soviet Union, notorious for its noxious treatment of dissidents. While Sakharov’s actions demonstrated a fervent commitment to human rights, his rhetoric consistently—and paradoxically—prioritized nuclear disarmament. For their part, Soviet authorities evinced little concern for Sakharov’s disarmament ideas but greatly feared his influence as a human rights activist. Sakharov never reconciled …

Professor Edmund Todd's Full Bibliography, Edmund Todd Ph.D.

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Place And Politics At The Frankfurt Paulskirche After 1945, Shelley Rose

History Faculty Publications

This article investigates the reconstruction of the Frankfurt Paulskirche as a symbol of German democratic identity after World War II. The place memory of the Paulskirche is deeply rooted in the 1848 Parliament which anticipated the formation of a German democratic state. The church provided postwar Germans with a physical anchor for their sense of history and feelings of Heimat. This place identity pervades post-1945 debates about the reconstruction of the church and the appropriate uses of that space in the context of Frankfurt’s devastated urban and political landscape. Despite this, the place identity of the Paulskirche remains understudied in …

Masculine Compromise: Migration, Family, And Gender In China (Review), Wenqing Kang

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

[Review Of] Kamen, Henry. The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision. 4th Ed. New Haven, Ct: Yale University Press, 2014. Xii+490 Pp. $25.00 (Paper)., Gretchen Starr-Lebeau

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Column: From Plato To Ebola?: Introducing World History In A First Year Seminars On Epidemics, Carol Summers

History Faculty Publications

How can world historians take advantage of interdisciplinary general education requirements to introduce new students to the methods and uses of history? When survey courses are not institutionalized, specialized courses that draw on individual faculty members’ expertise and fit into general education curricular niches may be the best option. This essay describes my efforts in a First Year Seminar on Epidemics and Empires to teach a broader range of students to how world historical approaches and methods both introduce them to a bigger, more complicated world, and provide tools to understand it.

3d Digital Technologies To Record Excavation Data: The Case Of The Catacombs Of St. Lucy (Siracusa, Sicily), Davide Tanasi, Ilenia Gradante, Mariarita Sgarlata

History Faculty Publications

Between 2013 and 2015, Arcadia University in partnership with the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology and the University of Catania undertook new excavation campaigns in the Catacombs of St. Lucy at Siracusa. The research focuses on some very problematic parts of Region C of the complex, including Oratory C, the so-called Pagan Shrine and Crypt VI. These areas document most effectively the long life of this Christian hypogeum, which incorporated previous structures and artefacts related to the Greek period and continued to be used until the Middle Ages. During the excavation an array of 3D digital techniques (3D scanning, 3d …

Rediscovering The Maltese Temple Of Borġ In-Nadur: An Archaeoastronomical Perspective, David Tanasi, Andrea Orlando

History Faculty Publications

The Maltese island have megalithic temples of extraordinary interest for archaeoastronomy. In literature we find different works that involve most of its archaeological sites. The temple of Borġ in-Nadur, set on the top of a hill by the Marsaxlokk Bay in southern Malta, is less well known than the rest of the others, even though it started off as a major attraction for grand tourists and travellers in the Early Modern and Colonial periods. It was explored in the second half of the 1920s by a team of British archaeologists, led by Margaret Murray, who gradually uncovered the ruins of …

Ordered Eating: Food And Social Structures, Bobbi Sutherland

History Faculty Publications

Article is a review essay of Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking, and the Table by Massimo Montanari and Food and Identity in England, 1540-1640: Eating to Impress by Paul S. Lloyd.

In the last few decades, food history has gone from being an unusual side-study viewed as outside the realm of academic history proper to one of the most popular sub-fields of social, economic, and cultural history – if not a field in its own right. Pre-modern historians have welcomed this development as one that expands our limited sources by opening new ones to us and providing us another method for …

Paper Rights: The Emergence Of Documentary Identities In Post-Colonial India, 1950–67, Haimanti Roy

History Faculty Publications

This essay contextualises the emergence of a document regime which regulated routine travel through the deployment of the India–Pakistan Passport and Visa Scheme in 1952. It suggests that such travel documents were useful for the new Indian state to delineate citizenship and the nationality of migrants and individual travellers from Pakistan. The bureaucratic and legal mediations under the Scheme helped the Indian state to frame itself before its new citizens as the sole certifier of some of their rights as Indians. In contrast, applicants for these documents viewed them as utilitarian, meant to facilitate their travel across the new borders. …

A History And Bibliography Of Articles Published In The Utb-Utrgv Studies In Local History Series, Milo Kearney

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

“The Best Things In Life Are Here” In “The Mistake On The Lake”: Narratives Of Decline And Renewal In Cleveland, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

Historians have devoted ample attention to the urban crisis, but few have explored symbolic actions to manage attitudes toward metropolitan change. In the 1980s, Cleveland, Ohio, experienced what many politicians and business and civic leaders called a “comeback.” To understand the images and narratives constructed during this intended renaissance, it is necessary to examine earlier campaigns to revivify Cleveland and its reputation. This article traces three such campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the better-known 1980s renaissance, and examines the tension between acceptance and rejection of these images and narratives. This interplay paralleled a tension between decline …

Banishment In The Later Roman Empire, 284-476 Ce, By Daniel Washburn (Book Review), Eric Fournier

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Three Decades Of Engendering History: Selected Works Of Antonia I. Castañeda Ed. By Linda Heidenreich And Antonia I. Castañeda (Review), Karla A. Lira

History Faculty Publications

Linda Heidenreich compiles leading Chicana historian Antonia I. Castañeda’s essays into one book featuring four thematic segments, each closed by a platica or discussion by Luz María Gordillo, in an effort to pass Chicana history and literature from one generation of scholars to the next. At the start of each section, Heidenreich includes an introduction that explains why she grouped certain essays together. The first pairs Castañeda’s essays on “The Political Economy of 19th Century Stereotypes of Californians” and “Malinche, Califa y Toypurina” to show how Mestiza and native women have been portrayed in California. Part two includes “Women of …

Mary Helen Berlanga - Education Advocate, Manuel F. Medrano

History Faculty Publications

A biography of Mary Helen Berlanga, an advocate who worked with Texas State Board of Education and has championed educational justice and fairness. Topics discussed include her graduation at the University of Houston; her law education at South Texas Law School; and ways in which she continues to champion the rights of immigrants and the rights of students throughout Texas.

Russia And Britain In Persia: Imperial Ambitions In Qajar Iran. By Firuz Kazemzadeh. (New York, Ny: I. B. Tauris, 2013. Pp. Xvii, 711. $85.00.), James D. Clark

History Faculty Publications

This is a reprint of the author's classic study of British and Russian policies and intervention in Iran from the 1860s to 1914. For this edition, Firuz Kazemzadeh has consulted Russian archive materials and books that became accessible after the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet he maintains that those sources confirmed his earlier conclusions, and he has made no changes to this edition. The book is basically “a case study in imperialism,” tracing the steady increase in penetration that occurred, and it largely relies upon British and Russian primary sources (vii). The few Persian sources that are cited are …

Review: 'Atlantic Automobilism: Emergence And Persistence Of The Car, 1895-1940', John Alfred Heitmann

History Faculty Publications

Gijs Mom particularly wants to answer the question of Why? Why the car (and not, say, the bicycle) Why in the North-Atlantic realm, and not elsewhere initially? During the course of seven intense and lengthy chapters that are further divided into two parts (1895-1918 and 1918-1940) Mom goes deep into motives as to why the internal combustion engine car has come to dominate our lives. These include masculinity and adventure; tourism; male violence and aggression; pleasure and consumption; encapsulation in closed vehicles and the cyborg relationship between driver and the machine; thrills and risks; gender and family structures; tinkering and …

A Us$35 Million 'Hole In The Ground': Metropolitan Fragmentation And Cleveland's Unbuilt Downtown Subway, J. Souther

History Faculty Publications

In the 1940s–1950s, Cleveland, Ohio, transit officials and a varied coalition of allies sought to construct a subway to distribute riders throughout downtown. Through two unsuccessful campaigns in the 1950s, the subway planning debate highlights the gradual erosion of downtown’s preeminence and corresponding rise of suburbia. It also sheds light on interest-based rifts within the downtown business establishment and across the social landscape of metropolitan Cleveland. More than transit history, the author argues, the mid-century Cleveland subway battles afford a close look at friction between influential leaders and ordinary citizens as well as competing place-based visions of the metropolitan future.

Review: 'Ethnic Historians And The Mainstream: Shaping America's Immigration Story', Caroline Waldron Merithew

History Faculty Publications

Ethnic Historians and the Mainstream links two different strands of academic writing that have become a part of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century discourse: the memoir as a genre of seeking historical ‘‘truths’’ and, in turn, the historiographical essay that traces legacies and the transformation of scholarly production. The latter is, of course, less new than the former. The methodological framework for this volume revolves around the question: ‘‘How do historians come by their calling as scholars and decide on the projects that eventuate in the books by which they become known?’’ (p. 3). In the published work of their …

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

This list of secondary sources includes surveys and monographs, but few collections or biographies; while some works may overlap disciplines, their content is historical on the whole and focused significantly on ethnic Mexicans in the United States.

Governing New Jersey: Reflections On The Publication Of A Revised And Expanded Edition Of 'The Governors Of New Jersey', Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

New Jersey’s chief executive enjoys more authority than any but a handful of governors in the United States. Historically speaking, however, New Jersey’s governors exercised less influence than met the eye. In the colonial period few proprietary or royal governors were able to make policy in the face of combative assemblies. The Revolutionary generation’s hostility to executive power contributed to a weak governor system that carried over into the 19th and 20th centuries, until the Constitution was thoroughly revised in 1947. Before that date a handful of governors, by dint of their ideas and personalities, affected the polity in meaningful …

Review: 'Death And Changing Rituals: Function And Meaning In Ancient Funerary Practices', Dorian Borbonus

History Faculty Publications

The fourteen conference papers in this collection explore chronological changes in funerary rituals and advance theoretical approaches that help explain such changes. The case studies range from the Mesolithic to the Early Modern periods and concentrate on European contexts. They are arranged chronologically, with four contributions on prehistory, one Etruscan, three Roman imperial, two late antique, three medieval and one early modern. The opening chapter briefly sets out five themes that characterize, to varying degrees, all subsequent contributions: change versus continuity, the relationship between practice and belief, the treatment and deposition of bodies, burial location and grave goods, and ritual …

Paving The Way To Scandal: History Repeats Itself, Michael J. Birkner

History Faculty Publications

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio of Florida enjoyed an assist this week managing the fallout from New York Times stories about his personal finances by an unlikely ally: Comedy Central host Jon Stewart, who dismissed the information as an example of “gotcha” politics, unworthy of current discussion. “How is this front page news?” Stewart said, calling the Times reports “inconsequential gossip.” [excerpt]