History Commons^™

The Popular Education Question In Antebellum South Carolina, 1800-1860, Brian A. Robinson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation reviews the struggle for popular education in Antebellum South Carolina. It contends that the failure of popular education in South Carolina was not a foregone conclusion nor was it mistake by school administration or state leaders, but instead, the failure to provide education for the white majority was the result of an intended goal. This project concludes that South Carolina remained without a system of public schools for the majority of citizens because those who opposed general education firmly believed popular education held the seeds of revolution while ignorance the better tool to perpetuate the status quo.

Chapter …

Black Men, Red Coats: The Carolina Corps, Race, And Society In The Revolutionary British Atlantic, Gary Sellick

Theses and Dissertations

The Carolina Corps were both a product and driver of British military zeal during the Age of Revolution. Created in South Carolina in the final years of the American Revolutionary War, the unit was the only black fighting force that survived the conflict on the British side. Evacuated at the end of the conflict as free men, the Carolina Corps straddled the boundaries of military–civil society in the highly racialized eighteenth century British Caribbean. Although former slaves, the men of the Corps were nonetheless crucial to the defense of the region. This gave the men opportunities and legal standing that …

Garagecraft: Tinkering In The American Garage, Katherine Erica Mcfadden

Theses and Dissertations

The American garage, whether in the home or larger, communal ventures, has been a site of technological crafting for a variety of people across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The garage has been a space in which to both reaffirm the status quo of masculinity, and to discover feminist modes of self sufficiency. It has provided a place to play, experiment, commercialize technology, while also providing a space to create new identities and communal standards. What we make and how we make it is, in the end, more about crafting ourselves than crafting objects.

Women In Music: Letting A Long Story Be Long Contemplating Women’S Sonic, Musical, And Spiritual Experiences In Prehistory, Deborah J. Saidel

Theses and Dissertations

Situated within deep history, this study explores the auditory and spiritual lives of Paleolithic women. It considers their personal agency in mediating the spiritual power of sound and how doing so contributes to a multifaceted musicality. The theoretical framework involves a wide spectrum of topics, from ways of rethinking the writing of history and reckoning with time, to sound studies and the study of acoustics in ancient sites, to a critical examination through a feminist lens of normative disciplinary scholarship in anthropology and archaeology, religious studies, and musicology. I explore potential audio-visual-lithic relationships for their implications for deepening an understanding …

Embedded In These Walls, Trish J. Gibson

Theses and Dissertations

Embedded In These Walls uses photographic imagery, archival ephemera, and written text to examine a specific history of generational trauma through the lens of a singular family of a southern tradition to point to a larger systemic breakdown of accountability and truthfulness regarding abuse

"To Conceive With Child Is The Earnest Desire If Not Of All, Yet Of Most Women": The Advancement Of Prenatal Care And Childbirth In Early Modern England: 1500-1770, Victoria E.C. Glover

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes medical manuals published in England between 1500 and 1770 to trace developing medical understandings and prescriptive approaches to conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. While there have been plenty of books written regarding social and religious changes in the reproductive process during the early modern era, there is a dearth of scholarly work focusing on the medical changes which took place in obstetrics over this period. Early modern England was a time of great change in the field of obstetrics as physicians incorporated newly-discovered knowledge about the male and female body, new fields and tools, and new or revived …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

"Let The Castillo Be His Monument!": Imperialism, Nationalism, And Indian Commemoration At The Castillo De San Marcos National Monument In St. Augustine, Florida, Claire M. Barnewolt

Theses and Dissertations

The Castillo de San Marcos is the oldest stone fortification on the North American mainland, a unique site that integrates Florida’s Spanish colonial past with American Indian narratives. A complete history of this fortification from its origins to its management under the National Park Service has not yet been written. During the Spanish colonial era, the Indian mission system complemented the defensive work of the fort until imperial skirmishes led to the demise of the Florida Indian. During the nineteenth century, Indian prisoners put a new American Empire on display while the fort transformed into a tourist destination. The Castillo …

Consuming Digital Debris In The Plasticene, Stephen R. Parks

Theses and Dissertations

Claims of customization and control by socio-technical industries are altering the role of consumer and producer. These narratives are often misleading attempts to engage consumers with new forms of technology. By addressing capitalist intent, material, and the reproduction limits of 3-D printed objects’, I observe the aspirational promise of becoming a producer of my own belongings through new networks of production. I am interested in gaining a better understanding of the data consumed that perpetuates hyper-consumptive tendencies for new technological apparatuses. My role as a designer focuses on the resolution of not only the surface of the object through 3-D …

The Political Nature Of The Paris Commune Of 1871 And Manifestations Of Marxist Ideology In The Official Publications Of The Central Committee, Emily M. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Historians originally claimed that the 1871 Paris Commune was inspired by Karl Marx. Since the 1960s, however, this assertion has been rejected by scholars who either claim that Marx had no influence over the Paris Communards or do not address the possibility that this influence existed. Many scholars have also claimed that the Commune was not political in any way, but was a rebellion inspired by patriotism, bitterness for the Versailles government’s capitulation of Paris to Prussia, or a spontaneous reaction to hostility from the national army’s attempt to disarm the indignant, rapidly organizing Parisian workers who called for municipal …

Perks Of Perkins: Understanding Where Magic And Religion Meet For An Early Modern English Theologian, Kyle Sanders

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis argues that A Discourse of the Damned Art of Witchcraft by William Perkins, a prestigious Puritan theologian in Elizabethan England, highlights several themes in his witchcraft discourse which reflect his larger theology and more general trends in English theology: a world with an active Devil, predestination, providence, Biblicism, and anti-Catholicism. These central themes shape his understandings of where witchcraft fits within a world where God dominates everything. Witchcraft is an attempt to steal the dominion from God, even though the Devil only tricks witches into thinking they have power. He also tricks them into thinking he has power, …

The Lost Ones: The Cold War State, Child Welfare Systems, And The Battles Over The Rosenberg Children, Megan Bennett

Theses and Dissertations

The conspiracy case against Julius and Ethel Rosenberg was a formative event in the early stages of the Cold War, but it also set their two sons adrift in a domestic climate which emphasized domestic order but feared communists and those connected to communists within their midst. Michael and Robert Rosenberg’s lives remained in various states of instability from their mother’s arrest in August 1950 until they were adopted by Anne and Abel Meeropol in 1958. The placement of the Rosenberg children with the Meeropols came only after years of upheaval and family strife in which the notoriety of the …

Building A History: A Case Study Of Manufactured History In Texas, Gregg L. Carter

Theses and Dissertations

Building a History is a case study that seeks to examine Texas mytho-history, and the subsequent historical memory it engenders, from the perspective of Nationalism. Specifically, this paper addresses two periods in Texas’ historical past—beginning with the period of Anglo colonialization of Texas and the subsequent rebellion against Mexican authority, (1820–1836), and transitioning to the progressive era, (1890–1936).

This thesis demonstrates that during progressive era, Anglo-Texans began manufacturing an alternative historical narrative that blended Judeo-Christian and Puritan mytho-symbolism with Euro-centric notions of socio-political and ethnic superiority. This process of manufacturing and legitimizing historical myth in Texas reveals a characteristic similarity …

The Origins And Development Of John F. Kennedy And Lyndon B. Johnson's Perceptions Of American Foreign Policy Toward East Asia, Juan C. Razo Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The administrations of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson focused extensively on foreign affairs in East Asia related to China, Laos, and Vietnam. Examining the development of their respective perceptions proved instrumental in comprehending their approaches to the geopolitics of the region. The overall structure of this thesis includes an analysis of their tenure in Congress, a breakdown of the first-half of Kennedy’s presidency, an emphasis on the transition period between Kennedy and Johnson, an examination of Johnson’s presidency, and concluding with a detailed comparison of their foreign policy toward East Asia. Their differing perceptions to the regional geopolitics …

Aristotle, Redemption, And The Conquest Of The Americas, Luis Angel Buentello

Theses and Dissertations

The central question addressed in my thesis is the claim that the even though the conquest of the Americas by the Spaniards was a brutal and murderous process, the Spanish imperial project in the Americas, based on Aristotelian ideology, resulted in the most beneficial and least harmful form of conquest conceivable in comparison to the next great empire of the age, the British Empire.

The founding pillars of Spain’s overseas empire in the Americas, based on an Aristotelian framework, produced a synthesis of political thinking that brought about greater benefits to the native populations, and slave populations, subsumed under the …

Hablando De Negocios: Three Rio Grande Valley Businesses During The Great Depression, 1929-1939, Karla A. Lira

Theses and Dissertations

The Rio Grande Valley is in the South most tip of Texas and borders Northern Mexico, it includes Willacy, Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr Counties. Scholars have focused on gender, agriculture, and labor of the area. However, historians have failed to research the region through a business perspective during the Great Depression. This thesis then seeks to analyze ways in which the Great Depression affected the Rio Grande Valley through the research of two stores and one business in the area: The Manuel Guerra Store, Edelstein’s furniture store, and John Shary’s land selling business. Its objective will fill an existing gap …

Political Animal: Florence Brown Cotnam And The Arkansas Women's Suffrage Movement, Jared Barton Craig

Theses and Dissertations

Florence Brown Cotnam was a suffragist, war worker, clubwoman, one-time congressional candidate, and an active member of the Democratic Party. She entered the Women’s Suffrage Movement when nothing got done, especially in the American South that opposed equal suffrage on racial and social grounds. The Arkansas General Assembly stalled legislation. Equally daunting were the anti-suffrage arguments were rampant, both in government corridors and in communities across the state. Cotnam was uniquely suited to change that. She remade the perception of a suffragist through a robust publicity campaign, linked the movement to World War I, made suffrage a patriotic issue, countered …

Exorcising Power, John Jarzemsky

Theses and Dissertations

This paper theorizes that authors, in an act I have termed “literary exorcism,” project and expunge parts of their identities that are in conflict with the overriding political agenda of their texts, into the figure of the villain. Drawing upon theories of power put forth by Judith Butler, I argue that this sort of projection arises in reaction to dominant ideas and institutions, but that authors find ways to manipulate this process over time. By examining a broad cross-section of English-language literature over several centuries, this phenomenon and its evolution can be observed, as well as the means by which …

1864 Arkansas Constitutional Convention, Jacob Ethan Lindsey

Theses and Dissertations

This study reveals the identity and background of the constitutional delegates who attempted to mend the division brought about by Civil War and bring Arkansas back into the Union. This biographical sketch of the delegates provides a detailed account of their background and how it influenced the convention proceedings. The delegates’ identity was virtually unknown prior to this study. The convention convened during the middle of the American Civil War and its members and accomplishments were ignored or minimized in prior studies. Subsequent conventions overshadowed this crucial convention and the diverse assembly of delegates. This study addresses questions posed by …

Propaganda And Comic Books And Their Relationship With World War Ii, Shakeelah Rahmaan

Theses and Dissertations

Sequential art is a way of telling a story with images. Throughout history, telling stories by way of graphics has been conveyed in many different ways. Visual narratives began in caves as wall painting and hieroglyphs, and they evolved into newspaper comic strips, and then comic book magazines, and, in more modern times, graphic novels. Over time, many countries have had their own versions of a comic book, but for the United States of America, it became prominent in the 1930’s, and became a major component in World War II by effectively spreading propaganda to American citizens. During the years …

Mapping Argenta From Annexation To Secession, Lyle C. Grisham

Theses and Dissertations

This project illustrates the use of interactive media in the form of interactive maps to Display a section of history, the annexation and secession of Argenta, Arkansas. Founded in the late 1860’s, Argenta became a boom town in central Arkansas, just north of Little Rock, the capitol of the state. In 1890, seeking to expand its economic bases, Little Rock annexed the small community. This thesis details the rise of Argenta during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its time as a ward of Little Rock and its secession, describing the process of creating a Wordpress website in combination …

The Development Of Auto-Tourism And Shady Grove Camp In The Buffalo National River Region, Leslie Anna Shelby Linck

Theses and Dissertations

Early twentieth century tourism in Buffalo National River region is an important link to the beginnings of Arkansas tourism. The Pruitt Historic District provides a window into the development of the rise of autocamps in the early 1920s. This process paper examines why tourists were interested in visiting natural sites such as Shady Grove Camp in Pruitt, Arkansas. To do this I examined the beginnings of tourism in America, and how it evolved up into the mid-twentieth century. This process paper also includes methodology and examination of primary sources used for the project portion. I compiled the results of my …

Arts Advocate: Jeannette Edris Rockefeller And The Founding Of The Arkansas Arts Center, Kaye Marie Lundgren

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the dynamics behind the arts advocacy of Jeannette Edris Rockefeller of Seattle, Washington, who was the daughter and granddaughter of West-Coast capitalists and the spouse of an East-Coast philanthropist, Winthrop Rockefeller, to answer the question, “Did Jeannette Edris Rockefeller achieve the mantle of Art Advocate in her own right while participating in the Rockefeller family’s philanthropic mission of assisting America’s South?” Primary sources and contextual analysis show that Jeannette Rockefeller achieved the title of art advocate not only by virtue of her marriage to a member of the philanthropic Rockefeller family, but by virtue of her upbringing, …

Three Companies, One Story: The History Of Railroading In North Little Rock, Joseph Wayne Alley

Theses and Dissertations

The early railroads that operated in North Little Rock at the turn of the Twentieth century were a vital part of the city’s makeup. Not only did they impact the local area directly, but this system also acted as a hub that served a good majority of the country. This exhibit focuses on three important parts of the railroads that serviced North Little Rock: the Baring Cross Bridge, the Fort Smith Crossing, and the Iron Mountain Shop Complex. Using maps and other items, the exhibit shows show the most important parts of these railroads in the city.

The Catholic Church And The Formation Of Human Rights Doctrine In El Salvador, Edward Mikus Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The Catholic Church’s focus on human rights in the years following the Second Vatican Council led to increased political activity amongst the clergy in socially stratified El Salvador. This development, in turn, led to a breakdown in relations between the Church and the Salvadoran State

Thomas Paine And The Rhetoric Of American Identity, Oma Jean Quiroz

Theses and Dissertations

From 1700 to 1770, the population of the English colonies in North America grew from a mere 260,000 to 2,150,000 (Breen & Hall, 2004, p. 257). New settlers came from various cultures and faiths unlike the earlier settlers. Thomas Paine united these now diverse peoples into one people creating an American culture, not from new ideas, but from a perpetuation of existing ideals in Colonial America. Paine’s language preserved and rekindled colonial ideals for a melting pot of peoples that would have quickly become a varied nation of states instead of what became a nation of “United States.” This thesis …

Images Of Women In Refugee Drama: Eve Ensler’S Necessary Targets And Ellen Mclaughlin’S The Trojan Women, Kaitlyn Tossie

Theses and Dissertations

In the past ten years, a critique of the conceptualization of refugees in Western mass media has emerged as a developing discourse in response to post-20th century genocides. Photographs in mass media of wailing refugees began to appear in the early 1990s when reports of the Bosnian genocide appeared in the United States. These images, and the stereotypes that surround them, contribute to the universal depiction of refugees as weak. Though the way in which theatre comments on this conceptualization of refugees has largely been ignored, theatre has a unique ability to comment on, reflect, and create a culture that …

Theory For A Starving Obese, Ishai Shapira Kalter

Theses and Dissertations

Theory for a Starving Obese (2017) is both a book and an installation. During the years 2015-2017 I began writing Theory for a Starving Obese; a collection of essays and art criticism about exhibitions that took place in white cubes in New York. I was following my dissatisfaction, and hoped to delve deeper into the question “What is Contemporary Art?” At the end of a process, I sent seventeen envelopes to artists who exhibited solo shows in New York and whose works I have criticized. Each envelope consists of one digital drawing (שרבוט, pronounced Shirbut), DVD with the …

Tuff Breeches, Arkadiy Ryabin

Theses and Dissertations

In consideration of language and it’s relationship to information and knowledge, the author explores personal set of events in relationship to that of the public, via forms of orality. 19th century American literature is posited as a hangover influencing contemporary events.