History Commons^™

Fighting For Their Lives: Why The Marginalized Irish From The 1840s-1910 Dominated American Prizefighting, Owen Marshall

Honors Program Theses and Projects

One of the most recognizable figures in the world during his lifetime, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, previously Cassius Clay and Cassius X, put his self-esteem on display with the simple declaration “I am the greatest.” This was a phrase he told himself long before he truly was the greatest, but he proved it to the world in 1964 when he defeated defending champion Sonny Liston. Upon knocking out his dangerous, violent, and cheating opponent, Ali whipped himself into a frenzy, as onlookers saw him fall over the ropes, scream at the ringside reporters who had previously doubted him, and …

The Independent Reign Of Queen Victoria, Emilee Serwan

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Queen Victoria is one often most well know monarchs in both English and global history due to the extent of her empire, her personal achievements and for being the second longest reigning monarch in England. However, many have questioned if this reign was hers or if she was actually a figurehead, instead, controlled by the men in her life. In analyzing Victoria’s life and studying her diaries and letters, as well as, the writings of people surrounding her, it is evident that that her reign was ultimately led out of her own control and independently. Victoria did not see her …

The Dominican Liberator: Father Edward Paul Doyle, O.P.’S Response To The Holocaust, Jacqueline Michels

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

Individual survivors and witnesses to the Holocaust each remember and reflect on their experiences differently. Some are angry at the Nazis for their inhumane actions. Some are angry at God for allowing these evils to take place. Others learned from their experience. Edward Paul Doyle, O.P. was one of the latter. A Dominican Friar at Providence College, he served as an army chaplain for the United States Army in Germany during World War II. While in Germany, Father Doyle helped to liberate Nordhausen concentration camp where he witnessed the horrors of the Holocaust. Father Doyle recorded his experience and reflections …

Soldiers’ Motivations To Fight In World War Ii: The United States Army And The German Wehrmacht In The European Theatre, Anthony E. Hart

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

The European theatre of the Second World War has often been perceived as an ideological conflict driven by nationalism and patriotism. Ideology, patriotism, and nationalism may have been the motivations of leaders and citizens on the home front in Germany and the United States, but what about the men in the American and German armies fighting on the front lines? They may have been similarly motivated prior to their deployment, but what motivated soldiers in the U.S. Army and the Wehrmacht to continue fighting as the war dragged on and as they endured the horrors of combat? Were the motivational …

When Art Becomes Political: An Analysis Of Irish Republican Murals 1981 To 2011, Maura Wester

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

For nearly thirty years in the late twentieth century, sectarian violence between Irish Catholics and Ulster Protestants plagued Northern Ireland. Referred to as “the Troubles,” the violence officially lasted from 1969, when British troops were deployed to the region, until 1998, when the peace agreement, the Good Friday Agreement, was signed. Despite the changes in the government system, two things have not changed in Northern Ireland since the Good Friday Agreement: the pride both Loyalists and Republicans have in their cultures and their means to express this: murals. Traditionally a Loyalist practice dating back to late 1920s, Republican murals did …

Pledges Of Faith: The Development Of Ancient Roman Business Law And Contemporary Applications, Devon Guanci

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

It is no secret that the legacy of both the Roman Republic and Empire continue to influence Western culture and lifestyle today. In this thesis, I will specifically consider the development of Roman commercial and contract law. As Rome experienced continued expansion into the imperial age, commerce, use of contracts, and global trade worked to establish a robust economy in the empire. Thus, the established system of commercial law created a stable backbone that was necessary for the longevity of ancient Rome. While the modern United States is unlike Rome in many ways, many of the laws, as well as …

Contemptible Cravens And Dumb Beasts: The Story Of The Wiggans Patch Massacre, Kevin Cranney

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

On the evening of December 9, 1875, around forty masked men broke into the boardinghouse of the elderly widow Margaret O’Donnell in Wiggans Patch, a mining town outside of Mahanoy City, and killed her pregnant daughter and her son, an alleged Molly Maguire. The perpetrators of the Wiggans Patch Massacre literally got away with murder. One of the most brutal crimes of a particularly violent era was soon forgotten, especially when the Molly Maguire trials began the following month. How did this happen? Why was the Wiggans Patch Massacre forgotten when within the next few years (1876-1879) twenty men were …

“Only A Passing Idiocy”: The Ku Klux Klan In Maine State Politics, Erin Best

Honors Program Theses and Projects

During the late the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, French Canadians migrated to the United States to fill existing labor gaps in New England’s textile mills. By the 1920s, French Canadians and Franco-Americans dominated textile labor in Maine. Despite its general rural cultural landscape, the modernism of the 1920s did come to influence the lived-experience of Maine’s French-speaking population. Urban centers like Lewiston-Auburn, Portland, and Bangor were urban-industrial towns that tended to be oppositional to the state’s more rural and conservative demographic. This sparked a general counter-movement among Maine’s conservative Protestant population. Similar to other rural regions in the United …

The Shortcomings Of The Philosopher President: Sun Yat-Sen’S Provisional Presidency Of 1912, Sean Gray

History & Classics Student Scholarship

As the twentieth century began, the Qing dynasty found itself besieged by foreign powers. Critically examining these powers, such as the United States and Great Britain, Chinese thinkers found themselves in a paradox regarding the country’s future. On one hand, China could adhere to Confucian tradition, rebuke Western ideals, and maintain its distinct culture. On the other, these foreign nations had swept into China, pillaged its treasuries, and slaughtered its armies. These nations clearly had great power, which some argued stemmed from their modernization and political structure. To modernize, these would-be revolutionaries thought that the country should adopt Western principles. …

Cox, Hilda-Gay (Fa 1239), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1239. Student folk studies project titled “Sequent Occupance of the Main Business District of Hodgenville, Kentucky,” which includes a list of illustrations with brief descriptions of residents and buildings in the main business district of Hodgenville, LaRue County, Kentucky. List entries may include a brief description of building, resident, location, donor, and photo.

Marriage In Victorian England, Cheryl Ann Mcdonnell

Honors Program Theses and Projects

When most people consider the lives of women in the Victorian age in Great Britain, a period which covers the years of Queen Victoria’s reign from 1837 to 1901, they have a pretty rigid idea of what women were like in that era. Most see Victorian women as stifled and restricted, happy in their domestic role, both before and after their marriage. This stereotype is not accurate in reality to the women of the Victorian era. In this essay, I plan to explore what the reality of daily life was for Victorian women. More specifically I plan to examine what …

Archidamus Revisited: The Case For An Alternate Narrative Of The King Of Sparta, Sean Tobin

History & Classics Student Scholarship

Of all the figures who took part in the Peloponnesian War, perhaps no single person contributed so much to the outcome of the war as Archidamus II. However, if you scour the ancient primary sources, you will be hard-pressed to find a good, objective biography of this Spartan king. Plutarch mentions him only in passing in his Parallel Lives when writing of Agesilaus II, his son. In Xenophon’s Hellenica, Archidamus receives no mention at all, even though his descendants, one of whom bears the same name, feature prominently. Scholars must rely on Thucydides, therefore, to construct a rendering of …

Images, Art, And Paraphernalia: Analyzing Tactics Of The United Farm Workers And The Coalition Of Immokalee Workers, Felicia Viano

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

What do grapes and tomatoes have in common? Both of these foods have been or are major points of contention for influential farm worker movements. The United Farm Workers formed by Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla in 1962 has become a hallmark of success in labor history. This movement used traditional yet innovative methods of social movement strategy, eventually branding themselves as a household name. The images and paraphernalia such as buttons, bumper stickers, and posters distributed during the Delano Grape Strike seemed like a simple concept at the time, but there were strategic decisions made to incorporate …

Historical Effects Of Electronic Interfaces, G James Mitchell

Publications and Research

Electronic interfaces are a primary tool for most professional and personal communication currently happening. Electronics, like the human mind, are limited by the understanding of executing will, or commands. This can be characterized as “interface limitations” of digital technology. Identifying this bottleneck in technological development has been critical in historical changes to both hardware and software technology. Recent medical research examines a novel user interface to reduce task load. I hypothesize, interface developments that take cues from nonverbal human communication enhance and sustain the significance of those technologies in society. By examining pivotal moments of historical technology we can identify …

Review Of Venice: An Intimate Empire, Brian Jeffrey Maxson

ETSU Faculty Works

Review of Erin Maglaque. (2018) Venice's Intimate Empire: Family Life and Scholarship in the Renaissance Mediterranean. Cornell. 9781501721656.

A Lasting Legacy: E. J. Swalm’S Story Of Conscientious Objection During World War I, Beth Mark

Library Staff Presentations & Publications

Ernest John Swalm, despite being a part of a peace church, was drafted into World War I. In this article, Beth Mark, a librarian from Messiah University, discusses how he has become an symbol for historic peace churches, such as Mennonite and Brethren in Christ, for his experiences as a conscientious objector.

The Shanachie, Volume 30, Number 4, Connecticut Irish-American Historical Society

The Shanachie (CTIAHS)

This 16-page issue of our newsletter commemorates the 100th anniversary of the armistice which ended World War I just 100 years ago.

Contents: Connecticut's Irish in World War I --Hartford Red Cross nurse served amid bombardments --Sgt. Stubby and Cpl. Conroy went off to war --With roots in Canada, Lafferty got into the fight early --Picketing White House in wartime: patriotic or treason? --Ansonia native among nation’s first female sailors --Medals and monument honor Fair Haven Irish lads --Daring young men in their flying machines --Knights of Columbus offered soup and solace for friend and foe alike --Sailor from Roscommon …

Chiyo-Ni And Yukinobu: History And Recognition Of Japanese Women Artists, Kara N. Medema

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fukuda Chiyo-ni and Kiyohara Yukinobu were 17th-18th century (Edo period) Japanese women artists well known during their lifetime but are relatively unknown today. This thesis establishes their contributions and recognition during their lifespans. Further, it examines the precedence for professional women artists’ recognition within Japanese art history. Then, it proceeds to explain the complexities of Meiji-era changes to art history and aesthetics heavily influenced by European and American (Western) traditions. Using aesthetic and art historical analysis of artworks, this thesis establishes a pattern of art canon formation that favored specific styles of art/artists while excluding others in ways sometimes inauthentic …

Thomas Smith Cemetery Condition Report, Arianna Spooner, Joseph Travers

Thomas Smith Lot

No abstract provided.

Jackson, Carlton Luther, 1933-2014 (Mss 581), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 581. Research and manuscripts for books written by Western Kentucky University history professor Carlton Jackson. Includes some personal and professional correspondence, unpublished writing, and a partial memoir. Click on "Additional Files" below to see a listing of correspondents who provided information about the influenza pandemic of 1918. This correspondence is found in Boxes 13 and 14.

Disasters Fast And Slow: The Temporality Of Hazards In Environmental History, Fiona Williamson, Chris Courtney

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Popular representations of disasters tend to focus upon dramatic moments of chaos. They envision panicked communities desperately scrambling for safety as earthquakes reduce cities to rubble or lava turns villages to ashes. Yet disasters actually unfold on numerous temporal scales. Media reports tend to reduce disasters to discrete events, initiated on the shallow causal timescale of a meteorological fluctuation or seismic disruption. Social scientists, by contrast, have often sought to emphasise the processual nature of disasters—embedding causality in the deeper timescale of a community, in which risk and vulnerability build over months or years.2 Environmental historians elongate causality even further, …

The Lost & Found Game Series: Teaching Medieval Religious Law In Context, Owen Gottlieb, Ian Schreiber

Presentations and other scholarship

Lost & Found is a strategy card-to-mobile game series that teaches medieval religious legal systems with attention to period accuracy and cultural and historical context. The Lost & Found project seeks to expand the discourse around religious legal systems, to enrich public conversations in a variety of communities, and to promote greater understanding of the religious traditions that build the fabric of the United States. Comparative religious literacy can build bridges between and within communities and prepare learners to be responsible citizens in our pluralist democracy. The first game in the series is a strategy game called Lost & Found …

Guide To The Zimmerman Collection, Linfield College Archives

Linfield Archives Finding Aids

Celia Zimmerman was an alumna of Linfield College (1935). She and her brother, Gordon Zimmerman, were longtime residents of Yamhill County and were involved in the arts during their lives in McMinnville. Gordon, an operatically trained tenor, premiered the American performance of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff in 1954 and occasionally sang with the Linfield Choir, notably in a Messiah production.

A Select List Of Books In Mexican-American History (2018 Update), John R. Chavez

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.

[Review Of] Karolyn Smardz Frost And Veta Smith Tucker, Eds., A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, And The Underground Railroad In The Detroit River Borderland. Detroit, Mi: Wayne State University Press, 2016. Pp. 286. $34.99 (Paper)., Vanessa Holden

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Morgan, Nyla Margaret (Hammers) Moore, 1918-2017 (Mss 639), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 639. Information collected by Morgan about Butler County, Kentucky history and historical organizations. Genealogical records related to Morgan, Moore, and Johnson families (particularly the children of Christopher Columbus “Lum” Johnson, 1847-1921), as well as allied families. Includes two boxes of material related to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Kentucky, Tennessee, and West Virginia, particularly its women’s Relief Society.

Warren, Kaye (Fa 1150), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1150. Student folk studies project titled “From Slavery to Freedom for the Negro Race in Logan County [Kentucky]” which includes survey sheets with a brief description of African American life in Logan County, Kentucky. Sheets may include interviews, written records, photographs, informant’s name, age, and address.

Santería In A Globalized World: A Study In Afro-Cuban Folkloric Music, Nathan Montgomery

Lawrence University Honors Projects

The Yoruban people of modern-day Nigeria worship many deities called orichas by means of singing, drumming, and dancing. Their aurally preserved artistic traditions are intrinsically connected to both religious ceremony and everyday life. These forms of worship traveled to the Americas during the colonial era through the brutal transatlantic slave trade and continued to evolve beneath racist societal hierarchies implemented by western European nations. Despite severe oppression, Yoruban slaves in Cuba were able to disguise orichas behind Catholic saints so that they could still actively worship in public. This initial guise led to a synthesis of religious practice, language, and …

To The Frustration Of Many A Birdwatcher: The Rise And Development Of Naturism In Great Britain, Jacob David Santos

History & Classics Dissertations and Masters Theses

No abstract provided.

Planning Chaos: The Foundations And Organization Of The 1381 Peasants' Revolt, Michael Bartels

History & Classics Undergraduate Theses

On May 30, 1381, a newly recruited tax commissioner summoned several English townships to pay their dues. Within the space of a week, the working classes of southeast England revolted against the actions of officials whom they perceived as enemies of their king, Richard II, the first of many events which comprised the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. While source matter on the Peasants’ Revolt has its limitations, and we have not been able to access all of the original literature from the time of the revolt, we do have enough information for an informed inquiry into exactly how the rebellion …