History Commons^™

[Introduction To] The Dream Is Lost: Voting Rights And The Politics Of Race In Richmond, Virginia, Julian Maxwell Hayter

Bookshelf

Once the capital of the Confederacy and the industrial hub of slave-based tobacco production, Richmond, Virginia has been largely overlooked in the context of twentieth century urban and political history. By the early 1960s, the city served as an important center for integrated politics, as African Americans fought for fair representation and mobilized voters in order to overcome discriminatory policies. Richmond’s African Americans struggled to serve their growing communities in the face of unyielding discrimination. Yet, due to their dedication to strengthening the Voting Rights Act of 1965, African American politicians held a city council majority by the late 1970s. …

[Introduction To] Ambassadors Of The Working Class: Argentina's International Labor Activists And Cold War Democracy In The Americas, Ernesto Seman

Bookshelf

In 1946 Juan Perón launched a populist challenge to the United States, recruiting an army of labor activists to serve as worker attachés at every Argentine embassy. By 1955, over five hundred would serve, representing the largest presence of blue-collar workers in the foreign service of any country in history. A meatpacking union leader taught striking workers in Chicago about rising salaries under Perón. A railroad motorist joined the revolution in Bolivia. A baker showed Soviet workers the daily caloric intake of their Argentine counterparts. As Ambassadors of the Working Class shows, the attachés' struggle against US diplomats in Latin …

[Introduction To] Heroes Of Richmond: Four Centuries Of Courage, Dignity, And Virtue, Scott T. Allison

Bookshelf

A gorgeous river city blessed with abundant resources, Richmond, Virginia has also been called the city of “contradictions” and “crises”, a city with a “complicated history” replete with “struggles and wounds”. Richmond has been a magnet for heroism and villainy, a place where the best and worst of human nature have collided over several centuries. This volume, Heroes of Richmond: Four Centuries of Courage, Dignity, and Virtue, captures the complex heroic history of a complex city. Authored by a group of outstanding students at the University of Richmond, this book provides coverage of Richmond’s heroes from the first Euro …

[Introduction To] Reasoning Against Madness: Psychiatry And The State In Rio De Janeiro, 1830-1944, Manuella Meyer

Bookshelf

Reasoning against Madness: Psychiatry and the State in Rio de Janeiro, 1830-1944 examines the emergence of Brazilian psychiatry, looking at how its practitioners fashioned themselves as the key architects in the project of national regeneration. The book's narrative involves a cast of varied characters in an unstable context: psychiatrists, Catholic representatives, spiritist leaders, state officials, and the mentally ill, all caught in the shifting landscape of modern state formation. Manuella Meyer investigates the key junctures at which psychiatrists sought to establish their authority and the ways in which their adversaries challenged this authority. These moments serve as productive points from …

[Introduction To] Natsional-Bol'shevizm: Stalinskaia Massovaia Kul'tura I Formirovanie Russkogo Natsional'nogo Samosoznaniia, 1931-1956, David Brandenberger

Bookshelf

During the 1930s, Stalin and his entourage rehabilitated famous names from the Russian national past in a propaganda campaign designed to mobilize Soviet society for the coming war. Legendary heroes like Aleksandr Nevskii and epic events like the Battle of Borodino quickly eclipsed more conventional communist slogans revolving around class struggle and proletarian internationalism. In a provocative study, David Brandenberger traces this populist "national Bolshevism" into the 1950s, highlighting the catalytic effect that it had on Russian national identity formation.

Beginning with national Bolshevism's origins within Stalin's inner circle, Brandenberger next examines its projection into Soviet society through education and …

Literatura Heterónoma A La Salida Del Franquismo: El Caso Del Primer Nacionalismo Marxista Gallego, Pablo García Martínez

Publications and Research

Centrándose en el final del franquismo y el primer post-franquismo, este artículo estudia la teoría literaria articulada en un momento de inflexión, también para Galicia, como fue la consolidación de lo que se hizo llamar el “Nacionalismo Popular” gallego. El estudio se centrará en los años inmediatamente posteriores al cambio en la dirección del partido Unión do Povo Galego (UPG) producido en noviembre de 1976, momento desde el cual la cultura pasa a convertirse en piedra angular del discurso de esta organización. Se trata de un proceso resultado de dos dinámicas entrecruzadas, como son la utilización de herramientas de la …

La France Contemporaine Face Au Défi De La Créolisation, Nathalie Etoke

Publications and Research

Inspired by Jane Gordon's book, Creolizing Political Theory: Reading Rousseau through Fanon, this article examines the paradoxes of Creolization within the French context. How do post-colonial French identities of Maghrebi, Sub-Saharan African or Caribbean descent Creolize French society? Instead of being an opportunity that must be seized by the Nation, why is creolization perceived as an imminent threat to the Republic? How can one think of Creolizing politics in the former colonial power? How does Creolization compel us to rethink how we live together? And how does it require us to rethink freedom and equality for all? These are …

Confronting The Present: Migration In Sidney Mintz’S Journal For The People Of Puerto Rico, Ismael Garcia-Colon

Publications and Research

Sidney Mintz’s field journal for The People of Puerto Rico, published in 1956, is a valuable source for historical anthropological work. Until now, however, it has remained a hidden treasure for the anthropology of migration. By the late 1940s and 1950s, migration was central to the lives of Puerto Rican sugarcane workers and their families, and Mintz recorded important details of it. His journal shows how people maneuvered within fields of power that were full of opportunities and constraints for people seeking to make a living by migrating. Thanks to Mintz, anthropologists can learn about working-class Puerto Ricans’ experiences, lives, …

Libraries, Knowledge, And The Common Good: The Cultural Politics Of Labor Republicanism In Progressive-Era Wheeling, West Virginia, Jonathan Cope

Publications and Research

An analysis of the Ohio Valley Trades and Labor Assembly's campaign to defeat a proposed Carnegie library in Wheeling, West Virginia in 1904.

Painless Portal Partnerships: Collaboration And Its Challenges For Small Organizations, Christine Mcevilly

Publications and Research

This article addresses challenges inherent in collaborative archival projects involving both large institutions and small historical societies. It identifies these unique problems and outlines potential solutions to overcome these issues. Examples are drawn from the Portal to American Jewish History project and contextualized within the professional literature on ethnic or community archives and archival collaboration. This project collected metadata from a wide range of Jewish history archives and aggregated the records in a single searchable website.

Potential Republicans: Reconstruction Printers Of Columbia, South Carolina, John Lustrea

Theses and Dissertations

If the project Reconstruction was to succeed in the South, Republicans needed a significant minority of native white Southern support. The printers of Columbia, South Carolina seemed like a promising group of potential Republicans. They were members of an urban skilled trade that had a long history of activism. There were several immigrants and native Northerners among them. Plus, the Republican presence in the South created the possibility of more jobs and patronage money for them. All the relevant data suggests that the printers of Columbia could have been scalawags, but they ultimately were not. My research shows that the …

Environmental Negotiations Cherokee Power In The Arkansas Valley, 1812-1828, Cane West

Theses and Dissertations

In the early 19th century, the Arkansas River Valley existed as a borderlands region of powerful Indian nations and immigrant Euro-American and Native American settlers. In the resulting contests over settlement, Cherokee chiefs recreated the Arkansas Cherokees' ecological identity from hunters to agrarians to differentiate themselves from their Osage and white rivals. During the 1820s, Cherokee chiefs expanded on their agrarian rhetoric by appropriating American scientific systems in order to stymie white settlement. By the end of the 1820s, Arkansas Cherokee chiefs had infused their arguments of preferred agricultural lands, appropriate survey methods, and accurate cartography into the debates over …

Odor And Power In The Americas: Olfactory Consciousness From Columbus To Emancipation, Andrew Kettler

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes discourses concerning odor within the Atlantic World from approximately 1492 until 1838. Numerous historians and philosophers have described how the Reformation’s emphasis on texts and an increased concentration on visual science during the Enlightenment influenced Western Europeans to heighten the importance of the eye to the detriment of the lower sense of smell. This dissertation begins by thinking about materialist contours of this olfactory decline through a linguistic analysis of sulfur within seventeenth century England. It then proceeds to examine how in the early Americas such a repudiation of the sense of smell did not occur. The …

Rebirth Of The House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction At The Woodrow Wilson Family Home, Jennifer Whitmer Taylor

Theses and Dissertations

Rebirth of a House Museum traces the transformation of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) in Columbia, South Carolina from an eighty year-old presidential shrine to the nation’s first museum of Reconstruction. A semi-guided house tour with limited objects and grounded in a specific time and place modernized an outdated historic house museum (HHM). The house became the primary artifact, supported by a panel exhibit and five original Wilson family objects. Critical to the exhibit’s success were the docents, who also steer this manuscript via their oral histories and fill a void in public history literature. Like Reconstruction, the reinterpretation …

From Rice Fields To Duck Marshes: Sport Hunters And Environmental Change On The South Carolina Coast, 1890–1950, Matthew Allen Lockhart

Theses and Dissertations

In part because some historians are ethically opposed to their avocation, sport hunters of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era are an understudied group. As environmental actors, they have been virtually ignored. Based on the biological traits of their quarry, one particular subset of sportsmen, waterfowl hunters, were especially disposed to manipulating the environment in which they hunted. Their efforts to attract migratory waterfowl to privately owned wetlands through habitat management, which started nearly a half-century before federal engineers and biologists undertook similar work on the national wildlife refuges in the 1930s, were pioneering. By the midpoint of the twentieth …

Lamps, Maps, Mud-Machines, And Signal Flags: Science, Technology, And Commerce In The Early United States, James Russell Risk

Theses and Dissertations

As the United States looked forward to its future as an independent nation at the end of the eighteenth century, many saw commerce as a way to secure the nation’s future. American commerce, however, was plagued by a number of commercial problems. Solving these commercial problems facilitated an interest in science and the practical arts as engineers, inventors, mechanics, public officials, and everyday tinkerers innovated new apparatuses to preserve, promote, and protect American commerce. Many of America’s commercial problems in the early nineteenth century, however, resulted from the young nation’s varied geography and environments. Combating the environment’s unrelenting forces often …

Buy For The Sake Of Your Baby: Guardian Consumerism In Twentieth Century America, Mark Vandriel

Theses and Dissertations

“Buy For the Sake of Your Baby” argues that consumerism for infants in twentieth century America was an exceptional type of consumer society. Because the parents who bought the consumer goods could not effectively communicate with their children who used these products, parents frequently purchased items for their babies as acts of good parenting. These parent consumers wanted to do what was right for their children, but because they could not effectively communicate with their children, they were particularly susceptible to influence from outside groups. Businesses, nongovernmental organizations, and the federal government recognized throughout the twentieth century how to effectively …

Within The House Of Bondage: Constructing And Negotiating The Plantation Landscape In The British Atlantic World, 1670-1820, Erin M. Holmes

Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation is a comparative study of the plantation landscape in South Carolina, Barbados, and Virginia between 1670 and 1820 that explores how the built environment (landscape, architecture, and material culture) shaped interactions between enslaved people and free, white workers and slaveholders. Instead of simply the home of the planter class, the plantation house was more than a living space or a work space; it was a workshop for the creation of a distinctly American culture.

The vastly different houses built in each colony reflect the transformation of the built environment in the New World that began during the second …

Theatrical Texts And Contexts: Poe And Hawthorne’S Fictional Women, Savannah M. Singletary

Theses and Dissertations

Edgar Allen Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne are arguably two of the most highly read and heavily debated nineteenth-century antebellum authors in America. Their writings fascinate readers, while their character depictions, particularly their characterizations of fictional women, prompt intense academic debate. This thesis examines the previously less-studied historical developments surrounding Poe and Hawthorne in the antebellum era that shaped their approach to writing fiction. In particular, this study scrutinizes the effects of the development of a newly popular art form, ballet, the ascendency of female authorship, and the impact of American theatrical reform upon antebellum authors’ authorial faculties, especially Hawthorne and …

Wake The Devil, Ricardo Ruiz

Theses and Dissertations

You could only bury a body so deep before the seasons decided you would join it . Topsoil so desperate for affection it shakes to remind me that I was once and am loved .

I linger in the southwestern sky , burgundy to violet , with Neil Young playing faintly in the distance as my father calls me home .

Distant Electric Vision: Cultural Representations Of Television From “Edison’S Telephonoscope” To The Electronic Screen, Ivy Roberts

Theses and Dissertations

Do inventions that exist only on paper have less credibility than functional technologies? How has the meaning and significance of audiovisual media and technology changed over time? This dissertation examines historiography and methodology for media history, arguing for an interdisciplinary approach. It addresses methodological issues in media history—media in transition, media archaeology, and film history—through an examination of television’s speculative era. It tackles moving-image history through an historical investigation of Victorian and Machine age “television”.

Because the concept and terminology of “television” changed dramatically during this period, I use the phrases “distant electric vision” and “seeing by electricity,” to define …

Brandishing Our Air, Space, And Cyber Swords: Recommendations For Deterrence And Beyond, Mark Reith

Faculty Publications

This article examines how the nation could better prepare to deter aggressive action in space and cyberspace, and if necessary, prevail should deterrence fail. The key themes throughout this article include a strong need for space and cyber situational awareness, the need for an international attribution and escalation framework, and a national investment in space and cyber education, along with an updated national strategy and military doctrine. Although related, this article focuses on deterrence and avoids the topic of cyber coercion.

Heritage Without History: The 1960 South Carolina Secession Reenactment And The Desertion Of Historical Authority In Confederate Commemoration, Joshua Whitfield

Theses and Dissertations

In 1960 the South Carolina Confederate War Centennial Commission sponsored a reenactment of the 1860 secession convention as the keystone event for state observances of the Civil War Centennial. Local organizations such as the Richland Country Historical Society and WIS Television produced the reenactment, which featured politicians like Strom Thurmond and George Bell Timmerman in leading roles as secession delegates. The pageant had three live showings, and a televised version of the reenactment aired on WIS-TV, which broadcast the program across the state. Following the production’s open-circuit broadcast, the SC Educational Television Center continued broadcasting it in state public schools …

Sex And The State: Sexual Politics In South Carolina In The 1970s, Jennifer Holman Gunter

Theses and Dissertations

Sex and the State: Sexual Politics in South Carolina is an investigation of the interactions of feminists and the state from 1966 through 1985. Nationally, women cooperated with officials of state agencies to push their agenda of self-sovereignty. Using South Carolina as a case study highlights the inherent power struggles inherent in these maneuverings. Inspired by the Second Wave of the women’s movement, activists across South Carolina, in both small towns and urban settings, worked with the state and manipulated state reactions to suit their needs. The work focuses on four key aspects of the women’s movement including: the abortion …

Breaching The Citadel Of Slavery: Condorcet, The Abbé Grégoire, And The Assault On Racial Hierarchy In The Colonial Disputes (1788-1791), Jeffrey D. Waller

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Issues affecting France’s colonies came to the fore through critiques of social, political, and economic matters during the Late Enlightenment and French Revolutionary era of the late 1780s and early 1790s. Of all the questions France faced during this period, the colonial issues of slavery’s abolition and civil equality for the free people of color in the French Caribbean were among the most contentious. These two matters are most often characterized in the historiography of French abolitionism as separate issues. However, while the analysis of works by Condorcet and Grégoire on slavery and civil equality for the free people of …

Politics And Pragmatism: The United States And Israel Between Two Presidents, Christopher J. Parker

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

This thesis examines the United States’ relationship with Israel and the wider Middle East between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations. The United States’ relationship with Israel has reverberated across the Middle East and studying its impact is critical for understanding past and present issues in the region. It begins with an examination of the factors that impelled President Truman to act against the advice of his Department of State and recognize Israel only minutes after it declared statehood in May 1948; arguing that, above all else, domestic political considerations lay at the heart of his decision. It then assesses the …

A Forgotten Confederate: John H. Ash's Story Rediscovered, Heidi Moye

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

A historical study of a southern family living in Savannah, GA from shortly before the election of 1860 through the Civil War years based on the journals of John Hergen Ash II (1843-1918).

The Editor And Les Travailleurs: How Albert Tenney Championed The Rights Of The French-Canadian Mill Workers During The 1886 Diphtheria Epidemic In Brunswick, Maine, Laura Mosqueda Almasi Ma

All Student Scholarship

This thesis explores the devastating diphtheria epidemic that rocked the small Midcoast community and how Albert Tenney, through his weekly editorials, championed for the French immigrants and called attention to not only the shocking living conditions of the Cabot Mill‟s housing, but also convinced the Maine Board of Health that there was in fact an epidemic decimating the population. It is a story of passion, courage and partnership in acting upon what is right regardless of race, religion or nationality.

The State, The Gentry, And Local Institutions: The Song Dynasty From A Longue Durée Perspective, Song Chen

Faculty Journal Articles

Review essay on five books:

• Cunshe chuantong yu Ming Qing shishen: Shanxi Zezhou xiangtu shehui de zhidu bianqian 村社傳 統與明清士紳：山西澤州鄉土社會的制度變遷(Village Worship Associations and the Gentry in Ming and Qing Times: Institutional Transformations in the Local Society of Zezhou, Shanxi). By DU ZHENGZHEN 杜正貞. Shanghai: Shanghai cishu chubanshe, 2007. 348 pp. CNY 30.00 (paper).
• The Destruction of the Medieval Chinese Aristocracy. By NICOLAS TACKETT. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2014. xiv + 281 pp. $49.95 (cloth), $25.00 (paper).
• Kin Gen jidai no kahoku shakai to kakyo seido: Mōhitotsu no “shijin sō” 金元時代の華北社会と 科挙制度―もう一つの「士人層」(Society and the Examination System in North …

การฟื้นฟูรัฐน่านในสมัยราชวงศ์หลวงติ๋น พ.ศ. 2329-2442, บริพัตร อินปาต๊ะ

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

การสูญเสียอิทธิพลของพม่าในล้านนาช่วงปลายพุทธศตวรรษที่ 23 นำไปสู่สภาวะสุญญากาศในพื้นที่ต่างๆของล้านนา ซึ่งเปิดโอกาสให้เจ้าผู้ปกครองท้องถิ่นตามเมืองขนาดใหญ่ต่างๆสามารถสั่งสมอำนาจของตนและสถาปนาความเป็นรัฐขึ้นปกครองตนเองขึ้นมาในช่วงเวลาดังกล่าวได้ น่านในช่วงเวลาดังกล่าวอยู่ภายใต้การปกครองของคนในตระกูลหลวงติ๋น ซึ่งประสบความสำเร็จในการสถาปนาความเป็นรัฐของตนให้เป็นเอกเทศจากหน่วยการเมืองอื่นๆในล้านนาได้สำเร็จในช่วงต้นพุทธศตวรรษที่ 24 อย่างไรก็ตาม รัฐน่านในช่วงเวลาดังกล่าวอยู่ในสภาพเสียหายจากสงครามในช่วงเวลาก่อนหน้า และตกอยู่ในความไม่มั่นคงของการเมืองระหว่างภูมิภาค ทำให้เจ้าผู้ปกครองน่านตระกูลหลวงติ๋นในช่วงเวลาดังกล่าวจำเป็นต้องดำเนินนโยบายต่างๆเพื่อสร้างความมั่นคงให้กับสถานะความเป็นเจ้าผู้ปกครองของตนและสถานะความเป็นรัฐของน่าน วิทยานิพนธ์ฉบับนี้มุ่งศึกษา สาเหตุ กระบวนการ และผลของการฟื้นฟูความเป็นรัฐแบบจารีตของน่านในช่วงเวลา ระหว่าง พ.ศ. 2329-2442 โดยเน้นสำรวจแนวคิดและวิธีปฏิบัติของผู้ปกครองในราชวงศ์หลวงติ๋นที่ส่งผลต่อการฟื้นฟูสถานะความเป็นรัฐ ซึ่งพบว่า เจ้าผู้ปกครองในราชวงศ์หลวงติ๋นใช้นโยบายในสร้างความยอมรับจากภายนอก ใช้นโยบายกระจายอำนาจบริหารและสร้างภาพความเป็นศูนย์กลางในการสร้างความยอมรับจากภายใน และใช้นโยบายอิงอำนาจกับสยามเพื่อให้ได้รับการค้ำประกันทางอำนาจ นโยบายดังกล่าวเหล่านี้ทำให้เจ้าผู้ปกครองน่านราชวงศ์หลวงติ๋นประสบความสำเร็จในการประคับประคองสถานะความเป็นรัฐของตนไปได้จนกระทั่งถึงช่วงสุดท้ายของรัฐจารีต เมื่อมีการปฏิรูปการปกครองโดยสยาม ใน พ.ศ. 2442