History Commons^™

The Heritage Of The Spanish Antilles, Daniel Nieves

Open Educational Resources

This course seeks to explore the heritage of the Spanish Caribbean—primarily Cuba, Dominican Republic/Hispaniola, and Puerto Rico. We will place particular emphasis on the historical, cultural and ethnic forces that have shaped the character of the people of these islands. As well we will explore the variety of societies and cultures of the Spanish Caribbean in their historical and contemporary setting up to and including the (im)migration experience of Spanish Caribbean people to urban North America.

Turner, Ruby: A Living Legacy, Ruby Mckie Turner

Oral Histories

[Turner has] chosen not to write an oral history of African Americans but, rather, one of Colored Americans through images. These images are those who were among the first freeborn generation of the Civil War, thereby placing them in the historical period of the country changing its course to admit freed former slaves.

A Bridge Between Earth & Sky: How The Natural World Shaped The Civilizations Of Ancient And Early-Modern Persia, Sophia Cabana

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This project seeks to investigate the ways in which nature shaped the culture of ancient Persia through technology, architecture, agriculture, and art. Furthermore, this project investigates how the symbols and mentalities of ancient Persia were carried forward into the early-modern period. Achaemenid Persia and Babylon are studied as societies which influenced one another and combined to create the foundation of Persian culture as it is currently understood, which then combined in later centuries with other Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultural movements to produce the Safavid and Mughal Empires. The Safavids and Mughals imitated and revived Persian culture in order …

“Tell Me, Bambi Or Yogi Ever Hunt You Back?” The Windigo Myth: A Metaphor For Imperialism And Mental Illness, Christine Carlough

Senior Capstone Theses

The Canadian indigenous myth of the windigo, originating from Algonquian-speaking tribes of the subarctic Northeast like Ojibwe and Cree, is a manifestation for a multitude of fears. This myth originated hundreds of years ago in order to explain the horror and lack of understanding of a mental illness, which would later be known as Windigo Psychosis. Windigo Psychosis is a culture-bound syndrome for an insatiable desire to consume human flesh. A culture-bound syndrome is recognizable and unique only within a specific society or culture, so in other words, Windigo Psychosis is specific to this area in Canada due to a …

Review Of Religion As Resistance: Negotiating Authority In Italian Libya, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Eileen Ryan's Religion as Resistance: Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya.

Performance: All Our Names Were Freedom, Jessica Wilkerson, Kevin Cozart

About the Project

Students in Jessica Wilkerson's class, SST 560 (Oral History of Southern Social Movements), participated in a staged reading of All Our Names Were Freedom: Agency, Resiliency, and Community in Yalobusha County, a multivocal and multilayered narrative inspired by listening to the interviews recorded that semester. The event at the Spring Hill M. B. Baptist Church was attended by approximately 70 community members, UM faculty and students, and six of the interviewees.

Contextualizing Filipina/O Experiences Through The Life And Lens Of Virgil Duyungan, Benjamin Huff

History Undergraduate Theses

This paper serves a dual purpose: to examine the world of Filipina/o immigrants and Filipina/o Americans during the 1930s in the Puget Sound region, as well as look at the life and death of Filipina/o labor leader Virgil S. Duyungan. Incorporating these two different aspects into one paper reveals how Duyungan’s experiences contextualize and highlight key issues of the greater Filipina/o community in the region at the time, such as racial identity and tensions, labor rights, corruption and exploitation, and socio-economic conditions. By utilizing a body of primary and secondary sources, such as books, journal articles, government documents, images and …

Truffaut’S L’Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970): Evoking Autism And The Nascent “Eugenic Atlantic”, Joy C. Schaefer

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This essay analyzes François Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) as an early representation of autism that metaphorizes the neurodiverse child as the colonial subject. The film takes place in 1798, only a decade after the French Revolution, and depicts the true events of the “wild boy of Aveyron,” a feral child found in the Southern French forest when he was twelve years old. Before the film’s production, Truffaut—who also plays the boy’s teacher, Dr. Jean-Marc Itard—collected articles and books on autism and viewed videos of autistic children to create his main character’s behavioral patterns. The film …

A Power Man’S Theology: Marvel’S Luke Cage And Black Liberation Theology, Diarron B. Morrison

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Netflix released Marvel’s Luke Cage in 2016 to critical acclaim. Born from a 1970s comic book, the series features Luke Cage, an African-American superhero. Cage is a big, bald, bulletproof black man. Instead of tights and a cape, Cage wears a hoodie calling the audience to remember Trayvon Martin and other victims of white racism. Theologian James Cone created Black Liberation Theology in the 1970s. As a result of Cone’s work, Black Liberation Theology addresses the issue of white racism from a theological standpoint. In this thesis I present a close reading of Marvel’s Luke Cage using Black Liberation Theology …

Unangan Orthodox Christianity: Conversion Through Similarity, Robert Daley

Master of Arts in Humanities | Master's Theses 1936 - 2022

Between 1741, when Russians first entered the Aleutian archipelago, to 1867, when Russia sold Alaska to the United States, virtually the entire Aleutian indigenous population, the Unangan peoples, having been minimally missionized and influenced only by traders, had subsumed their ancient religious beliefs and practices into a new framework and converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity. This, despite the fact that by 1800, murder, disease and forced labor at the hands of the Russian traders were major causes of a near-extinction-level Unangan population decline of eighty percent.

This thesis will argue that, despite the injustices suffered by the Unangax at Russian …

Recovery After The Rupture: Linking Colonial Histories Of Displacement With Affective Objects And Memories, Aarzoo Singh

disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory

The notion of home and belonging, specifically in the context of South Asian postcolonial diasporas, is connected to past traumas of colonization and displacement. This paper addresses how trauma, displacement, and colonialism can be understood through and with material culture, and how familial objects and items emit and/ or carry within them, emotional narratives. I turn to the affective currency that emit and are transferred on and down from objects, by diasporic subjects, to access the possible reclamation of otherwise silenced narratives within colonial and postcolonial histories. By following the events of the Partition of India in 1947 as a …

"Liberty Further Extended”: The Federalist Identity Of Lemuel Haynes, America's First Biracial Minister, David F. Guidone

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

An introduction to the life and work of Lemuel Haynes (1753-1833), a neglected figure in American History as the first biracial pastor to lead an all-white Congregation in North America. The topic of this paper addresses an understudied and essential aspect of early America, political discourse from minority voices in the colonies. I hope to demonstrate in this paper how a particular early American minority worked as a change-agent despite the presence and practice of racism and slavery. Born in West Hartford, Connecticut and raised in Granville, Massachusetts, Haynes used the Bible, his voice, his agile mind, and a relentless …

Freedom Triumphant: Embracing Joyful Freedom But Facing An Uncertain, Perilous Future, Thomas L. Tacker

Publications

The newly freed slaves had almost nothing—no money, no education, and no strong social institutions, including marriage which had often been prohibited, rarely supported by slaveholders. Discrimination was rampant and government was often the worst discriminator. Yet, somehow, they triumphed. They built marriages that were actually slightly more stable than those of white families. The newly free went from virtually zero literacy to at least 50% literacy in a generation. They worked incredibly hard and increased their income about one third faster than white workers. The newly free, anchored in their strong faith, were amazingly forgiving and optimistic. Economics Professor …

Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, Jorge Baron, Maria Kolby-Wolfe, Kristen Smith Dayley, Twila Bird, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Program has been around for 35 years, started in 1984 specifically to help Central American refugees during the mid-1980s, when they were fleeing civil wars. A pro-bono group of attorneys performing "direct legal representation", helping low income community members who are navigating different aspects of the immigration system. NWIRP also engages in "systemic advocacy" which attempts to change systems and policies revolving around asylum and immigration rights.

Risky Times And Spaces: Settler Colonialism And Multiplying Genocide Prevention Through A Virtual Indian Residential School, Andrew Woolford, Adam Muller, Struan Sinclair

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we examine how the logic of genocide prevention aligns with a settler colonial logic of elimination. We examine how the exclusion of cultural techniques of destruction from consideration contributes to the logic of elimination, and we suggest this is, in part, a structural problem built into the logic of genocide prevention. Along these lines, we interrogate linear and molar approaches to genocide prevention and propose, in addition to existing macro-level strategies, a molecular, everyday ethos of genocide prevention that is attuned to genocidal intimacies and seeks to foster anti-genocide habits and practices. In so doing, we argue …

Racial Ambiguity In The Borderlands: New Mexico’S African American Soldiers, 1860-1922, Jacqulyne Anton

History in the Making

In the nineteenth century United States, African Americans faced severe forms of racism that manifested through institutions of slavery, segregation and discrimination. Antebellum and Civil War historians focus on African American resistance to white supremacy and oppression through various forms of resistance, some of which include violent revolts and the search for freedom in the North. With that being said, however, many historians seem to ignore the role of the US-Mexico borderlands in African Americans’ contestation of the racist laws of the American North and South. This article examines African Americans' experiences in the US-Mexico borderlands of New Mexico during …

Comanche Resistance Against Colonialism, Tyler Amoy

History in the Making

Of all the indigenous tribes in North America, none stood stronger than the Comanche. This Great Plains tribe is considered to be one of the strongest and most warlike of the indigenous tribes and can even be compared to the Greek Spartans of old. This empire ruled for hundreds of years, overtaking and enveloping other tribes and nations in this area, however, this success would not last forever. In three steady waves, the invasions by Spain, Mexico, and the United States would crash upon this nation like a wave on the shoreline. Unlike many other native nations, the Comanche initially …

Music Is Power: Nueva Cancion’S Push For An Indigenous Identity, Jason Garcia

History in the Making

The emergence of Nueva Cancion musicians during 1960’s Chile, such as Victor Jara and Inti-Illimani, played an important role in propelling the left wing revolutionary movements that supported Salvador Allende’s presidential victory in 1970, making him the first democratically elected Socialist in the Western Hemisphere. Although there is much scholarly literature that deals with the social and political aspects of Nueva Cancion, historians have failed to recognize how indigeneity played a crucial role in the shaping the identity that Nueva Cancion musicians embodied through their music. With the power of music, Nueva Cancion became a militant song movement that represented …

Little Bethel Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery, Alvin D. Jackson

Willow Hill Cemeteries- Tour Programs

No abstract provided.

St. Mary's Independent Methodist Church Cemetery, Alvin D. Jackson

Willow Hill Cemeteries- Tour Programs

No abstract provided.

Seventeenth-Century Spanish Colonial Identity In New Mexico: A Study Of Identity Practices Through Material Culture, Caroline M. Gabe

Anthropology ETDs

This dissertation explores how seventeenth-century Spanish colonial households expressed their group identity at a regional level in New Mexico. Through the material remains of daily practice and repetitive actions, identity markers tied to adornment, technological traditions, and culinary practices are compared between 14 assemblages to test four identity models. Seventeenth-century colonists were eating a combination of Old World domesticates and wild game on colonoware and majolica serving vessels, cooking using Indigenous pottery, grinding with Puebloan style tools, and conducting household scale production and prospecting. While assemblages are consistent in basic composition, variations are present tied to socioeconomic status. This blending …

Andrew T. Hatcher: Press, Public Information & Perception For A Nation In Transition Historical Content Analysis On The First African American To Serve As A White House Associate Press Secretary, Nayita Wilson

LSU Master's Theses

Andrew T. Hatcher rose to one of the highest positions in U.S. government when he became the first African American to serve as associate White House press secretary in 1960 under the administration of President John F. Kennedy and during the peak of the Civil Rights Movement. This is a historical content analysis that analyzes Hatcher’s role through primary sources, presidential archives, and select national, local, and minority newspapers.

The overarching purpose of this study was to ascertain Hatcher’s role as associate White House press secretary during civil rights. This study provides further insight into: 1) to what extent did …

“Blessed Within My Selves”: The Prophetic Visions Of Our Lorde, Flávia Santos De Araújo

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This essay discusses the intellectual and poetic work of Audre Lorde and its significance for contemporary global movements for liberation. My discussion considers Lorde’s theorizing of difference and power, as well as her poetic work, as prophetic interventions within the context of the 1960s to the early 1990s. I argue that Lorde’s intellectual and literary work is the result of a black woman’s embodied experiences within the intersections of many struggles—notably, the ones against racism, sexism, and homophobia. This strategic positionality becomes, as I discuss, the centrality of Lorde’s prophetic vision of collective and inclusive liberation: one that permeates past …

Review Of Darkness Now Visible: Patriarchy’S Resurgence And Feminist Resistance. By Carol Gilligan And David A. J. Richards. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. 172p. $20.59., Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The authors argue in the book that Trump’s election shows the power and presence of patriarchy in American society and how gender can become the optics and hermeneutics of seeing things within a patriarchal framework.

Review Of The Economies Of Queer Inclusion: Transnational Organizing For Lgbti Rights In Uganda, By S.M. Rodriguez. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books, 2018, Katharina Wiedlack

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The Economies of Queer Inclusion interrogates the politics of international LGBT activism and its effects on the kuchu (LGBTQIA) people in Kampala, Uganda. It deconstructs Western ideas about Uganda, using counter-storytelling from an anti-racist, decolonial, feminist and queer people of color perspective, merging historic discourse analysis, qualitative sociology and various ethnographic forms such as autoethnography.

Editorial: Media Activism, Sexual Expressions, And Agency In The Era Of #Metoo, Bekeh Utietiang Ukelina

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

The problem is that sexism, homophobia, and all forms of gender discrimination remain patently a problem in our society. Sometimes, these are echoed in language and most times in policies and practices that remain deeply unjust. The erroneous stereotypes about women ingrained in our polity and economic systems have often led to the exclusion of women from positions of leadership.

Sexual Real Estate: Repatriation, Reterritorialization, And The Digital Activism Of Nicole Amarteifio’S Web Series An African City, Tori Arthur

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

When Nicole Amarteifio, a Ghanaian born-United States raised repatriate to Ghana, uploaded the first episode of An African City to YouTube on March 2, 2014, she began a transnational televisual movement. The series, with two seasons completed and aired and a third season in the works, is a global powerhouse that not only shifts narratives about African mass media production and consumption, but also challenges limited notions of African life, especially for a new generation of the continent’s women. As the first of its kind on the African continent, the web series not only reconfigured the West African media landscape …

Seduction As Power? Searching For Empowerment And Emancipation In Sex Work, Jennifer Chisholm

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

A longstanding debate within feminism has been whether sex work is empowering or ultimately disempowering for those who engage in it. This essay seeks to contextualize discourses about seduction, prostitution, and sexual tourism as they relate to Brazil and to make a preliminary assessment as to the ways in which the act of seduction might be empowering for Brazil’s sex workers. Based on ethnographic research and borrowing from literary theory, tourism theory, and interdisciplinary theories of power and agency, I argue that seduction has the potential to be empowering for Brazilian prostitutes who can capitalize on the racial and ethnic …

The Trans Complaint: Contributions To The Disagreement About Desire, Brandon L. Aultman

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Trans studies has been argued to be at a defining crossroads. The discipline needs to reorient itself toward new theories of transness and subjectivity or face its own dissolution. This means contesting received dogmas of gender-determination, identity, history, and narrative convention. This essay examines how recently proposed uses of narratives, poetry, and satire can enable such contests in generative ways. It theorizes the trans complaint as an index for how popularly and academically mediated trans cultures, or intimate publics, might turn toward ordinary life theories in order to understand desire, fantasy, and their interlocking complexities of making a life.

Women’S “Empowerment” In The Bangladesh Garment Industry Through Labor Organizing, Chaumtoli Huq

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

By critiquing empowerment in international development discourse and reconceptualizing it, the article shows how Bangladeshi garment workers have used the trade union space to achieve socio-economic empowerment despite barriers to labor organizing. Further, it argues for the development of working class women’s leadership.