History Commons^™

Modern Meals And Mythology: The Los Angeles Culinary Field, Lindsay Megumi Chu

Pomona Senior Theses

Throughout history, food and our relationship with it has had numerous implications. Indeed, humans have consumed food not only as sustenance, but also as ritual and as a marker of status and social hierarchy. Though food and the dissemination of culinary practices have greatly diversified in the past century, food and the culinary methods required to make it remain relevant to our understanding of contemporary society, as popular culinary practices and trends reveal our preferences, beliefs, ideals, and aspirations. While there are numerous ways to analyze the cultural impact of food in the current era, this work focuses on food …

Evangels Of Emancipation: Missionary Activity In Postemancipation Sierra Leone, Jamaica, And The United States, Rowan Mcgarry-Williams

Pomona Senior Theses

White missionaries shaped the development of social relations and the political economies of post-emancipation Anglo-American societies. They imbued their destinations with a particular logic of freedom, stemming from a shared language of evangelicalism, liberalism, and white supremacy. For missionaries in Sierra Leone, Jamaica, and the United States, freedom meant the ability to engage in Christian worship and market relations. Freedom from Christianity or freedom from the market, however, did not factor into the missionary idea of what freedom entailed. In the face of conflict with formerly enslaved people and a hostile planter class, missionaries ultimately abandoned egalitarian and optimistic visions …

The Nana Yaa Asantewaa War: Analysis Of The Political Institutions Of The Asante During The War Of The Golden Stool And The Existing Narratives, Angela Danso Gyane

Senior Independent Study Theses

The War of the Golden Stool was the last in the Anglo-Asante Wars, where the Asante fought against the British colonial agenda. According to the Asante oral history, Nana Yaa Asantewaa was at the forefront of this war. She was the commander, but most of the literature to not reflect this oral history. Therefore, this study seeks to address two essential questions: how did gender dynamics in the Asante Kingdom's political system shape their Resistance against the British in 1900- 01? Moreover, how does the analysis of oral histories from the matrilineal culture of the Asante decenter Western narratives of …

American Government 3e, Glen Krutz, Sylvie Waskiewicz

Open Access Textbooks

American Government 3e aligns with the topics and objectives of many government courses. Faculty involved in the project have endeavored to make government workings, issues, debates, and impacts meaningful and memorable to students while maintaining the conceptual coverage and rigor inherent in the subject. With this objective in mind, the content of this textbook has been developed and arranged to provide a logical progression from the fundamental principles of institutional design at the founding, to avenues of political participation, to thorough coverage of the political structures that constitute American government. The book builds upon what students have already learned and …

"Unite The Left": Contextualizing Bukharin's Abc Of Communism And Berkman's Abc Of Anarchism, David Hayter

Theses and Dissertations

In 1919, Nikolai Bukharin, the leading theoretician of the Bolshevik Party, published a manual entitled The ABC of Communism meant to put the governing ideology of the newly formed Soviet State into eminently readable terms. Alexander Berkman, a Russian Anarchist who strongly supported the October Revolution, became disillusioned with the new regime in 1921 and left the country. He later published his own tract entitled The ABC of Anarchism. This thesis pits these two theoretical works against each other as historical documents embodying the nature of leftist polemics that has characterized the movement since the dissolution of the First …

Yolkkh: The Story Of My People, Amna Zelimkha Yandarbin

Theses and Dissertations

The name of my project is: Yolkkh, The Story of My People. With this project I present a series of scarves each one bearing an illustrated scene in order to tell a story – my story and the story of the Noxci people. Noxci are the people who are referred to as “Chechens” by Russians and are generally known by that title. As a Muslim, I have witnessed the way Western media tend to dehumanize my community. In order to contrast this dehumanizing process, I thought that telling the story of my family would help reverse Islamophobic tendencies and raise …

"With The Commodity In The Hand": A Practical Investigation Of The Intersection Of Material Culture With Performance Theory, Katharine M. Given

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the intersection of performance theory and material culture through the practices of garment reconstruction. In chapter 1, I examine key theorists in the fields of material culture and performance studies and articulate the connections between the two fields. In chapter 2, Using practice as research, I recount the experience of building reproduction garments from the eighteenth century using historically appropriate tools and methods, as well as the experience of wearing those garments. Finally, in Chapter 3, I walk through a possible historical examination of my encounter with these reconstructed garments, and consider the way in which feminine …

The Birth Of Exceptionalism: American Newspaper Coverage In The Revolutionary Era, Benjamin R. Smith

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores American exceptionalism through the lens of American newspapers during the Revolutionary era. As American newspapers covered the revolutions in France, Haiti, and Latin America, unique narratives developed around controversial leaders like Thomas Paine, Toussaint Louverture, and Simón Bolívar. Although at first newspapers covered the events in France and Latin America with glee, their coverage gradually began to change over time, increasingly finding flaws large and small in revolutions other than their own—chaos and violence in France and Haiti, and failures in the realization of republicanism in Latin America. If Americans initially believed their revolution was responsible for …

Effects Of States’ Laws On Youth Physical Activity Participation And Obesity Prevalence, Chae Young Chang

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

The alarming prevalence of obesity and lack of physical activity among adolescents led to immediate policy action to address these concerns. Accordingly, many states introduced and enacted their own legislation to encourage physical activity in schools. Few studies have explored the effectiveness of the new legislation, however, especially at the state level. To answer the fundamental question of whether policy is effective and to describe the varying effects of state obesity policies, this study analyzed the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System from 2007 to 2017. Using the difference-in-differences method, this study found that legislative efforts to encourage physical activity had …

Profitable Retail Customer Identification Based On A Combined Prediction Strategy Of Customer Lifetime Value, Yinglu Sun, Dong Cheng, Subir Bandyopadhyay, Wei Xue

Midwest Social Sciences Journal

As a fundamental concept of customer relationship management, customer lifetime value (CLV) serves as a crucial metric to identify profitable retail customers. Various methods are available to predict CLV in different contexts. With the development of consumer big data, modern statistics and machine learning algorithms have been gradually adopted in CLV modeling. We introduce two machine learning algorithms—the gradient boosting decision tree (GBDT) and the random forest (RF)—in retail customer CLV modeling and compare their predictive performance with two classical models—the Pareto/NBD (HB) and the Pareto/GGG. To ensure CLV prediction and customer identification robustness, we combined the predictions of the …

The Crisis Of Chad: Men’S Rights Movements And Contemporary Anti-Feminism, Kendrick Zapata

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis analyzes the relationship between the modern incel and manosphere movement, and its historical legacies in anti-feminist discourses in late 20th century men's rights movements. The manosphere is a collection of online videos, forums, blogs, and websites dedicated to raising awareness or promoting masculinist philosophies. Incels in particular are individuals that understand their lack of sexual interaction as inherent, and often interact in digital spaces with others. Incel beliefs range from calling for the reversal of women’s rights, to seeking advice on self-improvement forums that offer advice to young men seeking to improve their physique through diet and exercise. …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

The Jamaican Maroons Of The 17th And 18th Centuries: Survivalists Of The New World, Lance J. Parker Jr

Dissertations and Theses

The Jamaican Maroons, in the beginning, served as fugitive slaves avoiding captivity and liberating other enslaved people. To stop the Maroons from liberating other enslaved people, the British granting them freedom on the condition that they stop freeing slaves and even return runaways. Historians portray the Maroons as either freedom fighters or collaborators, sometimes even both. I argue that both narratives were a part of Maroon history, but I want to introduce them as survivalists. My research's significance is that I am exploring how the Maroons transitioned from freedom fighters to collaborators through notions of cultural identity. This project aims …

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

Harlem To Infinity: An Intellectual History And Critique Of Historical Frameworks On The New Negro Renaissance, Jeryl Raphael

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

"Savage And Bloody Footsteps Through The Valley" : The Wyoming Massacre In The American Imagination, William R. Tharp

Theses and Dissertations

Along the banks of the Susquehanna River in early July 1778, a force of about 600 Loyalist and Native American raiders won a lopsided victory against 400 overwhelmed Patriot militiamen and regulars in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania. While not well-known today, this battle—the Battle of Wyoming—had profound effects on the Revolutionary War and American culture and politics. Quite familiar to early Americans, this battle’s remembrance influenced the formation of national identity and informed Americans’ perceptions of their past and present over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

From the beginning, however, Americans’ understanding of what occurred in …

Debt, Death, And Deregulation: Neoliberalism, Human Rights, And American-Argentine Relations, 1976-1983, Billy Davis

Masters Theses

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentina was governed by a military government that oversaw both a brutal campaign against communism and a process of neoliberalization. During this period, the United States provided substantial economic support to Argentina through its approval of loans that enabled Argentina’s economic transformation. Early on, the United States was largely apathetic and complacent in regard to Argentina’s Dirty War. During the administration of Jimmy Carter, the United States attempted to confront the Argentine military government about its human rights abuses. However, a substantial contingent within the Carter administration pushed back against this initiative and worked to protect …

The Octofoil, January/February/March 2021, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

Front Matter

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Teaching Premodern Women And Gender, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Quidditas

In her influential History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism, Judith Bennett asked “Who’s afraid of the distant past?” Fifteen years after this book’s publication, the question remains relevant. Teaching the history of women and gender in the premodern world presents linked pedagogical challenges. Most students enter college with little to no background in premodern history. Many find premodern primary sources, when taught with the same pedagogical scaffolding as modern sources, inaccessible due to real or perceived strangeness. These challenges can be compounded by the challenges of teaching women’s and/or gender history. This roundtable addresses strategies for productive …

The Good, The Bad, And The Violent: Analyzing Beowulf’S Heroic Displacement And Transgressive Violence During The Grendel Quest, Jessie Bonafede

Quidditas

Heroic actions are often associated with altruistic feats of humanitarianism, but in Beowulf, the connection between heroism and performative acts of violence reveal significant complications concerning how the poem codifies violence for social honor. A central conflict arises with the poem’s contrasting presentation of Beowulf’s dominance and physical power before and during the Grendel quest with the relatively low social status he incurs amongst his maternal kin group, the Geats. In this paper, I use anthropological and sociological theories of collective violence and dominance versus prestige hierarchies to rethink how violence interplays with the poem’s treatment of lineage and other …

Contemporary History In Early Tudor English Chronicles: 1485-1553, Barrett L. Beer

Quidditas

English chronicles published between 1485 and 1547 are studied here to determine how they dealt with contemporary history. These chronicles obviously covered the distant past, but many end well before the date of publication. Today contemporary history is of great importance to the public as evidenced by a variety of published works, periodicals, and most recently the internet. An analysis of early Tudor chronicles reveals that while many were indifferent to the recent past, others clearly laid the foundation for a focus on the contemporary era. The recognized authors of the chronicles included in this study are Richard Arnold, John …

What She Said: Recovering Early Modern Women’S Experiences Through Court Records, Jennifer Mcnabb

Quidditas

Much of the fame of early modern England’s church courts today is based on their reputation as “women’s courts.” Because ecclesiastical law allowed women to initiate suit and to be sued in their own names, the courts’ records are full of women’s words. But the task of discovering women’s experiences through these records is a methodologically complex one. Words attributed to women, for example, come to us courtesy of the male church court clerk, whose education and legal experience shaped the written record of legal oral proceedings. And while women filing suit gives the appearance of female agency, it was …

Sir John Cheke, Chamberlain Of The Exchequer, 1552-53, James D. Alsop

Quidditas

The most obscure aspect of Sir John Cheke’s public career is his tenure as a Chamberlain of the English Exchequer. This study confirms that Cheke’s chamberlainship was a sinecure, albeit one of prestige and profit. Attention is also paid to the three rising gentlemen who held office under Cheke: Robert Creswell, Roger Higham, and William Hunwyke.

Full Issue

Quidditas

No abstract provided.

Allen D. Breck Award Winner

Quidditas

The Breck Award recognizes the most distinguished paper given by a junior scholar at the annual conference.

Recipient of the Breck Award for 2021

Jessie Bonafede

University of New Mexico

Humorous Spaces And Serious Magic In William Baldwin’S Beware The Cat, Ashley Jeanette Ecklund

Quidditas

When spaces transform in William Baldwin’s Beware the Cat, the transition is marked with humor, consistently signaling magic to follow. As an amalgamation of folklore, including magic that manifests around, for, and through cats, Baldwin’s work offers adventure, laughter, and danger alike. Some cats are diabolical, worshiping or holding the soul of a witch; however, their wit constitutes a jocular contrast to that of our interior narrator, Maister Streamer, whose quotation above demonstrates a serious misunderstanding of St. Augustine’s beliefs. Though Beware The Cat was published at the start of the early modern period, the folklore it contains speaks …

“There’S Rosemary, That’S For Remembrance:” Suicide Ideation And Portraying Ophelia’S Madness, Ian M. Borden, Sarah Imes Borden

Quidditas

Ophelia’s madness in Hamlet is too often portrayed or understood in a generalized fashion. Historical analysis of the play, as well as historical and recent reviews of Ophelia’s performance show how Ophelia has been considered a character controlled by outside forces, and her madness lacking direction or purpose. Applying the concept of suicide ideation to the character’s actions illuminates both our historical understanding of the character, and provides modern day performers a cohesive and focused model from which to draw.

The Fable As A Global Genre: Marie De France, Ulrich Bonerius, Don Juan Manuel, And Kalila And Dimna, Albrecht Classen

Quidditas

As much as recent scholarship has tried to develop a new approach toward world or global literature, the essential problem continues that in those efforts simply writers and poets from the various countries and continents are placed side by side without any consideration of inter- and transdisciplinarity, if not shared meaning and critical exchange. Drawing from the tradition of medieval fable literature, however, we face a truly productive approach in recognizing what global literature could really entail since the various writers across the continents addressed, broadly speaking, the same issues and fundamentally agreed on the critical values in all of …

A Complicated Affair Of Twentieth Century Southeast Asia, Nhi Phan

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

January 7, 2021 marked the 42nd anniversary of the Vietnamese army and allied forces of Cambodian general Hun Sen overthrowing Pol Pot. Although this invasion took a mere two weeks, the consequences lasted for more than ten years with huge losses for both the Vietnamese and Cambodians. After 1975, Indochina has gone through many changes with different regimes; its geography, however, has remained the same. Even though both Vietnam and Cambodia became communist regimes after winning their independence from France in 1975, they experienced different changes in political ideology. The shift in regime also brought along border conflicts between the …