Cultural History Commons^™

Absconding And Chasing Across The Western Sephardic Diaspora, Daniel Strum

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

Merchants of the Western Sephardic diaspora engaged in travels. Traveling, however, often raised question among their creditors whether the purpose of a travel was really for legitimate business interests or an attempt to abscond with their funds. By examining cases of creditors chasing absconding debtors and the surveillance of debtors in arrears who might be about to flee, my presentation discusses the concepts of residence and absence from one’s place of residence within a diaspora characterized by widespread mobility and secret identities and property. The Western Sephardic diaspora interwove extensive trading networks and early modern commercial techniques required traders to …

Fluid Boundaries: Rivers And The Jewish Communities Of Early Modern Ashkenaz, Debra Kaplan, Joshua Teplitsky

Early Modern Workshop: Resources in Jewish History

In this discussion we explore an aspect of space that is often overlooked in studies of Jewish life in the early modern period: the interactions between Jews and the natural world. Our session will focus around Jewish engagement with rivers, and how waterways shaped the spatial dimensions of daily life. In European settlements across the continent rivers bisect cities and towns, and were arteries of commerce, trade, and travel. Waterways also connected settlements, were a site of contact for non-elite Jews, and, as a force of nature, impacted the lives of Jewish and Christian neighbors. Rivers could be used as …

Fashion Under The Swastika: An Analysis Of Women's Fashion During The Third Reich, Ayrika Johnson

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This paper works to demonstrate women's fashion in Germany during WWII and how it was impacted by Nazi culture. Within Hitler's Germany, there was a desire to create a uniform community separate from the rest of the world, and greater than all others. Fashion is one way to analyze how the Nazis tried to accomplish this goal. The paper relies on speeches, magazines, and their fashion pages, and advertisement clippings to uncover the social, economic, and political factors at play. By using fashion as a means of expressing cultural, societal, economic, and political goals, the desires of the Nazi government …

Complete Bosoms, Incomplete Men: Reading Abstinence In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

Measure for Measure has often been called one of Shakespeare’s problem plays, and as recent productions show, Measure’s problems — including sexual coercion and governmental corruption — resonate with readers and audiences today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context, arguing that protagonist Isabella represents a radical break from merchant economics by opting out of the sexual economy. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the values of abstinence, and those claims are at odds with Isabella's claims. My research will …

“Breathless Zeal And Careless Confidence”: German Propaganda In World War I (1914-1918), Elisabeth Fondren

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the building and rethinking of German propaganda institutions during World War I. The goal of this dissertation is to illustrate the evolution of German government ideas on propaganda between 1914-1918.

During the war, German military leaders, politicians, and diplomats had ambitions to change, reform and modernize approaches to media governance. They were losing the battle of ideas, they realized early on. And so German officials were desperate to make propaganda fit into the structure of government; they tried to use new media technologies to be more persuasive. Although there was an abundance of ideas, all of their …

The First World War (A Database Review), Patti Mccall-Wright

Faculty Publications

The First World War offers primary and secondary digitized content spread over four modules. The first module, Personal Experiences, focuses on the daily lives of men and women during wartime and addresses issues such as trench warfare, battle, training, death, and daily life in the military. The materials found in this module include diaries, letters, oral histories, cartoons, trench maps, and even sheet music. Propaganda and Recruitment addresses morale, censorship, recruitment, dissension, and propaganda development and includes posters, recruitment materials, tribunal case files, and papers from the UK Ministry of Information and the Kriegspresseamt in Berlin. Visual Perspectives and Narratives …

Mass Media And The Diffusion Of Collective Action In Authoritarian Regimes: The June 1953 East German Uprising, Charles Crabtree, Holger L. Kern, Steven Pfaff

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

A growing literature attributes the rapid diffusion of domestic collective mobilization against authoritarian regimes to foreign mass media broadcasts. We examine this relationship in the context of the June 17, 1953, uprising in East Germany, the first national rebellion against communist rule in Eastern Europe. The uprising involved an extraordinarily swift and wide-ranging diffusion of antiregime collective action. Observers on both sides of the Iron Curtain attributed the revolt to Western media broadcasts, particularly news broadcasts by the Radio in the American Sector (RIAS) of Berlin. While historians have strongly endorsed this view, social scientists have never quantitatively tested it. …

Radical Social Ecology As Deep Pragmatism: A Call To The Abolition Of Systemic Dissonance And The Minimization Of Entropic Chaos, Arielle Brender

Student Theses 2015-Present

This paper aims to shed light on the dissonance caused by the superimposition of Dominant Human Systems on Natural Systems. I highlight the synthetic nature of Dominant Human Systems as egoic and linguistic phenomenon manufactured by a mere portion of the human population, which renders them inherently oppressive unto peoples and landscapes whose wisdom were barred from the design process. In pursuing a radical pragmatic approach to mending the simultaneous oppression and destruction of the human being and the earth, I highlight the necessity of minimizing entropic chaos caused by excess energy expenditure, an essential feature of systems that aim …

European Jazz: A Comparative Investigation Into The Reception And Impact Of Jazz In Interwar Paris And The Weimar Republic, Douglas A. Kowalewski

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

Both Paris and the Weimar Republic were fascinated with American jazz in the interwar period. Because of jazz's connection to African American culture, this fascination is linked with the themes of identity and race relations. This work will demonstrate that interwar Parisians were not always receptive of African Americans that played jazz, and that the citizens of the Weimar Republic were more aware of and interested in the African American culture that permeated jazz in the 1920s and 30s.

The Presbyterian Enlightenment: The Confluence Of Evangelical And Enlightenment Thought In British America, Brandon S. Durbin

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Eighteenth-Century British American Presbyterian ministers incorporated covenantal theology, ideas from the Scottish Enlightenment, and resistance theory in their sermons. The sermons of Presbyterian ministers strongly indicate the intermixing of enlightenment and evangelical ideas. Congregants heard and read these sermons, spreading these ideas to the average colonist. This combination helps explain why American Presbyterians were so apt to resist British rule during the American Revolution. Protestant covenantal theology, derived from Protestant reformers like John Calvin and John Knox, emphasized virtue and duty. This covenant affected both the people and their rulers. When rulers failed to uphold their covenant with God, the …

Stories Behind The Berlin Wall: Lesson Modules, Nicholas Redmon

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

I have grappled with my primary collection just as scholars and popular authors have with bringing these stories together with political histories. My goal is to create a digital map and analysis on specific themes like education and guard duty from the lives lived behind the Wall and their discourse with the government. I would like to explore how the divide impacted lives in 1961, created a GDR Society, and produced a division still felt in Germany today. The target audience of this project is U.S. students in high school and higher education. Students will be able to access timely …

Introduction: Finding Meaning In Life And History, Michael T. Desantis

Of Life and History

No abstract provided.

Of Life And History, Vol. 1 (May 2018)

Of Life and History

No abstract provided.

Zycie W Ameryce: Life In America—Polish-American Cultural Resilience And Adaptation In The Face Of Americanization, Brynn A. Cotter

Of Life and History

No abstract provided.

Une Crise D’Identité: The Use Of Institutional Systems To Build Nationalism In Alsace And Lorraine Following The First World War, 1918-1925, Catherine B. Griffin

Of Life and History

No abstract provided.

“A Christian World Order:” Protestants, Democracy And Christian Aid To Germany, 1945-1961, Ky N. Woltering

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the relationship between the German and American Protestantism from 1945-1961. I argue that in response to the threat of Nazism and communism, mainline ecumenical American Protestants aimed to create a universalist “Christian World Order” based on liberal democracy and Christian ethics. Only this new order, they argued, could supersede nationalist and materialist agendas and restore world peace. By rhetorically depicting Nazi and Communist "totalitarianism" as anti-Christian, a construction I refer to as the Christian-Totalitarian Dichotomy, these Protestants drove German conservatives away from Nazism and toward Western liberal democracy through association with Christianity. They accomplished this through two …

The Color Of Desire: Contradictions Of Race, Sex, And Gay Rights In The Federal Republic Of Germany, Christopher B. Ewing

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation argues that the current artificial dichotomy between European and Islamic sexual mores is rooted in competing impulses in German homosexual rights movements to seek solidarity with communities of color while simultaneously exoticizing their members. Interdisciplinary scholars of contemporary Europe have examined the many ways in which white Europeans have imagined Islam as inherently homophobic and misogynistic, rendering it incompatible with Western Europe's purported commitment to LGBT rights. My research historicizes this work by showing how, in the struggle against legal persecution and discrimination, homosexual West Germans turned to anti-racism as a political tool while simultaneously seeking out "exotic" …

Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts In Nineteenth-Century Britain, Dory Agazarian

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is about how historical narratives developed in the context of a modern marketplace in nineteenth-century Britain. In particular, it explores British historicism through urban space with a focus on Rome and London. Both cities were invested with complex political, religious and cultural meanings central to the British imagination. These were favorite tourist destinations and the subjects of popular and professional history writing. Both cities operated as palimpsests, offering a variety of histories to be “tried on” across the span of time. In Rome, British consumers struggled when traditional histories were problematized by emerging scholarship and archaeology. In London, …

The Cultural Cold War And The New Women Of Power. Making A Case Based On The Fulbright And Ford Foundations In Greece, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

When in the 1950s C. Wright Mills was writing about the emergence of the new power elites he paid no attention to the presence of women in its midsts. He was not entirely mistaken. Yet there is a particular intertwining of the ideologies of leadership and masculinity which serves to maintain the status quo, the privilege of an elite and perpetuate preconceptions about political agency and gender. In an attempt to go beyond available models and predominantly masculine images of the postwar America the present article accounts for women’s role in the postwar American efforts for cultural hegemony. It focuses …

The Impact Of Latin Culture On Medieval And Early Modern Scottish Writing, Alessandra F. Petrina, Ian M. Johnson

Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

In the late medieval and early modern periods, native tongues and traditions, including those of Scotland, cohabited and competed with latinitas in fascinating and inventive ways. Scottish latinity had its distinctive stamp, most intriguingly so in its effects upon the literary vernacular and on themes of national identity. The present book shows how, when viewed through the prism of its latinity, Scottish textuality was distinctive and fecund. The flowering of Scottish writing owed itself to a subtle combination of literary praxis, the ideal of eloquentia, and ideological deftness. This combination enabled writers to service a burgeoning national literary tradition, and …

The Imperial Legacy: An Examination Of The Trends Of Empire And Genocide From German Southwest Africa To The General Government, Laura Guebert

Steeplechase: An ORCA Student Journal

This project is an examination of correlations between imperial enterprises of the Second German Empire and the Nazi Reich through the lenses of global and imperial critiques. The three primary case studies are German Southwest Africa, the Ober Ost, and Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, particularly the General Government. This research draws heavily on certain themes and theories developed by leading historians of modern German and Eastern European history, including Timothy Snyder, Ben Kiernan, Shelley Baranowski, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, and Christopher Browning. By understanding the shared trends of empire and genocide, it is my aim to bring the actions of the National …

The Imperial Legacy: An Examination Of The Trends Of Empire And Genocide From German Southwest Africa To The General Government, Laura Guebert

Scholars Week

This project is an examination of the correlations between imperial enterprises of the Second German Empire and the Nazi Reich through the lenses of global and imperial critiques. By studying the realities and experiences of German Southwest Africa, the Ober Ost, and Nazi-occupied Easter Europe, this paper attempts to identify the common elements of German imperialism: pathos, frantic improvisation, cognizance of contemporaries, and industrial modernity. To help elucidate these elements, this research studied the themes and theories developed by leading historians of modern German and Eastern European history, including Timothy Snyder, Ben Kiernan, Shelley Baranowski, Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius, and Christopher …

Stifling The Subversive Swing: An Austrian Perspective On The Nazi Jazz Ban, Colin J. Rensch

Masters Theses

This research investigates the rationale behind the Nazis’ suppression of jazz music during the Second World War. Existing scholarship explains the circumstances surrounding this suppression, but it does not explore why the Nazis did not completely eradicate jazz. The goal of this research is to reveal which aspects of jazz the Nazis particularly disdained and why they allowed this music to continue while they so vehemently suppressed other forms of art that they deemed undesirable.

In order for the arguments to be viewed in their proper context, the thesis first discusses the rise of jazz in Austria and the Austrian …

Jews: The Makers Of Early Modern Berlin, Conlan Vance

2018 Symposium

This paper will discuss how Jews fit into the economic policies of Brandenburg-Prussia in the later 16^th century. From Frederick William’s decree in 1671 to allow fifty Jewish families to settle in Brandenburg-Prussia to these families and their descendants becoming immersed in the economy of Berlin through their use in courts but more so through their trading, specifically, the ways in which they traded and how they used these to free themselves from some of the constraints of German Christian society. Thusly, this will be shown by looking at Jews in Brandenburg-Prussia in the later 17th century, Jews in …

The Bronx Was Brewing: A Digital Resource Of A Lost Industry, Michelle Zimmer

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Bronx: a bucolic oasis laden with history, a suburb within city-limits, an urban warzone, and thanks to the recent renaissance, a phoenix of progress rising from the proverbial ashes of the fires that burned through the borough in the 1970’s. But many people are unaware that the Bronx also brewed.
Uncovering the brewing industry of the Bronx tells not only the story of the lost industry, but it also communicates the narrative of the development of the Bronx. The brewers were German immigrants who developed a thriving industry by introducing lager beer to the United States by taking advantage …

The Great War At The Table: Food As A Lens Of Inquiry In The Historiography Of The First World War, Alexander Bacha

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay…………………………........3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..23

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..28

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………….31

V. Bibliography…………………………………....37

Designing Narrative Artefacts, Jennifer Dempsey

Masters

This thesis documents an investigation that explored the use of narrative and material culture to present aspects of women’s lives from eighteenth-century Cork city to a twenty-first century museum audience. There were two objectives of this research. The first was to create a catalogue of elements from material culture through which these women’s lives would be revealed. The second was to use narrative to make this information accessible and engaging.

This research is linked with Nano Nagle Place, a heritage centre in Cork city that opened in 2017. The centre documents the life of Nano Nagle, an eighteenth-century philanthropist who, …

Bas Bleus, Divorceuses, Deceitful Prostitutes Or “Live Allegories” Of Change? Parisian Working-Class Women And The Revolution Of 1848, Natasha A. Gardonyi

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This thesis acts as both a history of the roles that Parisian working-class women played as writers, society members and insurgents during the revolutionary year of 1848, and an analysis of why they were vilified in the press as bas-bleus, divorceuses, deceitful prostitutes and more extensively as the individuals responsible for the failure of the revolution. It argues that women became “live allegories” of the changes that Paris was experiencing in the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly when a small minority of women radicalized from late April to June. These women galvanized anxieties that men and the upper …

The Two Conversions Of John Newton: Politics & Christianity In The British Abolitionist Movement, Megan Keller

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis interrogated the relationship between abolition and the evangelical revival in Britain through the life of John Newton. Newton, though not representative of every abolitionist, was a vital figure in the movement. His influence on Hannah More and William Wilberforce along with his contributions to the Parliamentary hearings made him a key aspect of its success. How he came to fulfill that role was a long and complex journey, both in terms of his religion and his understanding of slavery. He began his life under the spiritual direction of his pious, Dissenting mother, became an atheist by nineteen, and …

Stasi Brainwashing In The Gdr 1957 - 1990, Jacob H. Solbrig, Jacob Hagen Solbrig

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the methods used by the Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (MfS), more commonly known as the Stasi, or East German secret police, for extraction of information from citizens of the German Democratic Republic for the purpose of espionage and covert operations inside East Germany, as it pertains to the deliberate brainwashing of East German citizens. As one of the most efficient intelligence agencies to ever exist, the Stasi’s main purpose was to monitor the population, gather intelligence, and collect or turn informants. They used brainwashing techniques to control the people of the GDR, keeping the populace paralyzed with fear …