Cultural History Commons^™

International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …

Dulce Sueños De Tierra, Sweet Dreams Of Earth, Jordany Genao

Theses and Dissertations

Jordany's paper congregates their archival research into an art practice that examines the decolonial impulse to excavate the self and produce autonomy. Using ceramics to reference and re-animate Taino ritual objects found in museums, resulting in alternative museology, their work seeks to honor Caribbean ancestors by subverting colonial history.

Indigenous Performances In Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, And The State, Mayurakshi Sen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indigenous Performances in Contemporary Indian Urban Public Theatres: Coloniality, Globalization, and the State examines the aesthetic and political dimensions of contemporary public theatres in the major Indian cities of Kolkata, Mumbai, and Delhi, with a special focus on the utilization of India’s indigenous precolonial (or extra-colonial) classical, regional, and folk performance forms, elements, and repertoires in such urban practice. Through dramaturgical, ethnographic, and archival analyses, this dissertation studies significant contemporary productions from representative urban Indian theatre groups, including Nandikar, Rangakarmee, and Padatik in Kolkata; the Indian People’s Theatre Association, Mumbai, Ekjute, and Rangshila in Mumbai; and Circle Theatre Company and …

David Versus Goliath: The Power Of Weakness In Asymmetric Warfare—Lessons From History, Nicholas K. Petaludis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Under what conditions do violent nonstate actors (VNA) succeed against states? Why does David sometimes beat Goliath? Since at least the time of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars, the realist narrative in international relations measures power primarily in relative, coercive, and deterrent terms. Strong states should accordingly face fewer constraints and enjoy more options while pursuing their national interests. Unconventional warfare, and its subsets of terrorism and insurgency, should—given these circumstances, end in VNA failure. Sometimes, however, VNAs find success. By comparing the literature on historical and current case studies, I propose that a set of preconditions and two mechanisms …

Developing Mexico: History, Architecture, Photography, And Esther Born’S The New Architecture In Mexico, Tyler Considine

Theses and Dissertations

Esther Born’s The New Architecture in Mexico (1937) presents the first survey of Mexican modern architecture and documents early works by Luis Barragán, Juan O’Gorman, among other Mexican modernists. This thesis examines Born’s architectural photography alongside that of Lola Álvarez Bravo, Guillermo Kahlo, and other photographers and within discourses of modernity, history, and representation.

“This Little Patch Of Earth Is Inexhaustible”: Ernst Ludwig Kirchner And The Outdoors Movements, Erica Evans

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis focuses on the influence of reform movements and hiking and mountaineering organizations on the life and work of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. I explore how principles of these outdoors movements, including a healthy mind/body connection and rustic lifestyle, inform Kirchner’s works created while living in Davos, Switzerland.

Paternal Affliction: Emotions And Masculinity Among Eighteenth-Century Italian Jewish Merchants, Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

This essay focuses on the “rhetoric of paternal affliction” that late eighteenthcentury

Italian Jewish merchant patriarchs employed in letters and supplications

addressing threats to their intertwined paternal and commercial authority,

particularly when filial disobedience or apostasy was involved. I examine this

rhetoric as an emotional style that illuminates Jewish merchant masculinity.

Although the image of a suffering father seems to deviate from known early

modern models of hegemonic masculinity, within the context of the eighteenthcentury

culture of sensibility this rhetoric emphasized Jewish patriarchs’ honesty

and righteousness, beseeching male compassion and sympathy. By performing

vulnerability vis-à-vis Jewish associates, as well as …

The Party’S Over: How Russia’S War On Queers Spelled Its Downfall, Lucy Papachristou

Capstones

The test of any democracy, the Russian philosopher and sexologist Igor Kon once wrote, lies in how it treats the citizens it most despises. In Russia, the government of Vladimir Putin has fashioned many enemies: migrant workers, ethnic and religious minorities, and women. But none have come under such vicious fire as the LGBT. As the war in Ukraine rages and Putin tightens his grip on power domestically, an almost obvious story unfolds: that this all began long ago, with the queers. And it is Russia’s queers — scorned, brutalized, shunned, and exiled — that can best tell the story …

Primitivism, Performance Studies, And Modernist Time: Tracing An Alternative Genealogy Of Performance Studies Through Case Studies In Modernist Cultural Appropriation, Stephanie Vella

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation traces a genealogy of research methodologies for documenting, transmitting, and analyzing embodied, non-textual performance practices from the late-nineteenth through early-twentieth centuries. I uncover intersections between these methods and the conflations of race and temporality that are ubiquitously threaded through modernist cultural practices during this time in the form of primitivism. The researchers whose work I analyze all saw European modernity as fundamentally detached from physical culture, while viewing other cultures—especially those of the people most directly threatened by colonial and capitalist expansion during this time—as having access to a “lost” corporeal knowledge. I argue that primitivism is not …

Banarasipan As Revelation: Immanent Utopias In The Performance Of Everyday Life, Bhargav Rani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation locates itself at the intersection of performance theory, South Asian studies and philosophy of history to examine the history of an urban consciousness known as banarasipan (literally, "Banarasi-ness") as performed by the people of Banaras in northern India. Over the course of the twentieth century, banarasipan, as a distinct way of being in everyday life, has been characterized by its valorization of heroic laziness, seditious laughter, subversive obscenities, and by its egalitarian subjectivity that overrides sectarian and class differences. In the context of South Asian history, this dissertation interrogates the theoretical premises of both Marxist and postcolonial modes …

Humoring The Third Republic: Le Rire In French Politics And Popular Culture, 1894–1918, Andrew C. Kotick

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the illustrated satirical periodical Le Rire in its historical context between its debut during the Dreyfus Affair and the conclusion of World War I. Adopting a multivalent approach to the historical study of graphic humor, it argues that Le Rire constitutes a significant corpus of evidence for understanding the political, commercial, social, and cultural novelties of its time, and maintained an ambivalent relationship with the young institutions and functionaries of the French Third Republic. As France’s leading satirical periodical, Le Rire served as a powerful medium for broadcasting nascent and extreme ideas to a mass reading public …

Homotextualité Réaliste: Cryptosexualité Et Subculture Homosexuelle Masculine Chez Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Vincent Sallé

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse étudie les romans du canon réaliste français, en particulier Le Rouge et le noir et L’Éducation sentimentale, sous l’angle d’une textualité parallèle ancrée dans la langue érotique et les pratiques et les lieux de la subculture pédéraste. Principalement étudiée jusqu’ici dans des corpus identifiés comme érotiques ou dans des passages représentant l’homosexualité, cette homotextualité est ici inscrite dans la diégèse hétérosexuelle qu’elle permet de relire de manière située et historicisée.

La période de 1830 à 1870 est perçue par l’histoire et la littérature comme un hiatus sur le thème de l’homosexualité, pris entre son histoire moderne à …

Play: A Normative Theory Of Agency And Culture, Maxaie Belmont

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From the beginning, people are introduced to many different attempts at engaging with various “cultures”, and of course, are born into their own. The extant literature of various fields in the social sciences have afforded us the realization that no one culture holds neither moral ground nor blueprint for how to be a culture, as our own culture is one of many, all a part of the world. Yet, because of the way our culture specifies how we are to engage and live, we tend towards the assumption that our culture has monopoly on the definition of culture. The following …

[Cldv 100] Diversity And Multicultural Studies, Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Open Educational Resources

CLDV100 (Liberal Arts) Introduction to Multicultural Studies in the 21st Century: 3 hrs. 3 crs.

A study of what culture is; how it influences the choices we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working/living situations with people of diverse cultures. It is a course structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students' social skills in dealing with cultural differences. It includes an ethnographic study of cultural groups in the U.S.A. Through the study of cultural concepts, this course develops skills in critical thinking, writing, and scholarly documentation. Not open to students with credit in CLDV …

El Ritmo Del Westside: Exploring The Musical Landscape Of San Antonio’S Historic Westside, Valeria Alderete

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The westside of San Antonio, Texas fostered a uniquely diverse musical landscape throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, demonstrating the results of cross-cultural exchanges reflected in music. From Conjunto and Ranchera music, to R&B and Jazz, a wide range of music genres was celebrated in the historic westside, eventually shaping the birth of the area’s own Westside Sound, which remains a staple in many Chicano communities to date. Despite the cultural significance and rich history, the historic westside’s musical past remains widely unknown, often overshadowed by research and documentation surrounding the area’s violent history with gang networks and crime.

Committed to …

The Feminine Harp As Feminist Tool: Early Professional Footing For Women In Mid-Twentieth-Century America, Chelsea Lane

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1930s North America, women—for the first time—were accorded permanent principal positions in significant American orchestras. Edna Phillips, Alice Chalifoux, and Sylvia Meyer, all students of the legendary harp pedagogue Carlos Salzedo, have been celebrated as pioneers for the prestigious employment they obtained in the Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, and National Symphony Orchestra, respectively, between 1930 and 1933. Despite the impressiveness of these accomplishments, however, the narrative of their “firstness” is not wholly accurate. In actuality, female harpists have occupied orchestral posts as acting principals, substitutes, and second harpists since the very inception of orchestras. The cause for their early …

Homage To Eleanora: A Musical Journey Through The Billie Holiday Songbook, Keith A. Dames

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Billie Holiday was a singer, songwriter, vocalist, bandleader and composer in the fields of music, black culture and more specifically the genre of jazz. The primary focus of this study is Billie Holiday’s discography, music, and compositions as treated in relation to the black culture of production. This study will explore a secondary content analysis of Billie Holiday’s music, musicianship, musicality and compositional skills within the American jazz mainstream, broader jazz audience and world at large. This project will take an analytical look at the structure and form of the compositions of Billie Holiday. Billie Holiday is credited with composing …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

At Home Among Strangers, Aleksandra Gorbacheva

Theses and Dissertations

At Home Among Strangers is a character-driven documentary that explores the price of freedom for a gay person in a society that lacks freedom and civil rights. It follows an asylum seeker from Russia, Sasha Smirnov, during a crucial moment of his life: starting over in New York City at 40 as a journalist without English language skills. The film reflects on the choices one makes and the consequences of staying true to oneself.

An Oer / Coil Project On "Society And Cross-Cultural Interaction: Verbal And Non-Verbal Communication Across Cultures", Oluremi "Remi" Alapo

Publications and Research

The presenter’s goal is to discuss the research she has developed: an OER [open educational resources] course content and how she co-designed a COIL [collaborative online international learning] partnership course that was used by students in diversity and multicultural education courses which focused on race and ethnicity, how we see things based on several factors, how it influences the choices and decisions we make; how to deal positively with conflicts that inevitably arise in working /living situations with people of diverse cultures.

This course was structured to raise multicultural awareness and fortify students’ social skills in dealing with racial and …

Go Off: The Geography And Labor Of Off- And Off-Off-Broadway, Sean C. Mellott

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Off- and Off-Off-Broadway remain ill-defined and misunderstood sectors of New York City’s theatre industry, at least when compared with Broadway. This capstone project examines these dual sociocultural spaces and defines some of their contours through a primary analytical lens of geography (the physical locations where Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced) and a secondary lens of labor (the professional contexts in which Off- and Off-Off-Broadway are produced). Both elements speak to the material conditions of theatrical production in New York City, offering clues as to Off- and Off-Off-Broadway’s position within the entertainment industry and their relationship to the larger social structure …

Control, Allegiance, And Shame In Male Qing Dynasty Hairstyles, Carolle Pinkerton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis is about the politicization of hairstyles in imperial China. They indicated conformity with social norms, or rebellion against them. This was especially true under the country’s last dynasty. The Manchu conquerors imposed their own hairstyle, the queue, on their Han Chinese subjects to make their rule palpable to China’s illiterate millions. “Hair martyrs” who refused to accept this “barbarous” hairstyle were ruthlessly eliminated. The Manchus had feared assimilation into the much larger Han population. But the introduction of one uniform male hair style for both Manchus and Han blurred the lines between the two groups. In this way …

Armored Feelings: Romantic Love, Sexual Consent, And Gender-Based Violence In French First World War Narratives (1914–1956), Angélique Ibáñez Aristondo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Armored Feelings examines how the First World War reconfigured how the French thought and wrote about romantic love, sexual consent, and gender-based violence. It posits this devastating event as a critical juncture during which the misogynistic and racist notion of amour à la Française took its modern shape as a rhetoric buttressing the nation’s brittle sense of cultural superiority while obscuring diverse forms of gendered aggression – especially those perpetrated by its citizens against women. This dissertation also establishes that the notion of women’s sexual consent coalesced during the period under examination as a troubled and troubling response to the …

Virility And Defeat: Masculinities In Italy Between Fascism And The Sexual Revolution, Davide Giuseppe Colasanto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is the history of how masculinity evolved in a postfascist western European country. Militaristic virility was a core tenet of fascist Italy. World War Two weakened it profoundly, as men’s and women’s conceptions of their own sexual identities were fundamentally reshaped by violence and defeat. At the same time, consumer culture, exemplified by American GIs and expanding continuously through the 1950s and 1960s, encouraged the emergence of a new kind of man, only for this type, too, to be contested in turn in the wake of the New Left rebellions of 1968 and through the tumultuous 1970s. In all …

African American History Since Emancipation, Laurie Woodard

Open Educational Resources

This syllabus is designed for a lecture course on Post-Emancipation African American history.

Paranormal Pandemic: My Covid Exorcism, Parker Herren

Capstones

In less than two years, the COVID-19 pandemic has unceremoniously taken the lives of millions worldwide as the disease continues to evolve and wreak havoc. Mental health concerns have reached a state of emergency as reported diagnoses of anxiety and depression swell. The resultant mélange of death and distress have created a simultaneous outbreak of supernatural encounters. But the increase of paranormal activity during the COVID-19 years isn’t unprecedented. Throughout humanity’s death-plagued history, tales of spooks and specters have followed events of mass death from ghostly legends of the Bubonic Plague to reality TV after 9/11. https://www.parkerherren.com/capstone

Dels Territoris Tribals Als Territoris Globals: Una Etnografia Personal, Antoni Pizà

Publications and Research

Fins i tot en aquests temps d’ara, amb autopistes i autovies i mapes al mòbil que no t’abandonen pràcticament mai, arribar als territoris tribals no és tan fàcil. Aterres a l’aeroport de Palma i agafes una de les autopistes construïdes no fa tants d’anys per un govern autonòmic voraç de projectes estrella, i enfiles cap al sud-est de l’illa. Passes per camps esqueixats per l’asfalt, amb restes de garrofers, ametllers i algun petit pinar, i segueixes els quatre carrils, un ample voral i fins i tot una carretera de servei adjacent.

Suicidality As A Discourse Of Safety In The Queer Youth Movement, Robert M. Cleary

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In November 1991, a group of queer teenagers gathered to rally at the Massachusetts State House in Boston. Two years later, the state passed the first law in the nation adding sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in the state's schools. The November rally was the first public expression of what became the safe schools movement, which went on over the following decade to transform the landscape in public education for LGBTQ students. A notable feature of the rally was the staging by the youth of a mass performative act of queer suicide. This paper uses Foucauldian concepts …

From Green Pastures To Scorched Earth: German Environmentalism And Ecology, C. 1800s-1945, Santiago G. Lozada

Student Theses

Nature Conservation in Germany from The Second German Empire until Nazi Germany

Kinstitution: A Topia Between Archive And Proposal, Christopher Lineberry

Theses and Dissertations

Situating Topher Lineberry's work, this paper offers a primer on institutional critique, preliminary developments of "kinstitutional critique," and the cultivation of family-derived art history through the work of the artist's grandmother, Helen Lineberry. Feeding into a working understanding of family-and-kin-as-institution, the paper ultimately locates Topher Lineberry's work between relations to place, historical archives, and speculative proposals.