Cultural History Commons^™

Whose Line Is It Anyway? Rhetoric, Pathology, And The Jewish Race In Late Victorian England, Stephanie G. Pokras

Senior Independent Study Theses

This thesis examines how both late Victorian Anglo-Jews and Gentiles used rhetoric of race science and Jewish pathology to encode lines of difference, as well as the relationship between these discourses. My first chapter analyzes the role of Gentile discourse of disease and disability as the foundation of late Victorian anti-Semitism. My second chapter focuses on Jewish ‘expert’ engagement with race science. In this chapter, I argue that contrary to the dominant historical narrative, not only was the Jewish community engaged with race science, but their scholarly conversations were dynamic and diverse. Ideas about race and pathology became central to …

Finding A Place For World War I In American History 1914-1918, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"World War I has occupied an uneasy place in the American public and political consciousness.1 In the 1920s and 1930s, controversies over the war permeated the nation’s cultural and political life, influencing memorial culture and governmental policy. Interest in the war, however, waned considerably after World War II, a much larger and longer war for the United States. Despite a plethora of scholarly works examining nearly every aspect of the war, interest in the war remains limited even among academic historians. In many respects, World War I became the 'forgotten war' because Americans never developed a unifying collective memory about …

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 …

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 …

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 …

"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 …

Helen Of Troy? A Reexamination Of Helen's Speech In The Iliad, Erin A. Robichaud

Senior Independent Study Theses

In most interpretations, Helen of Troy’s beauty makes her a vain, promiscuous, and dangerous woman. This is the Helen that patriarchal societies have written into existence and passed on to later generations, but it is not the Helen that appears in the Iliad. This thesis argues that Helen’s voice makes her a perceptive and powerful strategist. On different occasions, Helen adopts the speech patterns of various social groups represented in Homeric society in order to assume their identity. She builds a Trojan and a Greek persona as a means to protect herself from the trauma she experiences during the …

Playing At The Crossroads Of Religion And Law: Historical Milieu, Context And Curriculum Hooks In Lost & Found, Owen Gottlieb

Articles

This chapter presents the use of Lost & Found – a purpose-built tabletop to mobile game series – to teach medieval religious legal systems. The series aims to broaden the discourse around religious legal systems and to counter popular depiction of these systems which often promote prejudice and misnomers. A central element is the importance of contextualizing religion in period and locale. The Lost & Found series uses period accurate depictions of material culture to set the stage for play around relevant topics – specifically how the law promoted collaboration and sustainable governance practices in Fustat (Old Cairo) in twelfth-century …

Negro Leagues And College Football Playoff, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Last week, the Commissioner of Baseball announced that from this point on the Negro Leagues that were operating between 1920 and 1948 would be “elevated” to “Major League status” by Major League Baseball. He added that “MLB is proud to highlight the contributions of the pioneers who played from 1920-1948.” The action was presented as a culmination of the centennial celebration of the founding of the Negro Leagues in 1920. The statistics from those leagues now become a part of the official records.

Religion And Rural Internationalism In The Nineteenth-Century Middle West: The Global Consciousness Of Rural Dutch Middle Westerners,1865–1901, Andrew Klumpp

Religious Studies Theses and Dissertations

This project asks: How did underlying religious worldviews inform the local, national, and global engagement of rural middle western Dutch communities in the nineteenth century, which are often characterized as isolated and provincial? More broadly, it queries, if the local, national, and global are united by this broad religious worldview, how does that transform our understandings of rural middle western ethnic enclaves and who contributed to the rich internationalism of the nineteenth century and from where?

Close examination of these rural middle western ethnic enclaves reveals not only an ambitious vision for building local institutions but also for extending Dutch …

How Palestinian Aid Organizations Adapt To The Possibility Of Further Annexation And Rights Abuses In The Wake Of "The Deal Of The Century", Nadia L. Wiggins

Capstone Collection

This research explores the question, “To what extent has the ‘Deal of the Century’ impacted Palestinian aid organizations, and how might it impact them in the future?” The significance of this question lies in the fact that the “Deal of the Century” claims to solve one of the longest and most complex conflicts, yet it has not been sufficiently analyzed from a Palestinian perspective nor a humanitarian perspective. Furthermore, by presenting scholarly critiques of the deal and aid worker’s concerns, my hope is that an American audience may be convinced of the complicity of our government in devising a failed …

A Qualitative Study Exploring Attachment Through The Context Of Indian Boarding Schools, Melissa D. Olson (Zephier)

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This is a qualitative phenomenological exploration looking at how Indian boarding schools impacted Indigenous families and indicators of how their attachment was affected. Thirty-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 individuals who attended Indian boarding schools and 13 descendants of those who attended these schools. The interviews were conducted on a Northern Plains reservation where approval was obtained from that tribal college and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Results indicate knowledge sharers in both groups, individuals who attended boarding schools and those who descended from these individuals experienced critical impacts to their ability to form intergenerational attachments with subsequent generations due …

Covid-19 Covers Against The Nfl, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

For the NFL, the push to the playoffs begins in December as the contenders are separated from the pretenders. The Super Bowl is still eleven weeks or so away, but those who hope to be there are fine-tuning their game to make the run to Super Bowl LV in Tampa.

A Call To Arms: A Comparative Study Of Mississippi And Kentucky Citizens During The Secession Crisis, 1859-1861, Amy Myers

Master's Theses

Many studies of the American Civil War have considered why Mississippi leaders voted to secede, while Kentucky politicians remained in the Union. Scholars have previously focused on political elites to understand the underlying motivations behind each state’s decision. These same scholars have often confined their studies to a synthesis of why secession occurred nationally or at the state level. The question remains as to what the common citizen saw and believed when faced with secession and if their views matched their delegates.

This study utilizes the governors’ papers of John J. Pettus and Beriah Magoffin, the Jefferson Davis papers, and …

December 2020, Temple Shalom Synagogue Center

Newsletter Archive

Contents: Mega-Chanukah Party; From the Rabbi; President's Message; Book Group; Community Notices

Amjambo Africa! (December 2020), Kathreen Harrison

Amjambo Africa!

In This Issue

Boko Haram .................................2/3

Publisher’s Editorial ........................4

Meet Georges Budagu Makoko .....4

Elections/immigration reform .......5

Translations

French ............................................7

Swahili............................................8

Somali ............................................9

Kinyarwanda...............................20

Portuguese ............................20/21

News from Africa.....................10/11

Piece Together Project .................12

I’m Your Neighbor Books.............13

Pious Ali mourns Rawlings of Ghana ....................14

A Man on the move.......................15

Black Mainer project.....................16

Finance/Business............................19

Auto Insurance ..............................21

Poem by Ekhlas Ahmed................22

Guest columns...............................23

Titi de Baccarat .......................26/27

Covid-19 Is Number One, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

Heading into December, the college football season has reached that point when teams are trying to position themselves for conference playoffs and championships, and for the elite the CFP National Championship Game. Lesser teams are trolling for bowl games, great and small. In addition, men’s and women’s college basketball and hockey are underway. College basketball opened on Wednesday with a bundle of cancellations.

In Need Of A Hero? The Creation And Use Of The Legend Of General George S. Patton, Jr., Nathan Curtis Jones

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During WWII, General George Patton became the hero Americans needed through the creation of a self-crafted brand and with help from journalists. After Patton’s death, opportunists forwarded a legend narrative that developed into a collective memory that morphed over time to meet contemporary challenges. Stakeholders of that collective memory commemorated and memorialized the dead hero for monetary and political gain, to promote patriotism, make military doctrinal changes, and even promote peace. Today, this collective memory has potential for the U.S. Army as it transforms civilians into soldiers and officers. This study contributes to history and memory studies by linking representations …

When Leaders Surrender Their Divine Lineage: The Loss Of Cosmic Connection Between Maya Local Lords And Their Supernatural Deities, Amy S. Peterson

Department of Anthropology: Theses and Student Research

The Maya who lived during the Classic Period (200 CE to 900 CE) went through many changes in their daily lives. In the Late Classic Period (600 to 900 CE), social, political and economic stressors caused even more change to their routines, leading to the “collapse” around 800-900 CE. Current hypotheses for this collapse included warfare, environmental factors, human degradation of landscapes, as well as internal and external influences. I hypothesize that in the Early Classic (200 to 600 CE), rulership of local communities by Maya lords, or ajawob, related mainly to their connection to a pantheon of supernatural …

Thanksgiving, Richard C. Crepeau

On Sport and Society

As with all American traditions, if it happened once or twice it is one. Therefore I present my traditional Thanksgiving piece.

Inequality, Living Standards And Growth: Two Centuries Of Economic Development In Mexico, Ingrid Bleynat, Amilcar Challú, Paul Segal

History Faculty Publications

Historical wage and incomes data are informative both as normative measures of living standards, and as indicators of patterns of economic development. We show that, given limited historical data, median incomes are most appropriate for measuring welfare and inequality, while urban unskilled wages can be used to test dualist models of development. We present a new dataset including both series in Mexico from 1800 to 2015 and find that both have historically failed to keep up with aggregate growth: per worker GDP is now over eight times higher than in the nineteenth century, while unskilled urban real wages are only …

Putting Cajuns On The Map: Music's Role In Popularizing Louisiana's Bayou Culture, Christine Broussard

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Southern Louisiana witnessed a grassroots Cajun cultural revival whose most active years stretched across three decades in the latter half of the twentieth century. While important local and world events created conditions favorable to its development, actors and events within the Cajun musical sphere specifically, and the establishment and use of iconography within that sphere, played integral roles in sustaining the Cajun renaissance into the 1980s. Activist efforts that recast long-held negative tropes about Cajun culture ensured modern-day Cajuns had access not only to cultural traditions but to the same spaces created to help keep those traditions alive. While those …

The Grizzly, November 19, 2020, Simra Mariam, Griffin Banks, Edward Martinez, Claude Wolfer, Morgan Grabowski, Layla Halterman, Daniel Cohen, Ava Compagnoni, Rosalia Murphy

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Election Results are In! • Ursinus Students on In-Person Voting vs. Mail-in Ballots • Radio Plays a Success • Emily Gurganus: A Case of Voter Suppression? • Comparison Steals Your Happiness • Opinion: COVID-19, Climate Change, and Sacrifice; The Literature Storm to Come Post-COVID • Post-Election: How's Your Stress? • Men's Soccer Hopes for More

Padre Pio, Pandemic Saint: The Effects Of The Spanish Flu And Covid-19 On Pilgrimage And Devotion To The World’S Most Popular Saint, Michael A. Di Giovine

International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage

In the Catholic world, pilgrimages and other devotional rituals are often undertaken to foster healing and well-being. Thus, shrines dedicated to saints are particularly relevant in times of pandemic. Pilgrimage to the shrines associated with 20th century Italian stigmatic, St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, known as one of the Catholic world’s most popular saints, is particularly informed by this notion, as Pio is understood as a healing saint thanks to the spiritual and corporal works of mercy that marked his ministry during his lifetime, as well as belief in the miraculous nature of his relics. Pio’s hometown of Pietrelcina and …

Acknowledging Our Past: Race, Landscape And History, Alea Harris, Kaycia Best, Dieran Mcgowan, Destiny Shippy, Vera Oberg, Bryson Coleman, Luke Meagher, Rhiannon Leebrick Ph.D., Phillip Stone

Student Scholarship

This book is the product of nearly a year's worth of student research on Wofford College's history, undertaken as part of a grant by the Council of Independent Colleges in the Humanities Research for the Public Good initiative. The research was supervised and directed by Dr. Rhiannon Leebrick.

"Guiding Research Questions:

How did Wofford College and its early stakeholders support and participate in slavery?

How is the legacy of slavery present in the landscape of our campus (buildings, statues, names, etc.)?

How can we better understand Wofford as an institution during the time of Reconstruction through the Jim Crow era? …

The Grizzly, November 12, 2020, Simra Mariam, Ava Compagnoni, Morgan Grabowski, Layla Halterman, Griffin Banks, Maggie Frymoyer, Shelsea Deravil

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Enters New Pre-Engineering Partnership • Creating Art in a New Way: Ursinus College Dance Company • Notable Alum Profile: Kim Guadagno • A Bear in the Woods • Opinion: Residence Life - Big Brother is Watching You; Outside Morning Noises Near North Hall are Obnoxious • Intramural Cornhole Makes Impression at UC • Students' Fantasy Football

How The Franks Became Frankish: The Power Of Law Codes And The Creation Of A People, Bruce H. Crosby

Honors College Theses

During the fifth century, many Germanic peoples in Roman service assumed control over vast swathes of the Western Empire. Among these peoples were the Franks, who lend their name to the modern European nation of France. Thus, a question arises regarding how this came to be: how did illiterate tribes from Germania create a culture of their own that supplanted the Romans? Through an analysis of Frankish legal texts like the Lex Salica and the Capitularies of Charlemagne, this paper argues that the Franks forged their own identity by first formalizing their Germanic customs in the early sixth century …

The Grizzly, November 5, 2020, Simra Mariam, Morgan Grabowski, Amy Litofsky, Ava Compagnoni, Layla Halterman, Rosalia Murphy

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Intruders & Campus Security • Trash Increases on Campus Due to COVID-19 • Kindness Isn't Cancelled • Ursinus College is Labeled Green! • Self-care: Check Your E-mails Only Twice a Day • Opinion: How to Increase Campus Safety • Safety Concerns Affect Students' Mental Health • Women's Soccer has Fun

Barnacle Geese And Sky Burials: Relativism In The Travels Of Sir John Mandeville, Akasha L. Khalsa

Conspectus Borealis

As a medieval travel narrative, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was immensely popular for everyone from bookworms to world travelers in 14th and 15th century Europe. Given its popularity, and the period in which it was produced, one might expect the fictitious travelogue to display an incredible level of intolerance towards the various peoples and cultures it depicts. However, the Travels frequently surprises modern readers with its message of tolerance towards greater humanity, and its recognition of the universality of human experience as it is mirrored in the lives of people of different ethnic and cultural groups. In order …

Seventeen Pieces: Displacement, Misplacement, And Conservation, Yasmin Merali, Kevork Mourad, Manas Ghanem

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article explores the systemic importance of art in the conservation of images, historical reference, and cultural meaning as displaced victims of humanitarian crises make the transition from the land of their birth to a new country with a different history and cultural landscape. In presenting the work of Kevork Mourad, an artist of Armenian descent displaced from Syria, we show the essential, layered interplay of visceral, lived individual experiences and the historic collective memory of real and imagined pasts that survive the destruction of physical artifacts.