European History Commons^™

Back To Nature: Marie Antionette And The Cottagecore Fantasy, Rose Caughie

Anthós

This essay is an examination of the legacy of Marie Antionette's Chemise a la Reine. At the end of the 18th century, a portrait of the queen in this dress caused scandal and outrage. Despite, or perhaps because of this, the Chemise a la Reine became a staple in the wardrobe of the Western woman. Today, this style continues to be popular. This is particularly notable in the Cottagecore aesthetic movement. Much like Marie Antionette's use of this style, Cottagecore fashion carries deep ties to an escapist pastoral fantasy. However, more important is the continued legacy of Neoclassicism and the …

Exposing The Governmental Amnesia Of The Human Rights Violations That Occurred In The Magdalene Laundries, Sarah G. Gallagher

Student Theses

Throughout history, Ireland is not regarded as a champion in the area of human rights discourse, but in recent years it has found itself present in it. Pre-secularized Ireland violated human and women’s rights in institutions such as the Magdalene Laundries. Within these institutions, girls and women were subjected to various types of abuse (e.g., sexual, physical, emotional, and mental). After their time in the Laundries, they faced a life of silence and shame due to the stigma of being incarcerated in a Laundry. Due to the stigma, survivors were unable to discuss their experiences in the Laundries as they …

Devil In The Details: Witchcraft In Reformation England, Angela A. Luna

Theses and Dissertations

An analysis of the English Reformation’s impact on perceptions of witches and the transformation of witchcraft as a crime prosecutable in courts of law. It demonstrates English diabolism characterized by the use of animal familiars, body markings, and pacts with the Devil, which helped to shape the English witch trials.

Femininity In Medieval Scandinavia: How Paganism Forged Gender Equality, Erin M. Caffey

Graduate Theses

The brutality of the Vikings and the conquests of medieval Scandinavian men have often garnered the majority of interest from the media, the armchair historian, and the scholar alike, with the pursuits and lives of their female counterparts seldom discussed. Medieval Scandinavian women’s lives though, when examined, are just as enthralling as those of the men. And while their stories are not necessarily as full of bloodshed or glory, the lives of women, those seen in both mythology and memory, provide an insight into the secular and religious foundations of medieval Scandinavian communities. Through an examination of various mythological texts, …

Amorous Poems And Passionate Letters: An Analysis Of The Contributions Of Two Female Authors To The Literary Scene Of 16th Century Italy, Ava Buchanan

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini were well known women in intellectual and public Italian society during the 16^th century. However, the history surrounding their individual impacts has often been limited due to the common practice of grouping these two women together or focusing more intently on their male connections. This thesis aims to advance women’s history on the Early Modern period by providing holistic accounts of Vittoria Colonna and Chiara Matraini’s careers that provide a better understanding of the unique contributions that these women made to distinctly female literature in the Early Modern period in Italy. This thesis utilizes …

Graduate, 1st Place: World War I War Front And Home Front: The Correspondence That Brought Them Together, Michelle Thole

2023 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The First World War was the first time American soldiers had participated in a war at a distance from home that did not easily facilitate home furloughs. Although the United States and Europe are physically separated by more than 3,500 miles, the relative distance between American World War I soldiers on the war front and their families on the home front was minor; the correspondence between them mitigated the physical and cognitive distance.

Historians of the First World War have explored soldiers’ contact with their families while in training camps and the US military’s intentional cultivation of a balance between …

'The Frank Exchange': A Historical Drama Novella, Ariel Finkle

Senior Honors Projects

I am an avid fan of historical fiction books such as The Royal Diaries. But given the recent popularity of more adult royal drama series like The Great, as well as impostor true crime shows like Inventing Anna, on this project I set out to create a historical fiction drama of my own. While searching for a real-life figure to base my story on, I happened to see a quick footnote at the bottom of an article on Catherine the Great that intrigued me. At the turn of the 18th century, an ordinary young Polish woman named Eva Frank managed …

To Be Necessary: The Remarkable Life Of Mary Wollstonecraft, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Although overshadowed by her daughter, Mary Shelley, in the public imagination, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) stands as a significant figure in her time who left a significant legacy. Her writings advocating for women’s education, equal rights, and career opportunities established her as the progenitor of the modern women’s rights movement. Wollstonecraft’s ideas resonated in the era of the Atlantic world revolutions and laid the foundation for later advances of women in the Western world; therefore, it is important to study her contributions in the present.

The Avenger - March 2023, Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

The Avenger

No abstract provided.

Overview & Acknowledgments, Marc Roscoe Loustau

Journal of Global Catholicism

No abstract provided.

Deconstructing The Miniskirt Mythology: Clothing And Womanhood In 1960s London, Neva Miller

Departmental Honors Projects

This research investigates the role of the miniskirt in reflecting the concept of femininity as understood in London and abroad throughout the 1960s and 70s. Data is drawn from primary sources from the 1960s including newspapers, advertisements, and firsthand accounts related to wearers of miniskirts in London. Particular attention is given to the supposed “revolutionary” status of Mary Quant, who is commonly credited with popularizing the miniskirt and thus ushering in an era of emancipation in female dress. While the miniskirt is preserved in historical memory as an icon of youth revolution and sexual liberation, more emphasis should be given …

Elite Women In The Mediterranean 31 Bc – 1380 Ad: An Investigation Into Female Agency, Identity, And Patriarchy Across Classical And Christian Paradigms, Julia Maurer

Capstone Showcase

This paper explores the responses of elite women to patriarchal regimes across the Classical Pagan and Medieval Christian paradigms in the Mediterranean from 31 BC to 1380 AD. While the current historiography acknowledges the radical differences between the two worldviews fundamental to the core values of Western Civilization, an investigation of three women that can be taken to be emblematic examples of the periods in which they lived reveals a striking continuity in the nuanced social roles available to women. This continuity contradicts expectations of significant changes reflective of this revolutionary paradigm shift.

I utilize Julia Augusti, Vibia Perpetua, and …

Skirting The Law: Sensationalism And Spectacle Of British Murderesses From The 1830s To The 1860s, Sarah Elizabeth Offutt

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

“Skirting the Law: Sensationalism and Spectacle of British Murderesses from the 1830s to the 1860s” concentrates on women who committed the crime of murder during a time where print culture rose in popularity, gendered spheres of influence dictated lives, and class consciousness governed society. Due to their rarity and uniqueness, murderesses became a fascination among the public as they defined societal expectations. While some women inspired sympathy for their plight that led to their actions, others were viewed as wicked and abominations of nature. When observing how infrequently women were convicted in comparison to men, the thesis argues that their …

Jane Austen: A Study On The Influences, World, And Character Of An Eighteenth-Century Novelist, Elisabeth Phillips

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Jane Austen is one of the most influential authors in history and her works are regarded as timeless classics. Her ability to harness the motif of the strong, independent woman in a time when society wanted women to have neither attribute is incomparable in contemporary works. This article examines Austen's life and the variety of factors (family, religious, intellectual, historical) that molded her mind and character and thus informed the characters she created and the stories she crafted.

Full Issue

The Forum: Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Insane Asylums In Britain During The Nineteenth Century, Jeanna Mankins

History Theses

This thesis analyzes insane asylums, in Britain, during the nineteenth century and argues that government, society, and gender had a profound impact on insane asylums and determined the quality of care that female and male patients received as a consequence.

The Avenger - August 2022, Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

The Avenger

No abstract provided.

From “Victorian” To “Unmanageable”: Radical Irish Women In The Revolutionary Years, 1900-1923, Kayla M. Cook

All Theses

During the turbulent decades of the early twentieth century, women participated increasingly in the fight for Irish independence, with this level of participation increasing significantly following the 1913 Dublin Lockout, a labor strike which lasted about five months from late summer of 1913 into the early weeks of 1914. Though this was not a nationalist demonstration, many of the participants, both men and women, were also members of various nationalist organizations and would later go on to participate in the various nationalist uprisings in the following years. Historian Fearghal McGarry in particular argues that the Lockout served as an inciting …

Seeking Margaret Baker: Identifying The Author Of Three Manuscript Receipt Books, Kimberley G. Connor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

This paper uses recipe contributors named in three early modern manuscript receipt books (Sloane MS 2485, Sloane MS 2486 and Folger V.a 619) to identify the author as Margaret Baker, daughter of Richard Baker the Chronicler (c.1568-1645) and Margaret Mainwaring (died c.1652). A familial connection is also made to Wellcome MS 212. The Margaret Baker example is used to argue for the necessity of identifying a broader range of receipt, or recipe, book writers in order to understand the spatial and temporal distribution of recipe book production, and their social context. In the case of Margaret Baker, additional information about …

By The Power Vesta-Ed In Me: The Power Of The Vestal Virgins And Those Who Took Advantage Of It, Elena M. Stanley

Classical Mediterranean and Middle East Honors Projects

Vestal Virgins were high ranking members of the Roman elite. Due to the priestesses’ elevated standing, Romans made use of their inherent privileges. Through analyses of case studies from ancient authors and archaeology, I identify three ways Romans wielded Vestal power: familial connections, financial and material resources, and political sway. I end by exploring cases of crimen incesti, the crime of unchastity, which highlight all three forms. The Vestals were influential women who shared access to power in different ways. The Vestals were active participants in the social and political world of Rome.

Invisible Yet Free: Sapphic Relationships In Late 19th Century Europe, Penelope Van Batavia

Student Academic Conference

Sapphic relationships, described as romantic relationships between two women, were able to proliferate without the watchful eye of society in late 19th-Century Europe due to many factors, including the lack of importance European society felt women had. While not entirely able to pronounce their relationships in public, these women were often able to operate somewhat publicly in three main types of common or “accepted” sapphic relationships. These include intimate friendships, “mother-daughter” models, and hetero-passing relationships. Since historical research on sapphic relationships before the 1970s was almost non-existent (beyond the chastising of such relationships) a number of women and queer academics …

Privilege, Power, And Patronage: Examining The Lives And Afterlives Of Three Tudor Noblewomen, Caroline Elizabeth Armbruster

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses the lives of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk; Anne Stanhope, Duchess of Somerset; and Jane Guildford, Duchess of Northumberland to examine various aspects of their experiences as noblewomen and as members of privileged family groups. By focusing on these three women, whose lives and careers spanned eight decades, this dissertation demonstrates the centrality of such women to Tudor politics. Catherine, Anne, and Jane were born into powerful, landowning families. Their successful marriages allowed them to climb the ranks of the Tudor aristocracy and paved the way for their entry into the Tudor political arena. They served as …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

Res Historica, Volume 1, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The inaugural journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg, Hunter Curlee, and Johnathan Sorce. Cover art for this volume is the Phi Alpha Theta: Alpha Rho Epsilon logo created by Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg.

The Evans Family: Familial Relationships In George Eliot's Life And Fiction, Hailey S. Fischer

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Biographers of George Eliot, when writing about her childhood, have focused on her close and complicated relationships with two of the most important men in her life, her father Robert Evans and brother Isaac Evans. Less discussed are Eliot’s relationships with her immediate female family members, her mother Christiana Pearson Evans and her sister Christiana (Chrissey) Evans Clarke. This thesis reviews the predominant interpretations of Eliot’s relations with her father and brother. It also pulls together the known information about Christiana and Chrissey from several major biographies and adds new insights from Eliot's letters in combination with two of her …

“Hush Ma Cailín”: Irish Women And Egalitarian Nationalism, Velma Tomasova Lockman

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

In October 1997, the members of the Army Executive of the Provisional Irish Republican Army who favored an end to the decades-long insurgency against British rule in the occupied six counties of Ireland outmaneuvered and forced the resignations of those who supported continuing the war. Among those forced to resign was the one woman on the Army Executive. She and her comrades would coalesce around Bernadette Sands McKevitt as the dissidents prepared to fight on under the banner of the Real Irish Republican Army while the majority of the insurgents laid down their arms. The Continuity Irish Republican Army simultaneously …

Bastardy And The New Poor Law: Redefining The Undeserving, Bianca M. Serbin

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The English New Poor Law, enacted in 1834, signaled a new era of welfare in England, shedding the paternalistic provision of aid that was characteristic of the Old Poor Law. Existing scholarship positions the New Poor Law as an important landmark in the capitalist development of the English economy. This paper analyzes the text of the Bastardy Clause of the New Poor Law––which overturned the existing bastardy laws and said that mothers of illegitimate children could no longer receive aid from the parish––and contextualizes it as a major rethinking of charity in 19^th century England. The debate on the …

Brigid Of Kildare: The Saint Who Got A Facelift, Aimee Hunt

Student Research

On the outskirts of Papal authority, early medieval Ireland created its own Christian identity separate from other European nations closer to Rome. Saint Brigid of Kildare, one of the patron saints of Ireland, played important yet problematic roles in that identity. After her death, the church began to alter her history. Being a female bishop, performing the first recorded abortion, and having both men and women within her monastery, Brigid had trodden on the male-dominated system in a way that few women had. Deemed unacceptable but having already been sainted, the Catholic church gave Brigid a holy facelift.

Barry Hoffman Nazi Postcard Collection, Robyn Conroy, Lamisa Muksitu

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of postcards that are connected to the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was …

Workers, Mothers, And Françaises: The French Communist Party And Women In The Interwar Period (1920 - 1939), Elizabeth Klements

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

A survey of the first two decades of the French Communist Party's propaganda reveals a wide range of female imagery, from the androgynous, Soviet-style militant of the 1920s to the fashionable, feminine figure of the 1930s. Earlier scholars noting this discrepancy argued that the Party first adopted the Soviet "new woman," based on the Marxist principle of absolute gender equality but rejected it just over a decade later in order to broaden their appeal to the French masses. These studies, however, were restricted by the limited access to the French Communist Party's interwar-era archives. Using recently-digitized Party meeting records, reports, …