European History Commons^™

Constructing Imperial Connectivity: State Infrastructure Projects And The Imperial Gaze In Bengal Presidency, 1849-1856, Richard William Bradley Gaspers Iii

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The construction of roads, canals, and supporting infrastructure in British India connected urban environs of power to interior peripheral spaces. The conclusion of the Second Anglo-Sikh War in 1849 saw the East India Company stand alone as the paramount power over the Indian subcontinent. A century of conquest gave way to a century of internal management. This shifted the state’s ‘gaze’ inward. Public infrastructure construction skyrocketed after 1849, transforming the role of the colonial state as it built roads, canals, bridges, courthouses, police stations, and jails on an unprecedented scale. This thesis will explore how these physical constructs bolstered connectivity, …

Stakhanov Lives Forever: How Art And Culture Outlasted Politics In The Communist World, Samuel Shewmake

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The Stakhanovite movement and its long term consequences has been heavily debated in the field of Soviet history for several decades. The dominant scholarly narrative is that the Stakhanovite movement and Stakhanovism were largely extinguished during the period following the buildup to the Second World War. Previous works have relied heavily on solely political analysis of the movement, presuming that its character was primarily state-driven with little social component. This paper analyzes the social and artistic legacy of the Stakhanovite movement through novel analysis of film, music, and art of the Stakhanovite period and following decades. Contrary to what has …

No Fue Un Accidente: The Fascist Fantasy Of Self-Victimization In Alfonso Ponce De León’S Autorretrato (1936), Geovany Uranda

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

During the eve of the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939) Alfonso Ponce de León, a Falange propagandist and artist, created Autorretrato (1936), a self-portrait inspired by an automobile accident he experienced. He exhibited this work several months before his arrest, torture, and execution by Republican forces. This paper analyzes the self-portrait as a fascist work of self-victimization and ideological myth-making in line with fascist propaganda of the time. The painting presents Ponce de León as a dead or dying figure staged through the visual language of Catholic martyrdom. Drawing from Baroque compositional practices and iconographic tropes associated with the …

The Cultural Politics Of Women's Equality In Victorian England: The Cases Of Caroline Norton, Annie Besant, And Clementina Black, Jaycie Weeks

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis explores the lives of three Victorian women – Caroline Norton, Annie Besant, and Clementina Black – and their campaigns to improve the status of women in the Victorian Era. Each engaged in the condition of women debate writing in distinctive genres- letter writing, social and political commentary and fiction, respectively. In an era of rising literacy, these middle and upper-class women used the power of the pen to shape how Victorians understood the Woman Question. The first chapter shares Norton’s fight to challenge principles of coverture. Using her writing to reach her high connections, she set the stage …

Socioeconomic Relations In Post-Soviet Spaces, Ariana Khzarjyan

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

This research focuses on post-Soviet spaces and the entanglement of political movements that often lead to intense struggles between democratic aspirations and authoritarian tendencies. Although, this research is hyperfocused on Armenia and analyzes political movements that oppose the current pro-democracy government. This study aims to identify and categorize movements, evaluate their democratic and anti-democratic sentiments, and compare them with similar movements that occurred in other post-Soviet countries such as Georgia and Ukraine. This study provided insights into the political landscape and underlying motivations by conducting qualitative field research in Armenia. The specific question to help guide this research is: What …

Shifts In French Jewish Citizenship, 1789-1840s, Jourdin Wilson

Spectra Undergraduate Research Journal

The citizenship of Jews became more discussed as a result of changes from the French Revolution of 1789. There were a variety of perspectives between non-Jews and Jews, and between different groups of Jews. The research methodology involves the analysis of qualitative primary sources including government texts and debates, groups of everyday Jews, and French Jewish literature and journal excerpts. The theoretical framework of nationalism will guide how citizenship is analyzed in the research, based on Dean Kostantaras’s book Nationalism and Revolution in Europe, 1763-1848. Results show that the way French Jews fit into or engaged with society is quite …

French Jewish Citizenship Of The Late 18th To Early 19th Century, Jourdin Wilson

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Results show that regions/origins influenced how French Jews felt about their citizenship, and how they were treated: (1) “The Jews of Bordeaux and Bayonne enjoyed the most advantageous legal status,” who had “Marrano origins” and acted as Portuguese merchants, made up Sephardi Jews in France (Hyman 1998, “Chapter One”). (2) Napoleon’s methods greatly influenced Jews’ citizenship. Limitations: finding English translations, understanding anti-Semitism. Future Research: (1) Findings suggest that researching particular groups or regions of French Jews leads to more varied and nuanced perspectives, rather than generalizing. (2) Choosing a region and study a particular community of Jews in France.

Scientific Collaboration And The Cold War: 1945-1970, Autumn Wyland

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This thesis is an examination of scientific collaboration between 1945 and 1970, covering the end of World War II and through the early stages of the Cold War. Prior to the Second World War, scientific collaboration was frequent and necessary to development and research. World War II created a new atmosphere of secrecy, preventing scientists from collaborating as they once had. This paper examines what that collaboration looked like, how it was derailed and why, how some scientists sought to return to collaboration, sometimes at personal expense, and finally what those effects looked like throughout the Nuclear Age and Space …

The Influence Of Volga Tatar Folk Music And Soviet Cultural Policies On The Orchestral Composers Of Kazan, Jane Katherine Brown

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

After a brief historical overview of Volga Tatar history and Soviet political and historical contexts, this document begins with a detailed description of Volga-Tatar folk musical characteristics, including probable influences as described, analyzed, and transcribed by twentieth and twenty-first century Volga Tatar scholars. In this description, the author attempts to give the preferential voice to Tatar perspectives, such as the early ethnographers and Tatar ethnomusicologists from Kazan State Conservatory, the officials from the Union of Composers of the Republic of Tatarstan, and of course, the composers themselves. The author’s detailed discussion of folk music elements and genres is then followed …

Promoting Paradise: The Recruitment Of Volga German Immigrants To The American Midwest, 1870-1900, Kassidy N. Whetstone

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In 1762 and 1763, Russian tsarina Catherine II issued manifestos encouraging foreign immigration throughout Russia, and received an overwhelming response from German farmers. These farmers, who would later be known as Russian Germans, Mennonites, or Volga Germans, quickly gained a reputation for their successful farming skills. As a result, following the Homestead Act of 1862, United States recruiters used promotional land advertisements to entice the farmers to migrate to the Midwest. The posters often depicted “open,” abundant lands in paradise. Upon arrival, however, the Volga Germans faced a reality starkly different from what the advertisements had promoted. This paper analyzes …

The Imagined Histories And Futures Of The Past: Wwi And The Cultural Imagination, Kelly Aliano

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this paper, I look at various modes of imagining the futures incarnated by the First World War, beginning with artists and writers, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Maria Remarque, who experienced and depicted the war from a firsthand point of view. From here, I expand that framework to include J.R.R. Tolkien, whose masterpiece Lord of the Rings may owe no small debt to his wartime experiences. I consider the Doctor Who episodes, “Human Nature” and “Family of Blood,” as contemporary attempts to reinsert WWI into the cultural consciousness. Finally, I look at the two versions of War Horse …

Art And Terror: Vergangenheitsbewältigung In Relation To The Red Army Faction, Joanie Lange

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Undergraduate Winner

The Red Army Faction, active from 1970-1998, was an infamous West German far-left terrorist group. Its ideology and numerous terrorist acts not only left a lasting impact upon the politics and culture of Germany, but noteworthy is also the fact that the group inspired the creation of countless works of art. This research paper seeks to understand and explain this phenomenon. It argues that the artworks inspired by the RAF are a form of Vergangenheitsbewältigung, a peculiarly German concept “coming to terms with the past,” most often used in relation to fiction and art exploring the …

Gaming In Britain 1900-1939: ‘I Have Got A Good Following. I Have Now A Duke And An Earl. In Fact I Have The Cream Of Society.’, Seamus M G Murphy Dr

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

Gaming, the organisation of Banker’s games for profit, in Britain prior to the Second World War has largely been ignored by academics and historians. There has been an assumption that gaming was conducted at such a small scale that it was either not worthy of research, or, that there was not enough evidence to support specific analysis.

This paper will attempt to dispel the above academic myth utilising contemporary press coverage and archive material which will illustrate a vibrant, but illegal gaming industry. In fact, gaming during this period formulated in the minds of the authorities the need for substantial …

The Change And Stability Of Moral Discourses And Practices Of Gambling And Tobacco Smoking In Finland, Sweden, And Germany, Riitta Matilainen

International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking

The presentation deals with comparative research on two morally-laden consumption phenomena (gambling and tobacco smoking) that have been differently morally (re)-framed in the course of the 20th century and in the 2000s. Whereas the prevalence of tobacco smoking in Western countries has dropped dramatically over the last few decades and tobacco smoking has become a deprecated consumption habit closely linked to lower-educated classes gambling has been tamed, legalized and made acceptable to all the classes and both men and women and gained in popularity. The roles of these two phenomena have changed: gambling has become almost ubiquitous whereas smoking is …

A Series Of Political Russian Events To Exploit And Destroy The Volga Germans, 1914-1921, Kassidy Whetstone

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

Advanced Research Winner 2019:

Immigration has been controversial for centuries, as it is not always successful; the relationship between the host country and immigrants can become tense and even disastrous. This was the case for the Volga Germans in the Russian Saratov region, an immigration experiment gone wrong. It is important that the story of the Volga Germans be told, as it is suspected of being an experience of ethnic cleansing and genocide. In this project, I will investigate the Volga Germans in the Russian Saratov region, analyze the relationship between the Germans and their Russian neighbors in the early …

Power And Authority Of Royal Queen Mothers: Juxtaposing The French Queen Regent And The Ottoman Validé Sultan During The Early Modern Period, Reneé N. Langlois

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Women and their relationship to sovereignty, during the early modern era has become a rapidly growing topic, given that during this period an unprecedented number of women rose to high positions of power. This paper aims to compare the lives of the queen regents in France with their counterparts, the validé sultans in the Ottoman Empire, over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when both groups of royal women acquired substantial power. Although these women were prohibited from ruling in their own right, the paper explores the ways in which queen regents and validé sultans used both official …

Fourth Time’S A Charm, Ardennes Vickery

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

The sources I used to create my short story, Fourth Time’s A Charm, were essential for all aspects of its development. My story concerns the awkward first meeting of King Henry VIII and his fourth wife, Anne of Cleves. As with all historical fiction stories, striving for period appropriate details and accurate representations of historical events was crucial. The resources that I was able to access through the UNLV University Libraries not only assisted me throughout my project by streamlining the research process, but proved indispensable for obtaining various primary sources that I may not have been unable to access …

British Appeasement 1936-1939: The Debate Between Parliament And The Public, Kylie D. Johnson

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

While it is now clear that appeasement of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler did not prevent another war, there is a historical debate on whether British appeasement policies were shameful, a set of well-intentioned blunders, an attempt at keeping peace internationally, or a strategy to keep domestic resources focused on Britain. Within the debate between historians, lies a debate between the British public and Parliament, and even within Parliament itself. An important factor in the British decision to implement appeasement policy in the 1930s often underemphasized in the literature is the governmental prioritizing of domestic issues and national security over …

An Enchanting Witchcraft: Masculinity, Melancholy, And The Pathology Of Gaming In Early Modern London, Celeste Chamberland

Occasional Papers

In seeking to illuminate the ways in which inchoate models of addiction emerged alongside the unprecedented popularity of gambling in Stuart London, this paper will explore the intersections between a rudimentary pathology of addiction and transformations in the epistemology of reason, the passions, and humoral psychology in the seventeenth century. By exploring the connections between endogenous and exogenous categories of mental illness, this study will examine the ways in which medicine, social expectations, and religion intersected in the seventeenth century alongside the historical relationship between evolving concepts of mental illness, stigma and the politics of blame and responsibility in the …

Betting On The Papal Election In Sixteenth-Century Rome, John M. Hunt

Occasional Papers

Wagering on the papal election was a popular pastime among all levels of society in sixteenth-century Rome. Brokers and their clients kept well-informed of the election taking place within the closed doors of the conclave. Consequently, wagering on the election proved to be a source of disruption since—intentionally or not—it begat rumors of a pope’s election and spurred brokers to use illicit means of discovering the secrets of the conclave. The papacy thus initiated a campaign against the practice during the last twenty-five years of the sixteenth century. This campaign, partially inspired by the Counter-Reformation’s impulse to reform popular mores, …

Actresses Redefining Theater And Femininity In Eighteenth-Century France, Rebecca Anne Bolen

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Published in 1798 and 1800, the memoires of Hypolite Clairon and Marie-Françoise Marchand Dumesnil relate the experiences and values of individuals who lived through massive social and cultural, and eventually political, changes. How and when these two women felt the need to adhere to society's standards in comparison to those instances when they were confident enough to assert themselves illuminates the ways in which developing a public persona could open up a space for women to stretch the boundaries of feminine self-fashioning. This space was not unlimited and may have depended on actresses making concessions to societal expectations. It was …

From Ashes To Architecture: Memorialization At Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Sara Elyse Kaplan

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Buchenwald concentration camp, located in Weimar, Germany, was a place of suffering, cruelty and death during World War II and during the first five years of the cold war. As many were tortured and perished there, it has since become a place of remembrance. Being one of the few concentration camps to not be destroyed by the Nazis before they could be liberated, since its final closure in 1950 numerous memorials have been erected to commemorate the events that took place and the people who fell victim to those events. Following several theorists four of the memorials at Buchenwald are …

Buffalo Bill's Wild West In Germany. A Transnational History., Julia Simone Stetler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines European and especially German responses to Buffalo Bill's Wild West show during its two European tours in 1890-1891 and 1906. It argues that the different European countries creatively adapted the content and message of the show according to their own specific cultural values and needs. By considering Buffalo Bill's Wild West within the specific cultural contexts of the nations it toured, we are able to better explain reactions to it, including Germany's astoundingly positive response. The show was an entertaining event for American and European audiences alike with its exoticized figures, spectacular stunts, and colorful drama; however, …

Civic Culture: Public Opinion And The Resurgence Of Civic Culture, Yuri Levada

Russian Culture

There has hardly been a stretch in Russian history more saturated with sweeping changes than the period between 1988-1993. Packed into this exceedingly brief historical era are the rise of "perestroika" and the fall of its illustrious leader, Mikhail Gorbachev; the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence in its place of 15 independent states; the August '91 communist putsch and the democrats' triumphant ascension to power; the proliferation of virulent ethnic conflicts and the recognition of the abiding need for cooperation; the bloody October '93 confrontation between the executive and legislative powers and the surprising strength that the …

Russian Spirituality And The Theology Of Negation, Mikhail Epstein

Russian Culture

Toward the end of the twentieth century Russian culture found itself at a crossroads which cannot be ascribed to any political election but which rather presupposed a radical change in its religious and social orientation. Two somewhat opposing theses will be developed in this article. First I will discuss the processes of secularization in Russian culture and the necessity of a third, neutral zone between the "sacred" and the "profane." Next, the dangers of social neutralization in culture and the necessity of retaining elements of the dual model along with the introduction of intermediate elements will be presented. We will …

Introduction: Continuity And Change In Russian Culture, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

This project on Russian culture goes back to the Spring of 1990 when several American and Russian scholars converged at the Russian Research Center at Harvard University and decided to join forces in a study of changes sweeping the Soviet Union. From the start, the participants agreed that they would not try to chase fast breaking news from Russia -- a hopeless task given the pace of recent changes, but rather would focus on the continuity and change in Russian culture, on the long-term social forces that compel the Russian people to reexamine old ways and reevaluate old values.

Historical Culture: Russia In Search Of Itself, Boris Paramonov

Russian Culture

Russia's 75 year-long experiment with communism is over, but the question persists as to whether the Soviet regime was a historical aberration or an expression of the country's destiny. This question is as old as the Bolshevik revolution. It has produced a voluminous literature and will no doubt continue to attract attention in the near future. Alas, it can not be answered conclusively, for it is grounded in the questioner's ideological a priori and tells us more about the historian's biases than about Russian history.

Moral Culture: Public Morality And Private Responsibility, Igor Kon

Russian Culture

When Mikhail Gorbachev unfurled his reform banners in the late 1980's, many observers inside and outside Russia hailed perestroika as a moral renaissance. The Soviet Union was indeed a spiritually bankrupt society at the time, its citizens demanding a clean break with the past and yearning for a better future. Despite the new openness or glasnost, the changes have been slow in coming and often very controversial. A public opinion survey conducted in February 1991 showed the country morally adrift and deeply divided about the course of reforms.

Psychological Culture: Ambivalence And Resistance To Social Change, Alexander Etkind

Russian Culture

"National character," "modal personality," "collective unconscious," "ethnic mentality," "cultural identity" -- these and similar notions are designed to capture psychological traits that distinguish one social group from another. Attempts to isolate such hypothetical qualities are not different in principle from efforts to describe religious, legal, or other social patterns found among people who have lived together for a length of time, except that psychological constructs tend to focus on subjective characteristics and are somewhat harder to identify. For the first time, the link between culture and psychology came under close scrutiny in the nineteen century. German linguists Steinthal and Lazarus …

Intellectual Culture: The End Of Russian Intelligentsia, Dmitri N. Shalin

Russian Culture

No group cheered louder for Soviet reform, had a bigger stake in perestroika, and suffered more in its aftermath than did the Russian intelligentsia. Today, nearly a decade after Mikhail Gorbachev unveiled his plan to reform Soviet society, the mood among Russian intellectuals is decidedly gloomy. "The intelligentsia has carried perestroika on its shoulders," laments Ury Shchekochikhin, "so why does it feel so forlorn, superfluous, forgotten"? G. Ivanitsky warns that the intellectual strata "has become so thin that in three or four years the current genocide against the intelligentsia would surely wipe it out." Andrey Bitov, one of the country's …