Intellectual History Commons^™

The Method And The Machinery: Gloria Steinem, India, And The Cold War Making Of American Second Wave Feminsim, 1956-1972, Rashida Shafiq

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation argues that Gloria Steinem became one of the most visible feminists of her generation because two political inheritances — postcolonial India and the Cold War liberal United States — converged in a single career. In 1957 and 1958, on a Chester Bowles Asian Fellowship, Steinem spent eighteen months in India, where she moved from elite intellectual circles in Delhi to Gandhian and Sarvodaya peace work in the villages of Ramnad. Walking with Bhoodan fieldworkers through caste-riot-stricken communities, she absorbed a repertoire of organizing practices — listening across difference, lateral and leaderless structure, decision by consensus, and the conversion …

The Broken Edge: Violence, Kinship, And Nation In The U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1820-1890, Patrick Troester

History Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of how people experienced and gave meaning to the violent conflicts that transformed the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands from a multipolar region into one dominated by two modern nation-states. As multiple imperial and national projects converged here between 1821-1890, borderland violence became a central way in which local people interacted with and participated in nation- and state-making. Using archival evidence from both sides of the modern border, I examine how borderlands people used gendered, racialized, and familial ideologies to organize, understand, and politicize these conflicts as well as to reckon their shifting positions within emerging nation-states. With …

Black Apollo Of Science: The Life Of Ernest Everett Just - Summarizing Timeline, Sumitography And Concept Poster, Lillie R. Jenkins

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

This two-part chronology is based on Kenneth R. Manning’s biography, Black Apollo of Science: The Life of Ernest Everett Just (1983). Like other such timelines, this one details Just’s life and pioneering research work. Additionally, and distinctively, this timetable lays out Just’s pioneering fund-seeking and his work mentoring African American female co-researchers (Part 1). A sumitography featuring the United States Postal Service’s postage stamp (1996) recognizes Just’s innovative thinking in biology (Part 2). Following this logic, the author includes a proof-of-concept poster commending E.E. Just’s work as a forward-thinking administrator. This timeline summarizes, chronicles, and aims to re-frame Just’s …

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 …

Evolutionary Bioethics Advanced By Ernest Everett Just: Implications For Biology, Ethics, And Theology, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Ernest Everett Just (1883-1941) is an acknowledged “pioneer” in biology, being honored with a Black Heritage postage stamp in 1996. Here we discover that Just also made pioneering contributions to general evolutionary bioethics (distinct from special medical bioethics) by advancing a cell-biology-rooted theory of the origin and continuing evolution of ethical behavior influenced by the “law of environmental dependence.”

See especially “The Origin of Man’s Ethical Behavior (1941, unpublished book manuscript) by Ernest Everett Just and Hedwig Schnetzler Just, discovered in 2018 among the collected papers of E.E. Just at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University.

Accordingly, evolution is …

Martin Luther King Jr. And Ernest Everett Just - On Evolution Of Ethical Behavior, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. prescribed an evolutionary advance in ethical behavior: the total “abolition of poverty” and the abolition of war throughout “the world house.” Cell biologist Ernest Everett Just advanced the idea that human ethical behavior evolved from cellular origins.

Also, astrobiologists Chandra Wickramasinghe and Sir Fred Hoyle advanced the idea of cosmic biology, including stellar evolution and cosmic evolution. From cells to humans to stars and cosmology, evolutionary natural science converges with natural theology.

“Of Nobler Song Than Mine”: Social Justice In The Life, Times, And Writings Of Fitz-James O'Brien, John P. Irish

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation will be a detailed study of the life, times, and writings of a mid-nineteenth century Irish-American writer, Fitz-James O’Brien. This will be the first full length study of O’Brien’s thought and writings. O’Brien was known, during his day, for two different types of writing: fiction of the supernatural and his writings on social justice, written in the emerging style of literary realism. It is his writings on social justice which this dissertation will explore. O’Brien’s writings on social justice covered three main topics: children, women, and animals. I look at how the historical context, O’Brien’s life, and his …

Three Reasons Martin Luther King Jr. Disliked Being Labeled "Civil Rights Leader", Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Three reasons King disliked being labeled "civil rights leader:"

(1) He was a religious leader, a preacher (not a secular politician).

(2) He advanced "economic rights" ("civil rights" do not include "economic rights").

(3) He opposed war in Vietnam (not a civil rights issue).

A Martin Luther King Jr. Amendment To The U.S. Constitution: Toward The Abolition Of Poverty, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. prescribed that we add an economic bill of rights to the U.S. Constitution. A King-Inspired bill of rights should include a constitutional amendment that enumerates a natural human right to be free from economic poverty, and appropriate enforcement legislation.

For the sake of abolishing slavery, the Thirteenth Amendment says:

(Section 1) Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

(Section 2) Congress shall have power to enforce this article by …

Don't Call King A 'Civil Rights' Leader: Toward Abolishing Poverty And War By Correcting Our Fatally Inadequate Remembering Of Mlk Jr., Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Remembering Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.—primarily as a domestic “civil rights” leader—is inadequate, and sometimes harmful. The term “civil rights” fails to embrace King’s abolitionist movements toward the global abolition of poverty and war. Moreover, King was a Baptist preacher called by God. He advanced an optimistic realism (including a “realistic pacifism”) that improves upon pessimistic-cynical versions of political realism. And King went beyond advancing “civil rights” to advancing economic justice, economic rights, and human rights. He prescribed adding a social and economic bill of rights to the US Constitution, plus full-employment supplemented by “guaranteed income,” …

Mestiza, Métis, American: How Intermixture On United States Borders Shaped Local, Regional, And National Identities, Carla L. Mendiola

History Theses and Dissertations

This project compares mestizaje in Mexican American communities of the Texas-Mexico border and métissage in Franco American communities of the Maine-Canada border, from the pre-contact period to the 20th-century. Exploring the central themes of intermixing, borders, and identity, the paper shows the long-standing presence of mixed-ancestry groups in the U.S. and investigates how social and geopolitical borders have been used to racialize and exclude these groups from U.S. history, and, ultimately from acceptance as part of U.S. identity. The comparison of Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley and Maine’s St. John River Valley follows the development of these communities and recognizes …

Becoming Indian: The Origins Of Indigeneity Among Chicana/Os In Texas, Ruben A. Arellano

History Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the idea of Mexican-American indigenous identity, or indigeneity. I argue that modern Mexican-American indigeneity progressed from the Chicana/o movement’s notion of belonging as a primordial people of Aztlan to the full-fledged embrace of Native American identity. This idea of being indigenous is traced to the colonial writers and thinkers, criollo patriots, mestizo nationalists, and the indigenists intellectuals of twentieth-century Mexico. The evolution of ethnic Mexican indigeneity culminated with cultural extremists in the first half of the last century who assumed a neo-Aztec identity. They in turn gave way to the neo-Mexika identity that emerged in the second …

Edgar Allan Poe’S Cosmology And Natural Theology: A Constructive Postmodern Appreciation, Theodore Walker

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

Contrary to some literary classifications, Edgar Allan Poe’s book-length prose poem Eureka is not intended to be fiction. In Eureka Poe was seriously attempting to advance ‘truth’ about the universe. Poe was doing natural science and poetry in the tradition of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and other natural philosophers. Poe’s prose poem is natural scientific astronomy and cosmology, plus natural theology, not science fiction.

Beyond Domestic Empire: Internal- And Post-Colonial New Mexico, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

The purpose of this paper is to outline the connections between internal colonialism and post-colonialism, two dimensions of an evolving colonial paradigm. To test these theories against historical reality, they are applied to ethnic Mexicans and Indians, especially Navajos, in New Mexico in order to ground them and colonialism in general at the regional level. This paper claims that internal colonialism continues effectively to explain the historic subordination of indigenous and mixed peoples within larger states dominated by other groups. This condition understood, the paper sees postcolonial theory as providing ideas to end internally colonized societies since the theory critiques …

The Missing Memory Of Jehu: An Essay On The Preservation Of Data Through Time, Ted A. Campbell

Perkins Faculty Research and Special Events

An essay on the preservation of data through time. Regardless of media (oral, written, computer-based), data are preserved only temporarily on media and for the long term by copying. The article suggests specific principles that should consistently govern the copying and preservation of data.

Aliens In Their Native Lands: The Persistence Of Internal Colonial Theory, John R. Chávez

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.