Public History Commons^™

Hidden Gems In The Cops/Metro Archival Collection, Qiuying Chen

Posters - 2025

This student poster was created for the 5th annual Research Showcase at St. Mary's University. From the poster:

University of Texas in San Antonio’s Special Collections has boxes upon boxes of COPS/Metro archival records which include rarely-known stories including these about a United Nations award, nationwide documentaries, and an inspiring bishop. In this project, it is my goal to uncover these special memories.

Public Memory Through Memorialization, Sophie A. O'Brien

SPARK Symposium Presentations

This research project aims to contextualize the story surrounding various Nashville monuments that memorialize civil rights leaders. This project will explore the history of monuments and road names in Nashville. The history will span from the Confederacy to the civil rights movement and examine how public memory has evolved and changed with the removal of some statues and the changing of road names. It aims to show who we choose to memorialize and why, and how the civil rights leaders we choose to remember reflects public sentiment of the civil rights era.

The Forgotten Heroes Of Postman’S Park, John Price

Heroism Science

The Watts Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice in Postman’s Park contains fifty-three memorial tablets, each dedicated to an act of life-risking bravery, undertaken by an otherwise ordinary individual, largely in the course of their everyday life, and within commonplace surroundings. The memorial’s creator, G. F. Watts, was a pivotal figure in the conception and promotion of the idea of ‘everyday’ heroism in Britain. Where he led, others followed. On this basis, the Watts Memorial has come to inform our understanding of how everyday heroism as a concept was constructed. Further research has now identified eighty-four individuals who were intended for commemoration …

“These Are Not Ordinary Criminals!” The First War Crimes Trial At The People's Tribunal And Its Implications In Post-Holocaust Romania, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the neglected war crimes trials of Holocaust perpetrators that took place at the People's Tribunal in early postwar Romania, focusing especially on the first trial (the “Macici group”). The article shows that in spite of the political interferences by the new pro-communist regime and the USSR, the Macici group trial in particular, and the first war crimes trials in general, were not Stalinist show trials or fake trials and they sentenced real war criminals and accurately captured Romania's participation in the Holocaust. Unlike the Antonescu group trial – that indicted the former pro-Nazi dictator and his closest …

Restitution Of Jewish Property In Northern Transylvania During The Early Postwar Years, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

The restitution of Jewish property in the multiethnic region of Northern Transylvania faced numerous challenges during the first post-Holocaust years as a result of the complicated wartime history, postwar demographics, legal status, interethnic dynamics, and occasional violence. Having the lowest rate of survival among all Jewish communities in Romania, most of the region’s Jews died during the deportation and did not return to their native places to claim their properties. This impacted the extent of restitution of individual private property. Some of the Aryanized property was restituted to the Jewish survivors or their heirs because the wartime beneficiaries fled the …

The Growing Rift Between Holocaust Scholars Over Israel/Palestine, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

"A chasm has formed between Holocaust scholars concerning Israel/Palestine, deepening immeasurably since 7 October 2023. Unlike previous controversies in the field, the divide is not just historical or methodological; it revolves around academics’ role in the world today, particularly the public stand they choose to take on Palestine/Israel and Zionism. Two main camps have formed. Put reductively, one camp defends Israel, while the other defends Palestinians, although differences between individual scholars within each camp make for more of a spectrum than a clear-cut divide. How, despite a diversity of ideas and foci within each camp, did two academic-political antipodes solidify …

Down The Bay Oral History Project Newsletter - Winter 2025, Center For Archaeological Studies, Mccall Library

Down the Bay Oral History Project Newsletter

Public newsletter sharing information about progress and discoveries during the Down The Bay Project.

River Flowing Through: Lost River Cave And Its Community, Elizabeth Coleman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Lost River Cave and Valley is a popular tourist attraction in Bowling Green, Kentucky, that also holds historical significance and importance to the local community. The Cave and Valley have functioned as a business, place of leisure, green space, and place of work for over 200 years. This thesis will explore the different ways that humans and non-humans have worked together to create a sense of place in this natural space. This will be accomplished utilizing “assemblage” theory from the discipline of philosophy. These assemblages will be made up of oral history interviews completed in 1999, one from 2009, and …

Iii.A.2 Displacement & Barriers To Home Ownership, Kim Rostan, Bria Harper, Jim Neighbors, Mark Byrnes

Crafting Democratic Futures

This document explains how systemic racism and discriminatory policies from the Civil War & Reconstruction period through the 20th century prevented African Americans in Spartanburg from building wealth through land ownership and home equity. It details barriers such as Black Codes, sharecropping, convict leasing, exclusion from New Deal programs, discriminatory housing policies, and urban renewal projects that displaced Black neighborhoods without providing equitable opportunities for economic advancement.

Justice And Restitution In Post-Nazi Romania: Rebuilding Jewish Lives And Communities, 1944-1950, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

On 23rd August 1944, following the collapse of the pro-Nazi dictatorship of Ion Antonescu, Romania changed sides and abandoned the Axis to join the Allies. Justice and Restitution in Post-Nazi Romania explores the hopes, struggles and disappointments of Jewish communities in Romania seeking to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. Focusing on the efforts of survivors to recuperate rights and property, Stefan Cristian Ionescu demonstrates how the early transitional government enabled short term restitution. However, from 1948, the consolidated communist regime implemented nationalizations which dispossessed many citizens. Jewish communities were disproportionality affected, and real estate and many businesses were lost …

Establishing The Narrative – A Comparative Analysis Of Nashville Newspaper Reporting During The Civil Rights Era, Katherine E. Cannon

SPARK Symposium Presentations

Public memory serves as the collective public consciousness – how a group of people remember a historical narrative and thus how they interpret and interact with their current environment. Journalism and news reporting plays a pivotal role in the creation of public memory. This study will analyze the differences in reporting between two Nashville-based newspapers, The Nashville Banner and The Tennessean, and how their reporting shaped public memory in Nashville. These publications are crucial to the Nashville community and how the public is informed. To properly conduct this research with narrow enough scope to get accurate results, this study will …

Healing Communities With Police Divestment: Seeking Abolition Through Transformative Reform And Community-Government Collaboration, Jessica E. Gillson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Concerns about the efficacy and sustainability of the U.S. carceral system have persisted throughout the country’s history, recently fueling renewed activism and bipartisan calls for reform. However, proposed solutions remain divisive. This thesis first defines the current status of our prison systems, then explores collaborative alternatives to incarceration and policing that support communities and break cycles of incarceration.

Focusing on partnerships among local governments, community organizations, justice-involved individuals, and law enforcement, this study examines holistic approaches to crime prevention, reentry, and reintegration. Using an interdisciplinary framework incorporating restorative justice, community resilience, and systems theory, it investigates how community-based strategies can …

Muharram, Milad And The Memons: The Commemoration Of Muharram And Celebration Of Milad Within The Memon Community, Ashkan Fayyaz

SSLA Culminating Experience

This thesis is a documentation of the Oral History of the commemoration of Muharram and celebration of Eid Milad-un-Nabi (ﷺ) within the Memon community residing in Karachi. The thesis traces a shift in scale from Muharram commemorations to Eid Milad-un-Nabi (ﷺ) celebrations. Using seven oral-history interviews from Kharadar and Hussainabad, it reconstructs the rituals affiliated with Muharram and Rabi-ul-Awal and analyses their meanings through hermeneutic phenomenology. It then analyzes transformation via Van Manen’s four lifeworld existentials: spatiality, corporeality, temporality and relationality. To complement the findings of this thesis, a historical analysis of Memon community’s practices in colonial Natal and colonial …

‘An Intriguing But Ambiguous Privilege’: Adventures In Franco-Irish Relations Through The Prism Of The Diplomatic Meal, Elaine Mahon

Books/Book Chapters

This essay discusses the welcome banquet held in February 1945 in honour of the newly appointed French diplomatic envoy to Ireland, Jean Rivière, hosted by Éamon de Valera at Iveagh House, the headquarters of the Irish Department of External Affairs. The banquet took place at a moment when ‘an intriguing but ambiguous privilege’ had been granted by Charles de Gaulle’s Provisional Government to Ireland as the only country permitted to retain its diplomatic representative to France in the post-liberation period. Following the fall of the Vichy regime and the liberation of France in August 1944, de Gaulle’s government de- manded …

“We Aren’T Dying Yet, But We’Re On The Hospital Bed.” An Analysis Of Scottish Culture And Desire For Independence, Emma Walker

Honors Papers and Posters

Scottish culture has long often been associated with barbaric clans and whiskey; however, there is much more to this culture than meets the eye. After centuries of oppression and pushback on expressing cultural aspects of Scottish identity post the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Scotland has now emerged as a leader in re-establishing its culture and protecting it as well. This paper will aim to analyze how Scotland's cultural pride over time has changed and how this uptick in pride has also led to a political movement for independence. I argue that the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, …

The Grateful Dead: An Imperfect Symbol Of The Hippie Movement, Vanessa Sharfe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The emergence of the band, the Grateful Dead, took San Francisco by storm in the 1960s as the hippie counterculture movement increased in popularity in the United States. The Grateful Dead’s career spanned thirty years from 1965 to the passing of their lead singer, Jerry Garcia in 1995. My work will focus on the political and social context of the 1960s and 1970s because the time period was shaped by major political issues and events that influenced the ideologies of the various protest movements such the Free Speech Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and controversial topics such as the Hell’s …

Victory Gardens: Helping On The Home Front, A Curriculum Outreach Project, Kelly Hoomes

Master's Theses

The Victory Garden: Helping on the Homefront traveling trunk outreach project links past, present, and future by introducing students to the historical significance of World War II victory gardens and emphasizing the continued relevance today. Partnering with Kennesaw State University’s Museum of History and Holocaust Education (MHHE), the traveling trunk focuses on a fifth-grade audience, aligning with Georgia Standards of Excellence for Social Studies, Health, and Science. The traveling trunk designed as a “museum-in-a-box" includes primary sources, artifacts, and a practical gardening activity that fosters critical thinking and analysis. By encouraging an understanding of the past and the connections to …

The Rise And Fall Of An Aryanization Bank: The Romanian Credit Institute, 1941–1951, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Probably the most important domestic project of the pro-Nazi Antonescu regime, the policy of Romanianization of the economy had ambitious goals. It aimed to seize Jewish-owned real estate and to redistribute it to “deserving” Romanians, state agencies, and welfare organizations and to increase the share of ethnic Romanian entrepreneurs and skilled employees through purchasing Jewish companies, adopting business and labour restrictions against Jews and “foreigners,” training and funding ethnic Romanian professionals and would-be entrepreneurs, and establishing new companies to displace minority and foreign competitors. While this project looked feasible on paper, in practice, it faced major obstacles, including a lack …

Book Review Of Motorsport And Fascism. Living Dangerously. By Paul Baxa. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 313 Pages., Alessio Giovene

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

Book Review Of The First Lady Of Dirt: The Triumphs And Tragedy Of Racing Pioneer Cheryl Glass. By Bill Poehler. Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield, 2024., Douglas Stark

Journal of Motorsport Culture & History

No abstract provided.

0886: Ken Reffeitt Collection, 1852-2023, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Ken Reffeitt was employed by Marshall University Special Collections for many years and was a member of a number of fraternal organizations. His extensive collection of materials on this subject was donated in 2024.

The Ken Reffeitt Collection consists of annual reports and other documents of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) of West Virginia, the Rebekah Assembly, I.O.O.F., the Improved Order of Red Men, the Department Council Patriarchs Militant, I.O.O.F., the M. W. Grand Lodge of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons of the State of West Virginia, and other organizations. The collection also includes a number of books …

Constructing The Enemy: How Us Media Framed The Ussr In The 1980s, Tyler J. Buchanan

The Exposition

Tyler Buchanan, Constructing the Enemy: How US Media Framed the USSR in the 1980s. This paper examines the presentation of media in the United States on American citizens through an analysis of the use of commercials and advertisements,. Ultimately, the media in the United States from the 1980s reveal a clear and apparent message the US media portrays the USSR to instill fear into the average American citizen. The 1980s was a hotbed for the ideological and political rivalry between the United States and the USSR during the Cold War. The United States sought to promote democracy and capitalism, …

From Adoption Papers To Shopping Lines: Decoding The Cabbage Patch Kids Craze Of U.S. Shoppers In The 1980s., Jeffrey J. Wilson

The Exposition

No abstract provided.

Satanic Panic: A Case Study Of Snakeland In Buffalo, New York During The 1980s, Emily Jarnot

The Exposition

No abstract provided.

Cramped, Narrow, And Overfilled: What Drove The Renovation Of Rochester’S Can Of Worms In March 1989, Declan S. Morrow

The Exposition

Constructed in the 1960s and rebuilt in the 1980s, the I-490 Interchange situated east of Rochester, New York was a source of constant controversy by the motorists who used the freeway to journey from the suburbs where they lived to the downtown districts where they worked. This infamous interchange became known to Rochesterarians as “the Can of Worms” because of its winding ramps and narrow roads that would often leave those who traversed it confused and at the mercy of other drivers if they had not already experienced its design. To explain why this freeway was so terrible to drive …

Myth And Monument In Old Town Albuquerque: Southwest Pietà And The War Of Presiding Histories, Eric Castillo

Regeneración: A Xicanacimiento Studies Journal

Luis Jiménez’s Southwest Pietà (1984) intended to combat cultural amnesia that obscured Native Americans’ and Mexicans’ contributions to the state. Jiménez’s Pietà sought to counter the iconography that shaped New Mexico’s colonialist heritage. But Old Town Albuquerque shrouds Native American and Mexican contributions to the region. Albuquerque’s public art has often been deployed as a wedge to write and rewrite narratives about land inhabitants, but the city’s public art tells a powerful story about race and place in New Mexico. This essay explores the socio-historical battle of land memorialization in Old Town Albuquerque and provides a geo-racial perspective about the …

The Architect Of The Past: Heinrich Himmler's Remaking Of Germany's History., Chad M. White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the complex interplay between historical narratives, ideological manipulation, and cultural artifacts in Heinrich Himmler’s efforts to reshape Germany’s history during the Nazi regime. The study shows how Himmler used historical revisionism to mythologize Germanic history to support Nazi ideology. Himmler used the Ahnenerbe, an SS organization, to research and propagate distorted narratives, fabricating artifacts to legitimize the Aryan myth and assert Germanic superiority. Influenced by movements like the Völkisch Movement, Himmler's ideology relied on pseudo-historical narratives to shape public perception and Nazi policies. The study analyzes Himmler's writings and the spatial transformation of sites like Wewelsburg Castle …

Rogers, Arkansas: The Impact Of The Frisco, Jeffrey Weaver

ATU Theses and Dissertations 2021 - Present

The second American railroad revolution transformed areas like Benton County, Arkansas, from rural farmland to urbanized cities. The railroad provided affordable transportation during the period called the New South. The railroad sparked the agricultural boom in Rogers, sending millions of apples and other agricultural goods to surrounding states. By 1900, Benton County had produced more apples than any other county in the country, elevating Rogers to one of the leading shipping hubs in Northwest Arkansas. The population increased by double-digit percentages, resetting the settlement dynamics of Benton County. In turn, the small town with a robust economy created a sensation …

Review Of Repression, Resistance And Collaboration In Stalinist Romania, 1944–1964: Post-Communist Remembering, By Monica Ciobanu, Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

A review of Repression, Resistance and Collaboration in Stalinist Romania, 1944–1964: Post-communist Remembering by Monica Ciobanu.

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …