Social History Commons^™

Speculative Spies: The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, Business, And Labor Conflict In The Gilded Age, Luke M. Gibbs

Tenor of Our Times

The Pinkerton Agency molded into an “arm of capital” used by the wealthy against labor during the Gilded Age. However, such a transition seems confusing given the life of the company’s founder. Allan Pinkerton, once a champion of workers’ rights in his home country of Scotland, seemingly used his agency to side with the wealthy elite. In explaining these shifts, historian Sean Paul O’Hara agrees with a “profits and negative image” narrative. The poor financial position of the agency, coupled with a battered reputation resulting from failures in the American West, would be remedied through the lucrative business that was …

Phi Alpha Theta Arkansas Regional Conference 2026, Jacob Rooney

Tenor of Our Times

Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference 2026

History Day At Harding 2026, Julie E Harris

Tenor of Our Times

History Day in Arkansas summary.

Women With Will: The Power Of The Women Of The Renaissance, Madeline E. Stewart

Tenor of Our Times

Women of Italy in the Renaissance period were not powerless. They may or may not have had articulate power, but in many cases, they wielded an inarticulate power or influence that is more complex and difficult to define by modern terms associated with feminism. Feminism is simply anachronistic for this time, and the people of this time cannot be expected to have upheld ideals that had not been developed yet. Claims that women had no power or development in this era are false. Some excellent examples of some of the most powerful people in Italy politically were women, and they …

Living Letters, Jacob Rooney

Tenor of Our Times

Living Letters

2nd Place Contest Entry: "Destablizing U.S.-Japan Relations: Nikkatsu Film Noir As Postwar Social Critique", Thomas Graham Buchanan

Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Library Research Prize

This is Thomas Buchanan's submission for the 2026 Eric M. Scandrett Graduate Research Prize, which won second place. It contains their essay on using library resources, a summary of their research project on how a generation of Japanese filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s borrowed the formal strategies of Hollywood film noir to mount a critique of U.S. Cold War policy, and their bibliography.

Thomas is a student in the Master of Arts in Film & Media Studies program at Chapman University. Their faculty mentor is Dr. Emily Carman.

Thomas' thesis is the scholarship that emerged from the research discussed …

Delenda Est Norfolk: The Tidewater Revolts!, Kiera Dillman, Alise Dunham, Kristen Gary, Olivia M. Haris, Nelliel A. Herrera, Logan Holzgrefe, R. J. Lynch, Adam M. Manis, David Mogan, Luke Pickard, Shayla M. Shaw, Landon Swain, Kenny Wilcox, Bailey M. Wimberly, Tracy L. Barnett

Student Projects

Introduction to the Exhibit:

Today—exactly 250 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence—many Americans trace the origins of the nation’s revolutionary sentiment to Boston, Massachusetts or Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. We remember the violence of March 1770, when red-coated British soldiers fired into a crowded Boston street, massacring innocent colonists and igniting outrage. We recall the patriotic defiance of the Sons of Liberty, who boarded three East India Company ships and dumped chests of imported British tea into the Boston Harbor in December 1773. We can still hear, too, the reverberations of the “shot heard ’round the world,” when British …

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 …

"By The Sweat Of His Brow"?: Master Mechanics And Class Position In Antebellum New Orleans, Caleb G. Roark

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis argues that New Orleans’s skilled laborers profited alongside or from enslaved laborers. Proponents of free labor ideology, largely relegated to the North, charged that the skilled mechanic was the prototypical “free laborer.” In contemporary and modern portrayals, the systems of free and enslaved labor were considered antithetical. This thesis posits that these views are incorrect. Free and enslaved labor flourished together in the Crescent City. Despite their absence in historical understandings of the antebellum South, skilled laborers succeeded in New Orleans. I track societal debates across Louisiana’s newspapers concerning the status and success of mechanics across the state. …

Review Of Stephen Kinzer, Poisoner In Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The Cia Search For Mind Control, Dennis M. Johnson

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Stephen Kinzer has produced an important work that explores the life and career of the architect of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA mind control project. Kinzer brings to light the varied projects and unsettling effects of the CIA’s attempt to brainwash unsuspecting persons and the quiet man who led the projects.

The Theological Tradition Of The Orthodox Church In The Aspect Of The Formation Of Military Leadership In Ukraine, Olga Dobrodum, Andrii S. Zborchyi, Tetyana Kondratyuk-Antonova, Oleksandr L. Kolomiiets

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Analysis of the Orthodox theological tradition as a moral foundation for military leadership in the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the full-scale war. The study moves beyond pragmatic managerial models, exploring Orthodox categories such as service (diakonia), sacrifice, and spiritual warfare. Drawing on patristic heritage and modern theologians, the authors examine leadership motivation, the role of faith in professional resilience, and the integration of Orthodox anthropology into military training. Special emphasis is placed on the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's chaplaincy as a key mechanism for actualizing these values while addressing challenges like secularism and multiconfessionalism.

Imagining South Korean Nationhood Through Remembering And Forgetting The South Korean Military In The Vietnam War, Robinson P. Lee

Pitzer Senior Theses

Little more than a decade after being victimized by the devastating Korean War, South Korea fought in another devastating civil war in Asia, the Vietnam War. How is South Korean nationhood and political identity understood and articulated in the face of existential national questions presented by the Vietnam War? This thesis uses social and oral history approaches to put a myriad of primary and secondary sources in conversation with one another, building on the existing, limited English-language literature on South Korean military involvement in the Vietnam War. These approaches include examining narratives of Vietnam War atrocities, of an organized group …

The Southern Roots Of Populist Rhetoric And The Growth Of Fundamentalism, Ethan Teems

Theses

The religious fundamentalism of the 1920s was a direct evolution of the Southern Populist movement of the 1890s. While populism began as a political crusade against economic exploitation, industrialization, and urbanization, it evolved into a movement that attacked modernity. The southern United States was rooted in a predominantly religiously homogeneous society. The Protestant religions that encompassed the region were unwilling to adapt to a changing society, allowing religious fundamentalism to expand.

Beginning with the cultural conflicts of the 1920s, such as the Scopes Trial and William Jennings Bryan’s activism, the study explains how fundamentalists framed their struggles against modernism as …

Models Of Emulation: Representations Of Foreign, Indigenous, And Accented Speech In Early American Literature, Elaina A. Frulla

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

“Models of Emulation: Representations of Foreign, Indigenous, and Accented Speech in Early American Literature” explores how American writers used depictions of “nonstandard” English and accented English language speech, traditionally described as “literary dialect,” as a way to negotiate identity, power, and political belonging in the formative years of nation building after the American Revolution. Beginning with Noah Webster’s mission to establish a standardized pronunciation of the English language that would simplify and purify spoken American-English and definitively differentiate it from what he saw as the corrupted, cosmopolitan British-English model, each of the three chapters examines literary representations of nonstandard emulated …

Lifting The Political Fog: People, Power, And Antislavery Politics In Upstate New York, 1848-1861, Nicholas Thony

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This work details the ascendance of the political antislavery movement in upstate New York, focusing on the roles a diverse array of actors played in constructing an unlikely Republican coalition of conservatives, reformers, black New Yorkers, nativists, prohibitionists, and abolitionists in the years preceding the Civil War. In weaving together the parallel and inextricable stories of powerful newspaperman Thurlow Weed, female reformers like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and black communities across the state, I argue the success of the political antislavery movement resulted from their combined efforts. Thurlow Weed was one of the most important politicians of …

“An Extremely Dangerous Institution:” The Cultures And Controversy Of Public Social Dances In Montana, 1900-1930, Danielle Allison Brown

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper explores public social dances east of the Continental Divide in Montana from 1900 to 1930. Rural social dances in schoolhouses and urban dances in dance halls created two different dance cultures. The relaxed nature of rural dances preserved the traditional values of nineteenth-century social dances, which reinforced community and family ties. Urban dances reflected the modern fads of the roaring twenties and challenged traditional values with sexual suggestiveness. Progressive Era moral reformers concerned about the possibility that social dance promoted illicit sexuality participated in an anti-dance movement and pushed for regulations of social dances. The anti-dance movement in …

Crafting The Right To Vote, Breana M. Mosher

Knowledge and Creativity Expo

This paper examines how British Suffragists between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used traditionally feminine domestic crafts as tools of political protest and communication. Excluded from formal political speech and subjected to censorship, violence, and imprisonment, women in the suffrage movement transformed textiles such as banners, posters, embroidery, and postcards into powerful tools of visual propaganda. Through close evaluation of suffrage-era material culture, this paper argues that domestic crafts enabled women to reclaim their voices and publicly expose state violence and political repression. By employing symbolism, color, and slogan-based design, suffragists created a recognizable visual identity that countered …

Tuberculosis In Jim Crow Virginia, 1900-1972, Elizabeth Dooley

Theses and Dissertations

Tuberculosis (TB) was a major public health concern in the United States, especially in the first half of the twentieth century. Transmission and treatment of the disease, which is spread between humans through close contact, was complicated by racial segregation laws in the South known as Jim Crow laws. Virginia subscribed to these laws, which played a role in how and where Black Virginians with TB could be treated. Segregated treatment facilities with an inadequate number of beds for the number of infected people and deaths in the state added to these complications of disease control and plan for eradication. …

From Universities, Streets, To Modern Contemporary Society: Becoming, Being, And Living As "Babaeng Aktibista", Mariah Alyssa Lorico Ampat, Jameelah Mikaellah Ahliya C. Robles, Zedrick Sombria Roa, Jessica Louise Cruz Clauna, Leo Vicentino

Sinaya: A Philippine Journal for Senior High School Teachers and Students

Historically, women faced patterns of prejudice and gender-based oppression, resulting in the denial of their fundamental rights. Through years of ingrained subordination under authoritarian regimes, activism birthed various movements and organizations that sought liberation. As militant groups gained traction, withstanding large-scale issues, women’s struggles were seldom addressed within nationalist movements. Literature has documented the roots of activism, women’s organizations, and the socio-political conditions throughout Philippine history. However, there is a narrow understanding of women’s experiences and how these mold their individual identities in response to shared struggles. This study attempts to design a local framework elucidating the motivations and drivers …

Something To Say: Nativism, Prohibition, And The Loss Of Political Alignment In Davenport, Iowa’S German-American Community 1848-1922, Clayton R. Schuler

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis ends with the municipal elections of 1920 in Davenport, Iowa. Amid the First Red Scare, the Socialist Party was swept into power. The party won under inauspicious national conditions thanks in part to a successful campaign on local concerns; the party had something to say. An examination of the years prior to the election, however, reveals that other factors contributed to political unalignment for the city’s large German descended population. Frustrated with Republican and Democratic parties that seemed to have no place for them, these voters had something to say as well. Ultimately the opportunity that this unalignment …

Diplomacy Derailed: Discrimination’S Detour On Route 40, Gage A. Kivlen

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The 1961 Route 40 campaign in Maryland became a critical battleground where three competing approaches to addressing racial segregation revealed deep contradictions in Cold War America. Route 40, a major highway between Washington D.C. and New York, became an international embarrassment when African diplomats from newly independent nations were repeatedly refused service at restaurants and hotels. This crisis prompted responses from three distinct actors: the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), which employed grassroots organizing and direct action; the State Department's Special Protocol Service Section (SPSS), which pursued top-down diplomatic solutions; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which conducted extensive …

Between Hard And Soft Power: A Historical Analysis Of U.S. Defense Diplomacy, Shuhei Takahashi

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

In recent years, countries around the world—those of Europe but also Japan, China, and Russia—have accelerated their efforts to use military assets as instruments of diplomacy. This trend has contributed to the rising prevalence of the term “defense diplomacy” in national security discourse. The United States is no exception. Its abundant military assets and its global network of bases clearly demonstrate that it is the world’s leading practitioner of defense diplomacy. Yet the United States lacks a clear strategic document outlining the concept. Moreover, because existing definitions remain theoretically ambiguous and methods for assessing the effectiveness of defense diplomacy initiatives …

Investigating The Relationship Between Noun Classes And Plant Folk Taxonomy In Chasu Language Of Kilimanjaro Region In Tanzania, Peter Rabson Mziray

Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences

The current study investigates the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu (G 22). The study focuses on two objectives: the first objective is to describe the plant folk taxonomy in Chasu and the second objective is to determine the relationship between noun classes and plant folk taxonomy in Chasu. Data were collected from rural villages in Same and Mwanga districts by using free listing, field interviews (jungle-walk-and-identify), and written texts containing Chasu plant names. The findings reveal that Chasu folk taxonomy reflects different ethnobotanical categories; including a unique beginner which is mmea/mimea ‘plant(s)’, and three life …

The Catholic Church And Their Response To The Rise Of Human Rights Abuses By The Military Regimes In Argentina And Brazil: A Comparative Analysis On The Argentine And Brazilian Church From The 1960’S To The 1980’S, Mya Miller

Global Studies Senior Capstone

This study is primarily focused on the Catholic Church's role in Argentina and Brazil throughout the 1960's to 1980's. It explores the historical and political context of Latin America amidst Cold War influence which resulted in the rise of military dictatorships who resorted to violence due to their strong political views. The Catholic Church, at the time, was experiencing deep internal tension which, in some cases, lead to an unfortunate lack of action despite their vast influence and their ability to aid their communities in need.

Review Of God’S Long Summer: Stories Of Faith And Civil Rights, Jenny N. Liang

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

No abstract provided.

Roots Of Justice: A History Of Race And Racism In Nebraska, Kevin Abourezk, M. Dewayne Mays, Paul Olson, Gabriel Bruguier, Preston Love Jr., Adam Fletcher Sasse, Heather Fryer, J.S. Onésimo (Ness) Sándoval, Sharon Ishii-Jordan, Emira Ibrahimpašić, Julia Reilly

Zea E-Books Collection

There is much to understand about the history of Nebraska and how the past shapes the present. This book attempts to bring into clearer focus the triumphs and trials of five broad groups whose lives have often been overlooked when the state’s history is told. The authors know some of this history of racism firsthand: Most of them have lived as people of color in Nebraska. They’ve experienced “the good, the bad and the ugly” that makes up our state story. We encourage educators, scholars and family historians to continue to dig, to document and to tell these stories. And …

Historical Note: The Capricious Nature Of Privanzas In Habsburg Spain: 1556-1665, Nathan Harkey

The Ozark Historical Review

The vast reaches of the Spanish Habsburg empire necessitated a change in court politics in order to manage day-to-day issues for the king. The answer to this problem in Spain, as in other European kingdoms, was the emergence of the privado or court favorite as a legitimate official who would ideally manage the influx of state affairs, limiting access to the king that would have been previously attainable through audiences. While the original purpose of the privado was to alleviate the countless duties of an overburdened monarch, early modern privanzas became a form of art in the expression of absolute …

Volkswagen And The Volksprodukte: The Failed Revolution In Production And Consumption In The Third Reich, Stuart Bailey

The Ozark Historical Review

Volksprodukte, with its utilization of consumption as a societal bond, was a crucial aspect for creating class harmony in Hitler's National Socialism. This paper discusses the influence of Henry Ford's manufacturing processes in supporting societal cohesion and their application to Volkswagen manufacture and the greater societal implications.

A Complex Border: Intractability And The Physical Roots Of Discursive Legitimations In Cyprus, Hilmi Ulas

Peace Studies Faculty Articles and Research

The Cypriot conflict is one of the most intractable conflicts of the modern era, and the collapse of complexity among the actors in the conflict—mainly the Republic of Cyprus, North Cyprus, and Turkey—appears to be the main cause of the continued “no war, no peace” state. Subsequent socio-psychological self-organization among these actors then produces conflict-perpetuating feedback loops and dynamics. These dynamics include identity narratives, narratives of “the other,” and narratives of the nature of the conflict, which, at the grassroots level, can legitimize ongoing engagement in the conflict, whereas peace is painted as an undesirable and undeserved/unjust compromise. Given this, …

[Review Of] The Trial Of A Nazi Doctor: Franz Lucas As Defendant, Opportunist, And Deceiver By Andrew Wisely. New York, Ny: Berghahn Books, 2024. Pp. Xiv+364. Cloth $150.00. Isbn 978-1-80539-530-0., Stefan Cristian Ionescu

History Faculty Articles and Research

"While we know a lot about the general framework of the trials of Nazi perpetrators, including of specific professional groups, the field of Holocaust, mass violence, and perpetrator studies still needs more in-depth studies on the careers, crimes, and the postwar whereabouts of individual midlevel Nazi officials who had power of life and death over thousands of inmates of Nazi camps and whose lives and careers were not thoroughly investigated by scholars. That is why the book authored by Andrew Wisely examining the case of the SS doctor Franz Bernhard Lucas as a long durée historical biography, is a much-needed …