Social History Commons^™

Metaphysics Of Mania: Edgar Allan Poe's And Herman Melville's Rebranding Of Madness During The American Asylum Movement, Alexis Renfro

All Master's Theses

The “madman’s” place throughout history has tended to be a mystery on both ontological and epistemological levels. From the perception of the madman as a crazed oracle in the sixteenth century to the perception of the madman as a criminal in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nineteenth-century madman was even more difficult to define. Because insanity was deemed the inverse of bourgeois normativity and conservative moral standards, those categorized as mad in America during mid-1800s were institutionalized in reformed mental asylums, establishments which sought to homogenize human behavior through moral treatment. Both Edgar Allan Poe and Herman Melville drew …

Fashion And Court-Building In The Sixteenth-Century Florentine Ducal Court: Politics, Agency, And Paleopathology In The Wardrobes Of Eleonora Di Toledo And Giovanna D'Austria, Leah Rachel Jeffers

Scripps Senior Theses

Fashion in the Renaissance became intensely political, highly gendered, and anatomized (i.e. emphasizing human anatomy rather than masking it). Court culture placed a particular emphasis on the body of the courtier, as skills such as dancing and dressing fashionably became crucial to political success in states throughout Europe. In sixteenth-century Florence, the Medici attempted to install a duchy in what was at the time a republican city (with strong republican heritage). Florentine fears of foreign domination and resentment towards non-republican forms of government made the Medici’s task nearly impossible. Fashion became a primary pillar of the Medicean political agenda, as …

Ethics, Eugenics, And Public Education In Georgia (1910-1965), Aaron Gerald Guest Sr.

Theses and Dissertations

This study traces the eugenics movement in Georgia, focusing on the ideology behind the social policies that led to the forced sterilizations of over four thousand Georgians from 1939 to 1965. This thesis will address the following questions: 1) How were Georgia’s public policies affected by eugenics? 2) To what extent were the racial views of Georgians affected by scientific proclamations? 3) What role did the public schools play in educating the populace about eugenics? This research will focus primarily on the scientific racial dynamic of America during the twentieth century, arguing that American political thought and the idea of …

0840: Bertram (Bert) A. Dressler Papers, 1924-1998, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains football-related materials, professional possessions, educational materials, and personal memorabilia of Bertram (Bert) A. Dressler. The collection includes photographs, professional programs developed, trucking log books and certificates, as well as genealogical materials. These materials document Dressler's life as a Marshall University graduate in West Virginia, North Carolina, Iowa, and beyond.

0839: Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Papers, 1941-2006, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection contains the personal, educational, and professional possessions of Mildred Mitchell-Bateman. The collection includes correspondence, newspaper articles, association newsletters, professional planners, financial documents, plaques, and other personal memorabilia. The materials document Bateman’s various roles within local, state, and national psychology and psychiatric organizations. The collection is organized into six series: Series 1, Personal; Series 2, Education; Series 3, Professional Experience; Series 4, Correspondence; Series 5, Associations; and Series 6, Bound Books, Bound Volumes and list of Newspapers.

To view materials from this collection that are digitized and available online, search the Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Papers, 1941-2006 here.

The Melting Pot: America, Food, And Ethnicity: 1880-1960, Jacob Kaus

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper attempts to provide an overview of the effect immigrants had on the food culture of America from 1880-1960. French, German, Italian, Jewish, as well as Chinese immigrants, to name only a few, had a direct impact on formulating the unique and diverse American cuisine we enjoy today.

The Jews Of Italy (1650-1815), Francesca Bregoli

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The King And The Land: A Geography Of Royal Power In The Biblical World, Stephen C. Russell

Publications and Research

The King and the Land offers an innovative history of space and power in the biblical world. Stephen C. Russell shows how the monarchies in ancient Israel and Judah asserted their power over strategically important spaces such as privately-held lands, religious buildings, collectively-governed towns, and urban water systems. Among the case studies examined are Solomon's use of foreign architecture, David's dedication of land to Yahweh, Jehu's decommissioning of Baal's temple, Absalom's navigation of the collective politics of Levantine towns, and Hezekiah's reshaping of the tunnels that supplied Jerusalem with water.

By treating the full range of archaeological and textual evidence …

Rhetoric Of Imagery: Gendering And Consumption Throughout Interwar American Advertisment, Natalie Delgado

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Interwar American advertising rose alongside new levels of hygiene, personal appearance, and technology in order to sell their products to target audiences. Despite the abundance of scholarship on media and gender, few studies have examined the gendered techniques through which interwar advertisers communicated with consumers in response to changing social norms and economic stability. The question this thesis explores is how these changes and communication shifted in response to consumer culture and how advertisers utilized early market research and persuasion techniques to target their audiences. Building on the studies of gender, consumption, and identity, this thesis examines the relationship between …

Communism's Futures: Intelligentsia Imaginations In The Writings Of The Strugatsky Brothers, Elizabeth Tammaro

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were the most popular science fiction writing duo in Soviet Russia from the 1960s through the 1980s. Examining their imaginative fictional worlds against the background of wider changes in the Soviet Union allows scholars to gain insights in the world of the Soviet intelligentsia, the educated bearers of culture. As members of this group, the Strugatskys expressed the hopes, frustrations and fears, of their peers, vindicating their intellectual and emotional life. I support the argument that the Brothers occupied a middle ground between conformity and dissident, dubbed the "lost" intelligentsia by Lloyd Churchward. I demonstrate this …

The Octofoil, January/February/March 2017, Ninth Infantry Division Association

The Octofoil

The Octofoil is the offical publication of the Ninth Infantry Division Association, Inc., an organization formed by the officers and men of the 9th Infantry Division in order to perpetuate the memory of fallen comrades, preserve the esprit de corps of the Division, promote peace and serve as an information bureau about the 9th Infantry Division. The Association is made up of 9th Infantry veterans from WWII and Vietnam, spouses, widows and lineal descendants.

Murder In Manassas: Mental Illness And Psychological Trauma After The Civil War, Savannah G. Rose

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

Following the American Civil War, the small railroad junction of Manassas, Virginia grew into one of the most prominent towns in the region with the help of town founder William S. Fewell and his family. In 1872, the youngest daughter of the prominent Fewell family was seduced and abducted by Prince Williams County’s Commonwealth Attorney and most prominent orator, James F. Clark without warning. Having just come home from three years of military service in the Civil War, witnessing the death of his twin brother as well as suffering for a year in Elmira Prison as a prisoner of war, …

Britain's Green Fascists: Understanding The Relationship Between Fascism, Farming, And Ecological Concerns In Britain, 1919-1951, Alec J. Warren

UNF Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the relationship between fascism, fascist ideas, and environmental consciousness in Britain during the pre- and post-World War II decades. In examining this topic, two main questions arise. First, why did fascist intellectuals support environmentally conscious ideas, and how did they relate these positions to their political ideologies? Second, why were many environmentally conscious thinkers during this period attracted to fascism? This thesis will also address several related issues regarding fascism and environmental consciousness. These issues include what role environmental concerns played in the British Union of Fascist’s platforms and in fascism’s public appeal, and how that role …

“Marching Mothers”: The Battle For Desegregation In Cleveland Public Schools, 1957-1976, Theresa Dunne

Senior Independent Study Theses

In 1957, the Cleveland Municipal School District’s (CMSD) Board of Education implemented a relay program to address issues of overcrowding in Cleveland public schools. Solely affecting schools that served a predominately black student body on Cleveland’s rigidly segregated East Side, this program split the school day into two three-and-a-half hour sessions to accommodate increasing student body sizes, shortening the school day for African American pupils by an hour-and-a-half compared to the five hours in the classroom given to white peers. As mothers of children on the relay program realized that this was the Board of Education’s permanent solution to overcrowding, …

“Confederate Soldiers In The Siege Of Petersburg And Postwar: An Intensified War And Coping Mechanisms Utilized, 1864- Ca. 1895”, Matthew R. Lempke

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis crafts a narrative about how Confederate soldiers during the siege of Petersburg experienced an intensified war that caused them to refine soldierly coping mechanisms in order to endure. They faced increasing deprivations, new forms of death, fewer restrictions on killing, dwindling fortunes, and increased racial acrimony by facing African American soldiers. In order to adjust, they relied on soldierly camaraderie, Southern notions of honor, letter writing, and an increasingly firm reliance on Protestant Christianity to cope with their situation. Postwar, these veterans repurposed soldierly coping mechanisms and eventually used institutional support from their states. Camaraderie, honor, literary endeavors, …

The Japanese Experience In Virginia, 1900s-1950s: Jim Crow To Internment, Emma T. Ito

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis addresses how Japanese and Japanese Americans may have lived and been perceived in Virginia from 1900s through the 1950s. This work focuses on their positions in society with comparisons to the nation, particularly during the “Jim Crow” era of “colored” and “white,” and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It highlights various means of understanding their positions in Virginia society, with emphasis on Japanese visitors, marriages of Japanese in Virginia, and the inclusion of Japanese in higher education at Roanoke College, Randolph-Macon College, William and Mary, University of Virginia, University of Richmond, Hampden-Sydney College, and Union …

Theories Of The Self, Race, And Essentialization In Buddhism In The United States During The “Yellow Peril,” 1899-1957, Ryan Anningson

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation is an intellectual history tracing developing notions of the Self in Buddhism through Buddhist publications during the years from 1899-1957. I define this time period as the Era of the Yellow Peril, due to common views in the United States of an Asian “other” which formed a larger clash of civilizations globally. 1899-1957 was marked by pessimism and dread due to two World Wars and the Great Depression, while popular and academic cultures argued for the validity of race sciences, and the application of these “sciences” through eugenics. Buddhism in the United States was created through a global …

The Making Of Astate In Waiting: The Lives Of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967 To 1985, Rebecca Granato

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

A State in Waiting? The Lives of Fatah Political Prisoners, 1967-1985 looks at the evolution of a Fatah prisoner movement inside Israeli prisons intended for Palestinian political prisoners. An under-researched area in Palestinian studies, this project relies on a combination of oral sources and anonymous documents drafted by prisoners during their internment housed at the Abu Jihad Museum in Abu Dis, Palestine. The dissertation argues that beginning in the 1970s and lasting into the 1980s a kind of collectivity emerged and came to define prisoner interactions and their day-to-day activities. Prison, and later system-wide hunger strikes are addressed in an …