United States History Commons^™

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 …

The Homemaker's Guide To Happiness: A Comparison Of Methods Used By Dissatisfied Mid-Twentieth Century American Housewives In Their Pursuit Of Fulfillment, Kristen Thompson

Graduate Masters Theses

In the mid-twentieth century, the United States of America had an unsung problem.The country had emerged from World War II as a superpower and the high of victory was still fresh, but under the surface the nation was desperately searching for stability to cope with the trauma of war. This search saw a cultural push back to traditional values and gender roles and a heavy focus on the nuclear family as the heart of society. As such, a great amount of pressure was placed on the shoulders of the American housewives who were at the center of the home and …

Log Cabins, Hard Ciders, And The Misunderstood Campaign Of 1840: Looking At How The Whigs Really Created The First Modern Presidential Campaign Through Effective Storytelling, Eric V. Schesventer

Masters Theses, 2020-current

The Whig party crafted the first ever modern campaign seen in American History during the campaign and subsequent presidential election of 1840. They did this not merely through the use of flashy campaign slogans and festive events as previous historians have discussed. The Whigs created the first ever modern campaign by telling both realistic and symbolic stories through the use of media narratives and physical objects crafted for the campaign. By doing this, this helped mold then candidate and future President William Henry Harrison into a candidate for all Americans, even if he was not in practice.

Rock, Rock, ‘Til You Drop: How Acid Rock Amplified The Counterculture Rebellion Of The 60s And 70s, Evan Bauer

Honors Projects

Acid rock’s rise to the top was aided by unprecedented times in American history. A collision of forces such as anti-war sentiment, youth rebellion, and the emergence of lysergic diethylamide exploded into a generation changing era of peace, love, violence, and above all else, music. Through the early years of acid rock's dominance, the outspoken virtues of the artists were held dear to their fans and listeners across the country, who never had to question its authenticity. Acid rock’s popularity was unlike anything the American people had ever seen, with major weekend long events which captivated the media and the …

Orthodoxy, Culture And Language: Alaska In Russia’S Religious Diplomacy Of The 21st Century, Oleksandr Lukyanenko

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

The article is devoted to the analysis of the religious factor of the Russian foreign diplomacy in the light of Vladimir Putin’s high-profile visit to Alaska n August 15, 2025. The paper studies a special place of Alaska in the historical imagination of Russian political and church discourse. The status of this particular territory in Russian state worldview – the former “Russian America” – is indicative: it refers to the idea of an unfinished imperial legacy. The research doesn’t touch a main event that included a meeting with US President Donald Trump but an off-schedule meeting with Archbishop Alexei (Trader) …

Knowing One's Place At The Table: Taste As A Means Of Othering In The American Colonies, 1700-1775, Nicholas Harp

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis began as an inquiry into a simple question. How did people in the American colonies talk about the food that they ate? This question led to a fascinating look into the social dynamics of the people living in eighteenth century America. Their own personal writings demonstrate how they understood their place in society through the food that they ate. Moreover, they often wrote about the way that other people ate in ways that alienated or discriminated against different ethnic groups. A look into the secondary historiography revealed that other historians had noticed this trend. However, very few addressed …

Evaluating The Impact Of Policy In Theatre: The Influence Of Public & Political Policy On The Theatrical World, John Q. Rhodes

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the second half of the twentieth century, there is distinct evidence to exhibit a direct correlation between daily occurrences and matters of public policy. This paper serves to analyze the impact of U.S. public policy on theatrical practices. To provide a detailed and targeted analysis of the exponential impact public policy had upon the theatrical industry, this examination will look at theatre beginning in 1961 and will extend towards the current administration of President Donald Trump and is organized in ten-year segments. Each decade will be generalized for its direct or indirect changes that occurred within the period and …

The Grizzly, November 20, 2025, Renee Washart, Jesse Cherone, Sidney Belleroche, Alex Zelaya, Adam Denn, Emily Veasey, Erin Ewing

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Steve Donahue: Ursinus College Legend • Dr. Atkins Talks Student Engagement Plans • Professors on Sabbatical for Spring 2026 • Ursinus Alum: Coach Dan Mullen • Try Out a Winter-Themed Crossword! • Is Having a Boyfriend Embarrassing? • Women's Tip-Off Time: Women's Basketball Takes the Court • Ursinus Football Secures Bowl Bid

The Grizzly, November 13, 2025, Renee Washart, Alex Zelaya, Julia Picklo, Sophia Kumar, Kat Carey, Emily Veasey, Erin Ewing

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Sparking Discussion: Advocacy & Community • Hope to C-U Tonight! • Sound (in) Sight: Honoring Tradition Through Dance • Being the Villain • Seniors' Wisdom • Halloween: A Night to Forget? • Ursinus Wrestling's Successful Season Debut • Ursinus Swim Teams Looking to Make Waves

The Grizzly, November 6, 2025, Renee Washart, Adam Denn, Alex Zelaya, Sidney Belleroche, Hanna Moghanaki, Erin Ewing

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

UC Hall of Famer Talks Basketball Development • HoCo NoMo? This Year's Lack of a Homecoming Court • Course Registration for Spring 2026 • Community's Shared Love for Music Brings New Life to Wind Ensemble • Finding My Way with Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Malala Yousafzai • APEX at Ursinus: Unfair, and to Whom? • Where Legacies Live On: The Dave Matey Linebacker Lounge • Bears' Basketball Prepares for Battle

The Grizzly, October 30, 2025, Renee Washart, Julia Picklo, Nathaniel Nerone, Sidney Belleroche, Caitlin Cunnane, Claudia Tracy, Erin Ewing, Jesse Cherone, Adam Denn

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Hannigan Removed as College President • Ursinus' Halloweekend History • Board Chair Speaks on Institution-Wide Concerns • Cold Seats, Late Starts • Witches' Brew • Deer Factor: Repellent or Rebellion? • The Fear Factor: How the Scariest Sport Faces Fright • Football Bears Battle Down the Stretch

The Grizzly, October 23, 2025, Renee Washart, Julia Picklo, Nathaniel Nerone, Erin Ewing, Caitlin Cunnane, Kate Adams

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Opportunities in Motion • Spooky Spectacles and Enchanting Art • In the Blood: A Visceral Scarlet Letter Stage Adaptation • The MAA Fortnightly Question • Greetings From Ireland • The Best and Worst of C-Store (In My Humble Opinion) • An Injured Athlete's Experience: Emma Reinert • Bears' Players of the Week • Field Hockey Fights to Keep Season Alive

The Grizzly, October 9, 2025, Renee Washart, Adam Denn, Sidney D. Belleroche, Nathaniel Nerone, Erin Ewing, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Ursinus Hall of Fame Construction • A Compiled List of Student Benefits, Discounts and More • Meet the Grizzly Team • President Hannigan Talks Affordability, DEI • Ursinus Student Starts Day Trading Club • For What it's Worth: My Experience Protesting on Campus • Men's Soccer Gears Up for Conference Play • Players of the Week • Football Falls Short in Conference Battle

The Grizzly, October 2, 2025, Renee Washart, Sidney D. Belleroche, Adam Denn, Ash Twomey, Claudia Tracy, Sophia Kumar, Erin Ewing, Emily A. Veasey

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Protests at Campus Charlie Kirk Memorial Screenings • Recovery Month Continues Past September at Ursinus • UC Theater Performs Harvey • President Hannigan Talks Financials, Retention, and More • More Than a Mic: WVOU's New Era Begins • Where's the Fun in Fashion? • Ursinus Goes "All-In" • Volleyball Looks to Repeat History

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

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

No abstract provided.

The Grizzly, September 25, 2025, Renee Washart, Julia Picklo, Laela Stackhouse, Sophia Kumar, Claudia Tracy, Caitlin Cunnane, Erin Ewing, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Let's Talk About the CARBO-Nation • Greek Life Numbers • Power Surge: Ursinus Goes Lights Out! • This Time in History! • The Writing is, Literally, on the Wall • GRRRL on the Street • A Sports Switch-up: Lippay Guards Goal for Bears • Football Rolls to 3-0 Start!

The Grizzly, September 18, 2025, Renee Washart, Sidney D. Belleroche, Sophia Kumar, Adam Denn, Hadley Whitman, Jesse Cherone

Ursinus College Grizzly Newspaper, 1978 to Present

Talking Greek Life With Maggie Diaz '28 • Best Booth in Sports? Ursinus's! • Are Ursinus Bears Going Extinct? An Enrollment Analysis • APEX Hub Spotlight: Sports! • The Making of Out! Just Over the Line • Ursinus Does Got Talent • Place and Chase: The Ursinus Field Hockey Ball Boys • A Fanatical Visit to 97.5

The Residual Impact Of Slavery On How Enslaved Black Females Defined And Made Meaning Of Sexual Violence: A Content Analysis, Suzanne R. Bates

Dissertations

Thompson-Miller & Picca (2016) and Feimster (2023) argued that enslaved African American women, and even free African Americans after the Civil War were victims of non-consensual sexual activity and rape. The NISVS report revealed that before the age of 18 years old, 35.5% of African American women experienced contact sexual violence, 29.5% experienced non-contact unwanted sexual encounters, and 20.7% experienced rape (Basile et al., 2022). Researchers of slave scholarship have made the case for the importance of including discourse on slavery and enslaved Black females’ experiences when discussing present day sexual violence among Black women in the US today (Balfour, …

Left Or Right, Loyal Or Disloyal: Ideology, Partisanship, And Empire In The Construction Of Interwar Japanese American Politics, Vivian Yan-Gonzalez

Asian American Studies Faculty Articles and Research

This article examines the first cohort of Japanese American voters in California in the interwar years, in order to explore the construction of racialized parameters on Japanese American political agency. Inter-imperial competition between the United States and Japan over the future of the Pacific, along with the popular and legal linkage of race and citizenship, produced a persistent distrust of Japanese American voters. Although Japanese Americans shaped their political strategies to appease these suspicions, militarized state demands for loyalty after the attack on Pearl Harbor sharply contracted their options from a range of diverse ideologies and partisanship to a narrow …

In The Name Of The Mother, The Nation, And The Race: White Women, The Jim Crow South, & Moralized White Supremacist Feminism, Shayna M. Lawson

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis introduces the concept of moralized white supremacist feminism to examine the central role white women played in constructing, legitimizing, and sustaining racial hierarchies in the Jim Crow South through a network of cultural and political organizing, particularly through the United Daughters of the Confederacy and Women’s Ku Klux Klan. Far from passive observers, white women were strategic agents of segregation, leveraging ideals of purity, motherhood, and moral virtue to enforce anti-Black violence and oppression through educational, civic, legal, and symbolic institutions, as well as extra-legal practices. Drawing from archival materials, oral histories, and critical race theory, this study …

Remaking Life: The Culture Of Chinese Transcontinental Railroad Workers, Caroline Jordan

The Purdue Historian

This paper examines the methods by which Chinese immigrants involved with the construction of the first transcontinental railroad maintained cultural ties to their native China, as well as the changes they made to adapt to their new surroundings. The United States’ first transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869, primarily at the hands of Chinese immigrants. Despite their massive contribution, no primary documents from Chinese workers themselves are known to exist. Their role in the railroad’s construction was largely forgotten until relatively recently. Chinese workers faced hostile living and working conditions during their life on the railroad. This paper covers multiple …

The Commander’S Crusade: Bush’S Campaign For War In Iraq, Aliyah Ramirez

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

Acting Religion: Analyzing The Aids Crisis Through A Religious Lens, Anya Thaovan Nguyenkhoa

Voces Novae

No abstract provided.

Where's The Dim Sum? Art, Oral History, And The Chinese American Diaspora In Portland, Or, Rayli Dornan

University Honors Theses

This thesis examines the history, transformation, and contemporary significance of Portland's Chinatown through an oral history framework, emphasizing the voices of Chinese American artists. Beginning with a comprehensive historical overview from the mid-nineteenth-century Gold Rush migrations and railroad labor to twentieth-century exclusion, dispossession under urban renewal, and the late-twentieth-century dispersal into suburbs, the thesis traces how structural racism and policy shaped both the physical landscape and communal life of Oregon's Chinese diaspora. Through in-depth interviews with local artists, this research aims to illuminate how individual experiences of identity, belonging, and creative expression navigate the tensions between heritage and adaptation.

Drawing …

The Role Of Imagination In Archaeology: Linking Contemplation And Method At The Amache National Historic Site, Sami Zepponi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Archaeology is both a science and an interpretative process, blending material discovery with imagination to reconstruct past experiences. This research, conducted through the 2024 University of Denver Amache Field School, explores the archaeological imagination and the creative and cognitive engagement that shapes historical interpretation. Using Amache, a WWII Japanese American incarceration site, as a case study, this thesis examines how material culture, landscape modifications, and reflection inform archaeological understanding. This study explores how imagination connects tangible findings to cultural narratives by integrating community-based archaeology, place and landscape theory, and contemplative inquiry. Findings highlight imagination as essential to archaeology, enabling deeper …

Toward Culturally Responsive Interpretation: Native American Histories, Lifeways, And Ways Of Knowing At The High Desert Museum, Carol Fitzsimmons, Ajena Cason Rogers

Dissertations

Many public museums and historic institutions reflect settler colonial culture and are primarily non-Native led. Although these institutions are trusted, many have perpetuated cultural harm through the theft of belongings, the misrepresentation of stories and histories, and the inaccurate portrayals of cultural content. When interpreting Native American experiences, many non-Native institutions struggle to co-create culturally responsive interpretation. The purpose of this basic qualitative study was to apply the four-truth framework, developed by the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to better understand how the High Desert Museum approached the interpretation of Native American content and stories and to explore how …

"Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow": Disneyland, Science, And The Cultural Cold War, Emily Searson

Master's Theses

Disneyland, the popular Anaheim-based theme park in California, opened its doors during heightened Cold War tensions in 1955. In this thesis, I trace the origins of Tomorrowland, one of the five original themed lands in Disneyland that included futuristic rides and attractions to depict Walt Disney’s imagining of the year 1986. I examine Tomorrowland in particular to argue that WED Enterprises (Disneyland, Inc.’s research and development arm) and Disney’s vision of scientific progress aligned with U.S. Cold War policy goals, especially containment. Disney and WED Enterprises meticulously planned Tomorrowland with the help of notable American defense contractors, including the Monsanto …

Embodied Archives, Emerging Futures, Xuân-Lam Nguyen

Masters Theses

Fifty years after the end of the U.S.–Vietnam War, this thesis reflects on the entangled relationship between the two nations, inspiring hope while challenging dominant representations of trauma and tragedy. Drawing from autobiography, family history, folk art traditions, colonial photographs, hierarchies within art history, archives of student activism, and key geopolitical events, the work explores the complex intersections of queer identity and glitchy historical narratives. Combining research-based inquiry with time- and labor-intensive processes, it reimagines historical materials to construct alternate possibilities for the future.

Disability: A Dirty Word? How Language Historically Perpetuates Exclusion And Systemic Oppression, Kelly E. Imm

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1990, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) marked a pivotal moment in the American disability rights movement, which began in the 1960s and sought to secure civil rights for people with disabilities. Despite this monumental achievement, this thesis considers how the language used throughout American history and culture to describe people with disabilities, even within the confines of progressive legislation like the ADA, remains deeply rooted in ableist and oppressive historical attitudes. At the heart of this issue, this thesis demonstrates how the medicalization of disability, which has dominated American culture for centuries, continues to frame …

From Essential To Expendable – Montagnards, Kurds, And U.S. Army Special Forces In Vietnam And Northern Iraq, Jake Brooks

Masters Theses, 2020-current

In the Vietnam and Iraqi conflicts, the U.S. Army Special Forces teamed up with indigenous ethnic monitories to bring the fight to all corners of the battle space, and to take advantage of their immense local knowledge and strategic locations. The Montagnards of Central Indochina and the Kurds in Northern Iraq allied with the Special Forces for a number of reasons: protection from their ruling governments, recognition for their movements for autonomy, increased access to better medicine and equipment, and the opportunity to strike back at their historical enemies. The Montagnards and Kurds taught the Green Berets how to better …