United States History Commons^™

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

Wives, Warriors, And Womanhood: A Study Of Women’S War Roles, Megan Lee

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Since starting the War, Diplomacy, and Society program, my interests have included a focus on the soldier’s experience in war, women’s changing roles in war, and the study of war journalism, ranging from World War II, the Cold War, to the Vietnam War. This thesis project is a culmination of these themes.

The first article examines the crucial nature of a soldier’s connection to the Home Front by analyzing a collection of letters between a soldier and his fiancé during World War II. Filled with declarations of love and occasional expressions of insecurity, these letters reveal the importance of a …

A Pelican's Journey To Flight: A Louisiana National Guardsman, The Development Of The United States Army Air Service, And The Human Cost Of Military Innovation, James H. Smith

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

George E. Dicks deployed to the Mexican Punitive Expedition and World War I with the Louisiana National Guard. He recorded his experience in writing and photography, which reside in the Jackson Barracks Military Museum in Chalmette, Louisiana. His memorabilia reflect an officer’s perspective on early military aviation and parallel to the United States military’s experimentation with aviation. Through experimentation, Dicks became an aerial observer in World War I.

This thesis explores George E. Dicks’ memorabilia and how it both represents the development of the American Air Service and the human cost of military aviation with photographic evidence. By representing aviation’s …

Georgia, Lesley Brian Bargo

Master of Arts in Professional Writing Capstones

The Vietnam War cast a massive shadow, both home and abroad. Relationships, morality, and humanity hang in the balance.

Perkins, John Casey, 1918-2010 (Mss 753), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid for Manuscripts Collection 753. Reports of the operations of the U.S. Army, Third Infantry Division in Italy, Sicily, France and Germany during World War II. Includes reports relating to the service of Lieutenant Colonel John C. Perkins of Bowling Green, Kentucky in the Third Signal Company. Also includes memoranda of surrender written by Nazi SS officer Otto Skorzeny, taken into custody by Perkins in Austria in May 1945 (Click on "Additional Files" below for scans).

The 2023 Society For Military History Annual Meeting, Micah Wright

Title III Professional Development Reports

Financed by Title III funds, I attended the Society for Military History (SMH) Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. The conference took place from March 23-25 2023. The Society for Military History was established in 1933 and is the preeminent professional organization for military historians in the United States. The SMH is devoted to stimulating and advancing the study of military history and counts more than 2,700 members from academia and the armed forces.

During the conference, I presented an original research paper entitled “A Soldier Can Owe Allegiance to but One Flag: Political Polarization and Military Service in Puerto …

Graduate, 1st Place: World War I War Front And Home Front: The Correspondence That Brought Them Together, Michelle Thole

2023 Awards for Excellence in Student Research and Creative Activity - Documents

The First World War was the first time American soldiers had participated in a war at a distance from home that did not easily facilitate home furloughs. Although the United States and Europe are physically separated by more than 3,500 miles, the relative distance between American World War I soldiers on the war front and their families on the home front was minor; the correspondence between them mitigated the physical and cognitive distance.

Historians of the First World War have explored soldiers’ contact with their families while in training camps and the US military’s intentional cultivation of a balance between …

Res Historica, Volume 2, Lynneth Miller Renberg Phd, Alpha Rho Epsilon Phi Alpha Theta

Res Historica

The 2023 journal of historical research by Anderson University students, Res Historica.

The editorial team for this edition of Res Historica was Dr. Lynneth Miller Renberg. Johnathan Sorce, and Helen Smith. Cover art for this volume by Helen Smith.

0891: Jean Edward Smith Collection, 1916-2015, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

Jean Edward Smith was a noted biographer and the John Marshall Professor of Political Science at Marshall University. He graduated from Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. from Columbia University. For more than thirty years, he was a professor at the University of Toronto. His biographical subjects included Lucius D. Clay, George W. Bush, Dwight Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant, John Marshall, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Smith won the 2008 Francis Parkman Prize for his biography of Roosevelt and was the 2002 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography or Autobiography for Grant. Jean Edward Smith died on September 1, 2019.

Materials …

U.S. Government Information Resources For Accountability On U.S. Assistance To Ukraine, Bert Chapman

Libraries Faculty and Staff Presentations

Provides detailed coverage of U.S. Government information resources documenting accountability for U.S. civilian and military assistance to Ukraine. Includes U.S. laws, agencies involved in U.S. arms export policy, Defense Department resources and data, Defense Dept. Inspector General reports, Government Accountability Office reports, congressional committee hearings, a letter from a congressional committee to the Secretaries of Defense and State and U.S. Agency for International Development administrator, congressional debate, and congressional recorded votes.

A Matter Of Accountability: Communication And Coordination Failures Proceeding Pearl Harbor, Marc C. Jeter

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Abstract

Save for September 11, 2001, arguably no other incident in American history generates persistent and impassioned debate associated with the questions of why and on whom to affix responsibility than does the Pearl Harbor raid. For both Japan and the United States the road to December 7 (or 8^th in Japan), was long and complex. Ensconced within the context of what was underway in Europe, there existed little room for diplomatic miscalculations or missteps. Thus for American civil, military, naval, and diplomatic leaders in Washington, D.C. and throughout the world, that American installations were attacked should not have …

The Ambush At Saint Marys River, Micah P. Bellamy

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

At a critical time in the American Civil War, President Lincoln was up for re-election, concerned that he might lose re-election, President Lincoln desired the Union to secure Florida. As Col. Guy Henry led an advancement from Jacksonville, Florida, across the northwest, there came word that the Confederate Army had a significant number of soldiers stationed at Lake City. Col. Henry and his men began to make their way towards Lake City, but on February 10, 1964, they were caught in an ambush as they attempted to cross the St. Marys River. This paper seeks to provide an examination of …

The Octofoil, January/February/March 2023, 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.

The Avenger - March 2023, Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

The Avenger

No abstract provided.

The Perseverance Of Play: An Archaeological Analysis Of Residential Blocks With Preschools At The Amache National Historic Site, Megan Brown

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this project is to expand on the understanding of experiences of Japanese American children, specifically preschool-aged children, within the Amache National Historic Site, a WWII Japanese American internment facility located in Granada, Colorado. Through archaeological methods, GIS analysis, oral histories, and archival research, I analyzed the landscape and material culture of the five residential blocks within Amache that had designated preschools. I then compared these blocks with preschools to residential blocks without preschools to determine if there are any patterns and discernable differences between the two study areas. The findings of this research provide insight into how …

Interview With Lt. Col. Herbert H. Schaaf, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections Oral History Collection

Unknown interviewer; interviewed on February 17th, 1986. Find this collection in the University Libraries' catalog!

The United States And The Origins Of The Second World War, Kerry Irish

Faculty Publications - Department of History and Politics

This brief but detailed narrative of the origins of World War II evaluates the claims by both Axis and Allied powers that they were fighting a just war.

Borderlands Course Reader, Volume One, Jamie Starling

Open Educational Resources - Books

This collection compiles primary source documents and narratives from the present-day U.S.-Mexico Borderlands Region from c.1500 to 1865. The collection is designed for use with U.S. History and Mexican American surveys as well as Texas history and U.S.-Mexico Borderlands history courses. A few documents are abridged or excerpted from longer sources. All sources contain a citation or link to a source at the foot of the document. Documents span from indigenous accounts and sources of early contact through the late Spanish colonial period, era of Mexican independence, U.S. expansion and the American Civil War.

China Lake, The Most Important Place You’Ve Never Heard Of, Tristan M. Bollenbaugh

Emerging Writers

How can one small community centered around a naval base in the middle of California's Mojave desert have had an enormous impact on critical geopolitical events of the twentieth century, such as the Cold War, while being largely absent from the shared knowledge of the citizens of the United States? China Lake has been the United States Navy's premier weapons research and development laboratory since its establishment in 1943. For 80 years, it has produced such systems as the Sidewinder air-to-air missile that helped to keep the nation of Taiwan safe from a Chinese invasion and the Polaris submarine-launched nuclear …

Enduring The Elements: Civil War Soldiers’ Struggles Against The Weather, Cameron Boutin

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation is an environmental history that studies the variety of ways that soldiers in the American Civil War experienced the pressures of weather over the course of their military service. For the troops of the U.S. and Confederacy, the weather was more than simply a passive backdrop to their time in the military, but a central preoccupation. This dissertation analyzes how weather intersected with some of the most central experiences of soldiering – tent camping and winter quarters, marching, bivouacking, manning sentry posts and field fortifications, and fighting in battles. Life in Civil War armies consisted of all of …

Military Cooperation And The Relocation Of Quapaw And French Settlements In Colonial Arkansas: A Case Study In Colonial International Relations, Morris S. Arnold

Arkansas Archeological Survey Academic Papers

A previous article made the case that the Quapaw Indians had played a role in the defense of Arkansas Post, and had entered several colonial wars on the side of the French, during the time that France had claimed sovereignty over the Arkansas country.

The purpose of the present effort is to describe and explain the origin and nature of the alliance between the Quapaws and the French, and to identify the considerations that led the tribe to conclude that it was often in its national interest to collaborate with the French in their defensive and offensive military operations. The …

“Laugh, When I Gives You A Joke”: The Forms And Functions Of Humor In The Great War, Samuel Sakoulas Griffin

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

In today’s popular memory, the First World War experience is not well-known for its humor. Yet during and after the war, soldiers produced a small but significant wave of wartime joke books and humorous war-story collections, in part to cope with their experiences in terrible, industrialized war, and also as a way to interpret, commemorate, and remember the war. These humorous interpretations and memories of the war clashed with the dominant literary reaction to the war, that of the mutilation of bodies and pointless deaths. But humor appeared in the midst of the slaughter, and today serves as an opening …

272nd Army Field Artillery Battalion (Sc 3665), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 3665. Materials collected by Haskell Pedigo, a World War II veteran of the U.S. Army’s 272nd Field Artillery Battalion. Includes copies of reports of actions against the enemy, August 1944-June 1945; unit histories, 1944-1945, and other historical data and reminiscences; and reunion materials, lists of attendees, and memorial rolls.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 14, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 04, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 966, Part 02, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 08, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 01, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 11, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.

Portsmouth Adm 1 965, Part 06, The National Archives, Kew, Johannes Schwalm Historical Association

Portsmouth Admiral’s Letters, 1780

No abstract provided.