United States History Commons^™

In The Shadows Of Apollo: The Space Age Legacies Of Dispossession In Hancock County, Mississippi, Stuart Simms

Theses and Dissertations--History

In the Piney Woods of Mississippi, John C. Stennis used political connections to displace small communities in a 150,000-acre space in Hancock County, Mississippi for the creation of a rocket test facility for NASA. What became the John C. Stennis Space Center created a narrative that preached of the benefits of the facility in the region while local residents from the displaced communities remember the facility in different terms.

Envisioning Catholicism: Popular Practice Of A Traditional Faith In The Post-Wwii Us, Christy A. Bohl

Theses and Dissertations--History

Marian apparitions in the United States have occurred in ever-increasing numbers since World War Two, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. These apparitions occupy a unique space in religious life, as they provide opportunities for Catholics to practice their faith outside of the Church hierarchy while still maintaining their status as faithful Catholics, often placing women in prominent positions. Although apparitions are an important part of faith for thousands of American Catholics, most Americans and Catholics are unaware of how widespread this movement is. This dissertation takes a comparative approach to examine a selection of apparition events, illuminating the pilgrimage …

African Americans In Madison County, Kentucky, Reinette F. Jones

Library Presentations

Reinette Jones, Special Collections Librarian at the University of Kentucky Libraries, speak about notable Madison County African Americans.

Gotta’ Go! African American Migration And Community Outside Kentucky, Reinette F. Jones

Library Presentations

Reinette Jones from the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center shares what she has learned about the fascinating and hidden story of the "out-migration" of African Americans from Kentucky while developing the Notable Kentucky African Americans Database (NKAA).

Please, Remember Me: African Americans From Scott County, Ky, Reinette F. Jones

Library Presentations

Reinette Jones, who created the Notable Kentucky African Americans (NKAA) Database, explains how to use this award-winning library tool while introducing us to some lesser-known Scott Countians. They include Sgt. Harrison Bradford, who led the San Pedro Springs Mutiny (TX) in 1867, in the fight for fair treatment of African American soldiers, and Lillian Nareen White, the first African American woman to play basketball at UK.

The History Of Latino Students At The University Of Kentucky, 1865-2019, Daniela Gamez Salgado

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

The purpose of this research project, prompted by the Office for Institutional Diversity, was to comprehensively collect the first draft of the history of Latino students at the University of Kentucky from 1865 through 2019. Digital and physical archival research, participant observation, and interviews were conducted in the process of understanding and analyzing the evolution of this historically underserved community. The extensive implications of this collection will serve as a formalized foundation that will further indicate the changing needs of the Latino community on campus. This collection of history also legitimizes the experiences of students of Latin American descent at …

How Did Coalitions Form During The Civil Rights Era In Mississippi?, Kenyatta L. Mitchell

Posters-at-the-Capitol Presentations

Over the past century, African Americans took part in building organizations to bring about equal rights and social change. Many organizations formed before Jim Crow but reached prominence during the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was built on long-term strategies for gaining the right to vote, education, housing, and freedom from discrimination. Through organized nonviolent protests, the Civil Rights Movement broke the pattern of segregation at a national level through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

‘Pa-Jew-Cah’: Reclaiming The History Of Paducah’S Jewish Community, Hannah Newberry

Posters-at-the-Capitol Presentations

When imagining Kentucky’s religious heritage, most people picture churches, not synagogues. Yet historian Lee Shai Weissbach demonstrates that Kentucky’s first synagogue was built in Louisville in 1849, and Jews had been living in the Commonwealth almost as long as it existed. Kentucky’s Jewish heritage is rich and varied as illustrated by Arwen Donahue’s This is Home Now: Kentucky’s Holocaust Survivors Speak, Deborah Weiner’s Coalfield Jews: An Appalachian History, and Amy Shevitz’s Jewish Communities on the Ohio River: A History. While each of these texts refers to Paducah as an early and important Jewish settlement, none offers exclusive …

Louisville Jewish Hospital’S “Tikkun Olam”: A Case Example Of Continuity For American Jewish Hospitals, Hannah Thompson

Libraries Award for Undergraduate Scholarship

According to Mary Wagner, the author of Jewish Hospitals Yesterday and Today, Jewish Hospitals emerged in the mid-19th century in the U.S. for several reasons: the Jewish American community’s need to combat anti-Semitism, to provide services for its large and then-growing immigrant population, and to establish a place for Jewish medical professionals to work, since anti-Semitism prevented them from being employed elsewhere. Although, American Jews became increasingly more accepted as part of the broader American social and political milieu throughout the early 20th century, Jewish Hospitals persisted in cities across the U.S. until the 1970s. To date roughly 22 …

Modern Charity: Morality, Politics, And Mid-Twentieth Century Us Writing, Matt Bryant Cheney

Theses and Dissertations--English

Scholars over the past two decades (Denning, Szalay, Edmunds, Robbins) have theorized the different ways literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century reflects the dawn of the liberal US welfare state. While these studies elaborate on the effect rapidly expanding public aid had on literary production of the period, many have tended to undervalue the lingering influence on midcentury storytelling of private charity and philanthropy, those traditional aid institutions fundamentally challenged by the Great Depression and historically championed by conservatives. If the welfare state had an indelible impact on US literatures, so did the moral complexity of the systems of charity and …

Gender, Politics, Market Segmentation, And Taste: Adult Contemporary Radio At The End Of The Twentieth Century, Saesha Senger

Theses and Dissertations--Music

This dissertation explores issues of gender politics, market segmentation, and taste through an examination of the contributions of several artists who have achieved Adult Contemporary (AC) chart success. The scope of the project is limited to a period when many artists who figured prominently in both the broader mainstream of American popular music and the more specific Adult Contemporary category were most commercially viable: from the mid-1980s through the 1990s. My contention is that, as gender politics and gendered social norms continued to change in the United States at this time, Adult Contemporary – the chart, the format, and the …

A Repurposed Narrative: Mary Rowlandson’S Narrative And Pre-Revolutionary Sentiment, Steven F. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations--English

Leading into the American Revolution, Puritan captivity narratives gained a resurgent popularity as nationalized sentiment burned towards political upheaval. Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative (1682) was reprinted six times between 1770-1776, signifying an incredible interest in Puritan stories that seemed to antithetically inspire a progressive and radical revolution against England. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God or A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson enhanced an already fervent revolutionary sentiment, transforming a seemingly straightforward captivity narrative into a totem meant to represent the oppressive struggle between England and her most coveted colony.

Such a literary revival taps …

“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the …

[Review Of] From Oligarchy To Republicanism: The Great Task Of Reconstruction. By Forrest A. Nabors (Columbia, University Of Missouri Press, 2017) 358 Pp. $45.00, Mark Wahlgren Summers

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

[Review Of] Karolyn Smardz Frost And Veta Smith Tucker, Eds., A Fluid Frontier: Slavery, Resistance, And The Underground Railroad In The Detroit River Borderland. Detroit, Mi: Wayne State University Press, 2016. Pp. 286. $34.99 (Paper)., Vanessa Holden

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2018 Constitution Day Essay Contest 1st Place--Social Media: Unifier Or Divider, Claire Hilbrecht

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2018 Constitution Day Essay Contest 2nd Place, Courtney Vice

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

Meeting At The Threshold: Slavery’S Influence On Hospitality And Black Personhood In Late-Antebellum American Literature, Rebecca Wiltberger Wiggins

Theses and Dissertations--English

In my dissertation, I argue that both white and black authors of the late-1850s and early-1860s used scenes of race-centered hospitality in their narratives to combat the pervasive stereotypes of black inferiority that flourished under the influence of chattel slavery. The wide-spread scenes of hospitality in antebellum literature—including shared meals, entertaining overnight guests, and business meetings in personal homes—are too inextricably bound to contemporary discussions of blackness and whiteness to be ignored. In arguing for the humanizing effects of playing host or guest as a black person, my project joins the work of literary scholars from William L. Andrews to …

"A Beacon Of Hope": The African American Baptist Church And The Origins Of Black Higher Learning Institutions In Kentucky, Erin Wiggins Gilliam

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation focuses on the African American Baptist church as a vital architect of black higher education in Kentucky. In keeping with the historiography of black education, my research focuses on the often-forgotten component of religion and its impact on the development of post-secondary education. More specifically, my work explores the dynamics of race, class and gender in shaping the origins of black higher learning institutions in the state. I contend that Kentucky was home to a growing and progressive African American middle class who sought racial uplift to solve the “negro problem" through education. I also reveal that African …

Free Labor: The Civil War And The Making Of An American Working Class By Mark A. Lause (Review), Joanne Pope Melish

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest 1st Place--Donald Trump: The Modern Day Killer Of The First Amendment, Ryann Schoenbaechler

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest 3rd Place--The Fine Line Between Criticism And Control: How The Trump Administration Is Weakening Freedom Of The Press, Michael Di Girolamo

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest Honorable Mention--On The Consequences Of “Free Speech”, Duncan Barron

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest 2nd Place, Kelsey Mattingly

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest Honorable Mention--Liberty And Responsibility, Callum Case

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

2017 Constitution Day Essay Contest Honorable Mention--On Freedom Of Expression, Emily Baehner

Constitution Day Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

Kentucky Slavery: The Historiography Of Human Property Records, Andrew D. Johnson

Oswald Research and Creativity Competition

The domestic slave trade in the United States was generally condemned as an evil business. Nonetheless, many documents pertaining to this trade do not reflect the negative aspects. The reason for this lies in the simple fact that many of the primary source documents studied are written by those who took part in the trade—not those who were forcibly traded. To view the trade from the eyes of those who were lost in the abominable trade, historians are faced with the dilemma mainly stemming from a lack of literacy from those who experienced this narrative. With the extreme bias in …

In Memories Of A Glorious Past: Transylvania College And The Liberal Arts In American Higher Education, 1945-1975, Jonathan Tyler Baker

Theses and Dissertations--History

Located in Lexington, Kentucky, and known for its historic connection to the Disciples of Christ Church, Transylvania College furnishes the opportunity to analyze the recent history of American liberal arts colleges and the way they handled issues of enrollment, funding and curriculum in the immediate postwar era—a period of unprecedented growth in American higher education. Transylvania College acts as a microcosm for other, similar liberal arts colleges. A careful examination of architecture, enrollment, student activities, and the way the administration interacted with governing boards will provide a glimpse into the way certain liberal arts colleges addressed their religious and budgetary …

One Dead Freedman: Everyday Racial Violence, Black Freedom, And American Citizenship, 1863-1871, Jacob Alan Glover

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation is the first comprehensive study of “everyday” racial violence in the postbellum South. Taking as its focus the states of Louisiana and Kentucky, One Dead Freedman juxtaposes the practical enactment of black citizenship against daily racial terrorism by incorporating personal, familial, and community testimony left behind by African Americans who had a direct experience with such violence. Within this dissertation, the terminology of “everyday violence” is employed to differentiate the more mundane forms of white violence from the more spectacular forms of Reconstruction-era violence such as lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, and race riots. Thus, the definition of …

Bluegrass Capital: An Environmental History Of Central Kentucky To 1860, Andrew P. Patrick

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation traces the long-term evolution of the Inner Bluegrass region of central Kentucky with a focus on the period between the first Euro-American incursions into the area and the Civil War era. Utilizing an agroecological perspective that analyzes cultivated landscapes for their ecological features, it explores the ever-shifting mix of cultural and natural influences that shaped the local environment. Most prominently, it reveals the extent to which intertwined strands of capitalism and slavery mingled with biology to produce the celebrated Bluegrass agricultural system.

It begins with an appraisal of the landscape before white men like Daniel Boone arrived, emphasizing …