United States History Commons^™

Backfire: How The Rise Of Neoliberalism Facilitated The Rise Of The Far Right, Jacob Fuller

Capstone Showcase

The U.S. far right has become increasingly mainstream in contemporary American politics. In this paper, I analyze the theory that the far right has gained ground due to a backlash from neoliberal policies beginning in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan. Using Process tracing, I operationalize claims made by those arguing that the white working class has moved towards the far right due to their loss of status, as well as the theory that specific wealthy actors have mobilized these groups and altered the movement against neoliberalism to suit their interests. I find that these arguments have merit, and further the …

The Right To The City: San Francisco's Chinatown Before And After The 1906 Earthquake, Alexandra Hsu

Scripps Senior Theses

The development of San Francisco, much like many American cities, is deeply entwined with the spatial process of settler-colonialism. Fueled by White supremacist processes of appropriation, dispossession and exclusion, city officials and White San Franciscans legally, financially, and socially segregated Chinese immigrants who entered into the U.S. context to a dense and degraded ethnic enclave. Henri Lefebvre and David Harvey theorize on The Right to the City, the social production of space and the ways in which social processes can be concretized by space. This thesis applies these concepts to the racialized space of San Francisco’s Chinatown. An examination of …

The Radicalism Of Rebecca Felton: Reforming Southern Masculinty And Creating And Destroying History: Butte, Montana’S Model City Program, 1968-1975, John C. Stefanek

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This professional paper is made up of two individual papers required for the M.A. degree in history. In my first paper, I discuss the radical suffragist Rebecca Felton. In 1897, Felton spoke to the Georgia Agricultural Society. Felton, a native Georgian who would later become the first female U.S. senator, gained prominence in the U.S. South as a politician, suffragist, and white supremacist. Her speech, “Woman on the Farm,” discussed the economic struggles of southern farmers. Felton’s speech also addressed a variety of controversial issues including agricultural economics on the farm, prison reform, and temperance. From the 1870s until her …

The New Monumental Era: Daniel Webster And The Commemoration Of Compromise In The Age Of Disunion, 1853-1865, Michael James Larmann

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Professional Paper 1:

This professional paper is an in-depth analysis of a statue of Daniel Webster erected in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1859. Daniel Webster was a congressman for Massachusetts who became a controversial figure after he spoke in support of the Fugitive Slave Law as part of the Compromise of 1850. This paper analyzes the Daniel Webster statue and argues that the fractured politics of Union politicized public commemoration in the late antebellum period after the Compromise of 1850. This paper furthermore analyzes one of the first debates surrounding the public commemoration of a controversial historical actor with close ties …

In Their Own Words: Forgotten Women Pilots Of Early Aviation, Fred Erisman

Purdue University Press Book Previews

Amelia Earhart’s prominence in American aviation during the 1930s obscures a crucial point: she was but one of a closely knit community of women pilots. Although the women were well known in the profession and widely publicized in the press at the time, they are largely overlooked today. Like Earhart, they wrote extensively about aviation and women’s causes, producing an absorbing record of the life of women fliers during the emergence and peak of the Golden Age of Aviation (1925–1940). Earhart and her contemporaries, however, were only the most recent in a long line of women pilots whose activities reached …

Finding A Place For World War I In American History 1914-1918, Jennifer D. Keene

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"World War I has occupied an uneasy place in the American public and political consciousness.1 In the 1920s and 1930s, controversies over the war permeated the nation’s cultural and political life, influencing memorial culture and governmental policy. Interest in the war, however, waned considerably after World War II, a much larger and longer war for the United States. Despite a plethora of scholarly works examining nearly every aspect of the war, interest in the war remains limited even among academic historians. In many respects, World War I became the 'forgotten war' because Americans never developed a unifying collective memory about …

Evangels Of Emancipation: Missionary Activity In Postemancipation Sierra Leone, Jamaica, And The United States, Rowan Mcgarry-Williams

Pomona Senior Theses

White missionaries shaped the development of social relations and the political economies of post-emancipation Anglo-American societies. They imbued their destinations with a particular logic of freedom, stemming from a shared language of evangelicalism, liberalism, and white supremacy. For missionaries in Sierra Leone, Jamaica, and the United States, freedom meant the ability to engage in Christian worship and market relations. Freedom from Christianity or freedom from the market, however, did not factor into the missionary idea of what freedom entailed. In the face of conflict with formerly enslaved people and a hostile planter class, missionaries ultimately abandoned egalitarian and optimistic visions …

From Civil Liberties To Social Contract Theory: Hobbes' And Locke's Influence On The Early American Republic, Evan A. Krasner

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..4

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………...18

III. Textbook Critique……………………………...31

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………...33

V. Bibliography………………………………….....35

Cannot Afford To Publicly Surrender: The Public's Influence On Ronald Reagan's Strategic Relationship With South Africa, Jessica P. Forsee

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Reagan’s administration used the policy of constructive engagement to bring gradual reform to the apartheid system and build peace in the southern African region. The coordination of anti-apartheid activist organizations and members advocating for harsher economic pressure on South Africa successfully raised US public awareness and shifted public opinion against constructive engagement’s gradualist policies. As a result, leading Reagan staffers like Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker recalibrated constructive engagement’s focus to quicken regional peacebuilding maintain stability and control of US foreign policy in the public eye. This thesis analyzes the early influences on constructive engagement and …

Review: The Hanford Plaintiffs: Voices From The Fight For Atomic Justice, By Trisha T. Pritikin, Andy Kirk

History Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Doctors, Miners, And Black Lung: A Transatlantic Comparison Of Organized Medicine's Role In The Fight For Black Lung Recognition In West Virginia And Wales, Mollie M. Cecil Md

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Black lung disease is a crippling occupational lung disease experienced by coal miners throughout the world. However, this disease was not always recognized by the medical profession and required significant efforts on the part of miners’ unions to force mainstream recognition. The historiography on the subject is limited, especially with respect to the relationship between organized medicine and organized labor. This work further explores this relationship, particularly how this relationship differed between the parties in Wales and in West Virginia. In doing so, it portrays a more detailed picture of the fight for black lung recognition as well as highlights …

Advancing The Spatial Turn In History Through Deep Mapping: Ghost Maps, Neogeography, And Frederick Jackson Turner, Jessica L. Mathai

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

The permeation of the spatial turn into the humanities, and in particular history, has both imbued scholarship and opened up new areas for research. This dissertation examines the conceptual and theoretical implications of advancing the spatial turn in history and evaluating existing approaches such as Historical GIS and ghost mapping as a foundation for deep mapping. The resulting deep map developed in this study utilizes Neogeography and web technology in the form of JavaScript Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) to develop a prototype that overcomes many of the limitations that occur when simultaneously integrating multiple sources of data and software functionality, …

"A Splendid Investment": Black Colonization And America's Pacific Empire, 1898-1904, Jolie Colette Scribner

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

“‘The Negro Had Been Run Over Long Enough By White Men, And It Was Time They Defend Themselves’: African-American Mutinies And The Long Emancipation, 1861-1974”, Scott F. Thompson

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation analyzes racially motivated mutinies by black military servicemen from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. Resistance against white supremacy in the armed forces illustrates the commitment of generations of African Americans to a vision of freedom centered on bodily, familial, and socioeconomic autonomy. These mutinies thereby warrant the reframing of emancipation as a centuries’-long process rather than a single event confined to the 1860s. Subscribing to martial masculinity, black servicemen believed acting forcefully, and risking their lives or well-being as a result, offered the best path to earning their human rights. African-American sailors enjoyed the opportunities offered …

"After All, Who Takes Care Of The Red Cross's Morale?": The Experiences Of American Red Cross Clubmobile Women During World War Ii, Paige Gulley

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis examines the experiences of the women who served in the American Red Cross Clubmobile Service in the European Theater of Operations during World War II. Their job required them to travel through England, France, and even Germany in converted buses and 2 ½ ton trucks, serving coffee, donuts, and a smile to soldiers just off the front lines. Though considered essential to maintaining soldiers’ morale, historians have virtually ignored these women’s experiences and role in the war. The inattention to their participation by the academic community parallels the disregard the women faced during the war. Clubmobile women encountered …