United States History Commons^™

Introduction To Richard Nixon And Europe : The Reshaping Of The Postwar Atlantic World, Luke A. Nichter

Presidential Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

The U.S.-European relationship remains the closest and most important alliance in the world. Since 1945, successive American presidents each put their own touches on transatlantic relations, but the literature has reached only into the presidency of Lyndon Johnson (1963-9). This first study of transatlantic relations during the era of Richard Nixon shows a complex, turbulent period during which the postwar period came to an end, and the modern era came to be on both sides of the Atlantic in terms of political, economic, and military relations.

William Walker And The Seeds Of Progressive Imperialism: The War In Nicaragua And The Message Of Regeneration, 1855-1860, John J. Mangipano

Dissertations

For a brief period of time, between 1855 and 1857, William Walker successfully portrayed himself to American audiences as the regenerator of Nicaragua. Though he arrived in Nicaragua in June 1855, with only fifty-eight men, his image as a regenerator attracted several-thousand men and women to join him in his mission to stabilize the region. Walker relied on both his medical studies as well as his experience in journalism to craft a message of regeneration that placated the anxieties that many Americans felt about the instability of the Caribbean. People supported Walker because he provided a strategy of regeneration that …

Winchel, Beulah Rhea, 1912-2015 (Mss 609), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 609. Correspondence, photographs, travel materials, genealogy, and other personal papers of Beulah R. Winchel, a Breckinridge County, Kentucky, native and a teacher and librarian who served in Japan, Germany and France with the U.S. Army Special Services and the Department of Defense Dependents Schools.

How World War Ii Affected The Economic And Social Life Of East Tennessee, Stuart N. Shelton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Much has been written about America’s entry into World War II. However, little attention has been given to the war’s effects on the social and economic lives of the people of East Tennessee who both benefited and suffered from the presence of many wartime facilities and industries. World War II also affected those civilians living and working on the home front. While its men had to fight in foreign lands, the region had to deal with food, housing, and labor shortages, the changing roles of women and African-Americans, and even the presence of enemy prisoners of war. This paper intends …

Defending Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo

Civil War Era Studies Faculty Publications

There are no Reconstruction re-enactors. And who would want to be? Reconstruction is the disappointing epilogue to the American Civil War, a sort of Grimm fairy tale stepchild of the war and the ugly duckling of American history. Even Abraham Lincoln was uneasy at using the word “reconstruction”—he qualified it with add-ons like “what is called reconstruction” or “a plan of reconstruction (as the phrase goes)”—and preferred to speak of the “re-inauguration of the national authority” or the need to “re-inaugurate loyal state governments.” Unlike the drama of the war years, Reconstruction has no official starting or ending date. ( …

Maligned “Milish:” Mississippi Militiamen In The Civil War, Tracy L. Barnett

Master's Theses

Thousands of southern men avoided regular military service in the American Civil War and enlisted or were drafted into state organized militias. In Mississippi, these units were termed Mississippi State Troops or Minute Men. This thesis argues that Mississippi militiamen’s pre-war positions and localized conception of military service directly influenced their wartime experiences. Militiamen, often in their thirties and forties, were older than the average Confederate soldier, established community members, and heads of families who sought service near home. The Mississippi state government, however, visualized militia service as anything but local and developed a centralized militia system that removed men …

American Immigration: Differing Views On The Threat From Immigrants, Carl Karpinski

Political Science Theses and Capstones

Immigration has been a hot button issue in politics across the world, especially in recent years in the United States. People’s views on immigration vary broadly among political parties and from every corner of the country. Why do people believe the things they do about immigrants? I researched this question to determine why immigration is at the forefront of American politics and how different aspects of one’s life affect his or her sentiments. Using General Social Survey data, I explored why some people feel threatened by immigrants coming to their country and others do not. Variables analyzed include income, church …

Forgetting The Lynching Of Jesse Washington: Manifestations Of Memory And The "Waco Horror", Kurt A. Terry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After a horrible historical injustice reemerged into public discourse in 1998, the citizens and civic leaders of Waco, Texas wrestled with the idea of whether to continue to forget the event or to acknowledge, apologize, and reconcile the past. At the center of the debate, a lynching of a seventeen-year old African American named Jesse Washington in 1916. Also known as the “Waco Horror,” the lynching disappeared from public conversation in Waco shortly after its occurrence. For nearly a century, the lynching remained relegated to anti-lynching movements, academic study, and the fringes of society. After the lynching’s reappearance into public …

Smuggling On Lopez Farm, Jonah Delasanta

Senior Honors Projects

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, the issue of illegal trade exacerbated tensions between the American colonies and the British government. Many Rhode Islanders, including wealthy merchants, smuggled goods like Madeira wine or French West Indian sugar into the colony in contravention of British trade laws. British warships patrolled Narragansett Bay in an attempt to interdict illegal trade, but many of the ships they intercepted were trading legally. Colonial resentment of British enforcement was exacerbated each time an innocent merchant captain suffered humiliation and financial loss at the hands of a British naval officer. While smuggling appears …

Progressive Education In Appalachia: East Tennessee State Normal School And Appalachian State Normal School, Holly Heacock

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this thesis, I am examining how East Tennessee State Normal School in East Tennessee and Appalachian State Normal School in Western North Carolina interpreted progressive education differently in their states. This difference is that East Tennessee State began as a state funded school to educate future teachers therefore their school and their curriculum was more rounded and set to a structured schedule. Appalachian State Normal School was initially founded to educate the uneducated in the “lost provinces” therefore, curriculum was even more progressive than East Tennessee State’s – based strongly on the practices of farming, woodworking, and other practical …

Women’S Liberation, Family, And The Fight For Daycare At The University At Albany, Sheri Sarnoff

History Honors Program

On October 9 1970, the Albany Student Press, the University at Albany’s student newspaper, featured an article entitled, “Day Care A Basic Issue,” which discussed the Pierce Hall Day Care Center. The students using the center claimed that the University’s Administration contradicted their original support for the on-campus daycare center. The students exclaimed, “issue after issue has been fabricated (Space, money etc) to stall the progress on the Center.”¹ The article also featured a quote from a spokeswoman from the Women’s Liberation Front arguing that, “the Administration has continually enjoyed putting forth the facade of working with women, when …

Authority's Last Stand: Mainline Protestants, Catholics, And Albany’S Tumultuous Sixties, Calley Quinn

History Honors Program

In 1970, a mainline Protestant in the Capital Area Council of Churches officially reached his breaking point. “Students in vast numbers have risen in rebellion against conventional American society,” Reverend Frank Snow stated to fellow Council members, “…. The crisis, as we all know from observation, if not from personal experience, is real.”¹ Serving as head campus minister for the State University of New York at Albany, Snow could not handle counseling one more student concerned with the Vietnam War and conscription laws. He made it very clear in the Annual Report of the Capital Area Council of Churches …

The Experience Of Generalized Anxiety Disorder Through The Lens Of Abraham Lincoln: The Effects Of Mental Health Stigma, Daryl Claude Medina

Senior Theses

Living with generalized anxiety disorder, also known as GAD, in the United States of America is difficult not only for the individual, but also for the people around him or her. Lifestyle changes have to be made, family dynamics need to be adjusted, and last but not least, all relationships must become flexible. In fact, these major life changes are never fixed and must continually adapt to the needs of the individual with generalized anxiety disorder since it is a lifelong medical condition. As with any other mental illness, dealing with generalized anxiety disorder takes great sacrifice in terms of …

To Create A More Contented Family And Community Life: Home Demonstration Work In Arkansas, 1912 - 1952, Erin Turner Hogue

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Home demonstration work in Arkansas altered the farm woman’s role within the household, community, and farm economy. By raising the standard of living in rural homes, progressive reforms sought to make domestic life more comfortable and healthy for family members, as well as reduce demands for them. However, rural women used these programs to improve their living conditions while remaining effective producers on the farm. In this respect, home demonstration programs were more than a means of social control aimed at rural America; they were a resource for rural women. Analyzing how women responded and utilized the skills learned from …

"The Only True American Republic" : Vermont Independence And The Development Of Constitutional Government In The Early United States., Jacob Michael Abrahamson

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

Vermont’s declaration of independence in 1777 created a unique and unprecedented situation in the brief history of the United States. Individuals in the newly independent New York and New Hampshire each claimed portions of present-day Vermont as part of their own state, and while Vermonters wished to become the fourteenth state in the brand-new country, the Continental Congress was in no hurry to take action. This paper analyzes how the Vermont issue affected the broader debate over the nature and limits of American federalism and the channels and limits of congressional power.

"Perhaps A Juvenile Delinquent Or A Revolutionary": Robert Kennedy And Liberalism, Cassandra Cleary

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

Robert Kennedy’s transformation from a conservative investigator to a liberal politician is a political legend. Kennedy started his career investigating corruption in labor unions—a bastion of liberal support. His career, and life, ended while campaigning for president as a champion of the poor and opponent of injustice. His brother President John Kennedy’s assassination is often cited as the origin of Robert Kennedy’s transformation. By examining Robert Kennedy’s anti-juvenile delinquency efforts, this project demonstrates that his commitment to fighting poverty started as Attorney General and before his brother’s death. I also show how Robert Kennedy’s insistence on local solutions to juvenile …

Italian Fellas In Olive Drab: Exploring The Experiences Of Italian-American Servicemen In Sicily And Italy, 1943-1945, Guido Rossi

Master's Theses

Despite constituting the largest ethnic group in the U.S. Armed Forces during World War II, the experiences of Italian-Americans have received scant attention by historians. In particular, the stories of the U.S. citizens of Italian descent or Italian-born but naturalized Americans who served in Italy, have received almost none. These soldiers, sailors, airmen, and coastguardmen who could often speak Italian, had grown up in Italian-American families and neighborhoods, and still had relatives in Italy, were asked to go fight in their country of origin. During the Allied advance, these men found themselves in close contact with a destitute Italian population …

No Foreign Despots On Southern Soil: The American Party In Alabama And South Carolina, 1850-1857, Robert N. Farrell

Master's Theses

During the 1850s in the South, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, rallied southerners culturally and politically around nativism, an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic ideology. This thesis studies nativism in the Deep South and challenges existing scholarship by Tyler Anbinder and William Darrell Overdyke. Anbinder claims that southern Know Nothings held little in common with their northern counterparts and exhibited only regional characteristics. Overdyke maintains that the American Party in the Deep South participated in the national organization, but he argues that nativism appeared only as an incidental component.

An analysis of private papers, speeches, and newspapers …

Sir Robert Thompson’S Better War: The British Advisory Mission And The South Vietnamese Strategic Hamlet Program, 1961-1963, Richard Sears Lovering

Master's Theses

This thesis examines the interactions between the British Advisory Mission to South Vietnam (BRIAM) and the South Vietnamese government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his American advisors. By studying BRIAM’s efforts—and those of its leader, Sir Robert Thompson—this thesis argues that many of the tactics Thompson advocated and Diem executed, especially the Strategic Hamlet Program, foreshadowed the techniques Americans used several years later under General Creighton Abrams, during the period historian Lewis Sorley termed the “better war.”

Sorley argued that the American strategy in the Vietnam War was flawed until Abrams implemented his “one war” plan. With this interpretation, however, …

Propagating Perfection: Eugenic Sterilization At The Utah State Training School, 1935 - 1974, Jennifer Rust

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Compulsory sterilization as a tool of eugenics occurred in the United States from before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld its’ constitutionality in 1927 until the early 1970s. Initial justification for removing a person’s ability to procreate was rooted in hereditarian assertions that disability was transmitted from parent to offspring, and incorporated an economic argument that individuals with disabilities placed a financial burden on the state for care. Due to scientific deconstruction of the hereditarian argument, rationalization for sterilization evolved into an anxiety over the perceived inability of the disabled to parent. The state of Utah sterilized 738 individuals with intellectual …

The Intersection Of Culture And Activism In The Filipino Community In Soma, Ericka J. Martynovych

Master's Theses

My research analyzes the intersection between culture and activism, through oral histories with participants and organizers of SoMa Pilipinas, the Filipino cultural heritage district in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. I analyzed the impact of the establishment of the Filipino cultural heritage district on the Filipino community in the South of Market neighborhood. I examined what motivates members of this community to be politically active by organizing and attending protests and rallies, speaking at Planning Commission hearings at City Hall, attending planning meetings for SoMa Pilipinas, building relationships across organizations and fields, and providing resources for community …

Breaking The Cycle Of Silence : The Significance Of Anya Seton's Historical Fiction., Lindsey Marie Okoroafo (Jesnek)

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the feminist significance of Anya Seton’s historical novels, My Theodosia (1941), Katherine (1954), and The Winthrop Woman (1958). The two main goals of this project are to 1.) identify and explain the reasons why Seton’s historical novels have not received the scholarly attention they are due, and 2.) to call attention to the ways in which My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman offer important feminist interventions to patriarchal social order. Ultimately, I argue that My Theodosia, Katherine, and The Winthrop Woman deserve more scholarly attention because they are significant contributions to women’s …

Sonic Intolerance : Aural Yellowface During The Golden Age Of American Radio., Greyson Perry Neff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The position of the Asian in the American popular imagination has a long history, stretching back to nineteenth century vaudeville theatrical performances and remaining largely unchanged throughout the twentieth and into the twenty-first century. Portrayed as simultaneously cunning and ignorant, spiritual and corrupt, or submissive and sexualized, Oriental stereotypes have remained firmly entrenched in popular culture. While perceptions of race exist largely in a visual sense, a closer look at how people heard racial differences opens up new avenues for scholarly interpretation of the social construction of race and the shifting notions of citizenship. This thesis will investigate how listeners …

Nihon Wa New Orleans No Ongaku Ga Daisukidesu (Japan Loves New Orleans’S Music): A Look At Japanese Interest In New Orleans Music From The 1940s To 2017, William Archambeault

Senior Honors Theses

Since the 1940s, music lovers and musicians in Japan has professed a strong interest in New Orleans music, particularly New Orleans jazz. This paper examines three ways in which this interest manifests itself: Japanese musicians immigrating to New Orleans, Japanese tourists visiting New Orleans, and sales of recorded and live New Orleans music in Japan. This paper primarily revolves around oral history interviews with Japanese musicians who immigrated in New Orleans. Additionally, this paper utilizes a combination of primary source and secondary source material to examine the history of Japanese interest in New Orleans music. By utilizing these sources, this …

Silver Breathed Upon The Stage: The American Revolution As Drama And Mythology, Nathan Stone

Masters Theses

At the time of the American Revolution, several different intellectual influences were present within the American colonies: the classical tradition, taken from ancient Greece and Rome; Christianity, taken from the Bible and the Reformed, Calvinist tradition; and, Whig theory. The question that must be asked is: Were these different intellectual traditions brought together at the time of the American Revolution and, if so, by what means? By analyzing how the different traditions were present in the colonies as well as how the past was utilized through the eighteenth century understanding of time and history—particularly through the use of pseudonyms and …

Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African Americans in the South were tied to the land during slavery and after emancipation. Many felt that land ownership was the key to freedom. For decades, black farmers strove for land ownership, in many cases falling prey to sharecropping and tenancy agreements in the meantime. Despite this drive toward independent farming, however, since 1920, there has been a steady decline in the number of black farm owners. This trend is especially prevalent in the Southern United States. The black farm owners who persevered through periods of economic, social, and political turmoil were able to, for varying reasons, navigate those …

Beyond The Exodus: Nauvoo After 1849, Rebecca A. Wiederhold, Dainan Skeem

Faculty Publications

Nauvoo, the City Beautiful, was named by Joseph Smith in 1839 when the Mormons began settling the area. After seven short years, the Saints had built a city to rival Chicago at the time. In 1844, Joseph was martyred and in 1847 the Mormons fled the city, changing the makeup of the town’s population and the direction of its growth. Emma Smith eventually returned with the remainder of her family and was beloved of the neighborhood children. Many other families not associated with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints continued to farm the land and raise families. As …

Defining Dartmouth: Inclusion And Exclusion At Dartmouth College 1917-2017, Laura Barrett

Dartmouth Library Staff Publications

Dartmouth College’s demographics have shifted over the past one hundred years, from an almost entirely all male, white, and wealthy student body, to one with gender, racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic diversity. During this time, the College has endeavored to maintain its reputation as an academically exclusive institution for the intellectual elite while simultaneously opening its doors continually wider to a more diverse student population. These aspirations, for broad inclusivity within the bounds of narrow exclusivity, have frequently worked in opposition to one another, and Dartmouth’s administrators have led the College in a delicate balancing act amid shifting alumni demands, student …

Rethinking The Bronx’S ‘Soundview Slums’: The Intersecting Histories Of Large-Scale Waterfront Redevelopment And Community-Scaled Planning In An Era Of Urban Renewal, Kara M. Schlichting

Publications and Research

In the 1910s, the bungalow colony Harding Park developed on marshy Clason Point. Through the 1930s–1950s, Robert Moses sought to modernize this East Bronx waterfront through the Parks Department and the Committee on Slum Clearance. While localism and special legislative treatment enabled Harding Park’s preservation as a co-op in 1981, the abandonment of master planning left neighboring Soundview Park unfinished. The entwined histories of recreation and residency on Clason Point reveal the beneficial and detrimental effects of both urban renewal and community development, while also demonstrating the complicated relationship between localism and largescale planning in postwar New York City.

Forward Myth: Military Public Relations And The Domestic Base Newspaper 1941-1981, Willie R. Tubbs

Dissertations

This dissertation explores the evolution of domestic military base newspapers from 1941-1981, a timeframe that encapsulates the Second World War, Korean War, and Vietnam War, as well as interwar and postwar years. While called “newspapers,” the United States military designed these publications to be a hybrid of traditional news and public relations. This dissertation focuses on three primary aspects of these newspapers: the evolution of the format, style, and function of these papers; the messages editors and writers crafted for and about the “common” soldier and American; and the messages for and about members of the non-majority group.

Sometimes printed …