Women's History Commons^™

Legal Strategies Used By Black Men During The Antebellum Period, A. D. Banse

Digital Legal Research Lab

AD Banse, "Legal Strategies Used by Black Men During the Antebellum Period" [Research Poster]

Digital Legal Research Lab REU Site, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2022

The Missouri Statute of 1807 existed as the primary act that somewhat ensured the freedom of those enslaved and pursuing their freedom. The act refuted laws such as the Futgitive Slave Clause of 1793 and 1850, and the Missouri Compromise, which were evidence that slaveholders held decisive political influence and could cast the Constitution in proslave terms (Baker 2012). These clauses essentially gave enslavers the right to seize enslaved people who escaped to free states deepening …

Habeas Corpus: Breaking Reservation Boundaries, Samantha Byrd

Digital Legal Research Lab

Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky’s Petitioning for Freedom examines marginalized peoples’ use of habeas corpus in the American West from 1812 to 1924. This project has uncovered Indigenous manipulation of the American legal system to counter the challenges of colonialism. Indigenous peoples used habeas to protest, and sometimes successfully mitigate boarding school experiences, forced removal, and confinement on reservations. This study aims to show how Indigenous peoples and other minorities had a complex understanding of the law and used it to their advantage.

Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky

Barry Hoffman Nazi Postcard Collection, Robyn Conroy, Lamisa Muksitu

Strassler Center Archival Collection Finding Aids

This collection is comprised of postcards that are connected to the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor, the German Workers' Party (Deutsche Arbeiterpartei; DAP), existed from 1919 to 1920. The Nazi Party emerged from the extremist German nationalist, racist and populist Freikorps paramilitary culture, which fought against the communist uprisings in post–World War I Germany. The party was …

A Home Shielded By Laws: Freedom Suits And Enslaved Mothers, Heidi Martin

Digital Legal Research Lab

This project collects, digitizes, and makes accessible the freedom suits brought by enslaved families in the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia, Maryland state courts, and the United States Supreme Court. This project places families in the foreground of our interpretive framework of slavery and national formation.

Using TEI encoding, we focused on outcomes, relationships between individuals and the claim for freedom made. Using these data sets, I focused specefically on mothers petitioning for their children. Of the 508 cases I utilized, 131 included children and a parental figure. I set out to distinguish the additional burden mothers had …

In The Waiting: The Role Of The Slave Bastille In Antebellum D.C., Ellyzabeth Morales-Ledesma

Digital Legal Research Lab

In 1808 the Transatlantic Slave Trade ended and in turn the government created a federally protected human market. As the South's demand for human labor force increased the domestic slave trade rocketed and in turn created even more turmoil for the Black population if the United States. Slave Traders and Man-Dealers took advantage of the market and kidnapped Free Black men women and children. While waiting to be sold enslaved people would be admitted into holding cells and jails; this was the creation of slave jails and Slave Bastilles. Slave jails served as places where the horrors of a human …

Habeas Corpus As A Means For Economic Freedom In The Progressive Era, Janana Khattak

Digital Legal Research Lab

Habeas corpus protects individual freedom by allowing detained individuals proper trial. Economic liberty, or the “right to earn a living in an occupation of choice without unnecessary government interference,” is a key component of individual freedom. Following the depression of 1893, the Progressive Era ushered in a sharp increase in productivity. This was in part because of an immigration boom. While immigrants sought economic opportunities for the betterment of themselves and their families, ideologies of nativism rose.

Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

‘It All Comes From Me’: Bahu Begam And The Making Of The Awadh Nawabi, Circa 1765–1815, Nicholas J. Abbott

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the durable, yet largely overlooked, claims of Bahu Begam (1727–1815) to dynastic wealth and authority in the Awadh nawabi (1722–1856), a North Indian Mughal ‘successor state’ and an important client of the East India Company. Chief consort (khass mahal) to Nawab Shuja-ud-Daula (r. 1754–75) and mother to his successor Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula (r. 1775–97), Bahu Begam played a well-documented role in the regime’s tumultuous politics, particularly during Warren Hastings’s tenure as the Company’s governor-general (1773–85) and his later parliamentary impeachment. But despite her prominent political influence, little attention has been paid to the substance of her …

The Avenger - November 2021, Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale Museum

The Avenger

No abstract provided.

Antonia Sentner's Fight Against Deportation: An Example Of The Federal Government's Fight Against Communism, Claire Wehking

Undergraduate Research Symposium

In the 20th century, the United States government used deportation as a tool to circumvent certain Constitutional protections in order to crack down on radicalism. This tactic was used in both the first and second “Red Scares.” In the 1940 and 1950s, a St. Louis deportation case rose to national prominence as it progressed through the federal court system. Antonia Sentner was the wife of Communist Party U.S.A. member and local labor leader, William Sentner. Her requests for naturalization were denied, even though her husband and children were born in the United States and she had lived here since she …

The Evolution Of The “We Can Do It” Poster And American Feminist Movements, Reina Aguirre

McNair Research Journal SJSU

World War II created mass destruction and economic distress but was also responsible for creating new opportunities for women. The war had torn families apart and had altered family dynamics. The high demands of the wartime economy called for a reevaluation of American women’s roles in society. In 1942, Pittsburgh artist J. Howard Miller was hired by the Westinghouse Company’s War Production Coordinating Committee to create a range of propaganda posters to encourage women to join the war effort.^[1] The most iconic was christened “Rosie the Riveter” and further popularized by Norman Rockwell. These images exemplified how the government …

Medieval Infertility: Treatments, Cures, And Consequences, Zia Simpson

The Forum: Journal of History

Since the first civilizations emerged, reproductive ability has been one of the most prominent elements in assessing a woman’s value to society. Other characteristics such as beauty, intelligence, and wealth may have been granted comparable consequence, but those are arbitrary and improvable. Fertility is genetic, and for centuries it was beyond human control. Among the medieval European nobility, fertility held even greater power. The absence of an heir could, either directly or indirectly, bring about war, economic depression, and social disorder. Catholicism provided a refuge by allowing barren women to retain their hopes, while simultaneously enriching Rome’s coffers. Other women …

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

Battling Over Bargain-Hunting: Defining The American Consumer Through Mass-Consumption Shopping Practices, 1909- 1915, Angela Xiao

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

This essay examines the debate and backlash against bargain-hunting in the first two decades of the 20th century across the United States. Using newspaper coverage and advertisements, congressional testimony, and the writings and speeches of businessman Ed Filene, it provides an account of the social and political discussion surrounding the practice of bargain-hunting, which include tensions at various levels. It concludes that the debate surrounding bargain-hunting and bargain-hunters, the women who most often engaged in such practices, reflected the challenges of imagining the concept of the American consumer and grappling with the role and relationship of the consumer as a …

The Infinite Crisis: How The American Comic Book Has Been Shaped By War, Winston Andrus

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

This thesis project argues that war has been the greatest catalyst for the American comic book medium to become a socio-political change agent within western society. Comic books have become one of the most pervasive influences to global popular culture, with superheroes dominating nearly every popular art form. Yet, the academic world has often ignored the comic book medium as a niche market instead of integrated into the broader discussions on cultural production and conflict studies. This paper intends to bridge the gap between what has been classified as comic book studies and the greater academic world to demonstrate the …

Mary Todd Lincoln: Duty And Depression, Bella Biancone

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln was perceived by Victorian America as materialistic and unbalanced. Behind the closed doors of the Executive Mansion, however, lie a grief-stricken mother struggling to manage an undiagnosed and untreated mental illness. Her fragile condition was exacerbated with each death of her beloved family. Yet, this First Lady played an integral role in the White House, acting as hostess, advisor to the President, and activist in her own right. She was not a passive bystander as her husband worked tirelessly to preserve the Union, but an active participant in the war effort. Following Abraham Lincoln’s premature …

Revising Mary Queen Of Scots: From Protestant Persecution To Patriarchal Struggle, Jennifer M. Desilva, Emily K. Mcguire

Journal of Religion & Film

Since Mary Queen of Scots’ execution in 1587, she has become a symbol of Scottish identity, failed female leadership, and Catholic martyrdom. Throughout the twentieth century, Mary was regularly depicted on screen (Ford, 1936; Froelich, 1940; Jarrott, 1971) as a thrice-wed Catholic queen, unable to rule her country due to her feminine nature and Catholic roots. However, with the rise of third wave feminism and postfeminism in media, coupled with the increased influence of female directors and writers, Mary’s characterization has shifted from portraying female/emotional weakness and religious sacrifice to female/collaborative strength in hardship and a struggle against patriarchal prejudice. …

Protest Music In Response To The United States’ Oppressive Political Culture: An Analysis Of Beyoncé'S "Freedom" And Janelle Monáe's "Americans", Jessica Torrey

HMC Senior Theses

This paper aims to study a popular musical artist’s responsibility towards the empowerment of marginalized communities in the United States through an analysis of the songs “Freedom” by Beyoncé and “Americans” by Janelle Monáe. These songs will be analyzed in conjunction with the political climate during the time of their fabrication and release as well as the political climates discussed in the songs themselves. This paper presents a thorough analysis of the lyrical and musical components of both songs as well as an analysis of a specific performance of both songs. These analyses will be presented in conversation with many …

Women And Violence In Revolutionary Russia, 1860-1925, Jenny R. Findsen

All Master's Theses

Russian women engaged in public violence during the late imperial and revolutionary periods in various ways and for a variety of reasons. This study examines traditional gender roles in Russia, and women’s motivations for female terrorism as well as military and police service. It establishes that women broke through patriarchal social barriers through violence, even while still embracing traditionally feminine notions of self-sacrifice for the common good. Based on primary sources such as memoirs, official policies, and newspaper articles, I argue that Russian women committed both illegal and officially sanctioned violence to achieve diverse personal, ideological, political, material, and familial …

Gender And Conservation: A Comparative Study Of The Bison And Wild Horse Conservation Movements, Holly Charlotte Fleshman

All Master's Theses

The focus of this thesis are the American bison and wild horse conservation movements. The goal is to address how these movements utilized and manipulated gender as a driving force for conservation. Throughout the nineteenth century, bison and bison hunting became identified with American manliness, which provided an opportunity for men like Theodore Roosevelt to establish and develop their masculinity through bison hunting narratives. When bison populations plummeted in the late nineteenth century, these men turned conservationists, and equated bison preservation with preservation of white American manliness. They developed idiosyncratic views of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which allowed conservationists …

“Sir, We Have The Honour Most Respectfully To Submit Our Humble Petition”: Voices In Ink And The Politics Of Petitions In Colonial Igboland, Nigeria, 1892-1960, Bright Chiazam Alozie

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

With limited access to the traditional sources that historians typically use to document their work, it has become necessary to find new ways to explore the voices of local peoples who have been historically “denied a voice.” One way is through the study of petitions. Indeed, scholars of history have sparingly used petitions in some way while few have made systematic use of them. Even so, historians of colonial Africa have largely overlooked petitions in their studies, despite the important role that these sources played in negotiating African-European relations. This dissertation revolves around the hundreds of selected petitions, dubbed “voices …

Witch Pamphlets, Tsea M. Francisconi

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The witch hysteria that overtook Christian Europe during the Early Modern era inspired a mass paranoia over the conspiratorial belief that the Abrahamic religion’s personification of the world’s evils, also known as Satan, the Devil, demons, or Lucifer interchangeably, was attempting to rise up and cause harm to Christian communities during this time period. It was believed that in order to achieve this goal the Christian version of the Devil had been recruiting humans within Christian communities and turning these chosen humans into witches by granting them the ability to wield magical powers to spread their destruction, murder, and terror …

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 …

Palestinian Women’S Agency, Yasmin Khodary

Political Science

In Civil Resistance and Conflict Transformation, Veronique Dudouet divides responses to oppression into two main analytical categories. The first category refers to conventional actions, including party politics, advocacy or diplomacy, dialogue and negotiations, and litigation. The second category is non-intuitional/contentious actions including: first, nonviolent/unarmed/peaceful resistance through protest and persuasion, non-cooperation, disruptive intervention and creative resistance and second, violent/armed resistance through warfare, terrorist attacks, guerrilla insurgency, protest violence and sabotage. These two sub-categories of resistance operate outside the bounds of conventional political channels and are usually employed by an oppressed minority or disempowered majority by an exclusionary national or foreign actor. …

Suffrage And The Specter Of Interracial Marriage, Carol Faulkner

History - All Scholarship

This paper explores the intersection of debates over voting rights and interracial marriage from the 15^th to the 19^thAmendments. In the Civil War era, the specter of interracial marriage rose with the possibility of emancipation.The 15^th Amendment became known as the miscegenation amendment, and critics used this nickname to attack Black men, Black women, and all women’s rights activists. While the 19^th amendment did not engender the same heated discourse, Catt and other white suffrage leaders viewed interracial marriage as dangerous to their cause in part because some of their allies retained a principled commitment …

“The New American Woman”: The Legal And Political Career Of Clara Shortridge Foltz, Marissa Swope

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

This article analyzes the life and career of Clara Shortridge Foltz, a California attorney and suffragist of the latter decades of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century who was an early developer of the concept of the public defender, leaving an important legacy in the advancement of women's rights.

Brewing History: How Local Option And Prohibition Altered The Texas Brewing Industry, Shelby Winthrop Dewitt

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The prohibition movement began decades before the Civil War but did not gain considerable support in Texas until the late nineteenth century. While local option elections and calls for statewide prohibition in Texas failed, national prohibition efforts culminated in the instatement of the Eighteenth Amendment in January 1919 and the Volstead Act in October 1919. This thesis details the prohibition issue through an analysis of eight larger, better-funded Texas breweries who used evolving social and political conditions to combat prohibition and grow their companies, laying the foundation for the Texas brewing industry. This thesis and subsequent digital exhibit provide a …

“The Speechmaking Of A Girl-Orator”: Reason, Gender, And Authority In Dorothy Hunter’S Free Trade Oratory, Erinn Elizabeth Campbell

Honors Projects

Dorothy M. Hunter (1881-1977) rose to prominence during the 1906 United Kingdom general election as a markedly “girlish” yet widely respected free trade orator. While men on the Edwardian public political platform typically built a reputation for oratorical prowess through theatrical displays of “heroic” masculinity, Hunter established her authority as a speaker through two very different (and apparently contradictory) strategies. Her performance of “charming” middle-class femininity helped demonstrate her right to speak on free trade as a “women’s question,” extending women’s traditional authority over matters of domestic consumption to include questions of political economy. Trusting in the power of education …

The Portrayal Of The Woman’S Suffrage Movement In High School History Textbooks, Michelle A. Devries

Masters Theses

The narrative of the woman’s suffrage movement in high school history textbooks varies from textbook to textbook and over time. Textbooks include different information, people, events, and interpretations of events. They employ different word choices and pictures. By using comparative analyzation of numerous popular high school textbooks, the pressure exerted by external economic, social, and political forces on the historical narrative can be seen. Studying the historical narrative in this way trains students to be discerning learners of history and equips them not only to recognize the bias in any historical narrative, but also to be able to analyze how …

Forgotten: A Study Of The Long-Term Economic Ramifications Suffered By Survivors Of Violence Against Females Sustained During State-Terror Such As Genocides, Natasha Holmark Andersen

Graduate Liberal Studies Theses and Dissertations

In an attempt to answer the question: What are the long-term economic ramifications of sexual violence against females in state terror such as genocide? This paper explores the thematic elements, conducive factors and the effects of the existence of sexual violence in state-terror genocides.

To do this, the paper first explores the elements of terrorism and apply them directly to state terror. The notion that states are immune from the blame of terrorism is acknowledged and debunked, furthering the association between terrorism and acts of state terror. Next, genocide is defined as the most atrocious act of state terror, and …