Women's History Commons^™

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Saints And Sinners Analysis Of The Moral Suasion And Motivations Behind The Creation Of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Makendric James Bowman

Student Summer Scholars Manuscripts

This project examines the motivations behind Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (UTC), focusing on how her desire for both financial gain and moral reform shaped her writing. Stowe’s use of religious themes to expose the moral and human costs of slavery positioned her novel at the center of national debate, forcing both defenders and opponents of slavery to confront uncomfortable truths. Her book ultimately made her the best-selling author of the 19th century, selling 300,000 copies mostly by door-to-door subscriptions. This is equivalent to about 4.4 million Americans today who do not have access to Amazon or bookstores. Even …

Women’S Voting Registrations In Marquette County, Lauren E. Mccollor

HS 390 Primary Research Papers

Following the Michigan state amendment of 1918, which granted women the right to vote, the women of Marquette County began registering. This paper looks into the Ishpeming women’s voting records from 1919 and 1920, as well as news paper articles that document early voting registration turnouts in Marquette and Negaunee. The research focused on the patterns of registration in the context of amendments, elections, and political movements at the local, state, and national levels. While there has been extensive research and analysis of early women voters across the United States, no previous studies have analyzed the Ishpeming voting records. Women …

Transnational Revolutionaries: Social And Political Forces Of Change In The Modern Era, Julia Baldowski, Annabel Payamps

Chronicles: Journal Of History

No abstract provided.

Towards The Non-Spectacle: Responses To Necropolitics In The Artwork Of Teresa Margolles And Maya Watanabe, Leslie Anne Condon

Masters Theses

How do we engage with artwork that addresses complicated histories

of colonialism and political violence, specifically intangible and

incomprehensible violence? Mexican artist Teresa Margolles’ 2005 work, Lote

Bravo, is named after and composed of the soil from a mass grave site

discovered in 1995 in the southeastern corner of Ciudad Juárez, a city known

internationally for the femicide that has continued to haunt its streets and

peripheries since the 1990s. Peruvian filmmaker Maya Watanabe’s 2019 film

Liminal cinematically documents the official exhumation of two mass graves

in the Ayacucho and Huánuco regions of the Andes highlands, where

thousands of …

Reconceptualizing Madness: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Autobiography And The Cultural Landscape Of Insanity, Gender, And The Illness Experience, Claire Paley

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Nuclear Reactions: Making Sense Of The Accident At Three Mile Island, Jordan Emily Bennett

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This thesis examines the causes and consequences of the nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in March of 1979. First detailing the event, this thesis then examines activist narratives following the accident, with a particular focus on women’s “motherist” activism in the community outside the plant, before turning to questions of memory and the creation of a public memory of survivorship in the community surrounding the plant. In considering these questions, this thesis seeks to shed light on the differences between official and communal narratives of the accident in an effort to understand the impacts that the partial meltdown at …

“Ignorance Is No Excuse”: Reproducing The Normative Female Body Through Mass Consumerism In Post-Wwii Women’S Magazines, Hannah E. Lorenz-Meyer

Scripps Senior Theses

In the Post-War era, women’s magazines took on a key role in cultural production, publishing literature, non-fiction articles, and advice on everything from marriage to fashion. Women’s magazines served a a form of propaganda, promoting a specific form of femininity that upheld the status quo. And that form of femininity was overwhelmingly affluent and White. By establishing magazines as a solution to women’s personal problems, editors served to shape the image of the post-war American woman. Nowhere is this vision more intimate than the way it was applied to the female body and reproduction. In this thesis, I analyze how …

Aestheticizing And Engendering Disease: The Case Of Tuberculosis, Abigail Dollries

Dartmouth College Master’s Theses

This thesis examines how tuberculosis, known in the nineteenth century as “consumption,” was aestheticized in American cultural and medical discourse, particularly in industrial cities of the North between 1830 and 1850. It addresses the paradox at the heart of the disease’s representation: while tuberculosis was medically pathologized, it was simultaneously romanticized, especially when afflicting elite white women. The central problem explored is how this aestheticization of illness functioned to reinforce gender, class, and racial hierarchies by transforming suffering into a symbol of virtue, refinement, and social status. Using a cultural-historical methodology, this project analyzes a range of sources, including medical …

America's Highest Stage: Utopians, Capitalists, And Trail Runners On Pikes Peak, Mitchell Morris

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Since ancient times, Pikes Peak’s prominence on the land has endowed it with prominence in the minds of all who have lived around it. This ancient dynamic was reinforced in the nineteenth century by the famed expedition of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike in 1806 and the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in 1858. Since then, the mountain has become a stage. Standing tall, visible from hundreds of miles around, and known from coast to coast, Pikes Peak is a platform that has attracted diverse historical actors to come and perform, elevate their endeavors to new heights, and demonstrate what they, and people …

Frances E. W. Harper, “We Are All Bound Up Together” (10 May 1866), Garth Pauley

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

Frances Harper’s address at the 1866 National Woman’s Rights Convention was a visionary speech on civil rights, citizenship, and civic identity. In it, Harper skillfully negotiated the context of nineteenth-century reform politics while remaining true to her vision. The message of her speech was grounded in both her experience as a Black woman and her theological convictions. A close reading of the speech shows that key elements—including its signature line—have been misunderstood and unappreciated.

Using Gis To Visualize Daily Routines At The Neighborhood And Household Scales: A Feminist Approach Using A Nineteenth-Century Diary, Sterling D. Quinn

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Feminist scholars in the discipline of geography have noted the ways that routine activities at the household and neighborhood scales contribute to power relations and identity formation. Geographic information systems (GIS), with their ability to create multiple visual representations of people’s experiences in space at any scale, hold great potential for revealing these local processes and patterns that are often lost or invisible in broader historical narratives, especially when they pertain to women and children. This article contributes an example by using GIS to encode and map everyday events in a diary kept by Elisabeth Koren, a nineteenth-century Norwegian immigrant …

Señoritas On And Off The Silver Screen: How Chicana Women Organized For Equality And Challenged The Cultural Prison Of Sexualized Media Representations In The First Half Of The Twentieth-Century, Rossandra Paloma Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research is personal for me due to lived experience and day-to-day situations where I have felt the pressures of unattainable beauty standards and society’s fluid definition of beauty and femininity surrounding Chicana, Latinas, Mexican, and Mexican-American women. What inspired me to pursue these issues and topics was the work of Dr. Vicki Lynn Ruiz in her book From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. This research focuses on rival and contested images of Chicana, Mexican, Mexican-American and Latina labor advocates and activists from the early twentieth as opposed to sexualized and eroticized packaged caricatures that Hollywood …

Urban Japanese, Rural American: How Regionality Shaped Nisei Girlhood In Prewar America, Lauren Reiko Yanase

University Honors Theses

This thesis explores Nisei girls' racial and cultural identity formation in the American West before their forced removal to the World War II Japanese American mass incarceration camps. Japanese American history has long been dominated by male narratives, from labor histories of the 1880's first-generation Issei to the American patriotism of the 1930's second-generation Nisei. Japanese American women are generally considered through generational categories, promulgating a linear story of American progress. I argue that regionality is the main factor that shaped Nisei girls' self-identity, employing transcribed interviews with Nisei women born 1924-1929 as primary sources to write narrative histories differentiated …

Resourcefulness And Changes In Wealthy Confederate Women’S Fashion During The American Civil War, Adaline Nolley

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

At the dawn of the American Civil War, women’s fashion had become increasingly extravagant, featuring intricate embroidered designs, folded skirts, and detailed bodices. In the American South, the image of the “southern belle” emerged during the antebellum period. The initial view of the southern belle was characterized by displays of wealth through clothing and décor choices. However, as the Civil War dragged on, battles and blockades caused shortages in goods in the South both from Northern industrial centers and European markets. The evolution of southern women’s fashions between the antebellum period and the end of the American Civil war demonstrates …

Women’S Fashion In The Civil War And Godey’S Lady’S Book’S Role In Its Dissemination, Julia Broughton

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

The Civil War was a difficult time in America’s history, but in many ways, life continued as it always had. Women were still interested in fashion, and they still wanted to wear dresses that made them feel beautiful. They also wanted to keep up with trends and find creative ways to incorporate trends into their wardrobes. In the war period, fabric types, the typical dress silhouette, common trends, and fashion magazines all informed women’s fashion, as well as fashion’s function. One such magazine that played an important role as a disseminator of women’s fashion during the Civil War was the …

Good Grief!: The Challenging Of Middle-Class Life By Youth Culture In Mafalda And Peanuts, Eden E. Baize

The Cardinal Edge

The politically and socially tumultuous world of the mid-20th century in both Argentina and the United States inspired the creation of two incredibly influential comic strips: Joaquín Salvador Lavado’s, also known as Quino’s, Mafalda in Argentina, and Charles Schultz’s Peanuts in the United States. These comics changed the popular conception of childhood in their respective countries by reflecting the cultural shifts which challenged existing social conventions like family organization. Primarily, however, the central theme of these works rested in the commentary on the growing middle-class and the role of younger generations in championing countercultural and antiestablishment movements against this expansion. …

Surviving And Thriving On The Gold-Capped Mountain; The Entrepreneurial Sucessess Of Chinese Women In Early Nevada, Madison Campbell

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

As a result of shifts in historical methodologies, women’s history began to rise in prominence but only recently have historians shifted their focus to specific marginalized groups. Chinese women in Nevada at the turn of the 20th century are noteworthy due to their entrepreneurial successes in a time of rampant discrimination, yet have not been discussed in the literature as a collective. By analyzing the impacts of anti-Chinese legislation, public commentary in newspapers and political cartoons, and first-hand accounts of Chinese women from the region during the period this project develops an untold narrative. Secondary material provides further claims on …

Ua12/2/2 Talisman: Legacy, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Fall 2024 Talisman:

• Our Mission
• Harrington, Ragan & Cecilia Alali. Legacy
• Muscutt, Carson. The Spirit of Western – Big Red
• Hardesty, Emma. Beyond the Letters – Fraternities & Sororities
• Lein, Samantha. The Iceberg Beneath You – Poem
• Pollard, Evynn. Echoes of the Past – Jonesville
• Sutton, Avery. Tasting Tradition – Recipes
• Phelps, Brett. The Hill
• Colovos, Christina. Pale Blue Dot – Poem
• Rainwater, Riley & Carson Muscutt. Marking Time – Marching Band
• Vickers, Abigail. Grassroots – Political Campaigns
• Muscutt, Carson. Horoscopes
• Legacy Issue 17 Playlist
• Lasting Impact

Ethel Bird: A College Woman's Life And Legacy From 1901 To 1905, Bryn A. Morris

Student Publications

This essay is a case study of the experiences of Ethel Bird, a middle-class student at Beloit College at the turn of the twentieth century. Through an analysis of the first-person accounts of her college life, as reported in hundreds of letters sent to her parents, the essay will expand upon previous explorations of gender and postsecondary education to examine specifically the middle-class experience, as well as how this experience led to the entry of women into the workforce. Furthermore, it will examine how Bird’s college experiences fit into the broader history of women’s education in the United States, especially …

Black Experiences In The Shadow Of The Civil War, Beverly A. Duran

GLI MA in American History Student Works

This study examines the contrasting experiences and perspectives of enslaved African Americans in the South and free Black communities in the North in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Drawing on primary sources such as slave narratives, abolitionist writings, and speeches by Black leaders, the paper highlights how geographical, social, and legal contexts shaped their views on the impending conflict. While enslaved individuals feared the war’s potential for intensified oppression but harbored faint hopes for freedom, free Black Northerners viewed the war as both an opportunity for abolition and a risk to their precarious freedoms. The analysis …

Using Vr And Ar To Create Immersive Experiences That Document Local History And Culture, Susan Swiatosz, Beryl White-Bing, Kevin Pfeil

Library Faculty Presentations & Publications

In 2023 the Virtual Learning Librarian at the University of North Florida’s (UNF) Thomas G. Carpenter Library approached the Head of Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) with the idea to create a virtual reality (VR) experience using one of SCUA’s most accessed special collections: the Eartha M. M. White Collection. She was inspired by several existing VR experiences such as The Book of Distance and The People’s House: Inside the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama. She was also stimulated by the challenge set by the Head of SCUA to figure out a collaborative project with Special Collections. …

Thompson, Cassidy Hope, B. 2002 (Fa 1424), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archives Project 1424. Audio interviews by WKU student Cassidy Thompson of her grandmother Elisabeth Martin, who discusses her ancestry and family, her childhood in Brazil, and her emigration to and life in the United States. Includes a transcript for one interview and an index/log for the second interview.

Sexual Surveillance: Morality Policing Of Greeks And Italians In The Early 20th Century, Isabella Ferrell

Digital Legal Research Lab

The Petitioning for Freedom Project under Dr. Jagodinsky is a database of habeas corpus use in the West. It examines legal action by marginalized individuals. This project focuses on how Greek and Italian petitioners used habeas to challenge sexual policing in a xenophobic context.

Research poster titled Sexual Surveillance: Morality Policing of Greeks and Italians in the Early 20th Century; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2024.

Advisors: Katrina Jagodinsky and William Thomas

The Harding Brothers And Underage Enlistment In The Age Of American Expansion, 1851–1857, Ryan Minton

Digital Legal Research Lab

The Petitioning for Freedom Project is an NSF funded database project that seeks to collect and encode carceral, institutional, and interpersonal habeas corpus petitions from county, state, and federal courts all throughout the American West.

This research project explores and analyzes the twenty-four habeas corpus petitions that were submitted between 1851 and 1857 to the Saint Louis County Law Commissioners Office to challenge the enlistment of underage recruits stationed at Jefferson Barracks.

Research poster titled The Harding Brothers and Underage Enlistment in the Age of American Expansion, 1851–1857; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of …

Maternal Chains: Black Women's Legal Battles For Freedom In Pre-Emancipation America, Roshawnna Brinkley

Digital Legal Research Lab

This research examines the use of habeas corpus petitions by Black Women in antebellum America to secure freedom for themselves and their children. Given that slave status was inherited matrilineally, these legal actions had implications for generational freedom. In Dr. Jagodinsky’s Petitioning for Freedom project there are numerous cases of Black Women utilizing Habeas Corpus. This study focuses on these Women's agency in navigating a hostile legal system.

Research poster titled Maternal Chains: Black Women's Legal Battles for Freedom in Pre-Emancipation America; via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2024.

Advisors: Katrina Jagodinsky and …

To Have And To Hold: Habeas Corpus And The Mobilization Of Female Petitioners, 1832–1924, Miranda Martinez

Digital Legal Research Lab

Dr. Jagodinsky’s Petitioning For Freedom (PFF) is an open-access database of habeas corpus petitions from the American West. It aims to further our understanding of the United States legal landscape in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Research poster titled To Have and To Hold: Habeas Corpus & the Mobilization of Female Petitioners, 1832–1924; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2024.

Advisors: Katrina Jagodinsky and William Thomas

Profiled Pickpockets: Seattle's Black Community & 1890s Habeas Mobilization, Zoë Williams

Digital Legal Research Lab

The Petitioning for Freedom project examines habeas corpus in the American West, 1812–1924 to highlight the legal mobilization of marginalized people. This study uses habeas petitions to identify Black people's response to racial profiling in Seattle.

Research poster titled Profiled Pickpockets: Seattle's Black Community & 1890s Habeas Mobilization; presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2024.

Advisors: Katrina Jagodinsky and William Thomas

Legal Proxies And Advocates: Exploring Inter-Case Relationships In 19th- And 20th-Century Habeas Corpus, Ethan Reiter

Digital Legal Research Lab

• The Petitioning for Freedom Project (PFF) is an open access database that details the use of habeas corpus in legal proceedings in the American West from 1812 to 1924.

• A writ of habeas Corpus is a challenge by a petitioner that alleges that someone is detained unlawfully.

• In certain instances. a petitioner is petitioning on behalf of someone who is held illegally. This study examines the nature of the relationships between petitioner and bound party and how those relationships reflect historical and legal developments over time.

Research poster titled Legal Proxies and Advocates: Exploring Inter-Case Relationships in 19th- and 20th-Century …

Equal Protection Of Life, Liberty, And Labor: Habeas Corpus & The 14th Amendment, 1901–1904, Madison Mendiola

Digital Legal Research Lab

Presents and synthesizes three cases demonstrating the use of habeas corpus in the contect of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution between 1901 and 1904.

Research poster titled Equal Protection of Life, Liberty, and Labor Habeas Corpus & the 14th Amendment, 1901–1904, presented via the Digital Legal Research Lab NSF REU Site, University of Nebraska–Lincoln, August 2024.

Advisors: Katrina Jagodinsky and William Thomas

Review-A Girl's Life In New Orleans: The Diary Of Ella Grunewald, 1884-1886, Blake Denton

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.