Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Lot On My Plate: Family Dishware Serving Up A History Of Global Commercialization, Grace Thanasiu

Student Projects from the Archives

The “Hearthside” shaped plate was created by the Homer Laughlin China Company sometime between 1963 and 1973. My family owns such a plate, and ours originally belonged to a set of plates that was “purchased” by my grandmother, Mary Ruhlin, with books and books full of redemption stamps. Redemption stamps were literal stamps that stores distributed to customers, who could later redeem them for cash or merchandise at affiliated redemption centers that partnered with grocery stores and businesses; redemption stamps functioned as a precursor to the modern loyalty card! The need for a reputable pottery company like Homer Laughlin to …

Humans Of Ua: A University Of Akron Unclass 2020, Kaylie Yaceczko

Student Projects from the Archives

No abstract provided.

Taking A Different Look At The University Of Akron: Researching In The Archives, Katelynn Olsen

Student Projects from the Archives

No abstract provided.

Art Is Data Is Art, Nicole Orchosky

Student Projects from the Archives

The Digital Humanities field is rapidly introducing new and innovative ways in which we can analyze and explore large bodies of humanities material in order to make new discoveries and connections. This project serves as an introduction on how to use simple Digital Humanities tools to examine a dataset. In this project, data collected about the body of artwork exhibited in the 1913 Armory Show like medium, subject, or year of creation is analyzed using three different free-to-use tools. The data is then presented in a visual format that brings new questions and connections to light. The limitations and frustrations …

A Prized Memento Of The Civil Way: Joseph Abbott's "Lightning Brigade" Medal, James Brenner

Student Projects from the Archives

This silver medal commemorates Joseph N. Abbott's Civil War service with Wilder's Lightning Brigade, 1861-1865. The engraving on the reverse reads, "Jos. N. Abbott, Co. B, 98th Illinois. Dating to about 1887, these medals were features at post-war veterans' reunions.

Mcguffey's Second Eclectic Reader, Lisa Van Gaasbeek

Student Projects from the Archives

McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader

By: Lisa M. Van Gaasbeek

This article focuses on the life of William H. McGuffey and how he created his series of eclectic readers for children in school.

The Story Behind My Uncle's Copy Of Il Milione, Janos M. Jalics

Student Projects from the Archives

In 1983, a 1948 copy of Marco Polo’s Travels was given to my Uncle Laci by my Great-Aunt Kristi and Great-Uncle Paul. It was translated by William Marsden. The story of this book is surrounded by adventure.

Recovering Thirty-Five Years Of A Factory Worker's Life, Kristie Zachar

Student Projects from the Archives

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation's plant in Sharon, Pennsylvania operated from the 1920s till the 1980s and saw a number of significant events during that period. This article uses a belt buckle that was given to one company employee as a 35-year service award, and it explores the historical significance of the object by focusing on the major events its owner was involved in during those 35 years. It looks closer into the life of one Westinghouse employee while also exploring significant events that influenced the company itself as well as the small town of Sharon, Pennsylvania.

Hot Dog Vs. Christian Fundamentalism In 1920s America, Nicole Orchosky

Student Projects from the Archives

Hot Dog: the Regular Fellow’s Monthly was a satirical magazine published by the Merit Publishing Company in Cleveland, Ohio throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Editor Jack Dinsmore included crudely humorous short stories and poems, images of scantily clad women, and editorials and opinion pieces offering his own commentary on current events. In the case of the December 1921 issue, Dinsmore offers scathing criticism of religious Prohibition supporters, namely Billy Sunday and Reverend John Roach Straton. This paper examines how an opinionated independent publication representative of its anti-Prohibition readership reacted to the Temperance Movement and subsequent outspoken Fundamentalist Christian figureheads.

On The Reactionary Treatment Of American Radicals By J. Edgar Hoover's Fbi, Sonia Potter

Student Projects from the Archives

African Americans, who had been systematically oppressed from the very beginning of their time in the United States, were calling more and more loudly for freedom and equality in the mid-twentieth century. Compounded with the fear and hatred of communism was also a fear of black Americans ascending to the same societal plane as white Americans, especially among individuals and groups of people who held racist views and had reservations about equality between blacks and whites.

One of the groups of people who seemed to have reservations about such a concept was the United States’ own Federal Bureau of Investigation …

Tuberculosis Patient Number 296 In The Daniel Harris Papers, Margaret Stehura, Cristopher Shell, Zachary Piette

Student Projects from the Archives

This essay examines Susan Sontag's _Illness as Metaphor_ alongside Daniel Harris's studies of those admitted for tuberculosis care at the Saranac Lake Sanitarium. While both Sontag’s perceptions and Patient 296’s tubercular reality may not be 100% aligned with one another (i.e., lived experience of someone with tuberculosis versus historical perceptions of the disease itself), by combining both aspects we are able to develop a fairly crystalline image of what it was like to actually have tuberculosis at this point in time. In doing so, it becomes clear that while some perceptions of tuberculosis may have been fairly misguided, it was …

“Failure Of Will”?: Tb Patient Narratives And Susan Sontag’S Illness As Metaphor, Bryon Dickon, Ashley Gonzalez

Student Projects from the Archives

Susan Sontag outlines in Illness as Metaphor the romantic narratives of what she called a “tubercular personality.” Sontag writes the following in doing so, describing one key aspect of romantic tuberculosis: “TB was understood, like insanity, to a kind of one-sidedness; a failure of will or an overintensity…the tubercular was considered to be someone quintessentially vulnerable, and full of self-destructive whims” (63-64). “A failure of will” and “quintessential vulnerability” form a set of characteristics through which a narrative of the “tubercular personality” is constructed. The tubercular narrative Sontag describes is based on a wide variety of stereotypes. This creates a …

“Ships, Vol. 2” Beyond Transport, Combat And Tourism: A Study Into Ships On Postcards, Janos Jalics

Student Projects from the Archives

Over several millennia, ships have been displayed in all sorts of media ranging from commercials to diaries and newspapers. When the postcard was invented in 1869, various ships began appearing on them. Postcards with ships became far more than a way to message. They became advertisements, showcases of paintings, and repositories of information. Postcards gave ships a new purpose and unique audiences in the name of advertisement, art, and knowledge, as this essay will show by examining “Ships, Vol. 2”of the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection at The University of Akron.

Replicating Nontraditional Postcards From The Archive, Cristopher Shell

Student Projects from the Archives

The purpose of this project is to digitize and replicate nontraditional postcards from the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection from Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology.I set out to find the easiest way to replicate a few postcards that are nontraditional in one way or another. The method I came to involves using a Cricut Printer and the Cricut Design Space to scan and upload the complex shapes. The result was that I could very easily replicate any of the three chosen postcards with little to no trouble. I concluded that, even though Cricut Printers …

Postcards And Psychograms: The Science Of Handwriting Analysis, Aubrey Baldwin

Student Projects from the Archives

One psychogram, or means of testing personality, is handwriting analysis or graphology. Handwriting analysis can be used to look at personality traits or it can be used to determine emotions that a person is feeling when they are writing things like a postcard or a letter. This essay will look at the history of handwriting analysis and then will analyze four postcards from the 1920’s using Paul D. Hugon's handwriting analysis test.

Thanks to the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cumming Center for the History of Psychology, Hugon's Psychograms test has been saved and it will be used to do the …

“Here Is Where Al Capone And A Few Others Are Spending Their Vacations?” : Tracing How Alcatraz Was Portrayed In Postcards, 1924-1971, Franchesica Kidd

Student Projects from the Archives

Between the 1920s and the 1970s and as Alcatraz was decommissioned as a federal prison and bloomed into a booming tourist industry, the Rock saw a change in the way that the postcard industry portrayed it via photos on the back of postcards. As time went on, Alcatraz was depicted more as a tourist hotspot than a warning place to stay out of. Photo postcards of Alcatraz shifted from black and white photos and printed photos toward lively colored photos that had the message “Wish You Were Here!” printed on them, suggesting a cultural shift in attitude toward this notorious …

A Map Based On The "Hold-To-Light" Binder, Amanda Leach

Student Projects from the Archives

The Hold-to-Light cards in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection have a wide dispersion over the United States and Europe, and even one from Argentina. The Copper Window cards, however, are predominately travel postcards, which show a popular tourist attraction. These cards are indeed clustered in the New England Area. This tells us that these coastal states were popular travel destinations in the early 1900s. To explore this interactive map, please follow the link below:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Wkjl4QLAxLYX7ukvp84fgIcV4TsNTB0G&ll=35.41926243680842%2C-97.16311076875001&z=4

Capturing Hold-To-Light Postcard Images: A Video, Richard Marko

Student Projects from the Archives

One of the major challenges we faced in working with our binder from the David P Campbell Postcard Collection was getting digital images of the postcards with their Hold-to-Light effects. After a few attempts with the scanner it was decided that photography was the best way to capture these images. In order to best capture the Hold-to-Light a special card holder was constructed. The holder helped make photographing the cards less time consuming and produced the best quality images in showing the effects of the cards. The construction process and instructions for this card holder can be found in this …

Hold-To-Light And Other Specialty Postcards, Zoe Orcutt

Student Projects from the Archives

The "Hold-to-Light" binder in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection deals primarily with cards that contain some type of visual effect when viewed. The majority of the cards’ visual effects can be viewed when held up a light. For this, they are usually called HTL (hold-to-light) cards, or transparency cards. There were three specific processes used in printing these HTL Cards: Die-cutting, Transparency, and Slide-Transparency.

M. Storey-Bates Cards, Stacy Young, Emma Grosjean

Student Projects from the Archives

The M. Storey-Bates postcard binder in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection includes 132 postcards that date from 1904-1918 and that feature a multitude of images. These images consist of photographs of Edwardian actors and actresses, cartoon illustrations, illustrations created from Dickens, paintings, and much more. All of the postcards that are included in the binder have been mailed to addresses in the United Kingdom, most certainly from other addresses in the UK. The majority of these postcards were mailed to Minnie Storey-Bates (1887-1959) from Ralph Duckworth (1885-1960). Their personal relationship included correspondence that consisted of mundane daily activities, check-ins, …

A Map Based On The Institutions, Asylums, Etc. Binder, Justin Veda

Student Projects from the Archives

This project creates a map that displays the real life locations of the institutions pictured in our Institutions, Asylums, Etc. binder’s postcards and creates a website that displays the information of the map and some of the information from Veronica Bagley’s project.

The David P. Campbell Postcard Collection, searchable at postcard.uakron.edu, is a key collection of the CCHP’s Institute for Human Science and Culture. The collection provides the raw material for this project.

Overview To The Institutions, Asylums, Etc. Binder Catalogue, Veronica Bagley

Student Projects from the Archives

This project involves compiling different tables, graphs, and indexes that cover the Institutions, Asylums, Etc. binder. I also made a glossary that covers some of the names of the institutions for which definitions may not be obvious. The intention was that these can be added to the binder for future researchers.

The David P. Campbell Postcard Collection, searchable at postcard.uakron.edu, is a key collection of the CCHP’s Institute for Human Science and Culture.

“None But The Brave Deserve The Fair?” An Analysis Of Lovers Postcards From The First World War, Randall Slonaker

Student Projects from the Archives

Over ten percent of postcards in the Lovers Portraits Vol. 1 binder feature couples where the man is wearing a military uniform, with twenty-two of these cards depicting men in World War I era, United States military garb. The images and captions featured on these cards evoke familiar ideas of romance, courtship, and marital fidelity. Therefore, I have chosen to write a short synopsis that groups all of the World War One themed cards in this binder in one of three categories: courtship and pursuit, domesticity and marriage, and marital commitment and fidelity. I have positioned the images and captions …

The Medium And The Message In Early Twentieth Century Postcards Picturing Courtship And Romance, Rosemary Herbert

Student Projects from the Archives

This examination of representative postcards from the Lovers Portrait Vol. 1 volume in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection will use the postcards dating from the early twentieth century and the messages on them to illuminate facts about postcard production, postal history, family relationships, daily life, fashion strictures, and much more. With each card inspiring a piece of detective work that brings to light a nugget of information about a time gone by, this work also generally represents the kind of curiosities that the collection as a whole brings to light. It is hoped that it will serve as a …