Department: College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History ![[clear]](close-x.png "Remove this limiter")
34 matches in the database.
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1.
Abrams, Scott D.
"By Any Means Necessary:" The League for Human Rights Against Nazism and Domestic Fascism, 1933-1946.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► This study explores the policies, ideals, and resistance tactics used by northeast…
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▼ This study explores the policies, ideals, and resistance tactics used by northeast Ohio's most active non-sectarian anti-Nazi organization from 1933 to 1946, The League for Human Rights Against Nazism. Led by famed Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver and local activist Grace Mayette, the League conducted public boycotts, informational speeches, and rallies, as well as secretive investigation campaigns against domestic fascist organizations like the German American Bund and Silver Shirt Legion. As the nation entered World War Two, the League altered their activities by engaging more heavily with the local community through their weekly newspaper column, “The Rumor Roundup” and releasing "This is Cleveland," a magazine/study into Cleveland's legacy as the nation's leading liberal and multiracial city. Moreover, this thesis challenges two historiographical trends. First, it shows how clandestine vigilance tactics were often used against perceived enemies and was a response to the perception that the federal government was not aggressively pursuing domestic fascist groups. Second, it shows that Jewish and sympathetic Gentile anti-Nazi resistance in the United States was much stronger, targeted, and organized than previous historians have claimed. In all, this thesis reviews the various roles the League played in Cleveland and northeast Ohio as the region's leading anti-Nazi voice, vigilant spy network, public information organization, civil rights advocate, and leader in uniting the local Jewish population while simultaneously adding to and challenging old historiographical trends.
Advisors/Committee Members: Bindas, Kenneth.
Subjects: History
Keywords: League for Human Rights Against Nazism; Cleveland, OH; domestic fascism; Abba Hillel Silver; anti-Nazi resistance; nazism; Jewish history; 1933-1946; German-American Bund; Silver Shirt Legion
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2.
Artino, Serene.
To Further the Cause of Empire: Professional Women and the Negotiation of Gender Roles in French Third Republic Colonial Algeria, 1870-1900.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► The ideology of Republican motherhood, a political philosophy that equated patriotism with…
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▼ The ideology of Republican motherhood, a political philosophy that equated patriotism with gendered social constructions of womanhood, within the early years of the French Third Republic, influenced the implementation of state mandated girls’ education in the metropole. Expanding upon already existing gendered cultural constructions of womanhood and the social role of French women, politicians sought to promote the concept of Republican motherhood in the textbooks of school girls to prepare them for their future role as mothers of strong and loyal French citizens. The ideology of patriotic womanhood, under the Third Republican government, was not only a guiding principle for domestic policy, but was also intrinsic to French colonial policy in Algeria. Through the use of a common nineteenth-century European practice known as woman-to-woman medical care, Dr. Dorothée Chellier, a female physicians under the auspice of the colonial government provided medical care to indigenous women in Algeria. Chellier published multiple written accounts of her medical advocacy for indigenous women’s health care and her account clearly demonstrates that the ideology of Republican motherhood was a factor in her participation in the medical missions as well as an important facet within the Republican government’s policy of assimilating the indigenous population of Algeria by catering to the women within the Berber tribes and predicting that they would not only personally recognize the benefice of French medical care, but pass on these beliefs to their children. Chellier and the Algerian colonial governor sought to assimilate the indigenous population to French social and economic frameworks, but also to ameliorate the fractious environment between the European colonial settlers, indigenous groups, and the French military. Thus, Republican motherhood was a framework used in the metropole and in the colonial context by Republican politicians who sought to harness the power of a mother’s influence on her children as a method for social coherence and adherence to government policies.
Advisors/Committee Members: Pulju, Rebecca.
Subjects: European History
Keywords: France; women; Algeria; colonial; Dorothee Chellier; Republican motherhood; Third Republic; medicine; colonial medicine; female physicians; gynecological healthcare; assimilation; 19th century; nineteenth-century; cultural history; political culture
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3.
Benoit, Colleen S.
A Woman’s “Natural” Work: Sewing and Notions of Feminine Labor in Northeast Ohio, 1900-1930.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► This thesis explores the social and cultural significance of sewing and its…
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▼ This thesis explores the social and cultural significance of sewing and its place in the factory, the domestic arts education movement, and the home during the rise of the garment trade between 1900 and 1930 in Northeast Ohio. Long viewed in American culture as women’s “natural” work, this study takes a more critical look at how sewing functioned in the lives of women during a time of great economic and social change in the context of the Progressive Era, push for suffrage, rise of mechanized industry, and influx of immigration. Through a historical investigation of women’s work and systems of gendered labor, this thesis examines how expectations of femininity were translated across class and racial lines but remained embedded in sewing even as it moved out of the home, into schools, and onto the factory floor. Garment industry leaders relied on this notion of sewing as women’s natural work to hire them as hand sewers and machine operators in factories, a job that drastically deskilled sewing and removed any of its traditional domestic attachments. During this same period, the domestic arts movement became a staple in girls’ education and marketed sewing as a domestic skill and duty of a good wife and mother. Such lessons did not prepare young women for work in any of the sewing trades and instead encouraged knowledge of sewing as a means of honing maternal instinct and domestic capacity. Despite these opposing contexts in which sewing was performed, women remained active negotiators in the debate over how sewing would function in their lives. Dependent on racial and class situations, women often disregarded the loaded cultural expectations of sewing and found ways to use the craft as a means of social empowerment. In conclusion, sewing cannot be accepted as a commonplace past time and when examined historically, often reveals much about the construction of gender and gender expectations.
Advisors/Committee Members: Smith-Pryor, Elizabeth.
Subjects: American History; History; Home Economics; Social Research; Womens Studies
Keywords: Sewing; garment industry; domestic arts education; women's history; women's work; social history; cultural history; Cleveland, Ohio
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4.
Bingham, Stephanie Michelle.
The Psychic Bridge: The Spiritualist Movement.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► This thesis examines the spiritualist movement from the turn of the nineteenth…
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▼ This thesis examines the spiritualist movement from the turn of the nineteenth century and how this group acted as a bridge between the past and their present, by looking at the contemporary writing supporting and criticizing the movement. The spiritualist movement had drawn numerous critics and supporters due to its incorporation of science and psychic mediums into its version of Christianity. The spiritualists were a diverse group unified by one tenet, the belief in an afterlife and the ability of mediums to connect with the dead. The spiritualists’ goal was to bridge the gap between the past and the present, through the use of psychic mediums. These mediums were tested, and their phenomena explained by the emerging science of the time as a way to prove their experiences were legitimate and in doing so validate Christianity. By doing this the movement was connecting Christianity of the past to the science of the present and modernizing the religion. This approach led many traditional Christians to oppose the movement and attack them as frauds or as having dealings with evil. This thesis looks closely at how the movement developed due to its links to Christianity, science, and by focusing on the importance of the individual medium.
Advisors/Committee Members: Bindas, Dr. Kenneth.
Subjects: American History; History; Religious History
Keywords: Spiritualism; Spiritualist Movement; Paranormal; séance; psychic; mediums; science; religion; ghost
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5.
Boaz, Rachel E.
The Search for “Aryan Blood:” Seroanthropology in Weimar and National Socialist Germany.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► This dissertation examines the origins and course of development of the science…
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▼ This dissertation examines the origins and course of development of the science of seroanthropology from its origins in World War I until the end of the Third Reich. Seroanthropology was a blend of two sciences—serology and anthropology—and sought to identify race through blood. It was perhaps most well-received by Germany’s völkisch race scientists, or those who believed in the superiority of the Aryan race to all others. During Weimar and Nazi Germany, race theorists emphasized physiognomic characteristics in racial classification. As examiners’ preferences varied, determining race was often a very subjective process. In the hope that blood would be a more efficient indicator of race than appearance, extensive efforts were made to realize a relationship between blood type and race. Some researchers came to affiliate blood type with race and a range of other characteristics. These tendencies were most conspicuous among researchers with a far-right political agenda, and I explore the ways in which their personal motivations were influenced by their professional activities. The scientific notion of “blood difference” was further exploited by race propagandists. Seroanthropology was attractive to a select group of far-right physicians who misappropriated blood science and medical fact for racist purposes, but there were also non-völkisch physicians of Jewish descent who made significant contributions to the study of blood and race. I examine the reasons for their involvement in a science that was misappropriated by anti-Semites. Jewish involvement in studies of race is more nuanced than has been claimed. This dissertation offers a revision of the recent biopolitics theory within modern German historiography which emphasizes the continuities between modern science and National Socialist racial policy. I question the notion that German studies of race and eugenics showed modernity’s “most fatal potential.” My analysis demonstrate how seroanthropology does not fit neatly into this more recent paradigm and thereby urges us to rethink the role of science in modernization. There was no “line of continuity” between Weimar and National Socialist seroanthropology.
Advisors/Committee Members: Steigmann-Gall, Richard.
Subjects: History
Keywords: blood; National Socialism; Weimar Republic; eugenics; race science
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6.
Bowden, Robin L.
Diagnosing Nazism: U.S. Perceptions of National Socialism, 1920-1933.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► Historical coverage of American perceptions of National Socialism normally begins with Adolf…
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▼ Historical coverage of American perceptions of National Socialism normally begins with Adolf Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. Yet American policymakers were aware of and reported on the party from its formation in the early 1920s, though their concern with Germany’s political and economic stability caused them to inaccurately assess the growing National Socialist threat during this formative period. U.S. diplomats’ often stark differences of opinion when it came to dealing with National Socialism before Hitler’s chancellorship have been relatively unexamined. Consequently, a complete understanding of the interwar relationship between the United States and Germany and the American understanding of National Socialism has heretofore been impossible.Using extensive primary documentation from the State Department and U.S. military intelligence, this dissertation dissects American diplomatic reporting on Germany from the formation of the NSDAP through Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. Part one examines U.S. assumptions about the Nazi Party from its infancy through the failed Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. Part two explores the U.S. failure to recognize that Hitler and the NSDAP were successfully reorganizing and restructuring their approach in the period prior to 1930. The final section details how American observers responded to a revitalized Nazi Party from 1930 to 1933. This study begins to fill the gap in the history of American perceptions of National Socialism by placing U.S. diplomatic reporting in its broadest historical context. Understanding American perceptions of National Socialism illuminates U.S.-German relations in the post-World War I era. At the same time the dissertation supplements the literature on U.S. policy history by contributing to a fuller understanding of the State Department’s relationship with its diplomats and Foreign Service officers. Finally, with its emphasis on the American understanding of National Socialism, this dissertation adds to the growing and important work done on U.S. perceptions of the enemy. As this study makes clear, U.S. observers had the opportunity to document and comprehend the developing National Socialist movement more than a decade before Hitler became chancellor. Lamentably, their coverage proved to be marked by misconceptions, some confusion, and, at times, complete disregard for the success of Hitler and his party.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary Ann.
Subjects: American history; European history; History; International relations
Keywords: Foreign Relations; United States; Germany; Weimar Republic; Hitler, Adolf; National Socialism; Nazis; U.S. State Department; Houghton, Alanson; Schurman, Jacob Gould; Sackett, Frederic; Murphy, Robert; Smith, Truman; 1920s; 1930s; Interwar Period
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7.
Braverman, Ilya.
A Failed Nazism: The Rise and Fall of the Deutschvolkische Freiheitspartei, 1919-1928.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► This study explores the tension between the better-known Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP)…
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▼ This study explores the tension between the better-known Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP) and an often overlooked familial rival, the Deutschvolkische Freiheitspartei (DVFP) during the early years of the Weimar Republic. Following a decades-long radicalization of the German right wing, and exacerbated by Germany's defeat in the First World War the NSDAP and DVFP emerged as representatives of a volkisch worldview that rejected the new system of parliament and was underscored by a fascist nature. This thesis challenges the too-simple conception of the rise to power of the NSDAP as having been inevitable, and of the party as seemingly unchallenged during its formative years. The existence of a plurality of Nazisms, reflected by the existence of the Nazistic DVFP that espoused a worldview nominally similar to that of the NSDAP, shows us that the rise to power of the NSDAP was a much more contingent affair than previously thought. The worldviews of both the NSDAP and DVFP are comparatively examined in this study to illuminate the existence of a variety of strands of Nazism, an ideology that was not a unique conception but rather a widespread worldview which was advocated by a variety of parties on the German extreme right wing during the Weimar years. The cooperative turned rivalrous relationship between the two parties between 1922-1928 is examined in this thesis in functional and cultural terms to highlight the structural and contingent factors which led to the success of the NSDAP and the failure of the DVFP. This study proposes that historians of the NSDAP, and particularly those studying its formative years use a different methodological approach in their attempts to understand the party's rise to power. Borrowing from the field of comparative fascist studies, this work uses the DVFP and its relationship with the NSDAP to explore the functional and cultural factors which led to the NSDAP's rise to power at the expense of a variety of other, Nazistic parties.
Advisors/Committee Members: Steigmann-Gall, Richard.
Subjects: European History; History; Modern History
Keywords: Nazism; Weimar Republic; Right wing groups; DVFP; NSDAP; Fascism
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8.
Briesacher, Erika L.
Cultural Currency: Notgeld, Nordische Woche, and the Nordische Gesellschaft, 1921-1945.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► The phenomena of material culture, collecting, economics and hyperinflation, and festival are…
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▼ The phenomena of material culture, collecting, economics and hyperinflation, and festival are related to identity formation, yet their connection is understudied. This dissertation contributes to the existing literature by analyzing not only how the Nordische Gesellschaft emerged but how it evolved between 1921 and 1933. Additionally, the cultural performances endorsed by the Society essentially retained the spirit of regional, local, and national identity fostered by the 1921 Nordische Woche festival in Lübeck. The expansion of the Nordische Gesellschaft beyond the borders of its home city demonstrates competing and often contradicting voices that were present in Germany on the topic of dominant identity. Rather than highlighting the organizational framework of the Society, my study views the group through the lens of culture, affected by and affecting Lübeckers and Germans at large. The material culture left behind by groups such as the Nordische Gesellschaft and events such as Nordische Woche add to the growing literature on European material culture, expanding it to account for overlooked sources such as collectable money, souvenir programs, and printed ephemera.
Advisors/Committee Members: Steigmann-Gall, Richard.
Subjects: History
Keywords: material culture, Nordische Woche, Nordische Gesellschaft, inflation, national identity, collecting
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9.
Bunge, Hans-Henning.
Comparing Ancient History Textbooks of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2007, Kent State University
► Title: Comparing Ancient History Textbooks of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic…
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▼ Title: Comparing Ancient History Textbooks of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic History book for secondary schools of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic were compared to establish how the depiction of ancient Greek and Roman history is influenced by the two political constellations, how much they emphasized democracy and use ancient social values to support ideals of the monarchy and later the republic. In addition it is determined how much the different authors compared past historical events to more recent ones, how they evaluated the influence of socioeconomic developments on historical events, and how they met the educational policy of the two periods. The larger goal is to seek how these textbooks appropriated ancient history for the presentist purposes of the age in which they were written: how they served not only as political and cultural symptoms of their age, but perhaps even causes of political and cultural transformation in the German youth who read them. The history books of Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic both mirror the political landscape of their time. In the Imperial period the advantages of a single leader are underpinned while democracy is downplayed. As the Bürgertum of the monarchy became more assertive by defending and expanding their political rights, Athens’ democratic achievements gained more attention. In the republic the support of such single leadership appeared as nostalgic longing for the more structured political system of the past however within a democratic frame. This argument is supported by the authors claiming that the Roman and German aristocracy through their selfless dedication helped the respective country to excel. These textbooks reflect not only the change from a monarchy to a republic but also the waning of the humanistic ideology as it made room for more science oriented education.
Advisors/Committee Members: Steigmann-Gall, Dr. Richard.
Subjects: History, Modern
Keywords: Humanistic education; Imperial Germany; Weimar Republic; democracy; history schoolbook; Roman history; Greek history; German secondary educations
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10.
Csehi, Jason.
When Two Worlds Collide: The Allied Downgrading Of General Dragoljub “Draža” Mihailović and Their Subsequent Full Support for Josip Broz “Tito”.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► A Serbian-dominated monarchy controlled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the Great War.…
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▼ A Serbian-dominated monarchy controlled the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the Great War. To a certain extent, the monarchy was oppressive and unfavorable towards communism, as was often the case in the interwar period. During the escalation of World War II, the German war machine pressed surrounding states in a retributive fashion and extended its tentacles. States fell to the might of their collective enemy. As the panzer divisions brought lightning to the nations, initial resistance in occupied territories was scant, save for Yugoslavia, where defiant and opposing factions, General Draža Mihailović’s monarchic Nationalists and Josip Broz’s communist Partisans, sought to rid themselves of the Germans—and each other. Allied resistance to the Axis became necessary. American President Franklin Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill opted to capitalize on the resistance and lend support. Initially, the Allies supported both factions against the Axis occupiers but the Nationalists sought the preservation of King Peter II, by then exiled to England; the Partisans desired to usurp power and there was the fear by the Western Allies that Yugoslavia would be taken over by communists. The divided country would be in a state of disarray. As the war trudged on, the Allies eventually withdrew support for Mihailović and backed only Tito for a variety of reasons. After the war, Allied notables regretted this decision. There is ample evidence showing that this decision was incorrect and that regret was justified. This thesis discusses the background of the conditions in Yugoslavia and the facts surrounding the Allied decision to permanently downgrade Mihailović, paving the way for communist rule in post-war Yugoslavia. Especially, it will focus on the policy of the British under Churchill and Roosevelt’s knowledge of the circumstances, which culminated in the dismissal of General Mihailović.
Advisors/Committee Members: Papacosma, Solon Victor.
Subjects: European history
Keywords: Churchill Roosevelt Stalin King Peter II Hitler Great Britain United States Soviet Union Yugoslavia Germany World War II Tito Partisans Mihailovic Chetniks
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11.
Curran, Michele M.
Torn Identity: Workingwomen and Their Struggle Between Gender and Class, 1932-1950.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► This study investigates the experience of American workingwomen struggling to balance their…
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▼ This study investigates the experience of American workingwomen struggling to balance their identity as women and workers. Gender was culturally constructed to create roles for men and women that fit societal needs, as these needs fluctuated, roles changed. This thesis examines the appropriate gender roles for women according to government policy, capitalist initiatives, and media representations, while exploring the everyday conflict workingwomen expressed in oral histories when prioritizing responsibilities to their families and society. Over the years, images of ideal women varied and sent contradictory messages about the proper place of women in society, amplifying tension for workingwomen during the Great Depression, World War II, and the Post-War Years. During the Great Depression, women were encouraged by the government and pressured by society to stay home, vacating jobs for unemployed men. Despite hostility, more and more women entered the workforce, performing a masculine objective to pay bills and feed themselves and loved ones. At the beginning of World War II, when the United States experienced a labor shortage which decreased production and hindered the nation’s ability to wage war, women were called upon to obtain industrial jobs. Empowering images of beautiful young women with their sleeves rolled up and ready to work for victory, flooded magazines and factory walls, inspiring women to obtain masculine jobs in order to bring their men home sooner. Women were conflicted, placing their new duty to society before the needs of their families, by prioritizing work over their traditional responsibilities as mothers and homemakers. Regardless of the attempt to feminize industrial jobs, female industrial workers experienced a new masculine identity which challenged their relationships with the men they worked with and other female war workers in feminine jobs. At the war’s end, female industrial workers, left or were pushed out of their jobs and returned to their former feminine employment positions while refocusing their attention on their families. During the Post-War years, the desires of ideal women in popular culture were conflicted between work and home, generating the roots of new feminism. In conclusion, under different circumstances workingwomen experienced a similar challenge to balance their identity throughout the three periods of change examined in this thesis.
Advisors/Committee Members: Adams, Kevin.
Subjects: American History; American Studies; Gender Studies; History; Modern History; Womens Studies
Keywords: Work; Women; Workingwomen; working women; working-class; class; middle; oral history; ideal women; perception; propaganda; feminism; The Great Depression; World War II; World War Two; Postwar; identity; conflict; struggle; femininity; gender
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12.
Eberly, Kurt Jeffrey.
Pennsylvanians, Foreign Relations, and Politics, 1775-1790.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► Pennsylvania, its leaders and its politics played a significant role in the…
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▼ Pennsylvania, its leaders and its politics played a significant role in the foreign relations of the United States from 1775-1790. This study examines the contributions of Pennsylvanians to American foreign policy, the ideologies that guided their thinking and the influence on foreign relations of the state’s political battle between its two factions, Constitutionalists and Republicans. Pennsylvania’s importance rested on its central political and economic position among the other British colonies. Its capital, Philadelphia, also served as a major entrépot of trade for American and overseas ports. These factors meant that the attitude of Pennsylvania’s political and business leaders on American foreign affairs would have a significant impact on their conduct. This study argues that these individuals drew upon several ideologies in devising their worldview. Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morris were the two major figures involved in foreign relations. Both sought the expansion of American commerce but pursued different ideologies in obtaining that goal. Franklin, the Constitutionalist’s leader until late 1776, believed that idealistic internationalism could establish a peaceful world where commerce flourished between nations. Morris, the Pennsylvania’s Republican chief, had an idealistic vision of a world of free trade but eventually realized a realistic approach to foreign policy was necessary for the new nation in a dangerous world. Morris also led the Nationalists, individuals throughout the nation who aimed to strengthen the central government by giving it power to enforce treaties with foreign nations, regulate commerce and collect duties, and defend the nation and its commerce. Morris’s survival against the attacks from his enemies in Congress and in Pennsylvania was a key factor of the Republican’s success in their struggle with the Constitutionalists and the Nationalists in ratifying the new federal constitution. During the period of 1778-1785, Pennsylvania’s state governments came into conflict on several occasions with French officials and merchants. Another argument of this study is that Pennsylvania’s stance as an independent political entity in its resolution of these affairs further demonstrated that the nation required a central government that could establish and enforce a uniform policy for dealing with foreign nations and their representatives at home and abroad.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary Ann.
Subjects: American History; History
Keywords: Pennsylvania, Foreign Relations, American Revolution, Robert Morris, Benjamin Franklin
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13.
Faverty, Brenda Lee.
Honor and Gender in the Antebellum Plantation South.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► Within the antebellum South’s plantation system, women led restricted lives that were…
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▼ Within the antebellum South’s plantation system, women led restricted lives that were controlled by social principles and gender conventions that were viewed through a prism of honor. Shaped by the ideals of personal and familial image, the precept required the total acquiescence of women. Since the link between a man’s reputation and the actions of his family was significant to his social status and power, female submission and obedience to male authority were essential. Women’s compliance to social norms ensured proper female behavior and safeguarded the male reputation. Through a sense of family and community pride, elite women accepted their predestined roles as wives, mothers, and daughters and sought to appropriately represent the honor of their husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers. Despite their own personal feelings about the limitations placed on their lives, planter women stoically submitted themselves to the requirements of southern society and worked to present the impression of perfect southern women. The important association between honor and female values influenced the manner in which plantation women understood and fulfilled their community’s gender standards. By connecting reputation and honor to social status and power, southern society defined the features of women’s duty and identified the female obligations of purity, piety, submission, and domesticity as vital aspects of an acceptable communal image. The relationship between proper female behavior and reputation and honor was so important that the entire plantation community took part in the instruction of the region’s young women. Friends, family, and neighbors initiated their youth in their society’s standards and formed penalties for misbehavior. Gossip and ostracism were the essential tools used to ensure women’s compliance with the ideals of proper behavior. The protection of individual and family reputation and honor through adherence to gender principles was so important to planter society that it was a vital factor in the gender-based changes produced by the Civil War. While elite southern women met the new requirements of their altered conditions, they continued to safeguard their personal and familial reputation and honor.
Advisors/Committee Members: Hudson, Leonne.
Subjects: American History; Gender; Womens Studies
Keywords: honor; gender; plantation system; antebellum South; southern women
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14.
Flaschka, Monika J.
Race, Rape and Gender in Nazi-Occupied Territories.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► Despite the vast historiography of the Second World War, scholars have long…
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▼ Despite the vast historiography of the Second World War, scholars have long overlooked sexual violence committed by the German military in the occupied territories. Using a linguistic analysis of court documents, this dissertation examines cases against German soldiers accused of rape, attempted rape, child abuse, and violations of the law against homosexuality, as well as cases against ethnic Germans and Poles in the occupied territories, to determine how Nazi racial and gender ideology affected the determination of punishment. The documents clearly demonstrate the importance of gender ideology, particularly constructs of heterosexual masculinity, in the sentencing proceedings. Men were evaluated as men; as soldiers; and as Germans, as members of the Volk. Ethnic Germans were also subject to the same evaluation, but Poles were not offered mitigating circumstances because of the threat the judges believed they posed to German women. Women too were evaluated, and the degree to which the judges thought they acted in accordance with normative gender roles affected the determination of punishment. What had an unpredictable effect, however, was the alleged racial quality of the woman assaulted by the German soldier; it mattered less what her “racial quality” was than whether she conformed to gendered behavioral expectations, and whether the German soldier did as well. Racial ideology was most definitely a factor in sex crimes cases, but more so in expectations placed upon soldiers as German men than in discussions of the “racial inferiority” of women. What the court-martial documents illustrate is that Nazi racial ideology was incoherent and unstable, with high-ranking members of the Party and the military incapable of establishing who should be considered racially inferior and what that should mean in the sentencing of men accused of sex crimes. The documents further illustrate the importance of gender ideology to the determination of sentencing. Lastly, this dissertation argues that the courts-martial functioned as the site of the discursive creation and negotiation of the most important identity of the regime, the Nazi German man.
Advisors/Committee Members: Steigmann-Gall, Richard.
Subjects: History
Keywords: Rape; Race; Gender; Masculinity; Nazi Germany; World War II
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15.
Haynes, Steven L.
Alternative Vision: The United States, Latin America, and the League of Nations during the Republican Ascendancy.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► Historical coverage concerning how the League of Nations affected U.S.-Latin American relations…
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▼ Historical coverage concerning how the League of Nations affected U.S.-Latin American relations has been lacking. Typically, historians have only concentrated on the reasons why the U.S. Senate refused to join the League in 1919 and 1920, but they do not discuss how that organization affected U.S. foreign policy throughout the decade of the 1920s. This study begins to fill this gap in the historical literature. Through the use of primary sources from multiple archives and papers from the U.S. State Department, this study examines the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations’ efforts to convince Latin Americans to accept an alternative peace plan to the League of Nations that was based on legal-internationalist principles. Understanding Republican efforts to establishing an international legal system to replace the traditional anarchist nationalistic international system sheds light upon the foreign policy objectives of the period that historians have heretofore largely ignored. This study focuses on the Republican efforts to create an alternative system to the newly established League of Nations. Republican leaders held that the collective security clauses of the League of Nations would fail to prevent future wars because they did not fundamentally alter humanity’s mindset concerning war. Alternatively, the Republicans sought to get the world to adopt their envisioned pax-Americana international system based on legal internationalist principles. To create such a system, the Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover administrations adopted a soft paternalistic approach that was designed to gain humanity’s acceptance of the American vision for peace. U.S. efforts were largely focused on Latin America to begin the process of reforming the regional international system in the Western Hemisphere. As this study makes clear, the United States was able to create an alternative peace machinery in the Western Hemisphere, but the Republican refusal to reject the “right” of the United States to intervene into Latin America doomed the movement to ultimate failure. This study concludes that the Republican goal of reforming the world system failed to lessen the chances of the outbreak of war, as clearly demonstrated by the world beginning to descend into crisis by the early 1930s.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary Ann.
Subjects: History
Keywords: Warren G. Harding; Calvin Coolidge; Herbert Hoover; Charles Evans Hughes; Frank Kellogg; Henry Stimson; League of Nations; United States Foreign Policy 1921-1933; United States-Latin American Relations 1921-1933; Pan Americanism; Republican Ascendancy
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16.
Hodge, Adam R.
Vectors of Colonialism: The Smallpox Epidemic of 1780-82 and Northern Great Plains Indian Life.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► While scholars have devoted significant attention to the various waves of diseases…
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▼ While scholars have devoted significant attention to the various waves of diseases that swept through the northern Great Plains during the nineteenth century, the great predecessor to those outbreaks, the 1780-82 smallpox epidemic, remains largely neglected. This thesis attempts to fill this major gap in the historiography by conducting an in-depth analysis of that earlier epidemic, informed by the approaches of environmental history and ethnohistory. Utilizing these methods, this work first traces the development of the northern plains disease ecology, demonstrating how the introduction of European colonial goods, primarily the horse and the gun, brought natives into more frequent and sustained contact with one another through trade and warfare. Then, this thesis discusses the immediate impact of the epidemic, revealing how its tremendous mortality irrevocably changed the world that its Indian survivors inhabited by altering the social, cultural, and political spheres of their lives. Next, this study asserts that since the epidemic left most northern plains peoples vulnerable to less-afflicted enemies during the decades following the epidemic, regional warfare patterns forever transformed. At the same time, the epidemic forged the regional power structure that the United States encountered when Lewis and Clark explored the newly-acquired territory during the first decade of the nineteenth century. In short, this thesis concludes that smallpox epidemic of 1780-82 constituted a major turning point in northern Great Plains history. Furthermore, it influenced the course of United States history by affecting the ability of the region’s indigenous peoples to resist American colonialism.
Advisors/Committee Members: Adams, Kevin.
Subjects: History; Native Americans
Keywords: Great Plains; Native Americans; Indians; smallpox; disease ecology; Northern Plains; epidemic; environment; climate; warfare; Sioux; Shoshone; Mandan; Arikara; Hidatsa; Crow; Cree; Assiniboine; Blackfoot; horse; firearm; Hudson's Bay Company; traders
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17.
Kahn, Miriam B.
Werner and His Empire: The Rise and Fall of a Gilded Age Printer.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► Paul E. Werner, newspaper publisher, printer, industrialist, was as ruthless as other…
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▼ Paul E. Werner, newspaper publisher, printer, industrialist, was as ruthless as other businessmen of Gilded Age Akron. His story and that of his company exemplifies the “Rags to Riches” American Dream. Lured by steady income from printing, Werner built his family business from a tiny concern in 1873 into a thriving multi-national company by 1894 by acquiring competitors and establishing offices in 20 cities across North America and Europe. Werner printed everything from newspapers and commercial stationary to books, magazines, art, and reference works, including the Encyclopedia Britannica (ninth edition). His once vast, multifaceted business collapsed in 1909 after Encyclopedia Britannica sued the company for copyright infringement, and disappeared by 1914. This dissertation examines the printers of Akron in the nineteenth century, particularly Paul E. Werner, and their place in the history of Akron and demonstrates how Werner is typical of printers of the Gilded Age. Second, it compares Werner to contemporary printers of Cleveland, building upon Russell Duino’s 1981 dissertation and Walter Sutton’s work on Cincinnati Printers. Finally, it explores intellectual property rights and international copyright infringement as it pertains to Werner’s ultimate financial downfall. In an era of micro-histories, this study contributes to Akron’s business history by demonstrating the economic significance of printing, and providing another perspective for understanding how industry fosters urban growth and prosperity. Werner’s business incorporated, in direct competition with contemporary printers, new merchandising techniques that enticed readers to acquire his books. Secondly, a careful study of Werner’s business practices will provide insight into the financial realities of late nineteenth century printers and book publishers, and will contribute to our understanding of the book in Gilded Age America. Lastly, this dissertation will set today’s battles over intellectual property and copyright into an historical context by demonstrating how international copyright laws continue to affect printers and publishers in the twenty-first century as they did in the late nineteenth century.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jameson, John.
Subjects: American History; Intellectual Property; Regional Studies
Keywords: Werner Company, Akron, Ohio; Encyclopaedia Britannica; Printing, Akron, Ohio; Copyright; Labor Unions, Akron, Ohio
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18.
Kopper, Kevin Katrick.
Arthur St. Clair and the Struggle For Power in the Old Northwest, 1763-1803.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2005, Kent State University
► Situating Governor Arthur St. Clair as the central figure of and focusing…
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▼ Situating Governor Arthur St. Clair as the central figure of and focusing on his administration of the Northwest Territory present an accurate and cogent account of America’s first experiment in colonialism. The frontier was not static, but amorphous; it changed over time and brought new challenges to the territorial government. St. Clair is the instrument through which to understand this change. His military and civil careers are the story of the frontier. Throughout his life, St. Clair wanted to be the “father of a country.” But in the end, he was rejected by his “subjects” and as a result later historians overlooked his contributions to western expansion. Examining St. Clair’s governorship shows the process by which the region that became the state of Ohio in 1803 was transformed from a colony populated by natives to a state inhabited predominately by white agriculturalists who were connected to the world markets via the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. St. Clair, working under the direction of the federal government, was the architect of this change. He implemented the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which served as the blueprint for expansion in the approximately 250,000 square mile region that became the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. While in office he presided over the settlement of the region, negotiated Indian treaties, campaigned against the Ohio Indians, opened diplomatic relations with colonial representatives from Great Britain and Spain, determined the locations of county boundaries and county seats, implemented a government based upon the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, created a judiciary, and put laws into operation through the territorial legislature. The governor managed the territory during the formative years of U.S. expansion and set precedents for future generations. St. Clair’s ultimate downfall occurred when he opposed the movement to create the state of Ohio and instead sought to redefine the territory’s boundaries to prevent the eastern section from meeting the criteria necessary to call a constitutional convention. In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson removed the governor from office because of his actions at the Ohio constitutional convention, when he had called the Enabling Act a nullity and questioned Congress’s authority to legislate for the territory without consulting the territorial government. The comments were thought by many to border on treason. His departure symbolized the success of the Revolution of 1800—the ascendancy of a new generation of political figures who dominated the nation’s affairs and determined the fate of the West. Defending the provisions of the Northwest Ordinance, St. Clair was the embodiment of the Federalist vision of expansion, a conservative political philosophy that was out of favor with many of the residents and politicians in Washington.
Advisors/Committee Members: Jon, Wakelyn L.
Subjects: History, United States
Keywords: Arthur St. Clair; Indians; Northwest Territory
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19.
LaRue, Dionna D.
The Movement: An Integrated Approach to the Study of the Origins and Evolution of 1960s Radical Thought.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► This thesis examines each of three 1960s radical movements: the Civil Rights…
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▼ This thesis examines each of three 1960s radical movements: the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Power Movement, and the New Left Movement, individually, but links them together in terms of the origins and changes in their rhetoric, exposing them as parts of a whole, overarching, national “Movement.”
Advisors/Committee Members: Smith-Pryor, Elizabeth.
Subjects: African Americans; History
Keywords: Carmichael; Hayden; Cleaver; Black Power; Malcolm X; Black Panther
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20.
McCoy, Austin C.
The Creation of an African-American Counterpublic: The Impact of Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality on Black Radicalism during the Black Freedom Movement, 1965-1981.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the role of black…
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▼ The purpose of this thesis is to analyze the role of black radical activist-intellectuals in developing and articulating the values, discourses, and rhetoric of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Feminist Movements. The ultimate goal was to analyze how black radicals utilized and contested ideas of race, nation, gender, sexuality, and class. This thesis argues that scholars should consider these formations as intellectual movements. Through their creation of movement institutions and “texts,” black Radicals created a modern black counterpublic that challenged black exclusion in the American public. Within this counterpublic, however, black activists produced their own subordinate publics that contested the ideas, discourses, and visions of other black publics. In taking this approach, one cannot analyze the emergence of and activities within the black counterpublic by adhering to the integrationist-nationalist dichotomy because while particular black political groups and leaders may have diverged politically, points of divergence and convergence emerge when analyzing how their ideas of difference impacted their thought and texts. This thesis represents an intersection between the study of political ideologies, discourse, and rhetoric. This thesis investigates the texts of a broad range of black activist-intellectuals including the Black Panther Party’s Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, and Eldridge Cleaver (1966-1969), who designed an alternative nationalism, gendered and classed notions of citizenship, and sexualized depictions of their enemies, Martin Luther King, Jr. (1956-1968), who transcended America’s civic and racial nationalist traditions, with his radical democratic socialist ideas and his concept of the “world house,” and a variety of black feminists including Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and bell hooks (1969-1981), who confronted the disciplinary and homogenizing aspects of black nationalist and feminist discourse and created their own visions of human liberation.
Advisors/Committee Members: Smith-Pryor, Elizabeth.
Subjects: African Americans; History
Keywords: Civil Rights Movement, Black Power, Black Feminism, Gender, Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, Black Radicalism
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21.
McFarland, Kelly M.
All About the Wordplay: Gendered and Orientalist Language in U.S.-Egyptian Foreign Relations, 1952-1961.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► Most historians writing on U.S.-Egyptian foreign relations during the Truman and Eisenhower…
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▼ Most historians writing on U.S.-Egyptian foreign relations during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations have focused on policies’ external causes. These scholarly discussions do not extend to the internal, or more specifically cultural, sources of U.S.-Egyptian foreign relations throughout the years 1952 to 1961. This dissertation will help fill a gap in the historical literature by delving into the cultural aspects of this important and often tense relationship. Specifically, this dissertation will explore the shifting language that U.S. officials from 1952-1961 used regarding Egyptians as well as the meaning behind that language and its relationship to America’s strategic interests. Articles from major periodicals will be used in order to show that these language changes were part of a larger cultural pattern. Studying how language changes correlated with U.S. policies toward Egypt will demonstrate how words and their meanings were used to place Egypt at one end of the political spectrum or the other. The gendered and Orientalist language that U.S. officials and the media used when describing Egyptian leaders was part of a cultural belief-system that placed “others” in a unique and different category then the United States and its leaders. This language could and did take on both negative and positive meanings throughout the time period under review, and this dissertation will demonstrate specifically how that language changed over time according to circumstances. When Egyptian leaders were following U.S. advice and otherwise acting in ways that comported with American, or Western, norms, the language used to describe them was positive. Once they started acting counter to those norms and policies, the language used to describe them would become derogatory in order to place Egypt in the camp of the “other.” This dissertation uses a wide variety of primary sources, both published and unpublished. For the Truman administration, the Papers of Harry Truman and Dean Acheson will be studied in order to discern the administration’s initial views and language on the new Egyptian regime that came to power in the last months of Truman’s presidency. The largest portion of primary documents will come from the Eisenhower administration. These will include the Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Foster Dulles, Richard M. Nixon, and Christian A. Herter, and the Ann Whitman Files, all of which are housed at the Eisenhower Presidential Library in Abilene, Kansas. I will also undertaken numerous trips to the Library of Congress and the National Archives in order to look into the papers of other key official and documents pertaining to the National Security Council, Congress, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Pertinent media sources, such as Time and Newsweek will also be used.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary Ann.
Subjects: American history
Keywords: U.S. foreign relations; U.S.-Egyptian relations; gender; Orientalism; Eisenhower foreign policy
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22.
McMurry, Philip Martin.
Dissertation Proposal: Civilian Education and the Preparation for Service and Leadership in Antebellum America, 1845 – 1860.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► The purpose of this study will be to compare and contrast the…
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▼ The purpose of this study will be to compare and contrast the educational systems of the North and South to discover and describe the national values, the various methods used to develop leadership skills, and the relationship between antebellum education and evangelical Christianity. These concepts came together to forge a form of indoctrination that compelled some educators to leave their comfortable positions and fight in the Civil War. This study will help in our overall understanding of the values that were part of the antebellum educational experience by focusing on those who were first receivers of, then responsible for imparting, those values. Education clearly played an important role in the lives of a number of individuals who fought in the Civil War and was a necessary component in the rapid ascension of these men into prominent positions of military leadership. While this phenomenon has been documented in individual biographies such as Alice Rains Trulock’s study of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Clyde Wilson’s analysis of James Johnston Pettigrew, historical investigation to this point has not tried to address the issue of motive and influence of education among a larger number of educators and intellectuals who sought active service in the war. What was the relationship? As a test to relate education to loyalty and leadership, this dissertation will focus on nine individuals who spent a considerable period of their antebellum life as either educators or working in academic circles. Five of these individuals fought for the Confederacy and five fought for the Union. Moreover, all of these men served in the upper ranks of their respective armies and commanded, at least, at the brigade level. They are part of a larger cohort of individuals who came from educational or intellectual backgrounds, but these ten individuals to provide an adequate sample. In order to understand their values and their training, this dissertation will be examining the lives and pre-Civil War careers of Henry Lawrence Eustis, Ormsby Mitchel, John Carpenter Carter, Claudius Wistar Sears, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, James Johnston Pettigrew, James Garfield, William Flank Perry, and Francis Amasa Walker.
Advisors/Committee Members: Wakelyn, Jon.
Subjects: American history; American studies; Education history; History
Keywords: education; Civil War; leadership; antebellum
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23.
Meyer, Dwight R.
Employing Masculinity as an Agent of Social Change: An Examination of the Writings and Tactics of Robert F. Williams.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► The Civil Rights Movement is often envisioned very narrowly as a uniquely…
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▼ The Civil Rights Movement is often envisioned very narrowly as a uniquely American movement from 1955-1965. This thesis embraces a wider geographical and temporal definition of this era. No matter where Robert F. Williams was geographically situated, he continually framed his rhetoric within a definition of masculinity that he fully embraced as the key to the struggle for expanded rights and full citizenship for African Americans. Much of the current scholarship on Williams focuses on how his NAACP chapter integrated the library and advocated for progressive employment practices in Monroe, North Carolina from 1955-1961. They clashed with counter protesters on the subject of integration of lunch-counters and black usage of the public pool. These clashes escalated until Williams saved two white supremacists from an angry mob. These actions were perverted into accusations of kidnapping. To avoid charges, Williams left Monroe for Canada that night in 1961. This work’s main focus is upon Robert and Mabel Williams after they made their separate ways to Fidel Castro’s Cuba. They were granted political asylum by the revolutionary government to protect them from the violence of the Ku Klux Klan and other organizations in Monroe. While in Cuba, Williams continued publishing his newsletter The Crusader and began broadcasting an editorial radio program named “Radio Free Dixie.” He used these two outlets to highlight the denial of full citizenship to African Americans in the United States. In Cuba, Williams’s ideology of Black Nationalism and his refusal to endorse Socialism in his radio broadcasts led to friction with a faction that he nicknamed the “Bourgeois Communists.” This designation referred to the apparent lack of “revolutionary fervor” of these communists as well as differing views on politics, masculinity and race which diverged from both Williams and Castro. Due to these differences, Williams was largely silenced and eventually moved on to China despite his warm relationship with Castro. Once in China Williams focused his time articulating opposition to black participation in the Vietnam War. He felt fighting for their own empowerment was a more manly pursuit for black soldiers rather than blindly participating in military action that oppressed colored Vietnamese people under the guise of liberation. Throughout these diverse geographic locations Williams consistently used his definition of self as a father and citizen of the United States to advocate for expanded rights for black Americans. His masculinist rhetoric is the major focus of this thesis.
Advisors/Committee Members: Julio, Pino.
Subjects: African Americans; African American Studies; Black Studies; Caribbean Studies; Modern History
Keywords: Civil Rights Movement; Black Power; Robert F. Williams; Black Nationalism; Masculinity
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24.
Mizoguchi, So.
IMAGINARY DEMOCRATIZATION UNDER TURMOIL: EMBRACING THE REAL POLITICS AND BROADCASTING IDEALIZED DEMOCRATIC IMAGES OF THE JAPANESE EMPEROR, 1945-1947.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► Historiography currently evaluated the American Occupation of Japan as a success for…
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▼ Historiography currently evaluated the American Occupation of Japan as a success for the most part. Some scholars had a tendency to define the Occupation as an example of American benevolence that democratized the Japanese. When the Pacific War ended, the United States possessed overwhelming national power. Nevertheless, the American Occupation of Japan faced constrains and limits. Truman’s realistic way of thinking that the United States had to finish the Pacific War before the Soviets entered the Japanese mainland and that the American occupation policy should be as cost-effective as possible corresponded to Joseph Grew’s idea. Grew considered that the main purpose of the American Occupation would be ideologically to destroy militarism and establish democratic regime but the Truman administration could not ignore reality. Retention of the emperor, he believed, would shorten the occupation, thereby reducing domestic U.S. opposition to the continued deployment of U.S. troops. However, this gap between the reality and the ideal when it came to the emperor could not be easily offset. The majority of Americans called for punishing the emperor as a major war criminal. In addition, the China hands in the State Department always opposed an appeasement policy toward the emperor. While the emperor showed a cooperative attitude toward the American occupation, it was MacArthur who established the groundwork of the new institution of the emperor in postwar Japan. MacArthur adroitly remade the status of the emperor from sacred ruler of the Japanese to a symbol of the democratic Japan. He conducted these policies in the form of the emperor and the Japanese government’s initiative. Through this sophisticated political decision, the constitutional monarchy was established from the top. This did not mean, however, that the Japanese accepted the new emperor as a symbol of the democratic Japan without criticism. The Japanese soon started to consider the emperor and institution of the emperor in the new constitution. Their responses to the new emperor were diverse. Some people begged MacArthur to save the emperor. Some denied the existence of the emperor himself. Even though the people could change the institution in a short time, it was impossible to change the people’s minds. Debates about the future of the emperor ceased when the new constitution was enforced. It was only two years from the defeat of the war to enforcement of the new constitution, but the people’s struggle between democratic and traditional values continued.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary.
Subjects: History
Keywords: The Japanese Emperor, American Occupation, Democracy, Censorship
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25.
Mujic, Julie A.
Between Campus and War: Students, Patriotism, and Education at Midwestern Universities during the American Civil War.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2012, Kent State University
► The Midwest home front is one of the overlooked frontiers in American…
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▼ The Midwest home front is one of the overlooked frontiers in American Civil War scholarship. Historians have focused on the war-torn Confederate states, New England, and the dramatic border states, while largely ignoring the experiences of Midwesterners. Outside of studies of the Copperhead peace movement, many other significant aspects of the war experience in the Midwest have failed to garner sufficient scholarly attention. This dissertation addresses this gap in the historiography by examining the war years at the University of Michigan, the University of Wisconsin, and Indiana University. As the only three viable state universities in the Midwest prior to the war, these institutions offer a valuable lens through which to investigate how students understood and shaped their relationship with the nation’s conflict. Students at these three universities experienced the war in different ways, each affected by their surrounding political environment, enrollment struggles at their schools, and the ideological perspectives of their professors. University of Michigan students crafted a justification for remaining in school that defined their educations as equally patriotic as serving in the Union military. University of Wisconsin leaders forced students there to adjust to the admission of women during the war. Indiana’s students rebelled against a repressive faculty edict passed down early in the war and launched an uprising that mimicked the South’s complaints and demands. This clash of wills lasted more than two years and caused the dismissal of several students. At each university, students who remained in school pushed their liberties to the edge during the Civil War, but almost all backed off rather than risk losing their educational opportunities. Woven together in thematic chapters, this study reveals the turbulent nature of the home front in the Midwest. Students at these state universities actively engaged with the war intellectually to enhance their educations. In doing so, they reassured themselves and the public that their presence on the home front displayed the best qualities of an American man on the rise in the nineteenth century.
Advisors/Committee Members: Hudson, Leonne.
Subjects: History
Keywords: Indiana University; University of Michigan; University of Wisconsin; Midwest Home Front; Home front studies; American Civil War; Civil War Education
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26.
Nalmpantis, Kyriakos.
Time on the Mountain: The Office of Strategic Services in Axis-Occupied Greece, 1943-1944.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► Using the wartime reports produced by various field agents of the Office…
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▼ Using the wartime reports produced by various field agents of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), this dissertation attempts to rebut the currently hegemonic notion that the communist-led EAM/ELAS resistance organization was unprepared to militarily challenge the British and their anticommunist Greek clients for control of Greece after the German evacuation in late 1944. It also seeks to counter the related assumption that EAM/ELAS’s wide popularity after the end of the Axis occupation made a fight with the British unnecessary. The fact that conflict erupted anyway is cited by many historians sympathetic to EAM/ELAS as proof positive that EAM/ELAS’s supposedly hapless, naïve, and inexperienced leadership was manipulated into starting a revolution by the preternaturally clever British. The OSS reports from various parts of wartime Greece collected in this dissertation refute this supposition. By restoring historical agency to EAM/ELAS, this study also implicitly broaches the broader question of the origin of revolutionary violence. Despite the stated commitment of EAM/ELAS’s leaders to the concept of the Popular Front, the organization as a whole was responsible for conducting numerous ideological witch-hunts against its perceived domestic enemies during the war. In contrast, opposing the Axis appeared in many instances to be a secondary concern for many within the organization. Ultimately, this study argues that the beguiling utopian vision of a communist future for Greece created a kind of revolutionary imperative that dragged many members of EAM/ELAS, whether leaders or rank-and-file, along in its inexorable wake. Unfortunately for Greece, at the end of that path lay civil war.
Advisors/Committee Members: Papacosma, S. Victor.
Subjects: History
Keywords: Greece; resistance; civil war; occupation; axis; violence
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27.
Patadia, Ashley Elizabeth.
The Language of Empire and the Case of Indochina: Masculine Discourse in the Shaping and Subverting of Colonial Gender Hierarchies.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► Throughout the history of European imperialism, gender served to define relationships of…
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▼ Throughout the history of European imperialism, gender served to define relationships of power, allowing the colonizer to assert and to maintain a position of domination over the colonized. Despite this binary relationship between the colonizer and the colonized, colonial gender constructs were never static. This thesis seeks to extend the historiography surrounding the gendered language of empire by revealing the complexities, ambiguities, and debates inherent within the gendered identities of colonialism, particularly within the case of French Indochina. This thesis demonstrates how the gendered and racial identities of the colonial discourse, which positioned the masculine, heroic colonizer in opposition to the feminine, passive colonized and thus legitimated European supremacy, were both confirmed and contested by various groups and in different contexts from the World War II era through the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu. It illuminates differences in how distinct groups both perceived and manipulated colonial gender identities, but it also highlights continuities. Repeated masculine imagery reveals that though French colonizers in Indochina, French women writers who occupied an ambivalent position in the colonial hierarchy, and indigenous nationalists all had different and often opposing views on who should be included within the category of men, they often reaffirmed the definition of masculinity offered by the colonial discourse. The first chapter of this thesis explores the gendered imagery of the colonial discourse and the manner in which it served to construct and subsequently legitimate colonial gendered relationships of power. The second chapter examines the travel diary of Claudie Beaucarnot and Marguerite Duras's novel The Sea Wall in order to explore the paradoxical role occupied by female colonizers in Indochina and their subsequent ambiguous perspective on colonialism and the colonized people whom they dominated. The third chapter examines The Red Earth by Tran Tu Binh and the works of Ho Chi Minh to demonstrate how indigenous nationalists in Indochina appropriated gendered language to question the legitimacy of French rule and seek recognition as men. The fourth explores the varied perspective of Frenchmen and other Westerners to decolonization in Indochina in order to argue that as the battle for power in the colony intensified, so did the debate over gendered identities. Ultimately, this thesis argues that gendered identity within the context of the French Empire in Indochina was continually contested. It also demonstrates the manner in which gendered identities could be manipulated by different groups to both legitimate and challenge imperial authority.
Advisors/Committee Members: Pulju, Rebecca.
Subjects: History
Keywords: Gender; Empire; French Indochina; Ho Chi Minh; Masculinity; Colonial Discourse
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28.
Phillips, Matthew Todd.
The Millennium and the Madhouse: Institution and Intervention in Woodrow Wilson's Progressive Statecraft.
Degree: PhD, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2011, Kent State University
► Woodrow Wilson was a Christian anarchist who oftentimes used force and division…
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▼ Woodrow Wilson was a Christian anarchist who oftentimes used force and division as tools to help create transcendent national and global communities. This dissertation uses a combination of cultural and intellectual methodologies to crack Wilson’s riddle by first disentangling his progressive ideology and then dissecting the way in which he applied it, at a fundamental level, to his foreign and domestic foreign policymaking. By paying close attention to the writings, speeches, and lessons from his academic career, the dissertation first lays out the unique progressive ideology that Wilson constructed, a sort of management framework for society that would point mankind toward a future of practicable anarchy where people would be guided by the spirit of altruism rather than the compulsion of institutional law. From there, the dissertation then analyzes the way in which Wilson used his progressive ideology as a filter through which to interpret and act upon the major issues confronting him while in office—war, revolution, race, gender, class, etc. Throughout, the dissertation makes clear that Wilson understood the mechanisms of the world as operating holistically, seeing all the issues of his day as interconnected—from the League of Nations and war with Germany to the sterilization of the “feeble-minded” and even the creation of Mother’s Day. The organization of the dissertation, in turn, reflects Wilson’s view by providing an integrated explanation of his thought and policies, illustrating the nuanced way that he treated social theory, theology, race, gender, class, and disability. Ultimately, it explains how he rearticulated the way that American power would work, leading him to various Latin American interventions, a recalibration of American Empire (including the Philippines and Native America), regional and global institutionalism, war with Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany, interventions in newly Bolshevik Russia, and even early discussions with representatives from the Ethiopian Empire. While studies of Wilson and his policymaking are not exactly rare and most provide solid historiographical contributions, this dissertation’s employment of perception analysis provides a unique clarity and explanatory power that brings together seemingly disparate aspects of his years in office and resolves many of his seeming paradoxes. More broadly, it speaks to the connection between ideals and the use of force in U.S. foreign relations.
Advisors/Committee Members: Heiss, Mary Ann.
Subjects: American History; Cultural Anthropology; History; International Relations
Keywords: Woodrow Wilson; ideology; religion; race; gender; foreign relations; diplomacy; Wilhelm; suffrage; segregation; Philippines; Haiti; interventions; disability; eugenics; empire; imperialism; League of Nations; Latin America; Germany; World War I
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29.
Sidwell, Robert William.
Maintaining Order in the Midst of Chaos: Robert E. Lee's Usage of His Personal Staff.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2009, Kent State University
► In the mid-nineteenth century, prevailing military theory held that a commanding general…
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▼ In the mid-nineteenth century, prevailing military theory held that a commanding general was supposed to use his personal staff to deliver his orders and supervise their execution by his subordinates, thus facilitating his command and control over his army. Historians have usually portrayed Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s personal staff as inept or incompetent to perform these tasks. An in-depth examination of the historical record, however, reveals that despite its inexperience, Lee’s personal staff performed its assigned duties with skill and dedication. Lee, on the other hand, often did not use his personal staff officers as military theory dictated. While his usage of the staff improved as the war progressed, he never fully realized the Jominian ideal of using his staff as an extension of himself, to assert his will over the Army of Northern Virginia. Because of this failure, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia suffered from mistakes in coordination and communication which often led to battlefield reverses. This thesis does not suggest that better staff work alone would have changed the outcome of the Civil War; rather, it argues that if General Lee had better utilized his personal staff, the outcomes of several battles might have been different.
Advisors/Committee Members: Adams, Kevin.
Subjects: Military history
Keywords: military history; U. S. Civil War; Confederate army; Army of Northern Virginia; Lee, Robert E.; staff
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30.
Vincent, Stephanie M.
Flipping the Plate: Changing Perceptions of the Shenango China Company, 1945-1991.
Degree: MA, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History, 2010, Kent State University
► This study investigates the Shenango China company of New Castle, Pennsylvania in…
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▼ This study investigates the Shenango China company of New Castle, Pennsylvania in its years of decline prior to its 1991 shutdown. Shenango China began operations in 1901 and enjoyed steady success until a lawsuit brought the plant out of family hands into a series of outside corporate owners which led to its closure. Through historical investigation of the meanings of failure, both physical and psychological, this thesis outlines Shenango’s efforts to avoid their own demise in three ways. The first attempts are seen in the work of Shenango’s management within the plant. The company’s leadership actively promoted new products and designs to improve sales as well as renovations of the production facility and incentive promotions for salesmen, workers, and customers to keep up with a growing market of domestic and foreign competition. The dissemination and promotion of its public image through advertising make up another crucial aspect of Shenango’s efforts to avoid failure. Through examination of advertisements for its subsidiary Castleton China, Shenango’s overall failure is seen as a parallel to the decline in its public image as subsequent owners of the company reduced its outward appearance along with its autonomy. Finally, the viewpoints of Shenango’s workforce are explored to see the effects of failure on workforce morale in the plant’s declining years and how memory serves to create a narrative about the plant’s success and failure. In conclusion, the attempts of Shenango China to avoid failure are compared with the overall decline in industry in the region known as the Rust Belt and the social effects of deindustrialization on the population and quality of life in areas such as New Castle that have lost their industrial base since the 1970s and face uncertain futures going through the twenty-first century.
Advisors/Committee Members: Bindas, Kenneth.
Subjects: American History; Economic History; History; Modern History; Social Research
Keywords: failure; Shenango China; Castleton China; business history; social history; New Castle; Pennsylvania; Rust Belt; deindustrialization; oral history; advertising; company history
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