Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1993, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects: History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, History

This study represents a historical analysis of Erie Proving Ground in LaCarne, Ohio, from its inception until the end of World War II. From its roots as a small proofing facility attached to Camp Perry, it grew to become one of the most important Ordnance facilities in the country. It was responsible for the testing and shipping of over 70% of the mobile artillery and armament used by the United States and its Allies under Lend-Lease. This work uses newly uncovered primary sources and documentation from the Ordnance Department to reveal the astounding output achieved at this location during the critical war period. Despite constant personnel attrition and a facility expansion that swelled the site from 44 buildings in 1918 to 374 structures by 1943, Erie Proving Ground proofed and shipped artillery worth an estimated two million dollars each day, delivering them to battlefields in every theatre of the war. These documents show that this output was achieved because of the complete integration of the local community, Ordnance officials, and employees into the operational objectives of Erie Proving Ground. When selective service and volunteer enlistment winnowed the pool of experienced workers, women, African Americans, and former prisoners of war were brought in to fill the employment rolls, allowing them to achieve “maximum efficiency.” The management at this site developed habits of cooperation with the local community which resulted in the creation of roads, bridges, and housing that could accommodate the needs of Erie Proving Ground and its employees. They also used targeted strategies, propaganda, and occasional falsehoods to motivate and retain this diverse workforce. This work adds to the historiography of the Homefront during World War II, the role of women, African Americans, and prisoners of war in defense work during this era, and the impact of military installations on local communities. It also uncovers the importance of a facility whose impact on (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Benjamin Greene Ph.D (Committee Chair); Rebecca Mancuso Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: History; World History

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, History

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Black Americans were restrained from enjoying democratic principles. Black American editorials combatted these discriminations by exaggerating France as an egalitarian nation that provided principles of equality, liberty and fraternity to its colonial subjects. Often, Black journalists contrasted the experiences of Africans in the French army with Black Americans' inequalities. While Great Britain and Germany willingly deployed African troops in Africa, they refused to use Africans on the European continent, but France was different. The incorporation of French Africans into the French army compensated for its declining birth rate at World War I's outbreak by providing essential manpower for the war effort. As a result, journalists displayed France as appearing to provide egalitarian principles to its African soldiers. However, it was not to show the appearance of social advancement but rather to create a haze of social equality that hid France's cultural and biological racism. This paper addresses how the Black press interpreted the incorporation of French African colonial subjects into the French army in 1914 - 1915 and how these perceptions redefined American racism, equality, white supremacy, and American democracy. Black journalists used the appearance of social advancement for French Africans serving in the French army to initially display the differences between French and American society. As a result, editors noted the shifting mentality of Black American communities from various parts of the United States and how it impacted their perception of American society. Journalists were biased in their approach, understanding that they influenced the reader's interpretation through written or visual imagery by shaping how Black Americans interpreted the world around them. As the war raged on, they saw the war as an opportunity to criticize American democracy, demonstrate the inequalities experienced within a "white" Ame (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Douglas Forsyth PhD (Advisor); Nicole Jackson PhD (Committee Member); Richard Fogarty PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: African Americans; African History; American History; European History; History; Military History; Modern History

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2005, English

This dissertation examines both canonized and marginalized American World War I novels within the context of socio-political debates over shifting class, gender, and race relations. The study contends that American literary representations of the Great War are shaped less by universal insights into modern society's self-destructiveness than by concerted and often highly conflicted efforts to fashion class-, gender-, and race-specific experiences of industrial warfare in ways that create, stabilize, or heighten particular group identities. In moving beyond the customary focus on ironic war representations, Embattled Homefronts endeavors to show that the representational and ideological battles fought within the diverse body of American World War I literature not only shed light on the emergence of powerful identity-political concepts such as the "New Liberal," the "New Proletariat," the "New Woman, and the "New Negro," but also speak to the reappearance of utopian, communitarian, and social protest fictions in the early 1930s. Chapter two investigates how John Dos Passos's Three Soldiers and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms adapt elements of the protest novel so as to revalidate (neo)romantic ideas of bourgeois individualism vis-a-vis the presumed failures of the progressive movement. Chapter three scrutinizes the ways in which two Proletarian war novels-Upton Sinclair's Jimmie Higgins and William Cunningham's The Green Corn Rebellion-utilize the Bildungsroman genre in an attempt to commemorate the battles fought by and within the American laboring classes for revolutionary purposes. Chapter four investigates how Dorothy Canfield Fisher' Home Fires in France and Gertrude Atherton's The White Morning heighten and exploit war-induced notions of an "apotheosis of femaleness" by combining older motifs of female-centered communities with images of the emergent "New Woman." Lastly, taking a close look at Sarah Lee Brown Fleming's Hope's Highway and Walter F. White's T (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Rodrigo Lazo (Advisor) Subjects: Literature, American