History Theses and Dissertations
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Item "THIS ROT SPREADS LIKE AN EPIDEMIC" POLICING ADOLESCENT FEMALE SEXUALITY IN ICELAND DURING WORLD WAR II(2000) Baldursdottir, Bara; Gullickson, Gay L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The thesis examines events, perspectives and prevailing discourses that led to the criminalization of adolescent female sexuality in Iceland during World War II. Provisionary law was passed that became the foundation to submit young women to the mercy of special Juvenile Court, which tried girls for real or suspected sexual relationships with British and American servicemen, and sentenced them to rural homes or to a reformatory. Through the critical theory of Nira Juval-Davis, I have demonstrated that in the national discourse, Icelandic women who dated the foreign troops, stepped over the line that signified the nation 's boundaries and failed to become the bearers of the collectivity's identity. Their lack of Icelandicness turned them into the threatening "other". They were placed on the margin of society, as legal actions were taken to protect and police their sexuality.Item SAMUEL MORTON, JOSIAH NOTT, AND THE ORIGINS OF THE `AMERICAN SCHOOL': AUTHORITY, GENIUS, AND SYSTEMS-BUILDING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY ETHNOLOGY(2009) Donohue, Christopher R.; Ridgway, Whitman H.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis traces the origin and development of the "American School" of ethnology from the natural historical debate over the nature of hybridity and the definition of species between the naturalist John Bachman and the ethnologist Samuel George Morton to the posthumous management of Samuel Morton's reputation and authority by the physician and ethnologist Josiah Nott and his collaborators in Types of Mankind for the purposes of establishing themselves as ethnological authorities in their own right.Item Claiming India: French scholars and the preoccupation with India during the nineteenth century(2009) Mohan, Jyoti; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My dissertation examines the image of India which was created by French academics during the nineteenth century. This image of India was distinct from the British image of India as a land of oppressed masses ruled by Oriental despots. The French image of India relied on spiritual and religious aspects of India, with particular emphasis on the antiquity and Aryan heritage of Indian culture. the difference in these images was largely due to the different intellectual and political traditions of Britain and France, but also reflected Anglo-French national and colonial rivalry as well as France's subordinate (subaltern) colonial position in India. I have looked at French writings on India from the religious writings of early modern missionaries to the secular writing of early twentieth century French academics. I have also examined the interest that French scholars in diverse intellectual fields like philology, anthropology, history and religion had in learning and writing about India during the nineteenth century. My conclusion is that French scholars at the end of the nineteenth century defined India primarily in terms of race, caste and Hinduism.Item The Cartooned Revolution: Images and the Revolutionary Citizen in Cuba, 1959-1963(2009) Someillan, Yamile Regalado; Williams, Daryle; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document: THE CARTOONED REVOLUTION: IMAGES AND THE REVOLUTIONARY CITIZEN IN CUBA, 1959-1963 Yamile Regalado Someillan, Ph.D., 2009 Directed By: Associate Professor, Daryle Williams, Department of History "The Cartooned Revolution: Imagery and Political Culture in Cuba, 1959-1963" traces the relationship between cartooning and citizenship in the early phases of the Cuban Revolution. Through a broad analysis of cartoons and advertisements produced in the Havana press between January 1959 and December 1963, this study analyzes the interplay of state-regulated visual communication that fueled cultural transformation and defined a new revolutionary citizenry. A close reading of an "imagined narrative," drawn by the new revolutionary press and consumed by Havana readers, I argue, casts a new light on the fundamental changes in political culture and society that took place in Cuba following January 1, 1959. My choice to analyze cartoons, advertisements as well as the institutions and personalities responsible for their production, draws upon the powerful interplay of revolutionary vision, reform, politics, and ideology within the imagined narrative. The institutional and functional conversion of these forms of revolutionary imagery into official propaganda occurred as a result of a deconstruction of the pre-revolutionary press and an institutional takeover and re-staffing of newspaper offices and printing presses; the deregulation of the cartooning profession; and the reorganization of pre-revolutionary advertising enterprises into a government-controlled, central clearinghouse. Initially, images portrayed the young Castro state as champion of reform within a longer tradition of Cuban liberalism. But in short time, the resistance of holdovers from the deposed Batista political class in combination with the souring of relations with the United States, engendered an emergent revolutionary visual culture. The early forms of its new visuality were exemplified in images cultivating the bearded rebel. As it matured, especially in visual communication associated with the Literacy Campaign of 1961 and the Socialist Emulation Campaign of 1962-63, the rebel image stood alongside a cast of stock characters representative of the new political regime. If, on the one hand, revolutionary imagery projected a dangerous political landscape filled with subversive plots and looming "enemies of the people," it also gave visual clues to the new forms of political belonging. Cartoons and advertisements communicated vital policies and campaigns in which Cubans with varying levels of commitment to the Revolution might be projected into an imagined, yet official revolutionary narrative. As Cubans increased their level of integration into revolutionary society, they began to redefine themselves into a more ideologically sophisticated citizenry both inside and outside of the image world.Item "They're Bringing Home Japanese Wives": Japanese War Brides in the Postwar Era(2009) Tudico, Angela; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"'They're Bringing Home Japanese Wives': Japanese War Brides in the Postwar Era" explores the immigration of Japanese war brides to the U.S. following World War II and why the United States so swiftly and dramatically reversed its views toward immigration from Japan following the war; the degree to which Americans, both those of Japanese descent and those of other heritages, accepted this influx of newcomers; and the lived experiences of these immigrant women during their first decade in America. Drawing on sources that range from government documents to interviews with war brides conducted in the 1950s, I argue that postwar constructions of racialized gender eased the acceptance of these women into American society. However, sometimes the degree of acceptance was contingent on the race of the war bride's husband to such a degree that one might speak of racial or ethnic coverture in the mid-20th Century U.S.Item Understanding the Class Enemy: Foreign Policy Expertise in East Germany(2009) Scala, Stephen J.; Herf, Jeffrey; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study makes use of reports, resolutions, analyses, and other internal documents as well as oral history interviews in order to detail the construction, functioning, and output of foreign policy expertise in the GDR. Subordination to the practical needs and political-ideological requirements of the leadership of the ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) represented the defining feature of East German foreign policy expertise. Yet its full politicization, which was essentially complete by the late 1960s as the SED succeeded in establishing a comprehensive system of foreign policy expertise tailored to meet its particular vision, entailed the maintenance of a degree of professional and intellectual autonomy--the GDR's Aussenpolitiker, or foreign policy professionals, were expected not only to comply with the political and ideological postulates espoused by the party leadership but also to deliver sound, specialist analysis of international relations. The persistent tension between these contrasting objectives was directly reflected in the output of East German experts, who in the conditions of diplomatic isolation prevailing until the early 1970s formulated a GDR-specific conception of international relations that fused clear identification of East Germany's realpolitical interests with the Marxist-Leninist notion of foreign policy as a form of class struggle. Following foreign policy normalization in the first half of the 1970s, however, increasing specialization and professionalization matched with a dramatic increase in East German experts' exposure to the capitalist West, including integration into a transnational network of foreign policy specialists, allowed the specialist element of expertise to gain preponderance over the dogmatic-ideological element. The great challenge to the international position of the Soviet Bloc and the GDR represented by the "second Cold War" in the first half of the 1980s then prompted East German experts to abandon simplistic adherence to Marxist-Leninist foreign policy dogma in favor of prioritization of the concrete realpolitical interests of the GDR. In the process, the GDR's experts formulated a body of non-dogmatic foreign policy thought that mirrored the Soviet New Thinking without taking on its comprehensiveness or overt rejection of inherited postulates.Item "Dear Little Living Arguments": Orphans and Other Poor Children, Their Families and Orphanages, Baltimore and Liverpool, 1840-1910(2009) Wilson, Marcy Kay; Gullickson, Gay; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Orphanages in the United States and England cared for thousands of children between the early decades of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. These institutions were central to local provisions for the poor during a time period in which state and government poor relief remained limited. Though a small group of studies have focused on American orphan asylums and even fewer works have evaluated English orphanages, no effort has of yet been made to engage in a comparative analysis of the institutions that cared for so many children in both countries. Through analysis of Protestant orphan asylum registers, correspondence, committee minutes, and annual reports, this dissertation investigates the local provisions made for poor children in Baltimore, Maryland and Liverpool, England, between 1840 and 1910, examines the socio-economic realities of the families these children came from, the ways in which poor children in both cities were affected by the needs of their families and the aid available to them, and the similarities and differences that existed between these orphanages and their residents. This dissertation argues that there were significant differences between orphanage inhabitants in both cities when it came to parental survival and to who children ended up with after their residence in these institutions, but that the orphanages were remarkably alike, providing the poor children in their care with similar educational, religious and vocational training that the middle-class reformers who ran these institutions understood as gender and class appropriate. This study reveals a prolonged commitment on the part of orphanage administrators in both cities to the use of indenture as a dismissal method, and suggests as well the existence of a shared trans-Atlantic understanding of poor children and their labor when it came to these asylum officials.Item Second-Wave Feminism in the American South, 1965-1980(2009) Keane, Katarina; Rowland, Leslie S.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In the late 1960s and 1970s, second-wave feminism transformed American society, creating new legal rights for women, remaking gender roles, and altering women's position in the economy. Although largely omitted from popular and scholarly accounts, Southern women played critical roles in the second wave. At the grassroots, they engaged in a wide array of feminist activism, from establishing credit unions to opening health clinics, from suing discriminatory employers to opening rape crisis centers, from challenging sterilization abuse to building lesbian community, and from setting up feminist businesses to organizing domestic workers. Their initiatives included efforts to place women in non-traditional jobs, campaigns for political office, and court cases that established reproductive freedom and mandated equal pay. In restoring Southern women to the history of second-wave feminism, the dissertation suggests that the movement was far more widespread than has previously been acknowledged. While drawing on evidence from throughout the South, the dissertation devotes particularly close attention to Atlanta, Georgia, Chapel Hill-Durham, North Carolina, and Austin and Dallas, Texas, all places where feminists were especially active and the sources are especially rich. It demonstrates that Southern women of widely varying backgrounds engaged in feminist activism, but only rarely in organizations that crossed lines of race and class. More commonly, they mobilized in coalitions that preserved separate identities and agendas while addressing common grievances. The women's movement in the South may thus be characterized as multiple movements that overlapped at times, if only in limited ways, and moved along parallel tracks at others. Southern feminists confronted daunting obstacles, including their region's long history of racial injustice, social and economic conditions that lagged behind those of the rest of the nation, a weak welfare state, and entrenched political conservatism. The need to circumvent hostile state and local authorities led some Southern feminists to turn to the federal courts as a more promising arena. In so doing, they launched a number of landmark legal cases that transformed the lives of all American women. Ironically, feminists in the most conservative region of the nation became the vanguard of the women's movement.Item "America was Promises": The Ideology of Equal Opportunity, 1877-1905(2009) Goldstene, Claire; Gerstle, Gary; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"`America was Promises': The Ideology of Equal Opportunity, 1877-1905" seeks to untangle one of the enduring ideas in American history--equal economic opportunity--by exploring the varied discourses about its meaning during the upheavals caused by the corporate consolidation of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In so doing, a new framework is proposed through which to comprehend the social and political disruptions wrought by the transition from an entrepreneurial to a corporate society. This framework centers on a series of tensions that have permeated the idea of opportunity in the American context. As an expression of capitalism, the ideology of equal opportunity historically occupies conflicted terrain as it endeavors to promote upward mobility by permitting more people to participate in the economic sphere and emphasizing merit over inherited wealth, while it concurrently acts as a mechanism to maintain economic inequality. This tension allowed the rhetoric of opportunity to animate social dissent among rural and urban workers--the origins of Progressive reform--even as it simultaneously served efforts by business elites to temper this dissent. The dissertation examines the discourses about the ideology of equal opportunity of prominent figures and groups located along a spectrum of political belief. Some grounded opportunity in land ownership (Booker T. Washington); others defined it as control of one's own labor (Knights of Labor); while others connected opportunity to increased leisure and consumption (Samuel Gompers and business elites). As this occurred, the site of opportunity shifted away from entrepreneurship toward competition for advancement and investment within the corporation. Most social activists and reformers stressed the conditions necessary for equal opportunity to thrive. They thus reinforced assumptions about the benefits of economic competition and differentially rewarding individuals, even as they objected to the results of that system. And, certainly, some of these arguments led to progressive changes. But because the necessary outcome of equal opportunity was an inequality of economic result, to move beyond the boundaries of equal opportunity ideology demanded a rare willingness (Edward Bellamy) to question the system of economic competition itself.Item "Beans are Bullets" and "Of Course I Can!" Exhibiting War-Era Posters from the Collection of the National Agriculture Library(2009) Bernat, Cory A.; Freund, David M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)An exhibit of food and agriculture posters in the Special Collection of the National Agriculture Library will display posters from World Wars I and II side by side. What did these messages look like and how did they change over time? Public servants produced the earlier WWI posters to reflect "reason-why" approaches to mass communication. During WWII, the Advertising Council's business-minded admen produced posters with their techniques for modern advertising and mass persuasion. Poster text shortened, the tone lightened and images were more frequent and splashier. This collection of posters bears witness to the professionalization and rising influence of the advertising industry in the 1920s and 30s, and reveals the agendas of the creators and their assumptions about homefront populations. The posters raise questions about the sources and ambitions of government sponsored messages designed to encourage cooperation with war efforts and modify homefront behavior.