UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
Browse
6 results
Search Results
Item Hollow Ground: Industry, Extraction, and Ecology in the Floodplains of Early Maryland(2024) Hess, Sophie; Bell, Richard; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Hollow Ground: Industry, Extraction, and Ecology in the Floodplains of Early Maryland,” investigates histories of natural resource commodification, environment, and culture in the Patapsco River Valley, or “The Hollow” as it was called by its first European settlers. Beginning in the seventeenth century, English colonists seized the powerful currents of the Patapsco and the forests surrounding it, the ancestral floodplains of Piscataway and Susquehannock peoples, to build large-scale agricultural projects and industrial factories. These operations altered the environment, and as the valley grew into a center of extractive production, its communities experienced more frequent and severe floods which have continued into the present. This dissertation examines these entwined consequences of environmental capitalism and settler colonialism through a site-specific, multi-century lens, studying how humans, plants, and animals within various spaces of production—iron furnaces, wheat fields, grist and cotton mills, schools, prisons, local governments, and family units —experienced industrialization. It traces trace labor ecologies within communities of enslaved, convict, and low-wage workers, and the ways that soil exhaustion, flooding, and other environmental forces both threatened these enclaves and created opportunities for freedom. This work uses a microhistorical methodology to intervene in histories of energy transition, labor, and the Anthropocene. “Hollow Ground” argues that early American industrialism can help us to better understand how local desires for capital growth have accumulated into global processes of toxic emissions, and how the frontline issues faced by post-industrial communities today relate not only to global production but to local histories of extraction and the culture that perpetuates it. These same communities also hold critical histories of commoning, stewardship, labor resistance, and environmentalism that can help create a blueprint for survival in the face of the climate crisis.Item DYNAMIC REFLECTIONS OF CAPITALISM AND CLASS IDENTITY AT THE PENNS NECK COMMUNITY: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PERSISTENCE OF DUTCH-AMERICAN TRADITIONS ON FAMILY-OPERATED FARMS AT PENNS NECK, MERCER COUNTY, NEW JERSEY(2022) Andrews, Zachary Schaller; Palus, Matthew M.; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Recent archaeological investigations conducted at Penns Neck, a community originally established by the descendants of Dutch immigrants in northern Mercer County, New Jersey, revealed evidence of prosperous late-colonial and post-revolutionary family networks extending from the mid eighteenth to the twentieth century. The presence of domestic residences and family-owned farming operations at Penns Neck, including those at the Schenk-Jewell farmhouse and the Covenhoven-Silvers-Logan house, provide the opportunity to examine the development of late eighteenth and nineteenth century rural communities, particularly with Dutch-heritage backgrounds, and to help explore the nuanced link between traditions utilized by farming households and larger institutional and socio-economic systems that operated within these farming communities. The research question addressed by this thesis is: what were the traditional elements of cultural identity embraced by Dutch communities, especially at Penns Neck, and how were traditions changed and adapted to the pursuit of capitalistic enterprises and ideologies. Using a Marxist approach coupled with ideas from world systems theory, analysis of consumption patterns, landscape design, and class relations can peer into the economic and social realities transpiring at these sites exposing ties to larger governing, and invisible, networks of power expressed within the community. Patterns of consumption, wealth distribution, and labor relations at Penns Neck show an intermeshing of traditional values and ideas that both resist and sway to general socio-economic pressures and circumstances emerging across the region. Spatial and temporal analysis of artifacts, architectural forms, and landscape development show clear attempts by the capitalist farmers to naturalize/solidify their place within the social-economic order, in which symbols supporting capitalistic ideologies were ingrained in the landscape. This contrasts with earlier community members that used social institutions outside the farm to raise social and political capital, rather than solely economic capital, in the community to climb and hold positions of the social hierarchy. Despite the profound changes occurring on the landscape during the occupation of the site by the Schenck and Jewell families, some traditions remain, including the use of value systems and institutions, material culture by type, and symbols that reflect the family’s Dutch ethnic heritage. At large, the study follows Wurst and Mrozowski (2016) that capitalism in not a fixed entity, but a dynamic and multi-faceted totality that both shapes and conforms to the society that embraces it, even at the community level; the cultural expression of agrarian families on the Penns Neck landscape help depict and provide an example of the dynamic nature of capitalism from the eighteenth to the twentieth century and the nuanced experience that emerging capitalistic institutions and pursuits had on the day-to-day lives of the community members. The archaeological data collected for the analysis was largely acquired during the Phase II site evaluation of the Schenk-Jewell Farm Site (28ME408), Covenhoven-Silvers-Logan House Site (28ME410), and Lower Harrison Street Domestic Site (28ME413) by the Ottery Group during the summer and winter of 2021, which yielded an artifact assemblage dating as early as the mid-eighteenth century extending across multiple family generations up to the twentieth century. The archaeological investigation revealed evidence of the original location of the main houses and multiple structural features associated with the former outbuildings in the adjacent work yards. Historical documentation, including state land records, census and tax records, deeds and wills, maps and aerials, and historic photos, were analyzed, to contextualize the archaeological data and the family histories in a way that addresses the themes of this thesis. Archaeological sites, located in both Old World and New World contexts, that were identified during the literature review were compared in an attempt to identify Dutch-American cultural patterns present across the sites. While the analysis was successful in tracing certain elements of Dutch cultural continuity, that is in the occurrence of ceramic types and architectural forms, of the early families settling at Penns Neck, these traditions were challenged and refitted to accommodate the needs of emerging farming operations, which attempted to capitalize on the connection of Penns Neck into a wider regional economy during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Item “LABOR HAS A LONG MEMORY”: TRANSFORMATIONS IN CAPITALISM AND LABOR ORGANIZING IN CENTRAL APPALACHIA, 1977-2019(2019) Heim, David; Freund, David; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In 1989 the UMWA went on strike against Pittston Coal. In response to declining union power and corporate anti-unionism, the UMWA embraced community members and women as participants in its striking strategy. Although sometimes reluctant to do so, the union accepted the involvement of non-miners in non-violent demonstrations and civil disobedience, and was successful because of the strategic shift. The victory against Pittston Coal in 1989 suggests that scholars cannot rule industrial unions as sites of resistance to capitalism after 1982. The union’s acceptance of community organizing in 1989 also suggests a link between the strategies and success of the Pittston Strike and more recent organizing victories in West Virginia—the West Virginia Teachers’ Strikes. More recent labor militancy in Appalachia has also built off of legacies of resistance dating back to events like the Paint Creek Mine War and the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1912 and 1921.Item Respectable Holidays: The Archaeology of Capitalism and Identities at the Crosbyside Hotel (c. 1870-1902) and Wiawaka Holiday House (mid-1910s-1929), Lake George, New York(2017) Springate, Megan; Shackel, Paul A; Anthropology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The nineteenth century industrialization of America, the development of the middle class, anxiety about social belonging, and industrial capitalism are deeply intertwined. As America industrialized, people moved from rural communities, where people were known and support systems ran deep, to the cities to find work. Managers, who acted as proxies for owners, became so prevalent that they formed a new class. Middle class identity, rooted in a particular performance of respectability, whiteness, gender, distinguished its members from untrustworthy capitalist business owners and from the rough lives of the working classes. Middle class values became synonymous with American values. This essentialization of middle class respectability is a manifestation of capitalist ideology wielded to create new markets under consumer capitalism. Archaeological excavations at Wiawaka on Lake George, New York provided a material window on these processes. From 1857 to 1902, the Crosbyside Hotel served as a middle-class, mixed gender resort on the grounds of what is now Wiawaka. Vacationers performed middle class respectability and belonging while enjoying the benefits of nature. In 1903, Wiawaka moved in to the former Crosbyside, a single-gender, mixed-class moral reform vacation house for respectable working women and their middle-class benefactors. These women also performed middle class respectability and belonging while enjoying the benefits of nature. In both cases, people worked to make these vacations possible. This dissertation is one of a very few archaeological investigations of late nineteenth century hotels, and the first to examine women’s holiday houses. Using Third Space and performativity, artifacts from the Crosbyside and from the mid-1910s to 1929 associated with Wiawaka were used to explore interrelated facets of identity including gender, class, race, and respectability. Differences between how people negotiated identity in the era of industrial capitalism (Crosbyside) and consumer capitalism (Wiawaka) were identified, as were the ways that identities were shaped and confined by capitalism through powerful ideas of respectability. Also identified were material examples of the labor of leisure – of those who did the work that made vacations possible. Artifacts recovered make clear that it is, indeed, possible to see the labor of leisure in the archaeological record.Item Beyond Academic Capitalism: Innovation and Entrepreneurship as Institutional Ethos at a Public Research University(2014) McClure, Kevin Richard; Stromquist, Nelly P.; Education Policy, and Leadership; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The theory of academic capitalism provides a cogent explanation of the actors, organizations, and networks that initiated a shift in U.S. higher education from a "public good knowledge/learning regime" to an emerging "academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime." In the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime, the claims of entrepreneurs, administrators, and corporations--amidst amplified market forces--have come to supersede the claims of the public. Research thus far has not analyzed the process by which the multiple levels of higher education institutions adopt values and norms of the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime. Using case study methodology, this dissertation empirically examines the development and dissemination of an institutional ethos that, consistent with the theory of academic capitalism, has attributed great importance to innovation and entrepreneurship at a public doctoral/research-intensive university in the United States between 1998 and 2013. Specifically, I am interested in explaining why this ethos was initiated and supported by university leaders and how it has been translated into incentives for faculty members and academic opportunities for undergraduate students. Therefore, this dissertation traces academic capitalism as a multi-level process at one higher education institution. The findings demonstrate that meanings ascribed to innovation and entrepreneurship vary across the campus. However, there is a preponderance of language and examples derived from the for-profit sector. The individuals on campus instrumental in crafting the innovation and entrepreneurship ethos were central administrators, particularly presidents and provosts. The main motivations for supporting the ethos were generating revenue in the future, continuing a land-grant tradition of service to the state, and attempting to keep pace with institutional peers and garner prestige. Efforts to translate the ethos into incentives for faculty have been limited in scope and mainly cater to disciplines in sciences, engineering, and technology. However, there is clearly emphasis placed on developing the entrepreneurial mindset in undergraduate students. The implications of these incentives and academic opportunities are analyzed, suggesting possible outcomes of innovation and entrepreneurship as institutional ethos.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.