Theses and Dissertations from UMD

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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 give thesis/dissertation in DRUM

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    THE CULTURAL LANDSCAPE OF BALTIMORE'S 19TH-CENTURY WORKING CLASS STONEWARE POTTERS
    (2009) Kille, John Elliot; Sies, Mary C.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the world of ceramics, too often there is a focus on the "greatness" or "uniqueness" of potters. Traditional approaches involving decorative arts tend to favor rarity or aesthetic qualities of the wares they produced, while archaeological studies often focus on systematic categorizations or classifications of recovered ceramics, with little in the way of interpretation from a humanistic point of view. With regard to Baltimore's 19th-century stoneware potters, portions of their history or narrow related aspects have been studied, but there has been no attempt made to examine the birth, life, and death of an industry that lasted for a century. In order to better understand the vernacular or ordinary existence of these skilled potters a comprehensive study was undertaken to document the dynamic and changing cultural landscape to which they belonged. In addition, the experiences and contributions of these artisans are also placed within the perspective of working class labor history. This research project is concerned with the following three central questions. How did Baltimore's 19th-century stoneware industry shape the city's social, physical, and natural environment? How did the social, physical, and natural environment shape Baltimore's stoneware industry? What key historical circumstances such as industrialization, new technologies, and modern manufacturing methods influenced these dynamic relationships? The framing of research and interrogation of evidence involved a systematic, interdisciplinary cultural landscapes model that creates a three way relationship between humans, artifacts (the built environment), and the natural environment. A systematic social history methodology was also used to recover accessible types of data involving the social/economic and cultural dimensions of urban places, including artifactual evidence. This study reveals a cultural landscape shaped by enduring cultural traditions, a superior transportation system for marketing wares, a shared and restricted urban environment involving pollution and the threat of fire, and industrialization leading to technological advancements in food preservation and storage.
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    Odyssey of an Archives: What the History of the Gordon W. Prange Collection of Japanese Materials Teaches Us About Libraries, Censorship, and Keeping the Past Alive
    (2007-05-07) Snyder, Sara Christine; Mayo, Marlene; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In 1949, a professor of German history named Gordon W. Prange obtained a set of rare publications and censorship documents pertaining to the Allied Occupation of Japan. He shipped these materials to the University of Maryland, where for the next fifty years a parade of faculty and staff alternately neglected, protected, exploited, and cherished them. This Master's thesis traces that history, paralleling the rising fame of the Prange Collection with developments in East Asian Studies and Prange's interest in Pearl Harbor. It concludes with a discussion of applied concepts in archival science, arguing that the relatively late development of the American archival discipline coupled with the complicated format of Prange Collection materials meant that the archival qualities of the Collection took many years to recognize. Sources include original oral history interviews and archival research. This thesis contributes to the interdisciplinary field of archival history.
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    Mental Illness in Maryland: Public Perception, Discourse, and Treatment, from the Colonial Period to 1964
    (2006-05-01) Schoeberlein, Robert William; Mintz, Lawrence E.; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    This dissertation is an overview of the public perception of, discourse concerning, and treatment of Maryland's mentally ill citizens from the Colonial Period to 1964. The present day view of the mentally ill in the early colony is, at best, fragmentary. The numbers of such Marylanders were small and little information exists to frame a picture of what constituted their daily life or the level of care until about 1785. The decision to confine individuals at home or at an institution entered public discourse. Certain families entrusted their relatives to hospitals. Mentally ill people constituted a highly visible presence during the first half of the nineteenth century. A vacillating public interest and tepid financial support for their cause, however, prevented access to higher quality care for the majority. County almshouses and jails continued to house the "pauper insane" in a regressive manner. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the rights and well-being of mentally ill citizens came to public notice. The possibility of a sane individual being unjustly confined within a mental hospital fired the public imagination. Court cases and patient exposés persuaded legislators that some laws and formalized state oversight of institutions were required. The first three decades of the twentieth century marked an epoch of progress. A reform campaign resulted in the transfer of all patients from the county almshouses into modern, newly-constructed state mental hospitals. The insular settings, however, ultimately made them less visible. The Great Depression and Second World War era induced shortages that adversely affected state hospital patients. Many such patients languished in sub-standard conditions. A troubling 1949 photographic exposé ultimately pressured state officials to bring system-wide improvements. The 1950s ushered in a new era for Maryland's mentally ill citizens. The advent of psychotropic drugs allowed patients to leave the hospitals. Programs to assist in the transition back into the community were developed by the State and public advocates. Members of a once faceless, inarticulate group came to be perceived as individuals who could contribute to and enrich the life of our communities.
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    Abigail Adams
    (2004-05-04) Lloyd, Erin Marie; Ridgway, Whitman; History
    Abigail Adams was the key to the success of her husband's life and career. By studying the roles she played in her adult life, as a mother, a farm manager, a political advisor, a first lady, and a politician, one will see that Abigail Adams was more than a wife and mother. She was a multifaceted woman, who was the integral part of major success in President John Adams career.
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    A Case Study in the Formation of a Super-Rabbi: The Early Years of Rabbi Ezekiel Landau, 1713-1754
    (2004-04-28) Katz, David; Cooperman, Bernard; History
    The eighteenth century is usually thought of as the dawn of modernity in Jewish history. While this is true, it was also a time when pre-modern Jewish culture flourished and dominated Jewish life throughout Central and Eastern Europe. This culture was religious in nature, deriving its self-image, institutions, and norms primarily from Talmudic and post-talmudic teachings and literature. The most important group in this culture was the intellectual class, the rabbinic scholars. Any student of rabbinic literature, particularly one who mastered important Talmudic and post-talmudic texts, was a rabbinic scholar, even if he did not occupy a pulpit or hold official office. However, by the seventeenth century, an official and professional rabbinate had come into being throughout Ashkenazic Jewry. This rabbinate consisted of rabbinic scholars contractually employed by kehilot, official autonomous Jewish communities, in various offices. The highest office was that of communal rabbi or chief rabbi. The communal rabbi was the official religious leader, the guide and legal authority, of the community. Although lay elites held significant and often predominant power, the communal rabbinate was a position of much power and influence, particularly when it was held by a man of scholarly eminence and strong personality. Communal rabbis who gained reputation as men of preeminent scholarship and piety attained a unique authority that transcended the bounds of their communities and made them the unofficial but real highest religious figures in the Ashkenazic world. These "super-rabbis" were called Gedolim, great ones." In spite of its importance in pre-modern Jewish history, the rabbinate as a group, particularly the communal rabbinate and the Gedolim, has not received adequate scholarly attention. The rabbinate had an intellectual, professional, and social world of its own. Historians cannot afford to ignore this phenomenon. My study of the early career of Ezekiel Landau (1713-1793), addresses these issues. Landau was one of the greatest communal rabbis and Gedolim of the premodern era, A preeminent public figure of the eighteenth century, Landau spent his life within the world of the rabbinate and reached the highest rungs of fame and achievement. His was a model rabbinic career. A study of his life reveals how one became a scholar, a communal rabbi, and finally a Gadol. Towards the end of his life, Landau had to respond to the unprecedented challenges of incipient modernity, which threatened his world. His success and lack of success in meeting these challenges reveals the power as well as the limitations of the premodern communal rabbinate.