Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Broadcasting Birth Control: Family Planning and Mass Media, 1914-1984(2010) Parry, Manon; Michel, Sonya; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The history of the birth control movement in the United States is traditionally told through accounts of the leaders and organizations that campaigned to legalize the distribution of contraception. Only recently have historians begun to examine the "cultural work" of printed media including newspapers, magazines, and even novels in fostering support for the cause. This dissertation builds on this scholarship, to examine the films and radio and television broadcasts developed by birth control advocates, and the communications experts they increasingly turned to for guidance, over the course of the twentieth century. As advocates tried to mimic the efforts of commercial advertisers to "sell" health-related behaviors to a wide audience, they crafted the new academic specialty of health communication. I argue that mass media was central to the campaign to transform the private subject of fertility control into one fit for public discussion in the United States. Moreover, the international family planning movement played an instrumental role in establishing and expanding health communication in the promotion of contraception around the globe. As they negotiated for access to cinema and radio platforms from which to promote their cause, birth control advocates toned down their feminist rhetoric of sexual liberation. After the legalization of contraception, censorship and broadcasting conventions affecting educational messages further diluted the kinds of representations they could promote over the radio and on the nation's television sets. As commercial media became increasingly explicit in the 1960s and `70s, family planning promoters conversely expunged sex from their broadcasts for domestic and foreign audiences. In this way, media helped to shape the messages of the movement. Seeking greater creative freedom, some of the family planning community began to cultivate informal partnerships with entertainment media producers, perfecting a strategy abroad that would be brought home to the U.S. The Mexican "education-entertainment" approach has since become the most influential model of family planning communication, replicated around the world in efforts to reintroduce the context of sex and relationships to the promotion of contraceptive use. This history is thus a transnational narrative of the dissemination of messages and the technologies and techniques that delivered them.Item A DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH: THE AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE'S CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN LEGION IN THE 1950s(2010) Hoefer, Peter Darr; Gilbert, James B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ABSTRACT Title of Document: A DAVID AGAINST GOLIATH: THE AMERICAN VETERANS COMMITTEE'S CHALLENGE TO THE AMERICAN LEGION IN THE 1950s Peter D. Hoefer, Ph.D. 2010 Directed By: Professor James B. Gilbert, Department of History This study joins a nascent body of scholarship that seeks to enrich and complicate understanding of 1950s political culture. While this newer scholarship acknowledges conservative dominance, it has also uncovered considerable evidence that the period was far more politically diverse and contested. This study demonstrates that there was no single, unitary conservative Americanism or patriotism in the fifties decade. Instead, the American Veterans Committee, despite suffering heavy membership losses after purging the Communist Party from its ranks in the late 1940s, survived, regrouped and persistently challenged the hegemonic conservative American Legion, (the nation's largest veterans' organization) throughout the 1950s. Using a liberal version of what I term Cold War Americanism, the AVC attempted to defend and advance the New Deal legacy. The Legion, however, using a conservative version of anti-Communist discourse, joined with its counterparts in the postwar Right to oppose the interventionist liberal state. I explore the role of these contending languages in shaping 1950s political culture by analyzing how these two groups used Cold War Americanism to advance their respective interest concerning two of the period's most important domestic issues: the restriction on civil liberties, and the developing struggle for African-American civil rights. This study demonstrates that within the community of organized veterans, the American Legion was not the only voice heard in the 1950s. Any account of this period that fails to acknowledge the presence of the AVC would be incomplete and inaccurate.Item The Tort Revolution: Product Liability and the Rule of Courts(2010) Drake, Ian J.; Belz, Herman J; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is a history of the changes in tort law, specifically in products liability law, from the fault-based negligence standard to the no-fault strict liability standard. It covers a period from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth century. The historical questions this dissertation seeks to answer are i) what caused the change from negligence to strict liability, ii) who were the historical actors responsible for this change, iii) what was the political character of this change, and iv) what were the political consequences of this change. This dissertation reveals that the revolutionary expansion in product liability law in the states in the 1960s was the product of the Progressive ideologies of state court judges. During the Progressive Era, American legal education responded and adapted to the political climate of the wider society by adopting a new philosophical disposition regarding how the courts should address civil wrongs. The political and ideological responses to the industrialization of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century resulted in legal academics and practitioners advocating new ideologically oriented theories about how law does and should affect citizens. These theories, known as sociological jurisprudence and legal realism, became popular in American law schools. The law students of the 1920s became the judges and legal academics of the 1950s and 1960s. In the latter decades, Progressive state court judges instituted dramatic, revolutionary changes in the area of law known as torts, particularly products liability law. Products liability law was changed from a fault-based system to an insurance or no-fault system. These politically motivated changes in the courts had the unintended consequence of making a theretofore non-political issue into an inherently political issue, subjecting tort law to the pluralism of the American political system at the state and federal levels. Accordingly, this dissertation contributes to our understanding of the process of legal change, and explores the methods by which social and political changes filter into court decisions.Item "Let the People Have a Victory": The Politics of Transportation in Philadelphia, 1946-1984(2010) Kobrick, Jacob Ian; Muncy, Robyn L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Urban transportation planning in the United States underwent important changes in the decades after World War II. In the immediate postwar period, federal highway engineers in the Bureau of Public Roads dominated the decision-making process, creating a planning regime that focused almost entirely on the building of modern expressways to relieve traffic congestion. In the 1960s, however, local opposition to expressway construction emerged in cities across the nation, reflecting growing discontent with what many citizens perceived to be a closed planning process that resulted in the destruction of urban neighborhoods, environmental degradation, and inadequate attention paid to alternative modes of transportation. Local freeway protestors found allies in the new U.S. Department of Transportation, which moved in the mid-1960s to absorb the Bureau of Public Roads and support legislation promoting a planning process more open to local input as well as a greater emphasis on federal aid for urban mass transportation. The changing culture of transportation planning produced a series of freeway revolts, resulting in the cancellation or modification of interstate highway projects, in major American cities. Changes in transportation planning played out differently in every city, however. This dissertation examines controversies over Philadelphia's major expressway projects - the Schuylkill Expressway, the Delaware Expressway, and the never-built Crosstown Expressway, in addition to major mass transit developments such as the city's subsidization of the commuter railroads, the creation of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, and the building of a railroad tunnel known as the Center City Commuter Connection, in order to trace the evolution of the city's transportation politics between 1946 and 1984. Significantly, Philadelphia's own freeway revolt succeeded in eliminating the proposed Crosstown Expressway, which would have created a daunting racial barrier while decimating several low-income African American neighborhoods. The Crosstown Expressway revolt, however, failed to change the overall trajectory of Philadelphia's transportation planning politics, which continued to be dominated by an exceptionally strong alliance between City Hall and large business interests. Philadelphia's turn to mass transit in the 1970s, in contrast to those of other cities, failed to redistribute transportation resources to its low-income residents, mainly because the city chose to devote a massive percentage of its federal funding to the Center City Commuter Connection, a downtown rail tunnel designed to serve approximately 8% of the region's commuters. The prioritization of a rail system serving predominantly affluent white suburbanites left Philadelphia's lower-income population saddled with a crumbling urban mass transit system, demonstrating that, despite a more open planning process and a greater emphasis on mass transportation, fundamental inequalities persisted.Item How The Waltz Has Won: Towards A Waltz Aesthetic(2010) Martin, Christopher Tremewan; Carpenter, Faedra C; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the development of ballroom dancing aesthetics between 1860 and 1915, focusing on the appropriation, neutralization, and commodification of African American somatic performance by various European American agents/actors. The study suggests that the waltz, a dance form that was in decline at the beginning of the twentieth century, became a vital component of European American strategies to safely encapsulate certain elements of African American aesthetics while eliminating others. This negotiation of African American aesthetics into European American performance is presented as a part of a broader discourse concerned with the maintenance of white hegemony during this period. The work is grounded in the field theory best articulated by Pierre Bourdieu, and the critical race theories of Michal Omi and Howard Winant. From Bourdieu the work draws upon three key terms: habitus, codes of perception, and hexis. Taken together these terms provide the structure for contextualizing the choices made by dancers, dancing teachers, and social reformers who were concerned with modifying ballroom dance forms that had been influenced by African American aesthetics. Omi and Winant's work provide a matrix for understanding the choices of these diverse individuals and organizations as a racial project embedded in a discourse of white hegemony that, even at its most progressive, sought to maintain the hegemony of white, European American culture.Item Suitcase Diplomacy: The Role of Travel in Sino-American Relations, 1949-1968(2010) Rubin, Daniel Aaron; Olson, Keith; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines U.S. travel in the context of Sino-American relations between 1949 and 1968. Building on recent scholarship on tourism and foreign relations, this dissertation argues that historians cannot develop a comprehensive understanding of the U.S. relationship with the People's Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan, and Hong Kong without establishing travel and travelers as significant agents of historical change. Using tourism as a centerpiece of historical inquiry, moreover, adds complexity to the traditional Cold War narrative and suggests that other forces, aside from East-West struggle, defined the international climate in the post-World War II period. The post-1945 boom in recreational tourism did not materialize uniformly around the world. On the mainland of China, swept up in civil war, travel was difficult and unappealing. The emergence of Cold War tensions in the region added a new obstacle to tourism as Washington imposed restrictions on American travel. Using the founding of the PRC as a starting point, this dissertation follows the course of American travel and travel policy in the region. As opposed to being marked by isolation and disengagement, the period from 1949 to 1968 saw incredible activity in the area of travel. In terms of U.S.-PRC relations, travel served as a medium of engagement and both sides showed a willingness to initiate travel exchanges and reforms to travel policy as a means of feeling out the opposing camp. Moving beyond the mainland of China, U.S. officials, private industry, and individual travelers perceived Taiwan and Hong Kong as "alternatives" to the PRC and both destinations experienced huge booms in tourism. In all these realms, travel developed both as a crucial element of U.S. containment policy and as a phenomenon that seemed disconnected from Cold War strategy. Using government archival material, travelogues, travel guides, records from international tourism associations, and popular advertisements, this dissertation demonstrates that tourism was not always the most efficient channel for foreign policy. The expectations and motivations of individual tourists, the overwhelming belief in a "right to travel," and the unpredictable impact of tourism on local economies, all worked to add complexity and nuance to the Sino-American post-World War II relationship.Item Battle of the Brains: Election-Night Forecasting at the Dawn of the Computer Age(2010) Chinoy, Ira; Beasley, Maurine; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines journalists' early encounters with computers as tools for news reporting, focusing on election-night forecasting in 1952. Although election night 1952 is frequently mentioned in histories of computing and journalism as a quirky but seminal episode, it has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation asks how and why election night and the nascent field of television news became points of entry for computers in news reporting. The dissertation argues that although computers were employed as pathbreaking "electronic brains" on election night 1952, they were used in ways consistent with a long tradition of election-night reporting. As central events in American culture, election nights had long served to showcase both news reporting and new technology, whether with 19th-century devices for displaying returns to waiting crowds or with 20th-century experiments in delivering news by radio. In 1952, key players - television news broadcasters, computer manufacturers, and critics - showed varied reactions to employing computers for election coverage. But this computer use in 1952 did not represent wholesale change. While live use of the new technology was a risk taken by broadcasters and computer makers in a quest for attention, the underlying methodology of forecasting from early returns did not represent a sharp break with pre-computer approaches. And while computers were touted in advance as key features of election-night broadcasts, the "electronic brains" did not replace "human brains" as primary sources of analysis on election night in 1952. This case study chronicles the circumstances under which a new technology was employed by a relatively new form of the news media. On election night 1952, the computer was deployed not so much to revolutionize news reporting as to capture public attention. It functioned in line with existing values and practices of election-night journalism. In this important instance, therefore, the new technology's technical features were less a driving force for adoption than its usefulness as a wonder and as a symbol to enhance the prestige of its adopters. This suggests that a new technology's capacity to provide both technical and symbolic social utility can be key to its chances for adoption by the news media.Item Standing Tall: U.S. Efforts at Democratizing Rural Japanese Women During the Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952(2010) Price, Emily Rebecca; Mayo, Marlene J; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)During the U.S. Occupation of Japan, 1945-1952, dismantling the political and cultural systems that were perceived to have led Japan to war was a primary goal. Democracy, a word that came to encompass much more than its standard definitions, was to be the replacement ideology and coupled with demilitarization. Through a survey of SCAP documents from Record Group 331 located in the National Archives, this paper examines the way in which varying concepts and meanings of democracy were promoted to rural Japanese women by U.S. Occupation forces. It also explores the ways in which Japanese farm women embraced, rejected, and/or modified the evolving ideas about democracy into their daily lives. While the impact of democracy - in all of its many guises - was not as powerful as Occupation members desired, it still had a definite effect on the way rural Japanese women thought about their society and on their daily lives.Item Defending Giants: The Battle over Headwaters Forest and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics, 1850-1999(2010) Speece, Darren Frederick; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The redwoods have long been a source of inspiration and conflict. By the end of the twentieth century, disputes over logging Redwood Country had helped transform American environmental politics. Historians have largely neglected the redwood wars, but their impact on environmental politics was great. After 1945, the redwood wars ended official corporatist timber regulation in California, established a series of legal precedents governing private property management, and prompted the reordering of the federal environmental protection regime. This dissertation describes those transformations in detail, and helps situate the long history of conflicts over logging the redwoods in American history. The history of the redwood wars demonstrates the ways in which local activism influence the development of environmental politics, Northcoast activists complicate our understanding of radical environmentalism and wilderness ideals, and conservation methodologies persist in the priorities of modern environmentalism. The redwood wars were one of the longest and most violent environmental disputes in American history, beginning during the 1970s and lasting into the twenty-first century. Northcoast residents had grown increasingly concerned about the future of the ancient forest, timber jobs, and their rural culture as the rate of clear-cutting increased and as corporate giants swallowed up land. Some residents organized and challenged the industrial logging regime because of its threat to the health of their rural society. Eventually, the Northcoast was awash in daily direct actions, persistent litigation, and intense media scrutiny. After 1986, the citizen activists focused more and more on Pacific Lumber's plans to harvest its remaining old growth groves in Humboldt County. Pacific Lumber owned nearly all of the unprotected ancient redwood forest in the world, and the forest complex that contained those old-growth groves became known as Headwaters Forest. In 1999, after more than a decade of violent and protracted conflict, Pacific Lumber, California, and the federal government consummated an agreement to publicly acquire several old-growth groves and manage the rest of the company's land under a comprehensive land management plan. Even so, the wars continued because of the uncompromising nature of the local activists.Item Theatrical Militants: Stage For Action and Social Activist Performance, 1943 - 1953(2010) Dail, Chrystyna Marta; Nathans, Heather S; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Stage For Action began as "Stage Door to Action" in December 1943 under the leadership of a twenty-three year old radio performer, Perry Miller, along with fellow radio actress Donna Keath, the stage actress Berilla Kerr, and Peggy Clark, a soon-to-be prominent Broadway designer. Officially changing their name in March of 1944, Stage For Action was described in newspapers as a group which "dramatiz[es] current problems and [is] patterned after the Living Newspaper technique." From their original theme of supporting the war effort to tackling post-war issues of atomic warfare, racism, anti-Semitism, and the witch-hunts of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (commonly referred to as HUAC), Stage For Action became the prevailing social activist theatre group of the 1940s. They operated as one of the "opposing currents of dynamic progress and static conservatism...with its militant program...tak[ing] the theatre to the people when the people can't come to the theatre." By the time of Walter S. Steele's July 21, 1947 testimony before the HUAC, Stage For Action had created their own performance aesthetic, operated in at least nine cities, initiated a training school in New York City, and was funded by or had a direct connection to the Jewish People's Fraternal Order, the CIO Teachers' Union, the United Electrical Workers, the Furriers Union, Transport Union, National Maritime Union, and Department Store Workers' Union. This dissertation constructs Stage For Action as a social activist theatre that drew on the practices of the social activist and Workers' Theatres of the 1930s but utilized events specific to their historical moment in order to educate and activate their audiences. The dissertation moves freely between analyses of political, social, and theatrical events in order to address how Stage For Action directly commented on its entire cultural moment, its "norms, values, beliefs, and ways of life"; combating not only fascism and racism, but also the mainstream or commercial theatrical market through its productions.