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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Item SEX AND SOLIDARITY: CLASS AND GENDER IN THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR AND THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD(2017) McVey, Julie; Greene, Julie M; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This work examines women’s involvement in the Knights of Labor in the late nineteenth century and the Industrial Workers of the World in the early twentieth century. Through analyzing each organization’s perspective on working-class women, the lives and writings of their most prominent female leaders, and the interactions female leaders had with the rank and file women, this thesis aims to show that the KOL and IWW respectively held conflicting ideas about women members based on their class ideologies and shifting gender structures during a time of great change in American society.Item “FOR THE UNION MAKES US STRONG”: PROTEST MUSIC IN THE 1989−90 PITTSTON STRIKE(2016) Rogers, Alice Esther; Rios, Fernando; Music; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Music making was a common practice during the 1989−90 strike against the Pittston Coal Company, an action led by the United Mine Workers of America. The types of music made varied greatly based on the contexts in which musicians and protesters were participating. In this thesis, I discuss how performers and audiences engaged with the music of the Pittston strike, with a focus on how different participatory and presentational contexts included music with similar or the same lyrics to achieve different goals. I argue that the musicians’ understanding of the people around them as potential participants, audiences, or inherent audiences shifted their use of music as they worked to use music strategically and effectively for the strike. The musical methods and considerations of the Pittston strike protesters have had a lasting impact on more recent protest movements.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.Item The Politics of Labor Unions Laws Policy Making in Argentina(2006-07-12) Gonzalez, Marcela Fabiana; Kestnbaum, Meyer; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The question addressed in the Thesis seek to elucidate how and why did organized labor recover its strength vis-à-vis the state and create for itself a significant political place in the process of labor unions laws policy making in the eighties in Argentina? Drawing inspiration upon the historical institutionalist literature on policy outcomes and Bourdieu's concepts of field and practice sense, we propossed to answer the question by placing our attention on the conditional and contingent political factors as well as the historical and institutional patterns of overlapped and interwoven relationships that shaped labor politics: the trilogy state, labor, and peronist party. Specifically, we focused on organized labor relationally constituted capacities, coherence as a collective actor and capacity to fit its demands toward the state, the two critical dimensions of labor as a political actor to making sense of labor action vis-à-vis the state in the politics of labor unions laws reform.