College of Arts & Humanities

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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.

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    To Drink a Cup of Fire: Morality Tales and Moral Emotions in Egyptian, Algerian, and French Anti-Colonial Activism, 1945-1960
    (2019) Abu Sarah, Christiane Marie; Wien, Peter; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    In the 1940s and 1950s, newspapers in Egypt, Algeria, and France debated the behavior of activists who sacrificed themselves for a cause, calling them “hysterics,” “radicals,” “fanatics,” and “terrorists.” Underlying these debates was a core question: what “rational” person would choose to sacrifice himself for a cause? To learn how activists answered their critics, and to explore transnational patterns of activist exchange, this study explores two revolutionary moments: the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 and the Algerian Revolution of 1954–1962. Focusing on four Egyptian clubs (the Muslim Brotherhood, Young Egypt, the Egyptian Movement for National Liberation, and the Workers’ Vanguard); three Algerian organizations (the Front de Libération Nationale, the Mouvement National Algérien, and the Parti Communiste Algérien); and three French anti-colonial networks (the Jeanson network, the Curiel network, and the Mandouze network), the study analyzes data recovered from activist journals, tracts, court cases, police confessions, and memoirs—data gathered through multi-archival research conducted at the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis (Amsterdam), Dar al-Kutub (Cairo), The National Archives (London), and the Service Historique de la Défense (Paris). The result is a cognitive and behavioral history of transnational activist movements. Setting aside the motive-based question of why activists made certain decisions, the study surveys how activists made decisions and narrativized behaviors. Three types of stories are examined: stories of affiliation, stories of aggression, and stories about morality. Each set of stories is linked to a research question. How did individuals decide to affiliate with certain clubs over others? How did activists decide to commit violent attacks? And what role did morality tales, moral rationalizations, and “moral emotions” (like disgust, shame, and anger) play in these processes? As the study contends, activists drew on a common toolkit of cognitive and behavioral strategies to make decisions, negotiate behavior, and mobilize support for decolonization—crossing ideological, religious, and national boundaries in the process. Activist storytelling thus highlights the hybridity of Arab and French moral imaginaries, revealing how activists practiced emotions and produced movements. Their stories also foster awareness of how individuals negotiate concepts of right and wrong, both in public and in private.
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    History, Colonial Conquest and Empire: Louis-Philippe's Musée Historique & Horace Vernet's Battle Paintings of the French Occupation of Algeria
    (2013) Mistry, Kishan; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    The construction of the Musée Historique at Versailles and the colonial conquest of Algeria were two concurrent projects of national concern that spanned the July Monarchy (1830-1848), the period of Louis-Philippe d'Orléans's political administration. Louis-Philippe commissioned the history painter, Horace Vernet, to represent significant battles of the Algerian campaign to decorate three rooms in the Versailles museum, collectively titled the salles d'Afrique (African rooms). In this thesis, I argue that Vernet's Algerian battle scenes connect the Versailles historical-museological program with the colonial conquest of Algeria along aesthetic and ideological lines. Vernet's battle scenes functioned as propaganda, articulating the July Monarchy's imperial ambitions. In this respect, they invoked the legacy of Napoleon and the First Empire (1804-1815). Installed in the Versailles museum, they were also complicit in Louis-Philippe's project of writing history visually and inserting the Orléans chapter into the epic of French civic and martial glory embodied in the Musée Historique.