College of Arts & Humanities
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1611
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item How Cadillac Became Cadillac(2010) Benson, Edwin John Mortimer; Sicilia, David B; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines the process by which General Motors' Cadillac brand of automobiles came to dominate the U.S. luxury car market between 1927 and 1960. In 1927, Cadillac was only one among a crowded field of U.S. and European automobiles priced above $3000, the threshold of the luxury car market at the time. Through a skillful process of marketing, the corporate strength of General Motors, and the mistakes and ill-fortune of its competitors; Cadillac came to hold at least 50% of the U.S. luxury car market throughout the 1950s, and in some years accounted for nearly 70% of that market. It also briefly examines the reasons for Cadillac's decline in the market during the years since 1960.Item The Demise of the Congress for Cultural Freedom: Transatlantic Intellectual Consensus and "Vital Center" Liberalism, 1950-1967(2011) Kamen, Scott C.; Giovacchini, Saverio; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)From the 1950 to 1967, the U.S. government, employing the newly formed CIA, covertly provided the majority of the funding for an international organization comprised primarily of Western non-communist left intellectuals known as the Congress for Cultural Freedom. The Paris-based Congress saw its primary mission as facilitating cooperative networks of non-communist left intellectuals in order to sway the intelligentsia of Western Europe away from its lingering fascination with communism. This thesis explores how the Congress largely succeeded in the 1950s in establishing a cohesive international network of intellectuals by fostering a transatlantic consensus around "vital center" liberalism as a necessary guardian of the Western cultural intellectual tradition in the face of perceived communist threats. By examining the ways in which developments in the 1960s shattered this transatlantic consensus this thesis demonstrates how the Congress suffered an inevitable demise as Western intellectuals became disillusioned with American liberalism of the "vital center."Item WORLD WAR II AND U.S. CINEMA: RACE, NATION, AND REMEMBRANCE IN POSTWAR FILM, 1945-1978(2011) Chester, Robert Keith; Gerstle, Gary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation interrogates the meanings retrospectively imposed upon World War II in U.S. motion pictures released between 1945 and the mid-1970s. Focusing on combat films and images of veterans in postwar settings, I trace representations of World War II between war's end and the War in Vietnam, charting two distinct yet overlapping trajectories pivotal to the construction of U.S. identity in postwar cinema. The first is the connotations attached to U.S. ethnoracial relations - the presence and absence of a multiethnic, sometimes multiracial soldiery set against the hegemony of U.S. whiteness - in depictions of the war and its aftermath. The second is Hollywood's representation (and erasure) of the contributions of the wartime Allies and the ways in which such images engaged with and negotiated postwar international relations. Contrary to notions of a "good war" untainted by ambiguity or dissent, I argue that World War II gave rise to a conflicted cluster of postwar meanings. At times, notably in the early postwar period, the war served as a progressive summons to racial reform. At other times, the war was inscribed as a historical moment in which U.S. racism was either nonexistent or was laid permanently to rest. In regard to the Allies, I locate a Hollywood dialectic between internationalist and unilateralist remembrances. On one hand, narratives of the U.S. as the dominant wartime power affirmed the nation's benevolence and might, attesting to the United States' right to dictate the terms of postwar international politics. On the other, progressive filmmakers used images of the Allies to challenge postwar U.S.-centrism and bemoan the Cold War nation's military and economic mismanagement of international relations. Emphasizing the contested character of the war's cinematic image, the dissertation recuperates a tradition of dissent, complicating our understanding of World War II remembrance and postwar Hollywood history. The project also considers the relationship between the Department of Defense (DoD) Pictorial Division - the military's liaison with Hollywood - and the film industry. Drawing on DoD records, I show how the postwar state influenced representations of racial diversity, and how the military shaped images of the U.S. in interaction with its wartime Allies.Item Abigail Adams(2004-05-04) Lloyd, Erin Marie; Ridgway, Whitman; HistoryAbigail 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.