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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Item Between Nation and State: Albanian Associations from Ottoman Origins to a Communist Party, 1880 - 1945(2016) Mitrojorgji, Lejnar; Lampe, John R; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation addresses the broader antecedents of the Communist Party of Albania (CPA) as one of a number of associations whose experience was central to Albanian political history. This long experience dates back to the informal national associations formed in the Ottoman Empire of the late nineteenth century. The dissertation examines the role of these associations which, pursuing language rights and political representation through imperial state reforms, set a pattern that struggled to connect nation and state, rather than asserting the territorial demands for a nation-state familiar across the region. Starting out in the Ottoman Empire, but then maturing in the Albanian diaspora in Romania, Bulgaria, Egypt and the United States, this dissertation shows politically significant processes of longer-term adaptation that created informal associations as institutional structures able to channel collective action. It then traces the reframing of these patterns through their destruction in the Balkan Wars and the First World War to the emergence of communist associations in the interwar period and beyond. This dissertation is a sustained study that traces long-term Ottoman imperial political legacies in the Albanian successor state. The story of the associations, based on hitherto unexamined archival documents, shows that the Albanians possessed a far greater capacity for political mobilization that previously acknowledged by historians. Moreover, the dissertation successfully challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the Albanians as irreparably divided along sectarian and regional faultlines. It finds that Albanian national activism was civic in character rather than ethnic as elsewhere in the Balkans. The Albanians fought to remain within a multinational framework because this afforded them political security, social advancement and potential economic growth. In the late Ottoman period, this political objective was manifested in the acceptance of the supranational imperial order whereas during the Second World War, in the aspiration to become members of the Comintern internationalist movement. Another important find, is the newly-discovered evidence concerning the founding of the CPA and its wartime conduct as an organization created and led by the Albanians themselves, albeit with Yugoslav ideological assistance under the transnational umbrella of the Comintern.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 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.