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 Because You Were Strangers: The American Jewish Campaign Against Immigration Restriction, 1895-1924(2021) Krampner, Michael Jay; Rozenblit, Marsha L.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between 1895 and 1924, as the American immigration restriction movement attempted to limit immigration to the United States, an American Jewish anti-restriction campaign developed to combat immigration restriction. The American Jewish campaign against immigration restriction was a primary political concern of native-born and immigrant American Jews during the thirty years of the immigration restriction controversy. In the American Jewish anti-restriction campaign, immigrant Jewish intellectuals, Jewish congressmen and Jewish newspapers in both English and Yiddish fought against immigration restriction, often leading the anti-restrictionists in that controversy. Soon after the beginning of the twentieth century, ordinary American Jews, including Eastern European immigrants, participated in the campaign against immigration restriction by attending meetings and demonstrations, writing to their congressmen, senators and the president and voting for immigration-friendly politicians. Jewish immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe were not merely the subjects of the immigration restriction controversy, they were active participants in it. The American Jewish anti-restriction campaign included American Jews of all socio-economic classes, political ideologies and Jewish religious groups. That campaign brought American Jews together, caused Jewish immigrants to find their political voice and brought them into the American political processes. Immigrant Jewish intellectuals, Jewish newspapers and Jewish politicians challenged the foundational ideas of the immigration restriction movement in articles, books and speeches. In most prior histories of the immigration restriction controversy, restrictionists are protagonists and anti-restrictionists are marginal antagonists. In the few previous studies of Jewish anti-restrictionist activity Central European (“German”) Jews and their organizations have been active participants and the Eastern European (“Russian”) Jewish immigrants have been largely passive, without agency or a voice. In this dissertation the Eastern European Jewish immigrants are shown to have been active and vocal participants in the immigration restriction controversy and the American Jewish campaign against immigration restriction to have been much more inclusive, thorough and pervasive than has previously been described.Item While Opening a Family Album(2021) Rojas, Claudia; Collier, Michael; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This collection of 30 poems center vulnerability in response to the everyday interactions and concerns of a female speaker. Personal trauma is contextualized through dreams, memory, and history. These poems explore love of the self, family, and community. Issues of immigration, gender, and race frame the speaker’s experiences. While these poems are based on real life, some poems transform the real into fictionalized stories. These poems are written through various written forms: free verse, prose, fixed form. English is the primary language used with Spanish words or phrases used on occasion.Item Archives in the Attic: Exile, Activism, and Memory in the Washington Committee for Human Rights in Argentina(2019) Pyle, Perri; Rosemblatt, Karin; History/Library & Information Systems; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Spurred by the human rights violations committed by the last Argentine dictatorship (1976-1983), exiled Argentines in Washington, D.C. formed the Washington Committee for Human Rights in Argentina (WCHRA) to facilitate the transnational exchange of information between those under threat in Argentina and political actors in the United States. This thesis outlines the story of the WCHRA through the records they created - kept for nearly forty years in an attic - and oral interviews with former members. The collection consists of letters, testimonies, petitions, and notes that reflect the group’s extensive network and provide insight into how Argentine exile groups inserted themselves into the larger human rights movement. By critically examining how one small group of activists came together, I explore how archival records enhance, challenge, and reveal new insights into the politics of exile, activism, and memory, as seen through the lens of the records they kept.Item Salvation Abroad: Macedonian Migration to North America and the Making of Modern Macedonia, 1870-1970(2005-04-18) Michaelidis, Gregory; Gerstle, Gary; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores the establishment of Macedonian diaspora communities in North America, and the concurrent development of Macedonian national identity, between 1870 and 1970. Taking a transnational approach to cultural history, it ultimately finds a reciprocal relationship between Macedonian migration and identity by focusing on key nationalist leaders and organizations, as well as the crucial points of transformation in the evolution of Macedonian national identity. By blurring the boundary between Canada and the United States - as did many migrants from Macedonia who saw the two countries as "Upper" and "Lower" America - this study emphasizes migration rather than settlement in order to unveil nationalism's religious, cultural and political components. The dissertation, therefore, is grounded not in the cement of a single national narrative, but in the cultural products that result from passages - physical, spiritual, and social - among nations. As the nineteenth century ended, a climate of deprivation and violence compelled tens of thousands of men from the Macedonian region to depart their troubled corner of the Balkans and find economic salvation abroad. Like their fellow villagers, most of the migrants considered themselves to be geographically Macedonian but culturally Bulgarian. Almost none identified with a nationality in the modern sense. This study argues, however, that more than simply fulfilling an economic mission abroad, the migrant men, and later their families, capitalized on the freedoms North America offered to forge a broader "salvation" that fundamentally changed their national and ethnic worldview. Put another way, migration catalyzed a process in which the migrants became, simply, "Macedonians." Far from leaving behind the political and cultural battles of their homeland, the migrant communities formed political, cultural, and religious organizations that sought to influence the policies of both their host and home countries. But defining the new Macedonian nation proved a contentious issue. As the migrant communities cleaved into left- and right-leaning factions during the middle and latter years of the twentieth century, the nature of Macedonian identity, which, I argue, was intimately connected to notions of Macedonian cultural history, became a fiercely contested subject, and remains so today.