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This dissertation makes a significant contribution to the literature for several reasons. In paper one, I argue that learning a set of useful concrete practices, in addition to CRP mindsets, can help White scholars and educators prepare to lead diverse classrooms, build culturally relevant curricula, and form strong relationships with students with various identities. To explore these practices, I analyze interview and classroom observation data from six White teachers who are experienced in employing CRP teaching practices. The goal of paper two is to understand the process of how White social studies teachers committed to using culturally relevant curricula make decisions about the curricula they will use in their courses and how they actually go about building said curricula. A culturally relevant curriculum includes the experiences of students in the classroom, values their diversity and the contributions of their community, and invites them to bring their identities into classroom discussions. Such a curriculum should therefore promote the academic success of all students, encourage cultural competence and acceptance of students' own and others' cultures, and stimulate an eye toward sociopolitical consciousness in which students analyze and explore how to confront real-world issues (Ladson-Billings, 2014). Paper two therefore focuses on social studies classrooms, in particular, and asks: What are White teachers doing to create culturally relevant social studies curricula and what goals do they have for these curricula? Finally, in response to a phenomenon that I observed emerging from my data, paper three asks: How do White teachers incorporate stories and tools of resistance, resilience, and hope while also teaching students about hard, historic realities and their lasting impacts? Studying the teaching of hard history and hope yields two benefits. First, it provides information on how, in practice, White teachers achieve balance in teaching these sometimes-competing goals. Second, understanding these practices has implications for the teacher training and professional development of White educators, especially as the teaching of hard histories becomes increasingly relevant, important, and common. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Rising Autism diagnosis rates have prompted numerous awareness campaigns, treatment programs, social-emotional learning initiatives, research institutes, etc. Developing analogously, the Neurodiversity movement--an activist-led social justice movement focused on equity and justice for neurodivergent people--has presented compelling critiques of the ways neurodivergent children are educated and treated in therapeutic spaces. Activists' scathing critiques of 'best practices' in autism treatment have prompted a bitter public feud (played out in op-eds, policy hearings, social media, etc.) between themselves and parents/professionals because parents/professionals have overwhelmingly focused on cure and rehabilitation--a goal that autistic activists reject. The most vitriolic behavior centers around the use of Applied Behavior Analysis (i.e., applied operant conditioning) as a treatment for Autism. Despite years of parent activism fighting for insurance coverage for ABA therapy, autistic activists (many of whom have experienced ABA therapy as children) continue to regard ABA as 'torture,' 'Autistic conversion therapy,' and 'abuse' due to both the practices of the field and the onto-epistemological assumptions that underlie Autism treatment in general. However, most attempts to curb the use of more violent interventions (i.e., the use of aversives like skin shocking) have been unsuccessful. This dissertation answers the question of 'why' several decades of activism disparaging the use of ABA as a treatment for autism have hardly even slowed the expansive growth of the ABA industry. I demonstrate how both 'sides' of the Autism Culture Wars' continued reliance on identity politics (#actuallyautistic vs Autism Moms) pins the problem on their adversary's refusal to empathize, which allows the real perpetrator--the autism intervention industry--to pursue profit over the interests of autistic people, parents, and professionals. My work intervenes by sidestepping moral, identitarian argumentation in favor of a nuanced approach more equipped to analyze the development of an autism industrial complex. This dissertation provides a historical account of the rise of behaviorism in the United States post World War Two. While many scholars and activists have argued that the field of ABA has inflicted harm upon neurodivergent children, there are very few accounts of how ABA became the preeminent therapy for autism. My dissertation utilizes archival research from the B.F. Skinner Papers at Harvard University and textual analysis of the first thirty years of publications in stand-alone behaviorists journals The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JAEB) and The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA). This dissertation explores the sociopolitical arrangements that facilitated the rise of behaviorism in experimental psychology, education, and social services. I contextualize behaviorism within the project of modernity and demonstrate how behaviorism's legacy as one of the most dominant schools of psychological thought in the 20th century is due in part to the business acumen of early figures like Skinner. I argue Skinner and the early behaviorists were able to exploit the anxieties of the white middle class regarding otherness, social deviance, disability, and racial integration to elicit the support of universities, government agencies, private equity, and a large swath of the public, and demonstrate how these logics persist in the present. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Considered normative from the second half of the 20th century (Danziger, 1990), null hypothesis statistical testing (NHST) has received consistent, largely unheeded criticism. Critiques have received more attention in recent years with the recognition of the replication crisis in the social sciences and the American Statistical Society's statement and special issue on p values (Wasserstein & Lazar, 2016; Wasserstein et al., 2019). This paper seeks to provide a framework for understanding the issue by looking at the history of NHST and investigating some alternatives to the methodology. A brief review of the history, spread, and critiques of NHST is provided to help place the issues in context. Supplemental and alternative methods are described to demonstrate the range of available options to NHST. A selection of viable alternative methodologies and supplements to NHST are demonstrated using simulated data sets. Those methods that provide decision rules are compared with NHST using Monte Carlo method simulations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This paper presents an action research study as part of a Dissertation in Practice. Based on observations from the classroom of the participant-researcher, Problem of Practice is described: an over-reliance on teacher-centered instructional methods and the mismatch of these instructional techniques to the pedagogy endorsed by the International Baccalaureate. Through the identification of this PoP led to a research focus concerning student achievement, instructional methods, and the use of historical simulations in the social studies classroom. As a result of this research focus, the research question of "what, if any, is the possible impact of historical simulations on student achievement?" In order to answer this question, a quasiexperimental research design was developed where data was collected through a pretest and a posttest in order to determine the student achievement based on a historical simulation exercise versus student achievement based on traditional, teacher-centered instructional methods. While the study did not produce statistically significant results, the study did produce practical results that could be considered by the participant-researcher in order to develop an action plan. The action plan that was developed as a result of the findings of this study provides a framework for the participant-researcher to continue to study the use of historical simulations while hoping to affect positive change as a curriculum leader. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

Writing Studies has flourished as a field in Latin America during the last two decades. Its development has been fostered by an exponential growth of college enrollments and processes of expansion and democratization of the educational offer in the region. The renewed attention received by higher education writing has fueled new research efforts and teaching initiatives that have rapidly spread across the region, especially in some countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Chile. As the field has accumulated a growing body of research, some disciplinary inquiry has started to appear, mostly sponsored by the "Iniciativas de Lectura y Escritura en la Educacion Superior" (ILEES) international group, which has showed the coexistence of two approaches, one informed by linguistics and another closer to educational perspectives. However, examinations on the nature of the epistemologies, and consequently, on the ideologies of literacy of this emerging disciplinary space has not yet been conducted. Such a research is important in order to consolidate and expand research and teaching efforts, but also to reflect on and improve the community's definitions, goals and identities, which is a much needed step to join the international ongoing conversation about writing. This research constitutes a socio-rhetorically informed attempt to understand what this novel disciplinary configuration means in terms of intellectual work through the study of the writing it actually produces, for example through citations, rather than from an external approach. It draws from data from previous studies that have shown that intellectual influence is diverse and citation patterns sometimes seem to bring together seemingly conflicting epistemologies. Given its socio-rhetorical approach, this research is primarily concerned with the activity writing scholars engage in. As Russell posits, the writing of a community can only be understood in terms of the community's activities. Similarly, the nature of the disciplinary grouping these scholars represent is also understood in terms of communal activity and problem definition, that is, in the ways in which their writing shows efforts to communally define an object of study. Methods blend tools from Rhetoric of Science and Discourse Analysis in order to examine a sample constituted by nine articles from the three leading countries of the region, and sampling was made through the ILEES Survey, which assured ecological representativeness, as the participants identified themselves as writing scholars. The three research questions that guided the inquiry are: (1) What are the main interests, research problems and knowledge claims that can be found in this sample of papers? (2) What are the epistemologies and ideologies of literacy in the sample and how they get to be represented in the texts? (3) Do these epistemologies correspond to the two disciplinary spaces (i.e. linguistics and education) described in previous studies? Attention was paid to intertextual dynamics (including rhetorical uses and citation patterns), introductions and definition of research problems, theoretical apparatuses, and knowledge claims. Micro analytical tools included appraisal, subjectivity markers, hedging, and metadiscourse markers, among other ad-hoc linguistic-level tools. These tools were used to provide textual evidence for the interpretation of the epistemologies and ideologies of literacy of the field represented in the sample. Results show very interesting and differential patterns in the discourse construction of knowledge for all the variables analyzed, including epistemic introductions and communally definition of problems, intertextuality, positive and negative evaluation of sources, among others. There are also various indexes of communal activity which allow us to think of this grouping as an emergent disciplinary community, which exhibits high levels of hybridization, both by resorting to previously known traditions (inheritance) or by bringing together all the resources that might seem to be useful (synthesis). As for the research questions, (1) there is a varied array of topics in this sample, but they can mostly be characterized as text descriptions, pedagogy practices, and writing practices. (2) There are two broad ideologies that can be characterized. One, more centered in the textual dimension, and other, more diffuse, which is constructed around the study of practices but still lacks disciplinary compaction. (3) These ideologies correlate to the main two groupings that were previously detected, namely linguistics-driven and educational-driven. Disciplinary clustering also highly correlates with the different discursive features of knowledge-making strategies, including the kinds of introductions constructed, the uses of intertextuality, and the nature of the claims. Additionally, there is evidence of jurisdictional disputes, both in the research articles and in the interviews. In sum, whereas the field is currently growing and in a clear path towards consolidation, it would benefit from a more sound communal definition of problems as well as a more cooperative, interdisciplinary stance. In order to gain a voice and join international conversations of writing, Latin American Writing Studies need to go beyond the replication of northern models and advance a local, decolonial perspective to writing studies, paying attention to the historical and material needs and constraints of the region as well as to its own theoretical strengths. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]

This dissertation offers a new narrative on the history of public debt in late Qing and Republican-era China (1850 – 1914), highlighting its links with late Qing and Republican political economy. A history of economic ideas and institutions, the dissertation draws from official and diplomatic communications, contemporary newspapers and journals, academic studies and private letters to explore the process of its embedment into Chinese fiscal system and its evolution in China as a set of discourses and practice, including its reception by officials, merchants and general public, and its adjustment to established discourses of political economy in late Qing and Republican China.Adopting an expansive conception of public debt to include related public credit mechanisms and discourses, the dissertation traces the impact of pre-1850 official debates on late 19th Century Chinese officials’ ambivalence towards modern public debt. It argues that a domestic intellectual and policy reorientation in favour of growth was needed and mostly achieved before Qing’s military defeat in 1895, paving the way for large-scale borrowing that in turn reconfigured state-society relations in late Qing. The dissertation also investigates how mid-Victorian liberal discourses on public debt were co-opted by Chinese reformists, which in their modified form of political and fiscal accountability, proved to be effective in dominating late Qing and Republican discourses on public debt.This dissertation is one of the first English-language studies discussing the evolution of economic ideas surrounding Chinese public debt. Recounting China’s historical experiences with public debt, and discourses on political economy that resulted from these experiences would promote a more layered understanding of public debt’s role for peripheral economies in the late 19th and 20th Century.

Lengyel, Christian M., PhD., December 2021History Greenbacks and Greybacks: Iconographic Depictions of Union and Confederate Nationalism on Civil War-Era Currency (335 pp.)Dissertation Advisor: Kevin AdamsNationalism studies have recently increased in popularity, and particularly those focused on the era of the U.S. Civil War. But for all the attention scholars have given to this specific area of research, no single investigation exists that directly compares and contrasts the visual patriotic impulses of the North and the South under the banner of one holistic work. Further, no authority has ever accomplished such a feat using the iconographies on both sides’ government-issued paper dollars as the main vehicles for inquiring into this important facet of the country’s history. The present dissertation utilizes those essential artifacts as a means of illustrating the Union and the Confederacy’s separate nationalistic philosophies and highlighting that, from the start of the struggle, they included different casts of characters, subjects, and symbols. These findings indicate that each body attempted to portray itself as a distinct entity who relied on inherently individualized sets of “signs” to exemplify its leaders’ divergent ideas about proper American patriotism. Therefore, by using the analytical technique of semiotics – as well as quantitative and qualitative assessments – to classify the images at-hand, the following review tests the significance, frequency, and type(s) of monetary vignettes that northern and southern Treasury officials employed to represent their respective nations. What it discovers is that the initial batteries of U.S. Greenbacks were far simpler, less inconsistent, and more unique in their appearance than early C.S.A. Greybacks, only showcasing added layers complexity when it became apparent that the North would emerge victorious. This project thus argues that contrary to the convoluted designs of Confederate bills, the fixed features of United States scrip simultaneously brought to the forefront and continued to mold citizens’ trust in the State which, in turn, helped to partially ensure the successes of the country and its currency.

The following dissertation examines the ways in which Union and Confederate ex-prisoners of war discussed their experiences of captivity between 1862 and 1930. By examining former prisoners’ captivity narratives, this dissertation demonstrates that to the end of their lives, ex-prisoners worked to construct a public image—one of suffering—that differed from the typical gallant volunteer who fought and died on the battlefield. Ex-prisoners shared their stories of captivity as a way of affirming their identities as a distinct type of veteran and to affirm their place as American men, regardless of their time as a prisoner of war. Viewed singly, any of these narratives might be dismissed as a fascinating story of personal suffering and survival, but when they are considered as a body of literature, one can trace the development of a master narrative, both separate from and intertwined with the American public’s postwar memory. This dissertation challenges conventional understandings of postwar reconciliation and adds to recent scholarship on veterans’ reintegration into civilian life. Both Union and Confederate ex-prisoners of war often contradicted this preferred heroic narrative of the war. Some men, as they got older, accepted reconciliation and censored their bitterness and hatred. Others promised to never forget their sufferings and, as a result, remained obstacles to reconciliation. By examining ex-prisoners’ narratives, this dissertation reveals how ex-prisoners did not accept or fit into the ideal trajectory of reconciliation.

This dissertation leverages archival theory, public memory theory, feminist historiography, and rhetorical theory to argue that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints reinterpreted the Mormon past to engender identification and foster political action during the Equal Rights Amendment ratification period (1976-1981). Chapter One provides readers with an orientation to the Sandra Allen Collection of Papers on Mormonism and argues that its creator, Sandra Allen, marshaled her understanding of archiving, history writing, and institutional archives to make her history public. Chapter Two: On Memory uses theories of public memory to explain why the Mormon Church built the Nauvoo Monument to Women (MTW). The chapter posits that public monuments are pedagogical: They argue in the epideictic register for what should be by praising a past. By providing an explanation of the historical context in which the MTW was erected, the chapter demonstrates that the Mormon Church sought to assuage feelings of resentment among women. Its statues, physical location, and dedication suggest the MTW is less a representation honoring the past than a means of representing womens ideally embodied roles. Chapter Three: On History argues that Mormons draw from and build upon their history as means of self-identification. Church leaders foster this identification by calling upon members to contribute to history by producing personal journals, books of remembrance, and genealogies. The process of creating home archives engenders an ongoing practice of self-discipline, wherein members perform Mormon ethe. Chapter Four: On Forgetting examines the discourses that brought about and ultimately suppressed a 'Golden Age' of Mormon history. By offering a history of Mormon historiography, the chapter argues that the Church silenced professional historians. At the same time, the family history methodology the Church forwarded conceals structural inequality. The chapter asserts that the Mormon Church silenced counter-memories to prevent them from gaining purchase among stakeholders. After summarizing the major arguments presented, the dissertation's conclusion offers heuristic derived from the Roman god, Janus, as a tool for imaginative speculation on theorizing resistance to institutional rhetorics.'

From the middle of the eighteenth century the landscape movement had dominated garden making in England, but to many in the early nineteenth century this meant the destruction and loss of the old formal gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Using contemporary commentary throughout the nineteenth century from a range of literature, books and periodicals, from a variety of people, some known and some not, the thesis traced, analysed and explained why there was a revival of the formal garden in the later years of the nineteenth century. Two architects contributed to the revival of the formal garden. George Devey in the 1850s was the first to restore a formal garden from a plan of 1702 at Penshurst Place in Kent. Devey is little known, he did not write about his work and left no personal papers, but he did leave a small number of garden drawings and sketches which to date are unknown. Using these drawings and sketches, site visits and other archive material the thesis traced, analysed and explained Devey's contribution to the revival of the formal garden. The other architect was Sir Reginald Blomfield who is known, but more for his temperament than his garden making. In the 1940s Blomfield sent all his papers, including his garden plans, for the war effort. Using what little survived with archive material, Blomfield's own writings, perspective drawings, garden plans that remain at some properties, site visits and other research material, the thesis again traced, analysed and explained Blomfield's role as he followed Devey in the revival of the formal garden. These three elements, the commentary from contemporary literature, the work of Devey and of Blomfield, were analysed and argued to lead to an understanding and explanation of why the formal garden was revived in the later part of the nineteenth century and what was the contribution of Devey and Blomfield to this revival.

Of all the inventions of ancient and imperial China, perhaps none is as famous or world-changing as gunpowder. The chemical mixture drastically changed the nature of warfare, albeit over the course of a thousand years. The formula began with Daoist alchemy during the Tang Dynasty, but was applied militarily in the succeeding Song Dynasty. Such an invention created new empires and changed warfare forever. This paper discusses its invention and early military uses in China then investigates how Europeans, among other peoples, were able to advance it far beyond that of the Chinese and other civilizations by the fourteenth century. The “Military Revolution” has been a popular topic of discussion among scholars for years, but a broader analysis of such a revolution requires a comparison of the military histories of China and the West. This thesis examines how and why it was the Europeans that advanced this military technology and supplanted China as the premier gunpowder superpower of the late Middle Ages. Multiple geopolitical, political, economic, and military factors and preconditions played a role in causing the increasingly widening technological gap in the following centuries. The paper also details how China’s position as the unchallenged cultural, economic, and military giant of East Asia for much of the last two thousand years even contributed to its overall decline in comparison to an ascending West. Meanwhile, existential warfare among the fledgling nation states of premodern Europe stimulated hyper intense competition in nearly every field and triggered rapid advancements in weapons technology.

Sex work in the United States has become a more widely studied subject in the last twenty years. Most of these studies focus on the historical or archaeological evidence left behind by sex workers. Many of these studies focus most heavily on sex work in the western United States. Studies have looked through a variety of different lenses including gender, race, and economic impact. Despite these varied lenses, little attention has been paid to sex work in Southern cities such as Charleston, South Carolina. The purpose of this thesis is to add to the basic understanding of the prevalence, placement, policing, and composition of brothels in Charleston, South Carolina from 1880 to 1939. Charleston City Directories, Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps, the 1902 Charleston Blue Book, the Thomas P. Stony Papers, and the Law and Order League Papers provided addresses for analysis. The Charleston City Year Books provided information on arrests rates and death rates from syphilis which were used to help identify patterns of policing. This study found that the area known as the red-light district (the area between Queen Street, King Street, Beaufain Street, and Logan Street) in the early part of the twentieth century was the densest area throughout the entire study period. Brothels spread upwards towards the Neck of Charleston and east to the water on East Bay Street between 1880 and 1929. Additionally, this study found that brothel locations were heavily impacted by the political agenda of the sitting mayor with the amount of brothels and location of brothels ebbing and flowing alongside the sitting mayor’s stated moral agenda. The policing of brothels and brothel workers when compared against City Directory data suggests that sex workers of color were more heavily policed than their white counterparts. This thesis adds to the existing field of the study of sex work in Charleston, South Carolina. It is perhaps the most comprehensive list of brothel locations throughout the late nineteenth and into the twentieth centuries and among the first to examine the efficacy of policing attempts on the peninsula of Charleston, South Carolina.

The English language folktales collected from coastal New England in the 19th and 20th centuries display a prominence of weather magic motifs compared with folktales from other regions of the United States. This paper aims to explain the success of the weather magic theme in New England folklore collections and to serve as a starting point for scholarly discourse on the subject, which has hitherto been sparse. This study utilizes climate research, both scholarly and popular collections of folktales, local travel guides, and colonial and labor histories. Through a combination of historical analysis, comparative study, and textual analysis, it offers insight into the historical and climatological contexts for the success of the weather magic theme. The findings indicate that immigrants brought the relevant motifs into coastal New England from England, Scotland, and Ireland. Although migrants from those nations settled in other parts of the United States, New England’s particular climate and prominent seafaring industry kept these stories relevant. The paper argues for a significant possibility of bias on the part of the folklore collectors and authors who canonized these motifs into the region’s folklore, especially regarding their own regional identities and nautical occupations. This study may serve as a starting point for scholarly discourse on weather magic motifs in folklore and the collections of English language stories from coastal New England.

The Italian Renaissance workshop was simultaneously a business, a collaborative practice and a space for experimentation. Disegno, a term that can be interpreted to refer to a physical object –generally a work on paper –or the act of depicting an invention in visual form, served as the thread that connected theseinterests. This thesis investigates the role of disegno inthe workshop operated by Bartolomeo Montagna in Vicenza, Italy, between circa 1480 and 1520. During this period, the Montagna workshop was not only the preeminent workshop in Vicenza, but also ranked among the most prosperous on the Venetian terraferma. Focussing on the output of the Montagna workshop consequently in a manner that has hitherto gone unexplored therefore contributes new insights into the management of Venetic workshops. The graphic arts –here taken to encompass drawings and prints –serves as the prism through which a number of key themes are refracted. The question of an artist’s formation is addressed through analysis of Bartolomeo Montagna’s drawings in their deployment of media and handling of form in relation to the graphic traditions of other Venetic cities. The specialisation of Bartolomeo Montagna’s secondson, Benedetto, as an engraver, invites an extended appraisal of both how artists were instructed in printmaking techniques, and factors that facilitated the workshop’s diversification into print production. Mobility is revealed as a drivingforce: the migration of publishers from Northern Europe was instrumental to the establishment of the print trade in Vicenza, the import of Northern prints fostered an awareness of the medium and its potential, while the reputation of the Montagna workshop attracted ‘peintre-graveurs’ from across the Veneto. Benedetto Montagna is newly afforded a pivotal role in the development of engraving in the Veneto by virtue of the exchanges of ideas and knowhow between engravers that must have taken place around him. When taken in conjunction with the workshop’s concurrent fulfilment of commissions for altarpieces, devotional paintings and fresco schemes, the fundamental concept that emerges in the workshopis that of co-working. Drawings produced by Bartolomeo Montagna and prints acquired from other artists are posited as the basis of the workshop’s visual archive; a repository of designs that was recycled in diverse projects and deployed by various individuals. Access to vital materials such as paper, copper and a printing press is similarly shown to have brought artisans into contact. This pragmatic approach to resources is ultimately shown to have streamlined operations within the Montagna workshop. What, therefore, does this thesis contribute to scholarship on theItalian Renaissance? The collaboration between Bartolomeo and Benedetto Montagna, as father and son, that was fundamental to their printmaking ventures offers a new dimension to our understanding of the interplay between artistic autonomy and the assertion of a workshop identity. The extended analysis of the family’s production and use of prints and drawings demonstratescompellinglythe importance of disegnoto the operation of a Venetic workshop. Finally, and crucially, the potential of the Montagna workshop to attract itinerant artists to Vicenza brings into question the hegemony of Venice in the artistic developments of the Veneto.

This paper explores the reception history of Su Shi (1037-1101), examining how his image evolved over time and across different interpretations. It discusses how Su Shi, a composite model of a loyal official and a carefree literatus, was portrayed in historical, literary, and dramatic sources. By analyzing the interplay between Su Shi’s works and works of reception, this paper delves into the complex dynamics of values surrounding his image construction. This paper argues the reception of Su Shi’s works and his image was not a linear progression, but rather a constant process of negotiations and contentions of different discourses. It opposes a simplistic portrayal of Su Shi, highlighting the multifaceted nature of his persona and the diversity of perspectives that emerged over the centuries. Through critical analysis, this paper reveals the interplay of values and discourses that shaped Su Shi’s reception, resisting attempts to canonize or monopolize his image.

Robert F. Kennedy was his brother’s successful campaign manager, Attorney General at the height of the Civil Rights movement, a U.S. Senator, and presidential candidate in one of the most tumultuous times in American history. His celebrity was a catalyst for intense opinions about him, consequently, Kennedy was both loved and loathed. The crafting of his image through savvy media management while Robert Kennedy was alive was enhanced and magnified after his death. How did this mythology, particularly in film, flourish? This thesis examines a few examples in how the Robert Kennedy story morphed into legend -- whether it was his efforts as a champion of equality and justice within the Black community, or his guiding hand in the Cuban Missile crisis, with a focus on uncovering the historical truth, brings light to the “how.” There will also be an analysis of the number of documentaries and retrospectives beginning the night of Robert Kennedy’s death. While it’s been proved that the Kennedy family were conscious of press relations to improve their image, they were a visually attractive and dynamic family that invited media attention. The celebrity aspect of Robert Kennedy was a combination of his own fame, plus a living extension of possibilities lost with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The candid film of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General, as well as his physical adventures, travels around the world, and visits to the poor and destitute, which were all filmed mostly at the behest of his team, greatly contributed to his image and iconography. There was an enormous number of documentaries and film portrayals of Kennedy that enhanced his image. Into this mix is the human factor of losing a political leader in such a violent and tragic way that left those who were critical of Kennedy mostly silent in the aftermath. Popular biographies and the large number of films that featured Robert Kennedy either focus on his memory or portray him in dramaturgical terms which only heightened his iconic status. This paper shows how extensively film was used to augment his image, and after his assassination it was Robert Kennedy’s family, colleagues, friends, and admirers who boosted his accomplishments to mythological levels because there was no real measurement other than “what might have been.”

The Cold War era saw the emergence of many different pop culture phenomena. Some were political, such as the Punk Rock and Hippie movements. Others were fashionable trends like Disco. However, Heavy Metal music is unique due to its opaque origins, skyrocketing popularity, and final disappearance after the end of the Cold War. Heavy Metal had a direct relationship with reflecting the fears and anxieties of the late Cold War period. It was a direct response to the Hippie activist counterculture rock n' roll of the 1960s, and it charters a new path of rock n' roll in the process. However, Heavy Metal's content and moral reputation grew darker, so it lost much of its widespread appeal in the post-Cold War world. The emergence of Grunge and Hip-Hop in the 1990s dethroned Heavy Metal from its seat atop the pop-culture throne. This paper tracks the evolution and downfall of Heavy Metal from the 1970s through the 1990s. The findings are that Heavy Metal music was unique to the Cold War and could not exist without this conflict's geopolitical and social climate. However, Heavy Metal has survived in developing regions throughout decolonization. These individuals use Heavy Metal as an active and passive means of resistance against repressive and oppressive societies.

This project is a study of the establishment of the ‘PC Master Race’ identity within the larger personal computer/desktop computer enthusiast and gamer communities. This group (and its associated ideology) is traceable to the late 2000s and early 2010s and continues to be active to present. In this paper I will show that the group’s use of technical jargon and fascination with specific consumer technologies acts as a cultural mediator between larger enthusiast communities. Additionally, I posit that these ideas have origins in techno-social processes borne out of commodity computing machinery developed in the 1990s and 2000s. Here, the framework established by Donald MacKenzie, and later expanded by James S Small, is useful in understanding ‘technology’ as a contingent social process, not as a linear trajectory. Paths not taken, or ‘failures,’ are worth evaluation to understand why a given technology developed as it did. In the case of the ‘PC Master Race’ there is also a strong socioeconomic component at work – it is not simply a matter of ‘being an enthusiast’ but instead ‘being an enthusiast in the right way.’ Divining what ‘the right way’ means, and for whom, is the ultimate purpose of this project. Introduction: An unattributed image macro quips “[t]ired of looking at Bad Screen. Can’t wait to get home and look at Good Screen” The implicit underlying point being that many in the modern work force rely upon desktop, deskside, laptop, luggable, or similar pieces of computing machinery as their daily workplace, while simultaneously anticipating a return to their home wherein many leisure activities are also provided by computing machinery. Such computing machines have become a ubiquitous aspect of many people’s lives in the early 21st century. They are used for communication, business, scientific research, and other general tasks that largely conform under the umbrella term ‘computing.’ Recognition of this is neither novel nor unstudied, and represents both a significant amount of scholarship on the part of historians of technology, as well as a realization of mid-20th century technologists’ visions for the future.1 It is fair to say, the ‘Bad Screen’ is well-studied and well understood as a form of modern technology. However, what about the ‘Good Screen’? Where do leisure activities fit into the broader discussion of the history of computing machinery, and of computer science? A survey of the totality of uses for modern computing machinery in leisure would be not only exhaustive to read, but impossible to accurately compile given the myriad uses that people have found for computing machinery, especially machinery connected to the Internet, over the last twenty or thirty years. Therefore, this project is interested in only one possible leisure activity that people engage in: videogaming. A comprehensive survey of videogaming would also be prohibitively complex, so an additional series of scope reductions are necessary to further refine our topic to enthusiast videogaming from ca. 2002-2012 and the ways in which enthusiasts fashion themselves against non-enthusiast, non-expert users. This period is chosen because it is here that we see the price of self- styled ‘PC Master Race’ - an Internet-based community of computing enthusiasts who describe their mission as ‘spreading the Second Golden Age of PC Gaming.’2 Even a brief survey of the ‘PC Master Race’ (sometimes stylized/abbreviated as ‘PCMR’ or ‘pcmr’) subreddit will reveal a community of over 3,000,000 members that is seemingly obsessed with customized high performance desktop computing machines, as well as one founded on the rejection of inexpensive commodity machines and ‘gaming consoles.’3 Also striking is participants (often) waggish use of explicitly religious language when describing their experience – they do not simply ‘join’ but instead ‘ascend.’ This is also a group that attempts to directly chart its own history, citing its founding in 2011, and highlighting a number of sources as ‘foundational’ to understanding ‘what pcmr is about.’4 This work attempts to get at the motivations for the formation of the PCMR group, analyzing both their claims as a consumer advocacy group and enthusiast community, as well as the underlying technological story surrounding the gaming- oriented computing machinery which they use.

In 1938 U.S. counter espionage agencies learned of Abwehr espionage in America. Since that discovery, historical narratives of the history of Abwehr espionage in the United States can be summarized within three distinct themes. First, once espionage began, it was fairly limited in scope, centered around the New York City metropolitan area, and was executed by poorly trained or untrained individuals. Second, these efforts occurred prior to the U.S. entry into the war, were continually exposed by U.S. counter espionage agencies, and as a result of that exposure, fundamentally ceased to exist near the end of 1941. Third, the espionage that did exist within the U.S. had no impact on the conduct or outcome of the Second World War. Declassified sources available since the early 2000s in American, British, and German archives, or uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act, reveal a different scope and impact to that espionage. This paper seeks to use the declassified archival information for comparative analysis of the historical narratives to determine the actual extent of Abwehr espionage in the U.S. and its relative impact on the Second World War. Comparative analysis that pits this historical misunderstanding against declassified archival primary sources only available within the last two decades reveals an Abwehr that was far more present and capable within the United States, and the results of its espionage activity had tangible impacts prior to and during the U.S. participation in the war.

It is said that the victors write the history. That adage is demonstrably true for the history of the First World War. The German Empire, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, has shouldered most of the blame for the war for most of the past century. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles declares this German guilt in no uncertain terms. But is this a fair assessment? A study of pre-war German diplomatic and military actions provides a method to partially assess the culpability of Germany for the Great War. A fair analysis of that geopolitical activity shows that the actions of the German Empire were in accordance with normal and accepted policies and methods of other Great Power European countries of that time. The German actions were directed at protecting the Reich and enhancing Germany’s presence on the world stage, not at aggression towards other states. This manner of international interaction is not consistent with a long-term strategy aimed at initiating major warfare. This paper is an important addition to the historiography on the subject of German responsibility for the First World War because of its demonstration of the conventionality of Germany’s pre-war policies and activities. A modified DIME model (diplomatic-informational-military-economic with the addition of a social aspect to the model) is used as the organizational method of discussion and analysis. This specific model may be referred to as a DIMES model.

By the spring of 1777 loyalty and leadership in America had been tested both politically in congress and militarily on the battlefield for well over two years. The Continental Congress had declared independence the previous July, and General Washington’s military victories at Trenton in December 1776 and Princeton the following month stabilized wavering American patriotism after the massive loss of New York during the previous fall. Regional tensions were at a heightened state, especially in the Continental Congress. By March 1776 the Continental Army had lost their foothold on upper Canada, in large part due to the lack of material support from congress. Politicians in Philadelphia required a scapegoat for their inaction. They found one with the oldest general officer they had appointed to the position of brigadier general in 1775: David Wooster of Connecticut. On April 27, 1777, after being recommissioned as Connecticut’s senior ranking major general of militia, Wooster learned of a pending invasion of his home state. Major General Wooster, supported by Brigadier Generals Benedict Arnold and Gold Selleck Silliman, also from Connecticut, called out the militia and marched to Danbury to oppose the invaders. British troops under the command of General Tryon, the tory governor of New York, marched into Connecticut to seize a store of munitions held by the patriots in Danbury. On Tuesday morning, April 29, American troops met the British forces at the Battle of Ridgefield. As the enemy was engaged by Arnold and Silliman, Wooster’s troops attacked the rear of the retreating enemy. Wooster rallied his men forward to drive the British and loyalist forces from the field. While repositioning his men, he turned in his saddle, sword in hand, and was struck in his side by an enemy bullet and fell mortally wounded from his horse. The ball shattered Wooster’s spine. Soldiers removed the general’s scarlet sash from around his waist, unwrapped it, bore the dying officer from the field in the make-shift stretcher. On May 2, 1777, with his wife and son present, Major General David Wooster died and was quickly buried due to the proximity of the enemy still along the coast. At age sixty-seven, the oldest American general in the Revolution was dead. On June 17, 1777, the Continental Congress passed a resolution creating a committee to determine the most fitting way to honor “Brigadier Wooster.” The responsibility fell to Connecticut Governor Jonathan Trumbull, who had highly praised Wooster in a letter to General Washington on July 13, 1775, as being “held in high estimation by our Assembly, and by the officers and troops.” However, due to continued British threats followed by a second attack on the Connecticut coast in 1779, no memorial was ever erected. In 1786, the Confederation Congress officially created the Western Reserve of Connecticut in northeast Ohio, the “Firelands” as they were more commonly called. This land was made available to those in Connecticut who had lost their homes due to the devastation of the war. Wayne County was located on the southern edge of the Western Reserve and became home of many Connecticut refugees. By 1808, Wayne County had become sufficiently populated to establish an official county seat, and the veterans who resided there took the opportunity to honor the late Major General David Wooster by naming the county seat after the fallen general, who had been dead for almost thirty-two years. Yet today the question still arises: Who was David Wooster, and why should he be remembered within the annals of eighteenth-century American History? If this man was held in such “high estimation” by those in power in Connecticut throughout the 1700s, why has no one heard of him? Why has history, and the historiography of the eighteenth-century neglected him? Wooster’s experience highlighted the development and growth of American ideology throughout the 1700s that revolved around Lockean republicanism, military training, and civic leadership. His story provides new evidence which highlights the importance of eighteenth-century New England as an epicenter of political revolutionary ideology. David Wooster was a prominent leader in Connecticut throughout the 1700s, and was actively engaged in the civic, political, and military life of the colony. As historians continue to write about eighteenth-century America, as well as the Revolutionary War, David Wooster continues to evade the narrative, or at best is offered a peripheral reference. Why? By 1775 Wooster already had decades of successful military experience and was appointed the first major general of Connecticut militia before the Continental Army was even created. Yet, the historiography continues to provide only a tertiary glance at Wooster’s undeniable leadership. The focus of this dissertation will be to uncover how David Wooster shaped eighteenth-century Connecticut, and how his undivided loyalty and unwavering leadership are two characteristics that embody and define his life. As a British subject and commissioned officer in the army, his loyalty to England was unquestioned in his early years. However, as political abuses of royal authority and parliamentary government in London permeated into the colonies in North America, the seeds of political discontentment were sown, and Wooster eventually refocused his political loyalty upon his home colony of Connecticut. What would make a sixty-five-year-old merchant, justice of the peace, captain of the 51st Regiment of Foot, and naval custom officer for the port of New Haven yield his royal commission in 1775 and endanger his entire livelihood to take up arms in the republican cause of independence and liberty? The historical record of David Wooster is sparce. In 1779 British General Tryon led a raid upon New Haven and the surrounding Connecticut countryside. Wooster’s home was targeted. Many of his personal papers, including much of his correspondence, were destroyed. Thus, to recreate Wooster’s place within the historic narrative requires analysis of a limited number of surviving letters and intense research to locate additional sources within the correspondences of those who wrote to Wooster. Political journals of the colonies of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York provide important details, as well as the Journals of the Continental Congress. In addition, the personal papers of Connecticut Governors, Law, Fitch, Pitkin, and Trumbull illuminate the historical record where Wooster’s actions become difficult to trace. Furthermore, prominent individuals who interacted with Wooster wrote about him, such as Sir William Pepperrell, Philip Schuyler, Roger Sherman, and John Adams whose letters contain invaluable material on his life.

In the late Elizabethan and Jacobean period, monopolies emerged as a crucial tool of crown financial policy. In response, subjects petitioned crown, council, and parliament to lament the changes these grants wrought on their trades and livelihoods. This thesis will offer an analysis of anti-monopoly petitioning activity between 1590-1625. It will demonstrate the vibrancy and sophistication of petitioning in this often-overlooked period, whilst illuminating the important intersection between politics and economics at the turn of the seventeenth century. This economic issue politicised subjects, who turned to petitioning to lament the effects of this intrusive form of prerogative finance. They embraced the opportunities to approach parliament, council, monarch, and even new commissions charged with managing economic petitions. Subjects proved willing to draw on wider discourses in political culture and economic thought as bargaining strategies within petitions designed to further their own economic interests. This thesis will adopt a case study approach, focusing on the monopolisation of leather, starch, glass, and cloth. It will draw on a range of sources, predominantly manuscript, from such archives as the State Papers and individual livery companies. The role of London's livery and overseas trading companies both as petitioners, and as a source of concerted opposition themselves, will be explored throughout. In addition, the capacity for subjects to organise petitioning activity independently of the auspices of corporate organisation will be shown. By analysing often overlooked petitioning campaigns, the complex alliances between courtiers and artisans made possible in this era of monopolisation will also be illuminated. Through a focus on these anti-monopoly petitioning campaigns, this thesis will add to understandings of manuscript petitioning culture in the late Elizabethan and Jacobean periods, whilst demonstrating the importance of economic issues to the politics of the early modern public sphere.

This thesis for the degree of Doctor of Letters (DLitt) in history focuses on eleven single-author papers in peer-reviewed journals, three single-author book chapters, and three single-author books: 'Ada English: Patriot and Psychiatrist' (2014), 'He Lost Himself Completely: Shell Shock and its treatment at Dublin's Richmond War Hospital (1916-19)' (2014), and 'Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland' (2016). In the accompanying critical appraisal, I explore these publications in the context of the criteria for higher degrees. In this work, I use my training in both history and psychiatry to balance 'demedicalisation' with 'medicalisation' in order to maintain critical historical awareness and avoid the omission of clinical medicine from history. This paradigm supports a dynamic balance between historical awareness and the medical gaze. 'Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland' makes original contributions to several specific areas (e.g., particular institutions, various diagnoses, pieces of legislation, health policies, leading figures) and concludes that, despite Ireland's high rate of psychiatric hospitalisation, Ireland never had an epidemic of mental illness - we had an epidemic of 'mental hospitals'. A combination of poverty, poor healthcare, hastily enacted legislation, and a preference for institutional solutions to social problems resulted in Ireland's vast asylum system which was, I argue, as much a social creation as a medical one. 'Hearing Voices' draws on clinical archives from various 'mental hospitals', as well as legislation, policy documents, and historical and medical literature. I performed biochemical analysis of water from Tobar na nGealt ('well of the mad') in Kerry, to investigate reports of high levels of lithium, used for the treatment of bipolar disorder. 'Hearing Voices' provides a unique diversity of historical, social, epidemiological, and medical evidence, and original analysis, to explore an interplay of social and medical influences that was complex, dynamic, and fascinating.

The Hypothesis of Cultural Indigeneity proposes the novel concept that a non-native culture may qualify as indigenous to an area and, by extension, imply a right to legal protections for a non-native human population whose existence preserves an indigenous culture. This master’s thesis focuses on the contemporary field of indigeneity studies and the quintessential case study of the hypothesis, the culture of the Pitcairn Islands, through the lens of the intersection of culture, indigeneity, and international law. The methodology adheres to best practices of history, anthropology, and sociology, while taking particular care to place the views of indigenous populations at the epicenter of analysis, respecting the axiological standard of indigeneity studies. The present paper does not seek to make sweeping assertions about culture, indigeneity, nor even about “cultural indigeneity.” Rather, this research identifies how culture can be considered indigenous; how that status might provide legal protections for human populations which preserve such indigenous cultures; and why there is an extensive opportunity for an academic intervention in the field of indigeneity studies through the introduction of the niche of cultural indigeneity.

This thesis examines the emergence and influence of the 'Pan-Pacific' idea from the 1910s-1940s. It makes the case that to a diverse demographic globally, it proved a compelling regional geo-paradigm; the institutions it inspired, significant inter-imperial spaces for representatives from the former British Dominions to consider their society's place in the world and the region's globality. Situated at the intersection of 'British' and 'Pacific' World historiographies, the thesis is organised as a multi-thematic intellectual history, demonstrating the capacious appeal and ideological multiformity of the Pan-Pacific in educational, ethnological, leftist, commercial and geopolitical contexts respectively. Chapter 1 explores the intellectual roots of the Pan-Pacific, examining the institutional archives and private papers of figures associated with the Institute of Pacific Relations and Pan-Pacific Union. It argues that a 'Honolulu nexus' in inter-imperial affairs emerged, influencing a greater appraisal of the Dominions' own interests, including a form of 'rooted regionalism', largely neglected in the extant literature. Chapter 2 examines how the Pan-Pacific proved a conduit for the examination of race relations through the ethnological research programme of Honolulu's Bishop Museum and its investigations into the 'Polynesian Question' (the then disputed origins of the peoples of Oceania). Chapter 3 examines the attractions of the 'political left' to the Pan-Pacific, exploring the affiliation of trade unions in the Dominions to the Comintern-backed Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat. Chapter 4 explores how the Pan-Pacific idea boosted a regional commercial imaginary, whilst shedding light on the emergence of the Dominions' own nascent regional trade representation in the form of regional 'Honorary Agents'. The final chapter considers the emergence of trans-Pacific aviation and its influence upon conceptions of Dominion defence from sites spread across a Pan-Pacific cartography - from the atolls of the Phoenix Islands to the Kermadecs, spaces which found renewed significance in the 'Air Age'.

This work examines the lives and wellbeing of Irish women in the United States from 1850 until 1914, encompassing the end of the famine and the age of mass European migration. Irish migration in this period has been the subject of a large body of research, but existing studies have focused primarily on men, despite Irish female migrants often outnumbering male migrants in the late nineteenth century. The decision to emigrate in this period has frequently been explained by wage differentials between Ireland and destination countries, but this was only one factor in a multifaceted process. The importance of the family and the home is usually overlooked, despite their centrality to the decision to emigrate; and insufficient attention has been paid to how the experiences and circumstances of Irish émigrés changed over time. Most glaringly, the particular experiences of female migrants have not been given sufficient attention, with the result that our knowledge of this exceptional group of women is scanty, and their seminal impact on the broader history of Irish emigration is underplayed. This thesis takes a new and innovative approach to Irish emigration research, an approach which questions many of the assumptions underlying existing analysis. It does so in four main ways. First, this thesis places women at the centre of the analysis, considering their life in Ireland and, for emigres, their life in the United States. Second, it adopts a broad approach to wellbeing that extends beyond the typical and androcentric focus on real wages. Third, it considers how the lives of Irish women evolved over their life course, as workers, wives, mothers and widows. Fourth, it adopts a multi-level approach which combines numbers with narratives. The former includes United States micro-census data which provides information on all individuals in 1880, allowing for a new, national and comparative picture of women's lives. The latter includes parliamentary papers, newspaper articles, philanthropic studies of urban life, and charity reports. Moreover, this thesis employs letters of Irish women, to extrapolate how these women themselves perceived their own lives. Through this examination, this thesis shows the multidimensional nature of women's wellbeing, and how women's lives often deteriorated as migrant women aged. Although many women found independence and wellbeing in the US in their youth, many older women were left alone and destitute. Yet these women and their voices are central to our understanding of the history of Ireland, migration, and the making of the modern America.

This dissertation examines the evolution and impact of Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s celebrity from the 1900s to the 1940s. By using personal papers of the Roosevelt family, politicians, and journalists, along with magazines and newspapers, I delineate how Alice’s persona in the press changed over time and how her fame interacted with different historical trends. Alice’s emergence as a celebrity in 1901, when her father ascended to the presidency, coincided with the rise of human-interest journalism. Alice exuded unconventionality through her car-driving, gambling, and smoking, enabling her to emerge as a new model of white womanhood. As Alice became famous for transgressing gender norms, politicians, reformers, and others appropriated Alice’s fame for their own causes, and the press transposed new identities upon Alice based on new contexts. Alice materialized into a diplomat embodying a feminine form of U.S. imperialism that could be transplanted beyond the United States; a famous political wife who engaged in politics; and a salon hostess immersed in the rising gossip industry. In the 1930s, Alice capitalized on her fame to become a politically conservative journalist. By historicizing the evolution of her celebrity, my project expands on previous works on Alice that focus primarily on her personal life. Moreover, I seek to contribute to the burgeoning scholarship on celebrity studies, along with women’s history, studies of American imperialism, and political history. Lastly, by examining the trajectory of Alice’s fame, I illuminate how celebrity culture is not insulated from other aspects of society by showcasing the intersections of celebrity, gender, and politics in American history.

This dissertation examines the role of the kinship network in late medieval politics. It argues that these networks were often built and maintained by women, along the lines of modern sociological research into kinkeeping. This refutes earlier readings of the medieval family as patrilineal and progressively nuclear. As the chronicles, state papers, letters, conduct texts, and romances all revealed, medieval families were extensive, often held together by the mothers, daughters, and wives who cultivated connections across their natal and marital courts. We cannot assume that these women’s loyalty was inevitable, but instead must pay attention to the process by which they were courted, and how the networks were fostered in each new generation. Marriage treaties were investments in future connection and a belief that the daughters who left home would be able to establish secure political alliances for their families. Royal women’s use of these extended kinship networks made them powerful friends and foes. More specifically, this dissertation focuses on the way in which royal women’s kinship networks impacted the politics of fourteenth-century England. Kings who abused these connections learned that there were dire consequences, including the loss of the crown. On the other hand, when kings and queens operated in partnership, queens could mobilize their networks to support war efforts, recruit allies, or intercede for peace. Edward III’s appreciation for not only his wife’s relations abroad but also the kinswomen he had within the English dominions were major factors in his success as a king. When Edward III and Philippa then made plans for their children, they considered the entirety of the family network and the prospects for both their sons and daughters to be part of the continued English royal family system. Conversely, Edward II and Richard II learned all too late that their mismanagement of kinship networks, and their subsequent alienation of their kinswomen, left them with few allies as their regimes crumbled. As a whole, the dissertation challenges the anachronistic view of the medieval world as divided between public (political) and private (familial) spheres, a schema that usually places women firmly outside of public and political life. Instead, families were political in the Middle Ages, and women’s expected role in building and maintaining familial connections made them automatically political actors. By ignoring both the continued importance of kinship networks into the later medieval period and women’s uses of these networks, we have missed key facets of fourteenth-century history and important explanatory factors in the rise and fall of late medieval English kings.

This thesis discusses the role of the gold standard in Japan’s shift to militarism in the 1930s. Since its adoption in Japan in 1897, the gold standard and the price stability inherent in it had advantaged Japanese creditors and helped them finance Japan’s empire in Asia. At home, however, the gold standard generated deflation and prevented the Bank of Japan from responding to economic turmoil with interest rate decreases. Japan’s ill-advised return to gold in January 1930—amidst a recession—caused the nationalist and fiscally expansionist Rikken Seiyūkai party to gain the upper hand in public opinion over the liberal internationalist and fiscally conservative Rikken Minseitō party. This economic miscalculation was a major—perhaps the major—reason for the overwhelming loss of the liberal internationalists in the 1932 elections, setting Japan on its path to militarism. The paper begins with an outline of the history of money in Japan prior to 1897, using Japanese-language materials from the Japanese Currency Museum in Tokyo. Next, it provides a theoretical description of the gold standard and its variants and follows the history of the gold standard in Japan from its adoption in 1897 through 1932. It ends with an analysis of the interaction between the economic situation in the late 1920s and early 1930s and the shift to militarism in Japanese politics at that time.

This paper examines the reversal of Albanian-American relations following the end of the Cold War until Albania acceded to NATO membership: 1991 – 2009. During Albania’s communist era, it considered the United States to be its greatest enemy and greatest threat. After the fall of the communist regime with the collapse of Europe’s communist bloc, Albania quickly became one of America’s staunchest supporters, eventually becoming a treaty ally by joining NATO in 2009. By interviewing Albanians who were involved in Albanian government policy and actions and incorporating their comments into a study of Albania’s history and geopolitical nuances, this study demonstrates that Albania’s pro-American alignment is necessary for the preservation of Albania as an independent state. The international politics of Albania’s geographic position, the regional historical record, and internal deficiencies make an American alliance the most logical path for Albania to pursue.

I explore deep roots of corporate strategy and structure from historical and geographical perspectives. Specifically, in the first paper, I find that the ruggedness of a region’s terrain (i.e., amount of elevation difference due to mountains) and the temperateness of its climate (i.e., a moderate precipitation and temperature) are both positively related to individualism. Further, companies in more individualistic cultures may be less likely to engage in acquisitions. This paper deepens the understanding of the origins of culture from a geographic perspective, explains how regional culture affects firms, and sheds new light on how physical geography may affect firms. In the second paper, I show that the size and ratio of the Protestant population when U.S. states were admitted to the Union have reduced the number of hierarchical ranks and increased female representation in present-day firms’ top management teams. The effect has been partly channeled through legislation and laws promoting equality. In addition, historical Catholic immigration waves to different states have weakened this effect. This study contributes (1) to imprinting theory by considering imprinting dynamics and developing a regional, institutional imprinting perspective and (2) to a more nuanced understanding of institutional formation from a historical perspective and at the subnational level. In the third paper, I demonstrate that price regulation during a firm’s founding period leaves two regulatory imprints: a focus on government regulation and an accounting routine of downward earnings management. These regulatory imprints tend to persist and enduringly discourage firms’ R&D investment. This research contributes to a better understanding of how past institutions shape corporate R&D by uncovering new mechanisms—i.e., affecting firm operational focus and accounting routine. The regulatory imprinting perspective also helps explain why firms founded in regulated industries and communist countries tend to persistently invest less in R&D. Taken together, I show that a region’s physical geography shapes its culture, which then affects firms’ acquisition strategy. European immigrants established different institutions for U.S. states to reflect their cultural preferences, which in turn shape corporate leadership structure. A specific historical institutional arrangement in the United States and beyond—i.e., price regulation—persistently influences corporate R&D strategy.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is arguably Russia's most famous composer. Although his music is widespread, his immediate impact on Russian music in the 19th century is often overlooked or unknown by audiences. This paper examines what compositional and musical ideas Tchaikovsky used in his pieces and how he expressed them through his letters. Because of the relationships he had with his correspondents, Tchaikovsky had the means to develop and learn his unique compositional style. The most significant correspondents were his patroness Nadezhda von Meck, his brother Modest, and fellow composer Mily Balakirev. They enabled him to express and develop his musical beliefs. By utilizing these beliefs in his compositions, Tchaikovsky redefined what Russian music sounded like. This paper looks at these beliefs, applies them to his pieces, and discusses how he wrote about his ideas in his letters. Then, it discusses how these beliefs were influential on Russian composers who emerged following his death.

This paper focuses on evangelicalism, immigration, and unionism by looking at the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party (MFLP). The MFLP embodied the Midwestern and transatlantic religious developments introduced to it by immigrants coming from Protestant Europe. Yet, scholars have ignored the role of evangelicalism and migration in shaping the MFLP. By using the example of this party, this paper argues for a revised approach to labor and evangelical Christianity: appreciating it as a synthesis of European Christian Socialism and American evangelicalism as informed by transatlantic flows of migrations, ideas, and encounters from the 1800s to 1917.

(Re)mediating Math Anxieties with The Narrative, the Ephemeral, and the Visual, 1830-1930, unravels the intricate web of connections between the narrative, the material, and the affective conditions of mathematical discovery. Over the course of the century, student-centered pedagogies replaced rote memorization, leading to mass literacy and numeracy. New tools combined natural and mathematical language to ease anxiety and facilitate discovery. Beginning with Fredrich Froebel’s use of ephemera and quotidian objects, and expanding globally, pedagogues used illustrations, familiar narratives, paper, thread, and wooden blocks, to engage the learner. Activities such as paper folding and curve stitching captivated the discoverer’s visual and tactile senses, prompting them to narrate those sensory experiences as mathematical findings. For example, a parabolic trajectory is more intuitive when throwing a toy in the air and seeing how it falls. This trajectory helps learners visualize a traditional narrative arc, linking natural language to mathematical language. Newspapers and magazines regularly contained illustrative puzzles that fostered literacy and numeracy by yoking them to stories. Serialized fiction represented frustrations and breakthroughs that learners faced in the mathematical discovery process. Taken together, the sensual and cultural experience of mathematics dismantles its putative objectivity and status as a medium of scientific knowledge. Mathematics, instead, is an active form of literacy that engages with our material and social practices. The same publications that taught mathematical concepts reflected antipathetic cultural attitudes to learning math. Literary representations consistently portrayed mathematicians as villains. Novels and stories encourage readers to express frustrations with math that stem from gendered and classed preconceptions. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, Charles Kingsley’s Hypatia, and George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession portray successful female mathematicians as gender deviant: cold and calculating, and incapable of true happiness. When literary and visual modernism emerges, mathematics is used as a tool for formal experimentation, which reflects new positive attitudes toward mathematics and culture. For instance, James Joyce utilizes mathematical errors in the “Ithaca” chapter of Ulysses to emphasize the art of mathematical discovery over computed results. Acknowledging such cultural contexts of mathematics overturns the conventional notion of mathematical objectivity in science and technology studies.

Abstract“Prison Bound”: South Central LA Graffiti Writer Narratives of Carcerality and the Making of a Youth Carceral Culture, 1941—2000byAlejandro GarciaDoctor of Philosophy in HistoryUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Rebecca McLennan, Co-Chair, Professor Waldo E. Martin, Co-ChairFrom World War II to the early 1990s, Black and Brown people maintained peaceful intergroup relations on the streets of Los Angeles, California. The historical record shows that conflicts between these groups remained minimal and isolated, and that race only played a peripheral role. After the mid-1990s, this changed. Black-Brown interracial tensions and violence on the streets became more frequent. I argue that both California’s formal neoliberal carceral state and its informal neoliberal carceral culture decisively shaped this change.The thesis here is that when California developed its formal neoliberal carceral state between the 1970s and 2000s, its informal neoliberal carceral culture was also set in motion. By the 1990s, LA’s street power dynamics and race relations were informed by relational carceral interactions that intersect with the formal carceral state, the informal carceral culture of prisoners, and the free-world of the streets, or what I call carcerality. The primary research bases are archival research, newspapers, policy records, papers of government officials, including papers from the California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation (CDCR), music lyrics and music videos, graffiti writings, gang member narratives, and oral histories of graffiti writers that I conducted. I argue that South Central LA’s interracial graffiti crews of the 1980s and early 1990s echo in part a long history of fundamentally peaceful Black-Brown relations. In addition, I argue that the rupture between them in the mid-1990s reflects in large measure the impact of formerly Brown and Black prison gang members released concurrently onto LA’s streets and into LA’s communities. As mass institutions forge mass culture, then institutions of mass incarceration help create sufficient carceral cohesion to form mass informal carceral cultures. The scholarship on the carceral state and mass incarceration mostly focuses on official top-down processes of incarceration. We still know very little about how informal carceral cultures can appropriate the formal functions of the carceral state. Conversely, the scholarship on informal carceral cultures treats prisoners’ interactions as having little, at best limited impact, on the outside world. However, a historical examination of carceral interactions that intersect a massive carceral state, its informal carceral culture, and the free-world of the streets provides us opportunities to deepen our understanding of the width and breadth of carceral intersubjectivities. The scholarship on LA’s Black-Brown relations emphasizes the interracial tensions and violence of the 1990s. But, that scholarship fails to account for a longer history of Black-Brown peaceful coexistence prior to the 1990s and how it ruptures under massive formal and informal carceral forces in the 1990s. The story of South Central’s interracial graffiti crews helps us understand this. Prior to the 1990s, California prisons were the major site of Black-Brown interracial tensions and violence. When California massively expanded its carceral infrastructure during the 1970s throughout the early 2000s, this changed dramatically. With the release of prisoners from California’s prisons in the 1990s, Black and Brown gang members and the related cultural dynamics spilled out into Black-Brown communities and helped fracture Brown-Black relations. As I demonstrate here, graffiti crews were not gangs, but they were also not exempt from the reach of prison gangs, especially once formerly incarcerated Brown and Black gang members left prisons and rejoined the ‘free’ world. Ultimately, in concert with street gangs, prison gangs sought to discipline or punish interracial graffiti crews, seeking to incorporate them inside the larger informal neoliberal carceral culture of California. To reiterate, as a result, the peaceful relations between LA’s Black and Brown peoples endured a tremendous assault.

Historically, destructive cult groups have recruited members in-person, lived in communal spaces, and had strong in-person bonds. Developed in response to these groups is the BITE Model of undue influence, which models ways in which a group can be classified as a destructive cult. However, online-facilitated destructive groups have emerged since the beginning of the internet, and while the BITE model is the best method to determine if a group is a cult, the ways these groups operate in terms of recruitment, indoctrination, and mind control look different than historical cults. This paper explores the historical groups, the BITE model, the internet, policy and regulation, online-facilitated groups, along with suggestions for further research, and a cautionary word to those who hope to further the research of online-facilitated destructive cults.

The purpose of this research and writing is to examine the military history which transpired in the Shenandoah Valley during the American Civil War. There is a general motivation to discover more about the people who made the decisions that impacted the Valley. Two research questions will be considered. First, why did the Union and Confederate leadership conduct operations in the Shenandoah Valley as they did in the Civil War? Second, how did the conduct of operations in the Shenandoah Valley change during the war for both the North and the South? Readers will encounter what happened in the Shenandoah Valley during the Civil War from the perspective of some of the participants who lived through it. This encounter will be presented from the analysis of both primary and secondary sources. Such sources as collected papers of people including Robert E. Lee and Robert Milroy along with recorded history from units like the 118th Pennsylvania will be included. The Shenandoah Valley campaigns of the Civil War tell the story of two wars. In the beginning, there was the dramatic success of the Confederate army in the Valley in the first half of the war. Subsequently, there was the ultimate, final success of the Union army in the last half of the war. Unfortunately for the Confederacy, the Union success came at the right time and marked the end of the war for the South. This duality of emphasis on the Valley can be seen in two observations. First, the Federal leadership did not understand the importance of the Shenandoah Valley until they did. Second, the Confederate leadership always understood the importance of the Valley. Their problem was they were able to adequately defend it until they could no longer defend it. In the end, the explanation for the ability to access the Valley boiled down to the ability of both the Union and the Confederacy leadership to hold on to it.

When the Eleventh hour rang on November 11th, 1918, the United States Expeditionary Force, now the United States Army was no longer a mere constabulary organization. In fact, it had grown from just over 200,000 total soldiers to a staggering 4.2-million-man army. However, the growth of the army was not easy, through political and organizational in-fighting the army grew painfully. The inability of the United States government, especially its commander-in-chief, to implement reform measures ensured, and ultimately sealed the fate of thousands of American dead Doughboys in France. Additionally, the Army War College, General Staff, and War Department deliberately curtailed the progression of the army by virtually dismissing foreign reports of the war and discounting them as facts. The overall consolidation of facts points to several lackluster and implausible steps both in the military and political departments of the United States as to why the army had such growing difficulties. There was no reason for the most booming economy in the world to have the 17th smallest army to back up a weak and impulsive foreign policy. Within this project I address the raising, fielding, and overall effectiveness of the American Expeditionary Force from conception to victory. The paper embraces a top-down view from the political and military, both encompassing its leaders, President Woodrow Wilson, and his staff, as well as General John Pershing with his General Staff. While these men are magnanimous in the world of historical fact, the Doughboy’s story is also told to get a better understanding of what these extraordinary men did for their country.

The public primarily learns about scientific information from the news media. These news media have been, unfortunately, found guilty of fueling: biased coverage of climate change, misinformation about climate change, and politicization of climate science. “Disinformation outfits,” who are comprised of industry actors, prominent climate change deniers, and their organizations also used or attempted to use the news media to discredit climate scientists with the goal of accelerating the level of public uncertainty about global climate change and slow action to prevent it. This thesis explores how the news media discussed a small but very vocal cohort of climate change denialists throughout the 1990s. The use of “fake experts” has been found to be one of the most powerful techniques for effective misinformation campaigns. This paper examines the inclusion of key climate change skeptics via quantitative content analysis in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Times of London from 1989-2006. This paper also researches the prevalence of legitimization strategies iv that weaker parties use to amplify their messaging. The results find that skeptic inclusion was much higher in U.S. conservative papers than U.K. conservative papers. Left-center papers were more likely to include “compromised” scientists and discuss climate change controversies than conservative papers. Conservative papers were more likely to include irrelevant “fake experts” and actively misuse and misrepresent scientific information, as well discredit climate scientists. Skeptics were discussed more during years of particular significance to climate change history suggesting they were capitalizing on media opportunity structures. This thesis also found evidence of early “source hacking,” or the targeting of journalists to spread misinformation.

Abstract To date, Holocaust historians have often grappled with documenting life and death in the Nazi concentration camps for pregnant women. As a result of limited source material, historians have struggled to incorporate the narratives of pregnant women into the historiography and tend to group topics surrounding pregnancy into larger works on gender in the Holocaust. This approach has created a gap in the historiography on reproductive health and female bodies in the Holocaust. In this paper, I will examine the narratives of Holocaust survivors, including the testimonies from pregnant women and doctors, as well as the photographs and drawings from inmates who witnessed the murder of pregnant women and children. My paper will answer the following question: how did pregnancy, abortion, and childbirth influence the experience of pregnant women in the Nazi concentration camps? I will argue that while pregnancy increased the risk of experimentation and extermination for women, the bodies of pregnant women within the camp system experienced a physical deterioration which concealed the pregnancies of many women during subsequent selections and led to an increase in abortions performed by inmates in secret and infanticides after childbirth. To answer my research question, I will focus on the following camps: Theresienstadt, Ravensbruck, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. These camps will showcase the ways in which hybrid, work, and death camps influenced the experiences of pregnant women. Beyond its focus on pregnant women, this study can help historians better understand how a particular demographic could have different experiences depending on the type of camp they were imprisoned in.

Western Europe has long been established as a highly patriarchal culture that has established strict and rigorous gender norms and values for men and women. Such gender norms have determined how men and women behave, dress, work, and are depicted in the arts. During the time of the Italian Renaissance, these distinct gendered divisions were apparent in the works of male artists painting both male and female subject matter and themes. When artistic pieces were not catering towards the Catholic Church's goals, they were centered around the external male audience, focusing on appealing to male ego, arousal, and comfort. The depiction of strong female emotion during the Italian Renaissance illustrates not only the cultural and gender norms surrounding women during that time, but also how both men and women interacted with those norms. This paper analyzes the perspectives on the Italian Renaissance's gendered norms as seen through the work of Artemisia Gentileschi and Michelangelo Caravaggio's Judith Beheading Holofernes and Gentileschi and Cavaliere d'Arpino's Susanna and the Elders. Utilizing feminist criticism and historical analysis, this paper examines whether the hegemonic messaging of the Italian Renaissance permeates both male and female-created artwork, or if the differences in experience and gender brings a new narrative to the Judith and Susanna themes.

This thesis examines the role of entertainment in shaping the social hierarchy of ancient Rome. While birthright was a significant factor in determining one's status in Roman society, entertainment offered a way for increasing social standing. Furthermore, entertainment was a vital tool the Romans would use to reinforce the status hierarchy. The games, theater, and public baths were venues where individuals could display their wealth and influence, gain respect from elites and the Roman mob, and construct and maintain the social hierarchy. This thesis focuses on these three forms of entertainment because they are some of the most significant in terms of interactions with the different social classes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ways in which Roman entertainment shaped the social hierarchy of ancient Rome.

Just War Theory distinguishes between two levels of war, including jus ad bellum, or the just reasons for which the war is waged, and jus in bello, or just actions within the conduct of the war. This research paper focuses on jus in bello aspects of war, including non-combatant immunity, military necessity, and proportionality, in application to an understanding of history, that of the American Civil War. A significant question in this regard is how did commanders and their armies lead and conduct themselves in concern and adherence to the rules of warfare during campaigns in enemy territory? While the Battle of Gettysburg has certainly wielded an abundance of studies, the Gettysburg Campaign is less studied, especially in regard to the conduct of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia towards Pennsylvania civilians, particularly important as the northward movement of Confederate forces in the late spring and early summer of 1863 was the only major Confederate advance into Northern territory. To fully understand Confederate actions within Pennsylvania during Lee’s Gettysburg Campaign, it is necessary to conduct a comparative study with a campaign waged by a Federal army in the South. Major General Philip H. Sheridan’s Valley Campaign in the late summer and autumn of 1864, is suitable for such a comparison, due to a number of observable similarities and differences, related to jus in bello principles and the conduct of the Army of the Valley towards Virginia civilians.

This paper compares the process and outcomes from the reclassification of Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands from national monuments to national parks. Carlsbad was initially established as a national monument in 1923 and then redesignated as a national park in 1930. White Sands, however, was created as a national monument in 1933, but did not obtain national park status until 2019. This article reconstructs the sequence of events and decisions that led to the creation and redesignation of these two National Park Service (NPS) units, paying close attention to the significant difference in time separating their establishment as national monuments and eventual redesignation to national parks. To accomplish this, historical data relevant to these NPS units was analyzed from the University of New Mexico and New Mexico State University archives, including congressional and gubernatorial records, newspaper accounts, and personal correspondences. Budget and visitation statistics for the parks are also included, where relevant, to highlight the tangible impacts of redesignation.

Utilizing torture during the Battle of Algiers, the My Lai Massacre, and torture at Abu Ghraib as specific case studies, this thesis contends that negligence or dereliction of duty by the brigade, battalion, and company commanders were the primary factors. Additional factors included commanders stressing rapid results, and external stressors in the soldiers’ immediate environment. War crimes are defined as violations of the 1907 Hague Convention which was supported by the 1949 Geneva Protocols, and negligence is defined in the legal sense. Contrary to the existing narrative, this thesis contends that lower-level commanders did more to create the conditions required for war crimes than higher level policies. The final main factor was a series of external stressors and trauma that created a sense of hatred or revenge toward the people on whom the war crimes were later committed which was encouraged by the commanders. The central difference between this paper and existing scholarship is the focus on leaders directly above the soldiers committing the crimes rather than larger policies.

This thesis argues that the historical analysis of President Theodore Roosevelt’s diplomatic achievements are too often, and mistakenly, attributed to his use of the threat of military force to coerce foreign governments and ignore his remarkable ability to employ of the tools of statecraft and national power available to him towards achieving his objectives. The paper explores two examples of Roosevelt’s foreign policy actions, the 1902-1903 Venezuela Crisis, and his efforts to gain diplomatic concessions by the Ottoman government, to demonstrate that Roosevelt was a highly intelligent, educated, capable, and disciplined head of state. Rather than embodying the oft quoted, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” policy edict for which he is known, Roosevelt displayed a disciplined approach to achieving his strategic goals, a keen understanding of the limits of military force, which he coupled with a deep understanding of the national interests and exigencies of competitor states. Thus, through the calibrated application of the tools of statecraft, Roosevelt was able to effectively achieve his objectives without ever resorting to the use of force.

The Minoan civilization of Bronze-Age Crete has, until recently, been obscured in mythological uncertainty. As a prehistoric civilization, the available evidence for historic analysis is sparse and ambiguous. This paper evaluates the material evidence for ritual activity to chart the religious developments of Minoan Crete. In the earliest periods of their civilization, the Minoans practiced animism, which reflected their ideals towards survival and cooperation. As their prosperity grew due to technological advancements, a social hierarchy formed. The emerging elite employed religion to justify their claim to power by appropriating religion, which culminated in a dual-monotheistic Knossian theocracy. This lasted until a period of Mycenaean occupation on Crete, through which the Mycenaeans established political control through religious syncretism. After the Mycenaean authorities withdrew to the mainland, the Minoans continued to practice polytheism until the ultimate collapse of their civilization. Punctuated by periods of natural disasters, these developments show how religion can be used by the social elite as a tool to accumulate wealth and power.

This paper will examine the rhetoric and theology of four women reformers during the beginning of the Protestant Reformation to understand their conceptions of women’s authority during the Reformation. These four women, Marie Dentière (1495 - 1561), Marguerite de Navarre (1492 - 1549), Katarina Schütz Zell (1497/8 - 1562), and Argula von Grumbach (1492 - 1554), wrote numerous different religious tracts to disseminate their ideas. However, they still had to overcome cultural and religious barriers that prevented them from being allowed to speak on religious matters. To circumvent religious barriers, these women relied on many common rhetorical tactics to justify their decision to speak out on spiritual affairs. They adopted and proclaimed the traditional doctrines of the Reformation such as sola scriptura and the fellowship of all believers. However, they then took these beliefs to far more inclusive ends than their male contemporaries did. They wanted to expand the authority of women by allowing them to preach and by attempting to eliminate the moral and educational barriers which would otherwise be used to deny women the ability to communicate on spiritual matters.

This paper studies all eleven seasons of the hit television show M*A*S*H (1972-1973) and examines how the portrayal of mental health changed in the show’s plotlines in response to changing guidelines and mental health policy in the 1970s and early 1980s. This study focuses on the association of mental illness with homosexuality, the changes made to the American Psychological Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in the 1970s and early 1980s, the rise and fall of mental health policies from the Kennedy Administration to the Reagan Administration, and the portrayal of several pertinent mental conditions, such as combat-related trauma, PTSD, repressed memories, phobias, and stress-induced drug use.

In April 1965, President Johnson announced the start of Operation Rolling Thunder, an air campaign aimed at forcing North Vietnam into submission during the Vietnam War. The operation would prove to be an absolute failure, so much to the point that in March 1968, Johnson revealed that he was not running for President. How did Rolling Thunder’s failures contribute to this decision? How did the progression of the Vietnam War affect Johnson’s public approval ratings to the point that the President did not feel like he could win the election? How did Rolling Thunder alter the course of the Vietnam War and what impact did it leave on Johnson’s legacy? Moreover, how did the foreign policy under Johnson affect his successor, Richard Nixon? This paper would attempt to answer these questions, drawing from both American and Vietnamese sources, to try and examine a war that has plagued both nations involved even to the present time.