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Title: Prelude to Disaster: Defending Confederate New Orleans.
Creator: Zwilling, Andrew, Jones, Jim, Grant, Jonathan, Hadden, Sally, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the defense of Confederate New Orleans during American Civil War, specifically during the year 1861 and the first four months of 1862. The importance of New Orleans to the South is first analyzed in order to give context for its defense. Then both the Confederate military perspective and the city's perspective are taken into account, resulting in the conclusion that the defense can be seen as an inevitable microcosm of the problems that generally plagued the Confederacy....
Show moreThis thesis examines the defense of Confederate New Orleans during American Civil War, specifically during the year 1861 and the first four months of 1862. The importance of New Orleans to the South is first analyzed in order to give context for its defense. Then both the Confederate military perspective and the city's perspective are taken into account, resulting in the conclusion that the defense can be seen as an inevitable microcosm of the problems that generally plagued the Confederacy. Lack of material resources and manpower, confusion and division between the local population and Confederate authority, disorganized and compartmentalized leadership and overwhelming Federal industrial advantage are all issues that can be seen both in the defense of New Orleans and the Confederacy as a whole.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0471
Format: Thesis

Title: From Mosquito Clouds to War Clouds: The Rise of Naval Air Station Banana River.
Creator: Euziere, Melissa Williford, Jones, James P., Conner, V.J, Green, Elna C., Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Naval Air Station Banana River was created as a result of increased military appropriations to defend the Atlantic Coast of the United States of America. The Hepburn Board was charged with finding appropriate sites for new naval installations that could better protect American citizens from attacks along the coastline. After an exhaustive study, a site in Brevard County was selected to become a naval patrol sea plane base. County and city leaders in Brevard rallied around the construction of...
Show moreNaval Air Station Banana River was created as a result of increased military appropriations to defend the Atlantic Coast of the United States of America. The Hepburn Board was charged with finding appropriate sites for new naval installations that could better protect American citizens from attacks along the coastline. After an exhaustive study, a site in Brevard County was selected to become a naval patrol sea plane base. County and city leaders in Brevard rallied around the construction of the Naval Air Station Banana River that they had lobbied the Hepburn Board to bring to their county. They threw their support behind the station throughout its construction and celebrated its commissioning in October 1940. Pearl Harbor brought changes to NAS Banana River as German U-boats stalked the Florida coast and the station's mission was expanded to include patrol duty, search and rescue, bombardier training, sea-plane pilot training, and communications research. Buildings sprang up in response to the increase in personnel needed to fill all of the programs. Brevard County welcomed the sailors into their towns, homes, and lives. Although the base itself was isolated, there were a number of activities on and off base to keep the sailors busy. The county was felt the economic impact of the base with an increased number of employment opportunities, a rise in retail and food service profits, and a demand for additional infrastructure to support the station. Naval Air Station Banana River was deactivated in 1947 to the dismay of the people in Brevard County. Their disappointment did not last long when a few years later the base was reactivated to serve as the headquarters of the newly formed Joint Long Range Proving Ground, a testing site for the American rocket and missile program. The existence of the Naval Air Station Banana River and the infrastructure created to support it helped to bring missile program, and a few years later the space program, to Brevard County.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0489
Format: Thesis

Title: The Force of Nature: The Impact of Weather on Armies during the American War of Independence, 1775-1781.
Creator: Engel, Jonathan T., Hadden, Sally, Harper, Kristine, Jones, James, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the impact that weather had on armies during the American War of Independence. It argues that weather affected the operations of both American and British armies in three areas: strategy, influencing the planning of campaigns; tactics, affecting the course of battles; and administration, adding to the daily work of maintaining armies in the field and keeping them functional. Year after year, in all four seasons, generals and soldiers had to cope with phenomena such as...
Show moreThis thesis examines the impact that weather had on armies during the American War of Independence. It argues that weather affected the operations of both American and British armies in three areas: strategy, influencing the planning of campaigns; tactics, affecting the course of battles; and administration, adding to the daily work of maintaining armies in the field and keeping them functional. Year after year, in all four seasons, generals and soldiers had to cope with phenomena such as rain, snow, heat, and fog. Weather was capricious, sometimes helping one army and harming the other, and sometimes hindering both armies. Generals often tried to use the weather to gain an advantage and to mitigate the damage weather might do to their armies. The first chapter addresses weather's activity in early years of the war, up to the end of 1777. The second chapter focuses on the war in the north from 1778 to the end of major fighting in 1781, and the final chapter covers the impact of weather in that same period in the southern theater, concluding with the Franco-American victory at Yorktown. No previous study has concentrated on weather's role in the war as a whole. While weather was not the sole force that guided the armies' actions or decided the outcomes of battles or the war, this thesis demonstrates how the weather helped shape the Revolutionary War alongside other better-recognized factors such as political, economic, or logistical issues, and warrants recognition as such.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0562
Format: Thesis

Title: A Mississippi Burning: Examining the Lynching of Lloyd Clay and the Encumbering of Black Progress in Mississippi during the Progressive Era.
Creator: Dorsey, Albert, Jones, Maxine D., Montgomery, Maxine L., Jones, James P., Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: When twenty-two year old African American Lloyd Clay was strung up from an old elm tree, burned alive, and his body riddled with bullets by a white lynch mob of approximately one-thousand people on the corner of a major intersection in Vicksburg, Mississippi, nothing happened. Vicksburg in the year 1919 was typical of many other cities throughout the United States deep South. When Clay was unjustly crucified, no whites from the mob were put on trial; and there was no backlash or retaliation...
Show moreWhen twenty-two year old African American Lloyd Clay was strung up from an old elm tree, burned alive, and his body riddled with bullets by a white lynch mob of approximately one-thousand people on the corner of a major intersection in Vicksburg, Mississippi, nothing happened. Vicksburg in the year 1919 was typical of many other cities throughout the United States deep South. When Clay was unjustly crucified, no whites from the mob were put on trial; and there was no backlash or retaliation from the black Vicksburg citizenry. As a matter of fact, Clay's mother was even told by whites not to go to the morgue to identify her dead son's body; it would be best, they suggested, if she stayed out of it. This case study will specifically situate Vicksburg, Mississippi, and the lynching of Lloyd Clay within the context of the last decade of the 19th century and the first two decades of the 20th century, called by many historians, the Progressive Era. It will examine why black lynchings increased after slavery was constitutionally abolished and the Reconstruction Era in the American South came to an end. It will also juxtapose Mississippi lynchings, blamed for the maintenance of economical, political, and social white privilege, against the Progressive Era to show how those lynchings encumbered black economic, political, and social progress.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0686
Format: Thesis

Title: Realistic Religion and Radical Prophets: The Stfu, the Social Gospel, and the American Left in the 1930S.
Creator: Youngblood, Joshua C., Conner, Valerie Jean, Jones, James P., Grant, Jonathan, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union was an interracial organization of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers that emerged from northeastern Arkansas in the mid-1930s. The STFU became the most important social action on the part of landless agricultural workers during the Great Depression and one of the most significant critics of the New Deal and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This study examines the STFU as a dramatic expression of the Social Gospel in the South during...
Show moreThe Southern Tenant Farmers' Union was an interracial organization of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers that emerged from northeastern Arkansas in the mid-1930s. The STFU became the most important social action on the part of landless agricultural workers during the Great Depression and one of the most significant critics of the New Deal and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This study examines the STFU as a dramatic expression of the Social Gospel in the South during the 1930s and as a representation of the cooperative work of radical and moderate American leftists during the interwar period. From its inception, the STFU faced the violent opposition of planters and local authorities, yet the union managed to survive until the end of the decade as a result of talented leadership, the effectiveness of its organizational strategy, and the patronage of influential leftist leaders around the nation. The plight of the sharecroppers attracted the concern and attention of the eastern liberal establishment, Socialist leaders such as Norman Thomas, and the Communist Party. However, southern progressive leaders such as Harry Leland Mitchell, a former sharecropper turned political radical from west Tennessee, always led the union. The STFU also drew members of a new generation of southern seminary-trained social activists. These "Radical Prophets," through work with southern labor and national organizations such as the NAACP and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, injected the Social Gospel theology taught by social activists and university professors such as Alva Taylor at Vanderbilt University with a Marxist inspired desire to revolutionize southern economic and social institutions in keeping with the philosophy of modern theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr. Southern labor leaders, radical ministers, regional black leaders, and white and black country preachers, combined in the STFU, and the potent mixture allowed the union to quickly organize thousands of the nation's most impoverished and disenfranchised in a valiant though ill-fated effort to reform southern society. This thesis also presents the STFU as a microcosm of the dissolution of the American left consensus as the Great Depression came to an end. By the early 1940s, the union had all but disappeared after having reached a peak of 35,000 members. Although the pressures associated with affiliation with an international union and the changing demographics of the Delta South were the direct causes of the union's failure, ideological rifts between the radical and moderate leaders of the union, as closely observed below in the split between the "Radical Prophets" Howard Kester and Claude Williams, hastened the STFU's demise. By analyzing the letters and first-hand accounts of STFU leaders and organizers in the context of radical Christianity and leftist political and social thought, this study provides a new perspective concerning the STFU which addresses the place of the union in 1930s intellectual history and as a manifestation of the often overlooked radical progressive tradition that existed in the South during the period.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0764
Format: Thesis

Title: Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way.
Creator: Smith, Douglas Vaughn, Jones, James Pickett, Tatum, William J., Grant, Jonathan, Horward, Donald D., Sickinger, James, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation considers the transformation of the United States Navy from a defensive-minded coastal defense navy during the first century of this nation's history into an offensive-mindset, risk taking navy in the very early stages of World War II. More precisely, since none of the most significant leaders of the U.S. Navy in World War II were commissioned prior to the Spanish-American War and none participated in any significant offensive operations in the First World War, this...
Show moreThis dissertation considers the transformation of the United States Navy from a defensive-minded coastal defense navy during the first century of this nation's history into an offensive-mindset, risk taking navy in the very early stages of World War II. More precisely, since none of the most significant leaders of the U.S. Navy in World War II were commissioned prior to the Spanish-American War and none participated in any significant offensive operations in the First World War, this dissertation examines the premise that education, rather than experience in battle, accounts for that transformation. In evaluating this thesis this dissertation examines the five carrier battles of the Second World War to determine the extent to which the inter-war education of the major operational commanders translated into their decision processes, and the extent to which their interaction during their educational experiences transformed them from risk-adverse to risk-accepting in their operational concepts. Thus the title for my dissertation: Carrier Battles: Command Decision in Harm's Way. Almost all of the top-level leaders of the U.S. Navy in World War II had two things in common. They invariably graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy from 1904 through 1912, and from the U.S. Naval War College from 1923 through 1937. Thus none had any experience in the Spanish-American War, and, due primarily to lack of many opportunities for offensive action in the First World War, few had any real experience of consequence in that war either. The question that obviously springs to mind, then, is how did these top naval leaders, brought up in the culture of a Navy that had been developed as a coastal defense Service during the first hundred years of its existence, develop a risk-taking, offensive attitude without any real opportunity to refine the skills necessary for offensive operations save in the classroom? That has become the central theme around which this dissertation has been structured. In the formative stages of their education at the Naval Academy something profoundly influenced the Midshipmen in inculcating a long-term commitment to naval service. Though several formative events surround their socialization in the military, one in particular seems to stand out. That would be the realization of the position of the United States as a player on the world stage emanating from President Theodore Roosevelt's ordering of the "Great White Fleet" around the world in a cruise that marked the emergence of the United States in global politics. That event solidified in the Annapolis Midshipmen the realization of the role the U.S. Navy would of necessity play as America emerged from a survival instinct for isolation from European and world involvements to active participation in world affairs. Moreover, fortified by the naval theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan, the Officer candidates at Annapolis realized the geo-strategic implications of that participation. Of necessity, the U.S. Navy would spearhead U.S. global involvement, and by virtue of their eminent commissioning and potential for leadership positions in that Navy, their own destinies would be tied to that of United States global engagement. Several authors have speculated as to what accounts for the success of the U.S. Navy in World War II -- and particularly in the early stages of that war. Luck, naval war gaming at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, breaking of Japanese naval codes, and Divine Intervention have all been postulated as credible rationale for that success. Though all of these were important -- none can adequately account for the aggressive, risk-accepting decisions that the top U.S. Naval operational leaders were able to embrace. The institutionalized naval educational process stands out as enabling in their relationship to decisive decision and action and fundamental understanding among the leaders interacting in combat of what they could expect from those fighting with them. Foremost among these is the so-called "Green Hornet," -- so named because of the color of its binding, which provided an extremely concise and rote method for approaching and analyzing a problem and formulating a sound course of action appropriate to the situation at hand. Hence the actual title of the "Green Hornet," -- Sound Military Decision. The main thesis explored in this dissertation is that education rather than experience best accounts for U.S. Navy success in operations in World War II, and that Sound Military Decision can be appropriately established as the main element of that education which produced the success enjoyed. This thesis is evaluated by analyzing the naval decision process in the five carrier battles of the Second World War: The Battle of the Coral Sea; The Battle of Midway; The Battle of the Eastern Solomons; The Battle of Santa Cruz; and The Battle of the Philippine Sea. The institutions of higher education of the various Services today have deviated significantly and unacceptably from the successful approach they maintained during the inter-War period. Today's education for Officers is very descriptive with respect to theory, operational art, doctrine, technology, techniques and tactics, as opposed to a much more proscriptive and interactive (among students) approach employed between the World Wars. It is hoped that the research completed for this study might be a catalyst for consideration of a return to an approach to education that will more fully capture the essentials of confidence-building between and among students and promote unconventional thinking (in the current parlance, thinking "outside the box") that can refine approaches to warfare before rather than in the midst of battle. From a historical standpoint, this study is unlike any done previously in terms of both scope and methodology. Experienced editors of naval publications indicate that no one has previously published a book which covers all five carrier battles of the Second World War. All five carrier battles have been mentioned in books, but only briefly attendant to campaigns taking place on land. In terms of methodology, dissection of the naval decision process in battle in relation to specific educational objectives previously instilled in the naval leadership, this study is believed to be applicationally unique. Thus this study has been conducted in appreciation of the possibility of making a unique scholarly contribution to the field of Military History, and also Military Education.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0344
Format: Thesis

Title: "Conservation of the Child Is Our First Duty": Clubwomen, Organized Labor, and the Politics of Child Labor Legislation in Florida.
Creator: Burns, Sarah, Green, Elna, Jones, Maxine, Koslow, Jennifer, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Florida's child welfare movement, a broad coalition of clubwomen, legislators, labor activists, and civic reformers, worked tirelessly to ensure that the right to a protected childhood was guaranteed to all of Florida's future citizens. These Progressive reformers, embracing new ideas about charity, the causes of poverty, and family life, turned to legislation to protect children when society could not, and their efforts culminated in the passage of Florida's comprehensive Child Labor Law in...
Show moreFlorida's child welfare movement, a broad coalition of clubwomen, legislators, labor activists, and civic reformers, worked tirelessly to ensure that the right to a protected childhood was guaranteed to all of Florida's future citizens. These Progressive reformers, embracing new ideas about charity, the causes of poverty, and family life, turned to legislation to protect children when society could not, and their efforts culminated in the passage of Florida's comprehensive Child Labor Law in 1913. Florida's child labor campaign was part of both a regional and a national movement to eradicate the practice of manipulating children in industry and the street trades. Despite its inclusion in this broader movement, Florida's anti-child labor coalition was unique. Unlike their Southern neighbors, Floridians shied away from the rhetoric of "race suicide." Speaking on behalf of child labor legislation, they emphasized the social and moral disadvantages of child labor rather than its repercussions for race relations. This grew out of Florida's distinct pattern of economic development: Florida was among the last Southern states to industrialize, and that industrial sector did not include the textile mills notorious for child labor abuses across the South. Florida's child laborers primarily consisted of African Americans and Southern and Eastern European immigrants working in canneries along the Gulf Coast and Cuban and Italian immigrants laboring in the cigar industry of South Florida. Both of these industries employed a much smaller number of child workers than manufacturers in Florida's neighboring states. Florida's child labor legislation thus served two distinct purposes: it was both a preventative measure designed to protect Florida's children from the kinds of exploitation taking place in neighboring states and a means of pressuring those states to pass similar legislation. This thesis, an examination of the politics of Florida's child labor movement, highlights the ways in which the national child labor platform could be adapted to succeed in different states, while it reaffirms the diversity of both Progressive reform and Progressive reformers in the early twentieth-century South.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0193
Format: Thesis

Title: Baptist Missions in the British Empire: Jamaica and Serampore in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century.
Creator: Elliott, Kelly Rebecca, Upchurch, Charles J., Singh, Bawa S., McMahon, Darrin M., Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Baptist missions in the British Empire must be understood in the context of the Dissenting tradition in England, including Baptist history, theology, epistemology, radical politics, and class considerations. The Baptist missions at Serampore, in British Bengal, from 1794 to 1837, and in Jamaica from C. 1824 to 1850 provide ideal case studies through which to examine missionary identity formation, as well as the impact of missions on the Empire. British Baptist missionaries, already...
Show moreBaptist missions in the British Empire must be understood in the context of the Dissenting tradition in England, including Baptist history, theology, epistemology, radical politics, and class considerations. The Baptist missions at Serampore, in British Bengal, from 1794 to 1837, and in Jamaica from C. 1824 to 1850 provide ideal case studies through which to examine missionary identity formation, as well as the impact of missions on the Empire. British Baptist missionaries, already marginalized in England as Dissenters and artisan-class men, faced powerful challenges to their individual identities and loyalties in the mission field. In both India and Jamaica, white missionaries tended to identify more with non-white converts than with their fellow colonials. This shift led the Baptists studied here to ground their identities and loyalties in their mission and in their churches, rather than in the British Empire. Baptist missionaries thus viewed themselves primarily as Christians and Dissenters, not as English and white, and placed allegiance to their churches before English nationalism. The white missionaries who began the missions at Serampore and in Jamaica ultimately entrusted the future of their work to non-white converts. In both cases, the goal of evangelization was an independent church led by indigenous Christians.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0574
Format: Thesis

Title: Case Studies in Aquarium History: Trends Discovered in Studying the History of Three Regional Aquariums..
Creator: Doar, Kevin H., Davis, Frederick R., Koslow, Jennifer, Wulff, Janie L., Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Three regional aquariums, Waikiki Aquarium, Clearwater Aquarium, and the Mote Marine Laboratory, provide the case-studies for this analysis into the history of aquariums. The history of these institutes provided historical trends into their educational, entertainment, research, and rehabilitation efforts. This in turn helped prove their influence upon the surrounding society.
Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0724
Format: Thesis

Title: Petty Despots and Executive Officials: Civil Military Relations in the Early American Navy.
Creator: Sheppard, Thomas, Hadden, Sally, Creswell, Michael, Jones, James, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: As a new nation, the United States lacked the long naval traditions of the other powers of the time, particularly Great Britain. When Congress created a naval force in 1794, the country had to rely on its first officers to form the traditions of the service and lay the foundations of the American Navy. These first officers bequeathed to their country the naval force that would eventually challenge the mighty Royal Navy in the War of 1812. However, officers alone were not responsible for the...
Show moreAs a new nation, the United States lacked the long naval traditions of the other powers of the time, particularly Great Britain. When Congress created a naval force in 1794, the country had to rely on its first officers to form the traditions of the service and lay the foundations of the American Navy. These first officers bequeathed to their country the naval force that would eventually challenge the mighty Royal Navy in the War of 1812. However, officers alone were not responsible for the maturation of the Navy. Civilian officials, notably the Secretary of the Navy, also played a major role in the development of an American maritime force. These two components did not always interact harmoniously. Captains, used to the total autonomy that command at sea in an era of starkly limited communication created, often had difficulty subordinating themselves to their civilian superiors. During the first three decades of the Navy's existence, successive Secretaries of the Navy would gradually increase their authority over their officers, establishing the traditions of civilian control over the military that had long been a part of land warfare. This thesis explores the process whereby the question of ultimate authority over the Navy was settled, beginning with the creation of the navy and culminating in the creation of the Board of Naval Commissioners following the War of 1812.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0312
Format: Thesis

Title: Let He Who Objects Produce Sound Evidence: Lord Henry Howard and the Sixteenth Century Gynecocracy Debate.
Creator: Caney, Anna Christine, Strait, Paul, Grant, Jonathan, Singh, Bawa Satinder, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Glorious, creative, contentious and optimistic are all words that have been used to describe England in the second half of the Sixteenth-century. The Tudor age was one of great literature, military victory, religious tension, and, it was the age of queens. However, beneath the atmosphere of optimism that surrounded Mary I's, and then Elizabeth I's, ascension to the English throne lay a controversy that dug to the core of a man's beliefs about society, challenged the foundations of traditional...
Show moreGlorious, creative, contentious and optimistic are all words that have been used to describe England in the second half of the Sixteenth-century. The Tudor age was one of great literature, military victory, religious tension, and, it was the age of queens. However, beneath the atmosphere of optimism that surrounded Mary I's, and then Elizabeth I's, ascension to the English throne lay a controversy that dug to the core of a man's beliefs about society, challenged the foundations of traditional political thought, and forced men to decide what loyalty truly was. With Edward VI's death in 1553, for the first time since the twelfth-century, there were no male heirs to the English throne. Not only was the immediate heir to the throne of England female, but all of the possible legal contenders for the thrones of England and Scotland were female as well. Mary's succession fostered a debate among men as to whether a woman was not only legally allowed to rule England, but if she was spiritually and physically capable of doing so. Pamphlets and books discussing female rule were published throughout Mary's reign, and with Elizabeth's succession in 1558, the debate continued. This thesis seeks to discuss the Sixteenth century gynecocracy debate and Lord Henry Howard's unpublished defense of female rule, "The Dutifull Defence of the Lawfull Regiment of Weomen," which was presented to Queen Elizabeth in 1590. Howard's beliefs and interpretation of Scripture, Philosophy and Law differ in many respects from contemporary authors who were writing both against, and in favor of women in general and female monarchy. Howard's theories presented in "Dutifull Defence" will be compared to other contemporary works written on the subject, especially John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. After discussing Howard's life and motives for writing "Dutifull Defense," an analysis of his manuscript will be made by looking at the physical manuscripts themselves, comparing Howard's use of theology, philosophy and law to other contemporary writers, and revealing what Howard believed about women in an age when they were still seen as physically inferior, and mentally incapable, of administering any form of government. In order to achieve a thorough view of Howard, I have consulted his personal letters, letters from Howard's contemporaries, documents concerning Howard in the State Papers, and secondary sources discussing Howard, his life, and his written work. Additionally, works on early modern political thought, ancient and medieval philosophy and law, women and gender in the early modern period, and early modern English history have been consulted to provide contextual and content analysis. Combined, they will provide a view of a man who was remarkable in his time, and a work that was groundbreaking in his world.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0097
Format: Thesis

Title: Competition for Freedom: Black Labor during Reconstruction in Florida.
Creator: Day, Christopher S., Richardson, Joe M., Jones, Maxine D., Garretson, Peter, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: In American History Reconstruction was a period of great change. The abolition of slavery forced the South to create a free labor system. How did this new focus affect African-Americans? Were they to become equal participants in a free labor society or once again a subordinate labor class? Historians have argued about the ambiguities of racial oppression. Many concluded that the main fear was social equality; whites refused to accept blacks as anything other than second class. This was not...
Show moreIn American History Reconstruction was a period of great change. The abolition of slavery forced the South to create a free labor system. How did this new focus affect African-Americans? Were they to become equal participants in a free labor society or once again a subordinate labor class? Historians have argued about the ambiguities of racial oppression. Many concluded that the main fear was social equality; whites refused to accept blacks as anything other than second class. This was not entirely incorrect, but what else was at stake? If blacks were denied opportunities to advance in society what was left for them? By being denied certain avenues African-Americans were forced into a position of subservient labor for white employers. During the years of Presidential Reconstruction, 1865 – 1867, black suffrage was vigorously opposed by a majority of Southern whites. Even with the passage of the fifteenth amendment whites used intimidation to curb black voting. Lack of capital and fear of retribution also made it difficult to buy land and become economically independent. These issues along with social segregation created a second class black community that had few alternatives, but to work for whites as they had done in the past. This indeed is not the complete answer to the race relations question, but it does show that denial of rights, whether by law or violence, and lack of economic independence can create an environment that will promote a subordinate labor class.
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Date Issued: 2005
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0063
Format: Thesis

Title: Life inside the Earth: The Koreshan Unity and Its Urban Pioneers, 1880-1908.
Creator: Adams, Katherine J., Koslow, Jennifer, Frank, Andrew, Oshatz, Molly, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis presents a social and cultural history of the Koreshan Unity from its official beginnings in the 1880s to its decline in 1908. Founded by eclectic medical doctor Cyrus R. Teed, the Koreshan Unity emerged as yet another utopian experiment during the late-nineteenth century. While many utopian communities have been established in the United States since the colonial period, the Koreshans were a community unique in ideology and social practices. Founded on ancient Christian beliefs,...
Show moreThis thesis presents a social and cultural history of the Koreshan Unity from its official beginnings in the 1880s to its decline in 1908. Founded by eclectic medical doctor Cyrus R. Teed, the Koreshan Unity emerged as yet another utopian experiment during the late-nineteenth century. While many utopian communities have been established in the United States since the colonial period, the Koreshans were a community unique in ideology and social practices. Founded on ancient Christian beliefs, science, and communal standards, the Koreshan Unity has become known throughout the American utopian historical narrative as the utopian community that believed humanity lived inside the earth. While Koreshan beliefs are important in recording the community's history, a more personal history has often been left out of the scholarship on this topic. This thesis seeks to investigate the human side of the Koreshan Unity by tracing the life of Cyrus Teed and providing a glimpse into the everyday lives of the Koreshan members in their settlement in Estero, Florida. Utilizing the Koreshan Unity papers located at the State Archives of Florida, this material culture represents how the Koreshan members tried to realize Teed's and their utopian dream. While the Koreshan Unity began its decline after Teed's death in 1908, its members still portrayed their utopian experiment as a success because they found a haven in the religious and communal opportunities the community supported. Currently, this view of the Koreshan Unity is being preserved at the Koreshan State Historic Site (KSHS), located on the once Koreshan settlement grounds. While scholars who have contributed to the American utopian historical narrative have defined "success" based on numbers and general cultural trends, this thesis proves that only the participants in the movement can truly define what success really means.
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Date Issued: 2010
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0116
Format: Thesis

Title: The Romanian Media in Transition.
Creator: Georgiadis, Basil D., Grant, Jonathon, O'Sullivan, Patrick, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Creswell, Michael, Childs, Matt, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Romanian media has progressed in only a decade and a half since the fall of Communism. Reporters discuss themes about political reform, the elections, corruption, and even political protest. They critically analyze stories asking the basic questions while frequently providing follow-up. The press has liberalized, reflecting pluralistic domestic and international information sources as opposed to the State-controlled media before 1990. The media, along with free elections, transparency of...
Show moreThe Romanian media has progressed in only a decade and a half since the fall of Communism. Reporters discuss themes about political reform, the elections, corruption, and even political protest. They critically analyze stories asking the basic questions while frequently providing follow-up. The press has liberalized, reflecting pluralistic domestic and international information sources as opposed to the State-controlled media before 1990. The media, along with free elections, transparency of law and government, and a civil society, are important benchmarks for a society that strives to compare favorably with the West, and for that reason deserves examination. Serious problems exist however. A weak economy makes the media susceptible to government manipulation. Legal challenges by the government and businessmen against journalists as defendants, impose hefty fines over libel and slander challenges. Control of state broadcast media by ex-Communist ruling Social Democrats prevents the mass media from contributing to the public dialogue. Social attitudes developed in the twentieth century, negatively shape the reporting of national minority groups which are substantial in Romania and the Balkans. Finally, an authoritarian tradition based on imperial, fascist, and communist rule, has manifested itself in violence towards journalists. The dissertation examines the media within the Communist tradition from 1945-1989 and followed with a survey of the post-Communist media. A brief history of the national minorities question provides perspective on present day attitudes in the media towards these groups. A survey of NGO's and other institutions examined progress towards a civil society. In the international context, a comparison of the situation in Romania with countries in Eastern Europe and Latin America revealed similar problems. The media has diversified greatly considering the short time frame of this study in post-Communist Romania. Election choices, international structures and non-governmental agencies will continue to influence and change the political and media culture while a weak economy and authoritarian mentality in the government and legal system offer challenges to a developing free press and young democracy in Romania.
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Date Issued: 2004
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0139
Format: Thesis

Title: “Laborers Together with God”: Civilian Public Service and Public Health in the South during World War II.
Creator: Tomlinson, Angela E., Jones, Maxine Deloris, Montgomery, Maxine L., Jones, James Pickett, Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreTomlinson, Angela E., Jones, Maxine Deloris, Montgomery, Maxine L., Jones, James Pickett, Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: During World War II, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required conscientious objectors (COs) who opposed any form of military service to perform "work of national importance under civilian direction." The program that carried out this alternative service was the Civilian Public Service (CPS), in which approximately 12,000 pacifists served at 151 camps established across the nation during the war. Some of those camps were in Florida and Mississippi, where CPS men worked with...
Show moreDuring World War II, the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 required conscientious objectors (COs) who opposed any form of military service to perform "work of national importance under civilian direction." The program that carried out this alternative service was the Civilian Public Service (CPS), in which approximately 12,000 pacifists served at 151 camps established across the nation during the war. Some of those camps were in Florida and Mississippi, where CPS men worked with state and local public health authorities to combat diseases that plagued the South's poor, including hookworm and malaria. Though an advance over previous options for COs, CPS was not always well-received, by either the American people or the men who served within it. This dissertation will examine the camps in Florida and Mississippi to assess the success (or lack thereof) of the CPS alternative service program during the war, and also to explore the larger question of how well the United States upholds and protects the right of its citizens (particularly, nonconformist citizens) during a time of national crisis.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Tomlinson_fsu_0071E_12875
Format: Thesis

Title: Emancipating the American Spirit: Renaissance and Reconstruction in New England, 1845-1877.
Creator: Shubitz, Scott M., Jumonville, Neil, Frank, Andrew, Porterfield, Amanda, Gray, Edward G., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreShubitz, Scott M., Jumonville, Neil, Frank, Andrew, Porterfield, Amanda, Gray, Edward G., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: The abolition of slavery during the American Civil War did not end the antislavery ambitions of many liberal Christian reformers. As four million African American slaves transitioned from bondage to freedom, Unitarian and other Christian reformers knew that their work was far from complete. Initially motivated by a desire to establish a new spiritual world on Earth, the reformers in this study immediately realized that freeing African slaves hardly eliminated sin and injustice from the United...
Show moreThe abolition of slavery during the American Civil War did not end the antislavery ambitions of many liberal Christian reformers. As four million African American slaves transitioned from bondage to freedom, Unitarian and other Christian reformers knew that their work was far from complete. Initially motivated by a desire to establish a new spiritual world on Earth, the reformers in this study immediately realized that freeing African slaves hardly eliminated sin and injustice from the United States. As a result, they parlayed their energies into a new movement to emancipate the soul of the nation. In this continuation of the anti-slavery movement, spiritual abolitionists turned their attention to breaking down sectarianism, fighting orthodoxy, and legitimizing religious heterodoxy in the post-Civil War America. If they could eliminate doctrinal and organizational divisions between the various Christian sects, these reformers believed that they could usher in an era of free thought and religious tolerance; and if they could rid the nation of "spiritual slavery" and establish a "free religion," they would witness unprecedented freedom and prosperity in the newly reunited nation. This study shows that the reciprocal influence of abolitionism and liberal religion on each other culminated in a vibrant spiritual abolitionist movement aimed at reforming American spiritual life and promoting tolerance, legitimizing heterodox beliefs, and undermining the Protestant consensus that characterized American spiritual life during the antebellum period. Throughout the mid-to-late 1860s the individuals in this study who had cut their teeth as social reformers in the abolitionist movement or had at least been influenced by antislavery thought, used the rhetoric and approach of the antislavery movement to further the goals of liberal religion. These emerging spiritual abolitionists engaged in an effort to abolish what they termed "spiritual slavery"—a concept that has never had a full-length study devoted to it. Spiritual abolitionists conceived of spiritual slavery as a type of bondage, manifested through religious dogma, orthodoxy, and doctrine, that restricted human freedom. Spiritual abolitionists eschewed the orthodoxy and literalism that proslavery advocates had embraced during the antebellum to legitimate the institution of slavery. Spiritual slavery, like physical slavery, was simply a manifestation of hierarchy and authority that limited human free will and free thought. Spiritual slavery itself had real and concrete negative social repercussions, as it manifested in society in the form of ignorance, cruelty, and the suppression of heterodox beliefs. Spiritual abolitionists believed that without emancipating the human spirit and intellect from spiritual slavery, humanity would continue to be shackled by the chains of slavery. The Civil War and the abolition of chattel slavery were pivotal in the emergence of spiritual abolitionism. For spiritual abolitionists, the end of the Civil War represented a millennial moment which signaled the coming destruction of all forms of slavery. The end of the war and the defeat of the Confederacy closed a period of human history epitomized by slavery and brutality, and heralded a new epoch characterized by freedom and humaneness. In this view, the period following the war would be one of not just economic and political reconstruction, but of spiritual and intellectual reconstruction. The nation, reunited after the division of political sectionalism, would be further united with a triumph over religious sectarianism and denominationalism and of religious bigotry and intolerance. In 1865, spiritual abolitionists quickly went to work to achieve the end their new emancipationism. Using the language of abolitionism to further the cause of liberal religion, spiritual abolitionists devoted their energies to building institutions and establishing the framework for reforming American spiritual life. The largest organization dedicated to spiritual abolitionism was the Free Religious Association. The Free Religious Association, envisioned as a spiritual antislavery society, was founded in 1867 by Unitarians, Transcendentalists, and other liberal religionists who had been influenced by abolitionism. But the Free Religious Association was just one way of promoting spiritual and intellectual reform in Reconstruction era America. By connecting spiritual reformers throughout the nation, disseminating knowledge, and establishing a number of periodicals, reformers in this study helped spread spiritual abolitionism and promote religious pluralism and tolerance in postwar America.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Shubitz_fsu_0071E_12876
Format: Thesis

Title: A Case Study in Southern Justice: The Emmett Till Case.
Creator: Whitaker, Hugh Stephen, Irish, Marion D., Rogers, William W., Parsons, Malcolm B., Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: On August 28, 1955, Emmett Louis Till was abducted from the home of his uncle, Mose Wright, near Money, Mississippi. A body was recovered three days later in the nearby Tallahatchie River, which divides Tallahatchie and Leflore Counties, and the body was closer to the Tallahatchie bank of the river. A week later the Grand Jury of Tallahatchie County indicted J. W. Milan and Roy Bryant on separate counts of murder and kidnapping. On September 198, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi, there began a...
Show moreOn August 28, 1955, Emmett Louis Till was abducted from the home of his uncle, Mose Wright, near Money, Mississippi. A body was recovered three days later in the nearby Tallahatchie River, which divides Tallahatchie and Leflore Counties, and the body was closer to the Tallahatchie bank of the river. A week later the Grand Jury of Tallahatchie County indicted J. W. Milan and Roy Bryant on separate counts of murder and kidnapping. On September 198, 1955, in Sumner, Mississippi, there began a trial destined to be the most publicized kidnap-murder trial since the Bruno Hauptman case, seventy reporters covered the trial, representing newspapers and magazines from all over the United States and from some foreign countries. Nearly every newspaper in the country gave the case and trial front-page play, as did many of those published in other countries.
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Date Issued: 1963
Identifier: etd-05272004-140932
Format: Thesis

Title: Theophilanthropy: Civil Religion and Secularization in the French Revolution.
Creator: Deverse, Jonathan Douglas, McMahon, Darrin M., Blaufarb, Rafe, Kavka, Martin, Williamson, George S., Grant, Jonathan A., Doel, Ronald Edmund, Florida State University, College...
Show moreDeverse, Jonathan Douglas, McMahon, Darrin M., Blaufarb, Rafe, Kavka, Martin, Williamson, George S., Grant, Jonathan A., Doel, Ronald Edmund, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines how the implementation of Enlightenment ideas in the French Revolution gave birth to a new secular conception of the state and the invention of a new religion. I argue that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, representing shared assumptions across the Enlightenment, interpreted religion to be a human construct and thus subject to human intervention. With the onset of 1789 revolutionaries employed this conception to reorganize the Gallican Church and institute the radical Cults...
Show moreThis dissertation examines how the implementation of Enlightenment ideas in the French Revolution gave birth to a new secular conception of the state and the invention of a new religion. I argue that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, representing shared assumptions across the Enlightenment, interpreted religion to be a human construct and thus subject to human intervention. With the onset of 1789 revolutionaries employed this conception to reorganize the Gallican Church and institute the radical Cults of Reason and the Supreme Being. When these endeavors failed revolutionaries refocused on two solutions: the secular laws of 1795 and Theophilanthropy. Revolutionary secularization separated Church and state and confined worship to the private sphere. Consequently Theophilanthropy acquired an independent status and the Revolution acted as a catalyst for the invention of a new religion based on Enlightenment principles. This study explores how Theophilanthropy stood at the foundation of French secularization, modern civil religion and subsequent New Religious Movements (NRM). The historical significance of Theophilanthropy was critical in its own time and bequeathed a legacy that long outlasted the Revolution.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Deverse_fsu_0071E_12862
Format: Thesis

Title: Cut from Different Cloth: The USS Constitution and the American Frigate Fleet.
Creator: Byington, Richard Brownlow, Blaufarb, Rafe, Ward, Candace, Grant, Jonathan A., Jones, Maxine Deloris, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreByington, Richard Brownlow, Blaufarb, Rafe, Ward, Candace, Grant, Jonathan A., Jones, Maxine Deloris, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: The historiography of the early American navy and, more definitively, the USS Constitution's role in American consciousness revolve around the valorous acts associated with the naval engagement between the Constitution and the HMS Guerriere during the War of 1812. The basis for this mass public appeal was presented, disseminated, and perpetuated by historians, journalists, and popular writers. Paralleling historical and popular works, the public perception of the Constitution and the prowess...
Show moreThe historiography of the early American navy and, more definitively, the USS Constitution's role in American consciousness revolve around the valorous acts associated with the naval engagement between the Constitution and the HMS Guerriere during the War of 1812. The basis for this mass public appeal was presented, disseminated, and perpetuated by historians, journalists, and popular writers. Paralleling historical and popular works, the public perception of the Constitution and the prowess of America's frigate fleet as a whole subsequently rose to dizzying heights after the War of 1812—based on the evidence emanating from a single naval engagement that lasted just over half an hour. This work seeks to examine how the Constitution ascended to such great military heights when all the odds were against American naval hegemony following the Revolutionary War. By comparing and contrasting naval correspondence, captain's logs, and ship records associated with America's original frigate fleet, a better sense of the collective biographies of the six frigates will be achieved; and, in the process, lend greater perspective to the history of the early American Navy. The methodology of this dissertation is to view the American Navy through the lens of the captains, officers, and crew that served on the Constitution. While this study looks to add insight into naval development by comparing and contrasting each of the original six American frigates, the USS Constitution is at the center of the investigation. This is a case study that utilizes the Constitution as a means to view and balance the successes and failures of the early American Navy.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Byington_fsu_0071E_12858
Format: Thesis

Title: Failing to Prepare or Preparing to Fail?: the Iraqi and American Armies Between 1991 and 2003.
Creator: Drury, John Jacob, Garretson, Peter, Creswell, Michael, Souva, Mark, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: The Iraqi and American armies made changes in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, but they made those changes within the constraints imposed upon them by their political overseers and their own political cultures. Unlike other works regarding the conflicts between Iraq and the United States, which are often historical narratives of the wars themselves, this paper is a comparative analysis of the changes made and the effects they would eventually have on the two states' respective performances in...
Show moreThe Iraqi and American armies made changes in the wake of the 1991 Gulf War, but they made those changes within the constraints imposed upon them by their political overseers and their own political cultures. Unlike other works regarding the conflicts between Iraq and the United States, which are often historical narratives of the wars themselves, this paper is a comparative analysis of the changes made and the effects they would eventually have on the two states' respective performances in 2003. The Iraqi Army was badly hindered by Saddam Hussein's belief that they represented a threat to him. This suspicion caused the Iraqi dictator to form multiple rival services that competed with the Iraqi Army for men, equipment, and funding. Saddam also promoted on the basis of perceived loyalty, dismissing competent officers as threats to his power. Finally, the U.N.-imposed sanctions prevented Iraq from replacing destroyed or dilapidated weapons. The United States Army, in contrast, engaged in an expensive effort to correct perceived flaws in its force structure. At the same time, due to budget cuts, the United States Army had to find ways to perform the same duties with fewer resources. It did so using two paths. First, it attempted to modify its equipment and force structure in order to provide soldiers with firepower that would previously have been available only to larger units. Second, it made increased use of private contractors in an effort to free uniformed soldiers for combat duties. In the end, neither Iraq nor the United States was fully prepared for the war in 2003. Iraq's forces were designed with internal security in mind; repelling an external enemy as powerful as the United States proved to be beyond their capabilities. The United States Army was fully capable and prepared for the initial campaign against the Iraqi Army, but it found itself unable to control the subsequent outburst of civil strife.
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Date Issued: 2011
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0657
Format: Thesis

Title: Setting the Stage: Dance and Gender in Old-Line New Orleans Carnival Balls, 1870-1920.
Creator: Atkins, Jennifer, Sinke, Suzanne, Perpener, John O., Hadden, Sally, Conner, V.J., Young, Tricia, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Mardi Gras Carnival balls are traditional New Orleans events when krewe organizations present their seasonal mock monarchs. Traditionally, these ballroom spectacles included tableaux vivants performances, the grand march and promenade of the season's royal court, special dances with masked krewemen, and general ballroom dancing. These events reinforced generational ties through the display of social power in a place where women were crystallized into perfect images of Southern beauty. Since...
Show moreMardi Gras Carnival balls are traditional New Orleans events when krewe organizations present their seasonal mock monarchs. Traditionally, these ballroom spectacles included tableaux vivants performances, the grand march and promenade of the season's royal court, special dances with masked krewemen, and general ballroom dancing. These events reinforced generational ties through the display of social power in a place where women were crystallized into perfect images of Southern beauty. Since the mid nineteenth century, old-line krewes (the oldest, most elite Carnival organizations) have cultivated patriarchal traditions in their ball presentations and have acted as historical vehicles of commentary on personal and social identity. The manner in which krewe members used their bodies to proclaim their royalty, to promenade, or to dance, all signified individual social roles and represented the evolving mores of their connected group. Likewise, masked courtiers and fashionable guests used their bodies in ballroom dancing to uphold or refute acceptable standards of male and female behavior. From 1870 to 1920, old-line krewes dominated the private terrain of New Orleans Mardi Gras. Through their steadfast commitment to performing white elitism, traditional krewes set the stage for the gender battles of the twentieth century, when female, black, and gay bodies, within newly formed krewes, used dance in their own carnival balls to define modern and diverse sexual, personal, and communal identities.
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Date Issued: 2008
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0806
Format: Thesis

Title: "Acribillados Y Torturados": Newspapers and the Militarized State in Counterrevolutionary Guatemala.
Creator: Pichoff, Damon, Herrera, Robinson, Childs, Matt, Friedman, Max Paul, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This thesis is a discursive analysis of the daily Guatemalan newspaper, El Imparcial. It is a cultural study of attitudes toward the illegitimate militarized state, the role of ethnicity and class, and modernization as a shared goal between traditional elites and the burgeoning class of military officers turned economic elites. Based on an examination of hundreds of pages of Guatemalan newspapers, spanning nearly a decade, and housed in special collections in the Latin American Libraries of...
Show moreThis thesis is a discursive analysis of the daily Guatemalan newspaper, El Imparcial. It is a cultural study of attitudes toward the illegitimate militarized state, the role of ethnicity and class, and modernization as a shared goal between traditional elites and the burgeoning class of military officers turned economic elites. Based on an examination of hundreds of pages of Guatemalan newspapers, spanning nearly a decade, and housed in special collections in the Latin American Libraries of the University of Florida and Tulane University, the thesis treats topics such as how elites chose to make sense of a rapidly changing and uncertain world. The thesis focuses on three central elements: violence reporting, consumer and political advertising, and reporting of national development. I argue that El Imparcial, as a supposed elite vehicle within the militarized state, presents many contradictory messages for its readers. El Imparcial wavered in its political support for the state as demonstrated by the trends in violence reporting; the paper's consumer and political ads that sent similar contradictory messages of the state. Conversely, the adverts did send a consistent message of rigid social hierarchies promoted by a limited consumption style. El Imparcial's coverage of developmental projects reveals the paper's closest marriage to the militarized state. Development strategies served both civilian elites and the militarized state in mutually self-interested ways. Taken together, these elements reveal a complex cultural artifact with many opportunities for complicit and dissenting voices. It also shows how newspapers contributed to making the perception of violence into an unremarkable quotidian reality and how they encouraged the virulent dehumanization of Native peoples. The thesis shows the necessity of cultural history to explore the complexities of a contested history during a key transitional period in Guatemala's history, from a state dominated by elites and protected by the military, into a full fledged militarized state where military officers became coequals with traditional elites.
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Date Issued: 2007
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0910
Format: Thesis

Title: Protest at the Pyramid: The 1968 Mexico City Olympics and the Politicization of the Olympic Games.
Creator: Witherspoon, Kevin B., Jones, James P., O'Sullivan, Patrick, Richardson, Joe M., Conner, Valerie J., Herrera, Robinson, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: This dissertation examines the importance of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. It explores briefly the history of the Olympic movement in Mexico, and the origins of the Mexican bid to host the Olympics. In winning the bid, the Mexican Olympic Committee not only staged a thorough and well-prepared presentation, but also shrewdly negotiated the waters between the Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Even before the Opening Ceremonies, these Olympics were fraught with...
Show moreThis dissertation examines the importance of the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. It explores briefly the history of the Olympic movement in Mexico, and the origins of the Mexican bid to host the Olympics. In winning the bid, the Mexican Olympic Committee not only staged a thorough and well-prepared presentation, but also shrewdly negotiated the waters between the Cold War superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. Even before the Opening Ceremonies, these Olympics were fraught with controversy, including the altitude issue, the debate over amateurism, and the question of whether to admit South Africa, which proved so divisive it inspired an international boycott movement. Each of these controversies detracted from the purely athletic interest in the Games, lending them a political feel from the beginning. These controversies were soon superceded by the "Revolt of the Black Athlete" in the United States, as black athletes threatened to boycott the Games, and a burgeoning student movement in Mexico. The latter ended in a brutal massacre initiated by Mexican police and authorities. The movement among black athletes peaked as Tommie Smith and John Carlos delivered the black power salute while on the medal stand, again drawing attention away from the athletic contests. The dissertation concludes with an analysis of the broader significance of the Olympics, from its economic impact to the meanings of the social movements attached to it. By the end of the fortnight, several hundred Mexican students lay dead, racial discord in the United States was again a topic of international discussion, and all aspirations for a separation of sport and politics lay in ruins.
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Date Issued: 2003
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0920
Format: Thesis

Title: A Rough, Wet Ride: The Civilian Genesis of the American Motor Torpedo Boat.
Creator: Wiser, Edward H., Jones, James P., Chanton, Jeffrey, Creswell, Michael C., Grant, Jonathan, Garretson, Peter, Department of History, Florida State University
Abstract/Description: Dwight Eisenhower once warned of an insidious collusion between industry and government that threatened to become master of United States domestic and foreign policy. His warning came too late, of course, for the threat had already become reality before he spoke. But there were and are positive elements to the merger of interests, and one of them was the infusion of civilian small craft expertise into the arena of national defense. This dissertation is an overview of the evolution of small...
Show moreDwight Eisenhower once warned of an insidious collusion between industry and government that threatened to become master of United States domestic and foreign policy. His warning came too late, of course, for the threat had already become reality before he spoke. But there were and are positive elements to the merger of interests, and one of them was the infusion of civilian small craft expertise into the arena of national defense. This dissertation is an overview of the evolution of small combatant craft in the United States Navy and demonstrates that the most successful of these boats have consistently come from the civilian sector. The history of this intercourse is traced from its origins in the American Revolution through its ultimate incarnation of the motor torpedo boat of World War Two. Experience in Vietnam and ongoing counter-terror and drug interception operations worldwide, demonstrates conclusively that rugged, efficient boats for security, patrol, and combat are still an essential factor in law enforcement, homeland defense, and power projection, and the services have come to rely increasingly upon the domestic small craft industry to supply them.
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Date Issued: 2009
Identifier: FSU_migr_etd-0922
Format: Thesis

Title: Exploitation of Labor in College Football: A Comparison of Arguments.
Creator: O'Dea, Heather, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis uses parallels in the theories of amateurism in college athletics and paternalism in slavery to better understand college football as a system of exploitation of labor. To provide the reader with a background of these theories, it begins with in-depth explanations of their developments and various components. This study focuses on the similarities in arguments made by proponents of both theories, and pays particular attention to the idea that these systems of exploitation...
Show moreThis thesis uses parallels in the theories of amateurism in college athletics and paternalism in slavery to better understand college football as a system of exploitation of labor. To provide the reader with a background of these theories, it begins with in-depth explanations of their developments and various components. This study focuses on the similarities in arguments made by proponents of both theories, and pays particular attention to the idea that these systems of exploitation supposedly benefit those exploited. It compares the argument that college athletics creates for athletes the opportunity to receive a "free education" with the notion of slavery "saving" Africans by introducing them to Christianity. Through analysis of these arguments and the findings of multiple studies that examine the experiences of those exploited, this thesis reveals the inherent logical fallacies of these theories and the impact they have on those that operate under these exploitative systems.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0372
Format: Thesis

Title: Sovereignty, Religion, and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs ) in Sudan, with a focus on the Nuba Mountains.
Creator: Marks, Madison, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis addresses the causes and consequences of displacement in Sudan. By focusing on the themes of sovereignty and religion throughout Sudanese history, the complex challenges of the long-standing Sudanese conflict become apparent. This is clear through a focus on the Nuba Mountains. Colonial rule had a direct impact in shaping contrasting visions for the future of a sovereign Sudanese state. After Sudan's independence in 1956, the question over the fusion or separation of religion and...
Show moreThis thesis addresses the causes and consequences of displacement in Sudan. By focusing on the themes of sovereignty and religion throughout Sudanese history, the complex challenges of the long-standing Sudanese conflict become apparent. This is clear through a focus on the Nuba Mountains. Colonial rule had a direct impact in shaping contrasting visions for the future of a sovereign Sudanese state. After Sudan's independence in 1956, the question over the fusion or separation of religion and state contributed to two devastating civil wars, resulting in the death of two million and displacement of four million. According to the concept of Sovereignty as Responsibility, a state's sovereignty depends upon its protection for the rights and wellbeing of its people. The Sudanese government has engaged in direct assaults against its own people, and has prevented humanitarian assessment missions and relief personnel from responding to affected populations. This model of regime-induced displacement has posed many questions regarding the best methods for protection of IDPs when their rights are being violated or threatened by their sovereign. This thesis also provides an analysis of the hopeful prospects for future protection of IDPs in Africa through increased regional accountability and placing the rights of the individual over the state. This thesis provides a framework for future conversations among international stakeholders, humanitarian aid organizations, civil society groups, academics, media personnel, and Sudanese to discuss the impacts of sovereignty and religion on displacement in Sudan. Moreover, this thesis seeks to fill a gap in research on the Nuba Mountains.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0151
Format: Thesis

Title: Containment in the Soft Underbelly: The Allies, Italy, and Communism in 1945.
Creator: Silverstein, Matthew, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis deals with the motivations behind the final Allied campaign conducted in Italy during April of 1945. The role that the fear of communist expansion at least partially influenced the decision to conduct the campaign is evaluated in light of numerous factors that existed at the time including the presence of the Italian Resistance in Northern Italy. Numerous primary and secondary sources were utilized to help construct a picture of the Allied situation at that point in the war in...
Show moreThis thesis deals with the motivations behind the final Allied campaign conducted in Italy during April of 1945. The role that the fear of communist expansion at least partially influenced the decision to conduct the campaign is evaluated in light of numerous factors that existed at the time including the presence of the Italian Resistance in Northern Italy. Numerous primary and secondary sources were utilized to help construct a picture of the Allied situation at that point in the war in order to help explain the thesis. Additionally, analysis is conducted using Carl von Clausewitz's work, On War, in order to further tie the concept of political influence on wartime decision making to the campaign in Northern Italy.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0376
Format: Thesis

Title: Colonial Autonomy: Maryland's Legal Foundation.
Creator: Corkell, Liam, Department of History
Abstract/Description: The colony of Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore by Charles I in 1632, was the host of considerable, political turmoil regarding the scale of the royal governor's authority. The Charter of Maryland granted Baltimore, for all intents and purposes, the authority of a liege lord within the province, with the intention of making the chartered colony as close a parallel to England as was physically achievable. However, with the withdrawal of supervision from across the Atlantic in the mid 17th...
Show moreThe colony of Maryland, granted to Lord Baltimore by Charles I in 1632, was the host of considerable, political turmoil regarding the scale of the royal governor's authority. The Charter of Maryland granted Baltimore, for all intents and purposes, the authority of a liege lord within the province, with the intention of making the chartered colony as close a parallel to England as was physically achievable. However, with the withdrawal of supervision from across the Atlantic in the mid 17th century, Maryland, like several of its fellow colonies, began to grapple with the idea of political autonomy. Although the sentiment behind this newly found desire for self-management was nowhere near the extent that it would be during the Imperial Crisis more than a century later, the royal governorship was effectively challenged, both in London, and North America. In this political environment, Maryland, with the absence of royal supervision, functioned not only as a colony, but as an autonomous, quasi-independent state.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0299
Format: Thesis

Title: "But where is his voice?: " The Debate of Pope Pius XII's Silence During the Holocaust.
Creator: Whitman, Kayleigh, Department of History
Abstract/Description: For the past sixty years the question of whether or not Pope Pius XII did all that he could to help the victims of the Holocaust has plagued the reputation and memory of his papacy. As the Vatican and Pope Francis continue proceedings towards the canonization of Pius, the question of what judgment can be placed against the pope becomes ever more pressing. My project examines the path that the debate has taken over the past six decades through the work of both the critics and defenders of His...
Show moreFor the past sixty years the question of whether or not Pope Pius XII did all that he could to help the victims of the Holocaust has plagued the reputation and memory of his papacy. As the Vatican and Pope Francis continue proceedings towards the canonization of Pius, the question of what judgment can be placed against the pope becomes ever more pressing. My project examines the path that the debate has taken over the past six decades through the work of both the critics and defenders of His Holiness. While this thesis does not deliver a verdict against Pius, it does address the important question of how the contemporary reader can understand what has been written and the evolution of the charges that have been placed against him. In this paper Rolf Hochhuth serves as the leading example for the critics and Father Robert Graham S.J. serves as his defense counterpart. Beginning with these two men and their arguments, I examine the charges and responses of both the defenders and the critics during the controversial years of the 1960s and 1990s. Through this study I have found that though the Vatican's records remain sealed limiting the pool of information for researchers, the debate has continued to thrive because of the difference in perception of the two sides. The critics place their emphasis on the moral responsibility of the pope and the defenders focus their arguments on the political responsibility and implications of the pope's actions during this uncertain time.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0346
Format: Thesis

Title: Agency, Gender, and the Law in Slave Narratives.
Creator: Thomas, Alexandra, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis examines the presence of legal institutions in the accounts of enslaved and apprenticed people who resided in the British colonies of Jamaica, Antigua and Mauritius. Focusing on the lives of three individuals, Mary Prince, James Williams, and Marie Saladin, this thesis integrates enslaved persons' presence in and interaction with legal institutions into the wider scope of what it meant to be enslaved during the nineteenth century on a British colony. To do so, the thesis observes...
Show moreThis thesis examines the presence of legal institutions in the accounts of enslaved and apprenticed people who resided in the British colonies of Jamaica, Antigua and Mauritius. Focusing on the lives of three individuals, Mary Prince, James Williams, and Marie Saladin, this thesis integrates enslaved persons' presence in and interaction with legal institutions into the wider scope of what it meant to be enslaved during the nineteenth century on a British colony. To do so, the thesis observes the common elements discussed and represented in accounts of enslaved people and analyses the concept of a slave narrative.
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Date Issued: 2014
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0400
Format: Thesis

Title: Seeing Red in Double Vision.
Creator: Yost, Austin, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis represents my attempt to broaden our understanding of the root causes and underlying nature of the Red Scare phenomenon. I cover both the Frist Red Scare of the early 1920s as well as the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s. After considerable research, I came to the conclusion that the traditional understanding of anti-communism in the US - as a reactionary movement largely motivated by the international hostility of the USSR - provides us with only half of the...
Show moreThis thesis represents my attempt to broaden our understanding of the root causes and underlying nature of the Red Scare phenomenon. I cover both the Frist Red Scare of the early 1920s as well as the Second Red Scare of the late 1940s and early 1950s. After considerable research, I came to the conclusion that the traditional understanding of anti-communism in the US - as a reactionary movement largely motivated by the international hostility of the USSR - provides us with only half of the truth. In fact, the development of public hysteria over perceived Soviet infiltration had far more to do with domestic circumstances than it had to do with foreign threats. Chief among these motivating factors was the state of the US economy. During the 1920s, when many poorer Americans felt they had been left behind by the post-war boom, the federal government's attempts to develop public hostility towards socialism failed somewhat. But after the Fair Deal and the GI Bill ensured a new, broader prosperity for the larger American public, it became easy to galvanize citizens in response to a perceived threat to their happy way of life.
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Date Issued: 2013
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0283
Format: Thesis

Title: Humanizing the Enemy.
Creator: Cook, Anna, Department of History
Abstract/Description: This thesis studies how the shift in American popular perception of the Japanese changed and shows how Japan's relationship with the United States changed from that of an enemy to ally in the mid-1950s. The cause of this positive change in U.S.-Japan relations can be directly linked to that of the Occupation of Japan, particularly the American servicemen stationed in Japan for occupation duties. When these servicemen returned home, many with Japanese war brides, there was an initial negative...
Show moreThis thesis studies how the shift in American popular perception of the Japanese changed and shows how Japan's relationship with the United States changed from that of an enemy to ally in the mid-1950s. The cause of this positive change in U.S.-Japan relations can be directly linked to that of the Occupation of Japan, particularly the American servicemen stationed in Japan for occupation duties. When these servicemen returned home, many with Japanese war brides, there was an initial negative perception of the Japanese women. However, this changed drastically in the mid-1950s. After careful review of the change in American public opinion, it can be seen that the relationships formed between the American GIs and the Japanese caused the shift in American popular opinion and made an eventual alliance with Japan possible. This thesis is based off of research on primary resources from two archival institutes along with media publications such as newspapers and magazines. Not only does this thesis incorporate original military documents and journal publications from the archives at the U.S. Army Military History Institute but it also uses letters, diaries, manuscripts and occasional transcribed oral histories from the World War II and the Human Experience Institute. These resources were a bulk of the primary sources for this thesis; however, there is also an incorporation of original media in order to portray the social condition of American opinion of the Japanese. In this thesis each primary resource was considered for its bias and was treated accordingly.
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Date Issued: 2012
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0118
Format: Thesis

Title: Cool but Correct: Humanitarian Discourse and the US Justification for Intervention in Chile.
Creator: Forehand, Kristen D., Department of History
Abstract/Description: Intervening to supposedly protect human rights constitutes a potent justification for foreign involvement, but how humanitarian discourse became critical to the United States' (US) foreign policy remains poorly studied. I argue that humanitarian discourse, while present in the Spanish-American War of 1898, became essential to the US during the Cold War. Rationalizing the 1973 overthrow of the democratically elected socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, the US relied on anticommunist...
Show moreIntervening to supposedly protect human rights constitutes a potent justification for foreign involvement, but how humanitarian discourse became critical to the United States' (US) foreign policy remains poorly studied. I argue that humanitarian discourse, while present in the Spanish-American War of 1898, became essential to the US during the Cold War. Rationalizing the 1973 overthrow of the democratically elected socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende, the US relied on anticommunist rhetoric joined with accusations that Allende violated Chileans' rights. However, the overthrow led to a brutal dictatorship. Thus, the thesis interrogates primary sources such as declassified government documents, speeches, memoirs, films, murals and music to discover hidden meanings. It employs the methodology of subaltern history as articulated by Ranajit Guha to investigate sources contrapuntally. Therefore, the thesis sheds light on the vaguely understood connection between imperialism and humanitarian intervention. The thesis utilizes a theoretical prism informed by Walter Benjamin, Slavoj Žižek and David Smith to understand how language can justify humanitarian intervention. Finally, the thesis adds to Latin American history and the history humanitarian intervention, specifically the scholarly works of Peter Kornbluh, Steve J. Stern and James Peck. I argue that the US manufactured rhetoric to gain approval for policies that would have otherwise been opposed. Following the Cold War, anticommunist justifications for intervention became less prevalent. However, humanitarian discourse continues. In many cases, the language becomes a façade for less noble reasons to intervene. Thus, Chile continues to provide a model for intervention in the name of protecting human rights.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0556
Format: Thesis

Title: The Power of Memory and Manipulation in Anglo-Norman England: Symeon, St. Cuthbert, and Durham Cathedra.
Creator: Sauer, Michelle L., Department of History
Abstract/Description: Cultural memory is the collective perception of a group on their own history, and the way in which remembrance and emphasis of specific elements of that history build the identity of a culture. The formation and alteration of cultural memory throughout history has become an important area of interest in the field of history, as this building of identity and memory informs how cultures operate and view themselves to this day. English memory has been built and changed throughout time by various...
Show moreCultural memory is the collective perception of a group on their own history, and the way in which remembrance and emphasis of specific elements of that history build the identity of a culture. The formation and alteration of cultural memory throughout history has become an important area of interest in the field of history, as this building of identity and memory informs how cultures operate and view themselves to this day. English memory has been built and changed throughout time by various invading groups, and has contributed to the enduring legacy of the British people that exists to this day. This project seeks to examine the ways in which the cultural memory of the Anglo-Saxon people was altered after the Norman Invasion through historical propaganda, particularly the writings of Symeon of Durham, and the building of Durham Cathedral. Symeon, a Norman monk in Durham, is a figure who shows the power of memory in the middle ages, as he effectively rewrote the history of the monks who came before him, giving the new Norman population of Durham an imagined history of themselves in that place. The Normans also built Durham Cathedral as a way to consolidate power and legitimize their reign through an emphasized devotion to the religious scene in Durham. Through analysis of historical documents and religious art used as a means of political and religious manipulation by the Normans, this thesis examines the pre-Norman cultural memory of Durham and delves into the ways that perception changed to include the Normans and merge the two groups into one.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0563
Format: Thesis

Title: Debating and Defining: Historical Memory and America's Reaction to the French Revolution.
Creator: Diskin, Harrison M., Department of History
Abstract/Description: Beginning in 1789, Americans reacted to the French Revolution with the vociferous passion of a people whose very identity was at stake. Indeed this was precisely the case, for in the face of a new definition of revolution emanating from France, Americans were forced to confront the fragility and mutability of the legacy of their own. American supporters of the French Revolution therefore both consciously and unconsciously redefined the terms of their own revolution in a manner which...
Show moreBeginning in 1789, Americans reacted to the French Revolution with the vociferous passion of a people whose very identity was at stake. Indeed this was precisely the case, for in the face of a new definition of revolution emanating from France, Americans were forced to confront the fragility and mutability of the legacy of their own. American supporters of the French Revolution therefore both consciously and unconsciously redefined the terms of their own revolution in a manner which functioned to destabilize the foundations of the nascent country still struggling to survive, while those who spoke and wrote against the French did so in an effort to reassert what they considered as having been their Revolution's original terms.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0571
Format: Thesis

Title: A Changing Promised Land: The Southern Baptist Convention and the Civil War.
Creator: Smith, Dalton L., Department of History
Abstract/Description: Before the final political division of Union and Confederacy leading to the Civil War, the people of the United States had already begun to separate on idealogical levels along geographical lines. In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention separated from Baptists in the North based on their desire to be equally represented in the convention and northern feelings that slave owners could not participate in some aspects of convention work, namely mission work. The paper focuses on the growth of...
Show moreBefore the final political division of Union and Confederacy leading to the Civil War, the people of the United States had already begun to separate on idealogical levels along geographical lines. In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention separated from Baptists in the North based on their desire to be equally represented in the convention and northern feelings that slave owners could not participate in some aspects of convention work, namely mission work. The paper focuses on the growth of the Southern Baptist Convention through the beginning of the Civil War, examines the difficulties the convention faced during the war, and finally how the Convention recovers during and after Reconstruction. This research follows both the political and intellectual shifts of influential Southern Baptists and is based almost entirely on primary resources, such as sermons, letters and meeting notes, taken from those influential Southern Baptists.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0579
Format: Thesis

Title: The Importance of Geographical Background of Supreme Court Appointments in the Period of 1830-1920.
Creator: Abbatiello, Shawna M., Department of History
Abstract/Description: This paper analyzes the complex relationship of United States Supreme Court appointments with the appointees' geographical background. With a focus on the period of 1830-1920, this research will examine possible reasons why no justice has ever hailed from Florida in particular, and the importance of appointees' geographical background as a whole. First, I discuss the ideological reasons that made geography so important but yet may have prevented a justice from Florida, and then I examine the...
Show moreThis paper analyzes the complex relationship of United States Supreme Court appointments with the appointees' geographical background. With a focus on the period of 1830-1920, this research will examine possible reasons why no justice has ever hailed from Florida in particular, and the importance of appointees' geographical background as a whole. First, I discuss the ideological reasons that made geography so important but yet may have prevented a justice from Florida, and then I examine the practical implications of circuit riding and its relations to geographical importance. Finally, the paper looks at Nixon's failed appointment of G. Harrold Carswell who, though technically labeled a Floridian, had equal ties to the state of Georgia. Using Florida as a case study of the larger issue, this paper will then examine the judiciary's role in nation building and politics.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_migr_uhm-0480
Format: Thesis

Title: Doing a Real Job: The Evolution in Women's Roles in British Society through the Lens of Female Spies, 1914-1945.
Creator: Wirsansky, Danielle, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Upchurch, Charles, Roberts, Diane, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Abstract/Description: The first half of the twentieth century was in many ways a watershed era for women and their role in British society. The world wars ushered in a time of unprecedented change. The wars opened positions for women outside of the home, making it a more accepted practice; the government recruited and drafted women not just for work but for active service. Looking at these changes, the shifts in women’s roles in British society can be reflected by the more extreme cases of this shift, focusing on...
Show moreThe first half of the twentieth century was in many ways a watershed era for women and their role in British society. The world wars ushered in a time of unprecedented change. The wars opened positions for women outside of the home, making it a more accepted practice; the government recruited and drafted women not just for work but for active service. Looking at these changes, the shifts in women’s roles in British society can be reflected by the more extreme cases of this shift, focusing on the experiences of female spies. This paper serves to demonstrate that the involvement of female spies in WWI and WWII is a useful indicator in the shift of women’s role in British society during this span of time. Alongside the goals of the government, this paper aims to analyze the broader shift in gender roles. Focusing in on the micro-history of spies, this study explores the evolution of the experience of female spies from WWI to WWII, reflecting the same kinds of changes taking place in the experience of the everyday British woman. Then, by focusing in on the struggle for agency that British female spies faced in the second world war, the study directly relates their attempts with those of the everyday British woman. War did not simply generate a change, a quick and sudden reversal of gender roles. Instead, the war afforded women opportunities to prove themselves and make strides towards being the kind of woman they wanted to be.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Wirsansky_fsu_0071N_14327
Format: Thesis

Title: The Controversy Surrounding Slave Insanity: The Diagnosis, Treatment and Lived Experience of Mentally Ill Slaves in the Antebellum South.
Creator: Simon, Kristi M. (Kristi Marie), Mooney, Katherine Carmines, Gabriel, Joseph, Jones, Maxine Deloris, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Abstract/Description: Focusing on the period from approximately 1800-1865, this thesis uses a historical conceptualist perspective to examine how psychiatric history intersects with the lived experience of slaves in the antebellum south. Unlike previous works that tell the history of psychiatry through the history of the asylum movement, this study seeks to emphasize how everyday Americans, from white physicians to slaves, conceptualized, discussed, diagnosed, and treated black insanity. In the process, this study...
Show moreFocusing on the period from approximately 1800-1865, this thesis uses a historical conceptualist perspective to examine how psychiatric history intersects with the lived experience of slaves in the antebellum south. Unlike previous works that tell the history of psychiatry through the history of the asylum movement, this study seeks to emphasize how everyday Americans, from white physicians to slaves, conceptualized, discussed, diagnosed, and treated black insanity. In the process, this study illuminates the way the politics, beliefs, and culture of nineteenth-century society impacted the way Americans viewed black insanity. Moreover, the findings presented in this thesis attest to the pivotal role race, gender, and class played in both the diagnosis and treatment of mental illness in the antebellum south. Hence, paying careful attention to the politics of the time, this study focuses on the highly contested and flexible process that was conceptualizing, diagnosing, quantifying, and treating black insanity in the antebellum south, and encourages readers to consider how the label “insane” impacted the life of an afflicted slave and their community.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Simon_fsu_0071N_14534
Format: Thesis

Title: Reconstruction's Ghost: The Struggle for Racial Equality in Greater Albany.
Creator: Butler, Joshua W. (Josh William), Jones, Maxine Deloris, Montgomery, Maxine Lavon, Frank, Andrew, Mooney, Katherine Carmines, Florida State University, College of Arts and...
Show moreButler, Joshua W. (Josh William), Jones, Maxine Deloris, Montgomery, Maxine Lavon, Frank, Andrew, Mooney, Katherine Carmines, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: Generations of Americans believe that black political activism materialized in the decades of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Since this overwhelming view prevails, the history of local African Americans who made a means of not giving into racism in spite of the violent and recalcitrant oppression that had existed since the days of slavery is often overlooked. But blacks fought for, and at times secured, small victories on an individual or community level, although setbacks and challenges...
Show moreGenerations of Americans believe that black political activism materialized in the decades of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Since this overwhelming view prevails, the history of local African Americans who made a means of not giving into racism in spite of the violent and recalcitrant oppression that had existed since the days of slavery is often overlooked. But blacks fought for, and at times secured, small victories on an individual or community level, although setbacks and challenges to those gains also occurred. The mis-impression that activism merely manifested itself in the days following either Emmitt Till’s murder or the Brown decision leaves generations of people missing, or erased, from the annals of history, and simply ignores the reality of making a movement on the ground. By expanding the parameters beyond the typical definition of the Civil Rights Movement, black activism from each successive generation after the Civil War emerges and provides a better understanding of race in America. Approaching the Southwest Georgia Movement through the lens of a longer evolving fight for racial equality, it becomes apparent that most of those involved were fighting against the ghost of Reconstruction. It was during this tumultuous episode that blacks had lost all gains garnered after the fall of the Confederacy (the Freedom Generation). Moreover, southerners found ways of restricting or erasing these liberties as the country transitioned into the Jim Crow era (the Terrorist Generation). The modern leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Ralph David Abernathy, for example, rose to prominence by fighting against these segregation statutes, but their ultimate goal was to reclaim many of the gains of Reconstruction (the Protest Generation).
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Date Issued: 2017
Identifier: FSU_SUMMER2017_Butler_fsu_0071E_13919
Format: Thesis

Title: Europa and the Bull: Gendering Europe and the Process of European Integration, 1919-1939.
Creator: Shriver, Rebecca Rae, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Souva, Mark A., Sinke, Suzanne M., Hanley, Will, Upchurch, Charles, Kurlander, Eric, Florida State University, College of Arts and...
Show moreShriver, Rebecca Rae, Stoltzfus, Nathan, Souva, Mark A., Sinke, Suzanne M., Hanley, Will, Upchurch, Charles, Kurlander, Eric, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This study examines the role of women and gender in German and British sections of three antiwar organizations that advocated for a European polity during the 1920s and 1930s: the Pan-European Union (PEU), the New Europe Group (NEG), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). This project relies on extensive archival research using collections located throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada, some of which were only very recently cataloged. My findings...
Show moreThis study examines the role of women and gender in German and British sections of three antiwar organizations that advocated for a European polity during the 1920s and 1930s: the Pan-European Union (PEU), the New Europe Group (NEG), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). This project relies on extensive archival research using collections located throughout Europe, the United States, and Canada, some of which were only very recently cataloged. My findings fundamentally change our understanding of interwar integration advocates, who historians previously characterized as a small group of intellectual men. An analysis of the PEU and NEG reveals that women were a significant proportion of their members and leaders. Further complicating the traditional narrative that these were “male” driven groups, this study finds they stressed the “feminine” qualities their proposed system of governance required. Integration advocates blamed the perception of crisis between the wars on the belief that the political system was man-made. Many of these individuals believed women offered new ideas and an alternative source of leadership; thus, the role of women in developing a European polity was a popular topic among important segments of unification advocates. This argument resonated with many members and national sections of WILPF, which led them to collaborate with both the NEG and PEU. Although well known for its feminist pacifist activism, Europa and the Bull is the first study to examine the ways in which WILPF contributed to movements aimed at creating a European polity. By addressing all three of these organizations, this study challenges our understanding of the interwar movement for a federal European government, as well as the social and cultural forces that motivated them.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Shriver_fsu_0071E_14311
Format: Thesis

Title: The Little Island Will Not Be a Trifling Jewel: Great Britain and Malta: 1798-1824.
Creator: Zwilling, Andrew, Gray, Edward G., Porterfield, Amanda, Blaufarb, Rafe, Jones, James Pickett, Upchurch, Charles, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreZwilling, Andrew, Gray, Edward G., Porterfield, Amanda, Blaufarb, Rafe, Jones, James Pickett, Upchurch, Charles, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This project examines the creation and early administration of Malta as a British colony, between the years 1798 and 1824. For centuries, Britain’s imperial ambitions and Malta’s role in the Mediterranean operated on largely parallel courses, very rarely intersecting. This changed during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. British acquisition and development of Malta occurred during these conflicts, with all the inherent chaos and uncertainty that war creates. The Maltese people...
Show moreThis project examines the creation and early administration of Malta as a British colony, between the years 1798 and 1824. For centuries, Britain’s imperial ambitions and Malta’s role in the Mediterranean operated on largely parallel courses, very rarely intersecting. This changed during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. British acquisition and development of Malta occurred during these conflicts, with all the inherent chaos and uncertainty that war creates. The Maltese people endured a two-year- long siege against the French in Valletta, and saw the islands’ previous rulers, the Knights of St. John, deposed. Prior to that, Malta suffered a decade of fiscal ruin brought on by the French Revolution. The Maltese needed permanence and recovery, a difficult task for the British in a wartime climate. However, within the instability of war there was also opportunity. Malta’s relationships with other nations’ markets opened for expansion, especially given the island chain’s central location and longstanding reputation as a safe port of call. At the core of this narrative are the British officials tasked with administering Malta, especially the civil commissioners (later governors), whose decisions were crucial in shaping Malta’s growth under British rule. British Malta faced many challenges, including food shortages, international uncertainly, internal intrigue and plague. It was under the early administrators that British Malta saw some success, but mostly failure.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Sp_Zwilling_fsu_0071E_14389
Format: Thesis

Title: The Choctaw Club: Martin Behrman, Reform, and the Roots of Modern American Politics.
Creator: Criss, Ralph Eric, Jumonville, Neil, Bonn, Mark A, Creswell, Michael H., Gray, Edward G., Stoltzfus, Nathan, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department...
Show moreCriss, Ralph Eric, Jumonville, Neil, Bonn, Mark A, Creswell, Michael H., Gray, Edward G., Stoltzfus, Nathan, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: The proper role of government at all levels—local, state and federal—has been debated since the birth of the Republic. This project explores that debate by illustrating how a variety of social and political issues manifested themselves in the real life of New Orleans' longest serving mayor, Martin Behrman, and the lives of millions of other Americans, in the early twentieth century. Integral to the story of Martin Behrman's life is the tale of Storyville—the infamous red-light district—the...
Show moreThe proper role of government at all levels—local, state and federal—has been debated since the birth of the Republic. This project explores that debate by illustrating how a variety of social and political issues manifested themselves in the real life of New Orleans' longest serving mayor, Martin Behrman, and the lives of millions of other Americans, in the early twentieth century. Integral to the story of Martin Behrman's life is the tale of Storyville—the infamous red-light district—the growth of the beer industry, and World War I. These matters were bound together in a ball of confusion surrounding the act of congress authorizing the war and its funding. Specifically, questions poured in from across the nation, asking which parts of American cities sailors could visit, whether or not sailors and soldiers were to be treated equally under the law, and even whether or not a civilian could buy a soldier a cold beer to say "thank you" for his service. In this way, the politics of beer, sex, and reform exploded across the United States. In Louisiana, these issues contributed to the defeat of Martin Behrman in the mayoral election of 1920, the weakening of the "Regular" political machine, and the ascent Huey Long, the "Kingfish." Many of the same legal and moral questions that were asked in 1915 are now asked in 2015 as presidential candidates jockey for position in the presidential primaries of both major parties. How much federal government intrusion into the private lives of citizens is appropriate, given the urgent need to protect the nation from terrorism? Which civil liberties may be encroached upon and to what extent? What is government's role in promoting public health, fair wages, and morality? What is the appropriate role of the federal government versus states and localities, especially during wartime? How do we handle the large numbers of immigrants flocking to our shores—from both a policy and rhetorical perspective? Answers to such questions constituted the political fault lines of the early twentieth century, as they do today. This study does not attempt to answer the policy questions above. Rather, it seeks to add context to debates surrounding them and to demonstrate their durability. The challenge is how to discuss these complex issues in a concise and cohesive manner. The author chose the political career of the longest serving mayor in the history of New Orleans to act as the glue that holds the narrative together.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Criss_fsu_0071E_12842
Format: Thesis

Title: Designing Victory on the Civil War’s Sea: The Development and Use of Ironclad Warships in the American Civil War, 1830-1865.
Creator: Stern, Gregory N. (Gregory Nathaniel), Creswell, Michael H., Souva, Mark A., Doel, Ronald Edmund, Harper, Kristine, Piehler, G. Kurt, Florida State University, College of Arts...
Show moreStern, Gregory N. (Gregory Nathaniel), Creswell, Michael H., Souva, Mark A., Doel, Ronald Edmund, Harper, Kristine, Piehler, G. Kurt, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This is a study of the strategic and tactical use of ironclad warships during the American Civil War. The project seeks to examine why the naval administration on both sides (led by Gideon Welles for the Union and Stephen Mallory for the Confederacy) decided to give such vessels an opportunity in combat, their reaction to early operations (such as the famous battle at Hampton Roads on 8-9 March 1862), and how they learned to deploy the ships as the war progressed--accounting for difficulties...
Show moreThis is a study of the strategic and tactical use of ironclad warships during the American Civil War. The project seeks to examine why the naval administration on both sides (led by Gideon Welles for the Union and Stephen Mallory for the Confederacy) decided to give such vessels an opportunity in combat, their reaction to early operations (such as the famous battle at Hampton Roads on 8-9 March 1862), and how they learned to deploy the ships as the war progressed--accounting for difficulties with terrain, fortified opposition, learning curve for personnel, and weaknesses of the weapon system technology. The study also encompasses history of science and technology concepts such as gatekeeper theory and social construction of technology. The military gatekeepers, Union and Confederate, had to adopt weapons that suited their strategic needs as a part of their overall objective. The Confederate's need to maintain open ports and fend off the Union Navy's superior numbers made superior quality of ships a viable recourse. The Union's need to defeat the Confederate Navy, including overcoming any of the South's technological leaps, made inclusion of ironclad warships a valid plan. However, both sides of the conflict had to deal with different socially constructed backgrounds. The South's agricultural heritage and lack of industrial development hindered its ability to build or improve naval technology at home—forcing it to look abroad for assistance at a time when major nations would not recognize the Confederacy's official existence. The Union's entrenched naval traditions and cumbersome bureaucracy slowed approval of new and often unproven technologies. The result of these forces, military and technological, was an unforgiving trial by fire for the ironclad armored warship in the American Civil War.
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Date Issued: 2015
Identifier: FSU_2015fall_Stern_fsu_0071E_12920
Format: Thesis

Title: The Few, the Proud: Gender and the Marine Corps Body.
Creator: Patterson, Sarah Elizabeth, Sinke, Suzanne M., Moore, Dennis, Piehler, G. Kurt, Upchurch, Charles, Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show morePatterson, Sarah Elizabeth, Sinke, Suzanne M., Moore, Dennis, Piehler, G. Kurt, Upchurch, Charles, Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This project examines the changing shape of femininity and masculinity for Marines from World War I to the Korean War, focusing on the ways that the body serves as a canvas for demonstrating the negotiation of gender roles and the Marine Corps image. Gender has been a constant issue for the military. However, few historical studies consider the ways that the Marine Corps’ status as a particularly elite, masculine institution impacted the desired image of femininity for its female recruits and...
Show moreThis project examines the changing shape of femininity and masculinity for Marines from World War I to the Korean War, focusing on the ways that the body serves as a canvas for demonstrating the negotiation of gender roles and the Marine Corps image. Gender has been a constant issue for the military. However, few historical studies consider the ways that the Marine Corps’ status as a particularly elite, masculine institution impacted the desired image of femininity for its female recruits and how this image changed over time. The hyper-masculine nature of the military influenced the relationship between masculinity and femininity for both servicemen and women. My project looks at these changes in masculinity and femininity by placing gender identity within the context of the hyper-masculine military environment. R.W. Connell’s Masculinities, Anthony Rotundo’s American Manhood, and Aaron Belkin’s Bring Me Men assist in putting gender identity in the military into a more complex and nuanced context, especially focusing on masculinity’s centrality to the American military institution. Belkin, in particular, argues that military masculinity has never been entirely devoid of feminine elements. Aspects of femininity have long been a part of military life, from domestic responsibilities often associated with women to close same sex companionship between soldiers. While generally considered less masculine when taken as separate behaviors, they did not seem problematic in a military context. This leads to the conclusion that the incorporation of women into the military was not a radical introduction of femininity into a solely masculine environment, but rather a more complicated shift in the relationship between gender and occupation. This project’s conclusions support this kind of closer relationship between masculinity and femininity in the military context. Francine D’Amico and Laurie Weinstein’s Gender Camouflage, Melissa Ming Foynes, Jillian C. Shipherd, and Ellen F. Harrington’s “Race and Gender Discrimination in the Marines,” Melissa S. Herbert’s Camouflage Isn’t Only for Combat, Heather J. Höpfl’s “Becoming a (Virile) Member: Women and the Military Body,” Leisa D. Meyer’s Creating GI Jane, and Sara L. Zeigler and Gregory G. Gunderson’s Moving Beyond GI Jane address this shift in gender relations and the resulting tension between military men and women throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries I investigate changes in military gender identity by looking at legislation and regulations controlling gender and sexuality in the military, media depictions of Marines, and the ways that gendered military identity plays out on the body, especially through physical fitness, uniforms, and bodily maintenance. The Marine Corps documented their ideas of normative masculine and feminine Marine bodies through pictures, propaganda, and newsletters. Examination of these different characteristics of the ideal body allow for comparison through time of the ways that Marines presented themselves to society, as well as the methods the Corps utilized to encourage images advantageous to its purposes. Such comparisons show changes in the perception of gender identity through time, as well as new norms of appearance and behavior that developed. This evidence illustrates the complicated and often contradictory relationship between masculinity and femininity that all Marines, male and female, negotiate. This project illustrates the significance of these frequently gendered representations of Marine bodies through time. They show the negotiation of gender within the Corps and how assumptions of gender roles shifted from one war to the next. Understanding these changes helps explain the tensions and conflicts which developed between male and female Marines during different periods, as well as creating a framework for investigating these tensions into the contemporary era. The primary sources used for this project focus on the appearance of Marines, male and female, and include national legislation related to Marines and military regulations enforcing conformity in dress and appearance. Memoirs of Marines, publications intended for Marine readers, as well as publications depicting Marines aid in gaining a better idea of the function of gender for Marines, especially in relation to their interactions between male and female Marines. These documents show the changes occurring in expectations about femininity and masculinity in the Marine Corps over time. Public publications, such as general interest magazines, women’s magazines, and newspapers, showed public ideas of Marines’ gender and their relationship to civilian American gender ideals. This project explores the changing shape of normative Marine Corps bodies and the impact of ideas of masculinity and femininity in their deployment as methods of supporting the services’ goals.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Patterson_fsu_0071E_14978
Format: Thesis

Title: Health Politics in Cold War America, 1953 -1988.
Creator: Whitehurst, John Robert, Doel, Ronald Edmund, Mesev, Victor, Frank, Andrew, Blaufarb, Rafe, Gabriel, Joseph, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department...
Show moreWhitehurst, John Robert, Doel, Ronald Edmund, Mesev, Victor, Frank, Andrew, Blaufarb, Rafe, Gabriel, Joseph, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: Throughout American history, physicians and their close professional associates, including pharmacists, have been asked to participate in both public health and national security efforts. While these efforts are not inherently contradictory, some physicians within the medical community began to perceive them as such, especially following World War II. These physicians gave birth to an anti-nuclear “physicians’ movement” that challenged the notions of national security and used public health...
Show moreThroughout American history, physicians and their close professional associates, including pharmacists, have been asked to participate in both public health and national security efforts. While these efforts are not inherently contradictory, some physicians within the medical community began to perceive them as such, especially following World War II. These physicians gave birth to an anti-nuclear “physicians’ movement” that challenged the notions of national security and used public health as a basis for doing so. They did this alongside two very important allies: natural scientists and concerned citizens, particularly middle-class women. This dissertation focuses on the two ways in which activist physicians were most directly tied to national security: as purveyors of information on the health effects of radiation (especially that resulting from nuclear testing) on people and the environment, and as participants in civil defense programs and exercises. Cold War physicians and pharmacists were expected to be the arbiters of information concerning the physical impacts of nuclear testing on Americans. Indeed, civil defense programs often described them as the “liaison” between the science community and the general public. Consequently, those within the “physicians’ movement” used their positions to challenge nuclear testing through medical activism. The Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), alongside various other anti-nuclear groups like the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) and Committee for Nuclear Information (CNI), presented information which contested the narratives of federal and state agencies, which often claimed that radioactive levels resulting from nuclear testing remained and would continue to remain safe for Americans. This challenge was largely manifest through the national conversation on the consequences of radioisotopes on public health, in particular Strontium 90 and Iodine 131. These radioisotopes fell from the skies in the form of fallout and worked their way back up food chains and into the American diet. This was especially disconcerting to young mothers, as infants and small children were particularly susceptible to these toxins. The “physicians’ movement” mobilized these radioisotopes and challenged civil defense throughout the early Cold War. Its leaders largely did so in the name of public health and were even credited by Kennedy’s science advisor, Jerome Wiesner, for their influence in garnishing American support for the passing of a Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) in 1963. The LTBT was a monumental achievement of the anti-nuclear movement, as it eliminated atmospheric (above ground or aquatic) nuclear testing in both the United States and the Soviet Union. While underground nuclear testing continued, and other nations soon entered the nuclear club, this legislation greatly limited the two largest nuclear powers from further contaminating the global atmosphere to the degree that they had in the early Cold War. During the early Cold war, physicians and pharmacists were also expected to continue the tradition of supporting and preparing for war on the home front via civil defense exercises and practices. With civil defense administrators shifting their focus from conventional toward nuclear arsenals following World War II, they also began to predict the disproportionate destruction of physicians in post-war scenarios. Pharmacists and others within the medical community were being trained to take the place of these theoretically deceased physicians in preparation for a post-attack environment. The idea that pharmacists could replace physicians in a post-nuclear environment, as proposed by civil defense planners, alerted some physicians that something must be done. In response, the PSR participated in several congressional hearings, influenced the narratives of other anti-nuclear groups, funded anti-nuclear media, and fostered citizen-science projects in order to challenge notions of civil defense and nuclear testing in the name of public health. Medical activism, however, did not end with the signing of the LTBT. The PSR, in particular, only grew stronger as the Reagan Revolution and heightened Cold War tensions rose in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The PSR mutated from a local and national organization into an international participant in the Freeze movement and the anti-nuclear resurgence of the early 1980s. Medical activists again used many of the same methods they had relied on during the early Cold War period to challenge militarism such as professional journals, newspaper editorials, and popular media. They also began to use newer forms of media. In particular, the PSR funded the airing of several well-known and influential anti-nuclear films, like Day After and Threads, which challenged the foundations of civil defense throughout the 1980s. The story of Cold War medical activism illuminates the various tensions which have existed, and continue to exist, which are fundamental to balancing the necessities of national security with those of public health.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Whitehurst_fsu_0071E_14837
Format: Thesis

Title: Empire of Direct Mail: Media, Fundraising, and Conservative Political Consultants.
Creator: Moriyama, Takahito, Piehler, G. Kurt, Gomez, Brad T., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Sinke, Suzanne M., Creswell, Michael, McVicar, Michael J., Florida State University, College of Arts...
Show moreMoriyama, Takahito, Piehler, G. Kurt, Gomez, Brad T., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Sinke, Suzanne M., Creswell, Michael, McVicar, Michael J., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: This study examines the rise of modern American conservatism by analyzing the role of computerized direct mail in the conservative movement from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the post-World War II years, the advertising industry on Madison Avenue developed direct marketing to reach out to prospective customers. As political consultants in New York City introduced the new advertising strategy into politics during the 1950s, direct mail became an important medium especially for conservatives when...
Show moreThis study examines the rise of modern American conservatism by analyzing the role of computerized direct mail in the conservative movement from the 1950s to the 1980s. In the post-World War II years, the advertising industry on Madison Avenue developed direct marketing to reach out to prospective customers. As political consultants in New York City introduced the new advertising strategy into politics during the 1950s, direct mail became an important medium especially for conservatives when the majority of mass media was liberal. Empire of Direct Mail focuses on conservative activists in New York and Washington, D.C., such as Marvin Liebman and Richard Viguerie, narrating how direct mail contributed to right-wing organizations and politicians. Constructing the computer database of personal information, direct mail operatives compiled mailing lists of supporters, which provided conservative candidates, including Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, and Ronald Reagan, with nationwide networks of voters and contributors. Right-wing messengers effectively employed direct mail by using emotion as a campaign strategy. They capitalized on rage and discontent in post-1960s America in order to court Southern Democrats, middle-class white suburbanites, and blue-collar workers. While liberal critics condemned conservatives for their emotionalism, liberals unintentionally promoted direct mail politics. The Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974 brought about the ascendancy of conservative direct mail as the liberal campaign finance reform prohibited big contribution. Direct mail had profound impacts not only on the conservative movement but also on American politics, creating a grassroots activism as the mass of small contribution rather than the accumulation of local engagement. Thus, this research demonstrates how direct mail played a role in transforming the contours of American politics and how it affected American political participation in the twentieth century.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Moriyama_fsu_0071E_15002
Format: Thesis

Title: Collegiate Symbols and Mascots of the American Landscape: Identity, Iconography, and Marketing.
Creator: DeSantis, Gary Gennar, Frank, Andrew, Crew, Robert E., Grant, Jonathan A., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Gray, Edward G., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences,...
Show moreDeSantis, Gary Gennar, Frank, Andrew, Crew, Robert E., Grant, Jonathan A., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Gray, Edward G., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
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Abstract/Description: The rise of college symbols and mascots related to the American landscape directly correlates with the rapid changes stemming from industrialization and urbanization occurring in American culture between the late-nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century. The loss of national identity attributed to the closing of the western frontier had a devastating effect on young white males in particular. The ensuing cultural crisis brought about by the wanton extirpation of wildlife...
Show moreThe rise of college symbols and mascots related to the American landscape directly correlates with the rapid changes stemming from industrialization and urbanization occurring in American culture between the late-nineteenth century and first decades of the twentieth century. The loss of national identity attributed to the closing of the western frontier had a devastating effect on young white males in particular. The ensuing cultural crisis brought about by the wanton extirpation of wildlife and destruction of the natural environment led directly to the preservationist movement of the turn-of-the century. In the face of unparalleled immigration, fitness and the back-to-nature movement were believed to be instrumental in helping white American men avoid committing "race suicide." Nurtured by the teachings and philosophies of conservationists and preservationists, young white college men formed the first football teams and adopted symbols of the American landscape as a means of team identity. Because iconography makes for a powerful tool of identity and solidarity, students and college officials were likewise intrigued. Eager to quell unruly student behavior, college administrators—who had a more than contentious relationship with the student body throughout the late-nineteenth century—gladly assented. The profits soon realized from college sports and the pageantry surrounding it proved irresistible to colleges across the land. Consequently, by the early decades of the late-nineteenth century, numerous American college athletic teams began using mascots related to the American landscape and school colors to foment group solidarity.
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Date Issued: 2018
Identifier: 2018_Fall_DeSantis_fsu_0071E_14289
Format: Thesis

Title: The Pursuit of Equality the Continuation of Colonialism in Vietnam.
Creator: Boucher, Robert Arthur, Grant, Jonathan A., Blaufarb, Rafe, Özok-Gündoğan, Nilay, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Abstract/Description: Much of the scholarship on the colonial sphere remains focused on the ways that subalterns subverted colonial power and discourse, however little focus has centered on the way that colonized at times reified and perpetuated the ideas of the civilizing mission. In the case of Vietnam, over the course of approximately four decades Vietnamese intellectuals quickly swung from seeing the French as barbarians to a dynamic, modern power that should be learned from. In the process, modernization and...
Show moreMuch of the scholarship on the colonial sphere remains focused on the ways that subalterns subverted colonial power and discourse, however little focus has centered on the way that colonized at times reified and perpetuated the ideas of the civilizing mission. In the case of Vietnam, over the course of approximately four decades Vietnamese intellectuals quickly swung from seeing the French as barbarians to a dynamic, modern power that should be learned from. In the process, modernization and development came to be synonymous with everything from the West while tradition was invented as the old teachings. Importantly, while independence was achieved after much bloodshed and effort, the new Vietnamese state failed in reality to extricate itself from the grasp of European universalist ideas born out of the French Revolution. From efforts to open “New Learning” schools to demands of equality to French citizens and access to basic rights, the Vietnamese vision of a New Vietnam slowly became constrained to the path of the international community of nation-states. Ho Chi Minh would declare independence in the name of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness rather than the loss of the Mandate of Heaven. As such, this paper traces the variety of factors that influenced the manifold nature of colonialism and how rather than existing in a post-colonial world, the ideas of the mission civilisatrice have been continued by the powers which rebelled against it.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Boucher_fsu_0071N_15209
Format: Thesis

Title: Zeitfreiwillige and Freikorpskämpfer Paramilitaries of Early Weimar Germany.
Creator: Ellis, David Sloan, Grant, Jonathan A., Williamson, George S., Koslow, Jennifer Lisa, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Department of History
Abstract/Description: During the early years of the Weimar Republic paramilitary organizations were commonplace. With the dissolution of the Imperial Army after the German defeat in World War I, the new republican government needed a means to ensure its authority and fostered volunteer troops known as Freikorps. These units could be raised and led by any with both the financial and charismatic means to do so and held no uniform model or political motivation. They saw the most action during the German Revolution,...
Show moreDuring the early years of the Weimar Republic paramilitary organizations were commonplace. With the dissolution of the Imperial Army after the German defeat in World War I, the new republican government needed a means to ensure its authority and fostered volunteer troops known as Freikorps. These units could be raised and led by any with both the financial and charismatic means to do so and held no uniform model or political motivation. They saw the most action during the German Revolution, along the Eastern Border, and in the Ruhr. Their campaigns during the Revolution secured the position of the new administration but split the Labor Parties which prevented a majority government from forming for much of the 1920s. The string of short-lived cabinets prevented the stabilization of the Weimar Government, provided strong extra-constitutional powers to the President, and created the opportunity for previously fringe radical parties to become legitimate coalition members. After the acceptance of the Treaty of Versailles and the implementation of its restrictions, these units became highly disillusioned and hostile towards the Weimar Government and drifted towards the political Right. Led by nationalistic generals and political officials who wanted to reject the Treaty, the Freikorps units that emerged from the Revolution attempted several times to violently overthrow the government, but none would succeed. Their failures and the continued pressure of the Entente to disband all paramilitaries pushed the remaining Freikorps fighters into police units, the border guard, secret military reserves, and labor groups. They would reappear whenever Germany’s borders became threatened, but gradually lost support in the stability of the Golden Age of Weimar in the mid-1920s. Unwilling to accept the government and wholly disperse, Freikorps members moved into politics itself via war veteran organizations and the growing Right-wing parties. Having fought to support and later destroy the Weimar Government, they knew the only way to bring about the change they wanted to see would be to enter the system itself. Raised to provide authority to the Republic, the Freikorps greatly weakened the political Left, allowed the Right time to recuperate, bolstering their ranks in the 1930s.
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Date Issued: 2019
Identifier: 2019_Spring_Ellis_fsu_0071N_15191
Format: Thesis

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