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Nuclear weapons technology transformed the meaning of American citizenship in the early Cold War. The nature of nuclear war forced Americans to reconsider the relationship between citizens and the state, raising the question: who was responsible for Americans’ survival? As weapons technologies became more destructive, this civic debate intensified, demanding the involvement of policymakers, scientists, activists, and a surprising number of everyday Americans. Using a framework I call nuclear citizenship, this dissertation illustrates how knowledge of the nuclear threat led American citizens to reimagine ideas of public safety and democracy. This research thus examines the intersection of federal civil defense policies, popular science, and antinuclear activism, revealing how nuclear weapons opened new avenues for political participation and challenged ideas about democratic practice in the post-World War II era. Put another way, the problem of public safety in the Atomic Age gave Americans a new language for discussing rights, responsibilities, civic duty, and the power of the state. Americans, I argue, used their understanding of nuclear science and technology as a means for pushing back against the Cold War state. American civilians were active participants in a public dialogue that ultimately came to conclude that nuclear weapons stood in the way of peace, prosperity, and human health. Scholars frequently examine nuclear history through the lens of classified federal policymaking, military advancements, or elite science. These narratives downplay the economy of nuclear information available to civilians, and the ability of average Americans to understand and act in response to nuclear knowledge. This dissertation reorients the historical understanding of the early nuclear era in the United States by drawing attention to grassroots political engagement with nuclear science and technology. By utilizing a variety of local and federal records, personal correspondence, popular media, and civic group documents, my research gives agency to a range of unconsidered actors. My work thus adds nuance to larger scholarly conversations about the relationship between science, the state, and civilians, and changing currents of political activism in the postwar era. / History

Thomas Hart Benton was commissioned to paint murals depicting Indiana history for the Indiana state pavilion at the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. The completed Indiana murals were twelve feet high and over two hundred feet long, wrapping around the entire exhibition hall. Visitors to the Indiana pavilion experienced Indiana’s history through a continuous stream of narrative imitating the flow of time. After several years of storage following the fair, the panels were given to Indiana University in Bloomington in 1938, where they currently reside. While most scholarship has focused on the original message and context of the Indiana murals, the murals’ nearly seventy-five year display at IU necessitates a more thorough analysis of the murals at the university, with specific attention to the contextual changes since the time of the fair. The relocation of the murals to IU and the resultant restructuring of their historical narrative have altered perceptions of their imagery and attributed new meanings to the historical scenes Benton depicted. The aim of this study it to better understand the complex nature of Benton’s Indiana murals by exploring the ways in which changes in context result in alteration of the original message and the viewers’ reception of the murals. My research explores the murals’ role in university politics, reactions to the murals by their university audience, and recent controversies. A study of the Indiana murals in terms of the fluidity of historical construction and the effects of collective memory on their reception is significant because it leads to a greater understanding of the present’s cultural ideals, and begins to explain why the murals continue to elicit such strong reactions from viewers—whether to protest against their presence at the university or promote their preservation for the benefit of future generations. / Art History

In the early twentieth century, reformers within the U.S. War Department attempted to create a more robust and formalized reserve system to augment the regular army. While many regular officers advocated a federalized reserve, they were opposed by members of the National Guard Association, who insisted that state troops remain the nation’s second line of defense. In 1903, Congress passed the Dick Act, which stipulated that militia and National Guard units would continue to serve as the primary reserve to the regular army. To ensure Guardsmen were up to the task, Congress also required that state units conform to the regular army’s organization, armament, and discipline. This thesis examines the changes facilitated by the Dick Act within Pennsylvania’s National Guard, by focusing specifically on a single unit- the 1st Regiment of Infantry. It begins by exploring failed efforts by federal and state officials to change the 1st Regiment by 1908. It then examines the effects of increased federal funding and oversight on the regiment after 1908, and how these factors led to changes in the way the unit trained. Annual reports from the Adjutant General of Pennsylvania and the Chief of the Division of Militia Affairs provided the majority of the information for this thesis. Contemporary periodicals and documents maintained in the First Regiment Infantry Museum also helped to shed light on the activities of the 1st Regiment between 1903 and 1912. This thesis concludes that by 1912 the 1st Regiment achieved relative parity with the regulars in terms of organization and equipment, the type of field training it conducted, and the type of training its officers attended. / History

After the debt crisis in 1981, Costa Rica shifted from an inward (IDS) to an outward oriented development strategy (ODS). "Neoliberal" economists have characterized this shift as being a result of free trade and liberalization policies and reduced government intervention. The neoliberal perspective has seen inward and outward development strategies as mutually exclusive and has evaluated their success mainly in terms of GDP and export growth. This dissertation first shows that IDS and ODS are in fact not mutually exclusive and that countries which have been successful in applying an ODS, such as Taiwan and Korea, have had strong government intervention, particularly in that they have implemented a selective trade policy. Second, in the case of Costa Rica, it illustrates that the shift towards a more ODS has been the result of previous development achievements, pursuit of macroeconomic balance with social stability, and strong institutional and financial support for export promotion. Additionally, using a computable general equilibrium model, the study also shows that a gradual and combined policy of tariffs and export subsidies may have better overall macroeconomic results, not only in terms of growth, but also in terms of distributional issues, as compared with the neoliberal shock policies, involving import liberalization and large devaluations. This gradual and combined approach is consistent with the policies adopted by Costa Rica in the transition to an ODS; it also helps illustrate the distributional concerns that governments face when choosing a trade policy and development strategy. However, in order for Costa Rica to go beyond an easy stage of export promotion to a deeper export development process and overcome similar problems encountered during the period of import substitution industrialization such as rent seeking, developing an industrial structure with small degrees of value added and increasing trade imbalances and fiscal deficits, it is necessary to transform the productive structure and develop strategic export and import substitution sectors that would give Costa Rica a competitive advantage. The dissertation concludes by proposing a greater role for the state to promote an ODS based on a selective trade strategy and a combined macroeconomic policy of maintaining a realistic exchange rate and gradual and selective fiscal policies.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Charles Sanders / The power of historical memory is readily apparent in the United States of America. Ask any descendent of veterans that served in war, and a plethora of reasons behind their willingness to fight will follow. As with any conflict, the enduring legacies of the war‘s aftermath are not always clear until years after the fact. Memory of the American Civil War took several different routes before finally settling on the "spirit of reconciliation" that came to dominate American society in the post-war era. In the South, the "Lost Cause" began to take hold with former Confederates attempting to justify their defeat and change the historical record to excuse their actions. As the winner in the war, the North did not need to come up with justification as to why they fought—they had secured the Union and destroyed the divisive institution, slavery. Gradually over time, Northerners and Southerners celebrated their veterans while simultaneously promoting reconciliation between the two sections. As a result, any emancipationist legacy from the end of the Civil War was relegated to irrelevancy in American society as Jim Crow settled in within the South for the next hundred years. Memory of the American Civil War continues to have lasting impact upon modern American society, especially with the sesquicentennial celebrations of the war‘s major battles. Lesser known, and yet equally as important, is the memory of the American Revolution. As with the "Lost Cause", the American Revolution experienced its own reconstruction with equal parts forgetting and remembering. Emerging from this "reconstruction" was what became known as the American identity. Thirteen disparate colonies became a solid monolith of Americanism in the reconstructed views of the Revolution, instead of the divided thirteen colonies they truly were. This thesis argues that the "Lost Cause" and spirit of reconciliation that permeated the post-war United States after the Civil War followed a tradition of desiring unity above all else at the expense of minority groups such as African Americans and Native Americans, that began with the American Revolution.

The relationships between the United States and Argentina, traditionally complicated by diplomatic rivalry in the sphere of inter-American relations and by commercial difficulties derived from the non-complementary and often competitive nature of their economies, had reached their lowest level during World War II. However, in the aftermath of the war, a combination of international and domestic developments would lead Argentina to seek a rapprochement with the United States. The breakdown of Argentina's long commercial and financial relationship with Britain combined with its growing dependence on the United States as a source of capital goods, technology and financial capital, provided a powerful incentive for the Southern country to seek an alliance with Washington. On the other hand, the opportunity to exert a closer influence on the policies adopted by Argentina was welcomed by Washington since, although Argentina was a country of only peripheral strategic and economic importance for the United States, the course it followed acquired larger significance for Washington in the context of its impact on the development of inter-American relationships. However, although the circumstances seemed to be favorable for an improved relationship, the path toward rapprochement would be slow, difficult and uneven, as a combination of cultural misunderstandings, persisting stereotypes and structural economic constraints complicated the efforts made by both sides to find satisfactory solutions to the problems that stood between them. This dissertation is the first systematic study of the relationships between Argentina and the United States in the 1950s based on extensive archival research of recently opened documents. It focuses on the strategies adopted by three different Administrations led respectively by Juan D. Peron, the military and Arturo Frondizi to lead Argentina through the transition to a more autonomous and diversified industrial economy and on their efforts to enlist the collaboration of U.S. private and public capital in this process. It analyzes the ways in which the Eisenhower Administration responded to the new opportunities and challenges offered by these developments in Argentina within the context of inter-American relations in the Cold War.