<p> In this dissertation I present the first county-level estimates of deaths in the Confederate Army for eight of the former Confederate States (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia). As described in Chapter 2, I estimate the number of deaths by Confederate company (a unit of roughly 100 men) and map these back to the company's county of origin. Counties' death rates were driven by the battles in which their men fought, determined by generals for strategic reasons. This produces a wide distribution in county-level death rates, and it allows for causal inference in assessing the impacts of these losses on counties' later development.</p><p> In Chapter 3, I estimate the long-run effects of population loss on the economic geography of the South. Populations in counties with higher death rates caught up to neighboring areas within 15 years after the war, but then they kept growing. These increases were caused by migration, especially by African Americans: counties with ten percentage-point higher death rates had 14% larger black populations in 1900 and 27% larger in 1960. Migrants also increasingly went to counties that were less advantaged in Southern economy before the Civil War. The economic geography of the American South was thus changed significantly after the institutional shock from the Civil War. </p><p> In Chapter 4, I estimate the effects of relative labor scarcity on racial violence and political participation in the American South from 1865 to 1900. I find counties with 10 percentage-point higher death rates in the Civil War had 24-33% fewer lynchings of African Americans from 1866 to 1900. They also had 3.6-5.6% higher voter turnout despite a larger fraction of their population being black. These effects persisted for at least two decades after the counties' relative labor scarcity disappeared. However, in the very long run (100 years), counties with greater Civil War deaths saw a reversal, with much worse discrimination by the Civil Rights Era, likely due to their larger black populations and absence of economic incentives to prevent discrimination. This suggests relative levels of discrimination were not culturally determined and can change fairly quickly.</p>

<p> My research examines how the writers of the <i>Granada Pioneer</i>, a newspaper published in a Japanese American internment camp during World War II, used the editorial column of that publication to shape the community identity of that camp. The newspaper was published by Japanese America internees living in that camp, but their readership was composed of Japanese American internees and also non-interned non-Japanese Americans. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, I found that the internee writers were using the editorial column to shape a community habitus within the internment camp while at the same time attempting to reshape the imagined community of "America" within the minds of all their readers. In addition, I found that though the internee writers were subject to administrative censorship, they were able to circumvent that censorship by reprinting editorial columns from mainstream newspapers and thus express sentiments that they themselves were not permitted to published. </p>

<p>Jill Hemming Austin PERFORMING THE PAST: TWO PAGEANT TRADITIONS IN NAUVOO, ILLINOIS The founders of American historical pageantry were keenly interested in the social effect of pageant performance on audience and participants. Their vision for social transformation through performance endures into the present day with those who continue to promulgate the form. Examining two enduring pageant traditions in Nauvoo, Illinois affords a better understanding of how the formal features of outdoor historical pageant production and the social relations that underlie them are still potentially powerful for those who participate in their production and performance. This dissertation encourages serious study of pageants as a unique performance form particularly attuned to the tasks of building continuities and tradition, the reinforcement of group sentiment, and the propitiation of group myth. Nauvoo, Illinois is a historically contested site boasting two historical pageants dedicated to the portrayal of the Nauvoo story: The Grape Festival Pageant and The Nauvoo Pageant. Christened ?Nauvoo? by Mormon [LDS] refugees in the mid-19th century, the thriving city?s overwhelming social discord drove the Mormons west, and the town was resettled and reclaimed by new seekers and settlers. The legendary quality of Nauvoo continued to grow in the Mormon imagination, eventually leading to a reclamation process including heritage development. Competing claims on local history has led to a heightened historical consciousness among townsfolk and ongoing public presentation from multiple perspectives. The two pageants are cultural displays that influence this ongoing social process. Both derive from distinct traditions--the local drama squarely planted in American historical pageantry and the Mormon-sponsored pageant deriving from LDS social and religious culture. Historical pageants have some unique formal features that make them particularly interesting to folklorists. They depend heavily on sacred localities, tradition, legend, and large-group participation for their success. The story told gains power from familiarity and reinforcement of cherished group values. However, changing tastes and sensibilities have challenged the survival of pageants as a relevant cultural form into the present. Drawing on interviews, field observation, and historical research, the contemporary context of the town and its two performances is fleshed out in the voices of four individuals who have participated in the pageants.

Mastering Emotions: The Emotional Politics of Slavery explores how the emotions and affective norms of the Antebellum South were conditioned upon and constructed through the institution of slavery. Though slavery is a subject wrought with emotion, there has been no focus in recent historical scholarship on the affective dimensions of slavery. Studies in the history of emotion have also largely ignored slavery. My intervention in these fields reveals the ways that both slaveholders and slaves wielded fear, trust, jealousy, and affection in their interactions with one another. The project also sheds light on how the emotional norms of societies are learned and policed, manipulated and enforced. I argue that the emotions of slaveholders and slaves alike were irrevocably shaped by slavery. The daily negotiations and contestations that occurred between slaveholders and slaves through and about feelings, in conjunction with larger debates about race, freedom, and emotional norms, form the backbone of what I call the emotional politics of slavery. Mastering Emotions examines how the affective norms of slavery were taught, how emotional transgressions were punished, and the long-term impacts of those emotional norms on the affective landscape of the post-Reconstruction South. To gain insight into the emotional lives and affective experiences of enslaved people of color I use a variety of primary sources such as slave narratives, letters, and court testimony. Steeped in the mode of sentimentalism, which encouraged people to reflect upon and articulate their feelings, slaveholders revealed how they felt about their slaves, and how they believed their slaves felt, in diaries, wills, and even records of slave sales and manumissions. Studying the affective terrain of the Antebellum South provides fresh insight into the politics of slavery, revealing how those in bondage used feelings to resist slavery, and how the planter class employed emotions to enforce the institution. This project also contributes to the burgeoning field of affective history by complicating understandings of how emotions are constructed in relation to power, and how power operates in affective relations.

"Red Meat Republic: The Rise of the Cattle-Beef Complex, 1865-1906," examines the consolidation of the American meatpacking and ranching industries. Supplying urban consumers with inexpensive beef required a form of industrialized animal husbandry that had high costs, both human and environmental. In spite of these costs - the source of widespread criticism and public unease - this system has persisted in roughly the same shape for nearly a century. I argue this resilience depends on a set of widely accepted narratives that made centralized meatpacking appear natural and inevitable. Whether rooted in cultural discourses justifying Indian land expropriation or technological arguments rationalizing market concentration, particular narratives enabled the historical processes integral to the rise of big meatpacking. "Red Meat Republic" critiques these narratives and offers an alternate account of industrial animal husbandry's origins. / History

In the middle of the eighteenth century the Portuguese crown, under the influence of the Marquis of Pombal, sought to reform the political administration of its vast set of imperial holdings. As part of these reforms, in 1751 Pombal sent his brother, Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furtado, to the Portuguese Amazon to serve as governor of the state of Grão Pará and Maranhão. This study explores Furtado’s tenure as governor of the Amazon from his perspective, in an attempt to understand how and why he arrived at a set of policies known as the “Directorate,” which overhauled the region’s mission system and attempted to more effectively assimilate native Amazonians into Portuguese colonial society. Chapter One combines a look at Furtado’s initial years as governor with short digressions into the relevant historical background of the region. The analysis in this chapter focuses on Furtado’s influence on his brother, the Marquis of Pombal, as well as the early attempts at reform he pursues out of a growing sense of frustration with the Jesuit missionaries in the region. Chapter Two focuses on a long trip Furtado took upriver to a settlement called Mariuá, in order to negotiate the boundary demarcation with Spain. Over the course of two years away from his home in Belém at the mouth of the Amazon, Furtado’s opinion of the Indians evolves, influencing the implementation of the Directorate policy upon his return. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the legacies of Furtado and the Directorate.

<p> The aim of this thesis is to study the practices and background of Voodoo in New Orleans through a holistic lens. This holistic lens includes researching the history of Voodoo in New Orleans, previous research done on Voodoo practice in New Orleans, contacting current practitioners and performing informal interviews, and participant-observation of New Orleans Voodoo rituals. This work is divided into three sections; the first delves into the history and current state of Voodoo of New Orleans. The second section discusses how Voodoo has influenced other cultural areas in New Orleans. The third section discusses how Voodoo and tourism interrelate with one another. The conclusion of this work addresses how through out history, influences on other areas of New Orleans culture, and tourism, the original ideas of Voodoo in New Orleans has stretched out beyond the original spectacle of Voodoo into the various ways individuals think about Voodoo. This also influences how practitioners view their own practice by reacting to how non-practitioners view Voodoo. It is like the metaphor of the snake eating his own tail, how Voodoo is practiced and then perceived by outsiders keeps feeding into each other.</p>

<p> Land and water use at archaeological sites is a growing field of study within Mesoamerican archaeology. In Mesoamerica, similar to elsewhere in the world, landscapes were settled based partially upon the characteristics of the environment and the types of food and water resources available. Across Mesoamerica, landscape concepts were also important to religious beliefs and ritual activity in a manner that may have had the potential to influence the power dynamics of a site. This thesis focuses on the management of water at the site of Takalik Abaj in Guatemala during the Middle to Late Preclassic periods (c. 1000 B.C. - A.D. 250) in order to analyze potential ritual and political functions of the water management system. Using spatial data within GIS, this thesis examines the flow of water across the site as directed by its topographical features. The archaeological record of Takalik Abaj and comparisons to water management systems at other Mesoamerican sites are also used to investigate the functions of the water management system. Thesis findings suggest that the water management system of Takalik Abaj was multi-faceted and that ritual functions tied to the control of water may have contributed to the identities and power of the elite.</p>

No description available.

“Ambassadors of Pleasure” examines the social and cultural history of ‘sin’ in the Detroit-Windsor border region during the post-World War II period. It employs the interrelated frameworks of “borderlands” and “vice” in order to identify the complex ways in which illicit economies shaped—and were shaped by—these border cities. It argues that illicit economies served multiple purposes for members of local borderlands communities. For many downtown residents, vice industries provided important forms of leisure, labor, and diversion in cities undergoing rapid changes. Deeply rooted in local working-class communities, prostitution and heroin economies became intimately intertwined in the daily lives of many local residents who relied on them for both entertainment and income. For others, though, anti-vice activities offered a concrete way to engage in what they perceived as community betterment. Fighting the immoral influences of prostitution and drug use was one way some residents, particularly those of the middle class, worked to improve their local communities in seemingly tangible ways. These struggles for control over vice economies highlight the ways in which shifting meanings of race, class, and gender, growing divisions between urban centers and suburban regions, and debates over the meaning of citizenship evolved in the urban borderland. This dissertation subsequently traces the competing interests brought together through illicit vice activities, arguing that they provide unique insight into the fracturing social lines developing in the postwar North American cities.