<p> This thesis originally came out of a term paper for Dr. John Troutman&rsquo;s History 505 class in the spring of 2015, and at first, I was more interested in folklore itself than the organization charged with preserving it. But that soon changed, as did my purposes for writing. These purposes were several. First, to examine the Louisiana Folklife Program&mdash;its origins, its evolution, and its achievements&mdash;in order to see how it became what it is today. Second, to place the LFP in a national context by examining the factors that gave rise to its birth. Third, to explain why the LFP has endured while similar programs have struggled or faded away. And fourth, to examine the impact that political and academic opposition can and do have upon such programs. My methodology has changed little since I wrote the first page. Most of it entailed archival research coupled with secondary sources gleaned from libraries and Internet searches as well as oral interviews. What I learned in the course of my research has illustrated more than ever the fragility and value of Louisiana&rsquo;s cultural heritage and the value of preserving it. Some of it was almost wiped out in the early twentieth century, when speaking French was forbidden in schools throughout the state. It is thus incumbent upon both the LFP and the people of Louisiana to each do their part in ensuring that their posterity will be able to enjoy the rich diversity Louisiana has to offer. Stories, recipes, and handicrafts are things that we should not allow to fade away. Once they are gone, there is no restoring them. The LFP has made tremendous advances in this regard, and I sincerely hope they continue to do so, for the sake of all the generations that come after us.</p>

<p> This thesis examines the development of the gay rights movement in Louisiana. It begins by exploring both the homophile era and the liberation era in Louisiana, and how members of the LGBTQ community during these periods created safe spaces for themselves. I focus on two groups, the Louisiana Electorate of Gays and Lesbians (LEGAL) and the Louisiana Gay Political Action Caucus (LAGPAC), throughout the remainder of the work and how members of these organizations shaped the LGBTQ community by fighting for legislative protections and civil rights. I examine how gay rights activists negotiated the terms and parameters of identities like "gay" and "lesbian" in the context of political action, and how these identities remain relevant for the community today. Throughout the work, I argue that members of organizations like LAGPAC and LEGAL were more reactive than proactive when advocating for legislative protections for Louisiana&rsquo;s LGBTQ community. To reach this conclusion, I use primary source collections of both LEGAL and LAGPAC, as well as various local periodicals to show how members of these organizations and members of the press disseminated information regarding the fight for gay civil rights to the LGBTQ community and the general public.</p>

<p> This thesis examines and exposes the active student life of 1947 Newcomb College graduate Coralie Guarino Davis. Through the analysis of her diaries, I examine both the academic and social structure of Newcomb as a coordinate college and its effect on students in the 1940s as well as social and cultural events such as World War II and Carnival. Davis graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree that enabled her to work professionally in the art field and briefly as a Carnival designer. During her college education, Davis also experienced World War II. Davis and other students aided in the war effort through fundraising, experienced war rations, and anticipated the Allies victory. She also participated in Carnival as a queen of her krewe, the Elenians, in 1947. The exhibit is derived from her diary writings and presents an example of the typical Newcomb student experience during the 1940s in regards to education, the war, and New Orleans social events. Both my research and exhibit work to bridge the gap on Newcomb College history during World War II and enhance the scholarship on women in higher education and in New Orleans during the decade.</p>

<p> This thesis examines the premodern and ethnically stratified labor and social structure maintained at Rancho Los Alamitos in Long Beach, California during the early-to-mid twentieth century as an expression and performance of an idealized regional identity with roots in a romanticized sense of past and place. Amid dramatic urbanization, industrialization, and corporatization, the rancho&rsquo;s owners, Fred and Florence Bixby, made significant efforts to maintain past views, technology, and paternalistic social relations with their Mexican employee tenants. To be sure, the desire to preserve an idealized western lifestyle as well as a particular class position motivated such efforts. Moreover, while this daily performance of an idealized regionalism signified a rejection of the modern progress hailed by most elite white southern Californians, it nevertheless constituted a conscious exercise in defining modernity.</p>

<p> Images that come to mind when one thinks of the bucolic state of Vermont are not likely to include those of a mining landscape. These are reserved for the coalfields of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky, and perhaps the mining ghost towns of the American West. It is not surprising then that the discovery of substantial veins of copper in Orange County was to have dramatic impacts on not only the landscape of Vermont, but also its inhabitants. And in spite of the fits and starts of Vermont&rsquo;s copper industry, it owns a significant place in history. </p><p> Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, no fewer than five copper mines were in operation in Orange County. The Ely Mine, located in the southeast corner of Vershire, became one of the most productive copper mines in the United States. At one point employing over 800 miners and laborers, most of whom were Cornish and Irish immigrants, the Ely Mine spawned the creation of a boomtown consisting of over 150 buildings and dwellings. Following one of the earliest labor strikes of the era, the mine closed and, within two decades, the town of Copperfield completely disappeared. </p><p> This thesis is an historical narrative that tells the story of the Ely Mine, its boomtown, and particularly its miners by weaving together primary resource material such as United States Federal Census and immigration records, letters, and historical photographs, newspaper articles, and maps. </p><p> <i>Copperfield</i> is a story of perseverance and tenacity not only on the part of entrepreneurs and businessmen, but also &mdash; and most importantly &mdash; on the part of the hundreds of immigrant miners who passed through the Orange County copper mines. Without the contributions of these &ldquo;ordinary&rdquo; people, there would be no story to tell.</p>

Two volumes. Typewritten sheets in cover. Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University

<p>The Louisiana fur trade existed in colonial times; however, the state?s role as a major source of fur did not emerge until the twentieth century. The early market focused largely on muskrats along the coastal regions of the state. Muskrats are prone to swings in population. Capitalists, such as E.A. McIlhenny, introduced nutria to Louisiana under the guise that they would supplement the native fur industry despite warnings from the Bureau of Biological Survey. Once these entrepreneurs found it difficult to make a profit from nutria, they set many of their animals free. Soon after their introduction to the wild in the 1940s, the nutria population exploded. Further, individual and government actors, along with natural events such as hurricanes, spread nutria to almost the entire coastal region of the state. The nutria damaged crops, such as sugarcane and rice, and farmers labeled them an invasive species or a species that damages the existing environment. Through innovative marketing approaches put into place by government agencies such as the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), nutria became valuable in the 1960s and 1970s and prompted a golden age of nutria trapping. This entailed a resurgence of trapping efforts and preserved culture practices built around trapping. However, new technologies augmented these cultural practices. Soon larger cultural and climatic changes led to the decline of the entire fur industry and in turn nutria overpopulation. Conversations between state agents and politicians led to the current control program, the Coastwide Nutria Control Program. Passed in 2002, this program is successful at controlling the nutria population which in turn preserves the wetlands. This bounty program subsequently provides supplemental income to the descendants of trappers and preserves a labor and cultural practice of trapping in Louisiana. This practice entails a day to day relationship with the marsh.

<p> This dissertation reviews the deliberate and evolutionary development of cultural nationalism through food and cuisine, specifically the methods and manners in which Americans during the early Republic conceptualized and produced a distinct national culinary culture. Through multiple forms of evidence including published cookbooks, travelogues, etchings and paintings, nutritional studies, newspaper articles, and essays, Americans and Europeans employed food as a symbolic tool to redefine their definitions of national culture. The production and consumption of certain foodstuffs was indeed an essential component in the process of interpreting the burgeoning American postcolonial national consciousness, often at the expense however of an open and inclusive society. While the current scholarship contends that Americans remained anchored to their colonial British food systems in the early national period, this research reveals a more complicated narrative of identity construction that ultimately highlights a complex ideological and cultural transformation. In short, this work analyzes how intellectual descriptions of American cuisine affected attitudes and perceptions of national character formation in the early American Republic.</p><p>

<p> In 2009, the American Museum of Science and Energy (AMSE) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee debuted an updated history exhibit about the town&rsquo;s role as one of three secret cities in the Manhattan Project. The exhibit presented a celebratory tone in honor of the innocent people who unknowingly and victoriously participated in the construction of the atomic bomb that aided the Allies in their successful end of WWII. The exhibit omitted the larger national, political nuclear discussion that took place over the following sixty-five years, cementing a long-held victory culture identity. In a 2009 world, the AMSE exhibit seemed incomplete, if not obtuse. <i>Innocent Victors</i> traces the history of AMAE/AMSE to examine the social, cultural, and political path that resulted in the 2009 and final AMSE exhibits. An analysis of public history commemoration trends, America&rsquo;s twentieth century identity politics, and a chronicle of historical interpretation in Oak Ridge reveal a divergence in understood commemoration practices. Established public history theory suggests that the official and vernacular voices form a dichotomous relationship when interpreting the historical narrative. This thesis holds significant implications for examining the intersections between community and government perspectives on the historical narrative. This study also unearths specific theoretical and methodological barriers to interpreting the atomic bomb at public spaces in the United States. Moreover, <i>Innocent Victors</i> presents a commentary on the ongoing national discussion about the past, present, and future placement of the atomic bomb in American politics, ideology, and society.</p><p>

<p> Historical investigations of the Social Hygiene Movement (1890s-1930s) tend to focus on the urban origins of the concerns that sparked much of the resulting reform efforts. Furthermore, archaeological investigations that address artifacts associated with the Social Hygiene Movement often focus on either an urban or a rural setting, and usually only examine a single aspect of the movement rather than considering the impact of the totality of the movement&rsquo;s ideology on American consumer behaviors. As a result, little is known about the materialization of the Social Hygiene Movement in the archaeological record and the differential appearance of associated artifacts at urban relative to rural sites. This project seeks to define Social Hygiene Movementassociated artifact types and undertake a comparative analysis of the occurrence of these artifacts at two urban and four rural sites in the state of Colorado in an effort to better understand the early material expressions of the movement in rural regions of the United States. This study was designed to 1) explore the assumption that artifacts related to health, hygiene, and cleanliness should appear at rural sites later than at urban sites, 2) determine if the Social Hygiene Movement manifested differently in rural regions relative to urban areas as evidenced in the archaeological record by types of consumer products purchased, and 3) if differences do exist, provide information about what other contextual and ideological factors may have caused the divergence. This project concludes that rural residents were likely aware of the emerging health, hygiene, and cleanliness ideals from nearly the beginning of the Social Hygiene Movement.</p><p> However, differences in the frequency and types of products purchased suggest that consumer choices were informed by a shared system of rural values developed in opposition to the hegemonic rhetoric of Progressive Era reformers. The evidence presented in this study indicates that rural residents did not alter their hygienic practices and consumer behaviors to be in-line with urban standards, but rather selected the ideological aspects of the SHM that reinforced their rural identities and incorporated the products and practices which complemented their daily realities and social norms. The results highlight the importance of utilizing material studies in conjunction with historical research to achieve more nuanced understandings of the origins of the Social Hygiene Movement and question commonly-held assumptions based on the dominant discourse often evidenced in documentary sources.</p>