<p> Popular government in the United States requires an American citizenry capable to confront the difficult questions of a self-governing people. As political science deepens our understanding of the political behavior of the American people, it also narrows our understanding of the citizen's role to election cycles and policy outcomes. The Madisonian Framework for Civic Involvement represents an understanding of the citizen's role as complex and varied as the proposition of popular government itself. The Framework traces three themes (interaction, input and integration) that recur in James Madison's writing as a political theorist and his work as a political actor. </p><p> Rather than a prescription of specific behaviors required from each individual, Madison's work provides a framework for understanding the patterns, perspectives and principles giving shape to an American citizenry capable of countering the worst tendencies of popular government and their own nature. The work presented here revisits an understanding of the citizen's role as Madison imagined it, embedded in his commitments about the proper role of government, the institutional scheme of an extensive republic and the lessons of America's past.</p><p> The Framework demonstrates how the study of American Political Behavior has worked to shrink our ideas about the citizen's role while promoting studies constrained by specific commitments about the relationship between citizens and government. The Madisonian Framework for Civic Involvement makes it possible to suspend debate over Madison's liberal, democratic or civic republican commitments in order to extend our own understanding of civic involvement as it aligns with the more complex understanding of the nature of humankind and government that guided the original design of the American system of government. Finally, the author demonstrates how the Framework has potential to help us understand the political debates (Lincoln-Douglas Debates), social programs (President Johnson's Community Action Programs) and policy initiatives (President Obama's online petition) of the past and future where the understanding of the citizen's role makes all the difference.</p>

<p> Resting in the southeast corner of the Arkansas state capitol is the Little Rock monument honoring the women of the Confederacy. Known as the Southern Mother, the Arkansas division of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) erected this monument to commemorate the sacrifices of Arkansas women during the Civil War. Sculpted by J. Otto Schweizer, a Swiss-American from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, this monument represents two versions of Arkansas&rsquo; Civil War history: that of the sculptor, and that of its patrons. Arkansas broke away from the national UCV in 1906 and proceeded on its own to memorialize Confederate women&rsquo;s war time sacrifices. Paid for by a state appropriation of $10,000, the Arkansas UCV were able to commemorate in stone a specific memory of Arkansas history during the Civil War. The monument effort began on a national scale in 1896, but did not come to fruition in Arkansas until May 1913. Several conflicts occurred with members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, who opposed the monument idea and preferred that donations were routed into more social programs like retirement homes and scholarship programs. This monument occurred during a time of vast memorialization during the height of the Lost Cause, but the history behind it shows a more individual nature of healing traumatic wounds.</p>

<p> What explains why and how America fought the civil war? This thesis argues that industrial modernization can be a useful analytical tool for understanding the causes of the American Civil War. The argument is developed by analyzing the social, political, and military events of the era through the lens of industrialization. This study will show that the American Industrial Revolution lay at the core of the social, political, and military events that shaped this great conflict. Understanding the causes of human events is as critical as understanding their effects. By grasping the root causes of the war, we can better understand how and why it was fought. This analysis of American society, American politics, and the country's military establishment will provide the rich context needed to apprehend the reasons for the American Civil war beyond the dichotomy of slavery and economics.</p>

<p> This dissertation examines the function of family as a thematic in the contemporary Anglo-American novel. It argues that contemporary aesthetics increasingly presents the family as an enabling platform for conciliation with the social totality: as a space of personal development, readying one for life in the wider social field. This analyses hinges on readings of Jonathan Franzen&rsquo;s <i>Freedom</i> (2010), Zadie Smith&rsquo;s <i> NW</i> (2012), A. M. Homes&rsquo; <i>May We Be Forgiven</i> (2012) and Caryl Phillips&rsquo; <i>In the Falling Snow.</i> In approaching these novels, this project addresses the theoretical lacuna left open by the much-touted retreat of postmodernism as a general cultural-aesthetic strategy. This project identifies these novels as examples of a new and competing ideological constellation: metamodernism. Metamodernism encompasses the widely cited return of sincerity to contemporary aesthetics, though this project explains this development in a novel way: as a cultural expression from within the wider arc of postmodernism itself. One recurrent supposition within this project is that postmodernism, in its seeming nihilism, betrays a thwarted political commitment; on the other hand contemporary metamodern attitudes display the seriousness and earnestness of political causes carried out to an ironic disregard of the political. Metamodernism, in other words, is not a wholesale disavowal of postmodern irony, but a re-arrangement of its function: a move from sincere irony to an ironic sincerity. The central inquiry of this dissertation is into this re-arranged role of family and familial participation amidst this new cultural landscape. My argument is that family and the political have maintained a tense relationship through the twentieth century in the American consciousness. They represent competing models of futurity in a zero-sum game for an individual&rsquo;s life-energy. What metamodernism represents, so this dissertation will articulate, is a new form of anti-politics: a fully gratified impulse to depoliticize. Analyzing what this project terms the &ldquo;politics of the local,&rdquo; this dissertation will argue that the highly popular and successful models of conscientious capitalism have been superseded. Today, increasingly, redemption from consumerism guilt is itself wrapped up in commodities: the utopian impulse celebrated by Fredric Jameson has itself obtained a price tag. The contemporary novel thus reflects new social functions for that which has trumped the political: the family. </p>

<p> Nevada statehood was a bi-lateral event that required approval from both the federal government and the territorial residents. It has been extensively studied from a federal perspective, but no scholar has fully considered how the territorial judiciary influenced the residents&rsquo; approval of statehood. The judiciary&rsquo;s role is particularly relevant when explaining why territorial residents <i>rejected</i> statehood by a four-to-one margin only to <i>authorize</i> statehood a mere eight months later by an eight-to-one margin. </p><p> This paper will demonstrate the Nevada Territorial Supreme Court (NTSC) is an unrecognized but powerful influence in the statehood vote of September 1864. It begins with an examination of judicial systems in the Nevada area under the Utah Territory. It next examines the challenges of a remote, spiritual authority when profound mineral wealth was discovered during the spring of 1859, and suggests the absence of legal order and judicial normalcy compelled the creation of the Nevada Territory. </p><p> The NTSC exploded into existence in 1861 but then imploded under the weight of its own work during the summer of 1864. Great fortunes were in dispute and the three territorial judges were unable to manage the voluminous litigation. (In 1864, more than 400 lawsuits were on file in Storey County but only three were tried to a jury&mdash;and only one trial resulted in a jury verdict). Judicial processes became corrupted and productive mining and related capital infusions came to a halt. After a protracted battle between the newspapers, and a growing chorus of public discontent, the embattled judges resigned from office a mere 16 days before residents voted on statehood. Thus, voters knew the alternatives well: a rejection of statehood would maintain an impotent judiciary and perpetuate the mining recession, whereas the approval of statehood would result in popularly elected judges who were accountable to the citizens they served. </p><p> This paper examines the details of the first and second constitutional conventions through a judicial lens, the primitive judicial system in place during territorial years, and the role of the press in fomenting public discontent with the courts. This paper also examines the decisional work of the NTSC, which has never been published or otherwise folded into the historical record of Nevada. While some court records exist at the Nevada State Archives, the court&rsquo;s official opinions have been lost. Based upon extensive research into the newspapers of the time, this paper includes a significant portion of the NTSC&rsquo;s decisional history. Finally, this paper introduces the judicial personalities and suggests, contrary to other scholarship, that systemic corruption is more easily alleged than proven.</p>

<p> This study examines the discrimination against Japanese immigrants in U.S. naturalization law up to 1952 and how it was covered in the <i> Oregonian</i> newspaper, one of the oldest and most widely read newspapers on the West Coast. The anti-Japanese movement was much larger in California, but this paper focuses on the attitudes in Oregon, which at times echoed sentiments in California but at other times conveyed support for Japanese naturalization. Naturalization laws at the turn of the century were vague, leaving the task of defining who was white, and thus eligible for naturalization, to the courts. Japanese applicants were often denied, but until the federal government clarified which immigrants could or could not become citizens, the subject remained open to debate. &ldquo;Ineligibility to naturalization&rdquo; was often used as a code for &ldquo;Japanese&rdquo; in discriminatory land use laws and similar legislation at the state level in California and in other western states. This study highlights several factors which influenced <i>Oregonian</i> editorials on the subject. </p><p> First, the fear of offending Japan and provoking war with that empire was a foremost concern of <i>Oregonian</i> editors. California&rsquo;s moves to use naturalization law to prevent Japanese immigrants from owning land were seen as dangerous because they damaged relations with Japan and could lead to war. The <i>Oregonian</i> went so far as to recommend Japanese naturalization during the First World War. However, war and foreign relations were federal issues, thus the second theme seen throughout <i> Oregonian</i> editorials was deference to federal authority on questions related to naturalization. While suggesting that naturalization for existing immigrants might be good policy, the <i>Oregonian</i> urged the federal government to settle the matter. Once the Supreme Court ruled against Asian naturalization in 1922 and 1923, the <i>Oregonian</i> dropped its push for such rights. Nativism was another theme that influenced opinions at this time, and before 1923 the <i>Oregonian</i> generally opposed extreme nativist positions, while at the same time advocating for limits to Japanese immigration and against mixed marriages. </p><p> This paper does not deal with the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II because naturalization was not the issue for the anti-exclusion movement at the time. Citizenship did not give the Nisei, second generation Japanese American citizens, any protection against their wartime removal from the West Coast. </p><p> This study returns to the issue of naturalization for Japanese immigrants after the war, as a number of Issei, first generation Japanese immigrants, still lived in the United States but were denied citizenship, even though most had been in the country for decades at that point. There was less opposition to Japanese naturalization after the war due to the noted loyalty of the Japanese during the war, the focus on human rights as an issue promoted by the new United Nations, and Cold War politics which demanded better relations with Japan and thus fairer treatment of Japanese living in the United States. The <i>Oregonian</i> editorials reflected the shift in public opinion throughout the country in favor of lifting the racial bar to citizenship. Japanese Americans in Oregon were active in the campaign to change U.S. naturalization law. The issue was more important to the Japanese American community than it was to the <i>Oregonian</i> editorial board by then, as other Cold War events took precedence on the front and op-ed pages of the newspaper. </p>

<p> 1968 was a tumultuous year where Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the Democratic National Convention in Chicago had protests, and the election of Richard Nixon shaped the next four years. The mainstream media overshadowed the local interpretation of these events. Mid-sized cities like St. Louis have largely been ignored by the mainstream media and modern scholarship. St. Louis is a complex case because it includes the city, the county, and the greater Metro East region which lies in the neighboring state of Illinois. Unlike other major cities and their suburbs, cities in the St. Louis region consider themselves separate from the city even though there is a clear influence from the city. An examination of St. Clair County, Illinois in the Metro East will show how the complexity goes even deeper. Three cities in St. Clair County, Illinois shared their opinions about the major events in 1968, and their different interpretations of these events leads to a unique window into social and racial sentiments within the county. Each city represents one aspect of St. Clair County life. East St. Louis represents a largely African American industrial suburb of St. Louis, O&rsquo;Fallon was the predominant white rural farm and mining area of the county, and Belleville represents the blend of a city suburb and the rural country life. </p><p> The few previous historians who have done research on this region focused mainly on one city in the Metro East to exemplify the whole, and East St. Louis is used as the focal point of St. Clair County. I will not solely rely on one city to give an overarching concept, but three distinct cities with different economic and population makeups. Through my research on newspaper editorials on a micro level, I demonstrate the larger trend of these sentiments in the Midwest that go largely unnoticed by the larger media in 1968.</p><p>

The motives behind the foundation of Georgia illustrate the outlook upon overseas possessions held by the mother-country in the eighteenth century. Its conception was due to the philanthropy of private individuals, but its support by the Government was due to the strategic and commercial benefits that Britain was expected to derive. The strategic benefits were apparent in the conflict with Spain and France. The question of who should control the Georgia area was the cause of Anglo-Spanish diplomatic controversy which was kindled in the conflagration after 1739, and was not insignificant in the French and Indian War after 1755. The fact that Georgia was none too well supported by the British Government in these wars does not detract from the province's importance in those years, and the final outcome was in large measure a justification of the strategic and defensive motives that had lain behind the foundation of the colony. The corporation of trustees established to manage the affairs of the new colony pursued an individual policy differing in several particulars from the policy normally followed towards the other colonies, but its unsuitability in the circumstances prevailing at the time soon became apparent, gave rise to local discontent and eventually brought about its modification. When Georgia became a royal province its government and difficulties assumed forms similar to those experienced in the other Crown colonies. Economically, Georgia's development reflected all the commercial theories of the old colonial system and illustrated the mother-country's blind devotion to what was desirable and her consequent neglect of what was practicable or most suitable to the natural capacities of the overseas settlements. The history of colonial Georgia stands as a clear example of the objects, the methods and the failings of the old colonial system of empire.

abstract: The Grand Canyon is one of the most well-recognized natural features in the world, but it is also a cultural landscape. The way that the interpretation of this natural and cultural landscape has changed over time reveals a great deal about what values Americans place on scenic areas (especially national parks), how they want to experience them, what stories they want to be told there, and what cultural values were important in America at the time. This dissertation traces how the interpretation of Grand Canyon has changed over time from its earliest history until the present day, particularly focusing on National Park Service (NPS) interpretation of the site. It argues that the process involved in developing NPS interpretation at Grand Canyon National Park involved give and take between the local and national levels of the NPS, but also relied heavily on public engagement and interests. It also explores two sub themes, examining the degree to which Native American perspectives have been incorporated into Grand Canyon National Park interpretation, and how important individual personalities have been in shaping interpretation at the Park. Ultimately, the dissertation reveals that interpretation was a complex act, based upon dynamic interrelationships between author and audience, between professional objectives and public and private pressures, and between what messages the NPS wanted to convey and what visitors told the NPS they wanted to hear. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2010

<p> This thesis examines the ceramics, both full-scale and toy, and dolls recovered from the Industrial School for Girls (1859-1941) in Dorchester, MA, in order to assess the ways in which the Managers who ran the School used material culture to enculturate the girls, as well as how the girls used material culture to shape their own identities. This site provides a unique opportunity to study the archaeology of a single-gender, and predominately single-class and single-age. The Industrial School for Girls, as an institution whose aim was to better the lives of poor girls and give them economic opportunities, as well as to create a better class of domestic servants, embodies the complicated moralities of Victorian domesticity, gentility, and womanhood. Analysis of the function and style of adult and doll scale ceramic vessels indicates the control that the Managers had over the School&rsquo;s material culture and how it was used to expose the girls to the proper goods that would help shape them into successful and well-behaved domestic servants. The ceramic vessels represented some of the forms required by the etiquette of the time to set a proper dining table, and many of them exhibit Gothic and floral motifs, representing purity and morality in the home. These items suggest that the Managers were making an effort to include the material culture of a proper Victorian home in order to raise their girls to be comfortable in and enculturated to that environment. The porcelain dolls recovered from the site, in both their number and condition, hint at some amount of material self-fashioning among the girls, suggesting that perhaps not all of their experiences were pleasant ones. The fact that so many dolls were discarded in the privy suggests that there was some manner of discontent among the girls that was taken out on their own dolls or the dolls of others.</p><p>