<p> The study of women at Southwestern Louisiana Institute &mdash; now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette &mdash; during World War II on the American home front serves to show how young women responded to wartime necessities while at the same time reacting to the evolving and often contradictory meaning of womanhood and the sexual division of roles on the home front. On Southwestern's campus women's visible presence and expanded education included the areas of war work, athletics, and leadership within academic circles on campus. Women on campus used their war efforts to claim expanded opportunities on campus that allowed them to be not only &ldquo;Victory Belles&ldquo; who sold war bonds by looking pretty &mdash; in keeping with more traditional feminine roles &mdash; but also to participate in athletic competition and military training, gaining access to more institutional resources. As Victory Belles, female students at Southwestern initially responded to the war by making defense work part of their traditional female social spaces but worked toward fostering an environment conducive to recruitment, as women began to consider joining the war effort off campus. In order to prepare themselves physically for the war effort, women at Southwestern also approached athletics with wartime goals in mind. Women on university grounds, although pursuing expanded educational opportunities, did not reject domesticity. Women at Southwestern rather sought to broaden their academic circles and educational goals by becoming leaders and challenging initial stereotypes of women that existed before the war that categorized women's worth as primarily domestic. These young women, as campus officials concentrated on adjusting to a war&ndash;centered environment, used the war to go beyond the established curriculum to widen their sphere of influence at Southwestern during the mid&ndash;1940s. The expanded opportunities women pursued helped Southwestern in the postwar environment embrace co-education within numerous social spaces at the university.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-04, Section: A, page: 1503. Adviser: Michael McGerr. "Title from dissertation home page (viewed April 12, 2007)."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--New York University, 2003. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 64-09, Section: A, page: 3449. Adviser: Walter Johnson.

<p> Between 1943-46 <i>Esquire</i> magazine and the U.S. Post Office Department engaged in an extraordinary legal battle over the publication's content. Postmaster General Frank C. Walker took particular offense to the Varga Girl, <i>Esquire's</i> most popular pin-up illustration. The series of trials quickly turned into a circus-like spectacle as the press covered the testimonies of a host of high-profile witnesses called in to offer their opinion on the morality of the pin-up. Among the witnesses were H. L. Mencken, suffragist Anna Kelton Wiley, Rev. Peter Marshall, and others. After numerous appeals from both sides, in 1946 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of <i>Esquire</i> in <i>Hannegan vs. Esquire, Inc. </i> The "Varga Girl" Trials are an important event in American cultural history. They provide a glimpse into the social mores of the World War II era, highlighting deep divisions over issues of gender role construction and sexuality. The trials also had profound implications for postwar America. The Supreme Court's decision sanctioned the pin-up as a socially acceptable symbol. In the early postwar era, the pin-up increasingly came to be perceived as a model of domestic womanhood. In this context, she spoke powerfully to both women and men, informing them of their respective gender roles. The decision also spurred an unprecedented increase in pornographic magazines during the 1950s, and was widely regarded as an indicator of society's acceptance of women as sex objects. An examination of the "Varga Girl" Trials provides an opportunity for the pin-up to be understood in historical context. She is a symbol of traditional gender role construction that has had a far-reaching impact on American culture. Although obscure, the "Varga Girl" Trials have much to say about the American way of life.</p>

<p> On 17 March 1842, twenty-two women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered in Nauvoo, Illinois, under the direction of their prophet, Joseph Smith, to organize a female counterpart to priesthood and patriarchal leadership. The women elected lady leaders and established a purpose: to save souls and provide relief to the poor. "We are going to do something extraordinary," said Emma Smith, first Relief Society president. "We expect pressing calls and extraordinary occasions." The Relief Society engaged in religious, charitable, economic, political, and cultural activity and initiated a new emphasis on recording, remembering, and retaining the authority of the past. </p><p> This dissertation examines the way Mormon women remembered and commemorated the Nauvoo Relief Society for the next fifty years through the lens of material culture. Hair wreaths, quilts, buildings, posters, and hand-painted poetry books illustrate the transition of Mormonism through isolation in Utah to acceptance by mainstream America, based on the way the women presented their identity and their heritage. They selected the pieces of the past that would appeal to their audience, always maintaining a memory of their Nauvoo roots. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-09, Section: A, page: 4025. Adviser: Claude Clegg. Title from dissertation home page (viewed May 7, 2008).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Lehigh University, 2006. / Adviser: Jean R. Soderlund.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Theatre and Drama, 2006. / "Title from dissertation home page (viewed July 17, 2007)." Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-12, Section: A, page: 4389. Adviser: Ronald Wainscott.

<p> In 1947, the National Panhellenic Conference invited Jewish sororities to join its ranks, constituting the first time in the organization's history that non-Jewish sororities officially recognized their Jewish counterparts. The period of 1947-1964, I argue, became an era based on a new understanding between the Jewish and non-Jewish sororities, a "Gentlewoman's Agreement." This unspoken arrangement offered Jewish sororities unprecedented status in Greek affairs and a more visible presence within student life on college campuses across the country. However, membership came at a cost; the Jewish women had to ensure that their individual organizations' spoken beliefs conformed to those articulated by the larger, socially conservative non-Jewish groups. This significantly impacted the ways in which they responded to civil rights and the anticommunist hysteria that enveloped American society in these years. In addition to offering an appraisal of the ways in which gender shaped Jewish encounters with American higher education, the postwar Jewish sorority experience serves as a previously unexplored entry point into an examination of the limits of Jewish liberalism and provides a reevaluation of Jewish-Christian relationships during the period scholars have deemed the "Golden Age" of American Jewry </p>

<p> In this dissertation, I analyzing the invagination of slavery and madness as constitutive of the political, medical, economic, legal and literary institutions of the United States. In my introduction, I discuss my previous project concerning all black mental institutions that emerged in the American South after Reconstruction. My first chapter, "Haunting Asylums: Madness, Slavery and the Archive," addresses my difficulties with the fragmented records of the racially segregated mental asylums and how figurations of the ghost or the inhuman failed to provide me with a salvific moment. In Chapter 2, "Compounds of Madness and Race: Governing Species, Disease and Sexuality in the Early Republic," I map the epistemic ground of race, mind and nation in the Revolutionary-era United States. My third chapter, "Worse than Useless, Too Much Sense: Enslaved Insanity in Plantations, Courtrooms and Asylums" is the culmination of previous two, where I trace the admission and treatment records of a sixteen-year-old slave interned in a mental asylum to the discourses and institutions surrounding the internal slave trade. I conclude by discussing two deaths separated by two centuries but connected by the violent conjunction of antiblackness and madness.</p>