<p> This project considers how postwar American Jewish leaders representing a diverse range of ideological commitments, including Zionism, Yiddishism, and liberal Judaism used summer camps to expose children to their ideologies. In the years following World War II, American Jewish leaders anxiously debated how to preserve and produce what they considered authentic Jewish culture, fearing that upward mobility and suburbanization threatened the integrity of Jewish life in America as they knew it. While their newfound social and economic mobility had clear benefits, a diverse grouping of American Jews participated in a communal conversation over how these changes threatened the modes by which Jews had previously affiliated with Judaism and acted as Jews. Without intervention, some argued, &ldquo;authentic&rdquo; Jewish culture would disappear altogether. </p><p> In search of solutions, Jewish educators looked towards the residential sleep-away camp, hoping to construct lived experiences for the youngsters as tools to counteract assimilation, and expecting to mold the increasingly suburban, affluent American youth into ideologically-imbued Jews who espoused one variant or another of Jewish authenticity. Through the elements of camps&rsquo; programs and schedules, Jews with varied ideological, political, and religious perspectives shared nearly identical goals, and aimed to meet them through nearly identical means. With a multi-generational perspective, this project aims to portray both a history of Jewish postwar anxieties and struggles for cultural preservation, and a provide an example of how second and third generation Americans more broadly negotiated their culture, purpose, and future through the intensive molding of youth.</p><p>

Cultural geographers have explored how the power to control definitions of place and dominant modes of their representation has naturalized the manipulation of environments and people. I am concerned not only with the impact of dominant ideologies, but with the interconnections of competing definitions of the West along ideological, material, and aesthetic lines. I discuss the ways in which American Indians, Asians, and Mormons experienced, shaped, and represented the American West to illustrate the various responses to it and the alternative plans for its development that are omitted from traditional discussions of the American West. I argue that the dominant ideas that shaped the environment of the West intertwined with ideas about race and that their intersection can be traced back to Thomas Jefferson's notions of American democracy. By focusing on a specific locale, the state of Idaho, and critically analyzing the policies of federal agencies informing its development and the legislation affecting Idaho's racial/ethnic minorities, I detail how the vision of an agrarian and all-white West became the controlling blueprint for its development. I focus on the period from 1805 to 2000 and use a comparative and cross-cultural framework that focuses particularly on Japanese Americans, but also includes Chinese, American Indians, and Mormons. My own travels through Idaho function as a framework by which my “reading” of the contemporary landscape reveals this historical connection between race and place in the American West.

This thesis gives an historical account of the official and popular reaction to Travellers in independent Ireland. It describes the people who travelled Irish roads, outlining how and why Travellers were distinguishable from settled people. This study shows that one consequence of the developments in state and society from 1922 onwards was the alienation and isolation of Travellers. The urban and rural working class experienced massive social change, often as a result of government policy. Travellers became socially and economically distinct from the general population because of changing attitudes to the family economy and selfemployment determined by legislation such as the School Attendance Act 1926. When the introduction of planning redefined public space, campsites came to be viewed as eyesores. Planning legislation also introduced the concept of an amenity, a landscape designed for popular and tourist consumption. This had considerable implications for Travellers' use of marginal land. Despite complaints from local representatives, successive governments refused to tackle the `itinerant problem'. Occasionally efforts were made to target Travellers for public health reasons or on the basis of problems caused by vagrancy and homelessness. However, the government believed that the legal implications for the whole population of anti-Traveller measures were not worth enduring. While Travellers evaded repressive measures, they were largely ignored in welfare provision. Social welfare was extended in an ad hoc, piecemeal manner, with Travellers as a group among the last in society whose entitlement to assistance was recognised. The publication of the Report of the Commission on Itinerancy in 1963 marked a shift in the relationship between Travellers and the state. The report recommended settlement and assimilation as the solution to widespread poverty among Travellers and the hostility felt by the settled community. How the settlement programme was organised and directed, its successes and failures are also analysed. Many Travellers were politicised by their experience in the settlement programme of the 1960s. The thesis concludes when Traveller representatives were included in organisations established to minister to their community.

This thesis answers the question: ‘what explains Jordan’s international alignments between 1955 and 1957?’ In so doing, the thesis addresses the broader question of why states in the Global South make alignments and explores the conditions under which these alignments are generated. The thesis advances beyond existing accounts in the historical and International Relations (IR) literature: especially the ‘omni-balancing school who argue that in Southern States, ruling regimes balance or bandwagon (like state actors in neo-realist theory) but directed against both internal and external threats. This thesis argues that such explanations explain Southern state behaviour by some lack or failure in comparison to the states of the global North. The thesis argues that omnibalancing imports neo-realist assumptions inside the state, endowing regimes with an autonomy they do not necessarily hold. The thesis adopts the theoretical framework of uneven and combined development to overcome these challenges in explaining Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957. Using this case study, at a turning point in the international relations of the Middle East where Jordan could have taken either path, the thesis illuminates the potential utility of this theoretical framework for the region as a whole. The thesis argues that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries a ‘combined social formation’ emerged east of the Jordan river through the processes of Ottoman mimetic reform, land reform and state formation under the British mandate. The main characteristics of this social formation were a relatively egalitarian rural land-holding structure and a mechanism of combination with the global capitalist system through British subsidy to the former nomadic pastoralists in the armed forces, replacing formerly tributary relations. The thesis traces the social bases of the struggles that produced Jordan’s alignments between 1955 and 1957 to the emergence of this combined social formation and presents case studies of: the Jordanian responses to the Baghdad Pact, expulsion of British officers in the Jordanian armed forces, the Suez Crisis, abrogation of the Anglo- Jordanian treaty and acceptance of US aid at the time of the Eisenhower Doctrine. The thesis will be of interest in the fields of IR and Middle East studies: contributing to IR by critiquing existing approaches and demonstrating the utility of a new theoretical framework that can overcome the dichotomy of universality/specificity in the region.

This thesis explores the question of history’s future as a research discipline in the academy and the question of the discipline’s function in ‘pure’ inquiry. Central to the notion of research is the notion of discovery of new knowledge, but what constitutes new historical knowledge rather than simply more historical information is not clear. As the idea of research (which is understood to mean the discovery and creation of new knowledge) is central to the idea of the modern university, the future of history as a research discipline in the research university would seem to depend on the discipline being clear on its research function. Further complicating resolution of this question is the fact that the funding of research is informed by science and technology paradigms where research is defined as ‘pure basic research’, ‘strategic basic research’, ‘applied research’, and ‘experimental development’. / Curiously, what these classifications mean for the humanities generally and history in particular, remains unexamined—despite the fact that professional survival depends on the academic convincing sceptical funders of the relevance of humanist research. Do historians do basic research? If basic research is inquiry at the edge of understanding, how, and by whom, is the edge defined? In the first decades of the University of Berlin—the institution that formed the model for the modern research-university—the edge was defined through philosophy and history. Hegelian systematic philosophy, Fichtean philosophy of the subject, and the philosophical historicism of such thinkers as Ranke, Niebuhr, Ast and Boeckh was concerned with the subject’s knowledge of knowledge: there lay the edge. By the end of the nineteenth century no discipline was foundational. Epistemological ‘advance’ had resulted in not only the split of knowledge into that derived from humanities or ‘spirit’ studies (Geisteswissenschaften) and that from science studies (Naturwissenschaften), but also the proliferation of disciplinary specialization that further entrenched the dichotomy. / In the twenty-first century, inquiry’s edge has moved on. Climate change, environmental degradation and biological and genetic engineering have posed wholly new existential questions. The Archimedean point from where the edge is viewed is no longer anthropocentric. Society and nature are inextricably connected. The physical and the spiritual can no longer be considered separately. When ‘we’ can either be manufactured or artificially enhanced the notion of autonomy and self-fashioning takes on a different hue in postmodernity than in modernity. There is now an increasing but unsatisfied need for more interdisciplinary and holistic knowledge. Unfortunately, no effective models or processes exist to enable this need to be met. This thesis explores ways in which the deficiencies might be overcome and explores academic history’s possible location within a future integrated-knowledge schema.

This thesis examines the London furniture trade in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a period which witnessed dramatic transformations in the designs, styles and construction of English furniture. While this topic has been addressed in detail in terms of object-based analyses, it has never been examined in depth from a social, economic and cultural perspective. Although the relationship between many London livery companies and the trades they represented had greatly diminished by the middle years of the seventeenth century, the fact that the majority of Joiners’ Company members were furniture tradesmen (as has been determined by this thesis) means that its archives provide valuable empirical evidence of the people who populated the industry. This documentation in combination with other primary sources, such as parish and tax records, sheds light on the socio- economic profile of London’s furniture tradesmen, their specialised occupations, the way their industry was organised and regulated, and how it was affected by the turbulent political and social upheavals of the seventeenth century, as well as the Fire that ravaged London in 1666. The thesis begins with a discussion of the evolution of decorative design in England in the early modern period and the effects of burgeoning consumerism. It also defines the parameters and aims of this study. The second chapter introduces the tradesmen who supplied materials to the industry, the specialised artisans and craftsmen who produced new forms and styles of furniture, and the ways in which the chain of production was structured. The following two chapters discuss the relationship between the Joiners’ Company and the furniture trade. The third chapter assesses the extent to which the guild regulated the industry, protected and promoted the livelihoods of its tradesmen, and monitored the quality and standard of manufacture and training through apprenticeship. Chapter Four examines the role of apprenticeship in the furniture industry, analysing in detail patterns of recruitment and the social and geographical origins of apprentices. The fifth chapter identifies the geographical location of the trade in the City of London (focusing on the 1690s and 1721), and its spread into the fashionable West End between 1660 and 1720. The final chapter examines manufacturing networks through the case studies of two cabinetmakers and a cane chair maker. Finally, the conclusion draws together the themes discussed throughout and queries whether the standard practice of attributing particular pieces of furniture to specific makers or workshops, usually on stylistic grounds, needs to be reconsidered.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : K. Dian Kriz. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 328-356).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4334. Adviser: Kimberly Shinew. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 188-198) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

This is the first such study of Operation Banner: taking three Battalions as case studies, drawing upon extensive interviews with former soldiers, primary archival sources including unpublished diaries, this thesis closely examines soldiers' behaviour at the small infantry-unit level (Battalion downwards), including the leadership, cohesion, orientation and motivation that sustained, restrained and occasionally obstructed soldiers in Northern Ireland. It contends that there are aspects of wider scholarly literatures - from sociology, anthropology, criminology, and psychology - that can throw new light on our understanding of the British Army in Northern Ireland. The thesis will also contribute fresh insights and analysis of important events during the early years of Operation Banner, including the murders of two men in County Fermanagh, Michael Naan and Andrew Murray, and that of Warrenpoint hotel owner Edmund Woolsey in South Armagh in the autumn of 1972. The central argument of this thesis is that British Army small infantry units enjoyed considerable autonomy during the early years of Operation Banner and could behave in a vengeful, highly aggressive or benign and conciliatory way as their local commanders saw fit. The strain of civil-military relations at a senior level was replicated operationally – as soldiers came to resent the limitations of waging war in the UK. The unwillingness of the Army's senior leadership to thoroughly investigate and punish serious transgressions of standard operating procedures in Northern Ireland created uncertainty among soldiers over expected behaviour and desired outcomes. Mid-ranking officers and NCOs often played important roles in restraining soldiers in Northern Ireland. The degree of violence used in Northern was much less that that seen in the colonial wars fought since the end of World War II. But overly aggressive groups of soldiers could also be mistaken for high-functioning units – with negative consequences for the Army's overall strategy in Northern Ireland.