This dissertation studies poor women and the poverty relief system in New York's "Burned-Over District," the region comprising the Erie Canal corridor, during the period 1821-1861. The study offers a response to the historiography of middle-class formation in the region, which has largely omitted discussion of the working class and particularly the poor. While charitable work was critical in middle-class women's activities, poor women themselves are shadowy figures in the historiography. The following dissertation attempts to elucidate who poor women in the region were and why and how they used the poverty relief system. The study also uses gender as a framework of analysis in examining the middle-class discourse about poverty, the poor and especially poor women. In this discourse, able-bodied married and widowed women appeared as relatively deserving of assistance or as "worthy" poor for much of the period while single mothers and childless single women appeared as "unworthy." By the end of the antebellum era, only downwardly mobile, formerly middle-class, white, Protestant women appeared in the discourse as poor women who were entitled to public dependence.

The United States Naval Academy, located in Annapolis, Maryland, has trained officers for the U.S. Navy since 1845 and for the U.S. Marine Corps since 1887. This dissertation examines cultural and social changes at the Academy since 1949, and connects transformations at Annapolis to social trends in the larger American society. Through the use of a variety of source material, including archival research, oral history, and participatory observation at the Naval Academy, this manuscript presents thematic case studies related to gender, pranks, race, recruiting, religion, and midshipmen activism.

Historical scholarship has shown how the state and media mobilized women into "men's" roles including soldier and industrial worker during World War II, but little work has been done on the ways in which quasi-state organizations such as the United Service Organizations (USO) mobilized them to perform "women's" work. In the United States, the USO offered wholesome recreation to millions of servicemen outside of camp in their off duty hours. USO hostesses conducted work that helped to maintain the role of the virtuous woman in this time of crisis. Senior hostesses, married women over age 35, mothered servicemen by sewing insignias on their uniforms, and by baking sweets and making sandwiches for them. Senior hostesses also selected junior hostesses and chaperoned their interactions with servicemen. Junior hostesses, single women ages 16 to 25, comforted servicemen by serving as compliant dance and game partners, as well as eager listeners. The USO functioned as a normative force that emphasized women's domesticity and sought to contain female sexual activity to marriage. The USO assumed that white middle-class women were inherently sexually respectable and feminine. It groomed these "good girls" to represent the USO alongside a federal crackdown on female prostitution and the arrest of thousands of pickups girls suspected of passing venereal disease to servicemen. Junior hostesses, in turn, used the USO to explore a safe form of sexual expressiveness at the same time that they contributed their basic sexual services to the federal government and military. These institutions were the primary benefactors of senior and junior hostesses' unpaid morale work. Their work helped to humanize the military experience for servicemen. This project investigates race and class issues within the USO, along with sexuality and gender, because these categories were paramount in the hostess selection process and interactions between servicemen and hostesses. USO publications and government records form the basis of the archival research for this project. This project also draws on 35 oral interviews conducted by the author with former hostesses, and questionnaires from an additional 35 former hostesses.

To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the nature of historic commemoration in the American West. Through case studies of the three towns most commonly associated with the Old West; Deadwood, South Dakota; Tombstone, Arizona; and Dodge City, Kansas; this dissertation explores the nature of the political economy of memory in the American West. From the time of their respective founding in the 1870s, each town acquired a "wicked" past from the embellishment of actual events by journalists and dime novelists, and became famous through their association with well-known figures such as Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Bat Masterson, and Wyatt Earp. Characteristic of each town's reputation were regular images of immorality and disorder violence, drinking, gambling, prostitution, political corruption, and ramshackle architecture. Following the end of each town's boom period, boosters actively sought to distance themselves from their pasts by promoting their communities as modern, stable, pious, and law-abiding. After World War I, downturns in local economies and the opportunity to capitalize on tourism led local leaders to reconsider the value of their town's unsavory reputations. Working through chambers of commerce, leaders transformed what was once a working class memory into a commodity by marking sites, creating attractions, and creating civic celebrations to match the expectations of tourists seeking to experience the Old West they had witnessed in films and television. At the same time, towns sought to authenticate the wild west moment through historic preservation, building museums, and achieving official national recognition. These efforts, however, illustrated the ambiguity of what authentication and the Old West actually meant as each town became contested terrain between business interests, preservationists, and professional historians. By the end of the twentieth century, so ingrained were the constructed and authenticated versions of abstracted moments of the past into the fabric of the community, that fantasy and reality became indistinguishable.

During the early days of his administration, Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) to protect and enhance the nation's natural resources and speed economic recovery. He designed the agency to use unemployed young men and World War I veterans on a multitude of conservation projects. In Arizona, as the second largest funded federal program (behind the Bureau of Reclamation), the CCC significantly impacted the state in many ways. Socially, the corps reinforced American values among one segment of the population while introducing the same values to Native American peoples. Environmentally, the CCC programs altered Arizona's land use. When prosperity returned, the state's economy was more diversified and better prepared for the demands of World War II. From 1933 to 1942, the CCC not only played a vital role in transforming Arizona's economy and society but also provided a boost into the modern era.

In 1950s Arizona, manufacturing and tourism replaced mining and agriculture as the leading sources of revenue in the state. Yet the images of Arizona found in the popular media emphasize rural vistas and rugged individualism. Arizona's success as a consumer commodity is based on the endurance of stylized "frontier" images. The endurance of these images, apart from their popularity with affluent Anglo-American consumers, rests on Arizona's preservation of cultural landscapes associated with the mythic past: the public lands, the Indian Reservations, and the Arizona-Sonora border. Boosters and consumers alike have emphasized the cultural and environmental differentiation that these borders or frontiers are seen as protecting. Since consumer preconceptions of Arizona are as varied as the consumers themselves, this celebration of difference poses difficulties for Arizona's pluralistic society.

The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis featured an anthropology exhibit consisting of living American Indians in order to display both stages in "civilization" and the benefits of federal Indian boarding school education for Indian children. Although fair organizers considered these the goals of the exhibit, the American Indians created their own experience at the fair. While the living conditions and the treatment of the native people were often deplorable, the American Indians found in many instances adventure and economic gain through selling their crafts to tourists. Analyzing the local and national media coverage of the exhibit provides an understanding of the racial and cultural ideologies disseminated throughout the country. This thesis combines a reconstruction of the American Indian experience with an analysis of the media coverage in order to understand more clearly the daily life and importance of the exhibit for all involved.

The objective of this study was to create a reference of historically identifiable eras in plant use and landscape design in Tucson between 1854 and 1960. Determination of plant use eras was based on a combination of factors: (1) significant events, (2) technological advancements, (3) the number of species identified during specific time frames, (4) changes in plant collection patterns, and (5) new design trends. Five major landscape plant use eras are identified: the Anglo Settlement Era (1854-1879), the Railroad Era (1880-1899), the Post Victorian Era (1900-1917), the Post World War I and Depression Era (1918-1938), and the World War II and Suburban Expansion Era (1939-1960). Plant introduction peaked between 1900 and 1917. Following that time, tree introductions declined significantly and shrub introductions increased.

The construction of the Catalina Highway began at the height of a worldwide economic depression, when a huge portion of the workforce was unemployed and capital funds were hard to come by. Federal prisoners provided most of the labor in the eighteen-year project, which began in 1933 and ended in 1951, spanning the eras of the Great Depression and World War II, periods of sustained national shortages of material and equipment. Convict labor was considered the only affordable means of constructing the road (United States Department of Commerce [USDC] 1951:13). This thesis examines the work and labor correlates represented in the material culture of the road features and the attendant prison camp that was constructed to house the workforce for the Catalina Highway project. The thesis also examines the working and living conditions of the inmates and how the inmates were perceived by the community. The thesis employs the recognized historical and archaeological methods of archival, ethnographic, and archaeological research to achieve its ends.

<p> The delayed discovery of oil in North Dakota resulted from remoteness, environment, and economic disadvantage, three of the six themes of Elwyn B. Robinson. Initially, lacking outside capital, the local explorers turned to their communities from 1917 to 1935 to raise the capital necessary to search for oil. As a result a complex group united to raise the capital necessary, but did not discover oil. The Great Depression ushered in the era of outside capital from 1937 to the successful discovery of oil on April 4, 1951. During this entire exploration period the state legislature, restricted by a lack of tax revenue, was unable to properly fund the North Dakota Geologic Survey. The survey achieved only marginal success throughout this exploration period. This history of early petroleum exploration not only enhances public knowledge but also lays the groundwork for further research toward a complete history of the industry.</p>