<p> The work presented in this thesis argues for a new schema with which to approach the civil rights literature. Arguments for the necessity of this new approach utilize Milwaukee as a case study, analyzing the texts considered canonical to the city and offering a critique that will begin to break away from a lionized individual in favor of an egalitarian approach to history, specifically through the use of non-traditional methods such as quantitative analysis. Perhaps most important to the literature, this thesis addresses a fundamental, long-ignored aspect of the Civil Rights Movement by analyzing fiscal realities that face a grassroots organization agitating for school desegregation, the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee (MUSIC). Through quantitative analysis, the simple realities of donors, donations, and monetary outflow will be brought to the forefront of discussion. This data will also work to demasculinize and democratize a narrative largely composed of worshipped individuals by examining the demographic makeup of donors and volunteers in MUSIC. The information presented here will be vital to those wishing to articulate the Milwaukee movement as a unique presence in the field of civil rights literature as well as its place within the larger historiography. It will also provide the framework for a new way of understanding the rapidly growing volume of literature discussing the black freedom struggle.</p>

<p> This paper examines the role of Major General Everett S. Hughes during World War II. While Hughes has often been quoted in biographies of Dwight D. Eisenhower or George S. Patton Jr. this is the first work to exclusively examine Hughes' contribution to the Allied victory in World War II. The paper argues that Hughes played an important part throughout the war, both in his ability to solve numerous problems and his influence with Eisenhower. It also examines topics such as Hughes' work with the Women's Army Corps, his friendship with Patton, the relationship between Eisenhower and his driver Kay Summersby, along with many other issues afflicting the Allied high command. Finally, this paper argues that Hughes' influence in Eisenhower's Headquarters needs to be taken seriously by those trying to understand the decisions of the U.S. military leadership in Europe during World War II.</p>

<p> <i>Pis&eacute; de terre</i> or rammed earth is a building technique that has existed for over ten thousand years. Although this technique was first documented for Western Civilization by the Roman Pliny the Elder circa 79 AD, evidence of its use prior to his time is found in China, Europe, and elsewhere. Rammed earth achieved notoriety in the United States during three distinct periods in its history: the Jeffersonian era, the Great Depression, and the Back-to-Nature Movement of the 1970s. In the United States earth buildings are uncommon and usually deemed marginal or fringe. This is true even though at times the U.S. government has been a proponent of alternative building techniques, especially rammed earth. Intended for those interested in material culture, this thesis provides a brief history of rammed earth, articulates its importance to the building record of the United States, and describes methods for its preservation, repair, and maintenance. </p>

<p> Rediscovered in the 1930s by the Mantle family, Mantle's Cave contained excellently preserved feather bundles, a feather headdress, moccasins, a deer-scalp headdress, baskets, stone tools, and other perishable goods. From the start of excavations, Mantle's Cave appeared to display influences from both Fremont and Ancestral Puebloan peoples, leading Burgh and Scoggin to determine that the cave was used by Fremont people displaying traits heavily influenced by Basketmaker peoples. Researchers have analyzed the baskets, cordage, and feather headdress in the hopes of obtaining both radiocarbon dates and clues as to which culture group used Mantle's Cave. This thesis attempts to derive the cultural influence of the artifacts from Mantle's Cave by analyzing the feathers. This analysis includes data from comparative cave sites displaying cultural, temporal, or site-type similarities to Mantle's Cave. In addition to the archaeological data, ethnographic data concerning how Great Basin, Southwest, Great Plains, and northern Mexican peoples conceive of and use feathers will be included. Lastly, theoretical perspectives on agency, symbolism, and the transmission of cultural traditions will be used in an effort to interpret the data collected herein.</p>

<p> Numerous studies of anti-Catholicism in America have narrated a long dark prejudice that has plagued American society from the Colonial period to the present. A variety of interpretations for anti-Catholic sentiments and convictions have been offered, from theological to economic influences. Though many of these studies have offered invaluable insights in understanding anti-Catholic rhetoric and violence, each tends to neglect the larger anthropological realities which influence social tensions and group marginalization. By utilizing the <i>theory of human identity needs</i> as developed by Vern Neufeld Redekop, this study offers a means of interpreting anti-Catholicism from an anthropological perspective that allows for a multivalent approach to social, cultural, and communal disharmony and violence. Religion has played an important role in social and cultural tension in America. But by utilizing Redekop's human identity needs theory, it is possible to see religion's role in conjunction with other identity needs which help to form individual and communal identity. Human identity needs theory postulates that humans require a certain level of identity needs satisfaction in order to give an individual a sense of wellbeing in the world. These include, Redekop maintains, 1) meaning, 2) security, 3) connectedness, 4) recognition, and 5) action. By examining where these needs have been neglected or threatened, this study maintains one is better able to assess the variety of influences in the formation of identity, which in turn helps to foster animosity, marginalization, and possibly violence towards those individuals or groups defined as outsiders. Having been relegated as outsiders due to differing identity markers, the in group, or dominant social group, tend to perceive the outsiders as threatening if they are believed to be obstacles to the acquisition of one or more of the five identity needs categories. This study focuses on the bloody Bible Riots of 1844 as a case study for applying human identity needs theory in interpreting social violence in American history.</p>

<p> Following the commencement of the French Revolution in 1789, a debate erupted in the Atlantic world known as the Burke-Paine Debate. This debate was part of a larger Atlantic movement known as "the pamphlet war" of the 1790s, a series of polemical writings concerning the pros and cons of the Revolution. Alarmed at the broad scope of the French Revolutionaries, Englishman Edmund Burke opened the pamphlet war in 1790 with a scathing rebuke entitled <i> Reflections on the Revolution in France</i>. This in turn elicited the response of Thomas Paine, who derisively rebuked Burke in kind in 1791 with <i>Rights of Man</i>, supporting the Revolution's ostensible aim toward republicanism. This thesis examines how the ideas which animated the Burke-Paine Debate influenced the debate over the expansion of democracy in the early American republic. While the Debate influenced political discussion throughout the nineteenth century, it also serves as a paradigm for the creation of a dichotomy between liberal and conservative politics. The thesis provides a comparative analysis of how the ideas of Burke and Paine were received, reported, and repackaged during the nineteenth century, providing as well an intellectual history of the roles of ideas in American history.</p>

<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>

<p> The amending of the Volstead Act and repeal of national prohibition did not answer the "liquor question" but passed the issue to the states. This thesis examines New York's reaction to the change in national alcohol policy and the states decision to legalize and regulate the beverage with the establishment of the New York State Liquor Authority. It traces the activities of Jean Sheppard who led the state division of the Women's Organization for National Prohibition Reform (WONPR) and became one of the key architects of New York's modern alcohol control system. As an expert in alcohol control policies Sheppard developed a plan she believed would be respected by the public while also mitigating the problems associated with alcohol. Sheppard proposed an elaborate system of control which made temperance the objective. Through her position as Chairman of the New York State WONPR Sheppard gained the attention of Governor Herbert H. Lehman who nominated her to the New York State (Conway) Commission on Alcoholic Beverage Control Legislation. As a member of the Commission and then the New York State Alcohol Beverage Control Board, Sheppard was given the opportunity to propose her theories on control. The final legislation creating the New York State Liquor Authority embodied Sheppard's plan in regards to administrative structure but fell well short of her dream of a system that used the full power of the state to put temperance ahead of revenue.</p>

<p> In the Anglo-American world of the late 1790s, Thomas Paine's <i> The Age of Reason</i> (published in two parts) was not well received, and his volumes of Deistic theology were characterized as extremely dangerous. Over seventy replies to <i>The Age of Reason</i> appeared in Britain and the United States. It was widely criticized in the periodical literature, and it garnered Paine the reputation as a champion of irreligion. </p><p> This dissertation is a study of the rhetoric of refutation, and I focus on the replies to <i>The Age of Reason</i> that were published during Paine's lifetime (d. 1809). I pay particular attention to the ways that the replies characterized both Paine and <i>The Age of Reason</i>, and the strategies that his respondents employed to highlight and counteract its &ldquo;poison.&rdquo; To effectively refute <i>The Age of Reason</i>, Paine's respondents had to contend not only with his Deistic arguments, but also with his international reputation, his style of writing, and his intended audience. I argue that much of the driving force behind the controversy over <i> The Age of Reason</i> stems from the concern that it was geared towards the &ldquo;uneducated masses&rdquo; or the &ldquo;lower orders.&rdquo; Much of the rhetoric of the respondents therefore reflects their preoccupation with Paine's &ldquo;vulgar&rdquo; style, his use of ridicule and low-humor, his notoriety, and the perception that <i>The Age of Reason</i> was being read by common people in cheap editions. For Paine's critics, when the masses abandon their Christianity for Deism, bloody anarchy is the inevitable result, as proven by the horrors of the French Revolution.</p><p> This dissertation argues that while Paine's respondents were concerned about what he wrote in <i>The Age of Reason</i>, they were more concerned about how he wrote it, for whom he wrote it, and that Paine wrote it. Drawing on J&uuml;rgen Habermas's theories of the bourgeois public sphere, I focus on how respondents to <i>The Age of Reason</i> reveal not only their concerns and anxieties over the book, but also what their assumptions about authorial legitimacy and expectations about qualified reading audiences say about late eighteenth century print culture.</p>