Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 431-447)

The internment of over 375,000 German prisoners of war has become a footnote in the broad history of the United States’ involvement in World War II. Yet for Algona, a small town in north-central Iowa, a POW camp allowed the community to contribute to the war effort and to have a real encounter with “the enemy.” The memory of Camp Algona, which housed over 10,000 German POWs during the war, has been preserved in the archive of the Camp Algona POW museum. Among the historical and military documents held in the archive is an extensive collection of material related to the activities of the camp’s choir, orchestra, and theater troupe. The archive holds extant concert programs, photographs, concert reviews from the camp newspaper, and the choir director’s scrapbook, which together document fifty-nine concerts given between October 1944 and December 1945. Archival documentation suggests that music, especially German music, was a prominent feature of Camp Algona’s culture, distinct from other artistic and creative endeavors. This suggests a narrative that conflicts with existing assumptions in the most comprehensive histories of German POW camps in America (such as Arnold Krammer’s Nazi POWs in America and Judith Gansberg’s Stalag, U.S.A.), which generally categorize music-making as one of many popular recreational activities. One commonly accepted view is that music, like other leisurely activities, was evidence of the United States’ adherence to the Geneva Convention of 1929, which stipulated that captors must provide adequate time and means for recreation and “intellectual diversion.” Yet, first-hand accounts, newspaper reviews, and other archival documents from Camp Algona suggest that the music performed by the choir and orchestra had myriad layers of meaning and functionality for the POWs. Camp Algona’s archive holds the largest known collection of music and music-related artifacts from a German POW camp in the U.S. Thus, assumptions or oversimplifications in existing literature are likely products of the lack of existing scholarship specifically related to music. The archival evidence from Camp Algona suggests that music-making by German POWs functioned as a facilitator of communal expressions of emotion, nationalism, and cultural pride. It also served as a cultural bridge between Iowans and POWs in the context of Christmas concerts and religious services involving civilians. Through critical exploration of this relatively new archive, it is possible to offer the first musicological perspective on the lives of German POWs in American during WWII, one that contributes to the existing historical literature and invites further scholarship and comparative study on music in POW camps in America.

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Last Night in Americaland is a collection of poems of life, death, terror, refusal, confusion, America, music, geography, place, love, friendship, hope, and the past.

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This dissertation is a social and legal history of one of Iowa's most controversial sex discrimination cases. The study examines the 1979 civil rights complaint of Linda Eaton, Iowa City's first woman firefighter--a white, working-class, single mother who did not consider herself a feminist. Eaton made national news and became the focus of an intense local debate when she was threatened with dismissal for breastfeeding her baby at the fire station. The president of La Leche League spoke out on her behalf, while the local chapter of NOW established a legal defense fund and spearheaded a year-long campaign of support. Mining the personal documents of community members, and using oral history interviews, manuscript collections, and legal documents, this study elevates the importance of grassroots action by demonstrating that local women's sex discrimination complaints and lawsuits were central to the dramatic transformation of workplace policies that began across the U.S. during the 1970s. This study foregrounds the relationship of Eaton's case to Iowa City's vibrant 1970s feminist community, and to national politics. The controversy over Iowa's breastfeeding firefighter reflected and contributed to national struggles over the meaning of gender equality, particularly the complex debates about affirmative action and the Equal Rights Amendment. Because she drew support from both the feminists of NOW and the maternalists of LLL, Eaton's case highlights the problematic intersection of paid and domestic labor in women's lives, especially those of working-class women. Eaton's case critiques the masculine ideal worker standard and makes a bid for working conditions that accommodate women's biosocial role in reproductive labor. This project draws upon previously unavailable records to offer an historical account of the first career women firefighters in the U.S. that identifies the resistance these women met as they encountered the masculine culture of firefighting in the 1970s. It highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of using law to eliminate sex discrimination in the workplace by constructing a vivid portrait of women's slow and painful struggle for full economic citizenship.

Floods are the most common natural disaster in the U.S. as reported by the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), and there is a need to provide advance warning to vulnerable communities on the potential risks of flooding after intense storms. The key drivers of urban hydrological research include climate change impacts and adaption, city resilience to hydrological extremes, and integration with emergency management and city planning disciplines. Significant advances in modeling techniques and computational resources have made real-time flood forecasting tools in urban and rural areas an achievable goal, but there is no universal method for flood modeling. Urban landscapes pose a challenge because of fine-scale features and heterogeneities in the landscape including streets, buildings, pipes, and impervious land cover. A nested regional-local modeling approach was used to evaluate its capabilities to provide useful and accurate flood related information to a small community in Iowa. The advantage of a nested approach is the ability to harness the computational efficiency of the regional model while providing reasonably accurate streamflow boundary conditions to the local model. The nested model incorporates the tools and products maintained at the Iowa Flood Center (IFC) including the streamflow bridge sensors, rain gauges, radar rainfall product, and statewide model. A one-way connection was made between the regional model of the upper Maquoketa Watershed (275 mi2) and the local model of the City of Manchester (5 mi2). The uncalibrated, nested model was validated using photos and streamflow records for flood events that occurred in July 2010 and September 2016. Multiple radar rainfall estimates were used as input to the model to better understand the impacts of the spatial and temporal resolution and variations of rainfall on streamflow predictions. A local storm event analysis was completed to determine the vulnerable areas of the stormwater network in eastern Manchester. The two main sources of flooding in Manchester are from the river and from local runoff. During extreme flood events caused by the river, the hydrologic impacts of the urban catchment are masked and the stormwater network system is overwhelmed. The coarse, regional model is limited in producing streamflow results for the small tributaries draining the eastern areas of Manchester. In the case of localized rainfall, a fine resolution model that takes into account the stormwater network and rainfall-runoff dynamics are crucial to capturing the hydrologic response of the urban area. Overall, the nested model showed skill in reproducing the hydrographs and the flood extents. Using an ensemble of rainfall input, the multiple model realizations envelope the observed streamflow indicating that the uncertainty of the rainfall is implicitly captured in the model results. The simulated streamflow at the outlet varies significantly depending on the spatial resolution of the rainfall but shows small sensitivity to the temporal resolution of the rainfall input. However, the local rainfall-runoff volumes vary significantly depending on the spatial and temporal resolution of the rainfall input. Recommendations are given to Manchester to highlight areas at risk to flooding. Recommendations are given to the IFC on the capabilities of the nested regional-local modeling approach along with suggestions for future work to incorporate urban areas into the statewide flood forecasting system.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Trinity International University, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 164-168).

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Access to abstract permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Access to thesis permanently restricted to Ball State community only / Department of Physiology and Health Science