This thesis is an attempt to reveal John F. Kennedy, the politician, as a political theorist. Kennedy's philosophy was the underlying current for all his political action, and in the test of time and history, the measurement of his success is more likely to be weighted in favor of his political theory than in favor of his political accomplishments.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 191 p. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: Michael J. Hogan, Dept. of History. Includes bibliographical references (p. 182-191).

No description available.

This dissertation examines the role Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy played in national security policy during the Kennedy administration, drawing on significant new archival sources made available only in recent years. For decades Robert Kennedy’s involvement in national security affairs from 1961 to 1963 has gone largely unexamined, in part because of a lack of declassified archival evidence documenting his activities as the overseer of covert operations against Cuba. The writing and research presented here offers the only sustained examination of this aspect of RFK’s political life to date, filling a major gap in the historiography. What emerges is a refined understanding of RFK as a major 20th century historical figure challenging conventional narratives characterizing him as an icon of liberalism and a new lens for studying the foreign policy process of the Kennedy administration as a whole. The dissertation shows that RFK was extremely hawkish during his time as attorney general, a sharp contrast to his later reputation. At the president’s behest, the attorney general involved himself in a wide range of national security issues. RFK’s actual influence varied depending on the issue. In some cases he was the driving force behind U.S. policy. In others, he was simply one voice among many in the White House inner circle. In others still, he served as a conduit for sensitive communications to and from the president. Beyond describing RFK’s personal role, the dissertation challenges longstanding notions of the foreign policy process in the Kennedy administration by showing how RFK, the consummate White House insider, often struggled to exercise influence as a policymaker. Most scholarship examining the Kennedy administration argues that President Kennedy crafted foreign policy and national security decisions with a small group of advisers who held enormous influence. But, as RFK’s experiences in this realm demonstrate, structural forces larger than the influence wielded by individual policymakers appears to have played a greater role in the Kennedy administration than the scholarship to date has recognized.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 158-160). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

This study explores how representations of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in videogames inform our present and future. I argue that videogames have the potential to sway a player’s sense of politics and history through image, sound, and interactive capabilities: these games leave what we might call “residue” in a player’s mind, even if he or she is not conscious of those effects. I hope that my analysis, drawing upon player experiences and close readings of two games, will uncover how this residue might reconfigure a player’s sense of Kennedy’s assassination as well as his or her political ideologies and anxieties. I focus on two games released in the past ten years: the low-selling but controversial JFK: Reloaded, released in 2004, and the wildly popular Call of Duty: Black Ops, released in 2010. These games present the narrative in starkly different ways. The former invites players to reenact repeatedly the assassination from the vantage point of Oswald in the Book Depository while the latter presents an alternative history that ultimately positions a fictional character as Kennedy’s assassin. These games, however, invite players to arrive to similar conclusions about the ways that people engage with historical narratives when playing historically-inspired games. In different ways, both Reloaded and Black Ops divorce the player’s engagement with the assassination on a political level, framing Kennedy’s death as a simple act of violence. Players, then, might understand history as driven more by discrete acts of violence than by complex political practices. The two games diverge in how they treat the player’s relationship to official accounts of history as well. Reloaded enables deviation from the prescribed story of Kennedy’s assassination offered by the Warren Commission while Black Ops presents an alternative historical account that highlights the flimsiness of memory when memories are tainted by traumatic experience. Both suggest that the official narrative is faulty. Yet these games at once open a space for a new historical narrative and fail to provide a plausible alternative history. The games ultimately render history itself an uncertain enterprise, fraught with flawed memories and official reconfigurations of how events actually transpired. / text

No description available.