This thesis examines how the remembrance of deportation from France during the Second World War impacted the creation of two memorials in Paris in the postwar years. The two memorials, located just over 500 meters apart in the center of Paris and inaugurated within seven years of one another, physically embody each of these narratives. The Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, created by the Contemporary Jewish Documentation Center (CDJC) in 1956, represents the narrative of Jewish persecution and genocide throughout Europe during the Second World War. Expanded in 2005, the Tomb is now known as the Shoah Memorial and is an internationally recognized research center. The Memorial of Deportation, created by the Réseau du Souvenir in 1962, exemplifies the narrative of French deportees; typically made up of resisters and political enemies of the Vichy regime, and represents French universalism – downplaying the difference in victim identity. This thesis observes how the deportee narratives aligns with the postwar Resistance myth – which sought to unify the nations after war, defeat, occupation, and near civil war by papering over French culpability – influenced the memorialization of the deportee experience as well as how memorialization changed over time. It argues that the Memorial of Deportation maintained a national narrative, focusing on French victims regardless of the political or religious beliefs, wanting to highlight universal French victimhood, while the other, the Tomb of the Unknown Jewish Martyr, sought to commemorate the millions of Jews persecuted and targeted for destruction despite the canonization of the myth as history in France and fought to hold France responsible for its role in the genocide.

This study explores how late colonial Virginians used clothing to control, enforce, and negotiate gender. Gender, both as a system of power and as a category of social identity, became linked with the material forms of clothing that Virginians wore in their everyday lives. The identification of clothing with the body enabled Virginians to actively make choices about how to perform themselves to the wider culture of observation and perception present in the colony. Dress was ubiquitous, but its meanings were variable, changing, and unstable. In eighteenth-century Virginia, Anglo-descended colonists imported ideals from Britain, which then produced Chesapeake-specific gender relationships, facilitated by slavery and networks of perception. These relations became entangled in the sartorial embodiment of gender, as Anglo-Virginian women and men dictated acceptable forms of femininity and masculinity. Yet enslaved Afro-Virginians could and did negotiate gender on their own terms by fashioning new meanings about their clothing when they ran away. Bringing together documentary, visual, and material sources enables a material perspective on the importance of colonial appearances and the centrality of gender to colonial life. Embodiment theory, the method of reading "along the bias grain," and discussions of agency further augment histories that deal primarily with embodied social status or race and refine gender scholarship concerned with colonies besides Virginia.

This Digital/Public History visualization thesis project explores how three factors-Atlantic migration patterns, demographics, and socioeconomic systems-influenced the development of folk music in the southern United States from the 18th century through the 20th century. A large body of written scholarship exists addressing plantation economies, the slave trade, and folk music. Digital technology, however, creates new opportunities for analyzing the geo-temporal aspects contained within the numerous archival resources such as census and migration records, field recordings, economic data, diaries, and other personal records. The written portion of the thesis addresses the historiography, research findings, and the process of creating the visualization product. The digital component employs open-source archives and MapScholar, a visualization tool developed at the University of Virginia, to reveal the spatial dimensions of three distinct regions-The greater Chesapeake (Virginia/North Carolina/), the coastal lowlands and sea islands of the Gullah Corridor (Charleston/Savannah), and Louisiana (New Orleans). The end result is an educational and potential research tool that affords viewers a more dynamic perspective on the relationship between agricultural slave labor, migration patterns, and folk music than is possible with text alone.

This digital public history project explores one of the oldest and longest running of Florida's roadside attractions, Weeki Wachee Springs, during the years considered to be the park's heyday, the 1950s through the mid-1970s. With the 75th anniversary of the park approaching in 2022 and preliminary discussions of a new or expanded mermaid museum, there is a growing need to document the experiences of aging former employees and preserve park-related ephemera from that period. For this project six oral histories of former mermaids and former employees have been recorded, transcribed, and made publicly accessible through RICHES, the University of Central Florida's free-to-access digital archive, along with hundreds of documents and images related to the park. This newly discovered material uncovers the lived experiences of the mermaids and other employees interviewed, some of whom have never been written about previously. Historiographically, the park has attracted little attention from scholars. The few popular works devoted to Weeki Wachee Springs fail to place the attraction within the context of Florida's social or political climates in any meaningful way. Using oral histories of the park's employees recorded for this project, archival material uncovered during the research stage, and existing interviews from one of the only books written about the park (Lu Vickers' Weeki Wachee: City of Mermaids, 2007), this study combines a digital archive with scholarly interpretation informed by women's studies, social and cultural history, and oral history theory.

This thesis explores the absence of a Union monument at the Olustee Battlefield one hundred and fifty-five years after the battle concluded though this field has a number of Confederate monuments. Moreover, after the Battle of Olustee in February 1864, the largest battle of the Civil War fought on Florida soil, the victorious Confederates killed wounded African American soldiers left behind after the Union retreat. This thesis examines why Olustee battlefield became a place of Confederate memory, enshrining the Lost Cause within its monuments for well over a half of a century that consciously excluded any commemoration of the Union dead. The lack of proper commemoration to the costly Union sacrifices at Olustee comes as a surprise, since some of the Union dead still rest in a mass grave on the battlefield. They remain on this field because after the war, federal soldiers reburied the Olustee dead in a mass grave and erected a temporary memorial that marked their final resting place. This neglect contradicted War department policy that mandated that the reinterred Union dead be in separate graves and marked by individual permanent headstones. When the temporary monument marking their presence disappeared, this also erased the memory of their presence and their sacrifice from the Olustee landscape. This left room for champions of the Confederate Lost Cause - Southern, Confederate Civil War memory - like the United Daughters of Confederacy (UDC) to build monuments to the Confederate cause. In fact, these women worked actively to ensure that the Union dead were not memorialized, particularly the African American casualties. The UDC managed the site until 1949, when the State of Florida assumed control of those grounds. Seventy years of direct control by the state of Florida failed to make a difference in the landscape of memory at Olustee: the Union dead have no monument to commemorate their sacrifice. This thesis explores why the markers, monuments, and policies still honor the Lost Cause memory of the battle, even as the park services in charge of the site promote a reconciliationist narrative and the resurgence of Union memory, including the sacrifice of black US soldiers. Sources used include Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, meeting minutes of the UDC, newspaper articles, official documents from the Florida Division of Parks and Recreation, documents from the National Park Service, private correspondences, and state legislature bills.

This study explored the responses of Amish agrarians in northern Indiana to the mechanization and modernization of rural life in the early twentieth century. This period was marked by a shift towards agribusiness as well as the increased usage of farm machines. In addition to the increased emphasis on farm efficiency, reformers sought to modernize or update rural life. Within the context of these transformations, the Amish maintained their identity by exploring the necessity and the consequences of adapting to life in the modern world. Their responses to modernization defined not only their cultural boundaries in the modern world but also created their identity in twentieth century America. In stark contrast to the ideal of the independent farmer, the Amish used the strength of their community (both Amish and nonAmish) and their agrarian roots to endure and overcome the challenging events of the early twentieth century. The purpose of this study was to expand the scholarship of Amish studies in northern Indiana as well as place the Amish experience within the context of agrarian historiography. Resources used to examine this period included Amish writings, farm publications from Indiana and data from the agricultural census.

During the early twentieth century, Acadian women dressed up in a costume based on the main character from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1847 epic poem Evangeline at nation-building events to symbolize the Acadian people and its past. Acadians came to consider the Evangeline costume to be the national and historic dress of their people. Yet their ancestors never wore this outfit. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Acadian settlers to what is today Canada’s Maritime region instead developed a distinct style of dress based on a mix of local and external influences, which differentiated them from their French origins and from the colonists in other North American settlements by the time most of the population was deported from the region during the Seven Years’ War. In the period following the Expulsion, Acadians continued to wear unique styles of dress which contributed to the sense of a distinct identity. Longfellow’s Evangeline drew on the Romantic Movement, however, and its tendency to view rural dwellers as simple and picturesque peasants wearing exotic costumes. Evangeline led to a reimagining of the Acadians as they became widely associated with their description in the poem, in part due to the popularity with Norman peasant costumes evoked in the poem. This is the version of their past that Acadians chose to emphasize during the twentieth century. This thesis traces the process of reimagining the Acadians’ past that occurred during the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century through a study of representations of Acadian dress in popular culture by both outsiders and members of the community. This thesis intends to shed light on why the Evangeline costume has come to symbolize the Acadian people and their past. During the late nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Acadians used Evangeline as a tool for nation building to bring together disparate communities to create a unified nation based on the values described in the poem. By wearing the costume and including it in nation-building events, Acadians portrayed the version of their history described in the poem. Additionally, it will be shown that even though the Evangeline costume does not reflect the historical record, Acadians preferred it because the costume represents what the community came to believe was a more suitable version of the past.

The so-called culture wars of recent years have created an ethos of caution in our cultural institutions. Museums often avoid exhibits and programming that might prove controversial for fear of public backlash. This paper examines how public historians and archivists might work together to devise strategies for positive public engagement in controversial history projects. Archives have the power to ensure the public's trust in their cultural institutions, while primary source material can be utilized to promote constructive conversation among audiences. Public conflict will be directed into more productive channels if museums create a safe space for dialogue. / History

This study explores what happens when baseball and public history collide at physical sites. It specifically examines corporate and vernacular exhibits and tours at six Major League ballparks and exhibits at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum. I study these primary sources within the broader context of baseball history, nostalgia marketing, heritage tourism, and the relationship between public historians and corporations. My analysis adds to the sparse critical literature on sports public history. / History

Community engagement and relevance are topics prominently discussed in the museum field. Conversations about public history and social justice, however, are less common. Combining these two ideas and thinking broadly about how museums, particularly historic houses, can stay relevant in their community by adopting a community-centered mission, this thesis uses Casey Farm as a case study. By conducting interviews with the site managers and market manager alongside surveying market vendors and visitors, this thesis compares the museum’s perspective of their relevance with the lived experiences of visitors. Ultimately arguing that historic houses should prioritize community interests when creating programming to retain audiences to the museum. Studying how Casey Farm partners with Coastal Growers’ Market to increase community relevance by aligning with the goals of the Food Movement, this example can encourage other historic house museums to use the resources at their site and seek out possible partnerships in their community.