Given the primacy of Florida, and in particular Orlando, as an urban center with an above average rate of AIDS and HIV, this study examines how the outbreak of a deadly disease can affect a community. Complicating the response to this scourge, those who were most at-risk were marginalized groups such as those in the LGBTQ community, drug users, and often people of color. As a result, those who occupied positions of political power felt little incentive to curb the epidemic and mocked it by deeming it "the gay disease." As a result of neglect and the lack of investment in scientific and medical research to better understand the epidemiological contours of this deadly dis-ease, its growth and spread were exacerbated. Given the significant social stigma associated with AIDS, an analysis of the epidemic must be examined both an epidemiological as well as a social phenomenon. In Orlando and elsewhere, the refusal of the government and institutions to adequately address the AIDS epidemic, some people in the community formed grassroots organizations to help find relief for their community, family and friends. Whereas in previous generations, separation from the mainstream society was an explicit objective of many gay activists, in this era the gay community worked toward forming an inclusive coalition out of necessity to combat AIDS. Eventually, this effort forced the broader population and political establishment to begin taking decisive action. Eventually, declining rates of infection suggest that the resources invested in this effort, including scientific research and public information campaigns, worked. The public became more knowledgeable about AIDS and HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, even became manageable to the point that it no longer the equivalent to a death sentence; however, the AIDS epidemic left a legacy on communities across the country and globe. This analysis of the experience of Orlando, Florida, illustrates the effect of its aftermath; grief and mourning remains an ever-present reminder of this dark chapter in this community's history. Further, the grassroots organizations, strategies, and resources developed out of necessity during the 1980s remained and became important pillars of the community. The response to the PULSE Nightclub mass shooting that occurred decades after the height of the AIDS epidemic demonstrated the persistence and importance of these community organizations to the Orlando community.

Interwar American advertising rose alongside new levels of hygiene, personal appearance, and technology in order to sell their products to target audiences. Despite the abundance of scholarship on media and gender, few studies have examined the gendered techniques through which interwar advertisers communicated with consumers in response to changing social norms and economic stability. The question this thesis explores is how these changes and communication shifted in response to consumer culture and how advertisers utilized early market research and persuasion techniques to target their audiences. Building on the studies of gender, consumption, and identity, this thesis examines the relationship between American advertisers and their targeted male and female consumers between 1920 and 1940. By exploring how admen and women within Madison Avenue's top advertising agencies utilized psychology and consumer feedback to develop a two-way communication with middle-classed consumers, this thesis draws from social, cultural, and gendered studies to understand how advertisers communicated with and tried to appeal to their target audiences. Utilizing both copy and imagery as sources of communication, this study examines every issue of the top circulating American magazines between 1920 and 1940 to explain how advertisers rose with early consumer behavioral psychology and new standards of sanitation and hygiene, how a growing consumer culture and American notion of identity and gender affected the selling of selfhood and personal beauty products, and how gendered media representations and persuasion techniques helped advertisers sell modernity and individuality to readers. This analysis surveys specific advertising campaigns before, during, and after the Stock Market Crash to follow shifts in appeals to masculinity and femininity in response to changing social norms. By delving into this intersection of gender, media, and identity, this study finds various nuances through which advertisers and their audiences communicated in and alongside a growing consumer culture.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky were the most popular science fiction writing duo in Soviet Russia from the 1960s through the 1980s. Examining their imaginative fictional worlds against the background of wider changes in the Soviet Union allows scholars to gain insights in the world of the Soviet intelligentsia, the educated bearers of culture. As members of this group, the Strugatskys expressed the hopes, frustrations and fears, of their peers, vindicating their intellectual and emotional life. I support the argument that the Brothers occupied a middle ground between conformity and dissident, dubbed the "lost" intelligentsia by Lloyd Churchward. I demonstrate this state of being in Soviet society by providing context to popular Strugatsky works, and discussing the evolution of their perspective over time, as displayed in their literature. Featured prominently in Strugatsky works are themes of governmental authority and scientific development, therefore these are the key focuses of this research. The Strugatskys examination of the essential question of the meaning and attainment of happiness adds a new layer of insight to this argument. Studying the Strugatsky Brothers aligns with the greater trend in the field of cultural studies of the Soviet Union, as historians seek to gain greater understanding of how society experienced the communist government. The captivating writing of the Strugatskys, a mixture of foreboding, irony and humor, contributes to the narrative of Soviet history as the authors were culturally significant figures whose legacy remains influential today.

Paolo Giovio wrote his text in the aftermath of the sack of Rome by imperial troops in 1527, although the work remained unfinished at the time of the author's death some twenty-five years.

The following dissertation examines the history of general hospitals in modern, central and western Canada. It follows extensive case studies of the Toronto, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Vancouver general hospitals. The last few decades have seen an expanded interest in hospitals by Canadian medical historians, but the overall literature is thin. Further, many of the extant histories focus on a particular constituent: the medical profession, administrators, or architects. In this dissertation I argue that these general hospitals were contested spaces, and that their organization and layout reflected negotiation between several parties. A further important vector is the role hospitals played in the social life of their communities. As these general hospitals grew, and began treating middle-class patients, they also required large sums of money from the public purse. Administrators had to account for the shape and use of medical space to the general public that helped finance it, as they did to the doctors who worked there. During the period 1880-1945 general hospitals moved from the periphery of medical care to the centre, but not without substantial growing pains. These institutions routinely lacked funds and space, and remained in operation as much through the efforts of medical professionals as by concerned citizens. After the Second World War the Federal Government shifted from a standoffish institution to one ready to release funds and administrative energies towards new ideals of social welfare. Funding increased dramatically for the building of new hospitals, and legislative developments such as Medicare transformed the social and political relationship between hospitals and patients. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This dissertation began with the question: why do our general hospitals look the way that they do? It goes on to examine the ways in which multiple actors, including many non-medical ones such as local citizens, city councils, architects, and patients, interfaced with administrators and doctors to establish and build general hospitals in four Canadian cities. The core argument is that these were contested spaces, which reflected the communities in which they existed.

This thesis examines how Naval Air Station (NAS) Sanford impacted the nearby city economically, demographically, and socially during World War II. City commission minutes, newspapers, and census data highlight the efforts of city leaders and their cooperation with the federal government to get a naval base established at Sanford. Thereafter, it assesses the ways in which a naval base garnered economic and demographic development, and organizing among African Americans in a southern city.

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Social history has been much criticised over the past thirty years. This criticism and the consequent turn to cultural history have brought many advances, developing our understanding of the language, discourse, ritual and culture. However, it has also led to a neglect of structural factors and a turn away from the study of collectivities. This has meant that many subjects that class used to explain (social difference, social relationships and collective actions) are often ignored or undertheorized in current historical scholarship. This thesis examines one of these issues: how should historians understand and analyse the process of social-group formation? It does this through a case study of propertied society in Birmingham between 1780 and 1832. Propertied society is a loose category that does not have the connotations of concepts such as ‘middle class’. This thesis suggests that there were many different types of social group and that historians need to differentiate between them when analysing past societies. The most important distinction is between groups who shared attributes and groups that acted together. However, there was no simple relationship between attributes and actions; individuals who shared attributes did not necessarily act in the same way. The first part of the thesis (chapters 1-3) discusses who was included within the category of propertied society and the social and geographical understandings of those individuals. The second part of the thesis (chapters 4-6) moves from the general material and cultural structures of propertied society to consider three case studies that examine a number of processes by which individuals came together to form groups focused on particular discourses, institutions and events. The three case studies discuss the family and the transfer of social knowledge (chapter 4), local government and the nature of elites (chapter 5), and the process of politicization through examining membership of the Birmingham Political Union (chapter 6).