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During the late nineteenth century American reformers crafted a physical culture designed to help adjust their nation to the social changes fostered by industrialization, urbanization and immigration. The creators of modern sport considered athletics a "technology" for building a modern liberal civilization. Their "sporting republic" quickly gained a prominent place in American life. America's Athletic Missionaries examines the impact that United States participation in the Olympic Games, from 1896 to 1936, had on American culture. The idea of the sporting republic united politics and the strenuous life. In the Olympics Americans discovered a particularly rich environment for both athletic and political demonstrations. The architects of the sporting republic thought that sport could create livable urban environments, fight crime, promote democracy, Americanize the recently acquired empire, and assimilate immigrant populations. American Olympic teams earned the moniker of "America's athletic missionaries" for their performances at the first five Olympic Games. American Olympians enjoyed the active support of the political, business and academic elite. Lionized by the press and showered with public acclaim, the Olympians became symbols of the power of sport in channeling human energy in socially productive directions. During the 1920s the role of the sporting republic underwent a transformation. Sport, as had many other facets of Progressive reform, had been accepted as part of the orthodoxy of American values. But the political nature of sport changed. Abandoned by intellectuals who associated it with middle-class materialism, sport was increasingly cast as a form of escapism and disassociated from political action. The new version of sport became one of the totems of consumer culture. The press depicted the Olympic Games of the 1920s as sensational spectacles, without any significant political overtones. By the 1930s Americans had rediscovered the political uses of sport. Much of the world had come to view the Olympic Games as tests of national strength and many countries devoted great resources in the pursuit of athletic conquest. This study examines the relationship between political and physical culture, the uses of athletic ideology in the construction of American civilization, and the function of sport as a cultural tool.

Among the social sciences, guidance is relatively young, having evolved out of the American social experience with its concern for the welfare of the individual. As an independent discipline, guidance is about seventy years old. However, the foundations for guidance are imbedded in the nation's historical past. Beginning with seventeenth-century New Englanders, who stressed religious and economic reasoning, a systematic approach to occupational selection began. By the close of the colonial period, the precedent of freedom of choice of vocation and educational opportunity was well established.

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The purpose of this thesis is to examine the narratives of five formerly enslaved men and women in order to understand how they used this literary form to insert their voices into the anti-slavery discourse. These slave narratives were important for the advancement of the anti-slavery movement, both because they provided glimpse into the realities of the system of slavery from individuals who experienced it, and because these texts questioned the very ideologies they were meant to uphold by highlighting their inherent racial prejudices. Ultimately, the slave narrative allowed these formerly enslaved authors to demonstrate their autonomy through the act of authorship.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Humanities / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study identified and examined individual, group, institutional, and other factors and conditions associated with the founding and development of private higher education institutions designed to serve religious groups, women, black Americans, native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. A number of distinct influencing social conditions were identified. Distinctness was due to different group needs and circumstances during certain American historical periods. Common social conditions found included need for culturally sensitive institutions, pervasiveness of religious interests in founding attempts, social exclusion and discrimination, population growth and urbanization, democratic opportunity, federal government pervasiveness, and social consciousness change. Fifty-four specific factors associated with the founding and development of institutions were identified. Analysis revealed many complex interrelationships among social, individual, group, institutional and other miscellaneous factors and conditions existing in collegiate institution founding and development efforts. These factors created many variables that could affect the success of the institutions. Forty-two of the fifty-four factors were judged to be important elements for those contemporarily considering founding collegiate institutions. General conclusions: (1) Institutions best able to deal with the many complex factors were most likely to succeed. (2) The more support and (3) confidence institutions could generate, the better their chances for survival. (4) Institutional and community cohesion were important in achieving permanency. (5) Many institutions were created because of perceived socio-economic, political, cultural, and educational inequities. (6) Social groups addressed higher educational needs after increased awareness of their social conditions. (7) Sociocultural differences existed in group approaches to provision of higher education. (8) Regarding effectiveness in founding, groups ranked as follows; religious groups, women, black Americans, native Americans, and Hispanic Americans. (9) Religious denominations were very involved in founding efforts for three of the groups studied, minimally involved with native Americans, least involved with Hispanic Americans. (10) Religious affiliated institutions generally served socio-economic and religious needs of constituents; this was not evident with the Roman Catholic Church and Hispanic Americans. (11) Educated leadership was essential in founding efforts. (12) High dissatisfaction with existing institutions prompted private founding attempts.

This study examines the congressional mission to liberated concentration camps in April and May 1945. General Dwight D. Eisenhower requested a congressional mission and a group of newspaper editors and publishers to view firsthand the horrors of the concentration camp Buchenwald, so that the American public might be made more aware of German atrocities in concentration camps and to dispel the belief that the atrocity reports were wartime propaganda. The congressmen and newspapermen were horrified by what they saw at the German concentration camps, and many reported back to the American public about the atrocities and conditions in the concentration camps through articles, interviews, speeches, and rallies. Upon their return to the United States, the congressmen published a report on the conditions within the camps, and many of them spoke in Congress and to the public about the need to re-educate the Germans, try guilty Germans, and rebuild Germany. The congressmen and editors and publishers brought legitimacy to the reports of American war correspondents concerning German atrocities, and their efforts contributed to constructing a political climate that allowed for and legitimized the Nuremberg Trials, the U.S. Army denazification efforts, and the rebuilding of Germany through the Marshall Plan. To examine this mission, newspaper articles from April and May 1945 were collected from thirteen American newspapers, as well as the Times of London. Research was also conducted in the personal collections of two of the congressmen who toured Europe at that time, as well as at the National Archives in College Park, MD. This study goes beyond the existing research by examining the congressional mission to Buchenwald, Dora, and Dachau, which, though it has been briefly mentioned in existing Holocaust literature, has never been fully examined.

This thesis examines how churches and taverns became sites for political discussion and organizing during the Revolutionary era, 1765-1780. Taverns had long served a role in Virginians’ lives by providing places where news was exchanged and discussed, but with the political upheaval between the colonies and Great Britain many of the activities and discussions that took place there became far more politically charged. Analyzing churches and their role within the revolutionary era demonstrates that Virginia’s revolutionary leaders used an institution deeply rooted in their society to further political activism by Virginians and Virginia’s provisional government. But in several ways the Revolution also wrought profound changes with regard to religious liberty and social hierarchy. Through the study of both churches and taverns this study reveals new insights about how these institutions served overlapping and sometimes parallel roles by providing spaces for meetings, discussions, and the exchange of information—as well as new sources of political debate.