Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University

The First World War was a key factor in the development of Scottish art and culture in the first half of the twentieth century. Yet historians concentrating on Scotland have been slow to recognise its potential as an area of research. This thesis aims to provide a broad-ranging perspective by exploring the responses to the war of seven of Scotland's leading cultural personalities, including the poet Christopher Murray Grieve, the dramatists, James Matthew Barrie and Osborne Henry Mavor, the painters Eric Harald Macbeth Robertson and William McCance, the architect Robert Stodart Lorimer and the aristocrat, the 8th Duke of Atholl. In addition to consideration of their personal experiences of the war, however, attention will be given to the varied and many cultural productions created by these men both during and in the aftermath of the First World War to assess the nature of the war's impact on Scottish culture. The Scottish Renaissance movement of the 1920s will be discussed in light of the fury and disillusionment felt by Grieve as a result of his active service in Salonika; the pervading influence of the war in the plays of Mavor and Barrie will be shown to owe much to their subjective impressions of the war, and the curtailment and containment of the careers of Robertson and McCance viewed in the context of their conscientious objection to military service. Finally, the Scottish National War Memorial at Edinburgh Castle will be attributed to the determination and passion imbued by the war in Lorimer and Atholl. In achieving these aims this thesis will demonstrate that the First World War should be held up as a central component in the history of Scottish art and society, and by dOing so hopes to widen the horizon of Scottish cultural studies beyond the current fixation with typicality within the United Kingdom in order to emphasise the range of Scottish cultures.

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Please note: Editorial Studies works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link, and fill out the appropriate web form. / This dissertation is a study of the endnotes to David Jones's In Parenthesis. Jones is a 20th-century Welsh-English author and visual artist who provides semi-extensive annotations to his work in the form of footnotes, endnotes, or prefaces. This study examines Jones's editorial practice with focus on In Parenthesis. The bulk of the work is a critical edition of his notes (which could be followed in the future by a critical edition of the whole of In Parenthesis). Manuscript notes are collated and compared with the published text in order to examine Jones's working methods and use of annotation. Editorial commentary clarifies allusions and indicates where Jones has used similar material in his other writings (The Anathemata and a number of independently published essays) and art (engravings, paintings, and letterings; in particular the illustrations for an edition of S.T. Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"). Further editorial annotation is included where Jones does not explain allusions and references in the body of In Parenthesis. Because there is evidence that Jones is an inconsistent editor of his own work, his omission of these annotations may be accidental rather than deliberate. An initial discussion preceding the collated notes provides personal and historical context for Jones's practice. To provide further context, a chronology and bibliographical description are included, as is a list of key sources and frequency of use, as well as illustrations and facsimile drafts. This study draws attention to the key works and themes that appear not only in In Parenthesis, but again in The Anathemata, Jones's artwork, essays, and other writings. / 2031-01-01

The intention of this essay is to study the Swedish General Staff as a learning organisation during the period of 1914-1918 based on the theoretical work developed by the philosopher Bertil Rolf. Previous international research on the Prussian/German General Staff has shown that it is considered to be the first learning organisation in history. The Swedish General Staff was based on the German General Staff model and the focus of this study is to compare the development the tactics in Germany and Sweden regarding defence and attack in trench warfare. The questions are: How were the possibilities for gathering and analysing informa-tion affected by the war? Which conclusions were made for trench warfare in Swedish conditions? What experiences from the war and exercises in Swedish army were implemented in manuals and training?The conclusion of the study is that the Swedish General Staff was functioning as a learning organisation during the WWI through the ability to follow the international development, mainly in the Central Powers, and by modifying the experiences to the prevailing Swedish strategic and tactical conditions. During the war the German experiences, mainly from the eastern front, were used as a model combining movement and trench warfare. The main reasons were that the conditions on the western front with the concentration of artillery and troops were considered as an anomaly.The learning was created by processing the war experiences and experiences from the annual field exercises in several studies. One additional condition for the learning process was the demanding selection process for the employment of new General Staff officers, a process which meant that only a very small number of officers annually were appointed to general staff officers.

In response to growing German propaganda during the First World War, the British Government formed a special Propaganda Department, which used visual art as a means of boosting up the morale of civilians and British soldiers on the Front. The War Artists‟ Scheme brought into being under the auspices of the Propaganda Department in 1914 allowed some of the most promising British artists to produce memorable paintings. The works documented the numerous sites of the Western and Eastern Front. In addition, the artists employed under the scheme presented the nation with portraits of notable military and political figures engaged in the war effort. This thesis investigates how William Orpen, an established society portraitist and A.R.A., fits into the War Artists‟ Scheme. His position was problematic: as a painter working in an early twentieth-century descriptive vein and older than other artists at the Front, how did he fare in this troubled context? Orpen‟s work on the Western Front (France and Flanders) has been so far neglected and considered to be of little relevance in comparison to what other avant-garde artists produced during the same time span. The thesis investigates how Orpen, although painting in an early twentieth-century representational style considered slightly passé, embedded in his works innovative means of expression, creating vivid, haunting imagery, adding to a body of work which was supposed to be documentary a depth reminiscent of ecclesiastic artistic practice. The thesis attempts to re-evaluate Orpen‟s war oeuvre, an aspect of the artist‟s rich imagery hitherto left to oblivion.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis examines the motivations of the Woman’s Council of National Defense. It will examine how women in Indiana and Illinois organized their state and local councils of defense as they embraced home-front mobilization efforts. It will also show that Hoosier women, like women across the United States, became involved in World War One home-front mobilization, in part, to prove their responsibility to the government in order to make an irrefutable claim for suffrage. As a result of extensive home-front mobilization efforts by women, the government was able to fulfill its own agenda of creating a comprehensive record of its citizens, thus guaranteeing a roster of citizens eligible for future wartime mobilization. By examining the Child Welfare Committee and the Children’s Year in a broad view, this thesis supports the assertions of historians like Robert G. Barrows, William J. Breen, and Lynn Dumenil, who have shown how Progressive-minded women advanced Progressive reforms by embracing the war effort and using it to their own advantage.

This dissertation examines how progressive era social scientists thought about African American workers and their place in the nation’s industrial past, present, and future.Progressives across the color line drew on a common discourse of industrial evolution that linked racial development with labor fitness. Evolutionary science merged with scientific management to create new taxonomies of racial labor fitness. I chart this process from turn of the century actuarial science which defined African Americans as a dying race, to wartime mental and physical testing that acknowledged the Negro as a vital -albeit inferior- part of the nation’s industrial workforce. During this period, African Americans struggled to prove their worth on the shop-floor, the battlefield, and the academy. This thesis contends that the modern Negro type- African Americans as objects of social scientific inquiry- which came of age in the post-World War Two era, was born in the draft boards, factories, trenches, hospitals, and university classrooms of the Progressive Era.

This thesis addresses the physical aspects of farming on soldier settlement blocks in south west Victoria. The undeveloped land, high establishment costs, stock losses through animal diseases and lack of managerial skills all contributed to the settlers' inability to meet their financial commitments. These factors are analysed, as are the effects of declining rural commodities prices during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition, the relationship between the settlers and the successive administrative agencies is examined. The scheme was administered by the Closer Settlement Board from its inception until 1932 and much of the discussion during this period concerns the interaction between settler and inspector. Soldier settlement after World War One represented one of the last attempts to create a large body of 'yeoman' farmers. From the early 1920s there was an increasing dichotomy between the 'yeoman' and the 'managerial' ideologies. This dichotomy placed additional pressure on soldier settlers who were expected to be 'efficient' without adequate finances. In the post C.S.B. era, the focus shifts to the attempts by the Closer Settlement Commission to salvage the scheme and its greater understanding of the problems faced by the settlers. While this part of the thesis necessarily becomes more political, the physical and financial environment in which the soldier settlers worked was still an important factor in their success or failure. Unlike the C.S.B. which tended to blame soldier settlers for their situation, the Commission acknowledged that settlers' ability to succeed was often constrained by circumstances beyond their control. Under the latter administration, instalments were written off, additional land was allocated and finally the blocks were revalued to guarantee the men at least some equity in their farms. Those settlers who had survived until these changes were instituted received a 'successful outcome of their life's work'.

There is an abundance of historical and anecdotal material relating to the experiences of the Australian soldier during World War 1. These soldiers were conscious both during and after the war that their contribution was important and that it was recognised as such by Australian society at large. Conversely there is an almost total absence of historical or anecdotal material about the role of the Australian nurse who served during this same conflict. Whether these nurses had the same degree of consciousness, either during or after the war, that their contributions were valued or seen as important by Australian society remains, largely, unknown. This thesis attempts to redress, in part, this absence by telling the story of a nurse, Jessie Tomlins, who served in the Australian Army Nursing Service during this period. At the same time specific aspects of the historical events surrounding World War One will be explored. Jessie Tomlins served, first as a Staff Nurse and later as a Sister, in the 14th Australian General Hospital in Egypt during 1916. At the same time her brother, Fred Tomlins, was already serving in the 1st Australian Light Horse Regiment and spent the entire four years of World War 1 in Palestine and Egypt. At the end of 1916 their younger brother, Will Tomlins, also joined the Army and became a member of the Anzac Mounted Division. The letters, postcards and photographs that Jessie, Fred and Will sent home to their mother and family, as well as Fred's fourteen diaries, form the foundation of this thesis. This thesis provides a meaningful snapshot of one woman from rural Australia who completed her nurse training during the war and then served her country during one of the most brutal periods of humankind. Her own words clearly tell the story of her war time experiences whilst, at the same time, conveying her expectations, prior to, during and after, this event. The development of the Australian Army Nursing Service, as it affected Jessie, over this period is also considered. It will be demonstrated that whilst ordinary men, soldiers, were at the military front line so too were ordinary women, nurses. The thesis will provide support for the contention that the contribution of Australian nurses in World War One, especially that of the ordinary nurse caring for the ordinary soldier, has been poorly recorded and as a result remains under-valued.