acase@tulane.edu / This dissertation examines the role of Roman antiquity in crafting civic identity in fourteenth-century Siena. Roman heritage was a point of pride for Italian communes and had political and cultural relevance by informing values and legitimizing republican governments for contemporary audiences. Without provable classical settlement, trecento Siena fabricated an elaborate origin myth that stressed ancient foundations—by the twin sons of Rome’s own Remus—and promoted the legend in a city-wide iconographical and philosophical program. This dissertation presents a series of case studies that analyze specific occurrences of the civic deployment of Siena’s invented classical identity and examines the socio-political value of this Romanitas, or “Roman-ness,” in a pivotal period of transformation where the combination of a state-crafted visual campaign rooted in classicism and the political shift from one republican regime to the next provides the opportunity to trace the invocation of Rome in various forms across the city’s landscape. I begin by examining the origin legend as a response to foreign challenges to Siena’s historicity. I then analyze Sienese political discourse, both local and in broader Guelph-Ghibelline debates, to argue that Roman republicanism provided necessary legitimacy to republics and a vocabulary to express communal virtues. Chapter three follows Sienese efforts to emphasize ancient material through the celebration of spolia—native and imported—and attention to Rome in original art. Chapters four and five examine the presence of Christian antiquity in Siena, demonstrated by the selection of ancient martyrs as their patron saints and the religious ideals of the Gesuati order, dedicated to Jerome. The final chapter identifies instances where pagan and Christian antiquity appeared in the same civic space and questions how both expressions of Romanitas functioned together to create a cultural identity in Siena dependent on classical influence. This dissertation expands scholarship’s definition of antiquity to include both pagan and Christian manifestations and recognizes the role of Sienese communal government in developing the rebirth of antiquity. I suggest that the Sienese state cultivated a self-image that stressed Siena as a Roman city physically and philosophically built upon classical origins and benefiting from Rome’s political and spiritual inheritance. / 1 / Samantha Perez

Institutions of learning are discrete because of distinctive curricular and co-curricular programs, culture, history, and symbols. Thus, civic learning and identity development may differ across higher learning institutions, particularly in faith-based colleges and universities. This study sought to explore how Gethsemane College students make sense of their learning experiences in relation to civic identity development. I drew on relational developmental systems perspective to explore the mutual and bidirectional relationship between the participants and context. I collected documents and civic identity development narratives of eight graduating student sat Gethsemane College. Using qualitative content analysis and analysis of narratives in narrative inquiry, the findings revealed the mediating role of social identities, faith-learning integration, the influence of founding denomination, campus climate, civic contexts within Gethsemane College, institutional narratives, and pre-college civic experiences in the participants’ civic identity development. The participants civic identity development evolved in college. They transitioned from charitable actions to social change issues such as climate change and racial and environmental injustices. Global citizenship is an influential construct in how the participants think about their civic identities and citizenship. <br>

Thesis advisor: Michael Malec / American universities provide undergraduate students with seemingly endless opportunities for civic engagement. According to a recent report released by Boston College, students volunteer more than 444,000 hours of community service throughout the year (Community Benefits and Service Programs). This honors thesis offers a critical exploration of students’ attitudes towards civic engagement and how they make meaning of the change-making processes in which they choose to engage. The research was designed to explore how students feel about civic engagement divided into two main categories: service and politics. Declining political participation has become a characteristic identifier of young adults today. How, then, does this generational trend fit into the civic engagement story of Boston College? By exploring students’ civic and political attitudes, one can make sense of the decisions students make regarding how they can best produce social change in a democratic society, namely whether they select a service-oriented or political path. First, this research aims to highlight the crucial intersections and interdependencies between involvement in both service and politics. In other words, the change-making capacity of either service or politics is limited when the two are considered mutually exclusive. Second, this research aims to assess whether students draw parallels Boston College undergraduates between service and politics. Ultimately, this research aims to inspire undergraduates at Boston College and elsewhere to develop civic identities, which incorporate service-oriented and political ideals. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Departmental Honors. / Discipline: Sociology.

abstract: Civic identity in San Diego emerged first from a complex set of Native, Spanish and Mexican traditions. However, after 1850 Americans from the East coast and Midwest arrived and brought with them to San Diego a strong sense of how to both build and manage towns. These regional influences from other parts of the country carried over into the early twentieth century, and began to reshape civic identity and the first historic preservation movements in San Diego. This dissertation establishes San Diego's place in the scholarly literature of the urban West and historic preservation. After a brief background of San Diego history, this study begins with an explanation of the dual efforts at work in San Diego after 1945 to build for the future while preserving the past. Next, this study examines the partnerships formed and conflicts between promoters for development and advocates of preservation. The progression of historic preservation efforts in San Diego since WWII includes missed opportunities, lapses in historic authenticity, and divisions about what buildings or stories to preserve. This study describes how conflicts were resolved and explains the impact of those outcomes on historic preservation and authenticity. San Diego's history has much in common with many cities in the American West, but the historic narrative of San Diego also differs from other Western cities in several compelling ways. First, San Diego bears distinction as the oldest city in California and one of the oldest cities in the West. Second, historic preservation in San Diego has yet to be fully explored by scholars. Third, some of preservation conflicts explored in this study reveal distinct differences from preservation debates in other urban areas. Using government, organizational, and archival records, secondary sources, interviews, and personal observation, this dissertation explains how historic preservation in San Diego became an integral part of city planning, an expectation of residents and visitors, and a key feature of the city`s civic identity. This study contributes to Western scholarship by bringing San Diego into the literature of historic preservation and the urban West. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. History 2011

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Theatre, 2003. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 45-47).

This book reviewed investigates the negotiations of power between a political center, Venice, and its prized terraferma possession on the periphery, Brescia.

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This thesis is the first in depth study that has been undertaken concerning Edinburgh and Glasgow’s identities and rivalry. It is not an economic or a social study driven solely by theory. Essentially, this is a cultural and political examination of Edinburgh and Glasgow’s identities and rivalry based on empirical evidence. It engages with theory where appropriate. Although 1752 – 1842 is the main framework for the period there are other considerations included before this period and after this timeframe. This study provides the reader with a better understanding of the ideas highlighted in the introduction and it also indicates the degrees of changes as well as continuity within the two cities. Therefore, this thesis is not a strict comparison of the two cities and neither does it provide for a complete contextual breakdown of every historical event over the course of every year. The primary focus is kept on an array of primary written sources about the two cities over the course of the period, with only brief reflections about other places, where it is deemed appropriate. The thesis is driven by the evidence it has uncovered in relation to identity and rivalry, and the study uses particular events and their impact on the two cities within a particular historical narrative. As it is a preliminary report of its kind, there are, of course, many gaps which are opportunities for further research. This is something that the conclusion of this thesis returns to. Identity and rivalry are words not attached to any particular corpus of research material but rather are buried in an array of primary sources that are wide-ranging and all encompassing. Most have been uncovered in individual collections and in the literature of the time, including newspapers, guidebooks, travellers’ accounts, civic histories, speeches, letters, and in entries for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and also the Old and New Statistical Accounts. Although historians may have examined some of this material it has not necessarily been employed by them to investigate how the cities’ identities and rivalry evolved. The period was influenced by the ideas birthed from the Enlightenment and Romanticism, by the impact of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars and by the intense processes harboured by urbanisation, industrialisation and by political and social change as the Georgian city became a Victorian one, so consideration of these important aspects must be afforded, as well as the particular historians’ ideas about them and how they affected cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow within a Scottish and a British context.