This thesis discusses and proposes a design for a new kind of web-based interface for the display of historical interpretation. The design, specifically for the interpretation of the now-demolished Texas Confederate Home for Men in Austin, Texas, uses this site as a case study to explore how original historical research can combine with and inform the design of a hypothetical open and dynamic on-line database of historic properties. The first half discusses the history of the Home's development, highlighting its significance as a relic of 19th century reform movements and social utopianism, while exploring how this relates to its physical isolation from the surrounding urban context. The second half discusses the scope of web-based historical interpretation and some conclusions about the limitations of current solutions. This chapter then discusses and proposes a series of web-based interactive diagrams illustrating the significance of the site's history identified in the previous chapter. The design attempts to bridge two competing desires in historical interpretation: the desire for rigorous yet static curated interpretation and the desire for an open non-curated data management system. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2008. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed May 6, 2008). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Auburn University, 2008. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 116-121).

Thesis (Th. M.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 219-225).

Thesis (Honors)--College of William and Mary, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-97). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 2005. / Title from document title page.

Thesis (M. A.)--Florida State University, 2005. / Advisor: Dr. Jonathan A. Grant, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 19, 2005). Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 94 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Anglo-American kinship, as a set of historical continuities linking the United States to Great Britain and as a reckoning of relatedness, constituted a valuable cultural resource for Southerners as they contemplated their place within the American nation and outside in the nineteenth century. Like the more conventional calculations of consanguinity and familial belonging it referenced, the Anglo-American kinship was contingent, convoluted, and, not infrequently, contested. Articulated at various times by masters and former slaves, ministers and merchants, plantation mistresses and politicians, this sense of belonging to an imagined transatlantic family transcended the boundaries of gender, race, and class as readily as it traversed national borders. Though grounded in biogenetic factors, the language of Anglo-American kinship encompassed claims of belonging predicated on confessional faith, language, and institutions as well as blood. This thesis considers the interaction between conceptions of Anglo-American kinship and the formation of Southern national identity, both unionist and separatist, between 1830 and 1890 by examining institutions and social rituals that both inculcated filiopietism and constructed Southerness in the Civil War era and beyond. The subjects under consideration in this study include the role of European travel in forging Southern distinctiveness before the war, ring tournaments and the ethos of medieval chivalry they promoted, the Protestant Episcopal Church and its role in managing the sectional crisis, postbellum immigration societies and their vision of the plantation South remade in the image of British manors, and the role that state historical associations played in reunion and the entrenchment of the Lost Cause mythology as the predominant historical framework for interpreting the American Civil War.

Throughout the Civil War, Americans relied upon religion to shape their understanding of the conflict. As furious campaigns raged across the national landscape, Northerners and Southerners saw the hand of God at work in human history. Unfortunately, historians have not adequately dealt with this aspect of the conflict. In order to treat this historiographical void, this work focuses on the changes in religion wrought by civil war. More precisely, it concentrates on warfare's effects on Virginia's homefront Baptist churches and how these churches responded. This study, therefore, sheds light on the physical and spiritual ramifications that America's greatest trial had on Virginia's religious institutions. / Master of Arts

The dissertation examines administrative institutions and practices established to support the civil government of the Confederate States of America (1861-1865). Public administration at the national level in the Confederacy was characterized by administrative dualism (deference to state administrative norms and policy imperatives), restrained national level policy prerogatives, a normative orientation which emphasized responsiveness to public interest, and an overriding goal of achieving legitimacy in the eyes of the public. Confederate administrative invention and experimentation developed into a responsive mechanism for governance; many of the Confederate innovations served as precursors to new administrative practices in the government of the United States. Thus, the study of modern public administrative history begins not at the civil service reforms of 1883, or the Progressive era, but more properly, can be seen as including the norms of government administration debated during the founding period of the United States and which appeared subsequently in the Confederacy. / Ph. D.