This thesis examines the cultural context of opera in Boston between the years 1620 to 2010. Specifically, I look at how the Boston Opera Company was founded, its existence, and its ultimate demise. The rise of opera in colonial Boston is also explored and especially how the immigration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries influenced the city. Around this time of changing demographics Eben D. Jordan, Jr., of Jordan Marsh Co. decided to build an opera house for the city of Boston. The effects that Puritanism had on music and the culture of Boston during its early years are also explored. Then Boston musical independence is catalogued about how it relates to the unique form of music that did form during this time, starting with the First New England School. During the mid to late nineteenth century massive immigration took place that changed this country, especially Boston. The modern United States was formed during this time, including its music. Boston, starting in the 1830’s had numerous societies and schools disseminating music to the populace. This in turn led to the creation of the Boston Opera Company in 1908. The Boston Opera Company was founded by Eben D. Jordan of Jordan Marsh Co. He decided that the city of Boston needed a proper opera company, so he paid for the construction of the house and operation. Unfortunately, the populace soon lost interest and the company made in ill-fated trip to Paris in 1914. This trip, coupled with the start of WWI, forced the company to declare bankruptcy in 1915. There are definite cultural considerations as to why the opera company was unable to make itself part of the fabric of the city, like the Metropolitan Opera in New York. The Boston Symphony Orchestra is very much a part of the city and there is no reason why opera should not be with that part either. Boston has a very large metropolitan area and with the proper guidance and determination, opera could be supported here year round. A new house would have to be built, since the original opera house was torn down in 1958. With the proper determination, however, it could be done for permanent opera in the city.

Consumer culture’s spatial dynamics have rarely been examined. This study will use a methodology of “triangulation” – a term borrowed from Geographer Richard J. Dennis – to explore the characteristics of consumer culture among the working classes in a single industrial, planned city (Holyoke, Massachusetts). Each facet of the tripartite method – literary, cliometric, and geographical sources – will be used to conclude that consumer capitalism fundamentally changed the spatial character of Holyoke’s working class communities. A time period roughly from 1880 to 1940 has been selected because novels about Holyoke in this period help augment an understanding of the city’s consumer landscape. The study examines two writers who grew up in Holyoke: Jacques Ducharme and Mary Doyle Curran. It also centers on two streets, High Street and Main Street, which served as the commercial centers for very distinct types of communities. The study draws from oral histories, sociological data, place-based analysis, advertisements, material culture, census records, newspaper accounts, and corporate records from manufacturers and the city’s largest department store.

Many pages have been written concerning erotic images on Greek vases but few studies have focused on the frequency of erotic images. This is an important concept in determining the significance of the erotic images. Various Athenian cups from the online holdings of the Beazley Archive were investigated, using simple tabulations and Chi-square analysis, for erotic images. Out of 7901 cups only 130 had erotic images. As cups with erotic images represented only a small portion of the sample it was likely that they only appealed to the tastes of a small sub-set of the Athenian population. The context of these images is questionable and the historical community should use them with caution.

The degree of African cultural survivals in African-American culture has been debated since the Civil War. Convincing research that West African cultural traits did survive in African-American culture, particularly in African-Amercian foodways, focuses on the lower south, neglecting the upper south. This thesis fills that gap by identifying West African traits in African-as well as Anglo-America foodways in Virginia, focusing on four broad research areas: Native American and Anglo-American foodways during the colonial and early Republic eras; West African foodways; African-American foodways during slavery; and current trends in Virginia foodways. Primary sources consulted for this study included archaeological reports, eighteenth and nineteenth century personal accounts, personal interviews, and published cookbooks. Drawing on these research themes, this study concludes that West African food traditions did survive slavery and have affected foodways across cultural lines in Virginia and calls for further research on post Civil War transmission processes.

In the fall of 1956 Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee became the first public school in the south to desegregate. This paper examines how the quiet southern town handled the difficult task of forced integration while maintaining a commitment to the preservation of law and order. As the strength of a community was being tested, ordinary citizens in extraordinary circumstances met the challenges of integration with exceptional courage.

This project used primary historical documents from the Jessie A. Ackermann collection at ETSU's Archives of Appalachia, other books and documents from the temperance period, and recent scholarship on the subjects of temperance, suffrage, and women travelers and civilizers. As the second world missionary for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, Ackermann traveled in order to establish WCT Unions and worked as a civilizer, feminist, and reporter of the conditions of women and the disadvantaged throughout the world.

Perhaps no country at the present time has a richer unexplored fount of folk music than has Mexico. In fact. her rich store of musical culture, like a vast mine scarcely worked entitles her to a position among those peoples whose folk music has long been firmly established. Finding the source material on the music of Mexico for the most part, fragmentary and scattered, the writer decided to do serious research in translating from the early Spanish writers, and in reading the chronicles of the travelers of that early period, as well as the historical writings and the legendary lore of the Indian inhabitants. The summer of 1934 was spent in delightful study in Mexico in The Seminar of The Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America, of which Dr. Hubert Herring is the leader. The result of this activity is this compilation of facts on The Development of Mexican Music, which is by no means an exhaustive history, but represents, however, a careful investigation and selection of that material which is most valuable for the student of music in particular, as well as for the general reader interested in factual material. In this volume on The Development of Mexican Music it has been the endeavor of the author to assemble the chronological references to the music of Mexico from the earliest available records of the indigenous music of the semi-savage tribes to the information that is furnished us by the contemporary writers on the music existent at the present moment. Beginning with the culture of the earliest peoples, who were noted for their unusual rhythmic sense in music, the process has been one of tracing the gradual development of a rounded musical art - of presenting the indigenous background, the profound influence of the Spanish Conquest and subsequent changes wrought upon that artistic amalgamation by social, economic and political developments. In short, our path has led us from the musical achievements of the Aztecs to the present worthy achievements of Mexico's great artists and composers. It is the earnest hope of the author that this research on The Development of Mexican Music will be useful reference material and may stimulate the readers to further interest and research, thus leading to a better understanding and more friendly appreciation of this phase of Mexican culture. Our efforts are dedicated to those friends of Mexico everywhere who are appreciative of the fine rhythmical culture that is Mexican.

This "Annotated Bibliography of Literary Mormon Humor" includes over five hundred sources, cross-referenced to pertinent commentary and criticism, and divided into seven sections: "Humor in Mormon Fiction," "Humor in Mormon Non-Fiction," "Mormon Criticism Assessing ‘Inside Humor,’" "Gentile Criticism of the Saints' Humor," "Gentile Humor About Mormons," "Mormon Criticism of Gentile Humor," and "Mormon Internet Humor," all made accessible to scholars by a comprehensive index of more than one thousand topics. The author has filed selected photocopied pages of alphabetized, annotated items by author, or chronologically as periodicals, into a twenty-volume Archive of Mormon Humor in Literature, housed at the Center for Study of Christian Values in Literature, 3076E JKHB, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. The introduction includes the author's survey of recent trends in Mormon literary humor.This compilation of Mormon humor and literary criticism conclusively dispels the notion that Mormons are humorless. Indeed, this bibliography convincingly documents the fact that the Mormon people enjoy laughing at themselves.

Moab, located in southeastern Utah, began as an agricultural village, in accordance with the economy of early Utah. However, Moab's growth was limited by a restricted physical site. The purpose of this study is to trace the development of the economic functions of Moab in relation to its resource base. Despite the physical limitations of the area, agriculture remained the chief economic activity up to the mid-twentieth century. Periodic booms in speculative mining were only temporary and not significant to the permant economy of the community.However, in the 1950s, a spectacular uranium boom brought unprecedented growth to the town. As the uranium boom slackened, economic and population decline threatened the town's new status. Potash production and tourist-service industries emerged to buoy up the sagging economy. Although the economy was aided by the addition of other activities, the sectors of the economy still remained disproportionately unbalanced in comparison to the norm. The future economic stability of the community remains questionable unless balance can be attained.

Although John C. Fremont had traveled through Wayne County, Utah, in the winter of 1853-54, it was not until 1874 that the first herd of cattle was introduced to Rabbit Valley. Reports soon circulated that here was a new land, conducive to the raising of livestock, and in 1876 about a dozen families entered the valley and began settlement. Families that moved into this area came from various places. Each settler came to make a new life, and came independently of the others. In 1895 the population was nearly 2,000, and by 1970 it had dropped to 1,486.The Church did not initiate the settlement of Wayne County, Utah, as was happening in other areas, but it still had a great deal of influence because bishops, stake presidents, and other ecclesiastical officers performed both civil and religious functions.The purpose of this work was to provide a written record of the early history of the settlement and development of Wayne County, Utah.