The following work examines the personal diplomacy between James A. Baker, III and Eduard A. Shevardnadze at the end of the 1980s and early 1990s and their cooperation that led to the initiation of a new peace process in the Middle East inaugurated by the Madrid Conference of 1991. The paper addresses the importance of the personal element in international diplomacy and situates it in the context of a particular time framework that marked the end of the Cold War and which resulted in significant geopolitical changes across the globe. While recognizing the importance of larger events, such as the attempts to restructure the Soviet economy and society, this thesis argues for the significance of the personal relationship between James A. Baker, III and Eduard A. Shevardnadze in establishing a cooperative response to Iraqs invasion of Kuwait and, ultimately, to laying the groundwork for the Madrid Peace Conference. The research was conducted based on government sources, personal accounts, interviews, including personal interviews with former USSR Minister of Foreign Affairs and ex-President of Georgia, Eduard A. Shevardnadze, and former U.S. Ambassador to Senegal, Mark Johnson, as well other primary and secondary sources in English, Russian, and Georgian languages available at the time.

A historical/biographical analysis of the connection between creativity and a variety of psychoses including: syphilis, epilepsy, schizophenia and manic-depression/bi-polar disorder. The figures examined are Gustave Flaubert, Hector Berlioz, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath.

This thesis examines the cultural and political development of Liberal Catholicism in modern Italy. The events of the Risorgimento had deprived the Catholic Church of her temporal power in 1860 after the Second War of Italian Unification. Pius IX then promulgated Non expedit. The encyclical refused to recognize the Kingdom of Italy and forbade Italian Catholics from participating in local or national elections in the new liberal regime. In fin de siècle Italy, the Church consistently pursued anti-nationalist, reactionary policies, but there were many Catholic laymen who believed that the survival of the Catholic Church in the modern world depended on her capacity to adapt to modern civilization. An analysis of the life and works of Antonio Fogazzaro illustrates one of the many possibilities for political Catholicism in fin de siècle Italy. Fogazzaro came of age during this revolutionary period in the Catholic Church, and through his most important novels, Daniele Cortis, Il piccolo mondo antico, and Il Santo, he offered Italian Catholics a way of thinking about political Catholicism in an ostensibly apolitical Church. After the publication of Il Santo in 1905, Fogazzaro received condemnation from the Congregation of the Index. In his ninety-three-page encyclical Pascendi di dominici gregis of 8 September 1907, Pius X then denounced him in the modernist controversy. Ultimately, Fogazzaro accepted the judgments of the Holy Tribunal and remained attached the Catholic tradition he revered. His works represent a departure from religious traditionalism and literalism as well as a move toward the development of liberal Catholicism in modern Italy.

This thesis considers Confederate disaffection and disloyalty in North Carolina?s northwestern foothills; particularly Forsyth, Stokes, Surry, Yadkin, and Wilkes Counties. In so doing, this thesis adds to a growing collection of social histories and community studies that question Southern loyalties during the Civil War, and suggest that social, religious, and political factors, as well as war weariness contributed to anti-Confederate thought and behavior. Prewar Unionism and overwhelming opposition to secession before mid-April 1861 prevented the foothill counties from wholly devoting themselves to the Confederacy. Consequently, uncommitted foothill citizens rejected the Confederacy once faced with the Richmond government?s unpopular wartime measures. Relentless hardships on the homefront additionally deepened regional dissatisfaction. In reaction, the foothill?s disaffected population viewed the Confederate national government and North Carolina?s original secessionists who encouraged the war as their primary enemies. In response, the region?s anti-Confederates disloyally rebelled against the Richmond government, North Carolina?s pro-war politicians, and the Southern war effort from April 1862 until the end of the war.

James Morris Lawson, Jr. grew up in Massillion, Ohio, in a loving Christian home. He became a pacifist at an early age after a memorable encounter with racism. As he matured, he studied nonviolence from the perspectives of Jesus Christ and the great Indian revolutionary, Mohandas Gandhi. After meeting the famous Christian pacifist, A. J. Muste, Lawson became a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and a conscientious objector to war. He spent fourteen months in a federal prison after refusing to be drafted into the U.S. military. After prison, Lawson worked in India as a missionary and learned nonviolent direct action strategies from Gandhi?s followers.Inspired by the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Lawson left India and returned to America in 1956 to join the struggle to end racial segregation in America. That same year, Lawson met Martin Luther King, Jr. and upon King?s request, moved to the South to teach nonviolence. Lawson eventually settled in Nashville, Tennessee, to teach nonviolence to a group of young men and women who would become some of the most important ?leaders? in the American Civil Rights Movement. James Lawson made a significant contribution to the student sit-in movement of 1960 by teaching a new idea?nonviolent direct action?to an elite group of student activists. However, his influence has been ignored by most histories of the movement. The following essay brings this elusive figure to the forefront and highlights his impact on the first wave of student activists who spearheaded the nonviolent campaign to overturn segregation.

Paul-Henri Thiry, Baron dâHolbach (1723-1789) was an important figure in the Enlightenment and has been a permanent fixture in Enlightenment scholarship throughout the twentieth century. Yet, while this scholarship has generally recognized dâHolbachâs role in the Enlightenment, he is cited more often for his salon (la Synagogue dâHolbach, la coterie holbachique) than for his thought. This traditional account of dâHolbach is being challenged by more recent scholars who assert the primacy of a âRadical Enlightenmentâ over and above that of a moderate and counter Enlightenment. They regard dâHolbach as the capstone of an intellectual movement that had exhausted its novelty, but they have failed to provide the detailed analysis that would substantiate this claim. I believe that dâHolbachâs magnum opus Système de la Nature combines intellectual traditions in a manner that goes beyond the traditional and current studies of the Enlightenment. An investigation of this work will not only serve to expose the varieties of thought on which dâHolbach based his system, but also show how dâHolbach constructed his system with scientific and philosophical ideas and a specific argumentative strategy. This analysis will show that totalizing syntheses of the Enlightenment have rarely accounted for the tension and diversity of eighteenth-century thought.

Abraham Lincoln has been viewed alternately as a hero of the Union or a tyrant who abused his power. This debate stems in part from Lincolnâs actions regarding civil liberties. Lincoln authorized the suspension of habeas corpus and the military arrest of civilians in his efforts to preserve the Union and prosecute the Civil War. These actions specifically impacted the residents in the Border States of Maryland and Missouri. Not only are Lincolnâs actions a reflection of his personal constitutional philosophy, the subsequent reaction by citizens reveals the popular constitutionalism of the people impacted by the policies. An analysis of the citizen reactions to Lincolnâs civil liberty policies further explores the relationship of dissent and loyalty during wartime.

The execution of a number of clerics at Orléans in 1022 is viewed as a watershed moment in the history of heresy in the West. Five documents bear witness to the events, and each presents problems for historians. The accounts of Adémar of Chabannes and Paul of St Père de Chartres have received more attention than others, since they hint at the presence of dualist heretics in France, whom some historians have sought to link to the dualist Bogomils of Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire. Though the consensus on the origins of heretics in France has shifted to emphasize local conditions in the emergence of heresy, recent document discoveries have revived the debate. Most prominent of these is the so-called âLetter of Héribertâ describing seemingly dualist heretics in Périgord. Previously believed to a twelfth century document, it has recently been discovered in an eleventh-century version. This thesis argues that the âLetterâ describes not dualist heretics, but conscientious Christians taking responsibility for their own salvation. It further contends that this group can be identified as the âManichaeansâ whom Adémar of Chabannes describes as appearing in Aquitaine in 1018, and that when he applied the same label to the heretics of Orléans, he was not truly describing the latter group. The similarities between the doctrines adduced to the heretics and those of the Bogomils are considered, and it is argued that these are due to the influence of Orthodox monks on their Western brethren. Finally, it considers the implications of this for the study of eleventh-century heresy.

From 1965-1968, the United States Army bore the brunt of President Lyndon B. Johnsonâs military escalation of the Vietnam War, while attempting to maintain its Cold War deterrent responsibilities around the globe. While scholars have exhaustively researched the varying aspects of the former, fewer have studied the implications of these decisions on the latter. This paper examines the devastating effects of escalation in Southeast Asia on the armyâs ability to remain prepared and ready to fight another war should one arise anywhere else in the world. Specifically, it traces the downward trend of army readiness as a result of Johnsonâs decision not to call up the reserves until 1968, paired with the rapid expansion of the army from 1 million soldiers in 1965 to 1.5 million in 1968.

This thesis is an examination of the conservation movement, particularly in regards to hydroelectric power, from the Progressive Era through the New Deal. The creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority in 1933 had been premised upon earlier efforts to capture the riverâs power and harness it to meet social needs. By placing women at the center of the story, both in terms of their activism in bringing a conservation plan in the Tennessee River valley into fruition, and in terms of the gendered implications of the Tennessee Valley Authorityâs power policy, this thesis seeks to examine the invisible role that the construction of power politics had on the South.