When the United States first joined World War I it had long been without a large standing army, it soon became apparent that there was a need for soldiers and training facilities. To solve this problem, the United States utilized colleges and universities as training camps. Because of its strong military tradition, Louisiana State University (LSU) was mobilized for this purpose. Although this mobilization was a serious turning point in the schools development, not many scholars have written histories of the changes during this time. LSU began as the Seminary of Learning of the State of Louisiana in 1860, but soon changed its name to the Louisiana State Seminary of Learning and Military Academy. The Board of Supervisors pushed for the change because it felt a military system would produce a high level of education and discipline and repay the state by providing military knowledge to its young men. Its first superintendent, William Tecumseh Sherman, and faculty began the long tradition of mixing military discipline with strong academic education. This tradition served LSU well when Congress enacted The National Defense Act of 1916. It standardized military training at colleges and universities through the creation of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) and later its replacement, the Student Army Training Corps (SATC). LSU experienced an easy transition to a military training facility. Mobilization at LSU changed the campus experience. Because many students left to join the fight, student organizations, athletics, commencement, and other activities were adversely impacted with the decreased enrollment. Additional changes included inclusion of war courses in the curriculum, planting campus war gardens, implementing food conservation, fundraising for the war effort, and assisting the Red Cross. Since WWI was a technical war, the government called on faculty to lend their expertise and knowledge in various ways, such as public speaking to gain support for the war, working in military and government agencies, or answering the call to colors.

In this thesis, entitled The False Idealization of Heteronormativity and the Repression of Queerness, I examine heteronormativity as a social structure that is idealized over, and against, queerness. In the first chapter, I define heteronormativity and queerness. Heteronormativity, here, is simply a set of standards that dictate what one must do with their gender and sexuality, such as having sexual relations with the opposite sex, getting married, or having children. Heteronormativity is visible, validated, and normalized in society. Conversely, queerness refers to the social structures that dictate what one must not do with their gender and sexuality. Thus, queerness is condemned, threatened, and prohibited. Furthermore, I argue that all of us have transgressed the social structure of heteronormativity since no one can consistently maintain all that heteronormativity implies. Therefore, we all have embodied queerness in one way or another. However, we have also been systematically taught to repress queerness within ourselves and others in an attempt to reduce our fear of it. Moreover, the widespread repression and fear of queerness in society supports and justifies a hierarchical capitalistic system. Since queerness is devalued and considered inappropriate, those who hold power over us, such as in the workplace, have the right to control and regulate our gender and sexual expression. In the second chapter of my thesis, I turn my attention to Hegels ethical family where parents are obligated to repress their childrens queerness through the use of discipline. In the third and final chapter, I offer a solution to the problem of the repression of queerness. I argue that, if we can recognize that all of us embody queerness in one way or another and if we can allow ourselves the chance to try to understand each others queerness without the impulse to repress it, we can achieve queer solidarity. We will see that our struggle with gender and sexuality under a heteronormative social structure that is enforced all around us is a collective struggle. Therefore, the recognition of each others queerness without the impulse to condemn it can act as a bridge to help us recognize that we are integrally connected to one another.

When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ended The Final Problem with Sherlock Holmes apparent death there was a mass outcry of protest from his fans to the point that myths still circulate about how young Victorian men wore black armbands in mourning. There was a reason why the Holmes stories had such a mass appeal: Sherlock Holmes, brilliant, asexual, emotionally reserved and eminently rational detective that he was, was in many ways the archetype of the ideal Victorian man. As such he struck a very deep chord with British society at the time, the extent of which his creator never quite seemed to have grasped. Given that Sherlock Holmes was a bipolar cocaine addict who would occasionally shoot up the walls of his shared apartment as a salute to the Queen while drinking this probably tells you all you need to know about the Victorians. During the 1920s and 1930s a Shanghai writer by the name of Cheng Xiaoqing wrote a series of stories about a Shanghai-based Chinese master detective character called Huo Sang. Cheng Xiaoqing, who had read the Holmes canon and translated it into Chinese, based his character on Holmes, albeit with Chinese characteristics. The stories were extremely popular in Shanghai at the time but received relatively little critical attention due to being seen as lowbrow literature aimed at popular audiences. More specifically he was classified as a Butterfly-Saturday writer: that is, one who was read avidly but not taken seriously and moreover dismissed by more serious writers as a frivolous distraction from the contemporary issues of the day, dominated by pointless love stories and tales of knight-errantry. Cheng Xiaoqing believed that detective literature could be used as a sort of didactic device to teach the public how to think rationally and be good, modern Chinese citizens, and referred to his detective stories in essays as popular science textbooks in disguise. He argued that while art and literature in general could serve to promote morality, law, order, utility, etc detective stories had an additional kind of value. As he put it, The material of detective stories places a particular emphasis on science and can expand the intelligence and rational mind of human beings, cultivate peoples observation, and increase and improve peoples social experience. The stories are intensely moralistic, with the protagonist frequently commenting or passing judgment on contemporary social issues or debunking superstitions and ghost stories. Just as Holmes served as a sort of ideal British citizen, Huo Sang fulfilled a similar role as a model Republican Chinese citizen. Cheng Xiaoqing clearly had a message and an agenda in mind when he wrote these stories. Given that they proved popular enough to be adapted into at least one movie and a readership sufficient to be serialized in various literary journals for over a decade and a half it would seem that quite a few Chinese people found this message agreeable. Because of this it is worth asking why the stories were well-received and by whom. In doing so we can gain new insight into the thinking of Republican Chinese, particularly somewhat educated urbanites or xiaoshimin of Shanghai. This class, comprised of small merchants, various kinds of clerks and secretaries, high school students, housewives and other modestly educated, marginally well-off urbanites, was above the poor but far below the wealthy and outside the rarified academic circles of the true intellectual class. What they were was inextricably tied with the nucleus of the new Chinese state the Guomindang sought to build using cities like Shanghai as their laboratories. While not having the respectability or credentials of academia or holders of public office they were literate enough to be active consumers of the many newspapers and literary journals that competed for the new urban audience. They also had the leisure time and discretionary spending to seek such diversions and the numbers to make their wallets worth catering to. These were the people who read Cheng Xiaoqings stories and who their message was geared toward. As such, by reading the stories and comparing both the overt moral and political messages contained within and the ways in which the main character himself differs from the original Holmes we can use these stories as a window into the thinking of both the author and his readership and thereby gain new appreciation for the modernization and nation-building process in China prior to the Communist victory in 1949. In particular we can learn about how Western ideas regarding such issues as crime, justice and social disorder were received by the somewhat educated urban population at large.

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In this thesis, I will discuss the influence of education on the identity formation of African American students. Based on the scholarly literature in education theory, I will argue in Bourdieuan theory education, formal education, fails to accommodate the specific needs of African American students because education influences African American students to develop constructions of whiteness" that education reinforces. As education attempts to uphold the status quo of American society, education simultaneously forces African American students to question the relevance of education. In questioning the relevance of education through high-achieving African American students use of language and pursuit of academic achievement, low-achieving African American students offer a critique of education that characterizes education as a white-dominated system where individuals must embody whiteness in order to achieve social acceptance. As a result, African American students choose to disidentify with education rather than to assimilate into White culture to avoid being identified as white− speaking Standard English, following rules and regulations, and maintaining a high grade point average. This critique of education− though not an anti-intellectual response to education because most African Americans still view education as a means to social mobility− signifies education does not educate African American students but instead produces white African American students in order to reproduce societal norms. I will also propose the incorporation of self-knowledge into critical education will facilitate an awareness of personal history and self-worth among African American students not only to disrupt an educational structure of inequality but also to foster a positive self-concept within these students.

Politics in Cornwall in the twentieth century was dominated by the rivalry of two major parties: the Conservatives and the Liberals. Unlike much of the rest of Britain Cornwall retained a different political paradigm in which Labour did not replace the old left, with socialism, and until the modern day this localised duopoly has persisted. This thesis looks at the potentially different reasons why this divergence persists and identifies three possible explanations for this phenomenon: culture, character and campaigns. In Part I of the thesis, there is a comparison of politicians from the past and the attributes that these politicians possessed which are compared with modern day politicians to evaluate their relative strengths. The thesis also assesses historic campaigning as a cause of Liberal success as well as the different nature of Cornwall, with its distance from Westminster and its Celtic and Methodist background, which set it apart from much of the rest of England. Then in Part II, using modern day voter surveys conducted by telephone, this thesis identifies particular peculiarities in Cornwall which would seem to suggest that although there have been traditional cultural ties to Liberalism, mainly through the pre-dominant faith, Methodism, this cleavage towards the modern day Liberal Democrats has changed in nature as cultural reasons have become less significant. It also identifies the importance of so-called personality politics, in the Cornish context, as a key aspect of maintaining and then augmenting support for the party. As such major personalities from historic Cornish politics, such as Isaac Foot and David Penhaligon, are compared to modern day politicians to assess their relative significance. However, the significant majority of the original research conducted across Cornwall, and other parts of the country, attempts to identify whether the resurgence of the Liberal Democrats in the 1997 election, and subsequently, is linked to the campaigning the party conducts rather than these traditional assumptions for their electoral success. Conducting telephone surveys across thirteen parliamentary constituencies, before and after the 2010 general election, from the Highlands of Scotland to West Cornwall, this research identifies that grassroots campaigning, commonly referred to as Rennardism in the most recent past, but more accurately described as Community Politics, is the primary reason for the success of the Liberal Democrats in Cornwall between 1997 and 2010. By assessing not just seats in which the Liberal Democrats have been successful in recent years in Cornwall but also in similar, and different, regions of Britain a better assessment of the value of the party’s successes and failures can be evaluated both in Cornwall and comparatively. The research compares different potential reasons for voters supporting the party but the evidence would seem to suggest that in the period under discussion the party had built substantial levels of campaigning capacity in the target areas for the party and this helped to win all the seats in Cornwall for the Liberal Democrats in 2005. Surveys were conducted before and after the 2010 election and there is also evidence that as the party became a less effective campaigning machine it began to lose support in Cornwall and this helps to explain why the party lost seats in Cornwall in 2010. This thesis adds to the increasing awareness, amongst political scientists, of the significance of local constituency campaigning, in British politics, which has been the subject of debate in this field in recent years. Historically scholars have debated the significance of national swing, with early political scientists, like David Butler and Robert Mackenzie, favouring this explanation to electoral success assessing the general election campaign as being essentially a national one. However, as three and now arguably four or even five party politics is the norm academics such as David Denver, Dennis Kavanagh and Philip Cowley have identified that constituency campaigning matters much more to those parties breaking into the post-war duopoly, than early political scientists have suggested. This thesis evaluates, not just whether there is a local campaign factor in the Liberal Democrats’ success, but whether the volume and penetration of this local campaign matters and, as such, this research is original and forms a unique contribution to academic debate in this field.