This dissertation focuses on the interdependency between causality, context and history in selected novels by E.L. Doctorow: The Book of Daniel (1971), Ragtime (1974), Loon Lake (1980), World's Fair (1985) and The Waterworks (1995). Doctorow' s fiction is marked by an apparent paradox: while it underscores fictionalization and sometimes distorts late nineteenth and twentieth century American history, it simultaneously purports to be a valid representation of the past. The novelist's implementation of causality which is a significant component of "the power of freedom", constitutes fiction's ability to convey truth without relying on factuality or "the power of the regime". According to Doctorow, the documented fact is already an interpretation which induces the perception that all documentation is subjective. The author composes fictional contexts that disregard the pretence of reliability in non-fictional texts. Doctorow focuses on how contexts are formed: the contexts are usually defined through the experience of characters who have been exposed to an event or events that were generated by motivations, for example, emotions of fear, racism, conviction, desire and greed, i.e., the catalysts that form history. Each of the novels discussed focuses on various aspects of society and the fate of specific individuals. The Book of Daniel proposes that a human being can only survive physically and spiritually by remaining a social entity. Ragtime focuses on the persistent illusion in history that society is fragmented. The various "faces" of society encountered by the main character in Loon Lake, mirror one another and reflect spiritual poverty. Consequently, Loon Lake demonstrates that the search for personal fulfilment does not require a physical journey, but an inner or spiritual exploration. World's Fair postulates that reality is never exclusively defined by either fortune or misfortune alone. The Waterworks offers perhaps one of the most significant evaluations of history as it perceives that the world in which we live is essentially unknown to us. We have neither the practical means to obtain a total perspective of what occurs in society (especially among politicians and the financially powerful) nor do we have sufficient skills to distinguish what the motivations of individuals' actions really entail. / Thesis (M.A.) Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 2000.

In December of 1915, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported on the death of the patriarch of four generations of Mexican wax figure artists whose artworks demonstrated a century of change in the city of New Orleans. The family's artworks included religious sculptures, representations of indigenous and peasant populations of Mexico, and the merchant populations of the French Quarter. Francisco's artworks represented Louisiana's agriculture at two World's Fairs in New Orleans and Buffalo. Francisco received a contract from Mississippi Commissioner R. H. Henry to produce the 30-foot King Cotton for the 1904 Louisiana Purchase International Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. Though the family's success continued after Francisco's death, an examination into the family's business, artworks, travels, and personal connections during Francisco's lifetime provides a new avenue for exploring the relationship between New Orleans and Mexico in the nineteenth century

This dissertation examines the powerful role that museums played in constructing national art-historical narratives during the 1930s. By concentrating on Three Centuries of American Art—the 1938 exhibition organized by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) for viewing in Paris—I argue that the intertwining of art, political diplomacy, and canon formation uncovered by an analysis of the exhibition reveals American art’s unique role in supporting shared 1930s cultural ideologies. MoMA’s curators created the most comprehensive exhibition to date of the history of American art with works from 1590 through 1938, and with over five hundred architectural models, drawings, films, paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures, and vernacular artworks. With World War II on the horizon, these artworks took on new meaning as the embodiment of the United States. Adding complexity to notions of display, five chapters trace in chronological order how curators, politicians, journalists and art critics reimagined American art in the display, canonization, and reception of Three Centuries of American Art. Chapter 1 gives a synopsis of the exhibition, places it within the larger discourse of American art exhibitions in Paris, and documents how American and French relations developed during this pivotal time. Chapter 2 explores the different meanings ascribed to the artworks during loan negotiations and maps the works’ transportation to Paris. Chapter 3 elaborates on the notion of a unified American art in the 1930s by examining the histories of art created by each of MoMA’s departments. Chapter 4 offers the first substantive historiography of 1930s publications that examined American art across media to determine instances when MoMA curators echoed prior histories and when they deviated from them at a moment when scholars disputed the merit of such disciplinary histories. Chapter 5 grapples with the means by which audiences first learned about Three Centuries of American Art and unearths what American and international critics wrote about the exhibition. In sum, Three Centuries of American Art provides a model to understand how MoMA curators inserted their histories of American art into the emerging art historical discourse and how government agencies invested them with political meaning during the critical interwar period. / 2018-08-11T00:00:00Z

Please note: this work is permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link and fill out the appropriate web form. / Poems written by Sean Beckett, many inspired by walks with his father, William Stewart Beckett, in 2020-2021. / 2999-01-01T00:00:00Z

This body of work explores the World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 and looks at how African American challenge the built environment of the Fair. The African American community contested the white constructed spaces by reimaging and claiming them for the self. At the Fair, black subordination was achieved and was maintained by the unabashed use of white power structures. After Reconstruction Black people began to turn to racial solidarity as a means of survival. Prior to Emancipation Blacks had been segregated and denied equal participation in the larger society regardless of their individual achievements. The result has been that race pride had, to a large degree, been conspicuously absent. The Fair pushed African Americans towards greater solidarity through inadvertently promoting pride in their racial heritage. Through examining the Fair, this work illuminates that the World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 served as a nexus for pivotal African American movements. I argue that the fair served as a turning point for African Americans and sparked radical movements that focused on Black independence at home and abroad. The Fair became a pivotal site of protest that paved the way for the Black Nationalist Movement, Pan-African Movement, the creation of the National Association of Colored Women, and the New Negro Movement.

In this dissertation, I wrestle with how literature has helped frame how modern cities have been understood, and how neighborhood change within them has been interpreted, since the dawn of the modern city in the early twentieth century U.S. Moving from Chicago at the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition to 1920s Harlem, to postwar Chicago, then back again to 1960s-era Harlem before focusing on the first “brownstoning” era in Brooklyn, I analyze how literature has shaped and contested the terms through which urban neighborhood change was and still is understood—terms like “community,” “integration,” “segregation,” and, on a more housing-specific note, “tenements” and “slums.” Its aim is to demonstrate the necessity of applying close reading to cities in order to understand and address urban problems appropriately in light of their context(s). It also seeks to illustrate how literature can be and has been used as a tool for imagining more equal and more just forms of cities, forms occasionally reached for but never fully attained.

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Ce mémoire propose l’étude de l’exposition universelle de Paris 1900 par l’analyse discursive des articles de journaux, de La Presse et de La Patrie qui se penchent sur l’évènement. En ce sens, notre étude se situe au croisement de différents champs historiographiques. Le milieu de la presse imprimée subit d’importants changements dans la seconde moitié du 19e siècle autant en ce qui concerne le contenu des journaux que les planches en elles-mêmes. Les expositions universelles, ces « lieux-moments », évoluent également et culminent en cette célébration du 19e siècle se déroulant à Paris en 1900. Plusieurs questions de recherche animent ce mémoire, notamment : quel traitement la presse réserve-t-elle au Québec et au Canada français à l’exposition? Quelle est la place de l’Autre dans les articles? Y a-t-il des différences dans le contenu des articles qui portent sur les nations européennes et ceux qui se penchent sur la présence, à l’exposition, des colonies et des pays de ce qu’on appelait l’Orient? Dans un premier temps, le corpus de sources médiatiques est sujet à une rapide analyse quantitative qui nous permet de classer les articles dans différentes catégories soit, publicités, articles politiques, articles de divertissement et chroniques. Cette première étape de l’analyse nous permet de prendre le pouls du poids qu’occupe l’exposition universelle dans les quotidiens étudiés. L’analyse discursive de ces articles de journaux nous permet, dans un second temps, de relever certains aspects de la présence canadienne à l’exposition. Ils nous éclairent sur le contenu de l’exposition ainsi que sur l’image que le Canada cherche à projeter de lui- même sur la scène internationale. Le discours de presse témoigne ainsi de la volonté du Canada de s’élever au niveau des autres nations euroaméricaines « civilisées », comme la France, l’Allemagne ou encore les États-Unis. D’un autre côté, il éclaire également sur la perception que le Canada se fait de l’Autre racialisé puisqu’il rend compte de l’exposition des populations colonisées, régulièrement tenu pendant les expositions universelles du tournant du 20e siècle. En ce sens, le discours de presse entretient des relations de pouvoir inégal fondées sur une justification de la domination coloniale ancrée dans un racialisme scientifique européen. / This M.A thesis studies the Paris 1900 World’s Fair through the analysis of newspaper articles in La Presse and La Patrie. In doing so, this research situates itself at the crossroads of numerous historiographical fields. In the second half of the 19th century, both the press and the World’s Fair undergo significant changes. These changes affects newspapers in the way they look and are printed, but also in their content. For the World’s Fair, they evolve and culminate in the celebration of the 19th century in Paris in 1900. The changes affecting the press and the World’s Fair beg questions such as : How is the press talking about the presence of Quebec and French Canada at the Fair? What place do the Others take in the press discourse regarding the Fair? Is there a difference between the discourse surrounding the European nations, and those that are viewed as « Oriental » nations at the Fair? Firstly the newspaper articles that make up our body of sources are separated into four different categories: advertising, political articles, entertainment articles and chronicles. This analysis, though not exhaustive, will examine the significance that the Paris 1900 Wold’s Fair had in the La Presse and La Patrie newspapers. Secondly, the discursive analysis of these articles helps us understand the way Canada presents itself at the Fair. The press reveals how the Canadian exhibits were displayed, and consequently how the country tried to present itself on the international stage. The newspaper’s discourse also illustrates Canada’s will to appear on the same level as other euroamerican « civilized » nations, such as France, Germany or even the United- States, both culturally and economically. Also, the newspaper exposes how Canada perceived the Occident and it’s racialized view of other races. The later are often exhibited during the Fair in « human spectacles » that occasionally take place throughout the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Canada’s presentation of itself at the World’s Fair and the broad strokes of Canada’s ideals at the time, as shown through the newspaper articles, demonstrates unequal racial power relationships stemming from the justification of Occident’s colonial domination grounded in a European scientific racialism.

This thesis explores the potential impact of a World’s Fair on urban mobility in Los Angeles County by 2022. A brief historical account of World’s Fairs, and their impact on technological innovations in transportation will be given in conjunction with the development of transportation in Los Angeles. These accounts will help to contextualize an analysis of current plans to provide Los Angeles with transportation solutions, in light of the oversaturated automobile landscape in place today. Specifically, my research has revealed that the further development of light-speed rail systems paired alongside a mass adoption of autonomous vehicles would both alleviate contemporary transportation issues across Los Angeles County and accommodate the audience of international spectators that future mega-events may attract. Particular attention is paid to the Los Angeles World’s Fair for its ability to galvanize the resources and support that these transportation innovations require. I therefore conclude that the Los Angeles World Fair should direct its focus principally in support of these aforementioned technologies, as opposed to other less feasible transportations solutions such as the Hyperloop.