Browsing by Author "Cramer, Kevin"

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    The arsenal of democracy drops a stitch : WWII industrial mobilization and the Real Silk Hosiery Mills of Indianapolis, Indiana
    (2013) Wilson, Carol Marie; Morgan, Anita A.; Robertson, Nancy Marie, 1956-; Cramer, Kevin
    Conventional interpretations of WWII hold that the war brought the United States out of the Great Depression and laid the path for future economic prosperity. However, this was not the case for all businesses and industries. During WWII, unprecedented production output was required of U.S. industries to supply the great “Arsenal of Democracy.” Industrial mobilization required the creation of new agencies and commissions to manage the nation’s resources. These organizations created policies that deeply impacted U.S. industries involved in war production. Policies governing such areas as the allocation of raw materials, transportation of finished goods, and distribution of war contracts created challenges for businesses that often resulted in lost productivity and in some cases, loss of profitability. Government regulation of the labor force and labor problems such as labor shortages, high absenteeism and turnover rates, and labor disputes presented further challenges for businesses navigating the wartime economy. Most studies of WWII industrial mobilization have focused on large corporations in high priority industries, such as the aircraft, petroleum, or steel industries, which achieved great success during the war. This thesis presents a case study of The Real Silk Hosiery Mills of Indianapolis, Indiana, a company that is representative of small and mid-sized companies that produced lower priority goods. The study demonstrates that the policies created by the military and civilian wartime agencies favored large corporations and had a negative affect on some businesses like Real Silk. As such,the economic boost associated with the war did not occur across the board.
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    Belgian Soldiers’ Perceptions of the Enemy during the First World War, 1914 - 1918
    (2009) Lambrecht, Jeroen; Cramer, Kevin; Schneider, William H.; Little, Monroe H.
    The First World War was a long stalemated war in which millions of men fought and died. Many studies have looked at the reasons soldiers fought and stopped fighting. In this study, the perceptions that Belgian soldiers had of their enemy, Germany, are looked at. The Belgian army was stationed on a small part of the front at the coast, the last part of Belgium that is un-occupied. The war can be divided into three phases: the first phase is the invasion until the Germans were stopped, the second begins with the stalemate and the development of trench warfare on the Western Front, and the third and last phase is the pushing back of the Germans and final victory. In the first phase with the invasion and brutality of the Germans in Belgium, Belgian soldiers formed a view of Germans as barbarians, capable of anything. With the second phase the perceptions started to diverge among the men, depending on experience and surroundings of the soldiers; some get use to their new environment, old and new conflicts resurfaced, Germans faded into the background. On the other hand the war was still going on, violence of war was all around them, and brothers in arms were killed. In the third phase soldiers became enthusiastic again because of the prospect of being able to go home. With the ending of the war old grudges were not settled. The Peace treaty was not what was expected. A lot of memorials built at the time reflected views of Germany that very explicitly highlighted their perceived misbehavior, especially at the beginning on the war. Naturally this led to tensions between Belgium and Germany. Many Belgians never forgot what happened during the war, nor let go of their views that were formed.
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    "Churches in the Vanguard:" Margaret Sanger and the Morality of Birth Control in the 1920s
    (2015-03-30) Maurer, Anna C.; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Cramer, Kevin; Lantzer, Jason S.
    Many religious leaders in the early 1900s were afraid of the immoral associations and repercussions of birth control. The Catholic Church and some Protestants never accepted contraception, or accepted it much later, but many mainline Protestants leaders did change their tune dramatically between the years of 1920 and 1931. This investigation seeks to understand how Margaret Sanger was able to use her rhetoric to move her reform from the leftist outskirts and decadent, sexual connotations into the mainstream of family-friendly, morally virtuous, and even conservative religious approval. Securing the approval of religious leaders subsequently provided the impetus for legal and medical acceptance by the late-1930s. Margaret Sanger used conferences, speeches, articles, her magazine (Birth Control Review), and several books to reinforce her message as she pragmatically shifted from the radical left closer to the center and conservatives. She knew the power of the churches to influence their members, and since the United States population had undeniably a Judeo-Christian base, this power could be harnessed in order to achieve success for the birth control movement, among the conservative medical and political communities and the public at large. Despite the clear consensus against birth control by all mainline Christian churches in 1920, including Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, the decade that followed would bring about a great divide that would continue to widen in successive decades. Sanger put forward many arguments in her works, but the ones which ultimately brought along the relatively conservative religious leaders were those that presented birth control not as a gender equity issue, but rather as a morally constructive reform that had the power to save and strengthen marriages; lessen prostitution and promiscuity; protect the health of women; reduce abortions, infanticide, and infant mortality; and improve the quality of life for children and families. Initially, many conservatives and religious leaders associated the birth control movement with radicals, feminists, prostitutes, and promiscuous youth, and feared contraception would lead to immorality and the deterioration of the family. Without the threat of pregnancy, conservatives feared that youth and even married adults would seize the opportunity to have sex outside of marriage. Others worried the decreasing size of families was a sign of growing selfishness and materialism. In response, Sanger promoted the movement as a way for conservatives to stop the rising divorce rates by strengthening and increasing marriages, and to improve the lives of families by humanely increasing the health and standard of living, for women and children especially. In short, she argued that birth control would not lead to deleterious consequences, but would actually improve family moral values and become an effective humanitarian reform. She recognized that both liberals and conservatives were united in hoping to strengthen the family, and so she emphasized those virtues and actively courted those same conservative religious leaders that had previously shunned birth control and the movement. Throughout the 1920s, she emphasized the ways in which birth control could strengthen marriages and improve the quality of life of women and children, and she effectively won over the relatively conservative religious leaders that she needed to bring about the movement’s public, medical, and political progress.
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    The Clowes Family in World War II: 1939 to 1945
    (2019-09) Barriger, Ashly; Haberski, Raymond; Cramer, Kevin; Morgan, Anita
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    Conflicted Duty on the Indiana Home Front: A Family’s Civil War Story
    (2020-01) Tanzer, Anastasia; Morgan, Anita; Cramer, Kevin; Robertson, Nancy Marie
    This project looks at the Ketcham family of Indianapolis and analyzes how each member had a different sense of duty that led them to take on different activities during the Civil War. It includes both a typical thesis portion and a public history supplement that takes the form of an exhibit brief. The supplement provides an alternate means of presenting the family to the public. The Ketchams were a white, upper-class family, so although many of their ideas and activities aligned with those of others across the northern United States, in this thesis I argue that they also had a unique experience. For example, the matriarch, Jane Merrill Ketcham, chose to serve as a nurse, as did many other women, but her decision took precedence over her husband’s preference. This assertion was noteworthy because, during this time period, women were still typically expected to defer to their fathers or husbands. This conclusion, and others throughout the project, are based on an analysis of both primary and secondary sources. The main primary sources used were the letters included in the Ketcham collection at the Indiana Historical Society, which provided insight to the thoughts, opinions, and activities of most family members – some members had fewer surviving letters than others. Scholarship regarding the Civil War from national, regional, and local perspectives allowed for a fuller picture of what the prevailing views and activities were and understand how the Ketchams were either emblematic of the common experience or different from it.
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    The Eugenic Origins of Indiana's Muscatatuck Colony: 1920-2005
    (2020-09) Bragg, Abigail Nicole; Nelson, Elizabeth; Morgan, Anita; Cramer, Kevin
    This thesis examines the widely unknown history and origins of Muscatatuck Colony, located in Butlerville, Indiana. The national eugenics movement impacted the United States politically, medically, legally, and socially. While the United States established mental institutions prior to the eugenics movement, many institutions, including ones in Indiana, were founded as eugenic tools to advance the agenda of achieving a “purer” society. Muscatatuck was one such state institution founded during this national movement. I explore various elements that made the national eugenics movement effective, how Indiana helped advance the movement, and how all these elements impacted Muscatatuck’s founding. I investigate the language used to describe people that were considered “mentally inferior,” specifically who the “feeble-minded” were and how Americans were grouped into this category. I research commonly held beliefs by eugenicists of this time-period, eugenic methods implemented, and how these discussions and actions led to the establishment of Muscatatuck in 1920. Muscatatuck Colony, though a byproduct of the national eugenics movement, outlived this scientific effort. Toward the mid and late twentieth century, Muscatatuck leadership executed institutional change to best reflect American society’s evolving thoughts on mental health and how best to treat people with mental disabilities. Muscatatuck Colony reveals a complicated narrative of how best to treat or care for people within these institutions, a complex narrative that many mental institutions share.
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    From Revolutionary War heroes to navy cruisers : the role of public history and military history in Vincennes, Indiana
    (2012) Pfeiffer, David Michael; Scarpino, Philip V.; Cramer, Kevin; Shrum, Rebecca K.
    This thesis looks at the role that public history, expressed through civic pride and public memory, and military history have played in shaping the history of Vincennes, Indiana, from the battle fought by George Rogers Clark to the memorial named after him and finally with the four United States Navy ships named Vincennes.
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    HBO and the Holocaust: Conspiracy, the historical film, and public history at Wannsee
    (2016-12) Johnson, Nicholas K.; Haberski, Raymond J.; Carstensen, Thorsten; Cramer, Kevin
    In 2001, Home Box Office aired Conspiracy, a dramatization of the infamous Wannsee Conference organized by Reinhard Heydrich and Adolf Eichmann. The Conference took place in Berlin on 20 January 1942 and was intended to coordinate the Final Solution by asserting the dominance of Heydrich and the SS over other governmental departments. The surviving Wannsee Protocol stands as one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for the Third Reich’s genocidal intent and emblematic of its shift from mass shootings in the occupied East to industrial-scale murder. Conspiracy, written by Loring Mandel and directed by Frank Pierson, is an unusual historical film because it reenacts the Wannsee Conference in real time, devoid of the usual clichés prevalent throughout Holocaust films. It also engages with historiographical arguments and makes a few of its own. This thesis argues that dramatic film has been relatively ignored by the public history field and uses Conspiracy as a case study for how dramatic film and television can be used to further the goals of public history, especially that of making complex and difficult histories accessible to wide audiences. Grounded in a thorough reading of script drafts, production notes, HBO meeting minutes, and correspondence, this thesis examines Conspiracy from the vantage point of scholarship in public history, film studies, and Holocaust studies. It details the film’s production history, the sources used for the film, the claims it makes, and advocates for dramatic film as a powerful public history outlet. Ultimately, this thesis argues that Conspiracy is exactly the type of historical film that historians should be making themselves.
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    "How Others Have Built": A Sketch of Indianapolis Construction and Demolition Patterns
    (2018-12) Ryan, Jordan B.; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand; Barrows, Robert G.; Cramer, Kevin; Selm, William
    This thesis argues that an architectural surveying methodology via newspaper sampling offers new insight historic preservationists can use to more efficiently predict demolitions. Using data collected from the “Home Builder’s Department” section of the Indianapolis Star, this study compiles architectural information on 425 structures, mostly single-family and duplex residences, built between 1909 and 1926. Engaging with the historiographical themes of public history and architectural history as well as methodological components of historic preservation and digital humanities, the data-centric model relies on a collection of sampled newspaper articles, which were analyzed for specific information, compiled into a data repository with supplemental research, and then incorporated into the ArcGIS program for interpretation. The project provides a synopsis on early twentieth century building trends in Indianapolis and offers implications regarding the role that factors such as building type, geographic location, federal and municipal historic district protections, architectural style, and exterior building material or cladding play in predicting demolitions. Beyond these predictive results, this study also suggests a city-wide surveying methodology for organizing and analyzing large quantities of historic architecture for preservation planning initiatives.
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