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History Department Theses
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This collection represents the research of IUPUI history master's degree scholars. Areas of research include United States History, European History, and Public History, as well as dual degree research--combining an M.A. degree in history with a master's degree in either library science or philanthropic studies. Also included is research as part of the Graduate Certificate programs in Museum Studies and Professional Editing.
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Item The 1901 Fort Wayne, Indiana City Election: A Political Dialogue of Ethnic Tension(2013) Brown, Nancy Eileen; Wokeck, Marianne Sophia; Snodgrass, Michael; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand, 1947-In 1901, three German American candidates ran for the office of mayor in Fort Wayne, Indiana. The winner, Henry Berghoff, had emigrated from Germany as a teenager. This thesis examines the election discourse in the partisan press for signs of ethnic tension. The first chapter places Fort Wayne in historical context of German immigration and Indiana history. The second and third chapters investigate the editorial pages for evidence of ethnic tension. I also reference a few articles of an editorial nature outside of the editorial pages. The second chapter provides background information about the election and examines indications of the candidates’ ethnicity and references to the German language papers. The third chapter considers the editorial comment about Germany, the intertwining of ethnicity and the issues, and ethnic name-calling. In order to identify underlying bias for or against Germany and to better understand the context of the references to German ethnicity, the fourth chapter explores the portrayal of Germany in the Fort Wayne papers.Item "According to the custom of the country": Indian marriage, property rights, and legal testimony in the jurisdictional formation of Indiana settler society, 1717-1897(2011) Schwier, Ryan T.; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand, 1947-; Bodenhamer, David J.; Magliocca, Gerard N.This study examines the history of Indian-settler legal relations in Indiana, from the state’s pre-territorial period to the late-nineteenth century. Through a variety of interdisciplinary sources and methods, the author constructs a broad narrative on the evolution and co-existence of Native and non-Native customary legal systems in the region, focusing on matters related to marriage, property rights, and testimony. The primary thesis—which emphasizes reciprocally formative relations, rather than persistent conflict—suggests that Indiana’s pre-modern legal past involved an ad hoc yet highly effective process of cultural brokerage, reciprocity and inter-personal accommodation. That the American Indians lost much of their self-governing status following the period of contact is clear; however, a closer look at the ways in which nations historically defined, exercised, asserted, and shared jurisdiction, reveals a more intricate story of influence, authority, and concession. During the French and British colonial and American territorial periods, settler society adjusted to and often accommodated Native concepts of law and justice. Through a complex order of social obligations and community-based enforcement mechanisms, a shared set of rules and jurisdictional practices merged, forming a hybrid system of Indian-settler norms that bound these individuals across the cultural divide. When Indiana entered the Union in 1816, legal pluralism defined jurisdictional practice. However, with the nineteenth-century rise of legal positivism—the idea of law as the sole command of the nation-state, a sovereign entity vested with exclusive authority—territorial jurisdiction and legal uniformity became guiding principles. Many jurists viewed the informal, pre-existing custom-based regulatory structures with contempt. With the shift to a state-centered legal order, lawmakers established strict standards for recognizing the law of the “other,” ultimately rejecting the status of the tribes as equal sovereigns and forcing them to concede jurisdiction to the settler polity.Item Advertising to the elite : the role of innovation of fine art in advertising in the development of the advertising industry(2015-12) Brown, Margaret E.; Wokeck, Marianne S.; Monroe, Elizabeth Brand; Robertson, Nancy M.This study explores the intersection of the developments in the growing advertising, railroad, and automotive sectors of the U.S. economy. It examines the latter two sectors’ advertising to the elite by focusing on how industries that targeted the luxury market used fine art to emphasize and underscore the exceptionalism of that high-end market compared with the mass market. It does so by looking at the transition from using art as a decorative component unrelated to the product to using art specifically designed to advertise a product or experience. In the literature, advertising history has been delineated rather narrowly as the history of advertising to the mass consumer or as the history of advertising a specific type of product. This work broadens the focus in advertising history to show that luxury advertisers, as a sub-category of advertisers, developed particular advertising strategies, which recognized and exploited the relationship between their respective service or product, and a consciously selected audience for their respective advertisements. It shows that high art became a differentiating characteristic of advertising strategies aimed at the social elite market. This work also proposes the need for adding a specific timeline for the development of luxury advertising to the broad, more generally known outline of advertising history.Item African-American Hospitals and Health Care in Early Twentieth Century Indianapolis, Indiana, 1894-1917(2016-05) Erickson, Norma B.; Labode, Modupe Gloria; Schneider, William H.; Barrows, Robert G.At the end of the nineteenth century, the African-American population of Indianapolis increased, triggering a need for health care for the new emigrants from the South. Within the black population, some individuals pursued medical degrees to become physicians. At the same time, advances in medical treatment—especially surgical operations—shifted the most common site of care from patients’ homes to hospitals. Professionally trained nurses, mostly white, began to replace family members or untrained African-American nurses who previously delivered care to Black patients. Barriers of racial segregation kept both the Black doctors and Black nurses from practicing in the municipal City Hospital in Indianapolis. To remedy this problem, the city's African-American leaders undertook establishing healthcare institutions with nurse training schools during the first few years of the twentieth century. This thesis argues that the healthcare institution-building that occurred in the early twentieth century offered opportunities for the practice of self-help in the Black community. The institutions also created a bridge for Black-white relations because the Black hospitals attracted the support of prominent white leaders. Good health and health care for the sick or injured were necessary to achieve racial uplift, and healthcare consumption became an indicator of social status and economic success. Racially segregated institutions afforded doctors and nurses a chance to increase their expertise and prove they were capable of functioning in the public hospital system. After a decade of working in separate institutions, the Black community prepared to push for full access to the city's tax-supported City Hospital as a civil right.Item "Americans All?" - Messages in Miniature(2023-07) Bennett, Janna Merrill; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Kelly, Jason M.; Shrum, Rebecca K.A small white-collar project of the Works Progress Administration project called the Museum Extension Project (MEP) operated in the latter half of the 1930s in at least twenty-four states including Indiana. A product of this visual aid program was the twelve-inch miniature figure dressed in clothing to reflect periods in US history or countries or cultures throughout the world. Museum and Indiana school educators used the MEP figures, as part of a broader intercultural learning agenda, to demonstrate or encourage ethnic appreciation and inclusion, while also fostering “otherness”–all in the safety of classrooms and informal educational settings. The figures simultaneously expanded the definition of membership in a majority white cultural group by adding and validating recent white immigrants while they continued to differentiate “the other”–Black and Native Americans as well as non-European immigrants through the cultural construct of race. These miniature figures allowed students to learn about the ethnic populations of their state and made the world available to all. At the same time, they prescribed the role of “other” to Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, the inhabitants of South and Central American countries, and those perceived as “non-white” peoples in places like Palestine and Egypt. This research examines educational philosophy in the first quarter of the twentieth century combined with the material culture analysis of these figures to demonstrate how three-dimensional objects were powerful educational tools.Item 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, KevinConventional 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.Item Augustine and the Trinity vision in the Vita Sancti Augustini Imaginibus Adornata(2013) Slaymaker, Peter James Victor; Saak, Eric Leland; Whitchurch, Gail Gráinne; Lee, JenniferItem An Average Regiment: A Re-Examination of the 19th Indiana Volunteer Infantry of the Iron Brigade(2016) Crocker, Jared Anthony; Saak, Eric; Morgan, Anita J.; Towne, StephenThe 19th Indiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment is one of the most famous regiments of the Civil War through its membership in the Iron Brigade of the Union Army of the Potomac. This brigade has been hailed as an elite unit of the Civil War. This thesis is a regimental history which critically examines the socio-economic profile of the 19th Indiana and the combat record of the Iron Brigade. This thesis finds that the 19th Indiana is largely reflective of the rest of the Union Army in terms of its socio-economic profile. Also, the combat record of the brigade was not overly successful and not necessarily deserving of being singled out from among the hundreds of other brigades in the Civil War.Item Awkward Alliances and the Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance of 1984(2021-05) Fox, Jonnie Bray; Haberski, Raymond; Robertson, Nancy M.; Shrum, Rebecca K.This thesis examines the motivations behind the advocates and detractors of the Indianapolis Anti-Pornography Ordinance of 1984. It will examine how and why Indianapolis Conservatives, who opposed pornography due to its perceived moral implications, joined forces with a radical feminist to create an ordinance outlawing pornography that utilized the radical feminist argument of pornography’s potential violence. It will explain the national divide between radical and liberal feminists on the issue of pornography and how this is reflected on a local scale through the methods of Indianapolis feminists to contend with violence against women. Through interviews with those associated with the ordinance, it will broaden the understanding of the sides in the debate and how the ordinance was defeated. This thesis will also demonstrate that while the ordinance ultimately failed to be enforced after being signed into law by Mayor Hudnut, it marked a significant moment in not only Indianapolis but the Nation’s history and helped change the course of the pornography debate.Item "Back to the land and all its beauty" : managing cultural resources, natural resources, and wilderness on North Manitou Island, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan(2014) Fredericks, Katelyn V.; Scarpino, Philip V.; Shrum, Rebecca K.; Labode, ModupeThis thesis focuses on the history of human impact on North Manitou Island, Michigan, the management of natural and cultural resources on the island by Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, and the often conflicting beliefs and attitudes about wilderness and cultural resources that influenced (and continue to influence) management of the island by Sleeping Bear’s administrators.