Recent ucsb_journalhist items

Joséphine Baker and Eartha Kitt: How Two Americans Became French Icons

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Josephine Baker and Eartha Kitt were Black female entertainers who found great success when they emigrated to Paris. They both sought asylum in France after feeling threatened by racism in America

French citizens were obsessed with jazz, and continued to be into the 1970s. Even during the Great Depression, jazz musicians, who were only hired if they were Black made about $300 per week. One of the most talented of these jazz stars was Baker. Known predominantly for her iconic stage presence, Baker was beloved by the French. With her signature crossed eyes, high energy movements, and beaming smile, Baker graced stage after stage in France.

Kitt’s stage presence and her ability to sing in seven languages propelled her European career forward. She went from being too poor to recognize a banana to favoring beluga caviar. Of course, Kitt had ups and downs in France in the 1950s-1960s. She was also privy to a snide comment or two about the fact that she was mixed...

The Power of Words from Disney to de Gaulle: Gaucho Goofy, BBC, Free France & Argentina’s Second World War Neutrality

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Can the resistance thrive far from the battlefields, in places disconnected from the focal points of conflict? This study examines the intermesh of diplomacy, culture, and resistance in Argentina during World War II, breaking assumptions about neutrality in a country later shadowed by its ties to postwar fleeing Nazi fugitives. Argentina’s undecided wartime stance—fluctuating between official neutrality and Axis sympathies—was molded by U.S.-led propaganda, European colonial-cultural ties, and profound internal divisions. At the heart of all this was Albert Guérin, a WWI veteran and industrialist who led the Free French Committee in Buenos Aires. His grassroots resistance completely diminished geographical boundaries between continents. The committee united ideological factions through BBC broadcasts, distributed over 150,000 propaganda bulletins across Latin America, and significantly bolstered the Allied cause, recognized even by de Gaulle himself. Simultaneously, through the...

Boiling Down the Female Egg Industry and Advertising in Contemporary US History

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Advertisements targeted at intended parents and potential donors use women’s bodies to market a commodity—a female egg. Human eggs became commodified shortly after the first baby was conceived via egg donation and must be understood as a broader shift in reproductive medicine. This shift, combined with the increased cost of education, pushes women to potentially commit to invasive hormone injections, surgeries, and the risk of cancer in exchange for financial compensation. As assisted reproductive practices gained traction in the 1980s, demand for donor eggs surged, and private agencies—not clinics— stepped in as middlemen. To meet the demand, unregulated private egg agencies thrived under limited oversight and targeted college-aged women with ads that did not properly inform women of the risks. In this landscape, human eggs were no longer biological matter but high-value objects exchanged in the free market. Companies, namely YourEggs, adjusted to the societal shift to social...

Knowledge Making and Treatment in Early Modern Recipes: Baker, Woolley, and Shirley.

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Early modern English households produced a vast array of household recipes aimed at treating and preventing a wide variety of illnesses. Recipes were published in well-read books like Hannah Woolley’s The Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, but they were also traded between households, creating a web of social exchange, and tested and tweaked by many recipe makers, illustrating how the home acted as a site of scientific endeavor. These household collections, now being transcripted more and more, have become a helpful source for historians looking at household economies, medical histories, and women’s participation in medicine. In this paper, I aim to contribute to the growing field of early modern recipe research through an analysis of three recipe collections: Hannah Woolley’s published recipes in The Supplement to the Queen-Like Closet, the household recipes of Margaret Baker (approx. 1675), and the recipes of Dorothy Shirley (written approx 1693/4-1721)....

Agency and Mutuality: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Early Jesuit Missions to China

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article investigates the interactions between European and Chinese scholars during Jesuit missions in the sixteenth century, focusing on how both cultures resisted and adapted the new knowledge being presented to them, resulting in a dynamic exchange between two schools of thought. By observing both Chinese and Jesuit primary sources through this lens of academic interchange, this piece presents a new angle of the Jesuit settlements beyond the traditionally Eurocentric perspective that minimized Chinese agency and contributions to the Western world. Through accounts from missionaries, such as Matteo Ricci, it is evident that Jesuit scholars understood Chinese officials would likely be uneased by the presence of Catholic foreigners and resistant to interrupt centuries of spiritual tradition, forcing the Jesuits to barter new academic intellect to remain in the established empire. While the impact of the Jesuit’s in China has been historically highly documented, as seen in...

Sacred Simultaneity: The Hereford Mappa Mundi as a Zwischenform Between Bild and Diagram

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Hereford Mappa Mundi, the largest extant medieval world map, defies easy categorization. While scholars often dismiss it as either a purely symbolic artifact or laud it as a proto-cartographic stepping stone, such binary depictions overlook its core nature. Ultimately, the map is ultimately a zwischenform (in-between form), a hybrid form situated between schematic diagram and narrative image (bild). Drawing on Aristotle’s theory of visual duality and Andrea Worm’s conceptual framework of bild and diagram, this paper analyzes the map’s historical and aesthetic dimensions to argue that it occupies a liminal space in visual thought. Both theological chronology and spatial geography are present, merging sacred history, pseudo-science, and cultural ideology into a single visual artifact. The map’s topographical, ethnological, and zoological distortions function as more than error or ignorance; they reflect a medieval worldview that sought to organize space according to divine order....

The Death of Isolationism: U.S. Foreign Policy and Afghanistan

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The September 11th attacks ignited a new era of American foreign policy–the Global War on Terror. As the United States sought out punishment for those responsible, Americans created a new narrative in which the U.S. played a more centralized role within the deterrence of globalized terrorism. Academic literature published after 9/11 has maintained that the United States became aware of threats from Afghanistan as a result of the 1998 Kenyan and Tanzanian embassy bombings; however, this study argues that the United States government was aware of terrorism from the nation of Afghanistan earlier than 1998 and ignored it in a larger effort to absolve the U.S. from participation in international affairs. While this study does not explain modern events between Afghanistan and the United States, it serves to analyze the pre-existing history between the two nations up to and including 2011 and contribute to existing scholarship about U.S.-Afghan relations.

The Rise and Fall of Boomtowns:Remington-UMC in Bridgeport during the First World War

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Rise and Fall of Boomtowns: Remington-UMC in Bridgeport during WWI" journeys the story of Remington Arms Corporation and how it build Bridgeport into a 'boomtown' during WWI. From a surge of immigration, to the emergence of women in the workforce, and all the socialist ideas spurring clashes between corporations and workers' unions, Bridgeport was a hotbed for all things involving the US war effort throughout the 1910s. Just as much as companies like Remington-UMC built this boomtown, ripple effects from this era are felt to this day by the departure of the company in the 1970-80s, following the national trend of 'white flight' to the suburbs and manufacturing jobs moving abroad. By understanding this story, the hope is that Bridgeport will see a revival built upon the legacies of its predecessors.

Sonic Essentialism and Anti-Gay Policing in Mid-Century America, 1920-1960

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

From the height of the pansy craze through the post-Prohibition crackdown, vice officers, liquor agents, journalists, and lay observers repeatedly testified to the supposed hallmarks of “vocal homosexuality.” But how did vocal manner come to be heard as diagnostic of sexual deviance? On what grounds did courts accept auditory impressions, often framed as “what one might hear with one’s eyes closed,” as damming evidence of homosexuality? And why, long after visible “gender codes” were discredited as indices of homosexuality—after gay men unsettled, parodied, and multiplied the categories meant to contain them, and after psychiatric, military, and intellectual authorities conceded that no fixed sign could define “the homosexual”—did courts continue to admit testimony about the sound of queerness? Why did the ear remain credible long after the eye had been discredited, and why does it remain so today? Through an analysis of popular press coverage from the “pansy craze,”...

Missionaries and Monarchy: How Protestant Missionaries Influenced the Hawaiian Government from 1820 to 1863

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unprecedented events and circumstances allowed for Protestant missionaries to gain significant Hawaiian Government access within just a few years of their arrival in Hawaii. These events include the death of King Kamehameha I, the dissolution of the traditional Hawaiian religious system in 1819, and successful interactions by missionaries with the monarchy of the Islands. Within just a few decades, Hawaii was transformed by the missionaries in almost every way possible; government structures changed, Protestant Christianity flourished, literacy rates soared, and international interactions increased. In past literature, authors have often characterized the missionaries as successful victors who used their wit and strength to conquer the hearts and attentions of the Hawaiian Monarchs and their people. In this telling, it feels that the quick spread of Christianity was inevitable. On the other hand, more recent literature has portrayed the missionaries as villains, and the Monarchs...

Gender and Authority: Early Ecclesiastical Legislation on Women in the Late Roman Empire

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In an effort to set official precedent to festering doctrinal issues and create uniformity between the juxtaposed episcopal and imperial institutions, the first ecumenical councils of Christian church, ranging from 325 to 767 CE, were called to action. Over multiple lengthy council sessions, religious leaders and governmental officials assembled to engage in intense philosophical and theological debate, ultimately issuing sets of creeds and canons to be enacted into official imperial legislation. While many of the canons were primarily intended to cast authority over the male clergy and the laity, the rulings nevertheless had significant implications on the social, moral, and sexual autonomy of women. From the initial seven councils, I will focus solely on canons that explicitly regulated women; the First Council of Nicaea (325 A.D.), the Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.), the Second Council of Constantinople (553 A.D.), and the Second Council of Nicaea (787 A.D.).The objective...

Mothers of the Nation:The Intersection of Motherhood and Activism in Women’s Fight Against Apartheid in SouthAfrica, 1948-1994

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Previous literature has either excluded or diminished the role of motherhood in female political activism. However, South Africa’s high fertility rate, averaging six children per woman in 1950, suggests that most women were mothers during apartheid. Drawing upon memoirs, interviews, anti-apartheid pamphlets, and newspapers, this paper examines the intersection of motherhood and activism in South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle. Mothers faced the combined burdens of motherhood, patriarchy, and apartheid. With a husband oftentimes absent and laws that patriarchal norms reinforced, most mothers bore the brunt of household and familial duties, including financially supporting their families. They jumped over hurdles unique to their identity as women, restricted in terms of earning an income and having agency within the activism movement. They also faced emotional challenges as anti-apartheid activism encompassed imprisonment, to which mothers, who were held responsible for childcare,...

Breaking the Silence: The Hidden Stories of the Guatemalan Genocide

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper examines the Guatemalan genocide of the early 1980s through the lived experiences of Maya communities targeted by Efraín Ríos Montt and previous leaders. Drawing on survivor testimonies from the USC Shoah Foundation and human rights reports, this paper illustrates how state violence served as both a counterinsurgency tactic and a racialized project. By emphasizing Mayan voices, many of whom witnessed the destruction of villages, the disappearance of relatives, and the systematic use of terror, this paper highlights the human dimensions of a conflict too often reduced to Cold War narratives. The evidence reveals a consistent pattern of the Guatemalan state casting Maya peoples as internal enemies, enabling scorched-earth campaigns, forced displacement, and widespread massacres under the guise of national security. Survivor accounts complicate official explanations and demonstrate that the violence overwhelmingly targeted civilians, regardless of political affiliation....

The Autonomy of Lascars and Wealthy South Asian Travelers in Britain in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

Fri, 9 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This paper attempts to answer questions about class and race regarding that South Asians navigated while they resided in England. The paper delves into two groups of South Asian men: lascars (seamen) and more affluent South Asian men. It analyzes if the differences between classes were more critical than that of ethnicity, asks how these different demographics interacted with the white population of England and explains how each demographic navigated life throughout their time in Britain. The basis of this paper attempts to compare the difference of all these questions between different demographics to determine what role class played in a world dictated by white supremacy, specifically for South Asians in the very racialized environment that the British Empire created, specifically in the metropole.

False Friends: The Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654 and Competing Narratives in Russian and Ukrainian Historiographies

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Pereiaslav Agreement of 1654, concluded between the Cossack Hetmanate and the Grand Duchy of Muscovy at the Pereiaslav Rada, marked a decisive moment in the trajectory of Ukrainian-Russian relations. Celebrated in Russian historiography as a fraternal “reunification” of kindred Slavic peoples, and condemned in Ukrainian scholarship as the beginning of imperial domination, the agreement remains one of the most contested episodes in Eastern European history. This essay critically examines competing Russian and Ukrainian historiographical interpretations of the Pereiaslav Agreement by analyzing how each tradition reconstructs the events, motives, and aftermath of the Rada. Drawing on a broad range of primary sources—such as Khmelnytsky’s “Articles of Petition,” Tsar Alexei’s “March Articles,” and Vasilii Buturlin’s diplomatic report—alongside major secondary works, the essay evaluates the narratives advanced by key figures in both traditions. It argues that Ukrainian historiography...

The Oriental Other: Anti-Mormon Rhetoric and the Orientalization of Polygamy in Nineteenth-Century America

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: This paper examines how anti-Mormon activists in nineteenth-century America strategically employed orientalist rhetoric to delegitimize Mormon polygamy and the broader Mormon movement. Drawing upon Edward Said’s theoretical framework of Orientalism, the analysis demonstrates how critics deliberately characterized Mormon practices, particularly plural marriage, as fundamentally “oriental” and therefore incompatible with American values. By associating Mormonism with Eastern customs and traditions, such as Turkish harems and Islamic practices, anti-Mormon writers tapped into existing American anxieties about Asian influences and potential cultural infiltration due to immigration. This rhetoric proved particularly effective as it operated simultaneously on religious, racial, and political levels, justifying federal intervention while reinforcing Protestant cultural hegemony. The paper analyzes period literature, legal documents, political cartoons, and public discourse...

Hot Off the Ladies’ Press! The Optimization of the British Mass Media by the Late Victorian Women’s Movement, 1870-1899

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The nineteenth century is well known for the Industrial Revolution in Britain, with which came massive improvements in printing technology, naturally leading to the rise of the mass media in forms such as newspapers, magazines, and literature. In the same century, the preeminent women’s movement can also find its roots. Separately, the British mass media, with its many forms, and the British women’s movement have been studied extensively, but without much research into any connection between them. New forms of media such as the women’s magazine saw their peak in the Victorian era, and other forms of mass media evolved rapidly, bringing newspapers, women’s magazines, and New Woman literature to the forefront of the women’s movement. They provided an avenue to spread information for the cause and ways to connect and share with other women in an otherwise restrictive patriarchal society. Thorough examination and comparison of these three mediums, with focus on those produced in years...

Beyond Assimilation: The Dual Identity of 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighters in the United States

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In October 1956, Hungarian citizens of various education levels, social classes, and political affiliations united to overthrow their Soviet rulers. Ultimately failing, these same people were then forced to flee in search of political or physical freedom. By 1957, over thirty thousand Hungarian refugees had arrived in the United States in an operation often depicted as the most rapid and successful integration of refugees into the country to date. Numerous works have detailed the processes of integrating these refugees into the economic structure of the United States, but few have formed distinctions between those Hungarian refugees who fled due to their revolutionary participation and those who left for other social, political, or economic reasons. This paper seeks to make this distinction, focusing on those Hungarian refugees who fought in the 1956 revolution as a group with distinct ideological and cultural beliefs both before and after their resettlement to the United...

Mormon Suffrage Activism Mitigated Anti-Polygamy Societal Pressures and Political Lobbying

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

During the nineteenth century, as the territory of Utah pursued statehood, it faced intense national scrutiny. The innate protestant values of American conservatism brought constant backlash to the Utah territory as republican lobbyists continually pushed for disenfranchising polygamists in the name of upholding traditional values. As Utah was one of the first territories to grant women suffrage, the rest of the nation believed Mormon women were victims of polygamy and coerced into voting for their husbands’ choices: the rhetoric that women were suffering from Mormonism is a continual ideology present from before the Civil War and up until the eventual acceptance of Utah’s constitution in the late 1880s. In retaliation, the suffragists advocated for their autonomy through protests and media, in conjunction with the national suffrage movement. This paper situates the Mormon Suffragists as the center of political activism in the Utah territory as they combatted both religious intolerance...

The History of Early Indigenous Community Archaeology

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This research investigates how Indigenous reservations influenced the early development of community archaeology in North America from the 1960s to the 1990s. Through examination of three key case studies - the Ozette site, Vanatta site, and Navajo Cultural Resources Management Program - the study reveals that reservation systems, despite their colonial origins, created institutional frameworks that facilitated collaboration between archaeologists and Indigenous communities. The legal and administrative structure of reservations required archaeologists to obtain tribal permissions and engage with Indigenous communities, leading to increased recognition of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives. While social movements and archaeologists' ethical awakening contributed to the field's transformation, the research demonstrates that reservation-based projects had lasting impacts, including the establishment of tribal cultural organizations and innovative curation practices. The findings...

Faith, Family, and Final Wishes: Gendered Analysis of Bequeathing Practices in Reformation England Using Somerset Wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1558-1569

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Faith, Family, and Final Wishes: Gendered Analysis of Bequeathing Practices in Reformation England Using Somerset Wills from the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 1558-1569

Home and Homesickness: Silvia Tennenbaum’s Notes on Memory

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Silvia Tennenbaum (1928-2016), a German born Jewish woman, author, and activist, lived in the United States following her family’s exile in 1936. Tennenbaum wrote multiple semi-autobiographical novels reflecting her grapples with memory. Towards the end of her life, Tennenbaum attempted to chronicle her memories more directly; instead of fictionalizing, she wrote specifically of the gaps in her recollections. The archival materials used for this paper, having remained unpublished, serve as a memorial to this fragmentation. Tennenbaum’s notes powerfully exemplify how first-person narratives of Jewish survivors of Nazism complicate Holocaust historiography and the Holocaust’s impact on the Jewish Diaspora. For decades, women’s experiences of the Holocaust were largely disregarded. Dedicated analysis of women’s experiences becomes vital in understanding the act of memorialization itself. While historical attention has focused on the contrasting experiences of men and women as better...

Rebels and Traders: The Economic Consequences of the American Revolution

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

American political history commonly paints the revolutionary cries of the mid- to late-eighteenth century as a united effort to fight the oppressive mercantilist policies of the Mother Country. With reinforced Navigation Acts passed in 1763, the American economy was further limited in favor of Britain, reducing the colonists’ agency to trade with other nations or to develop a manufacturing industry. Adding flame to the fire, the Townshend Acts of the late 1760s further irritated colonists faced by higher taxes on British manufactured goods—an attempt by Parliament to recuperate the costs of the French and Indian War. Without representation in Parliament, certain pockets of elite colonists became increasingly frustrated—with merchants and large-scale planters vying to shift the political ground rules that shaped the parameters of capitalism. These patriot leaders, portraying the British policies as intolerable limitations of economic and political self-determination, both misrepresented...

Empire of Diaspora: Exploring African & Jewish Fights for Sovereignty in the First Maroon War

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The 18th century Caribbean has long been understood by academia and popular imagination as a diverse arena for competing, cooperating, and overlapping ethnic, religious, imperial, and indigenous groups. One interaction that requires more thorough analysis is between Africans–enslaved and free–and (predominantly) Sephardic Jewish merchants. Two diasporic peoples, Africans and Jews navigated the transatlantic slave trade and, during critical moments of imperial crisis, shared in resistance to oppressive political forces. British Jamaica was a particularly volatile island that saw African and Jewish attempts at liberation intimately intersect. The 1729-to-1740 First Maroon War allowed African Maroons to secure autonomous communities in the Blue Mountain region; meanwhile, Jewish merchants leveraged their access to the Crown, particularly from 1737 to 1739, to petition against local governmental taxation that was disproportionately levied on them for alleged assistance in the African...

The Federation of South African Women and the 1956 Anti-Pass March

Tue, 6 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This research paper focuses on the role of women in the fight against South African apartheid in the 20th century. The paper highlights the role of the Federation of South African Women (FSAW), a group that worked to peacefully resist apartheid, and the women who played prominent roles within that federation. Starting with early resistance to racist laws in the 1910s we will follow the growth and contributions of the women's movement to the anti-apartheid efforts taking place in South Africa until the early 1960s when the freedom movement was forced to shift underground. Special attention is given to the Anti-Pass March held in 1956, a gathering of an estimated 20,000 women in protest of the racist restrictions being placed on the non-white citizens of South Africa. A detailed account of the event has been created through the synthesis of primary sources such as autobiographies and personal letters with secondary sources created by those outside of the historical event. The paper...

The Collections Built by Globalization

Mon, 9 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

From 1350 to 1750, the European understanding of the natural world shifted dramatically, as the period contained the beginnings of global exploration and the ensuing expansion of European control across the world. As the Europeans ventured out of Europe, the map of the world began to expand, not only the places themselves, but the discovery of “previously unknown things,” caused them to question their current understanding of the world. As trade and exploration expanded, so did the new artifacts, plants, and animals discovered, challenging the previously understood knowledge taught by the ancient philosophers. In attempting to understand these changes, early natural philosophers in Europe attempted to decipher and organize this new knowledge, doing so via collections of new specimin. The early European collections of worldly artifacts that expanded during the period of globalization between 1350 and 1750 are illustrative of an overall societal shift in the way that knowledge was...

“Paid to a Forged Order”: Counterfeit Continental Pay Orders and Their Impact on Veterans in Early Republic Massachusetts

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Between 1783 and 1800, dozens of Continental Army veterans approached the Massachusetts House of Representatives to petition for their wages, which had been paid out to criminals in possession of forged pay orders. The legislature responded to these requests with direct, individual action, as well as with legislation punishing the forgery of payment certificates. These forgeries are situated within the broader context of an epidemic of counterfeiting in the Early Republic and the intricacies of Continental Army payment. However, due to their overlap in both of these fields, forged orders themselves have not been studied. What has also been overlooked is the impact of counterfeiting on its victims, which has largely been ignored in favor of research into the forgers and falsified documents themselves. Examination of the many petitions which were filed by veterans who fell victim to forged orders, as well as the resolutions that the Massachusetts House of Representatives passed...

The Roman Military Presence and Its Impact on Culinary Preferences in Britain

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay approaches archaeological studies through an historian’s lens, using dietary analysis to explore the degree of homogenisation and integration in Roman Britain. By employing the term “Romanisation” to describe dietary changes towards a palate more similar to that typically enjoyed by army, this essay focuses on the relationship between the army, urban Romano-Britons, and natives by looking at their shared food cultures. Moreover, dietary studies have been underutilised in historical research because of a reluctance to pursue an interdisciplinary approach when undertaking analysis on integration between different groups in society. By using Cool’s classifications of food categories, this paper shows that there was significant overlap between the three social groups regarding food preferences. Additionally, there was an observable diachronic and spatial trend to integration levels. Sites located closer to military sites tended to mirror their culinary preferences with...

Communication Networks That Tied Together Free And Enslaved People In The Era Of The Haitian Revolution

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This essay traces the extensive communications networks that facilitated the spread of revolutionary fervour during the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and its impact on the wider circum-Caribbean region. Beginning with an intriguing pork shortage in Havana, linked to ritualistic support for black insurgents, the essay reveals how these acts signified solidarity with the Haitian uprising. Adopting a Humboldtian framework, it emphasises the role of mobile actors such as sailors, port cities, and mnemonic devices including music and dance in disseminating revolutionary ideas across imperial boundaries. The essay underscores the significance of sailors in spreading news and fostering connections in port cities, including examples of mobile actors such as Olaudah Equiano and Newport Bowers. Additionally, it examines the integration of Haitian musical traditions in the Caribbean and southern US cities, which served as a common language amongst the Africa diasporas, furthering black...

Diversity of Medical Practice in Mamluk Egypt During the Second Pandemic

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Beginning in 1347, Mamluk Egypt was decimated by the Black Death. This disaster was only the beginning of the second pandemic, which would recur in the region for another five centuries. As cities such as Cairo were witnessing staggering mortality rates, rural communities were being depopulated to the point of unviability, leading to mass migration towards urban centers. This stark change to the status quo proved to be difficult for the Mamluk system of government, weakening the regime up to the Ottoman conquest in 1517. The Black Death and its recurrences ravaged the Egyptian countryside, causing instability in the Mamluk government, which enabled understandings of medicine previously considered taboo.

Fragmented Faith: Group Imagination in the Early Hussite Period (1414-1420)

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper explores group identity formation among three key factions in Bohemia during the early Hussite period from 1414-1420: Catholics, Prague Hussites, and Taborites. Following the execution of Jan Hus at the Council of Constance in 1415, these groups developed distinct narratives about themselves and their opponents through primary source materials. Catholics positioned themselves as the true inheritors of church tradition, portraying Hussites as heretics and agents of Satan. They emphasized their religious authority and sought to expel Hussites from Christian fellowship. Imperial authorities like Sigismund reinforced this narrative by supporting Catholic perspectives. Prague Hussites, analyzed primarily through Laurence of Březová's chronicle, developed a more moderate approach. They appealed to the original apostolic church while simultaneously emphasizing Czech identity against German Catholic opponents. They critiqued Catholic clergy's corruption while maintaining a...

The Aztec Empire: A Grand-Strategic Case Study in Commercialism, Hegemony, andDefection

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Edward Luttwak, author of classic studies of Roman and Byzantine grand strategy, argues that a state’s explicit intentions are nearly worthless in the study of grand strategy. Instead, he argues, scholars must instead glean evidence of strategy from state behavior, assuming that actions speak louder to state intentions than words. Here, I have applied this same approach to Tenochtitlan, rather than Rome or Byzantium, using a primarily Nahuatl source: the Florentine Codex. Together, a behavior-based approach and the Codex’s Nahuatl perspective pierce through the distractions of colonial Spanish observers and their analysis toreveal a clear, rational, cohesive Aztec grand strategy. The Mexica, limited by the scarce resources on the island of Tenochtitlan, took advantage of their central position to become a thriving trade economy, which they protected with close regulation and formidable military might. Using trade as a carrot and a formidable centralized military as a stick, they...

Contested Sexual Space: Britain’s Socio-legal Sexual Debates and its Effects on Soho’s “Immoral Geography”

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The small confines of Soho Village have long been known as a hotbed of sexual licentiousness in the UK. Yet, in the post-World War II era, the neighbourhood's sexual character evolved drastically, going from a space marked by street prostitution to a space typified by neon signs (sex shops, X-rated cinemas, clubs, etc.). While studies have explored this evolution in-depth, this paper adds to the literature by bridging the study of Soho with the broader study of UK “vice laws.” The main view developed in this paper is that post-war Soho was not solely a sexual space but a microcosm of the U_.K._’s socio-legal attitudes concerning sex. In doing so, it emphasizes social attitudes’ impact on geographical space. This essay shows that Soho’s evolution reflects a broader change of socio-legal attitudes that created a strict moral dichotomy between public and private displays of sex. Ultimately, these dichotomous attitudes and subsequent legislation led to two consequences in...

The Collections Built by Globalization

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Shifting Narratives: Abortion, Newspapers, and Socio-Political Change in California in 1967-1973

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This research paper examines newspaper coverage of abortion in California from 1967 to 1973, a pivotal era marked by significant legislative, judicial, and socio-political transformations. During this period, California experienced a convergence of civil rights activism and countercultural shifts, which influenced perspectives on reproductive rights. The enactment of the Therapeutic Abortion Act of 1967 and landmark court cases like People v. Belous (1969) and Roe v. Wade (1973) catalyzed public discourse on abortion. This study investigates how newspapers framed abortion and explores the influence of legislative changes on media narratives. It also assesses the impact of key court cases on public perception and the extent to which newspaper coverage shaped public opinion, as reflected in letters to the editor and reader responses. Additionally, the portrayal of religious perspectives and the influence of religious groups on abortion coverage are analyzed. By...

Caught Between Two Worlds: Princess Emma Sandile

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Nineteenth-century Southern Africa was marked by significant political, social, and economic changes, including the expansion of European colonialism, and the rise of powerful African kingdoms and states. European colonial powers such as Britain continued to establish colonies in Southern Africa, which led to the displacement and oppression of many indigenous peoples. The resulting conflicts and frontier wars often involved significant violence and loss of life, but they also contributed to the formation of new identities and political structures in the region. The formation of these identities and structures served to entrench elite southern African women between the competing patriarchies of traditional African society and the colonial empire. This paper serves to analyze the experiences of one such woman, Xhosa Princess Emma Sandile and the way in which she navigated her position therewithin.

The Shadows of Repression: Homosexuality, Identity, and the Lasting Legacy of the Soviet GULag

Mon, 19 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This paper investigates the systemic repression of homosexuality in the Soviet Union, particularly under Stalinist purges and within the GULag system, drawing critical parallels to the practices of Escuela Caribe, a Christian reform school infamous for its ideological "reeducation" of LGBTQIA+ youth. The study explores how these two seemingly disparate institutions—one rooted in Soviet communism and the other in American evangelical Christianity—employed strikingly similar mechanisms to enforce conformity and obliterate individuality under the guise of moral and ideological purity.Through personal narratives, such as Sasha Petrov’s journey from aspiring actor to GULag prisoner and David Wernsman’s forced exile to Escuela Caribe, the research illuminates the shared tactics of repression: forced labor, isolation, psychological manipulation, and brutal physical violence. The Soviet GULag sought to “reforge” deviance into state-approved conformity, just as Escuela Caribe inflicted...

Kalifornia Klan Kulture: The Ku Klux Klan’s Usage of Media and Reporting in 1970s Southern California

Tue, 26 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Through the early 1970s, Ventura County, California, witnessed an unprecedented rise in Ku Klux Klan activity. While earlier incarnations of the Klan predominantly targeted Mexican, male farmworkers, this latest iteration expanded their scope to target a growing population of people of color in the area. As their attacks and local presence increased, their actions became widely publicized with local newspapers rushing to print their stories. Reporters regularly worked with local Klan leaders in their publications, from including short statements to publishing entire interviews. Through the work of local and national newspapers, the group’s intentions and ideologies became well-documented and integrated into social discourse, leading to a distinct naturalization from the mainstream media. The Klan simultaneously received routine empowerment through the actions of local and federal institutions. Despite the Klan’s notorious reputation, the government legitimized them as an organization...

Challenges and Impact: Federal Initiatives in Desegregating Rural Mississippi Schools during the Great Society

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

My research aims to better understand the federal government’s role in addressing educational disparities by studying the impact of two of LBJ’s Great Society policy programs, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, on the desegregation of public schools in Rural Mississippi. It examines the state's resistance to integration from Brown v. Board of Education to the mid-1960s to analyze the structural factors that delayed integration and then moves into studying both the motives behind the policies and their implementation in Rural Mississippi. Ultimately, I found that the desegregation plans the federal government prescribed, many of which only called for “Freedom of Choice” or only desegregated two grades, were ineffective. Reasons for this include historical structural barriers, a lack of manpower in Washington, D.C. actually to enforce integration, and too much delegation of authority to the Mississippi State Office of Education....

Resisting the Rightward Turn: Marxist Analysis of Imperialism in Early Shōwa Japan

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Historians have extensively documented the defections of communists and other members of the Japanese political left to imperialist and nationalist causes from the mid-1930s through the Second World War. Previous scholarship has focused on the role of the Kōza-ha and Nōro-ha factions of Japanese communists at the turn of the 1930s within the overarching intellectual history of modern Japan, or on aspects of leftist thought at the time with clear connections to later turns to imperialism. Research has highlighted fringe theories and aspects of mainline leftist politics that appear to foreshadow the rightward turn. However, emphasis on the flaws in the Japanese left constructs a “slippery slope” narrative of inevitable defection and obscures other aspects of their ideology. This paper addresses the extent to which this ideological and political turn can be explained within the two factions of Japanese communists through analyzing their approaches to imperialism...

Toward a Sociogenic Understanding of Reparations: An Analysis of Japanese American Reparations and Yuri Kochiyama’s Revolutionary Praxis

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper comprises two parts: in the first, I analyze how the state utilizes reparations to perpetuate their antiblack and imperialist violence. I closely read Japanese American reparation testimonies, testimony guidelines, and other documents to argue for Japanese American reparations as a site for not representing truth but producing it. Drawing primarily on the works of The Honorable Sylvia Wynter, I show that the state imposes a temporal structure on Japanese Americans' experiences to engulf them within the surrounding antiblack and neoliberal model minority myth. My paper then turns to the praxis and speeches of Yuri Kochiyama to understand modes of experiencing that contest the state’s imposition. I argue that reparations and experiencing the past are not temporally stable, and by reading her diary entries to her biography, I demonstrate that her experience of the past shifts throughout her growing interaction with revolutionary politics. I trace Kochiyama’s subjectivity...

Relationships in Zanzibar: Narratives During the Turn of the Century

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

During the turn of the century, the island of Zanzibar experienced profound changes. Previously ruled by the sultanate of Oman, the territory was now a protectorate of the British Empire. Although the sultan remained, Arab elites were now scrambling to hold onto authority and influence. In accordance with their increasing power, the British slowly trudged toward abolition on the island. However, not all experienced liberation, specifically concubines. Various discourses emerged about free and forced relationships. Such discourses were rigidly marked along gender and ethnic lines. Correspondence between British colonial officials and the memoirs of Salamah bint Saïd, daughter of a sultan, contain insight into perceptions of concubines and consensual relationships. Scrutinizing these texts illustrates the agendas behind each narrative, and why they were promulgated. However, the voices of those subjected to such discourse are silent in the historical record. Zanzibari women, and...

Alexander Severus and his Puppet Masters: The Involvement of the Julias Maesa and Mamaeain Alexander Severus’ Reign (AD 222-235)

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Severan Dynasty of Ancient Rome (AD 193-235) is in part known for the increased involvement of its females, the Julias Domna, Maesa, and Mamaea, in the politics of the empire as compared to previous imperial dynasties. By examining the involvement of the Julias Maesa and Mamaea in Alexander Severus’ reign, I seek through this paper to examine what this involvement looked like, why it took certain forms, and what those forms can tell us about Roman society of the time more broadly. I used Herodian’s early 3rd century History of the Roman Empire and the early 4th century collection of biographies termed the Historia Augusta in doing so, and large sections of this paper discuss the issues with these sources and how they need to be read into in order to gather accurate information about the events they discuss.

Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands: A Study of African American Engagement with the Second Italo-Ethiopian War and the Role Black Periodicals Between 1935 to 1937 Played in Italian Colonial Resistance

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Second Italo-Ethiopian War sparked a wide-spanning and enthusiastic source of support for Ethiopia amongst African Americans. Black Americans held a deep-rooted political and spiritual connection with the African country, embracing Ethiopianism and perceiving the country as a symbol of Black nationalism while also using the war in Ethiopia to exemplify anti-colonialism rhetoric. Many believed that in supporting Ethiopia, African Americans were also protecting a crucial part of their identities. Support efforts were characterized by the foundation of aid organizations, charity drives, public speaking events, and protests; black periodicals' role in generating this support has been relatively obscure. This research essay attempts to analyze the impact black periodicals played in the African American protest of fascist Italy’s aggressions in Ethiopia. By examining the writings of famed black authors from Marcus Garvey to Joel Augustus Rogers, the...

Keepers of Womanhood: Missed Opportunities for Feminist and Transgender Coalition Building from the 1970s through the 1990s

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Alliances between members of the transgender community and the feminist community were slow to form, as the groups clashed over definitions of womanhood and experiences of gender oppression. Although trans people saw the value in forming alliances with feminists to fight gender oppression, feminists did not recognize the parallels between the groups. The very ideas that could have provided a base for coalition-building, including gender-based discrimination, access to employment, and gender violence, instead divided the groups. Sexual orientation further complicated coalition-building, as many cis lesbians questioned the gender identities of trans lesbians, while some trans lesbians believed cis lesbians were their natural allies. Through illuminating the shared struggles that feminists and trans people faced and the prejudices that inhibited coalition-building from the 1970s through the 1990s, this essay suggests the value and limits of transgender and feminist partnerships.

Evolution And Revolution:Anarchist Imaginaries Between Biology And Politics In The Early Twentieth Century

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Evolution And Revolution:Anarchist Imaginaries Between Biology And Politics In The Early Twentieth Century

Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim on Authority

Fri, 24 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

ABSTRACT: Authority is a frequent topic of analysis when discussing the works of Mamluk era jurists Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim. The common interpretation of their views is one of authoritarian control. Some previous works have argued that both authors were in favor of expansive government that regulates all aspects of society absolutely. However this minimizes the nuance in their opinions, as well as perpetuates the idea that Ibn al-Qayyim was simply a copy or imitation of his teacher, Ibn Taymiyya. Each author tackled the issue in their own way with Ibn al-Qayyim more readily discussing and critiquing authority in academia. They often did share opinions with some key differences, namely in the extent to which the word of authority was to be adhered to. In a broader sense, they both did take hard stances on the role of authority, and advocated for its expansion, however neither author was in favor of a state with absolute control. Instead they offered a view...

Raising Upright Citizens: Social Welfare and Growing Influence for Elite Women in the Gold Rush City

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Following the Gold Rush of 1849, San Francisco exploded into a dynamic urban center. Starting with a meager population of 50 people in 1844, the total skyrocketed to about 56,000 by 1860. While, early on, this growing population was overwhelmingly male, over time, single and married women came in search of opportunity at the edge of the “civilized” world. During the nineteenth century, women across the United States became the figureheads of morality in the pure, domestic sphere. However, many women extended their moral authority into the public sphere through charitable enterprises. In my research, I examine how elite, Protestant women in San Francisco exerted their influence on the ever-growing urban landscape through their management of charitable institutions and, as a result, created new opportunities for themselves. Inspired by the welfare work of their East Coast counterparts, I argue that women in San Francisco sought to regulate the perceived social ills around them and...

The United States of Acupuncture: An Assessment of Medicolegal Designation and Insurance Coverage’s Impact on US Practitioners

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This manuscript discusses how acupuncture has been incorporated into the twenty-first century US healthcare system. It traces the development of Chinese Medicine, and its uniquely localized variations in the US to date: Chinese Medicine in the US, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and American Chinese Medicine. I argue that Chinese Medicine has now entered a new stage, United States Chinese Medicine— where strictly, acupuncture’s definition in state regulation has affected its coverage under both private and federal health insurance to the detriment of patients and practitioners alike. The interaction of federal and state governments, regulatory boards, insurance companies, and acupuncture practitioners has created an unorganized framework across the country, effectively transforming it from being a unified “American” practice into an incongruous set of fifty. Through a lack of federal direction, separate state-specific acupuncture ecosystems emerge, in which practitioners follow...

Changing Conceptions of Nature and U.S. Economic Interests in Mexican California

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 1844, a man whose nom de plume was the unimaginative “A Pioneer” provided a full-page account of Mexico’s “Upper California” in The Farmer’s Monthly Visitor. He presented a land of inexhaustible vegetation and “innumerable herds.” As he put it, “there is no country in the world that offers as flattering inducements to emigrants as Upper California; nor is there a country…so eminently calculated by Nature herself to promote the prosperity and happiness of civilized and enlightened men.” According to this pioneer, the only people in the region were an assortment of mostly non-white people who lived in a “deplorable state of ignorance.” This essay uses primary accounts and secondary sources to examine US perceptions of Mexican California’s resources, economy, and people with the goal of improving the historical contextualization of US expansionism. This essay argues that from the 1810s-1840s, travel writers and commercial interests used new forms of scientific racism circulating...

Pharaohs and Embargos: Reinterpreting the New Kingdom in Anglophone Cultural Memory through Egyptomania Songs

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Twentieth-century Anglophone waves of "Egyptomania" - in the second and seventh decades forms the basis for much of our cultural understanding of the New Kingdom. The songs "Old King Tut" and "King Tut" provide examples of this aforementioned narrative surrounding the life of Tutankhamen, an eighteenth-dynasty Pharaoh. Their extremely inaccurate lyrics do more than induce eye-rolling from scholars of Ancient Egyptian history, these subversions of the truth reveal the politics behind both twentieth-century waves of Egyptomania. This essay, written for the Sarah Lawrence Programme at Wadham College, University of Oxford, examines these songs as examples of cultural attitudes towards the New Kingdom with the relevant social context.

American-German Diplomacy, Intelligence, and Switzerland: James McNally and Secret Peace Talks in the First World War

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

James C. McNally, the American Vice Consul in Zürich, Switzerland during the First World War occupied an important position in American-German diplomacy during the conflict. His influence came from his relationship to his son-in-law, the German naval officer, Friedrich Mensing. The American government placed McNally in Switzerland in order to leverage this relationship and report valuable intelligence back to Washington. He also came to be seen as important by the German government in Berlin, owing to his ability and willingness to forward peace negotiations directly to top American officials. McNally worked in an attempt to lay the groundwork for a peace deal, going against his official instructions from the State Department and leading to him being viewed with suspicion by his colleagues and superiors. James McNally engaged in these unauthorized, secret peace talks as an active way of furthering his own importance and in an attempt to advance his career.

The Beautification of Evil: Hitler’s Rise and Consolidation of Power Through Visual Imagery

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Prior to World War II, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) marketed their warped ideals, virtues, and goals to the German people under the veil of attractive imagery that exploited post-World War I discontent in Germany. Hitler believed that effective propaganda imagery, or visual rhetoric, could be used to “...awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses.” By exploring the visual rhetoric of Hitler and the NSDAP, this article reveals their strategic use of propaganda that resulted in the establishment of an attractive, persuasive facade that facilitated their rise to power. Analyzed in this essay are not only various compositions of party propaganda but also written and spoken compositions that highlight the ideals established by the visual rhetoric. Such works of rhetoric include Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the “25 Points...

The Shipmates of the Ana Maria: Tracing Recaptives’ Lives Through the Suppression of the Slave Trade

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In the early nineteenth century, the Transatlantic Slave Trade was in a period of rapid transformation. Britain’s abolition of its own slave trade in 1807, and active British attempts to suppress the trade in the following years, caused massive shifts in the patterns of the trade. Slave traders developed new methods to maximize profits in an increasingly dangerous business, while the British navy and parliament debated how to deal with recaptured slaves. Caught in the middle of these struggles were the more than one million people sold into slavery from 1807 to 1869. This study attempts to retrace, in as much detail as possible, the lives of 437 of them: the shipmates of the Ana Maria, who were “freed” by a British vessel in 1821 and resettled in the colony of Sierra Leone. Drawing on accounts of the Ana Maria’s voyage and capture, firsthand descriptions of life in Sierra Leone, and secondary sources, this paper follows the shipmates’ attempts to develop new...

“Children Like Mine”: The Discourse and Legal Status of the Irish Unmarried Mother 1922-1969

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, I will investigate four key questions relating to the rhetoric used to talk about Irish unmarried Mothers and their experiences. How did the rhetoric of the Catholic Church characterize the unmarried mother and influence her treatment? How did the state initially speak about unmarried mothers and did Catholicism influence this diction? How did this written description in law shape the experience of mothers like Mary? How do statements made in the Final Report of the Commission on Mother and Baby Homes continue this legacy of demeaning government reference to the unmarried mother? I will bring together the social and legal history through analysis of social discourse and subsequent laws. I will attempt to answer this using evidence from the Irish Government’s archive, The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, and publicly available witness statements. Analysis of primary sources, with these questions in mind, highlights a planned home system justified through...

“To Centralise or to Divide?”: Competing Memories of Medieval Chinese Intellectuals on the Qin Demise and Administrative System

Tue, 21 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines the recollection of Qin demise memories of medieval Chinese elites, arguing that they took the “Qin demise” notion as a means to achieve their respective political agendas. The Qin dynasty was the first empire that accomplished the unification of all-under-heaven in Chinese history; however, it collapsed in fifteen years. When analysing the causes of the Qin collapse, a controversial question catches enduring attention: To what extent does the system of administration account for the Qin demise? This question has led to an unsettled debate over the respective merits of the investiture- and commandery-county systems among Chinese literati for more than two millennia. This paper historicizes the debate about administrative system from Wei to mid-Tang, during which transitions of regimes occurred frequently. To examine this debate, the discourses of five intellectuals are chosen chronologically. By studying their memories pertaining to the reasons behind the...

From Dr. Du Bois to Brother Baraka: Maoism and United States Black Liberation Movements