Rocky Mountain Interdisciplinary History Conference
September 14 — 15, 2001
Boulder, Colorado

ABSTRACTS

Kristin Ahlberg, Ph.D. student
University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Department of History
The Green Challenge to American Hegemony

Ronald Wilson Reagan assumed the presidency in 1981, determined to restore American strength and prestige at the expense of the Soviet Union. The Reagan administration dealt with the Soviet Union directly concerning arms negotiation and indirectly over the existence of communism in the western hemisphere. The West German Greens political party opposed Reagan's approval of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's dual-track plan concerning deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missile throughout Europe. Despite the reality that the party advocated a neutral, unarmed West German state unencumbered by NATO responsibilities and American interference and staged protests against American political leaders, the Greens did not elicit much controversy in Washington D.C. The president preferred to criticize the larger German peace movement rather than singling out the Greens. Reagan responded by offering reasons why he felt compelled to pursue specific policies. His rationales supported an ideological framework presupposing the supremacy of American capitalism over Soviet communism. The president denounced counter-proposals as dangerous to both German and American security and the individuals formulating these prescriptions as misguided, misinformed, or duped. Neither political protests nor Green political representation convinced Reagan to abandon policies designed to intensify the arms race. Reagan understood that the Greens existed precariously on the margin. The conservative West German government was headed by one of his ideological companions. It remained Helmut Kohl's responsibility to manage German dissent.

Tisa Anders, Ph.D. student
University of Denver / Iliff School of Theology, Department of Religion and Social Change
Swedenborgianism and Nineteenth-Century L. Maria Child

L. Maria Child (1802-80) was a well-known author and activist in nineteenth-century United States. Her notoriety as an accomplished writer began with the publication of her first book when she was only twenty-two. Throughout her lifetime and career, she wrote forty-seven books and tracts along with hundreds of periodical sketches, stories, and editorials. She was literally a household name for much of her century due to this popularity as a published writer. In the early 1830’s, Child experienced a conversion to reforms. From that point on, she was highly involved in the social-change movements of her day: abolitionism for thirty-five years followed by work in Reconstruction, women’s rights, advocacy for American Indian cultural survival, and the free religionist movement. An important question emerges from Child’s long-term involvement in reforms: What principles or worldview kept this woman going and sustained her in this difficult work for almost fifty years? It is a vital question for contemporary activists, especially those who are long-time reformers like Child. Their work can be enhanced and deepened by this foremother’s experience. Pursuing the answer to this question also helps to elucidate certain aspects of nineteenth-century moral and theological thought. In Child’s case, her foundational principles were grounded in a theological/philosophical framework that is not well-known. As such, examining her guiding principles brings to light important aspects of Child’s life yet also a fascinating strand of American thought that is too often overlooked or forgotten. Child’s views were deeply rooted in Swedenborgian theology. In fact, this theology, based on the writings and beliefs of eighteenth-century scientist and visionary Emanual Swedenborg, became the foundation of Child’s belief system. In Child’s own words, it was the "fabric of her thought".

Alan Bearman, Ph.D. student
Kansas State University, Department of History
George Kennan and God: An Odd Pairing in the Fight Against Communism

George Frost Kennan, architect of United States containment policy, has long been a subject of fascination to historians. This essay examines some of the historiography surrounding Kennan, along with some of his own writings, while contemplating the intersection of political realism and ideology. Often portrayed as a political realist who believed that containment would allow the United States to quickly achieve a position of dominance in international affairs, many students of diplomacy revere Kennan as a prophet. However, Kennan upon leaving the State Department also disavowed any ownership of containment as carried out by the United States government. Furthermore, Kennan upon returning to academia at Princeton began to portray himself as something other than a strict realist. Other scholars have noticed this line of Kennan’s thought and illuminated him as a moralist, particularly with regard to domestic issues. While reviewing some of the literature, surrounding Kennan one cannot escape his disdain for American democracy. However, it is also seems clear that the only way for containment to succeed was for the American public to support it. No matter how much Kennan may have disliked American democracy and distrusted politicians they were necessary ingredients in the fight against communism. Kennan may have found a moral crusade against communism unnerving but it was probably the only way for the American people to remain engaged throughout the long years of the Cold War. Kennan expected the Cold War to be a short affair. It was not, and thus for America to win an odd couple was paired together. Kennan’s containment merged with the crusading nature of America to fight the battle between good and evil.

Chris Bowles, Ph.D. student
University of Glasgow, Department of Archaeology
Justinian and King Arthur: The Sixth Century Evidence for Diplomatic Contact Between Byzantium and Britain

Most scholars would contend that contact between Britain and the Mediterranean world was broken following the Roman withdrawal from the island in 410. However, relatively recent archaeological finds in southwestern Britain and southern Ireland show that imports of Mediterranean origin were reaching the islands in the first half of the sixth century. Increasingly, archaeologists and historians alike are warming to the idea that the insular world entertained a direct, sea-borne, trade with the Byzantine east. This paper seeks to examine the evidence for another potential reason for contact: diplomacy. While the evidence for such endeavors is elusive at best, there are a few hints found in Byzantine and British sources. The sixth century imperial historian Procopius provides us with several references to Britain in his lengthy discourse on the wars of Justinian I, and in his diatribe against the emperor, the Annekdota. These passages range from a simple description of geography to the predictions of the oracular Sibyl–but all provide us with insight into how the Byzantine people viewed Britain. While Byzantine diplomacy still awaits its scholar, a brief overview of the principles will add to our understanding of Procopius’ rather cryptic discourse. Finally, we will briefly look at western Britain, a place that, in the sixth century, was beset with warfare, political instability, plague and invasion. Here, we find a few tantalizing clues left by an elite Christian class still clinging to vestiges of Roman culture. Taken as a whole, it is hoped that this paper will bring to light for the first time the true nature of a historical reconnection between an empire trying to regain its former glory, and an island seeking to make sense of its world.

Hélène P. Buteux, M.A. student
University of Central Arkansas, Department of History
History and Religion: The Holocaust in the Work of Elie Wiesel

The Holocaust has been studied as part of World War II, or as a genocide. The Holocaust as a genocide has been the subject of a lot of controversy. On one side, some scholars have argued that the Holocaust was unique, that no other genocides–or what other historians have termed genocides–can be compared to the Holocaust. On the other side, scholars who have compared the Holocaust to other genocides, e.g. the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, etc., consider that all the genocides have common characteristics and other characteristics that make them all unique in some ways. Hélène Buteux agrees with the latter group. The Holocaust is one among other genocides. But it is different from other genocides because it did not happen in only one country; it was a European genocide with concentration camps in several countries and perpetrators and victims of different nationalities. Above all, the Holocaust as it concerned the Jews had theological consequences. The work of Elie Wiesel is a very enlightening source for the one who wants to understand why the Holocaust is a turning point in Jewish history. In his novels and essays, Elie Wiesel tried to answer the theological question that the Holocaust raised for the whole Jewish community: If there is a God, how could the Holocaust happen? After the war Wiesel strove to find a meaning in the Holocaust, in life, and consequently in God. This paper will focus on Wiesel's relationship to God in his earlier works and more particularly in his memoir Night. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to convince the reader/audience that it is possible to understand fully what the Holocaust has meant for Jews only if one takes the pain to look at the theological side of the genocide and its consequences.

Jeanne Christensen, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
The Philosophy of Reasoning: The Rastafari of Jamaica

The recent publication of Paget Henry’s study of Caribbean philosophy, Caliban’s Reason, and the launching of a Center for Caribbean Thought at the University of the West Indies provide a new context for viewing the Rastafari of Jamaica. In this paper I examine the roots of the Rastafari movement in the Afro-Jamaican Revivalist traditional and attempt to demonstrate that the break from this earlier expression of an Afro-Caribbean worldview was a conscious break which moved away from spirit possession as a method of maintaining some autonomy in a colonial situation, toward empowerment through knowledge. The intention behind this break was the belief that the revivalist tradition had been ineffective as a means of confronting the colonial society in which the black population remained firmly at the bottom economically and socially. The Rastafari now challenge colonial/postcolonial society by taking control of the definition of reality: establishing a philosophical discourse which describes their existential beingness in such a way that their lives were affirmed rather than negated. Henry suggests that this is one goal of Caribbean philosophy. Rastafari philosophy is most easily visible by focusing on the process rather than on the fixed ideology at any given time; by examining the thought as an unfoldment, and understanding that this dynamism is itself an integral aspect of the philosophy.

Amanda Coles, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Classics
Appius Claudius Caecus: Patrician and Politician

Appius Claudius Caecus, although a patrician who supported plebeian-oriented legislation, was primarily a politician. Among the policies attributed to him are the defense of the rights of poor plebeians, the sponsorship of major architectural improvements in Rome and Italy, the reorganization of public religion, and the prevention of an imprudent treaty between Rome and the enemy-king, Pyrrhus. At a time when the patrician nobility strove to maintain dominance over the ever-rising plebeian nobility, Appius Claudius concentrated his legislation on the under-represented, plebeian poor and freedmen classes to gain power and prestige, although he himself was part of the patrician class. He focused on the development of commerce in Rome and thus on Rome’s relations with the Campanian region of Italy, a campaign first promoted by Quintus Publilius Philo, an important plebeian citizen and statesman from the previous generation. Appius Claudius picked up where Philo left off by appealing to the portion of the population that would benefit most from an increase in trade: the urban proletariat. Appius Claudius’ religious reforms dealt primarily with Hercules, the god of commerce, and the Forum Boarium, Rome’s early center of commerce. Flavius, Appius Claudius’ former secretary, posted laws and calendars directly helping businessmen. Even Appius Claudius’ famous speech against Pyrrhus kept Campania under Roman control and thus maintained commerce. Appius Claudius suffered the abolishment of his censorial legislation but thereafter enjoyed a long a fruitful political career. Thus, despite the early setbacks in his life, Appius Claudius Caecus was a successful politician. He held the most important Roman offices, and through promoting commerce, gained fame and dignity that carried his reputation into the late Republic in which time he served as an example for such young politicians as the Gracchi, Cicero, and Caesar.

Maren L. Donley, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of English
Mutabilitie Stripped: An Analysis of Edmund Spenser’s Mutabilitie Cantos With Regard to English Common Law

This paper addresses the legal issues present in Mutabilitie’s challenge to Jove’s rule over the heavens and the Earth as presented in the Mutabilitie Cantos, the last two cantos of Edmund Spenser’s early-modern poem, The Faerie Qveene. The argument addresses Mutabilitie’s employment of common-law regarding heritable property in her quest to reclaim the throne and explores the Anglo-Irish legal history which makes her arguments a threat to Jove. I read Mutabilitie throughout as Irish or Anglo-Irish and Jove as a representative of England’s "might makes right" colonial policy toward Ireland under Elizabeth I and James I. I explore on which specific laws Mutabilitie’s argument depends, how Spenser removes Mutabilitie as a threat to Jove’s rule, and the implications of Spenser’s manipulations of common law for the English colonial project.

Anne Dotter, Ph.D. student
University of Kansas and University of Strasbourg, Department of American Studies
The Many Faces of a Plains Indian Grandmother

Among the numerous steps in the reading and understanding of the visual representations of Native American women–the central focus of my dissertation–the gathering of basic anthropological information is a priority. From this original aim, i.e., defining the "truth" through objective data, to the obvious reality of a rich literature, synonymous of so many fictions, the subject had to be altered. What was ultimately to be titled The Many Faces of a Plains Indian Grandmother is an attempt to define her role and responsibilities in the family and community through the "fictions" created by the different literatures where she appears. Grandmothers as role models, chaperones, baby sitters, or storytellers play in important role, ensuring the continuation of the circle of knowledge. Through both her symbolic and practical roles, the grandmother becomes the overseer of regeneration, of the continuation of the circle of life among her people. Her presence gives an alternative example, that of the old ways, often in opposition with the new ones; without privileging past "ways" over present ones, she shares her experience, and as such becomes an educator for younger generations, a guide. She is also an overseer of tradition, that is to say, a keeper of the circle of knowledge. Reification of past, she makes abstract and remote stories come true, believable and palpable to younger generations. Her presence is surrounded by a halo of mystery, which imposes respect and brings back stability and balance where the dichotomy between modernity and tradition might lead to chaos. A precise reading of a number of anthropological, historical, biographical, or fictional works on Plains Indians will attempt to provide a synthesis, thus filling the gaps left by a general absence of Indian grandmother. If "women [stand indeed] for continuity, creation, and survival" (Mary Brave Bird), the Plains Indian grandmother’s role and responsibilities have to be brought into light.

Susan Duncan, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Exemplary Justice: The Unusual Trial of Nathaniel Thompson, William Paine, and John Farwell

This paper examines a trial of seditious libel conducted in late-seventeenth century England. The King’s Bench heard this case in the summer of 1682, in the midst of a decade in which concern over controlling the press was heightened and in the aftermath of the Popish Plot, which had erupted in the fall of 1678 and continued to provoke anti-Catholic hysteria. Nathaniel Thompson, William Paine, and John Farwell were brought before the court for publishing letters suggesting (indirectly) that the Popish Plot had been a nefarious fabrication. But these men were not merely fined and tossed into jail, nor were their publications destroyed. The ritual of the courtroom was necessary, and, in this case, was a means of orchestrating a positive image of the government, even as such prosecution discouraged seditious publications. This trial brings together a number of concerns of interest: illustrating a particularly hysterical political climate, an attack upon a newly designated Protestant martyr, and the ways in which Charles II, in acknowledging the power and unenforceable nature of the printing presses that had been the ruin of his father, began to use the press himself to create examples both cautionary and self-promoting. The trial is unique both in the way the court chose to conduct the case and in its transcript being published in full; these idiosyncracies are explained in terms of political circumstances and new strategies employed to prop up an embattled monarchy.

Angela Feres, M.A. student
San Diego State University, Department of History
Herrad of Landsberg

Herrad of Landsberg was a powerful and respected member of the monastic community during the twelfth century. As the Abbess of Landsberg, Herrad was charged with continuing the reforms at Landsberg initially begun by her predecessor. After reforming and reviving the monastery to its former prestigious position, Herrad created a series of paintings that served to educate the nuns within her community. Herrad used her knowledge of Latin, Patristic, and Classical sources to bring to life the Christian message in a manner that facilitated the merging of oral and textural traditions. The revival of ancient sources and the renewed emphasis on literacy united during Herrad’s life to enable her to bring to life biblical and classical motifs in her artwork. Herrad’s paintings provide historians with examples of the revival of ancient learning that took place during the twelfth century as well as an understanding of medieval Christian piety and the experiences of monastic women.

Jennifer Freitas, M.A. student
University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Department of History
The Collapse of the Nahua Empire: A Study of the Weakness of Over-Expansion

When the Spaniards arrived off the coast of Mexico, the Nahua were approaching the peak of their civilization. The borders of the empire had been rapidly expanded under the leadership of Moctezuma. Throughout Mesoamerica, the name Moctezuma was both revered and feared. When the Spaniards encouraged coastal city-states to become vassals of the King of Spain, the natives had a difficult time comprehending that there could be another prince in the world as powerful as Moctezuma. The strength of the Nahua Empire became its demise. Moctezuma’s empire had exceeded the limits of the current political and military structures. The newly acquired city-states became increasingly difficult to control. Mountainous terrain slowed the travel time between Tenochtitlan and the newly conquered provinces. The Nahua army became stretched to its limits as it attempted to regulate such a vast expanse of territory. Discontinuous borders left areas within the empire hostile to Nahua rule. This further limited the ability of the Nahua leadership to exercise efficient control over the whole of the empire. Over-expansion provided Cortes with an unprecedented opportunity. He was able to use existing hostilities to venture farther into the mainland and to solidify alliances that would aid him in the final conquest of the Nahua Empire. Moctezuma's confidence in the strength of his empire lured him into a false sense of security regarding the Spaniards. When he realized the danger, Cortes was already at the threshold of the capital and had gained the support of several important groups, namely the Tlaxcalans. This paper investigates his journey to Tenochtitlan and his first entrance into the Nahua capital. It was on this expedition that Cortes first exploited the inefficiencies of the empire and formed the alliances that would allow him to succeed in the conquest of the Nahua.

Eric Giles, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Religious Studies
Potential of Cross-Cultural Ritual Studies: Muslim and Christian Death Rituals

It is evident throughout human history that cultural contact always breeds cultural interchange. Determining in what ways and to what extent two cultures have influenced each other is another matter entirely. As can be seen in regard to Christianity and Islam whose similar monotheistic base and distinct aversion to one another has always cast shadows in the corners of their interrelation. Nevertheless, the importance of their contact in the Western Middle Ages for the development of both cultures throughout post-contact centuries has long gone unquestioned. On the other hand, how deeply Christianity and Islam really influenced each other has long been open to conjecture. The purpose of this analysis is thus to open an avenue of comparative research that may shed some light on the extent to which the two cultures permeated each other in arguably their most seminal periods. To accomplish this it is necessary to look at an aspect of cultures that seems to be the slowest to change and try and decipher the extent of influence. To this end I will be looking at death rites. To paraphrase Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington, when an individual is removed from a community this creates a hole in the fabric of the society thus necessitating a rite by which the individual is firmly removed and the community healed. This also explains the insular nature of death rites as well as making them the ideal subject for this study. Thus, through a brief comparison of the two cultures both before and after contact we find some interesting parallels. Perhaps the most telling is the correspondence with the final perfumed wash before shrouding in the Islamic tradition and the subsequent Spanish Catholic perfumed anointing before shrouding in the Christian tradition. As can be seen in this singular example, an in depth analysis of Christian and Muslim death rites can illuminate how deep the respective cultures influenced each other.

Susan Guinn-Chipman, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Negotiations of Space in Early Stuart Parish Churches: Evidence from Cheshire

This paper will explore the negotiation of space within early-seventeenth century English parish churches looking, not only at issues of social hierarchy, but also at issues of gender, ritual, and the intersection of the living and dead within the geographical spaces of the church. In 1633/34, Archbishop Neile of York reported to the king the results of the archiepiscopal visitation: the diocese of both Carlisle and Cheshire had widely departed from the practice of uniformity by "chopping, changing, altering, omitting, and adding." This confusion was reflected, not only in the order of service, but also in negotiations of space within the parish church. The Cheshire Consistory Court Records reveal this confusion throught a number of pew disputes, the majority of which occurred between 1630 and 1641. The allocation of pews in the parish church had, since the Reformation, become increasingly formalized, resulting in a landscape of contested space in which one’s place might be determined in a variety of ways. First, the interior of the parish church mirrored its community; pews nearest the pulpit were reserved for those of the highest rank. In addition, a spatial duality of some church interiors separated its parishioners, not only according to rank, but also according to gender. Further, the inner space of the parish church operated as the locus for consecrated places, and one’s place in relationship to them. Finally, the spaces of the parish church served as the intersection of the living and the dead–a place where deceased family members were memorialized, linking past and present through architecture. While much seventeenth-century debate over the space of the English parish church had a decidedly post-Reformation character, the debate also reflected an inheritance from a medieval past, suggesting that habitus played a role in the Cheshire community’s continuing understanding of religious space.

Devin Hunter, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Denver, Department of History
Erasmus of Rotterdam: The Complexities of Reform, Defense, and Moderation

The Reformation era was one of great complexity and profundity. One of the sources for this time, Renaissance humanism, reflects these traits. "Humanism" is a problematic term when used to describe specific characters and theories, as historian Paul Oskar Kristeller demonstrates. The limits of this term help us understand the remarkable differences among some of the thinkers at the eve of Luther’s schism. The decided leader of the humanist movement, then and today, was Erasmus of Rotterdam. His was a specific style of humanism, one that relied on language knowledge, peaceful moderation and the importance of polite discussion. This style was implemented in Erasmus’s foremost work Praise of Folly (1509) a satirical masterpiece steeped in ancient knowledge and theological nuance. Its reform minded theme upset many conservative theologians and gained Erasmus international fame. The problems that Praise of Folly created soon seemed minor. Martin Luther did not view the world in the same manner as Erasmus despite some similar experiences--best seen through Phillip Melanchthon, Luther’s Erasmus-inspired humanist advisor. Luther’s aggressive style and Erasmus’s vaunted place in intellectual circles placed them on a theological collision course. With reservation, Erasmus wrote The Free Will in 1524, a short disputation on Luther’s denial of the will. It was answered by a combative Luther in The Bondage of the Will. While there was little theological nuance in the debate, it did reveal the essential, unavoidable disagreement on the nature of salvation and will, as well as the strikingly different styles of argumentation and personality.

Chris Ivanes, Ph.D. student
University of Memphis, Department of History
Romania: A Kidnapped Revolution and the History of a Pseudo-Transition

This paper tries to show that the sultanistic type of the Ceausescu dictatorship only indirectly caused the events after December 22nd 1989, and why Prjeworski's scheme cannot be applied to the Romanian case. The analysis done on civil society and party’s members reaction before and after December 1989 shows that there was no active civil society (therefore no moderates and no radicals, until the radical mob demanded the abolition of Communism itself), and the Liberalizers were outside the regime and planned change not through the game with the society, but through a coup. Thre was a trying to overthrow Ceasusescu during of 80s years, but it failed. In 1989 the purpose of the plotters was not the same with those of the crowd in the streets, whose desire was the total abolition of the Communist system. The paper shows that the Liberalizers, who can be called the "Communists with human face", think a broadened dictatorship is the preference of society. This is the crucial misunderstanding in the Romanian events. The analysis proves that mistakenly, the human face Communists imagined that mass society would support them in their attempt to topple Ceausescu, but did not think they would have to deal with radicals and with a revolutionary situation. Unlike Przeworski's scheme, in which organized forces of society enter the game in the very first stage of the transition process, the Romanian Liberalizers did not have with whom to play it. What is remarkable and the Liberalizers did not expect is that the mass society explodes without even being aware of the split within the elite. After 1989 the Liberalizers, in contrast with sultanism, created a kind of new feudalism, a structure, composed of old party bureaucrats and Securitate members, who soon controlled (or, better, continued to exercise control) over industry, banking and finances, and the country's major resources. The new society formed after 1989 is more like the Liberalizers wanted than the mass society that got to the streets in December 1989.

Sean Kalic, Ph.D. student
Kansas State University, Department of History
Spitting on Incapables, Madmen, and Cheats: The Rejection of Cultural Bolshevism and the Nazi Philosophy of Art

The Weimar republic and the Nazi era represent two distinctive social, political, and cultural periods in German History. The artistic works produced within each epoch likewise depict the dichotomy of the two periods. Despite the rich artistic environment of the Weimar period, Hitler and his NSDAP rejected and actively subverted the paintings and movements identified with "bolshevism" and "degeneracy." The Art associated with the Weimar and Nazi regimes therefore can provide insight into the fundamental principles associated with each historic period. By examining the of Weimar artists George Grosz, Otto Dix, Max Beckmann, and Ernst Kirchner, and comparing them against the social and political ideals of Hitler and the NSDAP, the rationale for the Nazi’s rejection of Weimar Art becomes apparent. The Nazi philosophy of art can be explained and understood juxtaposed against the expressionistic freedom found in the Weimar republic. Ultimately, Weimar art had no place in Hitler’s weltanschauung.

Elizabeth Karlsgodt, Ph.D. student
New York University, Department of History and Institute of French Studies
Selective Memory and Amnesia: Jewish Art Collections in France, 1940 to the Present

Over the past several years, organizations such as the World Jewish Congress have drawn international attention to the issue of Jewish assets that were confiscated during the Second World War, seeking financial compensation for the victims and their heirs. In France, a government commission recently published an extensive report that detailed the seizure of Jewish assets by French authorities and recommended means of compensation. Despite this effort to recognize French responsibility in the confiscations, at least one area eludes critical analysis: pillaged art collections. Public museum officials continue to describe the pillages as "a German affair," minimizing the role of their predecessors in the confiscation of artworks, and in the postwar misappropriation of nearly 2,000 unclaimed works, most of which are still held by French public museums. This paper examines the art pillages in terms of the French museum administration’s selective amnesia. Most accounts written by former or current members of the administration perpetuate a "resistance myth," in which officials defended not only French interests but also Jewish interests against the Germans. Contrary to these accounts, archival evidence shows that French authorities defended their own right to confiscate the artworks at the expense of Jewish collectors, not in their defense. Moreover, the exploitation of smaller, less powerful Jewish collectors continued after the war when the same officials did not use their provenance archives to find the rightful owners of unclaimed works. In addressing misdeeds of the past, museum officials should take a two-pronged approach: first by seeking to return unclaimed artworks to their rightful owners, and second by recognizing the responsibility of French authorities in the confiscation and misappropriation of artistic masterpieces.

Justin Kastner, Ph.D. student
University of Guelph, Department of Food Science and The Food Safety Network
Food Safety Related Trade Disputes in the Nineteenth-Century, Transatlantic World

During the nineteenth century, two international trade disputes emerged along lines not unlike those of today. Two of these trade quarrels revolved around animal health and food safety regulations that World Trade Organization (WTO) officials today would term "sanitary trade measures." After the importation of several cattle diseases into Great Britain during the middle of the nineteenth century, the British government adopted in late 1878 a Foreign Animals Order banning the importation of animals from several European countries. During the next year, in response to reports of cattle disease in the United States, the British government moved to restrict American cattle imports. The prospect of Great Britain restricting U.S. cattle imports added fuel to another food-related dispute. Several months earlier, in June 1878, a food safety furor had erupted with concerns about the trichina parasite in U.S. pork. As a consequence, several European countries instituted a separate ban on American pork. The contemplation of restrictions on U.S. agricultural imports initially appeared to represent straightforward considerations of public health. However, as in today’s trade wars, the policies evolved into larger political issues where non-scientific interests exerted ever-increasing influence. Three factors–economic considerations, the perception of risk, and regulatory coordination–were of particular importance in the nature and resolution of the disputes between the U.S. and Great Britain. Economic considerations, risk perception, and regulatory coordination remain influential in today’s international trade disputes. Fortunately, the international community is better prepared today to manage these factors than it was in the nineteenth century. The WTO and the Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures provide a framework for addressing or accommodating these three factors.

Beth Kovacs, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
He’s a Whore; She’s a Bully: Nontraditional Defamation in Sixteenth Century Cheshire

The Cheshire Consistory Court records, like other English Consistory Courts, are filled with documents addressing male social and female sexual defamation. Quietly residing amongst these cases are incidents of defamation that do not fit into the traditional categorizations that historians have created for defamation. In 1592 Wigan, Alice Rigbie defended herself against an allegation that she was a "cruel woman"–not a poxy jade. In 1594 Chester, John Fazaker was called a "curtal whore"–not a drunkard. This paper will examine cases of defamation in which labels and actions of men and women cross the traditional ideas of gender identity in communities isolated from traditional authority. This paper first examines regional differences between southern, urban England and northern, rural England. The language used in court documents to describe reputation gives clues to social distinction seen in the two geographic areas. Next, the defamation cases reflect nontraditional gender behavior. These cases address issues of male sexual defamation, namely labeled in terms of promiscuity, and female social defamation, seen in violent behavior and the transference of labeling and behavior to the other gender. Theoretically, these cases reveal how individuals were described in terms that community members could understand when no terminology existed that fitted their gender definitions. Finally, I look at the text construction of these legal documents and how they reflect accessibility and manipulation of the law as a social institution.

Eric Larsen, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Los Pastores of Peru: Domination and Resistance in Northwestern Colorado

This paper presents a case study of the "need" for importing cheap and docile workers in the American West, and examines how the imported agricultural workers there resisted exploitation in the late 20th century. The research–based largely on oral history–focuses on the Peruvian sheep herders who have worked in northwestern Colorado since the 1960s. The workers, who are from the central Andes, migrate under the H-2A program. Like the Bracero program before it, the H-2A program allows American employers to secure temporary, inexpensive workers, most of whom come from Latin America. And while the program is a form of government-sponsored exploitation, the workers have used it to escape other forms of exploitation in Peru. In addition, they have created spaces within the program to assert their autonomy as workers and preserve their Quechua/Peruvian heritages.

Anne Lefever, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Puppet or Politician? Carlos Castillo Armas and the Guatemalan Labour Movement

Traditional representations of Carlos Castillo Armas, Guatemalan president from 1954-1957, portray an ineffectual leader who complied with American demands while repressing the Guatemalan people. Scholars depict his presidency as a period during which the United States dictated the course of Guatemalan economic and political development. As the new concepts of cultural imperialism and informal empire begin to challenge the foundations of the study of foreign relations, historians are reconsidering their assumptions about inter-American encounters. Recent scholarship suggests that certain Latin American dictators, traditionally portrayed as American-controlled puppets, were in fact politically calculating leaders who sought to preserve their own interests, complying with US demands when it was to their own advantage. A reassessment of Castillo Armas’s policies towards the urban labour movement suggests that he, too, might fit this template of the politically expedient Latin American leader. Although the Liberation years are traditionally portrayed as devastating to Guatemala’s urban labour movement, a re-evaluation of the evidence reveals a more textured labour policy in which many of the liberties earned by workers during the revolutionary years of 1944-1954 were protected. Although certainly instances of repression existed, to suggest that Castillo Armas crushed the urban labour movement ignores the many freedoms that workers continued to enjoy during the Liberation years. Such a liberal labour policy suggests that Castillo Armas responded to pressures in addition to US demands when dealing with labour. Castillo Armas was supported by the most senior and right wing elements of the Guatemalan military, rural landlords, and the Guatemalan business elite. In formulating his labour policy, he sought to appease his domestic support base, meeting US expectations when it served the interests of his supporters. Therefore, although certainly there existed some hemispheric imperatives that Castillo Armas could not defy, in his policies towards labour, he was a politician before an American political lackey. Certainly, he pursued anti-Communist policies, but did so out of a political need to impress his domestic followers as much as to appease the US. To depict him as an American puppet is to ignore the complex nature of Guatemala’s internal political climate. This reassessment underscores the importance of new interpretations of inter-American relations as encounters of empire and the need to evaluate Central American policies within their local and regional context.

Tamara Levi , Ph.D. student
University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Department of History
One Goal, Two Systems: Missionary and Government Boarding Schools 1846-1900

Government-run American Indian schools have been the subject of numerous studies in the past three decades, as have the publication of student reminiscences. Schools run by various missionary societies have also increasingly been the subject of research. This essay examines two of these schools in detail, the Presbyterian Omaha Mission Boarding School on the Omaha Reservation in northeastern Nebraska, and the government-run Genoa Industrial Indian School in central Nebraska, from 1846-1900. It compares the two systems, one missionary and one government, implemented in the schools to find principle differences in motivation and intention. This study also examines student and community responses in light of the systems that produced them and argues that, while students experienced different educational systems, the results – cultural displacement, community breakdown, and the supplanting of Native culture and values – remained largely the same. This study uses reactions of students who attended the subject schools of this essay, and other mission and government boarding schools to place the Omaha Mission Boarding School and the Genoa Industrial Indian School into a national perspective. Many students hated but endured years of formal schooling, while others enjoyed and took advantage of many aspects of the system in which they found themselves.¹ Similar reactions can be found for nearly every Indian school across the United States. This wealth of information demonstrates that while students reacted individually and the school environment could vary according to teacher and superintendent, the policy of cultural genocide that all the schools followed had tremendous impact on generations of American Indian children and their communities.

1. K. Tsianina Lomawaima, They Called it Prairie Light: The Story of Chilocco Indian School (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), xiv.

Erik Loomis, Ph.D. student
University of New Mexico, Department of History
"The Boy had become a Man": Boys, Hunting, Wildlife Conservation, and Masculinity in Progressive Era America

Unprecedented change swept over American society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Urbanization, immigration, industrialization, the closing of the frontier, and increased roles for women in society revolutionized the nation. Many middle and upper class Americans felt uneasy in this rapidly changing America. The Progressive movements attempted to control this change as part of a "search for order." One of the leading Progressive movements was the conservation movement. Many conservationists were upper class urban men who looked to the frontier and nature to escape the feminizing influence of the city and the new America. They also believed that hunting was necessary to remain masculine men. Progressives were also concerned with children and conservationists were no exception. Conservationists gave their boys every opportunity to experience nature in order to learn manly values. Conservationists of the period frequently wrote of the need for fathers to take their boys hunting in order that they be saved from the cities and learn manly Anglo-Saxon values. Among other sources, the writings of Theodore Roosevelt, the children’s books of George Bird Grinnell, and letters to Forest and Stream, an upper class hunting journal of the period, show that men commonly stressed the necessity for boys to go into nature and hunt to become manly men. Taking them hunting also allowed boys to escape vice, become self-reliant, and restore their health, a necessary situation due to the enervating modern cities. Therefore, Anglo-Saxon men needed to take their boys hunting in the wilderness to rejuvenate the race and make them manly men. Yet, this would only prove possible if a conservation movement saved the remaining wilderness and game.

Anna O. Marley, M.A. student
University of Southern California, Department of Art History and Museum Studies
Breaking the Frame: (Re)Visions of American Identity in the Landscape Photography of Judy Dater and Ansel Adams

From the essays of Thoreau and Emerson, to the photography of Ansel Adams, the American landscape has long served as a frame for the viewing and interpretation of America. This paper examines the work of one contemporary photographer, Judy Dater, who breaks the frames of her genre to trouble the artistic conventions of the American landscape. Placing the photography of Judy Dater within the history of landscape photography of the American West, and comparing her to one of her artistic patriarchs, Ansel Adams, (whose iconic images dominate the photographic vision of the American West,) reveals how Dater works with, and subverts, conventional notions of the American landscape, and by extension, American identity. In this paper I focus on the landscape series Dater created in 1982 in New Mexico. Though these images were shot in New Mexico they bear no similarity to iconic Ansel Adam’s images shot nearby. Dater knew both Adams and his photography personally, and knew his impact on the creation of an identity of the American land. A comparison between Adams’ 1941 Moonrise, Hernanzez, New Mexico and Dater’s Desert Series reveals most strikingly how Dater is reconfiguring the New Mexican/Western landscape. The bulk of the paper will concentrate on Dater’s landscape work, first in the context of her placement in the 1987 exhibition Reclaiming Paradise: American Women Photograph the Land, where her work is offered as a gendered interpretation of woman as/in nature. I then move on to a discussion of my interpretation of her work, which posits Dater’s landscapes not as constructions of American identity, nor as a reflection of a more personal/feminist identity, but as work which moves beyond identity to challenge the artistic convention of the landscape genre itself. In the work of Ansel Adams the viewer is not encouraged to examine how the painter or photographer might be shaping the land with his camera. In the work of Dater, this marking and shaping is undeniable. Dater’s images break down the relationship between the viewer and the view. By placing her nude body in her photograph’s frame, Dater becomes the view, and the viewer at the same time, destroying the traditional distance and control that constitute American landscape art.

Jessica Martin, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Partnership Diplomacy: Towards a New Understanding of Eisenhower's Foreign Policies

Although historians have observed Eisenhower’s affinity for partnerships with the business community in the domestic realm, few have considered how similar relationships affected his foreign policy efforts or considered how such partnerships became meaningful, if inconspicuous, additions to Eisenhower’s overall diplomatic strategy.  Committed to winning a cultural as well as diplomatic contest with the Soviet Union, the Eisenhower administration launched a variety of broad-based initiatives aimed enhancing America’s image among the international community, and many of these efforts relied on the administration’s ability to partner with private organizations. This presentation will identify some of the cultural and informational activities launched by the government during the 1950s and will discuss how Eisenhower made use of his close ties to American businesses to carry out such initiatives.

Fawn-Amber Montoya, M.A. student
University of Arizona, Department of History
Men in Chicana Feminism

This paper examines the Chicana feminism present in the works of Gloria Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, Antonia Castaneda, Ramon Gutierrez, Albert Hurtado, Sonia Saldivar Hull, and Mary Pardo. The question addressed "What roles do Chicanos play in Chicana feminism" is answered by an analysis of the works of Ramon Gutierrez and Albert Hurtado, the male supporters of Mexican American women activists, and the male relatives of female scholars. Chicana feminism has left out the Chicanos that support the women in their activism and politics. By looking deeper into the works of historians it is possible to see Chicanos not as part of the domineering patriarchal system, but as Chicana feminists. This essay also examines the author's personal life and her own experience with Chicana feminists, a mentor and a brother. By looking at the men that support and encourage Chicana feminists, the author argues it is possible to use these men as a tool to dismantle patriarchal control.

Lisa Pasquariello, Ph.D. student
Stanford University, Department of Art History
"A Simple Variation on a Theme": Image, Text, and Signification in Ed Ruscha’s Early Work

This paper concerns the relationship between two elements of Ed Ruscha’s practice in the early 1960s–his photo books, which contain mostly images, and his first paintings, which contain mostly text. I depart from two related observations: 1) that critics and scholars alike treat the books and the paintings as utterly distinct projects; and 2) that the words in his paintings, like the photos in his books, are assumed to be randomly chosen, dumb, and ultimately meaningless. The artist’s language, in other words, is taken to be almost incidental; one critic writes that "a knowledge of the English language is not a prerequisite for enjoying Ruscha’s work," another that his paintings "resist linguistic interpretation," and a third that they are "empty of meaning" and "lack ‘real’ signifying power."¹ Proposing an alternative and a corrective to these approaches, I argue that the operative mode of signification in Ruscha’s paintings is a photographic one: that, like his blunt, maladroit photos, his painted words signify at once materially (bearing a trace of the word represented, as the photograph bears an index of its subject) and semiotically (referring outside and beyond itself, as the photograph is linked to the world from which it takes its image). Treating Ruscha’s early books (Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Thirty-Four Parking Lots) in conjunction with his first paintings of emblems of Los Angeles mass culture (the Hollywood and Twentieth-Century Fox signs, the Annie cartoon logo) will evince their complex interrelationships; approaching Ruscha’s use of text through photographic theory allows for a more material approach than those sponsored by linguistics and post-structuralism.

1. Patricia Failing, "Ed Ruscha, Young Artist: Dead Serious about Being Nonsensical," ARTnews 81, no. 4 (April 1982) p. 81; Lawrence Alloway in Kerry Brougher, "Words as Landscape," Ed Ruscha (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 2000) p. 161; Donald Kuspit, "Signs in Suspense: Ed Ruscha’s Liquidation of Meaning," Arts 65, no. 8 (1991) p. 54.

Nadja Pisula-Litoff, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of English
The Art of Seduction in "The Franklin's Tale"

Geoffrey Chaucer's "Franklin's Tale" has long been the starting point of divergent opinions concerning its genre and the question asked by the Franklin:  "who is the mooste fre?"  Though the Franklin claims his tale is a Breton Lay, scholars have long recognized that it is not.  More recently, critics have focused on the similarities between "The Franklin's Tale" and Giovanni Boccaccio's "Il Filocolo."  The emphasis on genre and the Franklin's question are understandable.  Like the Clerk of Orleans who deceives Dorigen into believing that Aurelius has removed the stones from the coast of Brittany, Chaucer, I will argue, seduces the reader into focusing on his artifice at the expense of understanding that literature, like illusion, is often no more than seduction.  In fact, the issue of genre is moot-it is a red herring generated by Chaucer to confound the reader. As for the Franklin's question, I will argue that Dorigen is clearly the "mooste fre" in tying her chastity to the stones that are hidden though actually present:  she is the only character not implicated in the clerk's illusion.  Further, the Franklin himself is complicit in the use of illusion when he begins his tale by claiming no knowledge of rhetoric while employing the modesty-topos.  In addition, he calls his tale a Breton Lay when it is not.  Ultimately, we are led to question Chaucer and his art because it is his own literary pyrotechnics that have misdirected centuries of readers.  From this reading of the tale, we learn that we must, in recognition of the unifying message of Chaucer's "Franklin's Tale," try to be even better readers than Dorigen and beware of the seductive possibilities of art.

Eric Rekeda, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Come and Go: Los Angeles, Mobility, and Resistance to Imperial Hegemony

In this paper, I use comparative history–looking at both the past and recent present–to delineate the consistencies in imperial hegemony and the subsequent inequality it generates. This inequality is greatly rising in today’s "hourglass" economy in which corporations globalize the world. I begin my paper with a look the emerging metropolis of Los Angeles–a historically, socially, and spatially constructed environment–in the late decade of the nineteenth century. I then make a great leap forward to the 1980s and the era of Ronald Reagan, privatization, and the withering away of government in favor of a globalized free-market economy. I use the city of Los Angeles, the most privatized of urban landscapes, to suggest what may occur in other "global" cities as corporate control stretches and strengthens from Athens to Beijing. The comparative approach I use in this paper is indebted to the work of the historian George Fredrickson, who cleverly defines racism as an anxious sense of "group position." Fredrickson’s idea of racism as anxious sense of group position can certainly be expanded to include sexism, but, just as important, this notion can be globalized and placed in a more totalizing framework of free–but not fair–economic competition. The Land of Sunshine (1894-1901), an influential magazine that highlights the booster rhetoric imbedded in the growth of Los Angeles as a metropolis, serves as the primary source for Los Angeles in the decade preceding the twentieth century. In the 1890s, the city’s boosters founded a culture industry on a faith that the region’s "perfect" climate would encourage Anglo-Saxon immigration to the city. Ronald Reagan’s Commission on Privatization and its government-published report–Privatization: Toward More Effective Government–serves as the representative source for the 1980s era of faith in the free market. The rhetoric of faith in privatization emanates from a climate of fear, not sunshine, and this physically and mentally constructed atmosphere helps anxious whites and the affluent consolidate their control.

Wendy Rex-Atzet, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Ethnicity and the Making of Place: Towards an Environmental History of Japanese America

As immigrants from Japan traveled across the Pacific to America between the 1880s and 1924, they approached not only the prejudices and political constraints so well documented by historians of Asians in America, but also an unfamiliar and distinctive landscape. Part of the American experience of Japanese immigrants and their children–part of becoming Japanese American–necessarily involved reorienting and situating themselves within the new physical landscapes they encountered in America. More than half of all Japanese immigrants worked in agriculture, and for them this transition was intensely practical, as they learned to cultivate new types of crops in what must have seemed a truly alien environment. If ethnic diversity and cultural conflict represent two of the great themes of the history of the American West, the relationship of natives and newcomers to the region’s distinctive landscapes and environmental conditions ranks a close third. In fact, the assumption that physical and imaginative relationships between human beings and given places are culturally specific and unique, and that they often become points of contention with competing or dominant groups, is an important theme in the field of environmental history. But in the growing literature on Japanese American history, analysis of the ways landscapes, land use, and place-making are a part of these larger processes remains peripheral. However, land and ethnic land-uses have been the sites of repeated social and political struggle between Japanese Americans and Euro-Americans, from the practices of Japanese farmers to the World War II internment of entire communities. For Japanese immigrants and their American-born children, land and landscapes have been fundamentally linked to political and legislative battles, racial marking, labor, family, and community. In this paper, I highlight some of the most salient of these points of congruence, and suggest how we might approach writing the environmental history of Japanese America.

Duke Richey, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
"Ski Like a Native": Image, Identity, and the Creation of Aspen, 1937-Present

The rise of Aspen, Colorado, from sleepy mining town to world-class skier’s haven had everything to do with how the town was imagined. Whether seen as a 1940s alternative to skiing in war-ravaged Europe, as a counter-culture haven in the 60s, or as a playground for the rich and famous by the 1980s, Aspen was imagined in various ways through different means over the last sixty years. Several constants have persisted through Aspen’s numerous evolutions as an imagined place. First, there have always been confrontations between insiders and outsiders for control of the town’s resources. Second, perceptions about when the town changed for the worse have always depended upon one’s length of time in town. Finally, the tensions created at the points of intersection where the control for resources and one’s level of nativeness, or "neonativeness" (as Hal Rothman calls it) collide, has been a driving force in how Aspen was imagined, marketed, then eventually sold. Once local identity was seen by some as a commodity that could be purchased through the ownership of real estate, Aspen changed as a community. This paper chronicles Aspen’s changes and examines why identity as a local in a resort community matters.

Marsha Robinson, Ph.D. student
Ohio State University, Department of History
Tao-ing the Painted Houses of Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Morocco: Gender, Islam, and the Decoration of Private Spaces

Recently I found several books that focus on the home decoration styles of Morocco, Turkey, Andalusia, and Arabia. The fathomable blues of mosque mosaics fade in the presence of the deep ochres, reds, and greens used for painted furniture and pottery. These colors are no less vibrant than the silks which hide beneath voluminous hijab. I began to make the connection between fabric and home décor. In the arid land of the Asir region of western Saudi Arabia, Thierry Mauger documented in his photo essay entitled "Impressions of Arabia" a particular style of painting the interior and exterior of plaster and brick homes with irregular geometric patterns in primary colors in a grand scale. These paintings are done by women. Similar styles and uses of color appear in non-palatial homes in Morocco. Before I could ascribe this style to an Ottoman influence, I found works observing a similar nineteenth century style in Nigeria and LeSotho. The histories of these areas intersect in the fifteenth century. Is this still Islamic art? Beginning with questions posed by Nancy J. Hafkin and Edna G. Bay in their edited work, Women in Africa: Studies in Social and Economic Change, I use several methods of interpreting Islamic art to read the painted houses as a text centered on women as artists and not subjects. Joseph Harris, Labelle Prussin, Oleg Grabar, Keith Critchlow, Sachiko Murata, Robert Irwin, Carel DuRy, Karin Ask, and Marit Tjomsland authored some of the works consulted for this study. The art of the Asir houses, the rhythms of the Hausa houses and the decorations of the Moroccan homes can be read, according to Prussin, as approximations of several of the techniques usually ascribed to canonical standards of Islaminc art. There are numerous ways to read female power into the painted houses. Several unspoken lessons of the texts of public architecture exist in the private space women inhabit, reaffirming women’s right to education in Islam. If color on the exterior of an adobe house signifies the presence of women within, then the very act of women painting the exterior of their houses proclaims that women can leave the courtyard and that women do enter public space. Using Murata’s Tao of Islam approach answers a question that the feminist approach could not. If men are as oppressive and dominant as feminists claim, why do they cooperate with the painting of these feminist patterns, especially if such paintings are acts of female power? The application of metaphysical principles couched in metaphors of gender enables a non-patriarchal reading of this text. Perhaps this has nothing to do with gender domination. Perhaps it has everything to do with creating a balance between engineered and natural spaces, reminding all of the duality of existence.

Andrew Russell, Ph.D. student
Department of History, University of Colorado at Boulder
Ideological and Policy Origins of the Internet, 1957-1965

This paper examines the ideological and policy environment that defined computing research funded by the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) within the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). This historical case study of the period between Sputnik and the beginnings in 1965 of plans for an ARPA computer network shows how military, scientific, and academic values shaped the institutions and relations of a foundational period in the creation of the Internet. ARPA’s generous support for computer networking research emerged out of a policy context shaped by a broad consensus on the goals and means of an effective science policy. IPTO’s research in networking was a direct manifestation of J.C.R. Licklider’s vision of a "symbiosis" between man and computer and his recognition that both military and academic computing could benefit from his vision of "interactive computing." Licklider, as the influential first director of IPTO, convinced military officers and academic computer researchers of the value of interactive computing, and established within IPTO an open and collaborative technical and cultural environment he called the "intergalactic network." Historical evidence including government reports, technical papers, and oral histories, points to the existence of a symbiotic relationship between ARPA and computer researchers–a symbiosis operating under the post-Sputnik consensus on the role of science in the nation and in society. Thus, this paper, while intended to clarify the respective roles of the government and university researchers in the creation of the ARPANET, additionally provides evidence of the fruits of the postwar science policy consensus and of the Cold War security state.

Jesse Schrier, M.A. student
Utah State University, Department of History
Conservation Through Efficiency: Mormons, Farmers, and the Utah Agricultural College, 1895-1925

Because it has not been traditionally considered a progressive state or a state of the Progressive Party, most historians have overlooked the development and promotion of progressive conservation in Utah. Although a handful of historians (including Thomas Alexander and Leonard Arrington) have studied early notions of environmental stewardship as a manifestation of L.D.S. Church values in mid-nineteenth-century Utah, few have studied Utah as an outpost of early conservation ideals in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. In fact, Utah proved to be a bastion of progressive conservation practice and thought. Through their institutional intermediary, the Utah Agricultural College (UAC), state engineers and planners encouraged local people to adopt more modern, scientifically-proven methods of farming. Using much the same language as their progressive counterparts in Washington--- the mechanical language of efficiency--- these reformers sought to change how Americans developed their natural resources. In short, UAC scientists hoped to superimpose the factory system of production on to the family farm. Because this paper focuses on Utah, it necessarily must deal with the Mormons and their culture. It is my claim that while Mormons found the message from the UAC sensible and even appealing, they had a difficult time reconciling their traditional notions of stewardship with more modern notions of commercial efficiency. Ultimately, many Mormons chose to pursue their hopes of more economically prosperous farms, often at the expense of their own natural resources.

Julie Severson, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Revisiting the Sterile Battlefields: Family Planning, Politics, and Indian Identity

As the birthrate among white, middle-class American women declined in the 1960s, many professionals–most notably politicians and physicians–became uneasy with the looming possibility that low-income racial and ethnic minorities could eventually become the dominant sector in society. To curb this threat, the U.S. government inaugurated its family planning program in 1966. Although it had a slow start, family planning facilities and doctors sprung up in nearly every low-income neighborhood to provide birth control to women who depended on federal healthcare such as Medicaid or the Indian Healthcare Service. Looking for a quick and permanent "fix," when possible physicians performed surgical sterilizations on these women–hysterectomies and tubal ligations–although oftentimes these procedures were coerced.  Today, many know this practice as involuntary sterilization; and the tactics physicians used to perform these procedures varied.  Physicians lied in order to obtain consent for the procedure, solicited consent after their patients were under anesthesia or the doctors had already finished the operation, and would in rare instances not inform the patients they were performing the surgery at all.  Many women would simply find out later in life they had been sterilized while giving birth to their last child.  One group of women who encountered all of these methods—the group of women on which this paper focuses–is Native American women. Estimates tell us that by 1980 the government’s family planning program rendered nearly 40 percent of Native American women of childbearing age incapable of having children. According to many politicians and physicians, Indian families were unable to provide "the sort of environment needed for good health, citizenship, and self-sufficiency." But how this typically white, middle-class sentiment affected Indian families, communities, and culture is an issue rarely explored by scholars.  In the era of "Red Power," how did the systematic sterilization of Indian women affect Indian identity?  Was this federal abuse of power widely known among Indian communities? If so, did it reaffirm, challenge, or perhaps have no affect on a longstanding sense of "Indianness" diametrically opposed to the federal government? Tailored around this core issue, this paper seeks to explore the significance of identity, relations of power, and reproduction in Indian culture while keeping an eye on the larger issue of population control that was sweeping the nation, as well as the rest of the world, at this time.

Diana Shull, Ph.D. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of History
Setting the Poor to Work: Workhouse Schemes in England, 1655-1714

Advocacy of workhouses as solutions to the problem of poverty was not new to England during the period 1655 to 1714. The idea of setting the poor to work had been put into law in 1536, in a statute that mandated that vagabonds be set to work, and again in the Poor Laws of 1598-1601, which authorized workhouses at the county level yet did not provide specific instructions or economic support for the proposed workhouses. The period 1655 to 1714 was a time of experimentation for advocators of workhouses as they responded to the lack of state instructions with their own suggestions and full-fledged plans for workhouses. Historians covering this time period have generally focused on the failure of the relatively few workhouses which were actually set up to reduce the numbers of poor people, or to reduce the impact of poverty on communities, in any measurable way. The approaches of these historians have not focused on the particular reasons that workhouses were seen by many at the time to be the most effective method of controlling the poor. This paper addresses the questions of why plans for workhouses were popular in the years after 1650 and how workhouses were justified as reasonable solutions to the problem of poverty. I selected the ten authors from the Wing Short-Title Catalog of Early English Printed Books whose writings focused on workhouses to analyze in depth. I argue that, for the men writing about them, workhouses were a popular solution to the problem of poverty during this time because they enabled the dominant members of society to supervise and control every aspect of the poor’s lives. The contradictions and blurred category boundaries between human and resource, deserving and undeserving, and charity and punishment allowed many of these writers to justify their harsh tactics. The images of the poor that these elite men held in their minds, though rife with unconscious contradictions, tensions, and imagined fears, prodded them to take drastic action against any show of autonomy by the poor which could be threatening to the dominant society. While the plans to actually set up workhouses failed due to economic reasons, the underlying assumptions and coherent, at least on the surface, belief systems acting within those men planning workhouses did not fail. When the parish-based system of relief expanded in the later eighteenth century, workhouses gained the economic grounding which they needed to survive. The ideological basis of workhouses survived unscathed, with only minimal challenges, during the period of 1655-1714 when the actual workhouses did not.

Thomas Smith, Ph.D. student
University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Department of History
Order Amongst the Masses: John Pintard and the Hope for Piety and Tradition in the Early Republican Era

Gordon S. Wood calls America’s movement from classical Republicanism, typified by the Constitutional Convention, to romantic democracy, represented by Andrew Jackson, a time of profound cultural crisis. Incited by the egalitarian implications of the Revolution, the Second Great Awakening promoted a new religious populism. The Episcopalian Church, stripped of its Church of England status by the formation of the United States, had survived by allowing more lay participation in its governing structures. The evangelical fervor of the Second Great Awakening again challenged the Episcopalian Church. The Church reacted with a split between its high and low church advocates. John Pintard, an Episcopalian layman, remained personally faithful to his church, but challenged high-church advocate Bishop Henry Hobart over the ecumenical American Bible Society. Pintard’s support of evangelical bible distribution was not an endorsement for progressive individualism, but an attempt to inject piety back into American culture. Pintard felt this piety would check unlearned conversion, skepticism and uninhibited democracy; thus, establishing the moral authority of God and reasserting America as a divinely ordered society. Recognition of providential authority in America would engender respect for the virtues associated with the earlier tradition of classical republicanism. In a changing world, society would regain the layered order of an earlier era and respect John Pintard as a pious, virtuous gentleman working for the amelioration of the country. Exploration of John Pintard’s contemplative letters gives insight into the early Republican era demonstrating the dramatic nature of the challenges facing American society and the reactions they provoked.

Pamyla Stiehl, M.A. student
University of Colorado at Boulder, Department of Theatre and Dance
The Musical Impulse of the Ibsen Female: A Feminist Exploration of Dance as an Instrument of Will, Liberation and Exceedance in Modern Drama

A thundering chord, a rhythmic pulse, and the body is induced to movement -- an induction constituted by a musical moment of physical stimulation through which a Dionysian dialogue is also engaged. In the latter half of the 1800s, Henrik Ibsen dramatically addressed this paradigm when he introduced female protagonists who were searching for strategies by which to negotiate restrictive boundaries. It is a Nietzschian paradigm; and this paper poses and explores an assertion that Ibsen’s writings were influenced by Nietzsche’s philosophies which addressed a crisis of the individual in society and explored strategies of freedom, will and transcendence. By traversing a Nietzschian roadmap, the paper will specifically address the music/dance impulse as an instrument of power and potential and, consequently, find application and further demonstration of this dialectic in Ibsen’s modern drama. After defining this "musical impulse," it can then be applied to two of Ibsen’s significant female protagonists -- Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler. With each woman’s moment of "dance" identified, gender-specific analysis can be made regarding the significance, particularities and mediations of such a moment. Through this exploration, one can formulate two questions: How did these differing dance engagements expand, color, and/or possibly negate each woman’s journey? And, can a contemporary spectator identify and use the music/dance impulse as a feminist instrument for change and exceedance? This paper will look to the two Ibsen women for possible affirmation and use their particular engagements as trajectories from which to explore other potential dangers, contradictions and discoveries pertaining to the female’s musical impulse on stage.

Adam A. Thomas, M.A. student
Colorado State University, Department of History
The Allure of Speed, the Organization Man, and the iMac: The Economic Influences of Modern Design in America

Americans in the nineteenth century worried about the destructive force machines wrought on the landscape. But over time, Americans began to embrace machines as they recognized technology’s possibility to improve life, to promote democratic ideals. In 1925, The Little Review proclaimed in all capital letters, "THE MACHINE IS THE RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION OF TODAY." And in no other sector of the economy were machines more visible and more lauded than in transportation. The image of swift and dependable transportation–trains, automobiles, ships, and airplanes–dominated the American imagination just as they did the economy in the early twentieth century until World War II. With a new, continent-wide marketplace evolved a sense of national unity and the ability to disseminate popular design trends across the country. Throughout the twentieth century, the most visible sectors of this new, national economy influenced Modern design styles in America. I am not suggesting a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Indeed the roots of any emerging style are varied and widespread. But the design elements chosen by the leaders of the economy’s dominant industries give those styles a sense of legitimacy and visibility. Once Americans identified a style with the most prominent sector of the economy, they applied those very same design elements to everything from vacuum cleaners to bottles of laundry detergent. During the 1930s until World War II, soaring airplanes, streamlined trains, and graceful automobiles captured the American imagination. Soon toasters, chairs, and even buildings took on the same sleek lines, capturing the allure of speed. After World War II, American corporations reached overseas, creating gigantic bureaucracies. The no-nonsense design of office buildings and suburban houses reflected a new ethic of efficiency. Even the simple lines of a 1950s wool suit transformed the wearer into an organization man–a cog in the corporate machine. In today’s economy, dominated by high-tech corporations, the computer has become the icon of design. In particular, office furniture, electronics, and fashion borrow the bright colors, translucent materials, and whimsical lines that characterize Apple Computer’s flamboyant iMac.

Masatoshi Tominaga, Ph.D. student
University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education, Culture, and Society
The Early History of Japanese Animation: Technology, Animation, and Popular Culture

Japanese animation has gained a great amount of popularity in the U.S. However, the study of Japanese animation has received little attention. Because Japanese animation sometimes draws from the stories of manga (Japanese comic books), it is difficult to differentiate between Japanese animation and manga. Given this situation, this paper will analyze how Japanese animation has a different quality from the other art forms, especially manga.  It is significant to recognize that the popularity of Japanese animation and the distinctive features of Japanese animation go hand in hand.  The paper will particularly focus on how the technological dimension plays an important role in animation. Look back on the early history of Japanese animation, the paper will highlight the works of the most well-known Japanese animator, Osamu Tezuka, who invented special technological skills.  Many Japanese animators since then have adopted his techniques.  This paper will reveal the fact that the relation between Japanese animation and the progress of technology are inseparable.

Jennifer Jensen Wallach, Ph.D. student
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Department of Afro-American Studies
Literary Memoirs as Historical Source Material: Some Thoughts Toward Developing a Distinct Methodological Approach

The study of literary memoirs has the potential to enrich our historical understanding in ways frequently unrealized. In order to establish this claim, I must attempt to describe the nature of the historical reality, which the historian hopes to depict in her work. Historical reality is comprised of the unique experiences, emotions, and thoughts of each historical agent. The utilization of literary memoirs as historical source material has the potential to enhance our understanding of the "inside" of an historical moment. (By "inside" I am referring to a slightly modified version of philosopher R.G. Collingwood’s definition as presented in The Idea of History.) Although it is never possible to completely reconstruct historical reality-- to recreate the cognitive and affective inside of a historical moment from each agent’s perspective-- the study of the memoir gives us the opportunity to complicate and deepen our historical comprehension. Mining the memoir for this kind of historical insight calls for a distinct methodological perspective, the framework for which I have sketched in this paper. Memoir is a peculiar genre, which purports to be both literature and history but is not entirely one or the other. Memoirs claim to convey facts and are rooted in real historical events, thus making them appear to be logical resources for the writing of history. Memoirs also utilize literary devices and aesthetic power to render emotional truths that cannot be conveyed through a mere recitation of facts. As a result, memoirs should be read from an open-minded, interdisciplinary perspective. Evaluative and interpretive insights can be gleaned from three ongoing academic discussions: the historiographical debate about the strengths and limitations of oral history, the interdisciplinary discussion about "historical memory," and the debate among literary critics and philosophers about the viability of reading for "authorial intent."

Cheria K. Yost, M.A. student
Colorado State University, Department of History
"History and nature can co-exist." McGraw Ranch as a Case Study Cultural Landscape

As the story goes, Rocky Mountain National Park Superintendent Chester Brooks, attended a party at McGraw Ranch. He said to his host, "Frank, I wish you’d keep your horses out of my park." To which Mr. McGraw replied, "I will, Chet, when you keep your elk off of my ranch." This debate continues as park officials converting the McGraw guest ranch into a research facility try to find the delicate balance between cultural landscapes and natural resources within Rocky Mountain National Park. Today’s management objectives strive to preserve and protect both natural and cultural resources. But how will a previously "natural" park embrace its cultural resources including cultural landscapes? Furthermore, the dynamics of a landscape make it difficult to preserve. So, how does one preserve a landscape that by its very nature changes? The answer is simple: one cannot preserve a landscape, one can only manage its changes. Establishing a management and interpretive plan, however, is a complicated task of balancing nature and culture, historic uses and future needs. Most difficult, however, is amending the public perception that McGraw Ranch and the Cow Creek valley are natural places.

Susan Zietkiewicz, M.S. student
Colorado State University, Department of Manufacturing Technology and Construction Management
Tahosa Valley and Longs Peak: Architecture, Identity, and Landscape

Since before the 1860s, the abundant resources of the mountains, which included water, minerals, timber, and most importantly, scenic splendor, attracted summer recreationists to what became Colorado. In the early 1860s, climbers sought the major peak "bag" of the era, Longs Peak. Soon after the first successful documented ascent of Longs Peak by John Wesley Powell’s party in 1868, the Lamb family established Longs Peak House, a climbers ranch, or proto-resort, built to accommodate perspective climbers and tourists enjoying the montane scenery. The prevailing log architecture of the Tahosa Valley embodied the cultural values of the mountain people who were economically dependent on tourists for their livelihood. Although Longs Peak dominated the skyline in postcards and photographs, quaint cabins and lodges nestled in the grassy valley made the picture complete in the eyes of lodge owners and their guests. The regional style of architecture was vernacular rustic, which developed due to cultural, economic, and environmental factors, as well as the fact that the knowledge of light frame building techniques prevailed among constructors. Currently, both academic material culturists and historic preservationists in the field dismiss these buildings constructed with logs and light framing techniques as crude, degenerate and unaesthetic. Most people interested in historic architecture see these log buildings as makeshift because they tell no story of intriguing ethnic heritage, nor do they measure up to Rustic Architecture as exemplified in famous monuments to wilderness like Old Faithful Inn at Yellowstone National Park, or El Tovar at Grand Canyon. Yet, the very plainness and uncomplicated construction of the log buildings at Tahosa Valley, Estes Park, and throughout the Central and Northern Rockies tell a story of a regional adaptation to landscape, one that typifies an urban people’s self-identification as rustic inhabitants of the mountain wilds.