VTechWorks Repository :: Browsing by Author "Shumsky, Neil Larry"

Browsing by Author "Shumsky, Neil Larry"

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Access and Inclusion: Women Students at VPI, 1914-1964
Williams, Leslie Ogg (Virginia Tech, 2006-07-19)
This thesis analyzes coeducation as a process between 1914 and 1964 at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI), as it was called during the period of study. The date for women's full-time admission came in 1921, but this thesis argues that, in the process of coeducation, the date for official access represents only one marker for VPI. Since women had taken courses during the summer before 1921 and did not encounter a welcoming environment after that date, this thesis contends that the relative importance of this "first" needs to be put in perspective. This thesis explores VPI as a case study to analyze how society's gender roles and women's place affected the decision to admit women and their treatment on campus after access. Examining social, political, and economic events in Virginia and the nation, this thesis places VPI within the context of events at the time. In particular, this thesis discusses how federal legislation, during the 1910s, prompted VPI to admit women, an area previously unexplored by historians of higher education. Throughout the period of study, this thesis argues that VPI - its students and administration - limited women's access and inclusion on campus in an effort to maintain its identity as a white, male, military institution.
"Can These Be The Sons of Their Fathers" The Defense of Slavery in Virginia, 1831-1832
Curtis, Christopher M. (Virginia Tech, 1997-03-28)
This study argues that the Virginia slavery debate of 1831-32 was an occasion when radical transformations in the nature of the proslavery argument occurred and where changing popular perceptions about the role of government can be seen. Since the Revolution, government in Virginia had been based upon the Lockean concept of the inviolable right of private property and of property's central relationship to government. During the slavery debate, when the initial emancipationist plan, which addressed the slaveholders' property rights, was dismissed as impractical, a more radical antislavery doctrine was proposed that challenged traditional beliefs concerning property and the function of government. This doctrine was the legal concept of eminent domain, the right of the state to take private property for public purposes without the consent of the owner. Arguing that slavery threatened public safety, emancipationists called on the state government to act within its eminent domain powers to confiscate this harmful species of property. In the climate of increased public fear, brought on by the recent slave insurrection in Southampton County, this particular emancipationist argument subverted the traditional necessary evil justification for slavery. Defenders of slavery became impaled upon the horns of a dilemma. If they continued to acknowledge that slavery was evil, then they risked engendering the expansive government powers that the emancipationists advocated. If slavery could no longer be justified as a necessary evil, then upon what grounds must its defense now rest? In the face of this dilemma, defenders abandoned their traditional apologetic justification and instead advanced the idea of slavery as a "positive good."
"The Case of Mary Phagan,'A Story About the Story of a Murder': Constructing a Crime"
Shelton, Regan Virginia (Virginia Tech, 1999-12-13)
On April 27, 1913, the body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was discovered in the basement of her workplace in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the course of the following two years, her employer, Leo Frank, would be tried and convicted for her murder. Another employee, Jim Conley, a black janitor originally implicated in the crime, provided the evidence used to convict Frank. In my thesis, I explain the multiple identities created to describe the victim and her accused murderer(s). Press reports, trial records, and secondary historical accounts of the crime all reveal a fascination with the young female victim and a desire to solve the mystery of her death. By examining personal identity as a cultural construction, I re-evaluate the manner in which we define and describe crime. Phagan's murder became a cautionary tale, a narrative of sexual danger within the model city of the New South. My thesis illustrates the importance of understanding murder as an event occurring within and shaped by a social context. The murder of Mary Phagan and the Frank case demonstrate how we ascribe meaning to tragic events and how variables such as race, class, gender, and age affect the outcome of criminal procedures.
Confederate Brig. Gen. B.H. Robertson and the 1863 Gettysburg campaign
Bowmaster, Patrick A. (Virginia Tech, 1995-04-28)
Beverly Holcombe Robertson was a military commander around whose Civil War career controversy always seemed to swirl. Robertson was born June 5, 1827, to Dr. William H. and Martha (Holcombe) Robertson at the family plantation, "The Oaks," in Amelia County, Virginia. With the exception of the fact that he was educated locally, nothing is known of young Robertson's life during the period between his birth and his appointment as a cadet to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Based upon his later performance at lithe Point," it can be assumed that this education was solid.
Confederate Lynchburg, 1861-1865
Morris, George G. (Virginia Tech, 1977)
In 1860, Lynchburg was a thriving tobacco town. The "golden leaf" had stimulated the economy and made the city financially sound. When civil war erupted, Lynchburg cast her fate with Virginia and the Confederacy. Mobilization began at a rapid rate. Men flocked to the ranks, industries geared to war production and women began making clothing for the soldiers. Located on three railroad lines and a canal, Lynchburg became an important transportation link for the Confederacy. Soldiers poured into the city during the first year of war. The city established two camps accommodating over 10,000 soldiers. A military hospital came into being shortly thereafter. As the war progressed, sick and wounded men poured into Lynchburg in such a stream that three general military hospitals and three independent hospitals were ultimately established. The general hospitals were divided into divisions and extended even into various tobacco factories. Lynchburg constantly faced inflation and scarcity during the war. Sometimes action from local authorities aided the problem, but many times Lynchburg citizens lived in fear of privation. With the city full of transit soldiers, crime became an almost insurmountable problem. The end finally came on April 12, 1865, when Mayor Branch surrendered the city to Federal troops.
Creating truth: the Committee on Public Information and the growth of government propaganda in the United States
Clauss, Michael Eric (Virginia Tech, 1993-05-15)
On April 13, 1917, Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information. For the next eighteen months, the members of the Committee attempted to gain the total support of the American people for the war effort. Historians who have written about the Committee focus on what it did. This thesis attempts to answer the question, why it insisted on distorting and fabricating facts when its Chairman, George Creel, had instituted a policy of only presenting facts to the American people. This thesis looks at several of the Committee's divisions in depth, including the Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation, the Four Minute Men, the Speaking Division, the Bureau of Cartoons, the Division of Advertising, the Division of Pictorial Publicity, the Division of News, and the Official Bulletin. Analysis of these divisions shows that their directors manipulated facts because they believed that the American people needed to be emotionally connected to the conflict to support it. They reasoned that facts alone would not suffice.
Ethnicity in Festival Landscapes: An Analysis of the Landscape of Jaialdi '95 as a Spatial Expression of Basque Ethnicity
Yatsko, Michael S. (Virginia Tech, 1997-05-08)
Ethnic festivals are dynamic socio-spatial phenomena in American society in which rationalized spaces are transformed into "festival space" and the cultural landscapes within the boundaries of the festivals are transfigured into festival landscapes. The landscapes of ethnic festivals generate, via a colorful assortment of cultural performances and symbols, metaphors of ethnicity and spatial expressions of social processes which influence ethnic groups. As a metaphor of ethnicity, festival landscapes have become both a tool for the ethnic boundary maintenance of ethnic groups and a form of symbolic ethnicity for many assimilated individuals. This thesis analyzes the landscape of the Basque festival, Jaialdi '95, as a tool for the ethnic boundary maintenance for the American Basque community and the Basque colony in Boise, Idaho, and as a form of symbolic ethnicity for assimilated American Basques.
"Every Thing in its Place" Gender and Space on America's Railroads, 1830-1899
McCall, R. David (Virginia Tech, 1999-09-16)
Gender was a critically important component of the rules and practices of railroading in the nineteenth century. While railroad passengers were initially composed of a homogenous group of middle-class men and women, increased use of trains very quickly led to separations by sex and class. Victorian understandings of respectability and gender roles and view of the world as being ordered and hierarchical strongly shaped how railroads treated their passengers. Like home and hotel parlors, railroad passenger cars constituted an intersection of the sacred private realm of the home and the less pure mundane arena of public life. Nineteenth-century middle-class Americans used space to define and maintain societal distinctions of gender and, especially, class. The definition and decoration of space in rail passenger service reinforced Victorian values and restricted and controlled behavior. Diverse gender and status roles distinguished white middle-class men and women from immigrants and members of other races as railroad passengers. Even white middle-class men and women did not have the same experience or expectations of nineteenth-century rail passenger service. Railroads in the nineteenth century were constructed by a mannered and hierarchical society, but they were also part of a capitalist consumer economy. In a conflict between taking care of business and upholding societal standards such as gender ideals, business generally took precedence.
'Fierce Winds and a Blank Whiteness': The Culture of Dakota Winter, 1870-1915
Fischer, Daniel (Virginia Tech, 2011-07-25)
This thesis argues that accommodation to winter was an important — though not the only — response of early Dakotans to the annual challenges and hazards of winter. It examines first the challenges of winter, then what Dakotans did to protect themselves from and even profit from the season, then the ways that Dakotans spoke in positive ways about their winters or, using winter, themselves.
Highways to health and pleasure: the antebellum turnpikes and trade of the mineral springs of Greenbrier and Monroe Counties, Virginia
Martindale, Lana McMann (Virginia Tech, 1994-12-31)
Turnpike building in Greenbrier and Monroe counties coincided with the period of their springs' greatest development and prosperity. The development of both the springs and the turnpikes in this region reflected the cyclical nature of the national economy. The springs of Greenbrier and Monroe counties at the heart of the antebellum Virginia Springs Tour provided a seasonal internal marketplace for the region. Turnpikes were built primarily to connect these springs with each other and with the state's major road arteries through southwestern Virginia. Without other internal improvements prior to the Civil War, this region fared comparably with the rest of western Virginia and the state as a whole in their bid for state assistance for turnpikes. Generally turnpike investments at both the local and the state level provided better access to the springs. Though inextricably connected through the springs tour, Greenbrier and Monroe Counties fared differently in their struggle for internal improvements.
James Mill and Dugald Stewart on Mind and Education
Murphree, David Wayne (Virginia Tech, 2014-04-23)
Late 18th Britain was experiencing the beginnings of social unrest fueled in part by the American and French Revolutions. The established two class social system was being challenged by the emergence of a middle class seeking something more than traditional agricultural work. While they subscribed to very different philosophies of mind, both Stewart and Mill saw the solution to potential social chaos in a revised educational system that would open the doors to a peaceful development of that middle class. What the new educational system should look like was a direct function of the theory of mind held by the two protagonists. Employing an enlarged Foucaultian framework, this dissertation examines the various forces at work in transforming British society as it prepares for the unanticipated forthcoming industrial revolution.
Noah Webster and the Invention of Immigration
Shumsky, Neil Larry (MIT Press, 2008-03)
Like all lexicographers, Noah Webster built his dictionaries on the works of others. But in the case of the verb to immigrate and its derivatives, he coined a new definition, one that has had a profound impact on how Americans conceive of the phenomenon of immigration.
Virginians' Responses to the Gettysburg Address, 1863-1963
Peatman, Jared Elliott (Virginia Tech, 2006-04-14)
By examining Virginia newspapers from the fall of 1863 this paper will bring to light what Civil War-era Southerners thought of the Gettysburg Address. This work is confined to Virginia not because that state is representative of the Confederacy, but because Southern reporting on the Address was wholly shaped by the Richmond papers. The first two chapters of this thesis reveal that Southern editors censored reporting on the Gettysburg Address because of Lincoln's affirmation that "all men are created equal. The final chapter traces Virginians' responses to the Address up to 1963. Drawing on newspaper editorials, textbooks adopted by Virginia's schools, coverage of the major anniversaries of the Address in the state's newspapers, and accounts of Memorial Day celebrations, this chapter makes clear that Virginians largely ignored the Gettysburg Address in the twentieth-century while Northerners considered it an essential national document. In 1963, as in 1863, it was the assertions about equality that Southerners could not abide. This divergence of response, even in 1963, lays bare the myth of a completed sectional reconciliation and shared national identity.
Weird Old Figures and a New Twist: Cultural Functions of Halloween at the Turn of the 20th Century
Williams, Rebecca Jean (Virginia Tech, 2017-06-09)
Halloween arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century with the surge in immigration from the British Isles — especially Ireland. However, the folk holiday did not gain widespread attention until the late 1870s and 1880s when descriptive pieces containing both accounts of Halloween's long history increasingly appeared in some newspapers and periodicals. Over the next couple decades, these descriptive pieces became more prescriptive, instructing women how to throw a "proper" Halloween party; what food to serve, games to play, and atmosphere to evoke. By the turn of the twentieth century and up through the 1920s, the middle-to-upper class — specifically women — adopted the holiday all across the country and characterized it with parties, decorative displays, and the propagation of literature, imagery, and ephemera. Since Halloween had existed as an ethnic folk tradition in America for several decades, why and how did this particular group of Americans adopt — and adapt — Halloween to meet their needs? Which Halloween traditions did they retain and how did they shape the holiday for their own purposes? Finally, how did this particular celebration of Halloween reflect the interplay of certain values among these celebrants through literature, imagery, and ephemera? This study of Halloween asks what the celebration of holidays and rituals can tell us about the culture in which they are celebrated. By employing a method which gives equal weight to historical context, audience, and imagery, we gain valuable insight about the stratum of American society which made Halloween an American tradition.
Wilderness rivers: environmentalism, the wilderness movement, and river preservation during the 1960s
Empfield, Jeffrey Morgan (Virginia Tech, 1994-05-05)
Wilderness Rivers explores America's treatment of rivers in the context of the social and political climate of the 1960s. The decades following the Second World War brought about significant changes in the way Americans perceived their environment. Higher levels of affluence and education, continued urbanization, and the popularization of ecology converged to promote an environmental awakening that increased steadily throughout the decade. The conservation movement broadened to include issues of quality of life and ecological protection. Rivers emerged as a central issue in relation to outdoor recreation, pollution, and freshwater shortages. As part of the general idea of wilderness preservation that came to fruition in the Wilderness Act of 1964, river advocates forwarded proposals to establish a protective federal system of wild rivers. To this end, the federal government experimented with a variety of river protection programs before arriving at the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968 which established a nationwide system of representative river preserves. Despite strong support for the idea, the resulting system secures only marginal protection for rivers based largely on recreational considerations. The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act is most significant for providing a symbolic acknowledgement of the need to restrain further development and prevent despoilation of America's rivers.

Browsing by Author "Shumsky, Neil Larry"

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