TAMU-CC Theses, Dissertations, and Other Projects
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Find theses, dissertations, and other projects completed by students of Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Associated files for theses, dissertations, and other projects, such as data sets and Honors Projects of Excellence, can also be found within this community.
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Browsing TAMU-CC Theses, Dissertations, and Other Projects by Department "Humanities"
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Item "A Brave New Woman:" Print Media's Portrayal of Women in the American Civil War(2018-12) Syamken, Jennie M.; Syamken, Jennie M.; Wooster, Robert; Wooster, Robert; Moore, Peter; Blanke, David; Moore, Peter; Blanke, David; Blanke, DavidThe American Civil War transformed the roles of women in the United States. Their domestic lifestyle was uprooted as many women vacated their domestic duties and joined different public causes to support the war in either the Union or Confederacy. These new roles included serving on the United States Sanitary Commission, as nurses in hospitals and on the front lines, and as women soldiers. This study illustrates how the 19th century print media published favorable stories about women’s expanding roles in the Civil War and molded public opinion about white women in a male dominated society. The first chapter will assess the work of other historians on the changing nature of journalism and women’s contributions in the war. The second chapter includes the coverage of women by newspapers and periodicals in the public sphere, most notably in the Sanitary Commission, aid societies and as nurses in the hospitals and on the battlefield. The third chapter will focus on the media’s portrayal of the experiences of women soldiers in battle and camp life. This affirmative view encouraged greater acceptance of women outside of the domestic sphere. Helped by the favorable portrayal of their efforts by newspapers and periodicals, women seized the opportunity to expand their roles by creating a new sense of respect for their gender, as evidenced by the successful efforts by Civil War nurses to secure pensions for their wartime service.Item "Fifty Years After Cisneros v. CCISD: a History of Racism, Segregation, and Continued Inequality for Minority Students"(2018-12) Jones, Jamie Lynn; Jones, Jamie Lynn; Sanos, Sandrine; Muños, Laura K.; Sanos, Sandrine; Mu�os, Laura K.Sanos, Sandrine; Muños, Laura K.; Quiroz, Anthony; Robinson, Beth; Quiroz, Anthony; Robinson, Beth; Robinson, BethThroughout the history of Corpus Christi, racism has played a central role within many aspects of life including within the role of education. For many decades, students attended particular schools based upon the color of their skin, and were afforded different educational opportunities in direct correlation to their social standing within society. In Corpus Christi, three types of schools, also known as a tripartite system, emerged with one for African American students, another for Mexican American students, and another for Anglo students. This trend was challenged in 1954 with the ruling of Brown v. Board of Education, which declared the “separate but equal” clause was no longer constitutional, and ordered schools districts throughout the nation to integrate their schools. Corpus Christi Independent School District (CCISD) began the integration process soon after, but only for African American and Mexican American students, which left Anglo schools completely intact essentially creating a dual school system. However, in 1970, another court case, Cisneros v. CCISD ruled that Mexican Americans were a minority, and as a result, CCISD was segregated and needed to form a unitary school system at once that integrated all three races. This paper presents an educational history of Corpus Christi both prior and after Cisneros in 1970, and analyzes the various desegregation methods CCISD employed, including busing and the creation of Special Emphasis Schools. I argue that CCISD is still a segregated school district despite all of the various desegregation compromises and plans adopted over the years due to the district embracing the neighborhood school plan, and several free choice programs offered at different schools that encourage transfers of certain students. This paper seeks to provide an accurate history of CCISD from 1871 to the current day that reveals the reasons why schools are still segregated today.Item A history of the Texas Congress of Mothers-Parent Teacher Association and school reform, 1909-1930(2016-12) Hatmaker, Amy A.The role of the Texas Congress of Mothers – Parent Teacher Association in school reform has long been overlooked by historians. This study is meant to examine the efforts of the organization in school reform from its inception in 1909 to the 1930s as well as the response of educators toward the organization following the creating of the professional school system. Chapter One examines the poor state of the public schools in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. Using reports of educational surveyors, the Superintendents of Public Instruction and historians, it shows how Texas, like most of the South, lagged behind the rest of the nation in literacy, educational standards, and school funding. It includes a discussion of the early reform efforts and the emergence of the Texas Congress of Mothers – Parent Teacher Association. Chapter Two uses organizational records and state reports to show the work of the organization. The priorities of each administration are examined with particular attention given to the work that helped create the professional teacher as well as efforts that led to developing a modern system of education. The final chapter uses publications of contemporary educators and parents as well as institutional records to discuss the reaction of the school establishment to the reforms advocated by the Texas Congress of Mothers – Parent Teacher Association. It demonstrates that once education became a recognized profession, educators began to question the need to cooperate with the organization, sparking a redefinition of organizational priorities. The Texas Congress of Mothers – Parent Teacher Association was a major factor in changing the state’s educational system. Yet, the very system they helped create would later limit the organization’s future impact. A better understanding of the contribution of the organization as well as the dynamics between it and educators should be a part of the historical record. Further, an understanding of the history of cooperation and advancement made when both sets of stakeholders worked together could prove useful as a model for future reform efforts.Item Lest we forget: commemorative movements in Texas, 1893-1936(2015-08) Banks, TheodoreThis thesis examines how white elite Texans deployed historical memory in constructing their cultural identity from the last decade of the nineteenth century through the Texas Centennial. As a former member of the Confederacy, Texas in many ways adhered to general patterns observable throughout the south, such as participation in Confederate veteran and auxiliary organizations and the regional celebration of the Lost Cause. As the state approached its centenary, memorialization of its frontier and revolutionary eras assumed a higher profile in the state's cultural landscape. This thesis analyzes the interplay of these two memory repertoires, Confederate and Texas frontier/revolutionary, as the state's elite celebrated the two concurrently over a period of several decades.Item Policing knowledge in the war on drugs: a Foucauldian analysis of the marijuana discourse in the late 1960s and early 1970s(2017-05) Rice, Ethan; Sanos, Sandrine; Muñoz, Laura; Quiroz, AnthonyMany histories of marijuana prohibition see the 1960s and 1970s as a time of relatively lax attitudes towards marijuana use. Scholars have argued that higher rates of usage and the fact that marijuana was being used by an increasing number of middle-class whites led to a softening of the penalties for low-level offenses. However, focusing solely on policy and failing to scrutinize how the discourse on drugs worked to marginalize users and underwrite enforcement efforts overlooks the extent to which this era represents a time of increasing obsession with controlling marijuana and other drug use. Michel Foucault’s work on the relationship between knowledge and power provides a useful framework through which this discourse can be elucidated. Foucault describes discourse as both productive and disciplinary: it produces categories of knowledge and simultaneously regulates what can be known through what it includes, excludes, or limits. Thus, it exerts a power distinct from the coercive power of the law: the power to determine the acceptability of a behavior and what is known about it. To analyze this discourse, I rely on two main forms of sources: print media and drug education materials. Newspaper and magazines provide a sense of how the “drug problem” was framed in the media, while government-sponsored drug education efforts are crucial to examining how the prohibitionist discourse was propagated and institutionalized. The popular discourse on marijuana and other drugs constituted an official discursive “truth,” a body of knowledge that justified the mechanisms, including law enforcement and drug education that enforced and normalized a prohibitive stance towards marijuana in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A Foucauldian approach to marijuana prohibition is significant because it considers discourse as a form of power that produced categorical frameworks through which drug use was perceived, rather than only considering legal restrictions. We must move beyond a policy-centered approach and look at discourse as a form of disciplinary power that can regulate and define citizen bodies and actions, and direct our attention to the ways this discourse itself is policed in order to understand how the systems of power that supported prohibition were maintained.Item The pulse of the Blucher archive: the making and life of a Texan institutional archive, 1980-2019(2019-12) Gonzalez, Shelby Lynn; Sanos, Sandrine; Wooster, Robert; Moore, PeterThe aim of this thesis is to reconstruct the history of the Blucher Archive. Rather than taking the life of the Blucher Archive to be a self-evident background, institution, and repository, this thesis will explore its “life” in order to understand how the archival turn may shed light on the Blucher Archive. The Blucher Archive has its own history. One that conditions the ability to interact with it, write from it, and understand the large system of power, control, and legitability that records keeping necessarily enables. The archive is the foundation for this thesis, meaning we are considering the archive as a unit of analysis unto itself rather than as a simple repository of historical source materials.Item Two counties in crisis: measuring political change in reconstruction Texas(2021-08) Dillard, Robert Jefferson; Wooster, Robert; Blanke, David; Moore, PeterMeasuring political change at the cultural level is a process that has long divided political scientists and historians. By focusing on two socially, economically, and culturally distinct Texas counties during Reconstruction, this thesis presents an example of political change. Collin County, Texas experienced a cultural shift from 1861 to 1876 resulting from the traumatic events of war, military rule, and the natural processes of enculturation and oppositional politics.Item "A Victorious Struggle:" Confederate Women Writers Commemorate the Civil War, 1860-1945(2017-05) Ballard, Crystal N.; Blanke, David; Wooster, Robert; Brown, Jen CorrinneThe American Civil War was the most life-altering event in history. The entire country was thrust into the chaos and mayhem of this tragic conflict, but no one felt the turmoil of war more than those whose families, homes, and communities were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of men joined the Confederate States Army (CSA) in defense of their traditions, liberties, and economic system. Women, too, joined in the fight to preserve southern heritage, with many female writers taking great care to celebrate their sacrifices and devotion to the Confederate cause. Following the war, southern women entered yet another time of great anxiety and unrest as Reconstruction tossed the defeated region into a state of confusion. As northern interest in southern society waned and abruptly ended in 1877, white southerners, who sought to reclaim their homeland, publicly acted to recover what was lost in the war and engaged in memorialization and commemorative practices. Some women joined the ranks of ladies’ organizations, such as the Ladies’ Memorial Associations of the South and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These women raised monuments to mark the battlefields that peppered the southern landscape and funds to recover the bodies of the Confederacy’s sons and bury them with dignity in proper military cemeteries. This study, however, showcases the female writers of the war. Their recordings, recollections, and reminisces allowed them to consciously enter the public reclamation movement of the postwar years. This essay chronologically follows two distinct shifts that occurred in Civil War memory. The first chapter emphasizes the work of other historians on the topic and provides context for the reader. It explains why these wartime women recorded their experiences and examines the events and trends that they felt compelled to include in their writings. The second chapter explores the documents of authors written between 1860-1865 which remain unpublished. Unlike the women of the next chapter, they did not publicize their writings and, thus, were unfiltered or unaltered by any third parties. The third chapter uncovers the first shift in memory, where the witnesses of war began to give their testimonials to the reading masses from 1865-1895. This is indicative of a much larger social and cultural transition as white southerners turned their gaze toward the reclamation of their homeland. The final chapter outlines a second major transfer of Civil War memory from 1895-1945. A generational exchange of memory occurred, as children born after 1865 were sculpted by their parents’ and grandparents’ wartime experiences. This was an affirmation of southern survival, and the transference of their cultural identity in the new era continued their dedication to the preservation of white southern beliefs, traditions, heritage, and history.