Welcome to the 2020-2021 academic year history capstone projects website. This year, the department’s capstone presentations will be presented in a series of roundtable discussions to be held on Zoom on April 5, 7, and 9.
Below please find the topic and time of each roundtable along with an abstract and short video presentation of each student’s project. You are encouraged to watch the videos prior to the roundtables, which will focus on questions raised and the implications of the exciting and innovative work produced by our majors.
12:00 - 12:30pm
Transcript of capstone presentation
“The Study of History: The evolution of the historical enterprise at the Macalester College history department”
The history of the historical enterprise, particularly within academic departments, has been underexplored. At Macalester College, the history department reflects national trends of academic professionalization, situating the context of the college’s own history. This provides a perspective on both the college and the historical discipline that can be used to inform responses to present challenges faced by history departments. History began to establish itself as an independent discipline in the late 19th century and early departments were dominated by “gentleman scholars,” often lacking extensive historical training. By the postwar period, departments came to be dominated by professionally trained career historians deeply loyal to a single institution. This has given rise to a new model, where professors bounce between multiple universities all operating under an extremely competitive “publish or perish” framework. Professors spend less time at institutions; thus the institutional knowledge of the departments shrink. This leaves departments without the long-term perspective to recognize patterns they are recreating, particularly unfortunate (and ironic) given that as historians, we pride ourselves on the ability to recognize historical trends and their impacts on the present.
Transcript of capstone presentation
“Lineage and Legacy: An Exploration of American Prohibition”
Since the dawn of fermentation, human society has been steeped in alcohol and the United States is no exception. From colonial beer to Kentucky bourbon, drinking has permeated all spheres of American history. But the story of drinking in America is not all cordials and cocktails. Since colonial times, questions of race and drinking have intermingled as Americans constantly curtailed how the “other” drinks. This paper examines the narrative of American drinking from 1607 to 1933, detailing how xenophobia and emerging nationalism dogged the steps of drinking in the United States.
To do so, this capstone synthesizes a variety of secondary sources, namely books and articles, and pulls primary texts, from pamphlets to newspaper articles, to support the claim that American drinking has always had a racist underbelly. The capstone argues that American drinking habits and American racial politics are inseparably tied and that the story of drinking in America is also the story of racism in America.
“Editing Wikipedia as a Tool for Activist Scholars: The White Pine Treaty"
Writing treaty history for Wikipedia is an activist project. While the Wikipedia community strives to represent “neutral points of view” in all of their content, systemic bias within the editing community and reflected in external source material privileges some perspectives and narratives more than others. Intentional Wikipedians, particularly those within academic institutions that can access privatized knowledge, can contribute content that aims to bring more balance to the content and perspectives on the platform. Currently, histories of the US Government’s land cession treaties with Indigenous peoples are sorely lacking on Wikipedia and, where they have been written, they reproduce harmful metanarratives from US history that warrant intervention. By citing rigorous and diverse sources, particularly those authored by indigenous individuals or communities, activist scholars can improve the collective content of Wikipedia. Intervening in this popular knowledge production space serves to raise consciousness about the harms of settler colonization.
12:30 - 1:00pm
“Zhou Bronzes: Recreating and Claiming the ‘China of Ritual and Music’"
This capstone, which forms part of my honors thesis, examines how two famous bronze artifacts from the Zhou dynasty (1046-256 BCE), the Da Ke Ding cauldron and Marquis Yi of Zeng’s bianzhong bell set, have been displayed and narrated on the Chinese educational entertainment program National Treasure (first aired 2017). It argues how this program utilizes theatrical narratives and performative bodies to elevate the artifacts into carriers of “Chinese national essence,” specifically a political and ethical system (liyue wenhua) based on Zhou institutions. Each artifact is first spotlighted in “former life” plays that portray mythic struggles between supporters and challengers of the Zhou order, then passed into “present legend” demonstrations that affirm their transmission of liyue wenhua to modern Chinese society (and especially the current Chinese state). This chapter closely analyzes the visual and thematic representations in these performances to show how the Da Ke Ding and bianzhong set are ultimately implicated in a state-sponsored, state-legitimizing myth of Chinese national identity.
“Revolutionary Apostles in a Foreign Land: Japanese Shishi and the Chinese Revolution of 1912”
This paper examines shishi, a unique social group in Japan’s Meiji period (1867-1912) who were descendants of lower-ranking samurai families, through exploring their participation in the Chinese Revolution of 1912. The shishi had played a critical role in helping the Chinese revolutionists by providing them funds, shelters, and military aids for revolts. The paper locates these individuals in a quickly modernizing Japan and the flux of different ideas such as Pan-Asianism, Liberalism, and Imperialism in the 19th century. It starts by accounting for the origin of this group’s tradition among the samurai class in the late Tokugawa period and then discusses the social displacement of this class that eventually caused their politicization. It ends with a brief study of the life of Miyazaki Tōten, a representative figure of shishi and a longtime partner of the renowned Chinese revolutionist Sun Yat-sen.
“The Self Strengthening Movement”
The Self-Strengthening Movement that began in the 1860s in late Qing China is often derided as a failure. In one sense it was. The goal of the Self-Strengthening Movement was to improve China’s military power and allow it to stand against modern militaries. In 1895 China faced disastrous defeat at the hands of Japan in the Sino-Japanese War, and by 1911 the Qing dynasty had dissolved entirely. That is often allowed to be the end of the Self-Strengthening Movement’s story; China lost, and then the Qing dynasty fell so it must have been an abject failure. However, the Self-Strengthening Movement did succeed in smaller goals of industrialization, despite setbacks. I will demonstrate this by examining the Kaiping mines, and the Jiangnan and Fuzhou arsenals. I conclude that the primary cause of failure was a lack of unity which the Qing dynasty had previously possessed, thus making the failures of the Self-Strengthening movement addressable within Chinese frameworks. The failure was not of unwillingness or inability to westernize or adopt industrial technology.
12:00 - 12:20pm
“Public Opinion is the Only Morality:” the role of public opinion in shaping the right to die movement from 1930-1994”
This paper examines the rhetorical history surrounding the “the right to die,” or euthanasia movement, from its beginnings as part of the eugenics movement in the 1920s to the first piece of state legislation guaranteeing the right to die in the early 1990s. By examining rhetoric produced by euthanasia advocates during this time, I demonstrate the complex interactions between political events, public opinion, the right to die movement, and associated rhetoric, as well as how these interactions shaped the creation and conception of the euthanasia movement. In order to conduct my study, I use a qualitative analysis political rhetoric created by different advocacy groups over this 60-year time period, grouping the different rhetoric into the three most prominent themes: medical ethics, religious rhetoric, and ideas around individual suffering and dignity. Data has been collected primarily from archives and newspapers. Exploring the intricate transformation of the “right to die” movement, from its close ties with eugenics to its modern entrenchment within progressive politics, allows insight into the way political events and rhetoric shape movements.
“Verdict and Verse: Women’s relational and economic agency in 10th-15th century Al-Andalus”
This paper assesses the ways in which Muslim and Jewish women in Al-Andalus, or Islamic Spain, during the 10th to 15th centuries demonstrated agency in the public and private aspects of their lives. Women’s perspectives are frequently invisible, especially in medieval histories, as men wrote many of the surviving sources. Through poetry and legal documents, however, we can understand how women expressed their needs and concerns. Poetry written by Muslim and Jewish women exposes the agency and power they had in their relationships because female poets articulated their desires. Fatwas and marriage contracts reveal the agency women had over their economic well-being because they brought forward contentions over their property rights to legal authorities. The experience of Muslim and Jewish women in Al-Andalus, who represent societal extremes as members of the dominant and minority religious groups, respectively, is remarkably similar. Both Muslim and Jewish women were expected to solely occupy positions and responsibilities in the domestic, private sphere, becoming wives and eventually mothers. The prosperity of the Golden Age of Islam did not significantly affect Muslim and Jewish women’s lives. However, further research into the experiences of Christian women is necessary to understand how, if at all, women’s experiences differed depending on the religious group they belonged to.
12:20 - 1:00pm
“European Ethnocentrism and Racism in Narrative Representations of Arctic North America Indigenous Peoples in Late Medieval Icelandic Literature”
One of the most prolific sources of medieval Viking literature is the collection of
Icelandic sagas known as the Flateyjarbók . Within this collection, two sagas are known as the Vinland Sagas, as they detail the Vikings’ journeys to the eastern shores of Arctic North America. In these sagas, a historically diverse group of Native Americans appear as a generic tribe known as the Skraelings or S krælingjar . It has been evident in Native American history that the Americas’ indigenous peoples have long been misrepresented, mistreated, and dismissed by white Europeans and their histories. In this paper, I intend to provide evidence for the claim that the racist, ethnocentric rhetoric of European literature is used to denigrate the indigenous people of North America as early as the late Middle Ages.
“Egyptian Exoticization: Tutankhamen’s Tomb and the Curse of Colonialism”
This capstone project examines the use of rumors, looking specifically at the curse of Tutankhamen’s tomb, as a tool for colonialism. The goal was to determine what the purpose of this rumor was in its colonial context. By focusing on this case study, I challenge the fascination with Egyptian culture, particularly the obsession with mummies and the supernatural. My paper utilizes theorists such as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Nicholas Daly, and Gregory Dowd to create a framework to view the primary sources, focusing on the economic exploitation and alienation of the Egyptian people. Viewing media as an outlet for this rumor provided the base for my capstone. I use two major media sources: newspapers and film. They are at the core of my analysis and make up the two main components, looking specifically at the language and stylistic choices. Both newspapers and film are unique because of the large audience they can reach. They deliberately spread a narrative that stereotyped Egyptian culture for their own fiscal gain. The rumor of the mummy’s curse perpetuated colonizers’ agenda and helped them maintain control over the people they colonized.
“Cartography and Colonialism: A Cherokee Nation Case Study”
This project examines the many discrete ways in which territorial maps of the Cherokee Nation, focusing on the period between 1824-1939, have been developed almost exclusively within the isolated spheres of the United States federal and state governments. The production of these maps ultimately indicates more about their contributors than they do geography itself. Using the Cherokee Nation as a case study, I provide a digital timeline of ten maps (1824-1939) that illustrate the continually shifting relationship between the United States federal and state governments and the Cherokee Nation specifically, and Native American Nations in general. I pair each of these maps with an analysis of authorship and subsequent commissioning institutions, along with other contextual information, providing a framework for understanding these maps through their institutional history. This project aids in visualizing the vast discontinuities of the institutional entities responsible for Native American relations within the U.S. federal government, which were in a constant state of change during this early period. Although my research concludes in 1939, it is pertinent today as the commissioning institution has not changed since that time.
“New Assessment: The Historiographical Evolution of the Historical Society of Ghana, 1952–1962”
On October 25, 1963, Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah gave a speech commemorating the formal opening of the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in which he lamented the current state of academic trends in Ghanaian social sciences and humanities. President Nkrumah argued these were still “largely influenced by the concepts of old style ‘colonial studies’…, remain[ing] under the shadow of colonial ideologies and mentality.” This paper attempts to evaluate Nkrumah’s claim by exploring the state of historiography in the late colonial Gold Coast and early independent Ghana during the decade leading up to this speech, in particular focusing on the Historical Society of Ghana and its journal of publications, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana.
12:00 - 12:30pm
“Chastity, Consumerism and Corsetry in the Victorian Era”
The corset, a staple of Western European fashion since the 16th century, was originally
worn almost exclusively by aristocrats. However, British women of all classes widely adopted the corset during the Victorian era (1837-1901). During this time, the corset transformed from a supportive undergarment intended to provide the wearer with good posture into a means of shrinking the wearer’s waist to achieve an exaggeratedly “feminine” silhouette. What caused the corset, a garment which had existed for centuries, to change so dramatically in such a short period of time? The answer lies largely in the effects of the Industrial Revolution - both because technological advances enabled mass production of less expensive corsets, and also because economic changes led to increasingly rigid gender roles. Contemporary propaganda described woman’s natural, God-ordained role as a submissive, dependent wife and mother. This portrayal served the interests of British industrialization, commerce, and consumerism, which required that “proper” women be rendered symbolically, if not literally, helpless. As men became the sole family breadwinners, women were relegated to a domestic sphere in which the goods they consumed and wore - including the tight-laced corset - became a means of displaying their husbands’ prosperity.
“The Fleeting Thrall of the Gun Moll: How the gangster girlfriend mesmerized the public"
In the midst of the demoralizing Great Depression, the United States also dealt with the problem of the emerging “Public Enemy.” To form the organization now known as the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover launched off of the publicity that the crimes of famous outlaws received. Yet these men weren’t the only criminals making the front page. This informative StoryMaps takes the viewer through a journey of the Public Enemy Era (1931-1934) and the public fascination with the “gun moll” or gangster girlfriend. Newspaper clippings and photographs are combined to dive into the reasons these women were so popular with the press and the public, and how the role they played influenced that popularity. I use two strategies: case studies of individual women and an analysis of general article trends. Data have been gathered from newspapers around the country, although the majority of events took place in the Midwest. This presentation discusses the role played by these briefly famous women and creates context for further analysis of gender relations in the Public Enemy Era.
“All American Santa: American Consumer Capitalism, Propaganda, and the Jolly Old Elf”
Santa’s current image and character are a work of public imagination, with most of that consolidation occurring in the United States in the last two centuries. Even as Santa’s image was being refined and standardized by artists and writers, his “brand” was used to sell ideas and cultural norms in addition to his long history of endorsing consumer goods, essentially weaving advertising into his character along with his archetypal sleigh and red coat. Two visual artists with the most noticeable impact on Santa’s consolidation, Thomas Nast and Haddon Sundblom, encoded their own ideas about what it meant to be American in their drawings of Santa; Nast, and Santa, took the side of the Union in the American Civil War, while Sundblom illustrated three decades of Coca-Cola Santa Claus advertisements, while espousing within them the coveted return to pre-World War II cultural norms as America adjusted to its status as a world superpower postwar. Santa’s characterization as a paragon of virtue and arbiter of goodness lends a unique credibility to the ideas his image is used to sell by building intense moral associations into those ideas, thus working to define and reinforce said cultural norms. Examining the use of Santa in advertising goods and spreading ideas is a reminder of the multifaceted nature of these norms, the variety of subtle ways in which they become enshrined, and provides a way to recognize the same tactics still in use today.
12:30 - 1:00pm
Transcript of capstone presentation
““Pro Football Gives Us Heroes”: Recreating American masculinities and femininities through the 1970s Dallas Cowboys organization”
This capstone is an examination and analysis of how the National Football League’s (NFL) Dallas Cowboys recreated and redefined gendered power during the 1970s in the U.S. It argues that the Cowboys and, on a larger scale, the NFL were able to reconstruct gender ideals through the media which were disrupted by events like the feminist movement and the Vietnam War. I draw on a number of primary sources including national newspapers, Sports Illustrated, and NFL Films highlight reels. The NFL is not just a site to reproduce gender modes but is an active player in reconstructing and imposing gender roles in America, particularly in times of national distress. Some argue that sport is a utopic mirror of the real world. Athletes, coaches, and teams, however, are as influential and visible as politicians and pop culture heroes. During the 1970s, the NFL redefined the masculinized warrior hero archetype. The league also redeveloped the hypersexualized and commodified “pinup girl” mode of femininity in response to second-wave feminism. Through mass media, the Dallas Cowboys and the NFL were able to regenerate gender power structures in the 1970s.
“Good Vibrations: Vibrators in the Early and Mid-Twentieth Century”
The electric vibrator has been widely studied during two periods of American history: immediately after its invention as a medical device in the late nineteenth century and nearly one hundred years later upon the open acknowledgement of vibrators as sex toys in the 1970s. However, there is a noticeable gap in scholarship regarding the vibrator in the early to mid-twentieth century between the vibrator’s advent and the sexual revolution. The early to mid-twentieth century is perhaps understudied due to a lack of direct primary sources discussing vibrators’ sexual uses, but advertisements, language used surrounding vibrators, and pornography of the era provide a deeper look at vibrators’ use during this time. Through these sources, it becomes apparent that the vibrator’s potential for sexual pleasure was realized by many parts of American society; however, open acknowledgement of female sexual pleasure, and masturbation in particular, was inhibited by the social environment and taboos surrounding female sexuality. Ultimately, vibrators were most likely used as sex toys long before the 1970s given that advertisers and the pornography industry saw their potential for sex, and therefore American women probably did as well.
Transcript of capstone presentation
“The Autism Specter: The Role of Stigma in Defining Disability”
In the 41 years since autism entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders (DSM) as a diagnostic category, its criteria have dramatically shifted away from a narrow model requiring severe impairment towards a broad model that acknowledges a wide spectrum of symptoms and severity. Yet, concurrent with these shifts, the DSM has cyclically introduced adjacent diagnoses meant to catch those cases not counted as “severe enough” to be autism—only to later absorb each of these diagnoses into the autistic category and introduce a new one. This paper examines the official criteria for autism and its adjacent diagnoses in each edition of the DSM as well as context surrounding the origin of the autism diagnosis. It uses this evidence to argue that the cyclical changes to the DSM indicate a deep stigma attached to developmental disability. While a small body of scholarship is beginning to study the social construction of autism and its implications over time, this paper is unique in examining the tensions and adherences between autism and its neighbors within the official diagnostic text. This analysis offers new insight into the the assumptions, challenged and unchallenged, about disability that inform the DSM and by extension the field of psychiatry.