Theses and Dissertations at Montana State University (MSU)
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Item Resilience, resistance, and redemption: opening ethical museum space for displaced voices in our modern era(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2020) Gwinner, Mackinley Michael; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Molly ToddMuseums traditionally silenced marginalized voices through their western colonial authority. Because of the passive nature of museum spaces, minority voices, especially the voices of displaced persons or refugees, are actively oppressed and marginalized. Resilience, Resistance, and Redemption uses case studies from the United States and Europe in order to analyze how museums throughout the western world have or have not engaged with displaced voices and their stories. Using theoretical and practical public historical practices this thesis seeks to give the reader insight into how decolonization practices have been and should be implemented in museum spaces. This thesis focuses on ethical and empathetic use of activism and solidarity by museum workers and more specifically curators to decolonize museum spaces and incorporate a more diverse range of voices into these spaces.Item Dangerous vagabonds' : resistance to slave emancipation and the colony of Senegal(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Hardy, Robin Aspasia; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Catherine DunlopIn 1848, when slavery was abolished across greater France, slavery remained virtually intact in the French colony of Senegal on the west coast of Africa. Slavery continued to be practiced in the colony and in its expanding borderlands until at least 1905, when this study ends. This thesis challenges traditional interpretations of illicit slavery in Senegal by demonstrating the power that French imperial culture played in the problem of continued captivity. While post-emancipation slavery in the colony was due to economic and logistic pressures in West Africa, as well as a strong indigenous tradition of forced labor, this study will show that it was also true that inherent factors within the culture of French colonialism made abolishing the institution exceedingly difficult. This thesis examines three aspects of French imperial culture after 1848 that mitigated slave freedom in Senegal: the views of race and slavery maintained by Senegal's influential métis (mixed-race) population; French cultural assessments of the aptitude and capabilities of West Africans; and a trend within French political culture to deny metropolitan rights to the colonized--a phenomenon that intensified in far-flung French territories that were not completely under French control, and where few whites resided. An examination of each of these themes will lead to a deeper understanding of the persistence of slavery in Senegal between 1848 and 1905, revealing greater nuance within the French imperial project overall.Item And they all fell silent : gender and violence in Butte, Montana, 1910-1950(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2016) Scheidler, Natalie Faye; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyThe history of violence in the American West has captured the attention of scholars as well as the popular imagination for decades. Novels, films, scholarly articles, and most recently video games have dedicated hundreds of pages and countless hours of media production to gold camp desperados, vigilantes, bandits, and early twentieth century labor agitators, while the history of more intimate violence remains quieted. That is the violence exacted against female bodies. This project tells one story from four separate yet intricately linked vantage points: the rates and patterns of gendered violence, the cultural interpretations of violence, the legal encoding and policing of violence, and women's resistance to that violence. Additionally, this project looks at rape and wife assault simultaneously, as these are both crimes that overwhelmingly affect women. Examining these crimes in tandem throughout the twentieth century, before the advent of spousal rape or domestic violence law, and within the larger context of all violent crimes, demonstrates the ways in which violence not only worked to maintain male power, but also to define relationships between related and unrelated men and women. The redefinition of these relationships and identities, however, did not only occur through physical force, but also through institutional and epistemic violence practices. Specifically, the statistical analysis expands a robust conversation about the history of homicide in its discussion of three kinds of violent crime-rape, homicide, and assault. In doing so, it presents a more complete depiction of the history of force. The cultural analysis investigates the development of violence narratives, which have significant consequences for how the law defines crimes, how offenders will be tried and sentenced, and how preventative strategies are developed. The legal analysis examines the ways in which the law constructed bodies of potential perpetrators and/or victims and either provided for or inhibited equal access to protection. It also investigates the fluid ways in which its practitioners interpreted and executed the law. Lastly, this project explores the ways in which woman, far from passive victims, opposed the abuse of their bodies.Item Endangered waters : interdependency on Montana's Big Hole River(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2015) Davis, Benjamin Avery; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brett WalkerThe Big Hole River brings life to this arid region of southwestern Montana, but its stream flows annually reach detrimentally low levels. The causes behind the low-flow levels are a direct reflection of Euro-American impacts dating back to the early nineteenth century. This is a story of dependency and scarcity, which presently makes the river the source of political conflict.Item Flame of the red flag : cogntive ecologies of the Paris commune(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2014) Aston, Alexander Reid; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Brett WalkerThis thesis addresses the longstanding intellectual framework that has divided mind from matter, agency from environment and humanity from nature. In an attempt to break down these dichotomies this paper explores the Paris Commune of 1871 as a case study in cognitive ecology. The paper hopes to answer the question of how people transform their societies without supervision or command from a central authority. It argues that cities are selection driven adaptive landscapes, co-evolutionary structures that emerge to facilitate and sustain dense human habitation through the material organization of cognition. This study seeks to answer questions about the entanglement of environment, social organization and cognition. Specifically the ways in which ecological dynamics and selection mechanisms affect social structure; how individual agency translates into collective action; and the ways in which cultural materials feedback into cognitive processes and social activity. By investigating flows of energy, matter and information during the Siege and Commune of Paris from 1870 to 1871 the analysis attempts to show how human cognition intersects with its environment to form self-organizing, complex adaptive systems. The research utilizes a number of theoretical frameworks to explore the evidence; Material Engagement Theory, Extended Mind Theory, Entanglement Theory, Developmental Systems Theory, Panarchy, and Complexity Theory. This paper demonstrates that contractions in energy, matter and information flows created by the Prussian siege triggered selection mechanisms favoring specific social institutions while disempowering others. Further, it shows that cognitive niche construction facilitated social revolution in the city. Finally, it argues that cultural materials helped to distribute cognitive processes in ways that enabled collective revolutionary action. This includes one clear example of a positive feedback loop mediated through physical objects. In conclusion, this paper shows that the most important feature of urban environments is the ability to facilitate individual adaptations to ecologies dominated by the physical and cognitive presence of their own species. The products of human cognition, circulating as materials in socio-cognitive ecologies, function to entangle ideas and relationships into the physical environment and organize behavior. Thus, human societies do not fundamentally break from the natural world but express the developmental properties of human evolution.Item The 1952 Montana elections : politics as usual(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1976) Everett, David DeanItem A man of Germany : acceptable uncertainties in a time of war(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2004) Gallagher, John Bernard; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Michael Sean Reidy.During the week of September 15, 1941, Niels Bohr and Wemer Heisenberg met secretly in Copenhagen, Denmark. These Nobel physicists worked together in the 1920s to construct a new quantum physics. The Copenhagen Interpretation consisted of statistical quantum mechanics, the Uncertainty Principle, and Complimentarity, which revolutionized perceptions of atomic phenomena and challenged the scientific community with their conceptions of classical Newtonian causality. At the time of the meeting, Germany occupied Denmark and Heisenberg led the German effort to develop practical applications of nuclear fission. Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s meeting ended with anger and frustration leading to the separation, personally and professionally, of these two men. Owing to a lack of documentation and the varying opinions over the events of 1941, I propose to use the scientific principle of uncertainty, developed by Heisenberg in 1927, as a metaphor to broaden our understanding of the meeting between these men. Instead of using the two pairs of conjugate variables, as defined by the Uncertainty Principle, I will use four-square variables that allows for an alternate interpretation of the 1941 Bohr-Heisenberg meeting. The four-square variables involve aspects of Werner Heisenberg’s life. These are the development of his scientific work, the formation of the scientific community through collaboration, the social, cultural, and political context of Germany, and the personal and professional relationship between other physicists and between Bohr and Heisenberg themselves. My thesis seeks to determine what was said between these men that led to the disruption to their relationship. My conclusions limit the indeterminacy of the event and brings a level of acceptable uncertainties that illustrate above all that Heisenberg was a man of Germany.Item Specialized residential and business districts : Philadelphia in an age of change, 1785-1800(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1988) Gentry, Thomas SamuelItem Competing discourses : early strategies for women's rights(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1999) Fosdick, April Dawn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy G. SmithThe American War for Independence established a sovereign American nation based upon the ideas of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet, most Americans were excluded from this discourse. Northern, white, middle-class women were among those denied actual economic, legal, and social independence after the Revolution, remaining under the common law of coveture (or legal dependence on their husband or father). Liberty, independence, and freedom became the basis for defining the American nation as well as masculinity. Thus, many women struggled to form a positive identity within a self-proclaimed “free” nation that kept them subordinate. This study examines the “gendered” construction of the American nation. It also demonstrates how two main groups of white, middle-class women identified with the dominant discourse of white, colonial men. Attention is placed upon the changing (male) rhetoric of the Revolution, the domestic ideology of Catharine Beecher, and the linguistic strategies of the early women’s rights reformers. Ultimately, the excluding definitions that emerged from the Revolution shaped the way many women were able to identify with the new nation. As frustrations among many women increased, strategies among influential middle-class women developed. Two dominant groups of women developed distinct approaches in forming a positive identity for female identity. The domestic reformers, such as Beecher, stressed the female superiority of women and argued that women exclusively should shape the values of America. Women’s rights activists, on the other hand, began developing a rights-based argument that called for an equal and legal footing with men. After the Civil War, women’s rights activists realized that their natural-rights language would not work to break down national and masculine definitions and gain them legal rights. It would take a less threatening rhetoric such as Beecher’s; and thus many suffragists began arguing that women could bring a moralizing influence to politics. In effect, the “competing discourses” of middle-class reformers in antebellum America demonstrate the way white women eventually obtained the vote based upon their female moral abilities.Item From the 'lost' to the 'greatest' generation : eastern Montana youth in the 1930s(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2000) McKinney, Amy Lynn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Mary MurphyThe Great Depression has been a widely researched a studied era in American history. One issue that gripped many government leaders and adults during the 1930s was the plight of youth. They feared the stressful economic conditions would produce a generation who did not understand a work ethic or would get in trouble by turning to radical groups such as fascism, socialism, and communism, a life of crime, or the social ills of society. In order to help the future leaders of America, something had to be done to restore and renew youth’s faith in democracy and capitalism. The national government established the Civilian Conservation Corp and the National Youth Administration to furnish youth with employment and education. In addition to work and school, adults needed to provide youth with wholesome, family-oriented recreation that would establish a better connection to their communities, the building blocks of democracy. Recreation, therefore, also became a weapon to keep youths out of trouble. Studying three communities in eastern Montana, Billings, Sidney, and Plentywood, shows how the national, state, and local governments as well as parents, teachers, and civic leaders fought to save the youth of the country. Newspapers and oral histories bring out the voices of the youth and adults of the day and how they viewed the efforts and programs. Government documents as well as studies by groups such as the American Youth Commission also provide insight on what many viewed as the problems facing youth and how to help them. Due to the extreme conditions of the years surrounding the Great Depression, writer Maxine Davis called this group of youth the “lost” generation in 1936. Today, reflecting on the accomplishments and humble nature those who grew up during the depression and fought in World War II, many call them the “greatest” generation.