History electronic theses and dissertations (MU)
Permanent URI for this collection
The items in this collection are the theses and dissertations written by students of the Department of History. Some items may be viewed only by members of the University of Missouri System and/or University of Missouri-Columbia. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item A travel-worthy nation : travel, cultural liminality, and national consciousness in the United States, 1783-1848(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2025) Pellerito, Jordan; Sexton, Jay; Dierksheide, Christa[EMBARGOED UNTIL 05/01/2026] This project contends that the distinct American national identity is rooted in the early travel phenomenon, an effect of the United States's postcolonial cultural dependence. As early as 1787, elite Americans identified the importance of cultural authority to political independence in the transatlantic world. Eighteenth and nineteenth-century Anglo-European culture evidenced that travel strengthened national legitimacy by displaying cultural distinction and unification. Thus, Americans sought to establish the United States as a travel-worthy country amidst other diplomatic, economic, and political developments. After American independence, British travelers visited the United States scouting for emigration because they perceived it as still within the imperial periphery. Independent Americans' economic dependence on the British Empire reinforced this notion and also enabled them to continue importing British culture as an early domestically unifying tool and transatlantic display of belonging. Further, the population's recent status as British subjects and predominantly Anglo ancestry comprised a familiar society for travelers, albeit under distinct political rule. British travelers initially found Americans familiar and used European comparisons to familiarize the United States as a country, while Americans embraced their travel literature as evidence of legitimacy and sources of information. At the turn of the century, geopolitical circumstances forced a renegotiation of the Anglo- American dynamic. Political and social unrest caused war in Europe, which led Britain to capitalize on American dependency and similarity for military support. British travel narratives added to outrage over the British Navy's impressment and American newspaper editors publicized the travelers' commentary as harmful to the United States's reputation. As such, they identified what the British got wrong about Americans but had little to offer in corrections because the national self-image rested on intangible political values. The War of 1812 then instigated a combination of developments ripe for claiming cultural authority in pursuit of a distinction. Reduced British presence in North America encouraged federal tours in the west in order to produce trustworthy--not British-- information, while postwar nationalism decidedly othered the British as opponents of republican government. Still, Americans fresh from a second war for independence had only their shared government and political abstractions to rally around. Newspapers, still suspicious of British travelers' influence, turned travel literature into a transatlantic discourse about the American identity, which included national space. Like the federal government's support for western tours, editors and contributors called upon Americans to travel their own country instead of relying on British information. The itinerary of the first American travel guide, published in 1821, consisted of northeastern sites. The region's picturesque scenery and existing attractions, like Niagara Falls and Ballston Springs, and developing urban spaces constituted a tour of American distinction and progress that Anglo- Europeans would still find comprehensible. The communication, market, and transportation revolutions expanded the possibilities of domestic travel, while westward expansion emphasized tensions around what domesticating new national space meant in such a geographically diverse country. The American self-image firmly rested on natural grandeur and progress but now had to consider how to effectively apply it across the expanding country. By the 1830s, a domestic American travel institution flourished. Publishers released new editions of guidebooks with updated sites and information, more Americans had the resources to travel, and there was more country to experience. Battle sites, waterfalls, native American encampments, caves, natural springs, asylums, and penitentiaries were among sites that travelers and guides made symbolic of America. However, growing sectional tensions manifested in domestic travel discourse. The northeast region inspired the national landscape and while southern states embraced the template in this period, they struggled to attract travelers and considered the issue within the broader sectional dynamic. Further, bringing new western states and territories into the nation maintained an eastern-western dichotomy as the northern-southern polarity grew. Despite this, American tourists abroad performed a unified national identity based on landscape to understand other spaces, as well as to avoid revealing their relation to slavery amongst European hosts. By the close of the 1840s, Americans possessed a concrete self-image and a fragile, though necessary national identity. A surge in European emigration, more territorial acquisitions, and intensifying debates about the future of slavery only added pressure. This project seeks to establish that postcolonial Americans recognized that Anglo-European national legitimacy required cultural distinction, and that travel was the means to achieve it. In order to become a travel-worthy nation, Americans had to also establish what distinguished their national space and represented them.Item Modernizing the Mountain South : the creation and early years of the Ozarks Regional Commission, 1965-1974(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2025) Hutchison, Joseph; McFarland, VictorIn 1965, Congress passed the Public Works and Economic Development Act (PWEDA), which established the Economic Development Administration (EDA) and allowed for the creation of multi-state development regions and commissions to mirror the newly formed Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). The first of these regions, officially established in March 1966, was the Ozarks Economic Development Region (OEDR), initially consisting of 125 counties in Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. Several months later, the Ozarks Regional Commission officially organized. The commission's primary task was to spur modern industrial economic development in the OEDR and thus grow the region's economy through private investment, infrastructure, vocational-technical education, and PR. But after sixteen short years of existence, President Ronald Reagan dismantled the commission in 1981, and few fought for its continuance. The commission was plagued by issues from the very beginning. Internal dysfunction, lack of funds, and a lack of authority all hindered the ORC from achieving its full goals. Even when the commission did fund projects in the OEDR, money seldom went to the counties that needed it most. But this was a part of the federal government's larger strategy of economic growth that sought to build up certain areas with the hopes that their success would trickle outward into the surrounding areas. Ultimately, this strategy did little to help the OEDR's poorest areas. Thus, the downfall of the ORC provides a look at the failures of growth as a viable economic strategy, as well as the federal government's rocky relationship with a regional approach to development.Item Big Jesus : Christian tourism and far-right influence in the Arkansas Ozarks(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2025) Cook, Kaylee; Wigger, JohnThe following contains the masters thesis, "Big Jesus: Christian Tourism and Far-Right Influence in the Arkansas Ozarks," by Kaylee Cook. The title refers to Christ of the Ozarks, an imposing, stark-white Jesus statue built atop Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Gerald L.K. Smith, after decades of fringe, far-right political activity, built it in 1966 before constructing additional, adjacent shrines, including a largescale production of the Passion Play, a religious performance depicting Jesus Christ's last week on earth. The first two chapters explore Eureka Springs' history, Smith's controversial career, his eventual delve into Christian tourism in the Ozarks region, and his complicated relationship with residents there. Smith's projects revitalized Eureka Springs' economy, but residents, including a growing influx of countercultural back-to-the-landers, faced the dilemma of being associated with the notorious extremist, anti-Semite, and political outcast. The town eventually displayed a seemingly contradictory embrace of Smith. This thesis explores how these outwardly progressive Americans decided to engage with, or at least tolerate, a far-right figure to stimulate their struggling local economy, and how Christians similarly overlooked or even endorsed his harmful beliefs to advance their religious cause. The concluding segments utilize Gerald L.K. Smith and Eureka Springs as a case study on compromised values in the search for economic or religious gain.Item On strange tides : the United Irishmen, conscription, and liminal spaces in the Revolutionary Atlantic(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2025) Floyd, Brendon Gray; Sexton, JayThis dissertation investigates the forced enlistment of United Irishmen into British military service during the 1790s and their subsequent experiences. It highlights the significance of transitional spaces in the Atlantic narrative of these Irish rebels. Often neglected or treated as peripheral, these spaces nurtured the rebellious spirit that the United Irishmen carried with them upon leaving Ireland. In their efforts to quell Irish insurgency in the 1790s, British authorities implemented a strategy of deportation and conscription. Initially, this practice was conducted illegally and acknowledged by British officials as unconstitutional and extrajudicial. This abuse of state power had enduring ramifications, including challenges to the legitimacy of the British Empire and the facilitation of the United Irishmen's international expansion. The dissertation also explores United Irish networks throughout England, Scotland, and Ireland. To capture the conscription experience and examine these radical networks, it focuses on transitional spaces such as the New Geneva internment facility in southern Ireland, prison and transport vessels, and dockyards and ports. By doing so, it demonstrates the extent of United Irish influence by analyzing the 1798 mutinies on the British warships Princess Royal and Ceasar of the Mediterranean and Channel Fleets respectively, and contends that these uprisings were interconnected through the United Irishmen.Item Technology towards transcendence : subliminal occultism in German Expressionist cinema(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2023) Ochsner, Colton; Sperber, JonathanOver the past century, the groundbreaking legacy of Expressionist cinema has inspired filmmakers and scholars alike with its special effects, visceral characters, and fantastic plotlines. In the Weimar Republic, the strangely stylized sets of what became known as Expressionist film captivated audiences worldwide with movies such as Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Though scholars generally agree that no Expressionist movement ever existed in cinema, I assert that the directors, screenwriters, and set designers of movies now called “Expressionist” maintained among themselves a common ideographic layout based thematically on the tropical zodiac of Western astrology, and, within the mise-en-scènes, the minor arcana pips from the standard tarot deck by Arthur Edward Waite (originally from 1910), while basing their characters on the sephiroth of the Hermetic cabala. This layout, which they implemented in all their so-called Expressionist movies, might most aptly be called an occult blueprint. I present this material in order to set forth the argument that the subliminality of occult ideography in Expressionist cinema has been ignored, neglected, and downright unnoticed in the whole of film and historical scholarship. But it is a field that demands to be taken more seriously by professionals and requires the attention of those familiar with the occult publications, arcane practices, and esoteric schools of and around Weimar Germany. Every scholar agrees: movies of this genre are filled with pentagrams, puffs of smoke, and strangelooking costumes. But all that content is nominal occultism. What about the seminal – that is, the truly hermeneutical – presence of the occult in Expressionist cinema? That crucial question is addressed in my paper, which combines history, film studies, and the German language to find some complex and nuanced answers.