History Electronic Theses and Dissertations (UMKC)
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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-Kansas City. Click on one of the browse buttons above for a complete listing of the works.
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Item "To keep Christmas well": gender and consumerism in the Age of Industrialization(2025) Gray Rabin, Angela; Phegley, Jennifer; Burke, Diane MuttiChristmas evolved as an outgrowth of the mid-winter pre-Christian festivals of Saturnalia, Kalends, and Yule, to an overly commercialized, mass-market driven enterprise. Modern Christmas celebrations are inextricably connected to place, family, and food, but today’s observances have one thing in common with their early predecessors—excessive indulgence of food and drink. Although Christmas—the combined term referring to Christ mass—introduced Christ’s birth to the solstice festivities, the annual holiday has been associated with secular tendencies since Gregory, Archbishop of Constantinople, issued his warning against dancing and feasting to observers late in the fourth century. This secular side would expand dramatically—and transatlantically—centuries later after Washington Irving published Knickerbocker’s History of New York in 1809, Clement Clarke Moore published his famous poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, in 1823, and Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol in 1843. Not only did St. Nicholas, who morphed over time into the figure known as Santa Claus, usher in a new and popular dimension of the holiday that included children, he encouraged widespread consumerism, propelled further by the Industrial Revolution. This dissertation examines how industrialization altered Christmas and guided women’s participation in the holiday in select urban centers of England between 1840, the year Queen Victoria and Prince Albert marry, and 1861, the year Albert died. My goal is to produce a literary and historical comparison of the impact of industrialization on three forms of consumerism—foodways, print materials (particularly how the press marketed the Christmas tree), and charitable spending—during the Christmas holiday. Christmas had been associated with secularism and indulgent eating long before Victoria’s coronation, but holiday meals took on new meaning during her reign. Most notably, in the middle-class home they were prepared and served by women. These meals, like gifts of food, formed and maintained familial bonds, and played a central role in “manufacturing” the correlation between Christmas observance and domesticity. But holiday fare, such as the quintessentially English plum pudding, likewise served as print culture symbols to make political statements about British global trade and colonization, another variation of consumption. Periodical artists and editors, especially those associated with Punch, or the London Charivari, frequently satirized the holiday to make social and political statements, and more than one issue of Punch featured the English plum pudding to illustrate food’s ability to transmit national identity within political discourse. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that the periodical press, with the assistance of Victorian women readers, ushered in and popularized the “new” domestic Christmas. In addition, the Christmas holiday created a means by which women could challenge and circumvent patriarchal order and enter the public sphere in ways complicit with yet defiant to the cult of domesticity. Such an intriguing paradox exemplifies the rich complexities of women’s lived experience in the nineteenth century. Thus, the Industrial Revolution redefined Christmas, as women, then as now, became essential to proper observance.Item The killer shepherds: hunters as pastoral figures in the Early National period(2024) Shawver, Brian; Barton, John Cyril; Burke, Diane MuttiThis dissertation explores the role of the backwoods hunter in American literature and culture during the Early National period, especially as it was embodied by Daniel Boone and by James Fenimore Cooper’s Natty Bumppo. I use these figures to examine how popular perceptions of the sustenance hunter underwent significant transformation after the Revolutionary period, and how Boone and Bumppo came to exemplify American attitudes about nature, individualism, and western expansion. In exploring the evolution of perceptions about the hunter, I argue that this f igure came to function as the shepherd in a new conception of the pastoral mode. My argument involves an original framework of the pastoral that I construct by integrating theories presented by William Empson and Paul Alpers in their landmark works Some Versions of Pastoral and What Is Pastoral?, respectively. This framework asserts that works in the pastoral mode are characterized not by the presence of an idyllic setting, but instead by the centrality of a shepherd or shepherd-equivalent who is of a lesser social status than the pastoral author and the intended audience, but who possesses an innate dignity and moral sensibility that allows him to serve as a representative of a culture’s aspirations. My framework is further influenced by the work of Leo Marx, in arguing that the pastoral in North America invokes a literal rather than metaphorical understanding of the “middle landscape,” i.e. the physical location that allows a pastoral shepherd to fulfill his representative function. Incorporating Marx’s analyses in his seminal book Machine in the Garden, I also propose that the North American pastoral differs from the European version in identifying a more specific representative function for its protagonists; whereas the Empsonian pastoral operation involves a shepherd whom its author uses to portray model behavior in a general sense, the American hunter-shepherd of this period depicts the ideal way of interacting with the natural world in particular. As such, I also explore how Daniel Boone and Natty Bumppo laid a foundation for future considerations and behaviors related to western expansion, environmental degradation, and interaction with Indigenous people.Item Women get tough on crime: punitive populism in Argentina(2024) Meara, Jack; Grieco, Viviana L., 1969-In the 2023 presidential election in Argentina, political outsider Javier Milei shocked observers with his victory over the center-left career politician and sitting finance minister, Sergio Massa. Exceeding expectations, Milei won by a margin of over 12% and became the second non-Peronist party member to win the presidency in 28 years. Milei’s campaign focused on two main policy goals, stabilizing the economy (with a radical proposal to replace the Argentine peso with the US dollar), and implementing tough-on-crime legislation to respond to perceived rising crime rates. His campaign’s focus on tough-on-crime legislation is indicative of growing trend of punitive populism in Latin America and emblematic of classical populist strategy adapting to contemporary societal developments. Milei’s punitive agenda, which proved to be crucial to his victory, was primarily delivered by two female politicians: Patricia Bullrich and Carolina Píparo. This study, based on analysis of media framing of specific policy goals and the rhetoric employed by these two candidates, provides new contributions to the study of the relationship between media discourse, gender, and populist politics. The roles that Patricia Bullrich and Carolina Píparo have embraced within Argentina’s political sphere and the subsequent success that they have both enjoyed challenge understandings of how gender stereotypes function within the theater of punitive populism and what the future of female participation in Latin American politics might entail. I hypothesize that the phenomenon of female candidates who themselves act as “empty signifiers” for the insecurity of the electorate while adhering to gender norms subverts how media framing has historically depicted women in politics, that is, by favoring gender stereotypes rather than discussion of policy. That phenomenon results in increased attention to the political objectives of female candidates and strengthens the bond between electorate and candidate.Item Joan de Mohun: a powerful courtier during the reign of Richard II(2024) Morris, Melissa Marie; Mitchell, Linda Elizabeth; Blanton, VirginiaThis dissertation examines English court culture and court politics through the life of Joan de Mohun (d. 1404). A member of the Burghershes, a socially aspirational family in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Joan benefitted from an advantageous marriage to the higher-ranking John de Mohun V (1320-1375). Although possessing status, the Mohuns struggled financially and experienced political marginalization from their seat at Dunster Castle. Lady Mohun, however, continued the social aspirations of her natal family and formed personal friendships with England’s most powerful individuals, including John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Queen Anne. Through her efforts, she successfully negotiated for a place at court. This dissertation explores how Joan orchestrated a move from the periphery of the elite to a prominent position in the court of Richard II. Surviving evidence, like the Mohun Chronicle, suggest the methods that Lady Mohun employed to fashion her image as an ideal courtier whose family was chivalrous. This reputation as the ideal courtier enabled Joan to both serve at court while also improving her personal social standing. Through examining primary evidence that document gift exchanges with Edward III, John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Queen Anne, this dissertation traces both the relationships that Lady Mohun cultivated and the closeness of such interactions. Joan became a confidante of John of Gaunt, Richard II, and Queen Anne, as suggested by the nature of the gifts exchanged, and through the patronage and the honors that Joan received. This dissertation additionally explores similar courtiers and suggests that the methods employed by Lady Mohun were used by others seeking favor and a place at court. Joan used these methods to great success, and a comparison of her actions with others provides insight into the politics of favor at the court of Richard II. Known for his inclusion of non-traditional players at court, Richard II honored a number of newcomers and women. The life of Joan de Mohun serves as a case study of court culture during the reign of Richard II, and an examination of her life demonstrates the factors that influenced a courtier’s rise.Item "Nobody Can Say It Wasn’t": Language of Power and the Bosnian Genocide, 1992–1995(2023) Van Cleave, Emily Elizabeth; Grieco, Viviana L., 1969-Between 1992 and 1995, Bosnian Serb nationalists, with aid from the Republic of Serbia, committed genocide against Bosnian Muslims in an effort to secure territory for a larger Serbian state. General debates over the definition and process of genocide frame specific studies of why and how Europe’s second genocide within fifty years occurred. This thesis argues that, during the Bosnian genocide, the rhetoric of genocide became a language of power that destroyed lines of communication between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Serbs, within the Bosnian Muslim community, and between American politicians and activists. In oral histories, interviews, public speeches, and court testimonies, Bosnian Muslims, Bosnian Serb nationalists, and Americans spoke about how the mass atrocity alienated them from each other. In the years since the genocide, a lack of a common understanding of the events has inhibited inter-ethnic healing within current-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. Curtailing nationalist sentiments is necessary to prevent the country’s rising tensions from reigniting the conflict. Preserving survivors’ experiences, especially through oral history, is key to proving that the genocide did occur and to helping individuals and communities heal.