History Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
W.R.B. Willcox: The Architect as Social Critic
(University of Oregon, 1971-08) Smith, Nancy Kimball Morris
The American architect at the turn of the century faced the prodigious task of reconciling his traditional role as the servant of privilege with the exigencies of technological revolution, burgeoning cities, and a rapidly expanding industrial society. Capitalists needed factories and office buildings that would use expensive land with a maximum efficiency and a minimum waste. The use of steel and the availability of free vertical space suggested the skyscraper as the most expedient form the buildings should take. Most architects looked at these new structures, shuddered at their ugly crudeness, and, turning to Europe for their precedents, copied the buildings they found there. Engineers could have helped develop the relationship between technology and architecture. Instead, the architect regarded the engineer as a barbarian, and alienating himself from his time, took refuge in the classics.
Open Access
“The Whole Thing Was to Try to Make a Living Here”: Labor, Land, and the Relationships They Produced on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, 1974-Present
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) McIntosh, Matthew; Beda, Steven
This thesis examines the relationships between workers, their labor, and the land during and after the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS). It places these relationships within a broader history of twentieth century industrial labor on the North Slope and in Alaska. Without these antecedents, the TAPS would not have been possible. I understand and analyze these relationships using oral histories, memoirs, and archival materials including photographs and journals. The TAPS workers’ relationships with labor and land were a productive historical process and force which created oil infrastructure. Workers on the TAPS built meaningful affective relationships which shared many factors with the conservation and environmental movements that so vehemently opposed the TAPS. Therefore, I argue that for some Pipeline workers, these relationships contributed to the construction of future personal lives and small businesses in Alaska’s post-1977 economy. This economy features environmental tourism alongside other resource extraction. I argue that the logics of capitalist extraction and extractivist labor run throughout both forms of value production. Because workers are one consistent throughline between these seemingly disparate economies, labor organizers can use environmental logics with fossil fuel workers to win broad proposals for a post-fossil capital economy.
Open Access
A Deal with the Devil: Arizona State University and the Built Environment in the 20th Century
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Gorham, Chandler; Howell, Ocean
This thesis examines the changing role of Arizona State University (ASU) in Phoenix and the United States from 1950 to 1994. The regional alliance of boosters in Phoenix made ASU a key part of the Valley’s economy as the university advanced research and development (R&D) capabilities to attract knowledge industries. Parallel to the distribution of knowledge production to Phoenix was the Cold War which granted American firms and universities R&D funding increases. The growth of Arizona State changed the built environment in Tempe and across the Valley as the university transitioned space to fit their needs. ASU expanded their facilities in Tempe, built a branch campus in Glendale in 1986, and opened a research park in 1984, all highlighting the university’s commitment to knowledge production. The process of development was unevenly distributed in Tempe as original residents were replaced by students and knowledge workers.
Open Access
Disrupting Colonial Binaries: Gender and Masculinity on the Northwestern Frontier of New Spain, 1540-1780
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Austin, Zahran; Heinz, Annelise
The overall goal of this thesis is to expand the understanding of the role of gender in theSpanish colonization of the margins of northwestern New Spain as well as the historiographical conceptions which have previously restricted some aspects of this field of study. My sources include both published and unpublished documents, primarily centered around Hernando de Alarcón, Juan de Oñate, Pedro Fages, and Francisco Palóu. The main argument of the thesis is that the proper performance of masculinity was so important to the colonizing Spanish, including missionaries, settlers, and soldiers, that it shaped what they considered good governance, reasonable conduct, appropriate clothing, marriage practices, and sexual behavior. They used the actions of Indigenous people as a rhetorical foil both to make their own masculinity appear stronger and to mark Indigenous people as inferior and other on the grounds of their improper performance of Spanish gender norms.
Open Access
Collaboration, Tradition, and Reimagination: The Influence of Soviet Cultural Policy on Uzbek Music
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Bender, Walter; Hessler, Julie
This thesis, “Collaboration, Tradition, and Reimagination: The Influence of Soviet Cultural Policy on Uzbek Music,” is an exploration of three Uzbek musicians and their engagement with Soviet cultural institutions. By using the careers of these musicians, this thesis uncovers the trajectory of increasing nationalist sentiment in Uzbek music, the legacy of the Leninist-Stalinist nationalities policy, and the ways that Uzbek musicians interpreted commands from the metropolitan cultural authorities. This thesis also explores the routes to success for musicians within the Uzbek SSR and the different musical movements that took form under different Soviet leaders. This thesis discusses the concept of authenticity in music and within the USSR, where the Soviets attempted to create “authentic” cultural expression from the top down. Musicians in Uzbekistan had ample opportunities to work within the Soviet system, but they were also working for the benefit of Uzbekistan at the same time, creating a culture that continued to be important after the collapse of the USSR.
Open Access
Somos de Allá y de Aquí: Tejano Sojourners, Mexican Immigrants, & the Creation of a Familiar Mexican Place in Independence, Oregon, 1950-2000
(University of Oregon, 2024-08-07) Ochoa, Victor; Weise, Julie
As Mexican Americans from southern Texas, who called themselves Tejanos, and Mexican immigrants migrated to Independence, Oregon, in the mid-to-late 20th century, memory became a way to familiarize a foreign place. In the 1950s and 1960s, a few Tejano families migrated from the Lower Rio Grande Valley and replicated a sense of home in the migrant stream that would follow them as they settled in Independence. By the 1970s, Mexicanos arrived to a Tejano community who labeled them as a threat to their home. The flames of diasporic strife were fanned in the 1980s and 1990s when the national debate on immigration became racially charged. However, through engaging in a constant struggle to validate their citizenship in Independence, Tejanos and Mexicanos would blossom into a unified community. By the 2000s, this unity would come to mobilize ethnic Mexicans to cement their place in Independence’s historical memory. Although these efforts proved successful, the memories of ethnic Mexicans are quickly becoming shelved. Thus a new effort is required to expand the accessibility of this memory into the heart of Independence.
Open Access
Sewing With A Double Thread: The Needlewomen of New York 1825-1870
(University of Oregon, 1974-08) Janiewski, Dolores Elizabeth Marie
The needlewomen of New York in the period 1825-1870 comprised the most numerous and the most degraded class of urban working women; yet they were also the most militant. Their societies -- the first organized efforts of American women to advance their own interests -- fought for their rights as women and as workers. The New York tailoresses in 1825 began their struggle with the first strike exclusively managed by women in American history. During the forty-five years that followed, seven successive groups of sewingwomen organized to carry on that struggle outside the ranks of organized labor and organized feminism.
Open Access
Asahel Bush, Party Master and Political Boss in Oregon 1850-1863
(University of Oregon, 1951-06) Malouf, Naseeb Mahfoud
The writer has attempted to trace, in this paper, the coming of Asahel Bush to Oregon and the part he played in its growth as a territory and in its creation and further maturation as a state. Intermingled in the story are the activities of many of his friends and enemies. No attempt has been made to separate into a single tale the activities of Mr. Bush for his story is the story of the Oregon Democracy; any attempt to segregate a single portion would render such an attempt sterile.
Open Access
Alfred B. Meacham Promoter of Indian Reform
(University of Oregon, 1963-06) Phinney, Edward Sterl
A study of existing materials raised questions about Meacham: Was he a sincere well-intentioned reformer, or was he a fool? Did he deserve the abuse heaped upon him by Oregonians and Coloradans? Was the support of eastern humanitarians warranted? Did he make effective contributions to Indian reform? It was discovered that satisfactory answers to these questions could be found only in a biographical study. The study was made, and this dissertation is the report.
Open Access
An Injury to One: The Politics of Racial Exclusion in the Portland Local of the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union
(University of Oregon, 1992-02) DeBra, Edward Balloch
The work is divided into four parts. The first deals with both the genesis of the ILWU and its ideology, and more specifically the Portland waterfront leading up to the watershed strike of 1934. The second part is a brief encapsulation of two strong vectors in Oregon's history which met in opposition in the Local 8 conflict. Of these, the first is the history of acute racism/nativism in the region and the passage of legislation in the mid-nineteenth century excluding blacks from the state. The second is the tradition of labor radicalism in the Pacific Northwest, which presented with particular force in the form of the Industrial Workers of the World, a group which held up equality among all workers as a strong tradition. The third part is, strictly speaking, a history of the controversy over the exclusion of blacks in Local 8; stitching together material from the available literature and from interviews, I have assembled the most accurate chronology possible of what happened in Portland (with a few details of the racial aspects of the waterfronts of the Bay Area and Seattle, both before and after the advent of the ILWU.) Included in this is a discussion of the highly controversial anti-discrimination litigation against the local engaged in by a group of black longshoremen in the late sixties, which has not appeared in any accounts thus far. I conclude with an explanation of the factors which insured that Portland's road to integration was a crooked one, due to the history of race relations (or rather nonrelations) in the city and state, as well as social and economic factors. My primary concern here is to address the paradoxical failure of the "radical heritage" of the IWW in Portland to have created a climate in which racial exclusion would have been unthinkable.
Open Access
Creating Oregon from Illahee: Race, Settler-Colonialism, and Native Sovereignty in Western Oregon, 1792-1856
(University of Oregon, 2002-06) Whaley, Gray H.
The colonial history of Oregon requires, in my opinion, significant revision. Therefore, I addressed numerous important topics that regional historians, in my estimation, have handled incompletely. Such topics include the paradoxes of Christian mission and colony, economic speculations of the "hardy pioneers," interracial marriages and the so-called "mixed-bloods," the relationship between citizenship and white patriarchy. and the attempted extermination of the Indians of southwestern Oregon. This dissertation attempts to analyze the power of different people to shape western Oregon in the early nineteenth century. a time of fundamental changes to identity, environment, and demography. I explored both the nature of Euro-American settler-colonialism in western Oregon and Native efforts to create new forms of sovereignty under the pressures of disease, displacement. and conquest. My emphasis on colonialism provides an effective context for exploring the dynamics of power that are crucial for understanding the region's history. As well, my approach makes it possible to relate an important part of United States history 10 similar histories in the world such as New Zealand and Australia that also featured settler-colonialism and its counterparts: conquest. Native dispossession, and, in some instances, genocide.
Embargo
Seafloor Machina: Aging Technologies in the Depths of the Pacific Ocean
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-10) Brazier, Hayley; Weisiger, Marsha
Everyone is talking about, reporting on, and studying the ocean, focusing on issues from sea level rise and pollution to coral reefs and algae blooms. Yet the piece we are missing in our study of the sea is understanding how we are industrializing the ocean floor, how the marine environment is responding to that industrialization, and how our present-day society cannot function without the manipulation, engineering, and management of machines on the seabed. By combining historical, primary source research with present-day marine science, this study offers one of the first environmental histories of the ocean floor. The dissertation analyzes the development of three seafloor industries in the northeast Pacific Ocean from the 1890s into the present day, including oil and gas drilling in the shoreline, telecommunications cables on the continental shelf, and cabled observatories in the abyss. These industries have become indispensable to onshore society: offshore drilling accounts for approximately 30 percent of the globe’s supply of oil; undersea cables facilitate 98 percent of all Internet and international phone traffic; and cabled observatories are scientific instruments at the forefront of collecting marine data that can help to prepare society for earthquakes, tsunamis, and the effects of climate change. Fixed seabed infrastructure has become one of the most important ways that humans are interacting with the ocean, just as fisheries have been to previous generations. I argue that the industrialization of the northeast Pacific’s seabed has resulted in a persistent interaction between marine life and machines. Within months of entering the seawater, marine life colonizes seafloor technologies and transforms them into habitat, a transition I refer to as the machine's biotic afterlife. The biotic afterlife marks not only the decades or centuries the machine will spend in the sea but also its integration into the seafloor’s ecology. Once these machines have spent years, decades, and now centuries in the ocean, what to do with them—to remove, or not to remove?—is the underlying question that drives this dissertation. Ultimately, as this research shows, the removal of machines from the seabed is often a political decision, rather than an ecological one.
Open Access
“Big Tales of Indians Ahead:” The Reproduction of Settler Colonial Discourse in the American West
(University of Oregon, 2024-01-09) Smith, Christopher; Ostler, Jeffrey
“Big Tales of Indians Ahead” traces the reproduction of settler colonial discourses—sentiments narrated by a settler society about themselves and about the Native American societies that predated them—from the period of colonial history of the seventeenth century to the present day in the twenty-first century. This study argues that the anti-Indian rhetoric that could be found in early colonial EuroAmerican writings, particularly Indian captivity narratives, were reproduced by subsequent settler societies throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the form of settler narratives from the overland trail migrations and various forms of popular culture. In the twentieth century these discourses, heavily influenced by past settler discourses, reached wider audiences through new forms of popular culture—particularly Western genre films and mass-produced works of fiction aimed at younger audiences. Finally, this dissertation tracks the ways in which these discourses are still reproduced and present in contemporary popular culture media and political identities in the American West. From Mary Rowlandson’s Indian captivity narrative of the late-seventeenth century to the overland trail settler narratives of the Oregon Trail and the wildly-popular Western films of the mid-twentieth century, Native Americans had consistently been tied to reductive and derogatory depictions in American collective cultural discourses that has tied stereotypes of so-called “Indians” to inherently-racial traits such as savagery, depravity, and violence. This study not only shows that these assertions from a settler population, and their descendants, has been falsely (and thus unfairly) attributed to racialized notions of “Indianness,” but also provides a clear and consistent historical timeline that tracks these depictions across centuries and various forms of settler discourses.
Open Access
ASHEL BUSH – PIONEER EDITOR, POLITICIAN AND BANKER
(University of Oregon, 1939-08) Roberts, Jenette Elizabeth
This study endeavors to show the part played in Oregon during the years 1851-1913 by Asahel Bush, pioneer editor, politician, and banker. The writer has made use of the plentiful source material available for the territorial period. The correspondence which the editor of the Statesman carried on with many men in Oregon has been fairly well preserved. Contemporary newspapers, particularly the Oregonian and the Argus, supplement the information about the political life, economic interests, and various activities gleaned from the Statesman. The papers of the territorial government give much reliable information. These are available for study in the Oregon Historical Library, Portland, Oregon.
Open Access
The Red Turban Rebellions and the Emergence of the Ethnic Consciousness of the Hakkas in Nineteenth-Century China
(University of Oregon, 2005-08) Kim, Jaeyoon
My dissertation, "The Red Turban Rebellions and the Emergence of Ethnic Consciousness of the Hakkas in Nineteenth-Century China," focuses on one of most important and controversial minorities in China-and a group that significantly shaped the country's nineteenth and twentieth century history: the Hakka or "guest people." Han Chinese who migrated from western Fujian to Guangdong province in search of new economic opportunities over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these "guest people" challenged the economic control of earlier settlers in these provinces and thereby sparked some of the most violent struggles of late Qing China. I examine, in particular, how the participation of the "guest people" in a series of struggles, the Red Turban Rebellions (1854-1856) and the Hakka-Punti War (1856-1867) in the Pearl River Delta areas of South China, helped create among these people a distinct sense of identity, a sharp sense of their own, different, Hakka, ethnicity. My study is designed to provide a detailed historical analysis of the construction of Hakka identity. I focus on the whole network of different interests and relationships that led to the Red Turban Rebellions and the Hakka-Punti War of the mid-nineteenth century: the long-standing economic conflicts over land use; the part played by local gentry and lineage organizations in Hakka-Punti feuds; the role that the state, and most particularly local governments, played in intensifying existing tensions and thus drawing "ethnic" lines. In short, in focusing intensively on one particular place and time, my work provides a full and rich picture of all the factors--economic, political, as well as social-that contributed to the definition of Hakka ethnicity. My dissertation thus helps us understand more precisely the complex process by which ethnicity is constructed.
Open Access
Brothers and Sisters (And Everyone in Between): Sexuality and Class in the Pacific Northwest, 1970—1995
(University of Oregon, 2002-06) Orth, Christa
In the past decade, national attention has focused on political battles in the Pacific Northwest, such as the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, and Measure 9 in Oregon in both 1992 and 2000. Although these events are usually considered in isolation, they reflect a rich history of growing alliances between labor and gay activism. My close study oflesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) organizations and political activity reveals gay rights activism took on another venue beginning in the seventies: the workplace. My study explores the history of the LGBT workers' rights movement through: ways they negotiated working-class issues within the gay rights movement through vocational groups and labor unions; how response to the HIV/ AIDS epidemic facilitated this workers' rights activism; and how the case study of the Northwest AIDS Foundation in Seattle resulted in class and identity conflicts when gay workers organized a gay workplace in 1989.
Open Access
An Investigation of the Foreign Policy of the United States Toward Japan, 1853—1869, as One Aspect of the Open Door Policy
(University of Oregon, 1951-06) Mack, Mary E. (Betty)
John Hay did not invent the Open Door policy. It is as old as American relations with Asia. The tap-root of American policy has been not philanthropy but the demand for protection of our nationals in the Far East and the objective of keeping open opportunity for them in the future. The resulting policy was one which has since become known as the Open Door policy. It received this name in 1899 just as it tended to assume a secondary position among American objectives in Asia. The Open Door policy is an attempt to secure economic opportunity for the United States in Far Eastern markets. It would have a Far East orderly enough to furnish safe and lucrative markets, strong enough to prevent unilateral exploitation of her economic resources and yet not strong enough to threaten United States economic interests. One of the fundamental methods used was the ingenious device of the most-favored-nation clause. Caleb Cushing was the first secure this guarantee to American opportunity in the Treaty of the Wanghia with China in 1844.
Open Access
The Effect of the Direct Primary Upon Senatorial Elections in Oregon, 1900—1909
(University of Oregon, 1951-06) Hendricks, Russell Gordon
The period from 1890 to 1914 was marked by a series of electoral reforms in Oregon, including: the Australian ballot; the regulation of political party primaries; the registration of voters; the initiative and referendum; the direct primary, with provision for expression at the polls of the people’s choice for United States Senators, and the pledging of legislative candidates to support the people’s choice; the recall of public officials; proportional representation; a corrupt practices act governing elections; the presidential preference primary; woman suffrage; and the requirement that voters be citizens of the United States. The scope of this study is limited to the introduction of the direct primary and its application to the nomination and election of United States Senators, during the first decade of the twentieth century.
Open Access
English Poor Law Administration: 1834—1847
(University of Oregon, 1957-06) Seal, Gyla Beth
Great Britain during the decade following the Napoleonic Wars seemed to be on the verge of revolution. Her social and political institutions had failed to catch up to the Industrial Revolution and the widespread discontent and unrest often threatened to break into open violence. Outdated institutions had become corrupt with the passing years, and vested interests controlled much of the government of England and Wales. Discontent was expressed in many ways—riots, agitation for the reform of Parliament, the League for the repeal of the Corn Laws, and the Chartist petition for constitutional change.
Open Access
Some Reflections on the Status of Real Property in the United States: 1837—1854
(University of Oregon, 1948-06) Nelson, Torlef
The period from 1837 to 1854 has been styled by Jean Rogers Commons as the most loquacious in the history of the 19th century. Certainly the variety of reforms and reformers, emerging during those years, tended to substantiate such a generalization. The Panic of 1837 marked a transition in the struggle for equal rights from the political to the social and economic arena, a transition in which the influence of the numerous off brand movements was particularly strong. Significantly, a large part of that influence was exerted in the direction of modifying or changing the existing status of property. The reaction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 brought the reform movement back into the political realm. The Republican Party, which emerged, had served to integrate some of the forces of discontent. In the following pages, an attempt will be made to represent some of these reflections on property from the standpoint of their historical origins, development, and effect. The interpretations of property, which have been used, are descriptive rather than legalistic in nature. These descriptive interpretations seem better adapted to a discussion of property in its relationships to the rather tempestuous reform movements. In consequence of the necessity of limiting the scope of the paper, the movements discussed have been limited to those of Owenism, Association, and land reform. In addition, it has been necessary to limit the treatment of men and ideas to a select few. While these choices are somewhat arbitrary, an effort has been made to choose those who wrote prominently on the subject or who offer a measure of contrast.