Cigar Workers and the History of the Labor Movement in Puerto Rico, 1890-1920
Year of Dissertation:
2012
During the first two decades of the twentieth century cigar production became a major industry in Puerto Rico. This was a predominantly urban industry in an economy dominated by the agricultural sector, whose product was exported as a complete and final product. The cigar industry was characterized by the employment of a relatively large number of workers. Its growth provided the opportunity for those workers interested in organizing unions to expand their incipient labor unions and also became the principal space for the incorporation of women into the labor market. This dissertation explores the role played by cigar workers in the development of the organized labor movement in Puerto Rico during the early years of the twentieth century. The discussion deals with the influence of this group of workers in the development of a working class ideology, as well as in organizing strategies to be used in the defense of workers interrests, such as strikes. Cigar workers promoted a culture and a way of working which gave them control over time, production, and working conditions.
The "Mary Carver" Affair: United States Foreign Policy and the Africa Squadron, 1841 - 1845
Year of Dissertation:
2010
Advisor:
Robert David Johnson
Diplomatic historians have ignored the U.S. Africa squadron, leaving the subject to slave trade historians. Consequently, the squadron has only been interpreted through the narrow lens of the slave trade, resulting in a distorted view of a failed squadron disconnected from foreign policy. This dissertation re-evaluates the squadron from a foreign policy perspective and concludes that it was not created to suppress the slave trade. Instead, it argues that the United States created the squadron in response to an escalating dispute with Britain over the future of international law.
The Business of Settlement: Land Companies and Colonization in the British Empire, ca 1800-1850
Year of Dissertation:
2012
When analyzed in a comparative fashion, rather than an understanding of British policy as a mass of "apparent inconsistencies which seem to defy coherent analysis," imperial policy clarifies and displays an evolution as it reflected changes based on knowledge gained from the colonies themselves and highlights domestic legal, social, and political changes. Imperial policy failed to "design an international regime that would make the world safe for the monarchial, propertied, gentlemanly orders" by the end of the 1830s. A study of land companies demonstrates the significance of the gentlemanly capitalists and the importance of the relationship of these men with the Home Government in the creation and implementation of imperial policy, specifically the Anglicization policy. A study of the three land companies allows a view of foreign investment before the bubble burst with a study of the Canada Company, after it burst but while a sense of optimism existed towards land companies with a discussion of BALC, and long after the optimism toward land companies died with an analysis of the New Zealand Company. As a new domestic environment arose, which included strict interpretation of contract and law and greater regulation of overseas investments, the Government changed along with this new state of affairs. The land companies, however, sought to ignore the changing domestic atmosphere and to maintain privileges typically associated with gentlemanly status. The failure of the Anglicization policy post 1837 accelerated the "ungentlemanly" nature of the relationship between the Home government and gentlemanly capitalists. The inability of the British government and land companies to institute English traditions through assimilation at the periphery had implications on a global scale. As the Anglicization policy failed, ideas regarding the inferiority of imperial subjects emerged. The construction of races of non-British colonial occupants created not only racism within the colonies, but also created pre-conditions for ready acceptance of racial inferiority associated with Social Darwinism in the second half of the century.
An Uneasy Idealism: The Reconstruction of American Adolescence from World War II to the War on Poverty
Year of Dissertation:
2009
This dissertation argues that American adolescence was reconstructed in the two decades after the end of World War II. At the beginning of the period, adolescent behavior was widely seen as a function of biological and psychological factors inside the individual. By the end, more adults understood the behavior of the young as reflective of the broader social, cultural, and political currents in American life. This transition was primarily visible in the reformulation of juvenile delinquency policy during these years. It was also present in the other realms where adolescence was constructed: in the mass media's investigation and entrepreneurial exploitation of youth, in the discourses that surrounded youth culture and consumption, in battles over school curricula, and in the way adolescence was invoked by politicians and other authority figures. This project looks at the reconstruction of adolescence both nationally and in New York City, and ultimately demonstrates that the concept is often about much more than the collective experiences of an age group made up of individuals who are transitioning to adulthood.
American Missionaries, Armenian Community, and the Making of Protestantism in the Ottoman Empire, 1820-1860
Year of Dissertation:
2010
This dissertation explores how missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) started their journey to the East hoping to reach Jerusalem to "save" souls and "convert" Jews and Muslims in the Bible lands (1819), ultimately landed in Istanbul (1831), and partitioned the Armenian Church in the Ottoman Empire into two (1846). The study focuses upon American Protestant missionaries and examines their complex relations with the indigenous population of the region, especially the Armenians. Missionary relations with the "heathens" (as missionaries often referred to the locals) led to the formation of the "Protestant millet" in the Ottoman Empire.
Love's Ethics: Sibilla Aleramo and Queer Feminism in Fin de Siècle Italy
Year of Dissertation:
2013
Utilizing the love story of feminists Sibilla Aleramo and Lina Poletti as a case study, this work illustrates lesbianism's complicated intersection with the public discourses of sexology, feminism and sexual ethics in turn-of-the-century Italy. While both Aleramo (famous for her 1906 feminist anthem, Una donna) and Poletti (a lesser-known scholar and activist) served on the frontlines of the Italian women's emancipation movement, their private lives lingered on the far periphery of acceptable sexual practices in recently-unified Italy. This dissertation looks at the public and private discourses surrounding the topics of women's homosexuality, love and polyamory in Italy in order to demonstrate how same-sex attraction, gender-nonconformity, feminism, and sexual ethics were understood and articulated by early-twentieth-century Italians. Italian public discourse by medical, criminological and social researchers categorized lesbianism as a disease, a sign or result of gender-nonconformity and sometimes criminality, or as a foreign plague infecting Italy's feminists. In contrast, Aleramo all but rejected the ideas of the sexologists and instead relied on the discourses of feminism and sexual ethics to inform her ideas on gender-nonconformity, homosexuality and monogamy. For her, homosexuality was not an identity or a disease. She saw love as feminist and debated sexual ethics in order to develop a new sexual space for herself and all Italian women, hetero- and homosexual.