Interests Eternal and Perpetual:  British Foreign Policy and the Royal Navy in the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1937 (open access)

Interests Eternal and Perpetual: British Foreign Policy and the Royal Navy in the Spanish Civil War, 1936 - 1937

This thesis will demonstrate that the British leaders saw the policy of non-intervention during the Spanish Civil War as the best option available under the circumstances, and will also focus on the role of the Royal Navy in carrying out that policy. Unpublished sources include Cabinet and Admiralty papers. Printed sources include the Documents on British Foreign Policy, newspaper and periodical articles, and memoirs. This thesis, covering the years 1936-37, is broken down into six chapters, each covering a time frame that reflected a change of policy or naval mission. The non-intervention policy was seen as the best available at the time, but it was shortsighted and ignored potentially serious long-term consequences.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Sanchez, James
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Victims of Hope: Explaining Jewish Behavior in the Treblinka, Sobibór and Birkenau Extermination Camps

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
I analyze the behavior of Jews imprisoned in the Treblinka, Sobibór, and Birkenau extermination camps in order to illustrate a systematic process of deception and psychological conditioning, which the Nazis employed during World War II to preclude Jewish resistance to the Final Solution. In Chapter I, I present resistance historiography as it has developed since the end of the war. In Chapter II, I delineate my own argument on Jewish behavior during the Final Solution, limiting my definition of resistance and the applicability of my thesis to behavior in the extermination camp, or closed, environment. In Chapters III, IV, and V, I present a detailed narrative of the Treblinka, Sobibór, and Birkenau revolts using secondary sources and selected survivor testimony. Finally, in Chapter VI, I isolate select parts of the previous narratives and apply my argument to demonstrate its validity as an explanation for Jewish behavior.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Motl, Kevin C.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Four Major Education GI Bills: A Historical Study of the Shifting National Purposes and Accompanying Changes in Economic Value to Veterans (open access)

The Four Major Education GI Bills: A Historical Study of the Shifting National Purposes and Accompanying Changes in Economic Value to Veterans

Benefits for soldiers follow the formation of ancient and present day armies raised for the purpose of extending the national or state will. Veterans' benefits for defenders of the U.S. emerged during the American colonial period. College benefits began after WWII with the GI Bill of Rights. This study examines the variations in purpose for nationally established educational benefits for veterans and the singular value to the veterans of these 5educational benefits. The study begins with an overview of the history of veterans' benefits. Primary emphasis is then placed on the educational portion of the World War II Servicemen's Readjustment Act and the current educational benefit, the Montgomery GI Bill. As the purpose of awarding educational benefits changed from World War II to the latest U.S. war, the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the economic value to the individual veteran also changed. The WWII GI Bill featured an educational provision intended to keep returning veterans out of the changing economy whereas current GI Bills is intended as a recruiting incentive for an all-volunteer force. Correspondingly, the economic value to the individual veteran has changed. Data supporting this study were extracted from historical documents in primary and secondary scholarly studies and writings, …
Date: December 2000
Creator: Spaulding, Donald James
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The United States Supreme Court's Volitional Agendas, 1801-1993: Historical Claims versus Empirical Findings (open access)

The United States Supreme Court's Volitional Agendas, 1801-1993: Historical Claims versus Empirical Findings

In this study, I examined the Supreme Court's agenda from 1801 to 1993 to determine the composition and dynamics of the issues that have dominated the business of the Court. Specifically, I set out to test empirically Robert G. McCloskey's (now standard) characterization of the Supreme Court's history, which sees it as dominated by nationalism/federalism issues before the Civil War, by economic issues just after the War through the 1930s, and by civil rights and liberties since the 1930s. The question that drove my investigation was "Is McCloskey's interpretation, which appears to be based on the great cases of Supreme Court history, an accurate description of the agenda represented in the Supreme Court's total body of reported decisions?" To test McCloskey's historical theses I employed concepts adapted from Richard Pacelle's (1991) important work on the agenda of post-Roosevelt Court and used the methods of classical historical analysis and of interrupted time-series analysis. Data for my research came from existing datasets and from my own collection (I coded the manifest content of thousands of Supreme Court's decisions from 1887 back to 1801). The most important finding from my analyses is that McCloskey not withstanding, the pre-Civil War Supreme Court's agenda was …
Date: May 2000
Creator: Ogundele, Ayodeji O.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Economic Development, Social Dislocation and Political Turmoil in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis and a Test of Causality (open access)

Economic Development, Social Dislocation and Political Turmoil in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Pooled Time-Series Analysis and a Test of Causality

This study focuses on economic development and political turmoil in post-independence Sub-Saharan Africa. There has been a resurgence of interest in the region following the end of the Cold War. In 1997 U.S. president Bill Clinton took a 12-day tour of the region. In 1999 the U.S. Congress (106th Congress) passed the Growth and Opportunity Act and the Hope for Africa Act, designed to encourage political stability and economic development in the region. Although most Sub-Saharan African countries attained independence from colonial rule in the 1960s, more than 30 years of self-government have brought little economic development and political stability to the region. This study attempts to analyze, theoretically and empirically, the relationship among economic development, social dislocation and political turmoil. Social dislocation, as defined in this study, means "urbanization," and it is used as an exogenous variable to model and test the hypothesized causal relationship between economic development and political turmoil. This study employs pooled cross-sectional time-series and seemingly unrelated regression analyses, as well as Granger-causality, to examine the hypothesized relationships and causality in 24 Sub-Saharan African countries from 1971 to 1995. The results confirm the classical economic development theory's argument that an increase in economic development leads to …
Date: December 2000
Creator: Obi, Zion Ikechukwu
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Imagining The Reader: Vernacular Representation and Specialized Vocabulary in Medieval English Literature (open access)

Imagining The Reader: Vernacular Representation and Specialized Vocabulary in Medieval English Literature

William Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman was probably the first medieval English poem to achieve a national audience because Langland chose to write in the vernacular and he used the specialized vocabularies of his readership to open the poem to them. During the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, writers began using the vernacular in an attempt to allow all English people access to their texts. They did so consciously, indicating their intent in prologues and envois when they formally address readers. Some writers, like Langland and the author of Mankind, actually use representatives of the rural classes as primary characters who exhibit the beliefs and lives of the rural population. Anne Middleton's distinction between public-the readership an author imagined-and audience-the readership a work achieved-allows modern critics to discuss both public and audience and try to determine how the two differed. While the public is always only a presumption, the language in which an author writes and the cultural events depicted by the literature can provide a more plausible estimate of the public. The vernacular allowed authors like Gower, Chaucer, the author of Mankind, and Langland to use the specialized vocabularies of the legal and rural communities to discuss societal …
Date: August 2000
Creator: Walther, James T.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Unexpected Unexpected Utilities: A Comparative Case-Study Analysis of Women and Revolutions (open access)

Unexpected Unexpected Utilities: A Comparative Case-Study Analysis of Women and Revolutions

Women have been part of modern revolutions since the American Revolution against Great Britain. Most descriptions and analyses of revolution relegate women to a supporting role, or make no mention of women's involvement at all. This work differs from prior efforts in that it will explore one possible explanation for the successes of three revolutions based upon the levels of women's support for those revolutions. An analysis of the three cases (Ireland, Russia, and Nicaragua) suggests a series of hypotheses about women's participation in revolution and its importance to revolutions' success.
Date: December 2000
Creator: Casey, Walter Thomas
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Evolution of AIDS as Subject Matter in Select American Dramas (open access)

The Evolution of AIDS as Subject Matter in Select American Dramas

Dramatic works from America with AIDS as subject matter have evolved over the past twenty years. In the early 1980s, dramas like Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart, William Hoffman's As Is, and Robert Chesley's Night Sweat educated primarily homosexual men about AIDS, its causes, and its effects on the gay community while combating the dominant discourse promoted by the media, government, and medical establishments that AIDS was either unimportant because it affected primarily the homosexual population or because it was attributed to lack of personal responsibility. By the mid-eighties and early nineties, playwrights Terrence McNally (Love! Valour! Compassion!)and Paul Rudnick (Jeffrey)concentrated on relationships between sero-discordant homosexual couples. McNally's "Andre's Mother" and Lips Together, Teeth Apart explored how families and friends face the loss of a loved one to AIDS. Tony Kushner's Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America epic represents living beyond AIDS as a powerful force. Without change and progress, Angels warns, life stagnates. Angels also introduces the powerful drugs that help alleviate the symptoms of AIDS. AIDS is the centerpiece of the epic, and AIDS and homosexuality are inextricably blended in the play. Rent, the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Jonathan Larson, features characters from an assortment of ethnic and social …
Date: August 2000
Creator: Sorrells, David J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Singing for Blaine and for Logan! Republican Songs as Campaign Literature in the 1884 Presidential Race (open access)

Singing for Blaine and for Logan! Republican Songs as Campaign Literature in the 1884 Presidential Race

During the presidential contest of 1884, Republicans used singing as a campaign tactic at rallies, meetings, and parades. Their songs may be divided into several categories, such as rally songs, songs of praise for the party and its candidate, "bloody shirt" songs, mudslinging songs, and issue-based songs. Songs provide a perspective on the overall tenor of the campaign, while a lack of songs on certain topics, such as temperance, reflects the party's reluctance to alienate voters by taking a strong stand on controversial issues. Although the campaign has often been called one of the dirtiest in American history, this negativity is not reflected in the majority of the songs.
Date: December 2000
Creator: Madding, Carol Ann
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Gobber Tooth, A Hairy Lip, A Squint Eye: Concepts of the Witch and the Body in Early Modern Europe (open access)

A Gobber Tooth, A Hairy Lip, A Squint Eye: Concepts of the Witch and the Body in Early Modern Europe

This thesis discusses early modern European perceptions of body and soul in association with the increasing stringency of civilized behaviour and state formation in an effort to provide motivation for the increased severity of the witch hunts of that time. Both secondary and primary sources have been used, in particular the contemporary demonologies by such authors as Bodin, and Kramer and Sprenger. The thesis is divided into five chapters, including an Introduction and Conclusion. The body of the thesis focuses on religious, scientific, and secular beliefs (Ch. 2), appearance and characteristics of witches (Ch. 3), and the activities and behaviours/actions of witches, (Ch. 4). This study concentrates on the similarities found across Europe, and, as the majority of witches persecuted were female, my thesis emphasizes women as victims of the witch hunts.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Easley, Patricia Thompson
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 20, 2000 (open access)

Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 29, Ed. 1 Thursday, July 20, 2000

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.
Date: July 20, 2000
Creator: Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 23, Ed. 1 Friday, February 11, 2000 (open access)

Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 23, Ed. 1 Friday, February 11, 2000

Weekly newspaper from Dell City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: February 11, 2000
Creator: Lynch, Mary Louise
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 43, Ed. 1 Friday, June 30, 2000 (open access)

Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 43, Ed. 1 Friday, June 30, 2000

Weekly newspaper from Dell City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: June 30, 2000
Creator: Lynch, Mary Louise
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Internet and U.S. citizen militias (open access)

Internet and U.S. citizen militias

Smelser's theory of collective behavior holds that people join radical social movements because they experience strain. Among the most serious strains are anxieties that relate to one's social status and the roles that correspond to it. A social movement arises as a means of coping with these anxieties. Militia presence and activity on the Internet (especially Usenet) is a phenomenon that can be studied within the framework of Smelser's theory. Militia watchers contend that those who join the militias have experienced the kinds of strain to which Smelser refers. A content analysis of Internet traffic of U.S. militias provides a test of the general thesis outlined above. By analyzing Internet sites it is possible to examine whether militiamen have experienced strain, and whether the strain, together with other factors, influence an individual's decision to join the militia. This dissertation was the first sociological study of American militias on the Internet and the first in which militias from all regions of the country was studied. Information was gathered on 171 militiamen who joined 28 militias. A qualitative analysis of militia web sites and Usenet traffic (n=1,189 online documents) yielded answers to seven research questions. Most militiamen studied experienced some form of …
Date: May 2000
Creator: Weeber, Stan C.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Jezebel's Daughters: A Study of Wilkie Collins and His Female Villains

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
The term "feminist," when applied to Wilkie Collins, implies he was concerned with rectifying the oppression of women in domestic life as well as with promoting equal rights between the sexes. This study explores Collins the "feminist" by analyzing his portrayals of women, particularly his most powerful feminine creations: his villainesses. Although this focus is somewhat limited, it allows for a detailed analysis of the development of Collins's attitudes towards powerful women from the beginning to the end of his career. It examines the relationship between Collins's developing moral attitudes and social beliefs, on the one hand, and the ideas of Victorian feminists such as Josephine Butler and feminist sympathizers such as John Stuart Mill, on the other. This interaction, while never overt, reveals the ambivalence and complexity of Collins's "feminist" attitudes. Of the five novels in this study, Antonina (1850), Basil (1852), Armadale (1866), Jezebel's Daughter (1880), and The Legacy of Cain (1889), only one was published at the zenith of Collins's career in the 1860s. Each of the villainesses in these novels, their ideas and experiences, are crucial to understanding Collins's "feminist" impulses. Looking at them as powerful women who detest domestic oppression, one becomes aware that Collins …
Date: August 2000
Creator: Colvin, Trey Vincent
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 20, 2000 (open access)

Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 54, No. 16, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 20, 2000

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.
Date: April 20, 2000
Creator: Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
A Comparison Study of Individual and Group Play Therapy In Treating Kindergarten Children with Adjustment Problems (open access)

A Comparison Study of Individual and Group Play Therapy In Treating Kindergarten Children with Adjustment Problems

This study was designed to determine the effectiveness of individual child-centered play therapy in the elementary school in: 1) enhancing the self-concept of kindergarten children who are experiencing adjustment difficulties; 2) decreasing the overall behavioral problems of kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties 3) decreasing externalizing behavior problems such as aggression and delinquency of kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties; 4) decreasing the internalizing behavior problems such as withdrawal, somatic complaints, anxiety and depression of kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties; 5) increasing parental perception of change in the problematic behaviors of kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties; and 6) enhancing self-control in kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties. A secondary objective was to compare the participants involved in individual child-centered play therapy with participants in a previous study who were involved in child-centered group play therapy on the above named dimensions. The experimental group, consisting of 14 kindergarten children experiencing adjustment difficulties, received 10-12, 30-minute individual play therapy sessions in a 12 week period in their elementary school. The comparison group, utilized from the 1999 McGuire study, consisted of 15 children with adjustment problems and received 12-14, 45-minute group play therapy sessions in 14 weeks in their elementary school. The control group, consisting of …
Date: May 2000
Creator: Rennie, Robyn Lynette
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Themes of Exodus and Revolution in Ellison's Invisible Man, Morrison's Beloved, and Doctorow's Ragtime (open access)

Themes of Exodus and Revolution in Ellison's Invisible Man, Morrison's Beloved, and Doctorow's Ragtime

In my dissertation I examine the steps in and performance of revolution through the writings of three Postmodern authors, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and E. L. Doctorow, in light of the model of the biblical Exodus journey and the revolution which precipitated that movement. I suggest that the revolution which began with the Israelites' bondage in Egypt has provided the foundation for American literature. I show that Invisible Man, Beloved, and Ragtime not only employ the motif of the Exodus journey; they also perpetuate the silent revolution begun by the Israelites while held captive in Egypt. This dissertation consists of six chapters. Chapter One provides the introduction to the project. Chapter Two provides the model for this study by defining the characteristics of the Exodus journey, Moses as the leader of the Israelites, and the pattern of revolution established by Michael Walzer in Exodus and Revolution. In Chapters Three, Four, and Five, I apply the model established in Chapter Two to the individual texts. In Chapter Six, I draw three conclusions which arise from my study. My first conclusion is that the master story of the Exodus journey and the Israelites' liberation from Egypt informs all Western literaturewhether the literature …
Date: December 2000
Creator: Turner, Tracy Peterson
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Keyboard Innovation: Harry Partch's Contributions

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
"Harry Partch's Keyboard Innovation" is a computer-assisted demonstration that introduces the tuning system used primarily by the twentieth-century American composer, Harry Partch. The multimedia product was developed in Director 6.0, and it includes sound and video clips from CDs and videocassettes of Partch's works produced by Phillip Blackburn and distributed by the American Composers Forum. The content of the demonstration involves a 43-tone microtonal tuning system and its application in the music literature. This demonstration will discuss the chronological order in which these prototypes were developed and also includes samples of the tuning of notes in Partch's scale that the novice can experiment with interactively. These tones were synthesized using the Csound scores shown in Appendix B. Materials for this demonstration are based on Harry Partch's Genesis of a Music.
Date: August 2000
Creator: Koh,Wee Lay
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 49, Ed. 1 Friday, August 11, 2000 (open access)

Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 49, Ed. 1 Friday, August 11, 2000

Weekly newspaper from Dell City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: August 11, 2000
Creator: Lynch, Mary Louise
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 46, Ed. 1 Friday, July 21, 2000 (open access)

Hudspeth County Herald and Dell Valley Review (Dell City, Tex.), Vol. 43, No. 46, Ed. 1 Friday, July 21, 2000

Weekly newspaper from Dell City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: July 21, 2000
Creator: Lynch, Mary Louise
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
"This Beautiful Evil": The Connection between Women, the Natural World, Female Sexuality, and Evil in Western Tradition (open access)

"This Beautiful Evil": The Connection between Women, the Natural World, Female Sexuality, and Evil in Western Tradition

Female archetypes reflect a social construction of reality, expressing expected modes of behavior, beliefs, and assumptions about women and are reinforced by repetition of common patterns and themes. Often female archetypes take on the physical characteristics of animals, commune with nature, engage in sexual promiscuity, and possess special powers to bewitch and control men into doing their bidding. Four prevalent archetypes include: the Predatory Woman, who with her bestial nature becomes the hunter of men; the Sacrificial Woman, who dutifully negates herself for the sake of men; the Bad Mother, who is cold, unnatural, and challenges men; and les enfants terrible seductive girl-women who at once tempt and torment men. This research traces the development and evolution of female archetypes and explores how images of women, nature, sexuality, and evil are structured within a cultural framework of Western tradition: myths and folktales, religious, philosophical, and scientific works, and film.
Date: December 2000
Creator: Gregg, Gretchen Esely
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

The Apologist Tradition: A Transitional Period in Southern Proslavery Thought, 1831-1845

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
Early antebellum defenders of slavery acknowledged that slavery created problems for southern society. They contended, however, that slave society was better and more natural than other forms of social organization. Thomas R. Dew, William Harper, and James Henry Hammond each expressed a social philosophy in which slavery had a crucial role in preserving social order. They argued from the basis of social organicism, the idea that society should have an elite that controlled the masses. For all three men, slavery represented a system of order that helped balance the dangers of democracy. Significantly, however, all three men recognized that the slave system was not perfect, and despite their defense of slavery, argued that it was a human institution and therefore corruptible.
Date: December 2000
Creator: Austin, Clara
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
His, Hers, and Theirs: Domestic Relations and Marital Property Law in Texas to 1850 (open access)

His, Hers, and Theirs: Domestic Relations and Marital Property Law in Texas to 1850

Texas law regarding the legal status of women and their property rights developed from the mingling of Spanish and English laws. Spanish laws regarding the protection of women's rights developed during the centuries-long Reconquest, when the Spanish Christians slowly took back the Iberian Peninsula from the Moorish conquerors. Women were of special importance to the expansion of Spanish civilization. Later, when Spain conquered and colonized the New World, these rights for women came, too. In the New World, women's rights under Spanish law remained the same as in Spain. Again, the Spanish were spreading their civilization across frontiers and women needed protection. When the Spanish moved into Texas, they brought their laws with them yet again. Archival evidence demonstrates that Spanish laws in early Texas remained essentially unchanged with regard to the status of women. Events in the history of England caused its legal system to develop in a different manner from Spain's. In England, the protection of property was the law's most important goal. With the growth of English common law, husbands gained the right to control their wives's lives in that married women lost all legal identity. When the English legal system crossed the Atlantic and took root …
Date: May 2000
Creator: Stuntz, Jean A.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library