This thesis explores the impact of home front and battlefield morale on Texas's civilian and military population during the Civil War. It addresses the creation, maintenance, and eventual surrender of Confederate nationalism and identity among Texans from five different counties: Colorado, Dallas, Galveston, Harrison, and Travis. The war divided Texans into three distinct groups: civilians on the home front, soldiers serving in theaters outside of the state, and soldiers serving within Texas's borders. Different environments, experiences, and morale affected the manner in which civilians and soldiers identified with the Confederate war effort. This study relies on contemporary letters, diaries, newspaper reports, and government records to evaluate how morale influenced national dedication and loyalty to the Confederacy among various segments of Texas's population.

This thesis examines why some governments and rebel organizations but not others recruit children to be child soldiers. The theory posits that if a country fights in a civil war of long duration, armed groups are more likely to recruit children as soldiers. I find that the probability of child soldier recruitment increases when a country experiences following conditions: a longer duration of civil war, a large proportion of battle deaths, a large number of refugees, a high infant mortality rate, and the presence of alluvial diamonds. An increase in education expenditures and civil liberties would decrease the probability of child soldier recruitments.

Throughout the colonial period, the Spanish attempted to Hispanicize the Indians along the northern frontier of New Spain. The conquistador, the missionary, the civilian settler, and the presidial soldier all took part in this effort. At La Junta de los Rios, a fertile area inhabited by both sedentary and semi-sedentary Indians, each of these institutions played a part in fundamentally changing the region and its occupants. This research, relying primarily on published Spanish source documents, sets the effort to Hispanicize La Junta in the broader sphere of Spain's frontier policy.

Traditional histories of the Texas frontier overlook a crucial component: efforts to defend Texas against Indians would have been far less successful without the contributions of Indian allies. The government of Texas tended to use smaller, nomadic bands such as the Lipan Apaches and Tonkawas as military allies. Immigrant Indian tribes such as the Shawnee and Delaware were employed primarily as scouts and interpreters. Texas, as a result of the terms of her annexation, retained a more control over Indian policy than other states. Texas also had a larger unsettled frontier region than other states. This necessitated the use of Indian allies in fighting and negotiating with hostile Indians, as well as scouting for Ranger and Army expeditions.

Although the Council House Fight is well written about in the annals of early Texas history, this all-encompassing study will reveal a whole new picture. Unlike previous works that maintained one point of view, multiple perspectives were analyzed and explored to allow a more comprehensive view of the Council House Fight to emerge. Primary focus on social and cultural misunderstandings, as well as the mounting hostility between the Penateka Comanche and Texians across the frontier, will demonstrate their general distrust and hatred of the other. Detailing their complicated relationship will prove that neither the Texians nor the Comanche were without blame, and both shared responsibility for the deterioration of events on and before March 19, 1840.

This thesis is concerned with the correlation between cultural values and the semantic content of words over time; toward this purpose, the research focuses on Judeo-Christian religious terminology in the English language. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is of central interest to this study, and the implications of the hypothesis, including a bidirectional interpretation allowing for both the influence of language on worldview and culture on language, is of great relevance to the research findings and conclusions. The paper focuses on the etymology and sources of religious terminology in the English language, the prominent category of terms with both religious and secular applications attained through semantic shift, and the role of religious words as English taboo. The research findings imply that a bidirectional understanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is the correct one. This is achieved both through analysis of historical events and linguistic development which emphasize the speaker's role in language development and through the study of societal values that are reinforced through linguistic practices, namely taboo.

The preface to this collection of poems, "Memory and The Myth of Lost Truth," explores the physical and metaphysical roles memory plays within poetry. It examines the melancholy frequently birthed from a particular kind poetic self-inquiry, or, more specifically, the feelings associated with recognizing the self's inability to re-inhabit the emotional experience of past events, and how poetry can redeem, via engaging our symbolic intuition, the faultiness of remembered history. Dawn in the Empty House is a collection of poems about the implications of human relationships, self-deception, and memory as a tool for self-discovery.

My thesis covers the materials and methods of my composition, The Passion According to the Gospels of Matthew and John. It features an extensive analysis of Penderecki's Passio et mors Domini nostri Iesu Christi secundum Lucam. The research also covers some history of the Passion genre and its development. The second half of the paper presents a background and analysis of my work. It details many of the creative processes and methods I employed.

Mexican immigration to the United States increased tremendously from 1900-1925 as factors such as the Mexican Revolution and the recruitment of Mexican laborers by American industry drew Mexicans north. A significant number of Mexicans settled in Dallas and in the face of Anglo discrimination and segregation in the workplace, public institutions, and housing, these immigrants forged a community in the city rooted in their Mexican identity and traditions. This research, based heavily on data from the 1900, 1910, and 1920 census enumerations for Dallas and on articles from Dallas Morning News, highlights the agency of the Mexican population - men and women - in Dallas in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

Mexico's cultural norms have been the subject of repeated inquiries because democratic and authoritarian patterns appear concomitantly. However, few have focused on the potential demographic and contextual sources of these divergent results. This study attempts to clarify the sources of Mexico's political culture, and then determine the extent to which these factors affect political participation. Statistical analysis of a LAPOP dataset from 2006 makes limited progress to this end. The sources of Mexican political culture remain somewhat a mystery, although some intriguing results were found. Most notably, demographic traits appear to have little influence on political culture variables and political participation rates in Mexico. In fact, political culture norms and political participation appears consistent across Mexico's infamous social and economic lines.

Wyatt Cephas Hedrick, builder and architect, was born in Virginia in 1888 and came to Texas in 1913. At his death in 1964, Hedrick's companies had managed construction projects worth more than $1.3 billion. Hedrick's architectural business designed and built edifices of all kinds, including educational facilities, hotels, military bases, railroad terminals, courthouses, and road systems. His companies built all over the United States, and in some foreign countries, but primarily in Texas. The purpose of Hedrick's structures and their architectural styles changed to accommodate historical events. This can be seen by examining many of the commissions he received during the 1920s and 1930s. Hedrick had a unique opportunity to participate in years of great change and development in Texas, and he played a vital role in the history of those times. This thesis examines the career of Wyatt C. Hedrick from his beginnings in Virginia through his years in Texas, closing in 1940. As a builder, he played a major role in changing the skylines of Texas cities, especially Fort Worth.