African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An Examination of the Contributions of Buffalo Soldiers during the Spanish American War and Its Aftermath, 1898-1902 (open access)

African American Soldiers in the Philippine War: An Examination of the Contributions of Buffalo Soldiers during the Spanish American War and Its Aftermath, 1898-1902

During the Philippine War, 1899 – 1902, America attempted to quell an uprising from the Filipino people. Four regular army regiments of black soldiers, the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry, and the Twenty-Fourth and Twenty-Fifth Infantry served in this conflict. Alongside the regular army regiments, two volunteer regiments of black soldiers, the Forty-Eighth and Forty-Ninth, also served. During and after the war these regiments received little attention from the press, public, or even historians. These black regiments served in a variety of duties in the Philippines, primarily these regiments served on the islands of Luzon and Samar. The main role of these regiments focused on garrisoning sections of the Philippines and helping to end the insurrection. To carry out this mission, the regiments undertook a variety of duties including scouting, fighting insurgents and ladrones (bandits), creating local civil governments, and improving infrastructure. The regiments challenged racist notions in America in three ways. They undertook the same duties as white soldiers. They interacted with local "brown" Filipino populations without fraternizing, particularly with women, as whites assumed they would. And, they served effectively at the company and platoon level under black officers. Despite the important contributions of these soldiers, both socially and militarily, …
Date: August 2017
Creator: Redgraves, Christopher M.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Enemies Within: The Cold War and the AIDS Crisis in Literature, Film, and Culture (open access)

Enemies Within: The Cold War and the AIDS Crisis in Literature, Film, and Culture

Book discussing the literature and film of the Cold War and AIDS eras in an effort to link the two with the fear they created; "not only the political and biological illnesses...but also the fear and panic they engender." Index starts on page 235.
Date: 2017
Creator: Foertsch, Jacqueline, 1964-
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901 (open access)

Service Honest and Faithful: The Thirty-Third Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Philippine War, 1899-1901

This manuscript is a study of the Thirty-Third Infantry, United States Volunteers, a regiment that was recruited in Texas, the South, and the Midwest and was trained by officers experienced from the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. This regiment served as a front-line infantry unit and then as a constabulary force during the Philippine War from 1899 until 1901. While famous in the United States as a highly effective infantry regiment during the Philippine War, the unit's fame and the lessons that it offered American war planners faded in time and were overlooked in favor of conventional fighting. In addition, the experiences of the men of the regiment belie the argument that the Philippine War was a brutal and racist imperial conflict akin to later interventions such as the Vietnam War. An examination of the Thirty-Third Infantry thus provides valuable context into a war not often studied in the United States and serves as a successful example of a counterinsurgency.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Andersen, Jack David
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
"On the Precipice in the Dark": Maryland in the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 (open access)

"On the Precipice in the Dark": Maryland in the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861

This dissertation is a study of the State of Maryland in the secession crisis of 1860-1861. Previous historians have emphasized economic, political, societal, and geographical considerations as the reasons Maryland remained loyal to the Union. However, not adequately considered is the manner in which Maryland understood and reacted to the secession of the Lower South. Historians have tended to portray Maryland's inaction as inevitable and reasonable. This study offers another reason for Maryland's inaction by placing the state in time and space, following where the sources lead, and allowing for contingency. No one in Maryland could have known that their state would not secede in 1860-61. Seeing the crisis through their eyes is instructive. It becomes clear that Maryland was a state on the brink of secession, but its resentment, suspicion, and anger toward the Lower South isolated it from the larger secession movement. Marylanders regarded the Lower South's rush to separate as precipitous, dangerous, and coercive to the Old Line State. A focus on a single state like Maryland allows a deeper, richer understanding of the dynamics, forces, and characteristics of the secession movement and the federal government's response to it. It cuts through the larger debates about the …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Hamilton, Matthew K.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Collective Security and Coalition: British Grand Strategy, 1783-1797 (open access)

Collective Security and Coalition: British Grand Strategy, 1783-1797

On 1 February 1793, the National Convention of Revolutionary France declared war on Great Britain and the Netherlands, expanding the list of France's enemies in the War of the First Coalition. Although British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger had predicted fifteen years of peace one year earlier, the French declaration of war initiated nearly a quarter century of war between Britain and France with only a brief respite during the Peace of Amiens. Britain entered the war amid both a nadir in British diplomacy and internal political divisions over the direction of British foreign policy. After becoming prime minister in 1783 in the aftermath of the War of American Independence, Pitt pursued financial and naval reform to recover British strength and cautious interventionism to end Britain's diplomatic isolation in Europe. He hoped to create a collective security system based on the principles of the territorial status quo, trade agreements, neutral rights, and resolution of diplomatic disputes through mediation - armed mediation if necessary. While his domestic measures largely met with success, Pitt's foreign policy suffered from a paucity of like-minded allies, contradictions between traditional hostility to France and emergent opposition to Russian expansion, Britain's limited ability to project power …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Jarrett, Nathaniel
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Xenotopia: Death and Displacement in the Landscape of Nineteenth-Century American Authorship (open access)

Xenotopia: Death and Displacement in the Landscape of Nineteenth-Century American Authorship

This dissertation is an examination of the interiority of American authorship from 1815–1866, an era of political, social, and economic instability in the United States. Without a well-defined historical narrative or an established literary lineage, writers drew upon death and the American landscape as tropes of unity and identification in an effort to define the nation and its literary future. Instead of representing nationalism or collectivism, however, the authors in this study drew on landscapes and death to mediate the crises of authorial displacement through what I term "xenotopia," strange places wherein a venerated American landscape has been disrupted or defamiliarized and inscribed with death or mourning. As opposed to the idealized settings of utopia or the environmental degradation of dystopia, which reflect the positive or negative social currents of a writer's milieu, xenotopia record the contingencies and potential problems that have not yet played out in a nation in the process of self-definition. Beyond this, however, xenotopia register as an assertion of agency and literary definition, a way to record each writer's individual and psychological experience of authorship while answering the call for a new definition of American literature in an indeterminate and undefined space.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Lewis, Darcy Hudelson
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Civil Liberties and National Unity: Reaction to the Sedition Act in the Southern States, 1798 (open access)

Civil Liberties and National Unity: Reaction to the Sedition Act in the Southern States, 1798

The traditional narrative of political party development in the United States of America during the latter half of the 1790s ascribes the decline in popularity of the Federalist Party in the Election of 1800 to that party's passage of controversial legislation, specifically the Sedition Act of 1798, prior to the election. Between the passage of the Sedition Act and the Election of 1800, however, the midterm elections of 1798-1799 transpired and resulted in a significant increase in Federalist popularity in four states – North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Virginia. This study seeks to ascertain why these four states increased their support for the Federalist Party in 1798-1799, despite the passage of the Sedition Act by the Federalist Party. By examining newspapers and election results, this study analyzes the reaction of these four states to the passage of the Sedition Act and finds that generally, these states did not react strongly against the Sedition Act in the immediate aftermath of its passage. Instead, all four states urged national unity and emphasized the need to support the national government because the United States faced the threat of war with France. This study employs a state-by-state formula to determine each state's individual …
Date: December 2017
Creator: Robinson, Sarah Elizabeth
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Furyous Female Just-Warriors of Post-Apocalypse and Dystopia (open access)

Furyous Female Just-Warriors of Post-Apocalypse and Dystopia

The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the precise shift from an exploitative archetype to an empowered representation of women warriors, to identify the arena in which male and female characters are given equal agency in the context of war, and finally explore the key characteristics that make up an empowered female hero. This thesis also addresses the sociocultural nature of the warrior woman archetype as it pertains to the current role of women in the military. The films analyzed in this thesis are all post 9/11 films; a fact that links them culturally to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In recent years, numerous milestones have been reached for women in the armed services, especially for those women in combat positions. For the first time in American history women are being recognized for their active role as soldiers in combat. Therefore, it is valid to consider the correlation between seeing women as military professionals, fighting alongside male soldiers in these films, and the cultural impact of female combat soldiers. This aspect of the thesis also imbues the female just-warrior archetype with a legitimate history, mythology, and current cultural reference; which is essential to the visibility of …
Date: December 2017
Creator: Lynch, Shaylynn
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Deep in the Heart of Texas: Government Information Stars from the Portal to Texas History

Presentation for Help! I'm an Accidental Government Information Librarian Webinar. This presentation provides an overview of Texas State government collections within the Portal to Texas History
Date: September 26, 2017
Creator: Sittel, Robbie
Object Type: Presentation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Exposing the Spectacular Body: The Wheel, Hanging, Impaling, Placarding, and Crucifixion in the Ancient World (open access)

Exposing the Spectacular Body: The Wheel, Hanging, Impaling, Placarding, and Crucifixion in the Ancient World

This dissertation brings the Ancient Near Eastern practice of the wheel, hanging, impaling, placarding, and crucifixion (WHIPC) into the scholarship of crucifixion, which has been too dominated by the Greek and Roman practice. WHIPC can be defined as the exposure of a body via affixing, by any means, to a structure, wooden or otherwise, for public display (Chapter 2). Linguistic analysis of relevant sources in several languages (including Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian, Hebrew, Hittite, Old Persian, all phases of ancient Greek, and Latin) shows that because of imprecise terminology, any realistic definition of WHIPC must be broad (Chapter 3). Using methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches drawn from art history, archaeology, linguistic analysis, and digital humanities, this work analyzes scattered but abundant evidence to piece together theories about who was crucified, when, how, where, and why. The dissertation proves that WHIPC records, written and visual, were kept for three primary functions: to advertise power, to punish and deter, and to perform magical rituals or fulfill religious obligations. Manifestations of these three functions come through WHIPC in mythology (see especially Chapter 4), trophies (Chapter 5), spectacles, propaganda, political commentary, executions, corrective torture, behavior modification or prevention, donative sacrifices, scapegoat offerings, curses, and healing rituals. …
Date: December 2017
Creator: Foust, Kristan Ewin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Nathanael Greene and the Myth of the Valiant Few (open access)

Nathanael Greene and the Myth of the Valiant Few

Nathan Greene is the Revolutionary Warfare general most associated with unconventional warfare. The historiography of the southern campaign of the revolution uniformly agrees he was a guerrilla leader. Best evidence shows, however, that Nathanael Greene was completely conventional -- that his strategy, operations, tactics, and logistics all strongly resembled that of Washington in the northern theater and of the British commanders against whom he fought in the south. By establishing that Greene was within the mainstream of eighteenth-century military science this dissertation also challenges the prevailing historiography of the American Revolution in general, especially its military aspects. The historiography overwhelmingly argues the myth of the valiant few -- the notion that a minority of colonists persuaded an apathetic majority to follow them in overthrowing the royal government, eking out an improbable victory. Broad and thorough research indicates the Patriot faction in the American Revolution was a clear majority not only throughout the colonies but in each individual colony. Far from the miraculous victory current historiography postulates, American independence was based on the most prosaic of principles -- manpower advantage.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Smith, David R.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence (open access)

The Criminal Law System of Medieval and Renaissance Florence

Book analyzing the law system of Florence, Italy during the Italian Renaissance; specifically it outlines the structure of the government, offices, and philosophies of governing. Index starts on page 281.
Date: 2017
Creator: Stern, Laura Ikins
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Quia Emptores, Subinfeudation, and the Decline of Feudalism in Medieval England: Feudalism, it is Your Count that Votes (open access)

Quia Emptores, Subinfeudation, and the Decline of Feudalism in Medieval England: Feudalism, it is Your Count that Votes

The focus of this thesis is threefold. First, Edward I enacted the Statute of Westminster III, Quia Emptores in 1290, at the insistence of his leading barons. Secondly, there were precedents for the king of England doing something against his will. Finally, there were unintended consequences once parliament passed this statute. The passage of the statute effectively outlawed subinfeudation in all fee simple estates. It also detailed how land was able to be transferred from one possessor to another. Prior to this statute being signed into law, a lord owed the King feudal incidences, which are fees or services of various types, paid by each property holder. In some cases, these fees were due in the form of knights and fighting soldiers along with the weapons and armor to support them. The number of these knights owed depended on the amount of land held. Lords in many cases would transfer land to another person and that person would now owe the feudal incidences to his new lord, not the original one. This amount collected by the lord effectively reduced the payments to the original lord. During the early Middle Ages, feudal incidences began to change to a monetary exchange which …
Date: August 2017
Creator: Garofalo, Michael D.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Third World Decolonization: The Pan Africanist Movement in the Age of Nasserism (open access)

Third World Decolonization: The Pan Africanist Movement in the Age of Nasserism

In the mid-twentieth century Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser, along with President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana rose to international prominence as leaders and visionaries who were able to achieve political independence in their respective home countries while attempting to shape a destiny for Africa that did not involve Western imperialism. For Nasser's part, he first secured independence for Egypt, then turned his attention to the Middle East, but soon became as active in the politics of Sub Saharan Africa, also known as black Africa, as he was in the Arab world. This thesis explores Nasser's forays into Sub Saharan Africa during the period of decolonization on the continent and how his aspirations for Africa were equally a part of his political agenda that came to be known as Nasserism. Considering Nasser was the leader of the Third bloc, Egypt's fate was tied to Africa just as much as it was to the Middle East. Beyond the aspects of Nasser's involvement in Africa, this work also explores the active role Africans played in their quest for independence from European colonizers. Many African leaders during this time were as prominent and as shrewd as Nasser and were committed to establishing an anti-imperialist continent …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Pendegraft, Gregory
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Your healing is killing me

Access: Use of this item is restricted to the UNT Community
"Your Healing is Killing Me is a performance manifesto based on lessons learned in San Antonio free health clinics and New York acupuncture schools; from the treatments and consejos of curanderas, abortion doctors, Marxist artists, community health workers, and bourgie dermatologists. One artist's reflections on living with post-traumatic stress disorder, ansia, and eczema in the new age of trigger warnings, the master cleanse, and crowd-funded self-care."--Back cover.
Date: 2017
Creator: Grise, Virginia
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Aesthetics of Sin: Beauty and Depravity in Early Modern English Literature (open access)

The Aesthetics of Sin: Beauty and Depravity in Early Modern English Literature

This dissertation argues that early modern writers such as William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, George Herbert, John Milton, and Andrew Marvell played a critical role in the transition from the Neoplatonic philosophy of beauty to Enlightenment aesthetics. I demonstrate how the Protestant Reformation, with its special emphasis on the depravity of human nature, prompted writers to critique models of aesthetic judgment and experience that depended on high faith in human goodness and rationality. These writers in turn used their literary works to popularize skepticism about the human mind's ability to perceive and appreciate beauty accurately. In doing so, early modern writers helped create an intellectual culture in which aesthetics would emerge as a distinct branch of philosophy.
Date: December 2017
Creator: Jeffrey, Anthony Cole
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 90, Ed. 1 Tuesday, October 31, 2017 (open access)

Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 90, Ed. 1 Tuesday, October 31, 2017

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: October 31, 2017
Creator: Parks, Scott K.
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
A Feminist Rereading of Selected Works by Carlos Morton (open access)

A Feminist Rereading of Selected Works by Carlos Morton

Carlos Morton is a prominent Chicano playwright that has contributed greatly to Chicano theatre, creatively and academically, since in 1970s. This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gender representation in three of his works: Lilith (1977), La Malinche (1984), and Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (1992). The female characters in these three plays possess a unique agency that allows them to challenge oppressive patriarchal standards imposed on their gender identity. The second chapter explores Morton's Lilith, a play based on a Jewish creation myth. In the play, Lilith possesses agency of her gender identity and forms a bond with Eve to fight the patriarchal gender norms used to restrict women in Chicano culture. La Malinche is an adaptation of Eurpides's Medea set in post-Conquest New Spain. Chapter three focuses on the agency displayed by La Malinche through her indigenous roots to fight for her own form of motherhood and freedom from patriarchy. The final play analyzed in this thesis is Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda, a dream-like play that is based on Diego Rivera's mural by the same name. Several female characters in the play demonstrate agency through their androgynous sexual identities as they unite …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Bruton, Rita T.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Listening in the Living Room: The Pursuit of Authentic Spaces and Sounds in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Punk Rock (open access)

Listening in the Living Room: The Pursuit of Authentic Spaces and Sounds in Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Punk Rock

In the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) do-it-yourself (DIY) punk scene, participants attempt to adhere to notions of authenticity that dictate whether a band, record label, performance venue, or individual are in compliance with punk philosophy. These guiding principles champion individual expression, contributions to one's community (scene), independence from the mainstream music industry and consumerism, and the celebration of amateurism and the idea that everyone should "do it yourself." While each city or scene has its own punk culture, participants draw on their perceptions of the historic legacy of punk and on experiences with contemporaries from around the world. For this thesis, I emphasize the significance of performance spaces and the sonic aesthetic of the music in enacting and reinforcing notions of punk authenticity. The live performance of music is perceived as the most authentic setting for punk music, and bands go to great lengths to recreate this soundscape in the recording studio. Bands achieve this sense of liveness by recording as a group, rather than individually for a polished studio sound mix, or by inviting friends and fans into the studio to help record a live show experience. House venues have been key to the development of the DFW scene with …
Date: December 2017
Creator: Peters, Sean (Sean Louis)
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 5, Ed. 1 Monday, August 7, 2017 (open access)

Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 5, Ed. 1 Monday, August 7, 2017

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: August 7, 2017
Creator: Parks, Scott K.
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Melville's Major Fiction: Politics, Theology, and Imagination (open access)

Melville's Major Fiction: Politics, Theology, and Imagination

Book analyzing the popular works of Herman Melville and his motives for writing such stories such as: "Pierre," "The Confidence-Man," and "Billy Budd." Index starts on page 258.
Date: 2017
Creator: Duban, James
Object Type: Book
System: The UNT Digital Library
Spectral Evidence (open access)

Spectral Evidence

Spectral Evidence is a collection of poems that instigates a variety of omens, signs, divinations, and folktales to explore the concept of wish fulfillment. They arise in obedience to the compulsion to repeat past dramas brought on by failed love, the nostalgia of childhood, the damning legacy of language, the restriction of gender roles, death, etc. In order to quell these anxieties, the speaker looks beyond the self to both history and mythology, often invented mythologies as an attempt to control or recast the story-to give shape to the obscurities of life by creating a system of belief in order to forge meaning or confuse oneself into believing. In many ways this collection is all about belief or in wanting to believe. Through language, God is written into existence. God is the name of the blanket we put over the mystery to give it shape. Here, in this collection, God is an ant's egg. a cherry pit, a colony of white moths, a severed hand, the color red, a little bird. This collection explores these vehicles of meaning, the words that provide the shell of meaning, and the power of invention in hopes to gain control over what is deemed …
Date: May 2017
Creator: Edwards, Trista
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 110, Ed. 1 Monday, November 20, 2017 (open access)

Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 110, Ed. 1 Monday, November 20, 2017

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: November 20, 2017
Creator: Parks, Scott K.
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History
Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 89, Ed. 1 Monday, October 30, 2017 (open access)

Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 114, No. 89, Ed. 1 Monday, October 30, 2017

Daily newspaper from Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.
Date: October 30, 2017
Creator: Parks, Scott K.
Object Type: Newspaper
System: The Portal to Texas History