Browsing by Author "Jefferson, Paul"

Now showing 1 - 16 of 16
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    Black Like Boris: Boris Vian's Fictions of Identity in Post-World War II Paris
    (2003) Moore, Celeste Day; Jefferson, Paul
    For my senior History thesis, I researched Boris Vian, a prominent figure in the post-World War II Paris intellectual scene. Vian is also significant in his relationships with and responses to both the African-American and African expatriate communities in Paris. In 1947, he wrote a novel, J'irai Cracher Sur Vos Tombes ["I Will Spit on Your Graves"] under the pseudonym of an imaginary African-American man, Vernon Sullivan. Through this piece, his prolific jazz criticism, and essays for a Parisian journal, Vian provides a fascinating counterpoint to the normative ways in which white Americans and Parisians responded to blackness
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    Clio's Catharsis: Family, History, and Memory in a 'Modern American South'
    (2002) Flowers, Lawrence Loftin; Jefferson, Paul
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    Constructing History: The Tet Offensive and American Memory
    (2004) Lavine, Nathalie; Jefferson, Paul; Saler, Bethel
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    Murder trial of a sex psychopath : the construction of homosexuality in mid-twentieth century America
    (2002) Worthman, Ari; Jefferson, Paul; Saler, Bethel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
    This thesis traces both the popular and psychiatric assumptions about homosexuality that guided the murder trial of Seymour Levin, a seventeen-year-old native Philadelphian who in 1949 was accused of raping and murdering twelve-year-old Ellis Simons. This microhistorical approach to studying the history of sexuality provides us with a glimpse of the ways in which medical experts and laypeople during the mid-twentieth century inextricably linked notions and imagery of homosexuality and violence. The study draws heavily upon materials from the Philadelphia City Archives and the Free Library. The City Archives houses over 200 pages of courtroom transcriptions of the 1949 murder trial. The Free Library stores on microfilm the Inquirer and Daily News from 1949, which supplemented the information and details presented in the courtroom transcriptions. The court records, for example, do not include transcriptions of the lawyers' closing arguments. Furthermore, current Pennsylvania law prohibits public access to psychiatric evaluations of defendants. Because this case was highly publicized, segments of the closing arguments and the complete psychiatric evaluation of Seymour were reprinted in the Philadelphia papers. I spent countless hours sifting through these court records and microfilmed newspaper articles that covered the trial.
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    Neither Pro-War Nor Pro-Peace: Sydney George Fisher, John and Leo Faller, and Their Perspectives on Civil War Pennsylvania.
    (2009) Walker, Ben; Jefferson, Paul; Lapsansky-Werner, Emma
    My thesis focuses on the lives of two Pennsylvanians in the Civil War. Sidney George Fisher was an aristocratic Philadelphian. He was educated at Dickinson College and originally worked as a lawyer. By the time of the war, he was retired, so he spent his time with family and friends. He also wrote books on political theory. During the Civil War, he kept a diary of his thoughts, opinions, and interactions with other people. John and Leo Faller were two young soldiers from Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1861, they enlisted in the Seventh Pennsylvania Reserves. In 1862, they fought in the battles of the Seven Days, Second Bull Run, and Antietam. Leo was killed at Antietam, but John continued to serve with his regiment until he was captured in 1864. After spending time at Andersonville, he returned home in 1865. They sent many letters home about their experiences in the army. For my thesis, I look at both of their documents. I use them as a means to examine what Pennsylvanians thought about the Civil War. Did the people in the Keystone State support the Civil War? What did they think about it? Did they want to fight in the war or not? I attempt to answer these questions and similar ones by looking at Fisher and the Fallers. More specifically, I look at what Fisher and the Fallers thought about Pennsylvania politics, the military, and humanitarian aid. My conclusion is that Pennsylvania had a few outspoken supporters of the war, and a few people who were outspoken in opposition against the war. Such polarized people, however, were in the minority. Fisher’s diary and the Fallers’ letters suggest that many Pennsylvanians had more moderate views and fell between the two extremes of completely pro-war and completely pro-peace. Sometimes they supported the war effort and agreed with some of the Union Party’s (the pro-war party) political beliefs, but other times the same people opposed the war effort and agreed with the Copperhead Party (the pro-peace party).
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    Nineteenth Century American Anxiety and Thomas Cole
    (2007) Djang, Benjamin; Smith, Paul J., 1947-; Jefferson, Paul
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    Republican Characters: Benjamin Rush's Political Use of Faculty Psychology
    (2007) Gable, Nicolette; Jefferson, Paul
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    Samuel Chase and the Principles of '76: A Study in American Republicanism and Jurisprudence, 1776-1803
    (2004) Greenberg, David; Jefferson, Paul; Saler, Bethel
    At first glance, Samuel Chase has one of the strangest histories of any Supreme Court justice or revolutionary era founder. One of his acquaintances, Alexander Contee Hanson, once called him a "Strange inconsistent man!" Indeed, it seems his career is fraught with inconsistency. After his helping to write the Maryland Constitution in 1776, he became an Anti-Federalist opposing the Federal Constitution in 1787. After opposing the Federal Constitution, he was appointed in 1796 to the Supreme Court, the body tasked with defending the Constitution! Subsequently, he was the only justice ever to be impeached, though he was not removed from office. While on the bench, he decided one case (US v. Worrall (1798)) that rejected Federal power beyond the written constitution (i.e. "strict construction"). Only three months later, however, he decided another (Calder v. Bull (1798)) that referred to the "vital republican principles" that circumscribed legislative authority beyond the written Constitution, and presaged the development of "loose construction". Today, he is remembered either for those inconsistencies, or in terms of his vigorous prosecution of the Sedition Act, which led to his being remembered as an aggrandizing Federalist "hanging judge." The objective of this paper is to explain those inconsistencies by putting Chase into a discursive context. This context is Chase's belief in the "principles of '76," a set of norms that characterized republicanism during the heady 1770s. By understanding Chase through that discourse, this paper seeks to reevaluate Chase in his own terms. It finds, in the end, that Chase's inconsistencies lay in his varied applications of the different.
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    Silenced by the South: White Southern Liberalism and the Failure of the Commission on Interracial Cooperation
    (2006) Krefting, Nicholas Gordon; Jefferson, Paul; Gerstein, Linda
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    "The Fruits of Imperialism, Be They Bitter or Sweet ...": "America's Mission" and the Rhetoric of the Imperialism Debates (1898-1900)
    (2009) Lundblade, Eric James; Jefferson, Paul
    My thesis unpacks the rhetoric of the imperialism debates which took place at the end of the eighteenth century in response to the American annexation of the Philippine Islands. The United States, confronted with the experience of a direct and sustained colonial project for the first time in its history, engaged in a brief but intense period of national self-examination. At the core of these debates was the question of whether or not this new policy was in keeping with the "American mission" as this idea was conceptualized by the political actors of the day. Although these debates grew bitter at times, both sides argued from a fundamental consensus which presupposed an exceptional American nation. The ultimate goal of this study is to uncover the common rhetorical traditions which shaped the discursive boundaries of these debates and American national self-conceptions of the time. The rhetorical form of the Puritan jeremiad sermon serves as a useful heuristic device for better understanding the assumptions which informed the arguments of the participants in these debates. The jeremiad is a mode of exhortation where a leader laments the degenerate state of his community, especially in contrast to a venerated past. The speaker reminds his audience of a set of norms which are not being fulfilled, often listing the divine punishments or other forms of declension that will be unleashed if this waywardness continues. The jeremiad typically ends with a prophetic reassurance in the ultimate success of the community’s mission, exhorting them to reflect on their shortcomings and reform their ways. I analyze the American jeremiad both in its original historical context in colonial New England, and as a rhetorical form that reappears throughout the imperialism debates. I also mine the rhetorical structure itself for its potential to shape a community’s self-conception. In the context of this study, I define America’s national mission as the widely-held belief that the United States has a special leading role to play in world affairs. This idea has manifested itself in many ways throughout American history. The Puritans exhorted each other to better fulfill their divinely-sanctioned "errand into the wilderness" as they struggled to establish an exemplary community or a "city on a hill." American mission has also informed the idea of "American exceptionalism," which posits the United States differs qualitatively from other nations, or that it can transcend the historical laws under which other nations must exist. Both the ideas of national exceptionalism and national mission present ambivalent worldviews. This allows advocates of diametrically opposed policies to appeal to those worldviews for support. This was the case in the imperialism debates. These represent an archetypal moment in which a novel experience forced Americans to struggle with and reinterpret the meanings of the American national self. This thesis closely examines this historical moment, while also connecting the varied arguments of the time to common rhetorical traditions.
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    The spectacle of progress : Lincoln Beachey and the stunt flying epoch
    (2003) Dowell, Jared I.; Jefferson, Paul; Lapsansky-Werner, Emma