Tag: History

Prostitution in the Frontier West

Presenter(s): Mira Cohen − History

Faculty Mentor(s): Jamie Bufalino, Marsha Weisiger

Oral Session 3SW

Research Area: History

The popular history of the American Frontier West is replete with stereotypical characters: miners, farmers, ranchers, railroad workers, and even prostitutes. While women were brought out west so the men could marry and have a family, many women travelled out to the West to seek their fortune and escape the restrictive Victorian American culture of the East. Some women, already prostitutes, went west planning to continue their trade, free of the judgments of Eastern morality. Other women went west and eventually resorted to prostitution in order to provide for themselves. Both types discovered financial advantages along with more social and political freedom compared to any other women in the country. While some historians overlooked the influence women had in shaping the Old west, my research suggests that women played a significant role, as women accumulated property and therefore became influential members of cities and towns. My research project focuses on the gendered nature of economic and politic power in the United States during the 19th century, using evidence from research papers and book other scholars have done on prostitution and women in the Old west, diary entries, personal accounts, and books written about sexual morality. Based on these sources and personal narratives, readers and other scholars can learn that women during this time period had the most personal freedom in the entire country.

Coercion of Seventeenth Century Laity Under the Guise of Religion

Presenter(s): Sydney O’Neil—History Sociology

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

In early 1692, an episode of witchcraft occurred that was different from any other outbreak in New England . The series of accusations, trials, and executions lasted longer, jailed and executed more suspects, and rippled the social, political, and religious norms within Salem, Massachusetts, more than any other incidence of suspected witchcraft . In the end there were some 1,600 accusations, 162 arrests, 54 confessions, 20 executions, and, shortly after its end, a government repudiation as a colossal mistake . This episode was caused by something deeper than petty squabbles between neighbors which seem to have been at the root of earlier and less extreme episodes of witchcraft . The goal of this research was to offer a more fully encompassing explanation of how the Salem Witch Trials became a moral panic . In accordance with a seventeenth-century Puritan worldview, in which religion played a central role, the rhetoric of sermons was analyzed to determine causation between sermons and trial accusations . The style, tone, and substance of the ministers sermons are examined before and during the trials . The persuasive sermons and everyday rhetoric by Puritan ministers acted as a call to action for Salem citizens, and were key in promoting the ministers’ personal agendas . Similarly, through these sermons ministers provided an explanation for the disproportionate prosecution of women, as well as the unjustly extracted confessions of satanic collusion from accusers, leading to extreme numbers of accusations, trials, and executions, and perpetuating the duration and extremity of the Salem Witch Trials .

“Peace Canal?”: Conflict, Cooperation, and the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance

Presenter(s): Abigail Keep—International Studies, History

Faculty Mentor(s): Yvonne Braun

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories are among the most water poor nations on earth . In coming years, climate change, population increases, economic development, and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis will exacerbate water scarcity–and tension–in the region . The Red Sea-Dead Sea Water Conveyance, a proposed pipeline that would run from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, intends to solve this problem by providing all three nations with potable water . Additionally, the reject brine created during the desalination process will be deposited into the Dead Sea, stabilizing its water level . The project is also intended to generate electricity . Ultimately, the project holds the potential to transform a situation of potential conflict into one of cooperation .

Reinforcing Dignity: Clinic Organizers at the Fred Hampton Memorial People’s Health Clinic in Portland

Presenter(s): Daniel Hinckley—History

Faculty Mentor(s): Curtis Austin, Ocean Howell

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

In the 1960s, healthcare for minorities in the US was characterized by mistreatment and restricted access . Patients were not being treated with dignity . In a neighborhood Portland, the Albina district, the Portland Black Panther Party (BPP) looked to solve the problems related to mistreatment and lack of access to healthcare that residents faced . To address these health disparities, the Portland BPP founded the Fred Hampton Memorial Peoples Health Clinic, named after Fred Hampton, a 21-year- old leader of the Illinois BPP who had been killed by police . My research aim to uncover the goals of the clinic organizers . Using historical research methods, my paper relies heavily on primary source archival materials from local newspapers and interviews with clinic organizers . I consulted scholarly articles, JSTOR, American Medical Association archives, a Portland newspaper database, and census data . I argue that the clinic organizers’ goal was to reinforce a sense of dignity for the people in Albina through its social health approach that included creating a positive environment, treatment of patients, engaging the community, and promotion of community education . This body of information offers a valuable insight into the unique impact and goals of the Portland BPP clinic organizers in Albina . Shedding light on effective strategies that worked to address complex racial disparities in health .

Points in Play: Reacting, Student Engagement and the Evolving College Classroom

Presenter(s): Kyley Canion Brewer—History

Faculty Mentor(s): Kevin Hatfield

Session 3: The Way We Were

Reacting to the Past, known colloquially as ‘Reacting’ is a role-playing pedagogy used in higher education that flips the classroom and encourages students to take a more active role in their education . At present some twenty historical role-playing games are currently in print and available to educators’ world over . However, rather than acting as a conclusion, the success of this new pedagogy provides us with a platform to further improve the experience of these games . This project takes an existing Reacting game: “Red Clay, 1835: Cherokee removal and the meaning of sovereignty” and seeks to adapt and make it more accessible to the college classroom . This project is conducted as a case study with particular amendments being applied to a specific game in an attempt to further develop the reacting pedagogy . The existing systems of ‘points’ used within Red Clay act as an infrastructure through which the contextual aims of each student’s role are framed . By changing and streamlining the points system the aim is to allow more students to better understand, and thus further engage with not only their roles on an individual level but also the historical premise of the game as a whole .

The Incomplete Male: Sex, Control, and Womanhood in Classical-Era Greek Medical and Philosophical Texts

Presenter(s): Daisy Burge—History

Faculty Mentor(s): Linni Mazurek

Session 1: Oh, the Humanities!

This project explores how Classical Greek philosophers and medical writers explained the female body and how their ideas affected perceptions of femaleness, gender, and sexual difference in classical antiquity . In several Classical Greek academic and artistic works, women are portrayed as “incomplete” versions of men, naturally servile and unable to exercise free will . Supposedly scientific understandings of female anatomy within antiquity justified and reified these ideas, creating justification for male exertions of control over women and rigid patriarchal mores in several regions through the Classical Mediterranean .

This project provides a critical gendered analysis of key medical and philosophical texts from Classical Greece which define sexual and gendered difference by casting women as inherently incomplete . This work primarily focuses on the treatment of the female body within the medical works of the Hippocratic Corpus and the biological works of Aristotle on regeneration, while incorporating political and philosophical passages of Plato, Aristotle, and Xenophon which discuss womanhood and femaleness . Examining the works of these Classical authors, this work seeks to understand how Classical Greek scholarship influenced and established gender norms throughout Mediterranean . In addition, this work seeks to incorporate the ideas and analysis feminist scholars on ancient philosophy and medicine, in particular focusing on the work of Hippocratic gynecological scholar Helen King and the theories of classicist feminist theorist Page DuBois in understanding how female identity was constructed and reinforced through ideas of biological determinism .

 

To Whomever Wants to Write this Novel: Towards a Hypertextual Approximation of Museo de la Novela de la Eterna by Macedonio Fernández

Presenter(s): Val Arbonias Flores (University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras Campus)—History of the Americas

Faculty Mentor(s): Elidio La Torre Lagares (Comparative Literature)

Session 5.5: McNair Scholars Presentations

“The porteño writer Macedonio Fernández (1874-1952) prefigures in Latin American literature as one of the precursors of the fragmented novel in Argentina . His novel Museo de la Novela de la Eterna is a clear example of this with his 58 prologues, which represent an endless beginning . But in this fragmentation we discover as its readers one of its complications; its “unreadability” . By taking a digital humanities approach, this project focuses on converting selected chapters of the printed text of Museo to a hybrid hypertext (a printed text that also counts with digital elements like QR codes or hyperlinks) in hopes of increasing the readability of it . Through this process I hope to answer the following questions: Does Museo’s unreadability complication lie in its medium? What if by changing the medium we can better understand the aesthetics behind Macedenio’s work? What can this case study teach us about how to properly approach literary works that are deemed by many readers, not just scholars, as unreadable?