History Department Local History Seminar Papers, 1947-1991

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This collection contains undergraduate research papers written between 1947 and 1981 on the local history of Kalamazoo and Michigan. Most papers (88 of them) were written between 1947 and 1962 for a history seminar class taught by Dr. Ivor D. Spencer (1909-1987), Professor of History at Kalamazoo College who taught in the Department of History from 1946 to 1973. The 14 remaining papers were written between 1976 and 1991.

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    US and British Media Perceptions of Warlord Era China from 1920-1928
    (2012) McGowan, John C.; Frost, Dennis J., 1976-
    Most warlord historians describe Warlord Era China as a time of great chaos, confusion, and complexity. The chaos that engulfed China during the 1920s made it difficult for foreign nations with economic interests in the region to protect and expand their business. The United States and Great Britain clearly hoped to protect the status quo in China by reaffirming policies that promoted equal trade and free access to all foreign nations in the region. However, by the 1920s, the United States, most European nations, and Japan already had a long and complicated history of encroaching on Chinese sovereignty with the purpose of expanding their trade in the country. These nations thus found it difficult to work together and benefit equally in China and consequently much of the time they sought to implement policies that would promote their own interests, rather than call for free trade. This caused tension to emerge among even the closest foreign allies. Consequently, the belief that a unified group of foreign powers acted together to determine China's future is a myth. Instead, foreign nations attempted to further their own positions in China by jockeying for power among one another. Evidence in support of this argument can be found in both US and British media sources and US Department of State foreign policy directives from the 1920s. This Senior Individualized Project is divided into four sections. Each section is meant to reveal the different types of policies that led to tensions between foreign nations and furthermore demonstrate the way in which the US and Britain sought to protect their economic interest in China during the 1920s.
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    "Sort of Tragic and Serene:" Southern Women and Insanity from 1880 to 1920
    (2012) Baumann, Sarah C.; Boyer Lewis, Charlene M., 1965-
    The case files used from the South Carolina Mental Hospital have three stories to be told within their lines. The first story was that of the hospital administrators. The asylum form itself set a certain standard of criteria that administrators wanted recorded about these patients, such as name, race, diagnosis, "predisposing cause," "exciting cause" and "civil condition." The terms exciting and predisposing cause were inconsistently defined by the entrance physicians. However, the term "predisposing cause" can be mostly be defined as the foundation of an illness. The most common example of this was "hereditary," meaning cases of insanity ran within the patient's family. "Exciting cause," another required field, can be defined as the immediate cause of insanity. Bouts of insanity were often described by "attacks," meaning specific intervals in time in which the patient expressed symptoms of mental illness. Thus, an exciting cause described what brought on the most recent "attack." One such example is "childbirth." The last important term, "civil condition," simply means marital status. In this section, physicians recorded whether a patient was single, married, or widowed. These forms and the medical terms they used set the parameters of diagnosis in which physicians worked.
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    Between the Rhine and the Guillotine: The Bas-Rhin in the Year of Revolutionary Government
    (2012) Simmons, Steven; Barclay, David E., 1948-
    The issue with the sources about the French Revolution provides yet another reason why the year of revolutionary government in Alsace is a legitimate topic to analyze. One of the main things that appear when looking at Alsace during the year of revolutionary government is indeed the efforts of the French government to assimilate the region culturally. Several causes exist for the imposition of French culture upon Alsace; the most important are the strategic value of the region and Alsace's Germanic culture. When looking at present-day Alsace, the fact that the area is not completely culturally French illustrates the failure of the revolutionary government to assimilate the region. The assimilation of Alsace was not successful due to the connections between the region and the Rhine, combined with disunity among those attempting to impose French culture on the region, and the ability of staunch supporters of Alsatian culture to flee.
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    The Battle Lost, the War Won: The Enduring Success of the Popular Front Narrative of the Spanish Civil War
    (2012) Sweetser, Ted; Barclay, David E., 1948-
    Research for this SIP required primary and secondary material from a number of distinct fields. In understanding the political situation and issues of Spain in the first half of the twentieth century, Franz Borkenau's writings are an invaluable primary source of objective analysis grounded in his personal experience gained in the war. Hugh Thomas authored what must be considered the definitive overall history of the war. The role of the Soviet Union and its agents in the conflict is brilliantly analyzed in Stanley Payne's book on the subject. His tome exploring the under-emphasized social struggles which lay at the war's heart was also essential in uncoupling the narrative myths from the realities of Spanish political developments. The history of the American volunteers in the International Brigades from their roots in American leftist politics to the Spanish battlefields and beyond the Cold War is thoroughly chronicled by Peter N. Carroll's work. The task of defining the leftist narrative of the war was simplified greatly by Peter Monteath's Writing the Good Fight. Stephen Koch's Double Lives was essential to tracing the role of the Soviet Union in shaping the narrative. Richard Gid Powers has provided the definitive history of American anticommunism with his work Not Without Honor. The author feels particularly indebted to the Yale University Press, whose "Annals of Communism" series has translated and made accessible previously classified information from former Soviet archives. New York University's Tamiment Library and Robert R. Wagner Labor Archives were the source of the majority of primary source documents consulted, and particular thanks are owed for their preservation of the Cominterns International Brigade records.
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    The Cigarette Embraces Its Feminine Side: 1930s Cigarette Advertising
    (2012) Skrocki, Christopher; Boyer Lewis, Charlene M., 1965-
    This study examines the transformation of the cigarette's image during the 1920s. This decade proved to be a period of outstanding social changes across American society, especially for women. Women received the right to vote in 1920 and their public role and presence grew throughout the decade. Along with this growth came a change in gender norms that challenged the traditional male and female spheres of the nineteenth century. Coming out of this change was the movement to allow women to smoke " as men 's equals." This movement was normally played out on college campuses across the country; both co-ed and women-only universities. As before, advertisers capitalized on this social change in order to break the cultural taboo of smoking for women and double the cigarette market. Their attempts included running ads that indirectly suggested women might like to smoke and organizing expensive publicity stunts that supported women smoking. By the end of the decade, the changing gender norms and the efforts of advertisers successfully broke the smoking taboo for American women. Now, advertisers were faced with a new task of creating a feminine image of the cigarette that would entice more women to take up smoking. After discussing the cigarette's masculine image and the breaking of the smoking taboo for women, this study examines the 1930, when smokers and nonsmokers alike "associated cigarettes with glamor and sophistication. " Advertisements throughout the decade used images that firmly established the cigarette as glamorous and sophisticated. Furthermore, advertisers in the 1930s proved successful in creating a feminine image of the cigarette that fit into American culture and gender definitions at this time. Advertisers did this by linking the cigarette to three cultural ideals associated with women during the 1930s: domesticity, romance, and modernity. Invoking these ideals in advertisements not only reinforced the ideals themselves, but also reinforced the cigarette as a representation of these ideals. In addition, invoking these ideals in advertisements connected the cigarette to other products that were directly advertised to women. Appeals to domesticity, romance, and modernity were common advertising strategies in the 1930s and were found in advertisements for a variety of products. Whether the advertisement was for Camel Cigarettes, Campbell's Tomato Soup, Lux for lingerie, or a Buick, at least one of these ideals was present as a strategy meant to entice women to purchase the product. These common strategies in advertisements for women's products further feminized the cigarette. Ultimately, advertising was able to create a feminine image of the cigarette that was supported by, and directly tied to, American culture and gender definitions of the 1930s. This study primarily draws upon magazine advertisements found in Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping, and Life magazine. By limiting the bulk of this study's primary sources to these magazines' advertisements, the group of women that this study addresses is defined. To start with, advertisers and tobacco manufacturers decided that most of the women in their cigarette advertisements would be white. Therefore, this study solely addresses the feminine image of the cigarette associated with white women. Further, the mainstream women's magazines geared themselves towards a middle-class audience. For instance, Ladies' Home Journal "aligned itself with the new middle-class ten-cent magazines" that were established in the 1890s. From then on, the Journal saw its audience as "a genteel one." Thus, this study primarily focuses on white middle class women. Importantly, however, the women depicted in this study's cigarette ยท advertisements were undoubtedly upper-class. Advertisers used women from the upper class in order to appeal to middle and lower-class women. The reason why advertisers did this is discussed in Chapter 5.
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