This dissertation explores an intellectual and political tradition that questioned the use of natural resources and the socioeconomic structures of rural Brazil in the early 20th century. “Organicist agrarianism” postulated an orderly transformation of the Brazil under the guidance of the state in the name of a natural and eternal...
This dissertation examines the role of the Botanic Garden at Buitenzorg, created in 1817, in shaping the practice of colonial agriculture in the Netherlands East Indies. It explores how Buitenzorg and its surrounding highland environs were an ideal place for botanical investigations and agricultural experimentation. The initial task of the...
This dissertation is a history of religious conservatism between 1880 and the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. Its main argument is that conservative religion in America, rather than being defined by fundamentalism, theological disputes, or cultural antipathy towards pluralism, was an outgrowth of a profound faith in capitalism...
This project traces the efforts by Scottish Protestants to achieve complete religious uniformity in the decades following the Reformation. Discontented with outward conformity, the via media that long characterized our understanding of religious reform in England, Scotland’s ministers sought to work genuine conversions among those who resisted the new order....
Judiciary at the Crossroads argues that a professional judiciary was able to restrain power, and thus lay the foundation for an independent judiciary and possible the rule of law later. Historical evidence comes from the performance of courts in property ordering projects launched by the governments in Taiwan and Manchuria...
This dissertation explores lasting familial relationships and friendships among southern African Americans from the antebellum years to the turn of the twentieth century. Focusing on southern Maryland, the dissertation shows how free and enslaved African Americans cultivated familial and non-familial relationships in towns and rural neighborhoods. Over the course of...
This dissertation is a case study of one midwestern city and its Latinx inhabitants. It explores the intertwined pursuit by ethnic Mexicans and Puerto Ricans of inclusion in union and electoral politics. The world of machine politics offered ethnic Mexicans and Puerto Ricans an avenue for inclusion. Central to this...
How we remember, narrate and teach the past is an inherently political and ethical act. This is especially true when teaching about race and racism within the context of United States history. In this dissertation, I ask: how do young people narrate the durability of racial inequality in the United...
Critical pedagogies offer a particular orientation towards education that understands the process of learning as inherently political. These frameworks demand explicit political attention by teachers to support student development of practices needed to create a liberatory world. Recent work evidences the positive impact critical pedagogies have on students academically, civically,...
This dissertation investigates the muscle-powered transport technologies that pervaded the Japanese empire. It examines the production, adoption, evolution, and decline of draft animals, rickshaws, human-powered railways, and push-car railways in Japan and colonial Taiwan, 1850-1930. Invented in Tokyo in 1870, rickshaws proliferated across Asia and became a symbol of modern...