History, Philosophy & Religious Studies

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Research from the Department of History, Philosophy & Religious Studies. The department website may be found at http://ndsuhprs.org

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American Thought, Culture, and Neo-Noir in the Era of Postmodernity
(North Dakota State University, 2017) Quist, Thomas
The rise of postmodernism, following the fall of modernism after WWII, brought about new modes of thinking, understanding, and living in America. Postmodernity is often neglected or glanced over by historians. Those who mention it do it either in passing or use it as a pejorative, yet it has had huge effects and ramifications on American culture during the second half of the 20th century. By exploring the thought, culture, and film of a postmodern America a deeper connection between history and postmodernism is formed. The transitions from noir to neo-noir films (which mirrors the transition from modernity to postmodernity) offers an avenue into understanding postmodern thought and culture. By using film as an intermediary it becomes apparent how neo-noir films were postmodern artifacts being watched and absorbed by a postmodern society. By linking the changing postmodern thought to culture and film a greater understanding of historical postmodernity becomes apparent.
The Battleground for the American Past: The Influence of the Vietnam War in Contemporary Memory
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Olmsted, Chelsea Dawn
Commemorative programming for historic anniversaries reveals an interpretive and narrative evolution between public memory and history. The divisiveness of the war and the public’s ambivalence about its meaning allowed for broader interpretive perspectives compared to earlier war commemorations. Research on the evolving narratives considers how public memory informs identity and affects historical interpretations. Recent museum exhibits, historic sites, and films about the Vietnam War bring into focus the changing narrative of the Vietnam War. Case studies for this research are the Washington, D.C. National Archives and Records Administration Remembering Vietnam exhibit, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund’s plans for an education center, and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary The Vietnam War. The soldier’s experience narrative still dominates interpretations, but interpretations have expanded to include the Vietnamese and the protest perspective. The passage of time and the conflict’s complexity has opened the way for new perspectives in commemorative programming.
Beryl Levine: North Dakota's first female State Supreme Court justice
(North Dakota State University, 2009) Stanley, Cody Benard
The intent of this thesis is to explore the life and perspective of the North Dakota State Supreme Court's first female justice, Beryl J. Levine. The overarching question throughout this thesis is, whether or not, because she was the first, Levine added a new voice to the court. This analysis begins with a biography of Levine. This biography will illustrate how Levine's knowledge and world views were affected by the environment that she grew up and lived in. The subsequent section deals with Levine's rulings on divorce cases. Levine had a unique perspective on divorce law; specifically in the areas of child custody, alimony and property distribution; she deviated from the court's majority on several occasions. The next part focuses on Levine's work to reduce gender discrimination in North Dakota. Levine worked to eliminate gender discrimination through many different methods. Once these three areas of Levine's life and work are looked at as a whole, it will be demonstrated that Levine added a new perspective to the North Dakota State Supreme Court.
Between Sea and Steppe: A Historical Foray in Three Parts
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Pogge, Asha Marie
Examinations into marine environmental history, Great Plains environmental history, and the city of Odessa, Ukraine, demonstrate these three areas have strong methodological and topical foundations and even stronger potential for future scholarship. Marine environmental history is a growing sub-field that necessitates a multidisciplinary approach to both situate the ocean as an active and dynamic participant in human history and allow it a history in its own right. Great Plains environmental history incorporates many kinds of scholarship including creative works—like those of novelist Will Cather—that shape historical memory as surely as they include marginalized perspectives. Finally, the city of Odessa, Ukraine, underwent such a transformation in the early twentieth century that it became a different city entirely, rendering its formative years (1794 to 1905) a mythologized memory.
But the Roots Remain: The Wisconsin Progressives in the Great Depression and Post-War Era
(North Dakota State University, 2012) McCollum, Daniel David
This work is concerned with the development of the Progressives, a political faction of the Republican Party which was active in Wisconsin during the first half of the 20th century, throughout the Great Depression, and the Post-War era. It was during this period that the Progressives broke with the Republican Party, formed the Progressive Party and gained control of the state from 1934 through 1938, before finally dissolving in 1946, with many members moving into the Democratic Party, where they rejuvenated that moribund state party. This work, furthermore, focuses on the those Progressive leaders who operated in Wisconsin’s northern counties, a region which had a long tradition of Progressivism, the influence they had upon the creation of the Progressive Party and the political realignment which followed its dissolution.
Canadian Confederation andAusgleich: A Comparative Case Study in Imperial Devolution as Imperial Rule and the Effects on National Formation, 1867-1918
(North Dakota State University, 2010) Carter, Thomas Lachlan
Scholarly thinking on empires is changing. These scholars see empires as flexible states which are fully capable of meeting the challenges of modernity. This newer line of scholarship challenges the standard narrative of the emergence of nations. Recent scholarship stresses that the history of successor states is not a complete break from the imperial past, but rather that the empires impacted the nature of both the successor states and the nations within. This thesis examines the Confederation of Canada and the Ausgleich, which resulted in the creation of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary, as successful imperial responses to challenges facing each empire. The subsequent development of national consciousness and national identity among the Canadian and the Hungarian elites emerged as a constituent part of the empire, rather than as a challenge to imperial legitimacy.
Caretakers of the Community's Past Volunteers in North Dakota Museums
(North Dakota State University, 2017) Lien, Amber
The bulk of museum studies research focuses on professionalized museums. Little research has been conducted on the challenges of small museums. This study looks at volunteers in small North Dakota museums. Sparsely populated North Dakota lacks the funds and manpower to professionally staff their rural museums. While it is especially difficult for museums to recruit younger volunteers because they tend to be more mobile and have constricted schedules, North Dakota’s small museums have adapted by staffing with older volunteers. Museums in Southwest North Dakota such as the Hettinger County Historical Society, Dakota Buttes Museum, and Mott Gallery of History and Art survive because older volunteers sustain their museums. These older volunteers do not always follow strict professional guidelines, but they do contribute life skills, knowledge of the community, and historical understanding to their work at the museums in North Dakota. Their contributions are vital to the survival of these museums.
A Compendium of Historiography: Change in the 1930s Hughes Supreme Court’s Constitutional Jurisprudence; The Decision to Drop the Atom Bomb on Japan; and The Brezhnev Doctrine and the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981
(North Dakota State University, 2015) Wakefield, Daniel Victor
This study is a compendium of historiography. The papers focus on transformative twentieth-century events: The first considers the Supreme Court’s shift from New Deal opponent to facilitator. Internal explanations of evolving judicial philosophy causing change countered external ones stressing political pressure. Debate became more complex when scholars argued both internal and external pressures altered the Court’s jurisprudence. The second reviews the atomic bombing of Japan. Post-World War II Consensus historians justified the United States attacks as saving lives by shortening the war. In the 1960s, New Left revisionists pointed to atomic diplomacy. Since the 1990s, Post-revisionism has gained acceptance, integrating and broadening Consensus and New Left positions. The third examines the Brezhnev Doctrine as a mechanism for the Soviet Union controlling satellite nations. The traditional view aligned the decline of the doctrine with Gorbachev’s liberalization policies. Recent analysis ties Soviet abandonment of the doctrine to the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981.
Construction, Adaptation, and Preservation of Earth Homes on the Northern Plains
(North Dakota State University, 2018) Kurtz, Robert Kevin
The earth home, in its many varieties and styles, played an important role in the development of the American Great Plains during the mid-nineteenth century. However, the lack of further study into the material culture of these homes has allowed many of these homes to be misrepresented in the historical record as temporary shelters. Not all of the earth homes constructed during this period were temporary. Further study of the materials used, the locations in which they were built, and their construction methods suggest that many of these homes were built to last. The three case studies used in this thesis represent a large number of earth homes still standing today. The findings of this study enhance the history of the region and open up new avenues for further research on earth homes as well as the possibilities and the importance of their preservation.
Drought, Depression, and Relief: The Agricultural Adjustment Wheat Reduction Program in North Dakota during the Great Depression
(North Dakota State University, 2012) Gostanzik, Brent Alan
The purpose of this thesis is to examine how the Agricultural Adjustment Wheat Reduction Program functioned in North Dakota from May of 1933 to January of 1936, why it ran so smoothly, and why it was such a success within the state. By using county Extension Agent reports that date from the time period this thesis uses an extensive number of primary sources that have not been used before. These reports, along with farmer journal accounts, newspaper articles, and Agricultural Adjustment Administration reports show that North Dakota wheat farmers openly embraced the policies of the Wheat Reduction Program and participated in it in higher numbers than any other state in the nation. The farmers embraced the program because the drought and economic depression they were facing left let them little choice, but also because the program did not seek to radically alter the structure of wheat farming in North Dakota.
The Effect of Title IX at the University of Nebraska at Omaha
(North Dakota State University, 2012) Sebranek, Sarah Jean
Title IX sought to end discrimination on the basis of gender in the realm of education and extra-curricular activities provided by academic institutions. This research examines the impact of Title IX at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and determines the success of the legislation. Title IX is a significant topic as it offered an equitable experience for females in an otherwise male dominated arena of athletics. The end result provides a case study on the effect of Title IX at a Midwestern public university, which begins in the 1920s and concludes in the early 2000s. Most importantly, the research gives the history of Title IX, focusing on the administrators, at the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The Emperors of Sport: Dominican Baseball during the US Occupation of the Dominican Republic, 1916-1924
(North Dakota State University, 2017) Larson, Karl
While baseball is typically associated with the United States for most Western readers, the sport was already being played in Cuba, Japan, and the Dominican Republic before the United States fully realized its own Major League system. During the First World War, the United States invaded and occupied Santo Domingo in an attempt to maintain hegemony in the Western Hemisphere. Dominican intellectuals in the capital city utilized baseball in their nation-building endeavor, seeking to prove that not only were they capable of performing their own westernization, but that Santo Domingo was the modern heir of ancient Athens in the New World.
Farming Democracy: American Agricultural Policy from the Great War to the Great Society
(North Dakota State University, 2020) Biles, Amanda Belle
In the days of the early republic, agriculture provided more than just an economic foundation; it shaped the country socially, and politically, too. Thomas Jefferson and others wrote at length of the role farming played in the American moral and political order, but by the turn of the twentieth century, agriculture’s share of the overall economy had declined, even as it became enmeshed in the emerging class question that was convulsing US politics. Farm policy followed that shift. While many historians of agricultural policy in the twentieth century limited their studies to the so-called farm bills and thus saw only commodity policy, US agricultural policy from Woodrow Wilson to Lyndon Johnson constituted a massive intervention in the lives and experiences of rural Americans. During this period, policymakers moved purposefully and emphatically beyond commodity concerns and aimed to remake rural life and farmer identity in the United States. They held as their model Thomas Jefferson’s agrarian ideal, a nation of freeholders deeply invested in the preservation of the republic and their own contributions to its success. However, the Wilson administration and its successors went beyond Jeffersonian laissez faire to build a farm policy rooted in the worldview and methods of the Progressive movement: middle class values, concern for social uplift, a growing civil service bureaucracy, and modern scientific and statistical tools. These administrations demonstrated clear intent to wield farm identity as a tool of democratization, growth, and national cohesion not only within the American countryside, but in the nation at large and then around the globe.
The Fluidity of Gender Roles on the Northern Great Plains 1890-1950
(North Dakota State University, 2022) Aulner, Stefanie Michele Pililani
The relative infancy of the Northern Great Plains social environment compared to the well-established social systems of the United States east of the Mississippi fostered growth and allowed the redefinition of women’s gender roles. Without the strict social policing of women’s roles within the frontier society, women could redefine their gender roles. Women not only redefined their gender roles but made independent decisions based on their current situations and navigated within the already assigned societal gender roles. In this instance, women, often oppressed and constrained by societal expectations and obligations, simultaneously possessed the choice to navigate and make decisions within the established framework of their gendered society. Defined gender roles in the Northern Great Plains do not exist. Instead, gender roles on the Northern Great Plains have been and are ever-evolving and fluid.
The Great Famine in Soviet Ukraine: Toward New Avenues of Inquiry into the Holodomor
(North Dakota State University, 2014) Reisenauer, Troy Philip
Famine spread across the Union of Social Soviet Republics in 1932 and 1933, a deadly though unanticipated consequence of Joseph Stalin's attempt in 1928 to build socialism in one country through massive industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture known as the first Five-Year Plan. This study uses published documents, collections, correspondence, memoirs, secondary sources and new insight to analyze the famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine and other Soviet republics. It presents the major scholarly works on the famine, research that often mirrors the diverse views and bitter public disagreement over the issue of intentionality and the ultimate culpability of Soviet leadership. The original contribution of this study is in the analysis of newly published primary documents of the 1920s and 1930s from the Russian Presidential Archives, especially vis-à-vis the role of Stalin and his chief lieutenants at the center of power and the various representatives at the republic-level periphery.
Historiographies of World War II, The Cold War, and Wounded Knee
(North Dakota State University, 2014) Olson, Scott
This historiographical essay discusses three events in recent history— Germany in World War II, the beginnings of the Cold War, and the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. The purpose of these essays is to show what the authors of these subjects are discussing in their books and to critique their work as it relates to the particular theme of each essay. There are many different writers on these subjects, but it can be difficult to show how do they compare or contrast to one another with the information that they presenting. The first essay will cover the failures of Germany in World War II that led to its destruction at the end of the war The second essay on the beginnings of the Cold War will discuss how authors viewed the U.S. as being the main instigator behind the Cold War. The third essay covers the occupation of Wounded Knee and how its differing authors felt about its legitimacy and the reasoning for how it came about. To read these essays is to better understand the authors themselves as well as the finer points of subjects that they are discussing.
A History of North Dakota's Petroleum Industry, 1917-2017
(North Dakota State University, 2022) Herz, Clarence Anthony
North Dakota’s petroleum industry can be traced back to 1917, when Arthur Blum found a small amount of oil in a well drilled to water his cattle. The unsuccessful exploration for oil continued from 1917 until 1951, when on April 4, oil was produced, in commercial quantities, from the Clarence Iverson #1 well. The discovery well initiated the state’s first boom, and after several other wells began production, the state began construction of industry infrastructure. This discovery boom lasted until 1966, when a global oil glut reduced exploration and production slowed. In the 1970s, as a result of OPEC’s manipulation of petroleum markets, the state would again experience a boom in its petroleum industry. This boom was short-lived, however, and ended abruptly and painfully. Government deregulation of the industry, coupled with Middle East tensions easing, caused foreign petroleum to produce once again a global glut in oil which caused prices to fall dramatically. After nearly two decades of anemic production, innovations in technology led to a third and significantly larger, more dramatic boom that saw growth in every aspect of life in western North Dakota. This occurred while the state also enjoyed an increase in agricultural prices and robust crop production. This boom saw intermittent busts in 2008-09 and 2014-15. Predictably, prices fall when oil is oversupplied, and rise when demand increases. The men and women of North Dakota, through each of these periods, have learned some valuable lessons, but despite that, they often continued to make many of the same mistakes. Sometimes they have learned from these mistakes and acknowledged the potential to do better, and sometimes, as in the case of the state’s budget, continue to do things the exact same way, hoping for different results.
The Importance of the Schleswig-Holstein Conflicts in German Unification: A Primordial Case Study, 1839-1871
(North Dakota State University, 2018) Ahlers, Christian Anthony
Considerations of German Unification usually center on Otto von Bismarck and Prussian power politics, the German Confederation, and Austria along with the Franco-Prussian War. Often overlooked are the important events that brought together certain northern German speaking states. But these conflicts were also the conclusion of a continuous feud between the Germans in the Schleswig and Holstein Duchies and the Danish. The feud, a series of wars which led to the creation of the Norddeutsches Bund in 1867, centered around the ‘Schleswig- Holstein Question’: the rightful rule of the Schleswig Duchy. Successional questions involved various intermarriages, personal unions, competing ambitions, the Danish Lex Regina (totalitarianism), and the German Primogeniture (the exclusion of female rule). The historical patterns emerging through this feud involve questions of legal, cultural and military history. They show not only the importance of Schleswig-Holstein but also of a kind of nationalism that can be called dynamic.
"The Indians may be led, but will not be drove": The Creek Nation's Struggle for Control of Its Destiny, 1783-1795
(North Dakota State University, 2016) Cummings, William
History tends to portray the interactions between Euro-American settlers and native Indian Nations as one in which Euro-American settlers imposed dominance on the Indians. This work takes an in-depth look at the relationship between the Creek Nation and the Euro-American settlers of Georgia in the early years of the American republic and shows the Creeks in control of their own destiny, as well as the destiny of Georgia and the young republic. The core argument is that the nature of the Creek nation allowed them to maintain autonomy while affecting the physical development of the United States. From Massachusetts to Carolina various Native American nations had tried to fend off Euro-American expansion but were forced off their land in short order. The Creek Nation considered Georgia and its settlers to be usurpers without valid claim to Indian land, and put forth a near impenetrable defense of their claim for over a decade. The Creeks steadfastly maintained their claim to the land between the Ogeechee River and the Oconee River, and declared war to enforce the boundary on their terms. In their struggle, primarily with the state of Georgia, new leaders emerged and new polities replaced old traditions. This was a significant accomplishment when one considers the lack of any form of political unity around which to take a stand against the expansionist plans of Georgia. This study will show that the Creeks succeeded because a common determination united the nation in its opposition to Georgia’s attempts to take their land, while its political disunity prevented any group less than the whole from negotiating effectively concerning their land.
The Influence of the Hudson's Bay Company in the Exploration and Settlement of the Red River Valley of the North
(North Dakota State University, 2014) Croll, Earla Elizabeth
As beaver became scarcer in the east, the quest for Castor Canadensis sent traders into the northern plains. Reluctant explorers, traders looked for easier access and cheaper means of transport. Initially content to wait on the shores of the Bay, HBC was forced to meet their competitors in the natives’ homelands. The Red River Valley was easily accessed from Hudson’s Bay, becoming the center of the fur trade in the northern plains. HBC helped colonize the first permanent settlement west of the Great Lakes in the Red River Valley. Allowing white women and introducing cultivation into the area was a necessary change. The influence of the fur trade in North Dakota and of the Hudson’s Bay Company on the exploration and settlement of the Red River Valley cannot be overemphasized.

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