Graduate Theses & Dissertations

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'Land Displacement and Coping Strategies'
This thesis explores the social history of the Marange people of eastern Zimbabwe from the 1960s to 2015. It uses historical episodes like the recurring droughts, the 1970s war of independence, the ‘crisis in Zimbabwe,’ that has been traced from the late - 1990s, and the diamond mining story to demonstrate how the inhabitants interacted with their environment. It argues that the relocation project that began in 2010 had a severely disruptive impact on the families relocated to the relocation area - ARDA Transau - making the case that the Marange relocation project was a ‘development disaster.’ While the provision of accommodation had a notable positive impact on the majority of the displaced households, family needs were not always met. For instance, large families such as those of the dominant polygamous followers of the African Apostolic Church of Johanne Marange were not provided with adequate housing. Also, the livelihoods of the displaced households were shattered by the relocation exercise. In their efforts to creatively adapt to these new constraints, the displacees had diverse coping strategies like selling firewood, illegally extending space for crop cultivation, artisanal mining, vending and begging for food to eke out a living. Author Keywords: Coping Strategies, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Development, Displacement, Land, Livelihoods
After the Fall
Utilizing pre-existing scholarship on post-conflict reconstruction in twentieth-century Europe, as well as a variety of French primary sources, this thesis explores the concept of national-moral reconstruction as utilized by French political leaders in the wake of their country's defeat by Nazi Germany in June 1940. In particular, this study analyzes the competing discourses employed by the Vichy regime and the various organizations of the French Resistance, as each group sought to explain to a broader public both the causes of the French defeat, as well as the repercussions of the German occupation of the country from June 1940 to August 1944. While previous scholarship has emphasized the physical and/or economic dimensions of post-conflict reconstruction--especially when considered in the context of the Second World War--this thesis focuses on issues of cultural identity and national history/memory in order to look at how French political leaders hoped to reconstruct the moral and cultural, as opposed to the strictly physical, fabric of their country in the wake of the comprehensive social, political, and military disaster brought about by the German occupation. Author Keywords: collective memory, German occupation, national-moral reconstruction, Philippe Pétain, post-conflict reconstruction, Vichy France
Alone in Power
The thesis uses three case studies of President Nixon’s foreign policy in South-east Asia to analyze presidential domestic-making. The theoretical concept of personality politics is used to analyze the Nixon administration and foreign policy. Nixon’s secretive nature combined with his mistrust of the press and bureaucracy to create an office structure that restricted the involvement and notification of others of his foreign policy. This thesis also takes into account the domestic climate that Nixon was operating within, including significant antiwar opposition, an adversarial media, and an ideologically opposed bureaucracy. Nixon’s foreign policy was ultimately the result of a perfect storm of factors. The president’s natural penchant for secrecy, along with his mistrust of the press and bureaucracy, combined with the American political environment that was in many instances ideologically set against him, also helped shape his foreign policy. Author Keywords: American Presidency, China, National Security Council, Richard Nixon, US Foreign Policy, 1969-1973, Vietnam War
Branding of the Prime Minister
From 1949-1957, Prime Minister Louis St. Laurent was the face of the Liberal Party. Party branding was wholly devoted to his friendly, ‘Uncle Louis’ brand image. St. Laurent’s image was manipulated and manufactured without public preconception, establishing the modern tactics of personal branding still used by his successors. This thesis studies the elections of 1949, 1953, and 1957, analysing photos, advertisements, speeches, archival documents, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources to show the development of Liberal branding strategy. It employs political scientist Margaret Scammell’s conceptualization of brand theory, showing how marketers used emotional brand differentiators and rational substantive performance indicators to sell ‘Uncle Louis’ to Canadians. The Liberals used St. Laurent and branding tactics to win two massive majorities in 1949 and 1953, and the Diefenbaker Tories used those same tactics to defeat them in 1957. ‘Uncle Louis’ proved the effectiveness of personal branding and leader-centered campaigns in Canadian politics. Author Keywords: Brand Theory, Canadian Politics, Elections, Liberal Party of Canada, Louis St. Laurent, Political Marketing
Effects of Ideological Conformity on Foreign Policymaking
During the 1970s, ideological divisions caused by divergent interpretations of the American failure in Vietnam permeated the world of foreign policymaking. This led to a concern among the architects of the Reagan administration that foreign policymaking had become incoherent. They attempted to mitigate the effects of this disharmony by re-establishing a workable degree of ideological conformity within the foreign policy bureaucracy. This thesis focuses on the strategy used to improve ideological conformity and its effect on the foreign policy bureaucracy’s ability to produce well informed policy. Using case studies of two of Reagan’s ambassadors to Central America, it argues that Reagan’s strategy created a foreign policy bureaucracy that manufactured uninformed policy. The influence granted to officials who based their recommendations on regional expertise was severely curtailed. This shift produced a subsequent change in diplomatic practice, as foreign service officers adapted to the demand for allegiance to the president’s agenda. Author Keywords: American Foreign Policy, Central America, Ronald Reagan
Entertain Me
The scope of my scholarship has undergone a primarily interdisciplinary approach with an emphasis on historiographic scholarship and method, with the support of communication and sociological theory to underpin my core arguments in each chapter. I use the theories of Third Space, commodified racism, and common sense racism in combination to provide an in-depth analysis of prior scholarship on professional wrestling, contemporary and historic fan activities, and biographic information about professional wrestlers. My first chapter examines prior scholarly methodologies and approaches for broaching the topic of professional wrestling while providing a unique and effective alternative for negotiating with the complex and often-tenuous relationship between professional wrestling, race, and collective memory. I evaluate the seminal works that make up the body of previous professional wrestling scholarship, specifically focusing on dramaturgy as a scholarly approach that limits focus to in-ring performance. In Chapter 2, I provide an in-depth analysis of first-hand accounts by and about Black professional wrestlers, charting the ways in which commodified and common sense racism affect both their careers and personal perspectives on race. Drawing on the tradition of minstrelsy, the chapter defines the ways that Black professional wrestlers have been categorized as mere sources of entertainment rather than being portrayed as skilled, athletic, or serious contenders for wrestling titles. My third chapter assesses twenty-first century fan engagement with professional wrestling content within the context of online Third Spaces. The chapter highlights the points of ideological division amongst fans, who both support and resist the wrestling industry’s common sense and commodifying racism. Keywords: Pro wrestling; commodified racism, common sense racism, Third Space, critical race theory, American history, fan studies Author Keywords: commodified racism, common sense racism, critical race theory, fan studies, Pro wrestling, Third Space
Hearing the Invisible Empire
This study investigates the origins of the music produced by the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Indiana as well as trying to understand how it facilitated recruitment into the Klan and how it was used as a tool for wider social and political change. The Indiana Klan’s newspaper The Fiery Cross is awash in reports of parades and other public performances of music, yet this phenomenon has remained unstudied. Klan musical performances were modelled after the practises of the evangelical revival, which allowed Klansmen to present themselves as an alternative religious community. In so doing the Klan came to dominate the public life of many towns and cities across Indiana. In areas that experienced Klan music, Klansmen, and other protestants, mobilized on issues relating to immigration, education, and elections. This is the first study of its kind and the results in Indiana encourage further study in other states. Author Keywords: Billy Sunday, Conservative Social Movement, Evangelical Revival, Far-Right, Hate Group, Ku Klux Klan
In the Wilderness at Föhrenwald
In 1945, few refugee cases were as complicated as those of the Jewish survivors of the Holocaust who found themselves stranded in defeated Germany but could neither return home due to antisemitic violence nor immigrate to most countries due to extant prewar visa restrictions. Between 1945 and 1947, some 150,000 Jews fleeing ongoing antisemitic violence joined them in American-occupied Bavaria, including thousands who had survived in the Soviet Union—a phenomenon Tony Judt has described as “surviving the peace.” This thesis focuses on Föhrenwald, a United Nations refugee camp outside of Munich. It interweaves oral histories with archival materials from the United Nations and the American Joint Distribution Committee to apply Atina Grossmann’s work on “close encounters” between Jews, Germans, and Americans to a single refugee camp. What emerges is a portrait of the vibrant, if transient, political, social, and educational life Jews built “in the wilderness” of Germany between 1945 and 1947. Author Keywords: Displaced Persons, Föhrenwald, Holocaust survivors, Occupied Germany (1945–49), United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration
Lives of Young Delinquents
The Royal Philanthropic Society (RPS) was the first institution in England to care for young offenders. While historians have demonstrated the legal importance of this institution, none have examined the experience of the youths it attempted to reform. The admission registers of the RPS reveal the importance of adults and peers in the experiences of the inmates of the institution, as both could be sources of conflict and support. Youths could express power over their own lives by resisting the authority of adults, but also by conforming to the rules of the RPS. Inmates could restrict the choices of their peers by working with the RPS, but also through peer pressure or violence. Networks of collaboration and youth culture could also exert a positive impact on peers. Because this thesis represents male youths as actors, it makes a significant addition to recent histories emphasizing the impact of the subaltern groups on eighteenth-century reform movements. Author Keywords: Conformity, Juvenile Delinquency, Penal Reform, Power Relationships, Royal Philanthropic Society, Youth Culutre
Pervert’s New Statesman
Justice Weekly was a tabloid published in Toronto from 1946 to 1972. The popular narrative is that it was an unremarkable, obscure, and pornographic paper which was co-opted by gay and homophile voices in the 1950s. But why did a magazine best remembered, as Mordecai Richler put it, as “the pervert’s new statesman” publish this material? This thesis argues that Justice Weekly really was primarily about Justice, rather than titillation. The paper explored justice through topics such as juvenile delinquency and spanking, which allowed sexualized material to appear, as well as conversations surrounding gay men, race, criminality, and punishment. While the paper outed gay men and often argued for harsher prison conditions, it also published material from Canada’s earliest gay activists and prisoner presses. Justice Weekly’s focus on equitable justice allowed both sex and advocacy to emerge from its content. Author Keywords: Delinquency, Homosexuality, Jim Egan, Pornography, Pulp, Tabloid
Press Rhetoric and Human Rights in The Carter Era
Jimmy Carter and his administration varied the ways in which they addressed human rights concerns internationally. There was a strong, often emotional evocation of human rights in reference to countries that were less economically, strategically, or politically important to the United States and the foreign policy goals of the Carter administration. This was not present in Carter’s approach to addressing human rights concerns in important allies, such as South Korea, or with countries where relations were fragile and important, such as China and the USSR. This ambivalence in addressing human rights in strategically important nations was compounded by Carter’s disavowal of linkage policies. It was this ambivalence that made the moral foreign policy a failure. While there were international situations out of his control, his continued leniency and unbalanced application of linkage and focus on adherence to human right practices internationally, lessened the administration’s ability to respond to international tragedy. Author Keywords: American Foreign Policy, Government Indexing, Human Rights, Jimmy Carter, Presidential Press Relations
Question of Culture in the Socio-Economic Violence & Abuse Against Women in Zambia
This thesis presents an assessment of the role of culture in the political marginalization and the socio-economic violence and abuse against women in Zambia. It also explores other contributing factors such as the country's economic crisis of the 1970s, and its colonial legacy, especially in as far as these factors related to the status of women and contributed to the issue of violence and abuse against them. The study utilized primary sources in the form of newspaper articles from the year 1980 to the mid-1990s, to make conclusions for its findings. While previous scholarship emphasized that the violent abuse of women in the country was prevalent because of the highly patriarchal attitudes of the society, this thesis seeks to suggest that the context of violence, abuse and the political marginalization of Zambian women was shaped by an intersection of various elements some of which were not necessarily patriarchal by nature. Furthermore, the thesis explores women's agency in this issue to show that patriarchal systems are not as fixed and uncontested as has been assumed to be the case. Author Keywords: Abuse, Culture, Political Marginalization, Tradition, Violence, Zambia

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Graduate student theses produced at Trent University. You may also browse theses and dissertations by year, program, or author.

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