History 797: MA Graduate Student Research Seminar

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    “The Flood Came and Took Them All Away”: The 1852 Holmfirth Flood in Multimedia and Memory
    (George Mason University, 2018-11) Newlin, Michael
    The 1852 Holmfirth Flood remains one of the deadliest and most destructive floods in the history of England, and it was a catastrophe of national significance. Newspapers throughout the country reported on the event and its aftermath through the year, while visitors flocked to the site of the calamity as early as the following day. Narratives and local histories chronicled the event in the years and decades that followed. But why was this particular flooding of Holmfirth so significant? Holmfirth had a decades-old history of severe flooding, so what was different about this one? The town of Holmfirth lies in the Holme Valley within the county of West Yorkshire. This county belongs to a larger geographic location, known as the Pennines. At the time of the flood, Holmfirth was an industrial hub for the textile industry. Because of Holmfirth’s position both geographically and economically as part of the “Backbone of England,” the flood was of national interest and was, by extension, a national catastrophe. The Holmfirth Flood of 1852 was both experienced as a local disaster and perceived as a national event, and the desire to interpret and experience the disaster was satisfied by various forms of multimedia. An examination of books, sermons, newspapers, and other mass communicative media provide a foundation for understanding how the people of Holmfirth and the greater whole of society dealt with the challenges presented by the flood.
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    From the Cold War to the Crypto War
    (2020) Shumate, Nicholas
    After the Cold War came to a close, in the United States a new informational society emerged from the rubble. This society, based on open access to information, challenged decades old policies of closed information. Encryption and access to cryptographic systems played a huge role in this paradigm. Stemming from the Counterculturalist movements in the 1960's, these trends towards open access to information climaxed during the early 1990s. Individuals, such as those found at the Computer, Freedom, and Information Conventions as well as on the online message board, the WELL, fought against information security governmental entities such as the NSA. As the NSA reevaluated its mission in the post-Cold War era, these crypto-advocates challenged the decades old monopoly the U.S. government had on encryption standards. By 1996, the pressures on the U.S. government made by these crypto-advocates as well as by private industry opened up the government's monopoly on cryptography.
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    What's Worn in Camp Stays in Camp: Women Campers Navigating Fashion and Function 1869-1915
    (2021-05) Nyborg, Bethany
    Before manufacturers and magazines commercialized a realistic alternative to everyday clothing for camping, women campers grappled with questions of why some clothing was feminine and appropriate, while others were unacceptably masculine and ridiculed. Camping provided an environment where middle-class women’s core beliefs on clothing were tested and broadened to accept clothing outside the bounds of mainstream society.
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    Bridle the Horse, Rein in the Man: Free-Ranging Horse-Control Measures and Contests for Authority in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake
    (2021-05) Nubbe, Adam
    From the introduction: ...The man is Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, and the gun he carries is loaded with an immunocontraceptive vaccine dart that will render the mare sterile for about a year. She lives on a wildlife refuge on Assateague Island and, as one of the Chesapeake’s feral horses, is part of a herd that has become a beloved cultural icon. To protect the refuge’s natural resources, without which the two herds that live on the island could not sustain themselves, the National Park Service and the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Company carefully manage Assateague’s horse population. They work to ensure that the herds remain large enough to be genetically viable but small enough so that they do not disrupt their island habitat. Their population- control efforts are designed to protect the horses, which might otherwise eat themselves out of a home.
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