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    Pushed to the Edge: Homeland Outcasts
    (UMBC Review, 2024) Palmer, Julia; Lizarazo, Tania; Voerkelius, Mirjam
    This paper examines the impact of British colonization on present Australian Aboriginal diet and health. Two crucial timelines are included in this paper. The first follows the foodways of the Natives, with evidence of lingering foodways present today. The second describes the increased presence and power of the British government, specifically in policies relating to Aboriginals. The research questions grounding this paper are, how did British colonization marginalize and displace Aboriginals? In what ways did the diet for Aboriginals change due to British colonization? And, what are the health concerns Aboriginals are suffering as a result of colonization? My paper is in conversation with much ongoing research that focuses on the impact of colonial policies for Native populations worldwide. At-home research included modern-day footage and interviews of Aboriginals. I relied mainly on present-day sources for Aboriginal perspectives as much of their knowledge had been traditionally spread via word-of-mouth. British writers were also utilized with their description of Native foodways. Most highlighted the biases which were used to justify disproportionate British policies. The final piece of research included the information and conversations of the food tour with my guide who spoke about colonial policies and their impact on his family.
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    Mellon Foundation grants CAHSS $750K to establish Global Asias Initiative
    (UMBC News, 2024-04-03) Duque, Catalina Sofia Dansberger; Demond, Marlayna
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    James Clavell’s ‘Shōgun’ is reimagined for a new generation of TV viewers
    (The Conversation, 2024-03-21) Vaporis, Constantine
    Compared to its 1980 predecessor, the new FX series presents a more authentic portrayal of early modern Japan.
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    Turkey will stop sending imams to German mosques – here’s why this matters
    (The conversation, 2024-02-15) Wyck, Brian Van
    The Turkish government started sending imams to Germany in the 1980s, but under a new agreement, imams will be trained in Germany instead.
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    “OH, LORD I WANT TO BE IN THAT NUMBER:” IDENTITY & JAZZ TOURISM IN NEW ORLEANS
    (2023-01-01) Lewis, George Allen; Scott, Michelle R; History; Historical Studies
    From the late 19th century to the mid-20th century, the city underwent a transformative journey, marked by the birth of jazz, its diaspora post-WWI, and the subsequent National Revival. This study explores the intricate evolution of New Orleans as a cultural and musical epicenter, specifically focusing on the interplay of tourism, jazz, and the identity of New Orleans. The New Orleans Jazz Club (NOJC), along with other local organizations emerged as crucial players in preserving the authenticity of Traditional New Orleans Jazz, fostering a vibrant community, and contributing to the city's global recognition as the "Birthplace of Jazz." As the narrative unfolds, it traces the multifaceted impacts of tourism on New Orleans, examining its role in urban revitalization, employment, and the decline in the city's residential population. The final chapters illuminate the ongoing struggle for place identity, particularly concerning the black population, and the profound consequences of Hurricane Katrina. This study offers a comprehensive exploration of the complex dynamics between cultural heritage, economic development, and resilience, making New Orleans a compelling case study in the enduring interplay between tradition and transformation.
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    “A Monument to Negro Womanhood:” The Women of the National Training School for Women and Girls, 1879-1961
    (2023-01-01) Baker, Brianna Gabrielle; Scott, Michelle R; History; Historical Studies
    This thesis is an institutional history of the National Training School for Women and Girls (NTS), a non-denominational Christian school operated by race woman, Nannie Helen Burroughs, in Washington, D.C from 1909-1961. The school was unique for its self-help philosophy, primary funding by African Americans, and devotion to black women’s education. The school trained black women and girls in domestic science, clerical work, and missionary service at a time when few schools accepted black girls, let alone designed curriculum for their academic and professional needs. This thesis uses the writings and speeches of Nannie Helen Burroughs, teachers’ notes, curriculum, school catalogs, and other NTS memorabilia to prove that NTS students and staff deserve greater attention in NTS histories because they inspired the school’s mission to offer vocational training to dignify black women’s work, labored and fundraised to support the school and themselves during their attendance, and were trained to be the living, breathing answers to the social problems facing black women. Burroughs, students and staff were all essential to economize donations, operate campus businesses, and provide labor to maintain campus facilities, food supplies, and basic necessities. While Nannie Helen Burroughs was the master fundraiser behind the NTS, the women and girls of the NTS were the engine powering Burroughs’s plan to sustain the school, build a positive image for black women and the school, and solve the social problems facing black people, women, and the church.
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    Finding Amica in the Archives: Navigating a Path between Strategic Collaboration and Independent Research
    (Oxford University Press, 2021-11-05) Armstrong-Partida, Michelle; McDonough, Susan
    This article is a call for US-based historians to consider participating in strategic collaboration with fellow academics in their field. Out of a series of lucky encounters in person and with documentary collections, the authors, both archival historians, created a generous and expansive collaboration both in research and writing. Galvanized by the shift in working conditions occasioned by the coronavirus, the authors map out how the field in the United States should change to accommodate and reward such collaboration.
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    Captured at Home: Gender, Family, and the Burden of Captivity
    (Brepols Publishers, 2017) McDonough, Susan
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    Singlewomen in the Late Medieval Mediterranean
    (Oxford University Press, 2022-09-22) Armstrong-Partida, Michelle; McDonough, Susan
    This article challenges a long-entrenched model of two discrete marital regimes in northern and southern Europe. Demographer John Hajnal argued in 1965 that a distinctive north-western European Marriage Pattern emerged post-1700 when a large population of unmarried men and women married in their early to late twenties and formed their own household rather than join a multi-generational household. The corollary to this argument is that women in southern Europe married young and universally, and thus rarely entered into domestic service. Medievalists have embraced and repeated this paradigm, shaping assumptions about the Mediterranean as less developed or less European than the north and ignoring the experience of women enslaved throughout the region.Notaries and judicial officials in medieval Barcelona, Valencia, Mallorca, Marseille, Palermo, Venice, Famagusta and Crete recognized singlewomen owning property, buying, selling and manumitting enslaved people, appointing procurators, committing crimes and making wills. We reintegrate the experiences of singlewomen, both enslaved and free, into the daily life of the medieval Mediterranean. Understanding how these women made community, survived economically and participated in the legal and notarial cultures of their cities reframes our understanding of women?s options outside marriage in the medieval past.
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    Amigas and Amichs: Prostitute-Concubines, Strategic Coupling, and Laboring-Class Masculinity in Late Medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean
    (University of Chicago Press, 2023-01-01) McDonough, Susan; Armstrong-Partida, Michelle
    This article illuminates the experiences of prostitute-concubines in late medieval Valencia and the Mediterranean. It addresses their economic and affective relationships with amichs and argues that the temporary concubinary union between a prostitute and a low-status man, often a foreigner or itinerant laborer, was important to the gender identity of men at the lower levels of medieval society. Our analysis shows that patrician men who comprised the Consell de Valencia worked to denigrate the manhood of poor and laboring men through the criminalization of these short-term relationships.
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    Affective networks across the divide: singlewomen, the notarial archive, and social connections in the late medieval Mediterranean
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-12-07) McDonough, Susan; Armstrong-Partida, Michelle
    Though previous scholarship has presumed singlewomen in medieval Southern Europe were nearly non-existent and had few means, notarial sources from the late medieval Mediterranean reveal not only that singlewomen were present in the thriving port cities, but also that they created extensive networks among other women and men in order to survive and in some cases to flourish. Some had children out of wedlock, some were formerly enslaved, others traveled long distances and still remembered family members in their places of origin, and many built new communities in their homes. Indeed, it is remarkable that many of these migrant and formerly enslaved women created deep ties to both local and migrant neighbors, and their actions suggest a sense of responsibility to manumit other enslaved peoples and give charity to poor women. We investigate how singlewomen strategically used their final wills and testaments and other notarial documents to sustain, post-mortem, the networks that nurtured the women in their life, both friends and family members. We consider how women bestowed personal goods and financial legacies to maintain and memorialize their relationships and to sustain community, even in their absence.
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    Impoverished mothers and poor widows: negotiating images of poverty in Marseille's courts
    (Taylor & Francis, 2012-01-03) McDonough, Susan
    In the early fifteenth century, in Marseille's court of first instance, a sailor's wife Margarida Gramone sued her son-in-law's estate to recoup money she had spent nursing her dying daughter and granddaughter. She justified her claim on the money by arguing that she had been completely impoverished by the medicine, doctors and wet nurses that her sick family had needed. She called witnesses to attest to her impoverished state and they told a story of a woman unable to pay her bills and reliant on the charity of her neighbours. Other witnesses in the same case, however, suggest Margarida was not poor, but a woman of means. Attempting to reconcile this discrepancy, this article will examine how Marseille's legally savvy citizens negotiated between at least two different attitudes towards the poor: a Christian celebration of charity and a legal scepticism of a pauper's word. The legal records from late medieval Marseille show a multivalent attitude towards the poor. They suggest that the city's citizens were able to draw on different narratives about poverty in order to win over the presiding judge. At the same time, witness testimony about the poor reminds us that the burden of charity was not always welcomed by Marseille's citizens.
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    She Said, He Said, and They Said: Claims of Abuse and a Community's Response in Late Medieval Marseille
    (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) McDonough, Susan
    This article examines two court cases from Marseille's civil court in 1424 and the three competing goals of the people involved. Silona Calverie initiated the suits to dissolve her marriage and reclaim her dowry from her husband, whom she claimed had mismanaged her dowry, usurped her inheritance, beaten and imprisoned her. Johannes Calverie dismissed Silona's claim, saying the court had no jurisdiction over marriage, and he had a right to chastise his wife as he saw fit. Having recently survived a Catalan attack, Silona's witnesses, from her neighborhood and the city's hierarchy, intervened to limit the violence in their midst. Unlike other studies, which have found communities rallying behind abused women and supporting their desire to separate from their husbands, the witnesses in this case did not stand entirely behind Silona's story. The discrepancy between Silona's claims and the witness testimony in her case suggests anxieties about unattached women and maintaining a peaceful neighborhood.
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    Being a Neighbor: Ideas and Ideals of Neighborliness in the Medieval West
    (Wiley, 2017-09-03) McDonough, Susan
    This essay takes stock of current scholarship on neighbors in the Middle Ages to think through medieval understandings of the notion of neighborliness. When historians invoke the ideas of neighbors and neighborliness, they mean something beyond the people who lived in adjoining buildings or on adjacent plots of land. When medieval people called someone a neighbor the label conveyed a set of obligations, behaviors, and expectations, rooted in the idea that neighbors were among the group of people who were privy to the intimacies of each others' lives, at times both monumental and mundane. Medieval neighborliness was not uncomplicated or understood as unequivocally positive of course. Neighbors were not always a source of unconditional support or love. Despite a Christian rhetoric that emphasized a love of one's neighbor as a vehicle for loving God, medieval studies have suggested that the figure of the neighbor was, in fact, a source of danger and disquiet. This notion of neighborliness as a source of unease explains, perhaps, why scholars of medieval religion and religious interaction showcase some of the most fruitful uses of the concept. This article considers how scholars have accessed medieval notions of neighbors and neighborliness in their exploration of medieval community.
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    My Kungomo, an Independent "Modern Girl": Family Stories from the Japanese Occupation of Korea and World War II
    (2023-01-01) Kim, Hyun Joo; Oyen, Meredith; History; Historical Studies
    The historical discourse surrounding Korea during the Japanese occupation and World War II has been dominated by stories of war and politics. In this thesis I add to that discourse to include the experiences of my paternal aunt, an ordinary woman who navigated the same geographic and temporal places. In offering the family stories in historical context, the role of memory and intent of the retelling are also explored.
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    Meeting the 1950s Consumer Ideal in Health Care
    (The Business History Conference, 2009) Chapin, Christy
    The story of how private health interests allied to defeat president Harry Truman's proposal for federally financed universal care is well known. Additionally, scholars have demonstrated how conservatives and private health interests promoted the superiority of voluntary or private insurance in order to thwart such government programs. In this article, I advance these findings by demonstrating how politics and culture interacted to shape market institutions around a specific model of "private" health insurance that empowered insurance companies to become not only the primary financiers, but also the main supervisors and coordinators of health care.
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    Review: Beatrix Hoffman, Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the U.S. since 1930
    (Cambridge University Press, 2014-10-31) Chapin, Christy Ford