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THE RED SCARE AND THE BI'S QUEST FOR POWER: THE SOVIET ARK AS POLITICAL THEATER
Title
THE RED SCARE AND THE BI'S QUEST FOR POWER: THE SOVIET ARK AS POLITICAL THEATER.
Creator
Smith, Austin, Crepeau, Richard, Sacher, John, Walker, Ezekiel, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The Red Scare of 1919-1920 has been presented as a wave of anti-Radical hysteria that swept post WWI America; a hysteria to which the state reluctantly capitulated to by arresting Radicals and deporting those alien Radicals they deemed most threatening. This presentation, however, is ludicrous when the motivations of the state and its conservative allies are examined. The truth of the matter was that almost all of the people targeted by the Red Scare represented no significant threat to the...
Show moreThe Red Scare of 1919-1920 has been presented as a wave of anti-Radical hysteria that swept post WWI America; a hysteria to which the state reluctantly capitulated to by arresting Radicals and deporting those alien Radicals they deemed most threatening. This presentation, however, is ludicrous when the motivations of the state and its conservative allies are examined. The truth of the matter was that almost all of the people targeted by the Red Scare represented no significant threat to the institutions of the United States and were merely targeted for holding Leftwing ideas, or being connected to a group that did. This work examines how the Red Scare deportations were used as a performance to gain power and funding for the Bureau of Investigation and how the Bureau sought to use this performance to set itself up as the premier anti-Radical agency in the United States.While the topic of the Red Scare of 1919-1920 has been thoroughly covered, most works on the subject attempt to cover the whole affair or even address it as part of a larger study of political repression in the United States. In these accounts these authors do not see the Red Scare as a performance, which culminated in the Soviet Ark deportations, put on by the BI in order to fulfill its goal of expanding its own importance. This work addresses the events leading up to climactic sailing of the Soviet Ark, as political theater put on by the BI and its allies in order to impress policy makers and other conservative interest groups.Since the Soviet Ark deportations were the climax of the Red Scare performance, this work addresses the event as a theatrical production and follows a three act dramatic structure. It begins by exploring the cast of characters, both individuals and organizations, in the BI's performance. This is followed by an analysis of the rising action of the BI, and other reactionary groups in the evolution of their grand performance. Finally the deportations serve as the climax of the Red Scare in this performance that the BI and its allies would use to justify an expansion of their influence.Through the use of government records, biographies, and first hand accounts, this work explores the Soviet Ark deportations as the high point of the first Red Scare, the point in which the BI and its allies took their quest for expanded power the furthest before having to change course. The grand performance that the Bureau of Investigation put on is looked at, not as a response to placate others (-) something the BI was merely swept up in (-) but as a performance that they designed to meet the specific needs of their campaign to grow their agency, a performance for which they were willing to draft those that represented no real threat despite the consequences to those individuals.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0005059, ucf:49977
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005059
Outside the Cage: The Campaign to Destroy Mixed Martial Arts
Title
Outside the Cage: The Campaign to Destroy Mixed Martial Arts.
Creator
Doeg, Andrew, Crepeau, Richard, Sacher, John, Solonari, Vladimir, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This is an early history of Mixed Martial Arts in America. It focuses primarily on the political campaign to ban the sport in the 1990s and the repercussions that campaign had on MMA itself. Furthermore, it examines the censorship of music and video games in the 1990s. The central argument of this work is that the political campaign to ban Mixed Martial Arts was part of a larger political movement to censor violent entertainment. Connections are shown in the actions and rhetoric of...
Show moreThis is an early history of Mixed Martial Arts in America. It focuses primarily on the political campaign to ban the sport in the 1990s and the repercussions that campaign had on MMA itself. Furthermore, it examines the censorship of music and video games in the 1990s. The central argument of this work is that the political campaign to ban Mixed Martial Arts was part of a larger political movement to censor violent entertainment. Connections are shown in the actions and rhetoric of politicians who attacked music, video games and the Ultimate Fighting Championship on the grounds that it glorified violence. The political pressure exerted on the sport is largely responsible for the eventual success and widespread acceptance of MMA. The pressure forced the sport to regulate itself and transformed it into something more acceptable to mainstream America.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0004675, ucf:49870
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004675
Reconciling Order and Progress: Auguste Comte, Gustave Le Bon, (&)#201;mile Durkheim, and the Development of Positivism in France, 1820-1914
Title
Reconciling Order and Progress: Auguste Comte, Gustave Le Bon, (&)#201;mile Durkheim, and the Development of Positivism in France, 1820-1914.
Creator
Navarro, Khali, Lyons, Amelia, Walker, Ezekiel, Crepeau, Richard, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis discusses the philosophy of positivism in nineteenth century France. Based on an empirical vision of society, positivism advocated values of rationality, progress, and secularization. In that way, it stood as one of the defining systems of thought of the modern era. I discuss, however, an undercurrent of anxiety about those same values. Positivism's founder, Auguste Comte, argued that all sciences would become unified and organized under universal principles and empirical...
Show moreThis thesis discusses the philosophy of positivism in nineteenth century France. Based on an empirical vision of society, positivism advocated values of rationality, progress, and secularization. In that way, it stood as one of the defining systems of thought of the modern era. I discuss, however, an undercurrent of anxiety about those same values. Positivism's founder, Auguste Comte, argued that all sciences would become unified and organized under universal principles and empirical standards. He viewed the human mind as becoming more rationalized throughout history. In his later career, however, he argued that rationalism was a destructive force and that a new form of secular religion as necessary to establish morality and order. I argue that this transition from science to religion represents an underlying anxiety of the nineteenth century. Intellectuals from different sides of the political spectrum viewed progress as positive, but also limited. They argued that something beyond science, in the realm of the religious, the metaphysical, or the subjective, was necessary for society. They expressed these concerns through the language of gender. Comte argued that women would be at the center of his religion. They would socialize and moralize men, making them part of a new unified, pacifist and orderly social whole.I also discuss two later intellectuals, social psychologist Gustave Le Bon and pioneering sociologist (&)#201;mile Durkheim. Le Bon represented the fin-de-si(&)#232;cle rejection of positivism. He began with positivist principles, but later argued that humanity was irrational and violent. He viewed the modern masses as a powerful force which threatened to destroy civilization. The other figure, Durkheim, rejected Le Bon's form of nationalist right-wing thought and formed theories of social harmony, altruism, and a solidarity. He sought to reconcile egalitarian republican principles with positivist science. Despite their diverging theories, however, Le Bon and Durkheim employed similar assumptions about modernity and gender. Le Bon argued that European men were superior, and that all other groups shared an undeveloped mentality. Durkheim argued that men were social while women were simpler and mentally limited.Their views, far from establishing an unproblematic hierarchy of gender and race, in fact expressed anxieties about the state of modernity. They identified women, the lower classes, and other societies with values of simplicity, unity, and tradition. They identified the modern, Western male individual with the problems of modern society: excessive rationalization, instability, and secularization. This sense of ambivalence about modernity reveals the central importance of positivism to understanding nineteenth century thought. Positivism sought to reconcile seemingly antithetical principles of order with progress, individualism with social unity, and morality with rationalization. In doing so, it established anxieties about the forces of change. Positivists advocated the most modern of principles, and sought to further the progress of civilization, but also identified those rationalized forces as problems in need of control. Positivism thus established its own undoing, which would come at the beginning of the twentieth century. In that era, intellectuals rejected purely scientific visions of the world in favor of subjective thought. I locate the origins of that rejection at the very foundations of positivist theory.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005220, ucf:50644
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005220
The Rwandan Genocide and Western Media: French, British, and American Press Coverage of the Genocide between April and July of 1994
Title
The Rwandan Genocide and Western Media: French, British, and American Press Coverage of the Genocide between April and July of 1994.
Creator
Tyrrell, Candice, Walker, Ezekiel, Lyons, Amelia, Crepeau, Richard, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The Rwandan Genocide occurred between April and July of 1994. Within those four months, approximately a million Tutsi were brutally murdered by the Hutu in an effort to cleanse the country of a Tutsi presence. The genocide was the culmination of decades of unrest between the two groups created from Western influence under colonialism and post-colonial relationships. The international response to the genocide was scarce. While international intervention waned, the international media kept the...
Show moreThe Rwandan Genocide occurred between April and July of 1994. Within those four months, approximately a million Tutsi were brutally murdered by the Hutu in an effort to cleanse the country of a Tutsi presence. The genocide was the culmination of decades of unrest between the two groups created from Western influence under colonialism and post-colonial relationships. The international response to the genocide was scarce. While international intervention waned, the international media kept the genocide relevant in its publications. This thesis examines print media sources from the United States, Britain, and France. This thesis argues that the reporting of the genocide exacerbated larger issues concerning the relationship between the West and Africa. The journalists perpetuated Western superiority over Africa by utilizing racism to preserve colonial ideologies and stereotypes of Africans. In turn, this inherent Western racism complicated the implementation of human rights legislation that would have helped save Tutsi lives. This thesis places the Rwandan genocide, through the reports of Western media, into the larger historiographic context of the Western African dichotomy.
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Date Issued
2015
Identifier
CFE0005730, ucf:50080
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005730
Chief Bowlegs and the Banana Garden: A Reassessment of the Beginning of the Third Seminole War
Title
Chief Bowlegs and the Banana Garden: A Reassessment of the Beginning of the Third Seminole War.
Creator
Settle, John, Murphree, Daniel, Crepeau, Richard, Larson, Peter, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This study examines in depth the most common interpretation of the opening of the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). The interpretation in question was authored almost thirty years after the beginning of the war, and it alleges that the destruction of a Seminole banana plant garden by United States soldiers was the direct cause of the conflict. This study analyzes the available primary records as well as traces the entire historiography of the Third Seminole War in order to ascertain how and why...
Show moreThis study examines in depth the most common interpretation of the opening of the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). The interpretation in question was authored almost thirty years after the beginning of the war, and it alleges that the destruction of a Seminole banana plant garden by United States soldiers was the direct cause of the conflict. This study analyzes the available primary records as well as traces the entire historiography of the Third Seminole War in order to ascertain how and why the banana garden account has had such an impactful and long-lasting effect. Based on available evidence, it is clear that the lack of fully contextualized primary records, combined with the failure of historians to deviate from or challenge previous scholarship, has led to a persistent reliance on the banana garden interpretation that continues to the present. Despite the highly questionable and problematic nature of this account, it has dominated the historiography on the topic and is found is almost every written source that addresses the beginning of the Third Seminole War. This thesis refutes the validity of the banana garden interpretation, and in addition, provides alternative explanations for the Florida Seminoles' decision to wage war against the United States during the 1850s.
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Date Issued
2015
Identifier
CFE0005710, ucf:50116
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005710
Le Temps des Copains: Youth and the Making of Modern France in the Era of Decolonization, 1958-1968
Title
Le Temps des Copains: Youth and the Making of Modern France in the Era of Decolonization, 1958-1968.
Creator
Fedorka, Drew, Lyons, Amelia, Nair, Deepa, Crepeau, Richard, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis examines the popular y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; phenomenon and its role in articulating a vision of modern France in the aftermath of decolonization. Y(&)#233;-y(&)#233;, a teen-oriented and music-based popular culture that flourished from roughly 1962-1966, was in a unique position to define what it meant to be young in 1960s France. I argue that the y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; popular culture, through its definition of youth, provided an important cultural channel through which to articulate a...
Show moreThis thesis examines the popular y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; phenomenon and its role in articulating a vision of modern France in the aftermath of decolonization. Y(&)#233;-y(&)#233;, a teen-oriented and music-based popular culture that flourished from roughly 1962-1966, was in a unique position to define what it meant to be young in 1960s France. I argue that the y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; popular culture, through its definition of youth, provided an important cultural channel through which to articulate a modern French identity after the Algerian War (1954-1962). Using a combination of advertisements, articles, and sanitized depictions of teenage pop singers, the y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; popular culture constructed an idealized vision of adolescence that coupled a technologically-savvy and consumer-oriented outlook with a distinctly conservative, apolitical, and inclusive social stance. It reflected France's reorientation toward a particular technological and consumer modernity while simultaneously serving to obscure France's recent colonial past and the dubious legacy of imperialism. To contextualize y(&)#233;-y(&)#233;, this thesis begins by examining the blousons noirs (black jackets) and the societal anxieties that surrounded them in the early Fifth Republic (1958-1962). By tracking the abrupt shift from the blousons noirs to y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; in predominant media representations of youth, this thesis provides a unique vantage point with which to interpret dominant discourses of the Gaullist Fifth Republic and its attempt to reinvent France into a modernized and decolonized consumer republic. As the work suggests, it was not a coincidence that the optimistic y(&)#233;-y(&)#233; youth, unburdened by the tribulations of France's recent past, appeared in full force within months following the recognition of Algerian independence in 1962.
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Date Issued
2015
Identifier
CFE0005612, ucf:50200
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005612

Pages