Thesiss

This dissertation analyzes the implementation of civil rights reforms in public schools between 1965 and 1980 in three small Midwestern cities: Waterloo, Iowa; Benton Harbor, Michigan; and Cairo, Illinois. Schools were consistently a target and site of protest during these years…

This dissertation explains the apparent transformation of people who only two decades before were considered the most isolated and isolationist in the United States into volunteer diplomats and Cold War specialists. It begins with a question of place: how did people who seemed p…

My dissertation project, "College Knowledge: The Experiences of Mexican Mothers and Educational Success in the Midwest", is grounded in the idea that Mexican parents (regardless of citizenship status) take part in a critical role in U.S. schooling today. While Mexican parents ho…

This dissertation examines the militarizing processes at work in the lives of middle class, white, Protestant American women living in a midwestern exurban town during the years 2003-2006. My investigation relies on feminist theories of militarization, maternalism, nationalism, …

The purpose of this research was to examine why a vast number of incarcerated African-American males embrace the Islamic faith, and what makes the religion so compelling to them. The study also investigated the influence of the conversion on the subjects. A case study was utiliz…

This dissertation provides an educational history of Latinxs in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. From the field of the history of education, it utilized inductive methods of searching for significant cultural phenomena, rather than studying education solely through an institutional focus. …

Disneyland has been accepted as the poster child for the convergence of the postmodern concepts of “non-place, hyperreality, and utopic degeneration,” and so scholarship heavily focuses on Disney parks and their relationships to liminality, theming, and space in ways that implic…

In the early twenty-first century, national media claimed that the the Fox River Valley was one of the most conservative parts of Wisconsin. It has not always been so. This dissertation demonstrates that the region has been on the frontline of battles over the shape and meaning …

While historians have learned a great deal about the Black professional baseball played during organized baseball’s Jim Crow era, there are many teams whose stories are yet to be told. Two of these teams, the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, played their home games in Mil…

For transgender and gender-expansive people, medical transition is not a single event but a long and complex process involving constant exchanges between people, bureaucracy, and bodies. As patients pursue transition care, they must interact not only with healthcare staff but al…

This micro study of the Akron and Barberton, Ohio, Divisions of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) adds to the understanding the geographic diversity of the Garvey Movement’s expansive reach. It begins to uncover the importance of Garveyism in the Midwest and in …

This dissertation consists of three proposed articles and one published article addressing issues related to the opportunities and challenges for silvopasture in Wisconsin. Silvopasture, the intentional, intensively managed integration of trees with grazing, has the potential to…

This dissertation is a story of my research concerns about myself, my family, my community, and our institutions. It is about an endeavor to live Islamic lives in the midst of a pervasive negative public curriculum. First comes a brief introduction followed by Chapter one, which…

This study aimed to establish better understanding of Muslim students' religious needs and challenges in public schools. Through interviewing Muslim students who attend a public high school in the Midwest, their parents, and a Muslim religious leader, the researcher was able to …