This project explores gender and identity during the Siege of Leningrad (September 8 1941 - January 27 1944) as articulated by child diarists Elena Mukhina and Iura Riabinkin. Iura is a disabled young man, who struggles to reestablish a sense of masculinity and purpose after being rejected from the army; he slowly loses his physical strength, a pillar of his male identity, due to extreme starvation and grapples with feelings of worthlessness. Lena is a young woman who grounds her femininity, and thus her self-worth, in her work as a hospital orderly; once she is required to return to school, she attempts to commit herself to the genderless “Soviet student” ideal but finds difficulty in relinquishing her feminine identity. During the German encirclement of the city during WWII, Leningraders suffered tremendously, fighting to survive without ample food, electricity, or water, all while isolated from the rest of the USSR. This deeply traumatic experience redefined Leningrad’s cultural landscape, specifically raising questions about Soviet gender culture. In their diaries, these two 16-year-old students demonstrate the changing norms through their perceptions of traditional gender roles, self-worth, and their own masculinity and femininity. This project focuses on the diarists’ use of gendered language and how it changes over the course of the war, offering historical context to suggest explanations for these changes. In the academic discourse surrounding the Siege, scholars have approached the event as a psychological phenomenon or a primarily female experience, but rarely as a child’s experience. Iura’s diary is the only published and translated diary by a male child, even then only available in excerpts, while Lena is one of very few female child diarists published in full. Through this project, I aim to illuminate this neglected aspect of Siege study and illustrate the nuanced gender discussion explored by these extraordinary children.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States galvanized millions of Americans to fight for a more free and democratic society, banding together to protest racial segregation and other forms of systemic racism such as police violence against minorities. Newspapers covered these actions extensively, spreading the message of civil rights across the US. People eager for change in cities far from the centers of civil rights activism in the South, such as Seattle, responded to this national political fervor by fighting for change locally. In Seattle, activists sought an end to job and housing discrimination, de facto school segregation, and police violence through non-violent direct action. Seattle’s major print newspapers, The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer covered these issues extensively, spreading news and controversial developments to their readers. In my research, I analyze newspaper coverage on activism and cases of police violence which garnered a strong public demand for justice. With the support of other sources, such as the biographies of Seattle activists, the histories of local civil rights organizations, and studies on media coverage of the police, I construct an analysis of how these newspapers shifted their coverage of civil rights activism and police violence throughout the 1960s as a response to community activism. This critical angle focuses on how the actions of Seattle’s activist community influenced newspaper media, prompting the newspapers to include more activist perspectives in their news coverage. This research, therefore, displays the power that local activists held in influencing print media coverage of their actions, and with that, the influence that activists had to shift the public perspective towards activism in the 1960s in Seattle.

Mount St. Helens shook local communities and spewed volcanic ash into the sky for two months before it finally had its major eruption. In those two months newspapers eagerly tracked the activity, crafted a story, and relayed it to their audiences. When the mountain erupted on May 18, 1980, the world caught a glimpse of nature’s power and found a dramatic climax to their two-month story. In the immediate aftermath, accounts of what had happened took various forms, ranging from personal hymns to films, with each of them showing a different response to the eruption. These responses showcase a population reconsidering what it means to live alongside nature. Today, forty years later, Mount St. Helens’ story is still being told through a wide array of sources. In my research, I analyze works approaching the eruption, reacting in the immediate aftermath, and those which have come out in memory. I note the content of these sources as well as their framing to construct an analysis of how changing treatment of the Mount St. Helens story reveals society’s approach to nature before the eruption and how that approach changed in response to the events of May 18. I specifically focus on sources consumed and produced by the broader public, such as films and songs, using private correspondence or scientific conferences only as a source of what does not make widespread narratives. This approach encapsulates how people of various communities make sense of living alongside the natural world, and especially how they conceptualize sudden change events like volcanic eruptions. My research uncovers both flaws in the population’s conceptual relationship to nature as well as their tendencies to remember natural events, specifically Mount St. Helens, in a way that maintains or minimally changes the way the see themselves in the world.

One year prior to the 1968 presidential election, CBS News hosted a town hall debate between rising political stars Robert Kennedy and Ronald Reagan that captured their opposing beliefs and styles as partisan leaders, especially on racial issues. In post-civil rights America, no tool shaped race relations as effectively as the two types of populistic rhetoric distinctly epitomized by Reagan and Kennedy. The reactionary style and colorblind rhetoric of the former was used by the Right to promote white backlash and racial hierarchy. Conversely, Kennedy’s inclusive style and rhetoric was used by the Left to break down hierarchy and expand political representation. This research explores the rhetoric and policy proposals in the campaigns of Reagan in 1966 and Kennedy in 1968 on the issues of government size, welfare, and law and order. In a macroscopic view, it also looks at partisan trends that followed the loss of the inclusive style, with Kennedy's death, and the adoption of the reactionary style throughout the Republican Party. I argue it was these compounding processes in the mid to late 1960s that made white backlash mainstream and pushed the country to the Right where it has largely remained since. This research utilizes primary source material that reflects Reagan’s and Kennedy’s campaigns, identities, and beliefs, namely newspaper reports, opinion pieces, and contemporary political analyses. This body of material is supplemented with secondary biographies that have shaped understandings of the campaigns in historical scholarship. Altogether, the chosen sources enable analysis of the populist messages Reagan and Kennedy promoted in their campaigns and brings to light refined explanations of the twentieth century party realignment, race’s primary role in the process, and America’s current conservative tendencies and beliefs.

In October 1962, China and India waged a war to contest the demarcation of their shared border, a culmination of years of escalating hostilities between the two governments. One month later, after overwhelming the Indian military, the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire. By contrast, seven years earlier at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, leaders from each country signed pledges for peace and mutual non-aggression. Speeches by Indonesian host and president Sukarno, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai imparted on attendees, most of whom represented newly decolonized countries, a sense of cautious optimism for their collective advancement. However, the "Bandung spirit" dissipated by 1965, as evidenced by the cancellation of the Second Asian-African Conference in Algeria. While most scholars focus on the Sino-Soviet Split and 1965 Algerian coup to explain the Bandung spirit's rupture, I study the 1962 border war and failed mediation efforts by neutralist governments, like Indonesia, as evidence of the Asian-African alliance's early fracturing. Drawing from primary sources such as English and Indonesian language newspapers, Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian government documents, and the writings of Indian and Indonesian politicians, I argue that Indonesians advocated for a stricter definition, relative to Nehru, of anti-imperialism tinged with Asian nationalism. Indonesian leaders’ reluctance to defend Nehru, their partner at Bandung, demonstrate that the Sino-Indian War exposed ideological differences between India and Indonesia, thus facilitating the Bandung Spirit’s demise. By framing the war with the Bandung Conference, I explore how governments fall short of their lofty visions of anti-imperialism and perpetuate the nationalistic hierarchies they originally eschew.

The Suez Crisis of 1956 was a critical turning point in the decline of the French and British empires following the end of the Second World War. Egyptian President Nasser's nationalization of the French and British-controlled Suez Canal sent officials in both countries into a panic, leading the two nations, together with Israel, to invade Egypt. The short-lived and unsuccessful invasion, ended under pressure from the United States, was a decisive political failure after years of colonial losses since 1945. While scholars have written in depth about the crisis from Britain's perspective, they have tended to oversimplify France's motivations as stemming from the ongoing Algerian War of independence and the fear that President Nasser would become the "next" Hitler. In my research, I examine the Suez Crisis in the larger context of the French colonial issues of the time: the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the losses of Tunisia and Morocco, the bomb attacks against pied-noir citizens in Algiers, the impending losses of the Sub-Saharan colonies, and the diplomatic efforts to include these colonies in European treaty negotiations. I focus on English and French-language sources, including the memoirs of former government officials, diplomatic communication, press coverage, and academic writing from the period to examine how the crisis was seen through these lenses in France. Ultimately, I demonstrate that French motivations during the crisis stemmed just as much from these broader colonial anxieties as from the two most common explanations. The topic of the French empire and its former "great power" status has remained a contentious one in France throughout the last half century. This research showcases a significant moment in the development of this mindset.