The eleventh publication of Davidson History Journal includes work from the Fall 2023 semester. The editorial staff would like to thank Davidson’s History Department and all student contributors.
A Formal Analysis on the Krak des Chevaliers’s Latin Inscription. Written by Caroline Miller and edited by Claire Hankins.
The Krak des Chevaliers is a castle in Syria that was utilized by Christians and Muslims during the Crusades. Remaining on the wall of a portico is a Latin inscription left by the Knights Hospitaller. I will argue that this Crusader inscription was able to survive the subsequent Muslim occupation of the castle because its message holds value in both Islam and Christianity.
Anti-Asian Bias in the Prevention and Public Perception of Invasive Species. Written by Jayme Rodriguez and edited by Abby Murphy.
This paper examines the historical context behind the policies and attitudes surrounding invasive species in the United States of America. Specifically, it questions how biases against Asian Americans throughout history have shaped the treatment of organisms originating from Asia.
Be Prepared: The Founding of Boy Scouts in Fin-de-Siecle England. Written by Bella Bryan and edited by Abby Murphy.
Fin-de-siècle Europe was defined by the rise of increasingly urban spaces and ways of life, but this shift to modernity came with many anxieties that as society advanced, generations rapidly degenerated. This essay examines Lieutenant-General Robert Baden-Powell’s 1908 publication of the Boy Scouts’ first founding manual, Scouting for Boys, as a response to modern life in London and the British Empire. Baden-Powell offered what he believed to be the ultimate solution to the supposed weaking of the British Empire and declining physical and moral health of its citizens: teach young boys to reject modern conveniences and return to a more traditional mode of living.
Chinese Exclusion: Burdens of White America’s Insecurities Placed on (Yet Another) Minority. Written by Will Hunt and edited by Wells Harned.
My paper serves as a holistic look into Chinese exclusion in the United States in the 19th century. It examines the root causes, the practices and measures used for exclusion, and the ever-lasting impacts it has had on the Chinese and Asian populations in the US. It puts the Chinese exclusion in context with the distorted mindsight of European and white settlers in which they view themselves as superior, and the Chinese as a threat to that place in their twisted hierarchy.
“Enter at your own Risk”: Skiing and the United States Legal System. Written by Thomas Zehner and edited by Maggie Jessen.
This essay examines the growth of recreational and commercial skiing in the United States and the unique legal culture that has grown to support the industry and ski-related business. Through individual court case studies and the analysis of larger statistics and trends I seek to identify underlying patterns in ski law and explain why it developed the way that it did.
Examining the Interplay of Environment and Anti-Asian Sentiment Through
Japanese American Incarceration. Written by Xuan Nguyen and edited by Crosby Boe.
This essay will examine the connections found between the racially motivated mistreatments and stereotypes targeted towards the Japanese incarcerated and the environments and conditions these injustices were acted upon, and further assess the lived experiences and responses of the incarcerated. By examining this relationship, various underlying motives which inflicted injustice upon marginalized communities are revealed.
Friend or Foe?: The Complex Relationship between Chinese and Japanese Communities in the
United States during World War II. Written by Tiffany Wen and edited by Ann Zhu.
The United States’ Executive Order 9066, issued during World War II, caused tremendous economic and social shifts amongst the Asian American communities, specifically between Asian ethnicities as they differentiated themselves from Japanese residents to avoid being incarcerated. As a result of both external targeting, such as discriminatory government policies, and internalized racism, there was a lack of Chinese solidarity against Japanese incarceration and the U.S.’s discrimination against Japanese residents.
From Late-Apartheid to Post-Apartheid Reproductive Justice: South African Advocacy in the early 1990s. Written by Claire Haile and edited by Ann Zhu.
The end of South African Apartheid in the 1990s sparked fierce debate about what policies the new South African government, led by the African National Congress, would support. Due to the eugenicist history of the Apartheid government, especially their family planning policies in the 1970s, South African feminists who fought for reproductive rights under the new government and constitution had an uphill battle to remove the stigma around birth control and abortion as forms of Black population control. Examining primary sources by these advocates in the 1990s reveals they fought this stigma by focusing on women’s health education and reproductive self-determination as forms of empowerment for South African women of color.
Hard to Track: Who Exactly Benefited from constructing the Transcontinental Railroad? Written by Joey DeHaan and edited by Violet Calkin.
Hard to Track: Who Exactly Benefited from constructing the Transcontinental Railroad aims to discuss the Transcontinental Railroad from the perspective of all involved. Was this grand project seen as an all around success, or were there some groups of people that came away worse off than pre-construction?
Rights and Restrictions: Planned Parenthood’s Intersection with the Law. Written by Charlotte Weis and edited by Mary Herdelin.
Planned Parenthood, known for its unwavering mission despite wavering support, has an extensive history with the Justice system. This essay is a chronology of legal interactions between the government and reproductive rights organizations since their inception. It draws attention to the ways in which our legal system are as human as the people who maintain it, and are subjected to changes based on public opinion.
Seeds of Failure: The Shanghai Young Men’s Christian Association during the May 4th Movement. Written by Ann Zhu and edited by Maggie Jessen.
This paper explores the challenging position of the Shanghai Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) during the May Fourth Movement, a period of significant political and social upheaval in early 20th-century China. It investigates the Shanghai YMCA’s struggle to balance its roles amid conflicting pressures from the international Christian community and Chinese nationalist sentiments. The tension between its religious mission and political involvement, compounded by criticisms from both Chinese and international observers, ultimately led to the organization’s decline in influence and legitimacy.
Slammed Shut: a Critique of Characterizations of Medicare Under Lyndon B. Johnson. Written by Malia Davis and edited by Ava Smith.
The Social Security Amendments of 1965 established Medicare and undoubtedly revolutionized healthcare for older Americans. Many people, however, were unable to access quality care. This paper examines the role of socioeconomic status, political affiliation, and medical institutions’ priorities to illustrate the care gaps in Medicare’s initial launch while capturing logistical concerns raised by patients and physicians.
Suffrage Movement: Women gaining the right to vote. Written by Priscila Magellan and edited by Liam Coughlin.
This paper explores how women in the 19th to 20th centuries gained the right to vote with the help of different eminent movements in the United States. I will argue how the involvement of American women, both black and white, in the temperance movement, sanitary movement, and civil rights movement created the necessary momentum, coalitions, and ideological framework to ensure the success of the suffrage movement, which established the right to vote for every citizen in the United States.
The Mutual Conception of Blackness and Medicine. Written by Cooper Oljeski and edited by Sofia Cimballa.
The genesis of American medicine in the 19th century was deeply interlaced with the creation of blackness as a racial category. African Americans were racialized by medical beliefs and excluded from health services and education, yet several Black individuals found ways to carve significant contributions into the American medical landscape.
The Purposes of Early Nineteenth Century Chartist Poetry. Written by Sofia Cimballa and edited by Ava Smith.
This essay will discuss Chartism’s role in nineteenth-century reform and how Chartist poetry connects to this context, as well as political art, solidarity, and propensity to create, as represented in Chartist poetry.
The Reach of Oil. Written by James Rose and edited by Taylor McGibbon.
This paper is an analysis of the interactions between the United States Federal Government and Exxon Mobil in the American legal system. As both corporations Exxon and Mobil (the two firms merged in 1999 to create Exxon Mobil) were created by the breakup of Standard Oil in 1911, the paper contains a substantial review of the Standard Oil Cases. Additionally, a review of the Federal Government’s foreign policy in conjunction with Exxon Mobil’s international business decisions demonstrates the impact that demand for a stable supply of oil has on government policy and legal decisions.
The Shanghai Polytechnic Institute: How Did the Chinese Respond to Western Learning? Written by Owen Williamson and edited by Mary Herdelin.
The Shanghai Polytechnic Institute, founded with the intents of spreading Western Scientific thought, created an essay-contest scheme. Through this project they intended to stimulate Chinese intellectuals but ultimately found themselves censoring and editing out imbedded criticisms of the west they contained. Building on scholarship about the Institutes’ reception in China, Williamson uses printed essays to present how this mission could have very well supported resistance to the intellectual hegemony Westerners asserted.
Turmoil in Tianmen, 1989: Student Motivations Against the Chinese Communist Party’s Political Framing. Written by Ian Smith and Edited by Claire Haile.
On June 3, 1989, months of protests led by university students in Beijing culminated in a massacre orchestrated by leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.). The student movement had originally formed to publicly challenge the internal corruption of the C.C.P. as well as advocate for increased democracy, freedom, and lawfulness in the People’s Republic of China. Throughout the Tiananmen Movement, the C.C.P. utilized the media to frame the protesters with increasingly critical, “counterrevolutionary” labels. While prior scholarship has identified the Tiananmen Movement’s origins through various historical and political lenses, this paper specifically examines how the C.C.P.’s progressively negative political framing of student leaders in the 1989 Tiananmen Movement influenced the actions of protesters throughout the height of the movement leading up to the eventual military crackdown.
Who were the Lowell Mill girls: their legacy, women’s independence and The Women’s Suffrage Movement. Written by Junah Jeong and edited by Julia Fitzgerald.
During an essential era in the early American women’s rights movement, the experiences of the Lowell Mill girls shaped the broader women’s movement. Their narratives not only drew attention to the women’s suffrage movement but also highlighted important topics such as labor, gender dynamics, and empowerment.
“Workers of the World, Unite!”: International Rhetoric and National Action on May 1, 1980. Written by Sofia Cimballa and edited by Taylor McGibbon.
The May 10, 1890 edition of Commonweal, a preeminent British socialist newspaper, devoted significant space to describing what May Day demonstrations looked like in the city in London. The document provides critical insight into working class political action in London in this period. Commonweal’s coverage of May 1, 1890 showed that May Day was an opportunity for working-class reclamation of the city in pursuit of socialist political goals; it also reflected that even while this political action manifested in the domestic sphere, it was inspired by and infused with a spirit of international working-class solidarity.
