History M.A. Thesis

Jun 28, 2016

History Graduate Student Wins Thesis Award

Carl “CJ” Rice joins a select group of History MAs in winning the College of Humanities and Social Sciences Thesis Award for "Diocletian's 'Great Persecutions': Minority Religions and the Roman Tetrarchy." CJ’s thesis had previously won the History Department’s Thesis Award at graduation this May 2016. This study explores the violent persecution of Christians and Manicheans under the Roman emperor Diocletian.

Mar 22, 2016

The Press and the Sword: Journalism, Racial Violence, and Political Control in Postbellum North Carolina

Political tension characterized North Carolina in the decades after the Civil War, and the partisan press played a critical role for both parties from the 1860s through the turn of the twentieth century: Republican papers praised the reforms of biracial Republican legislatures while Democratic editors harped on white fears of “negro rule” and black sexual predation. This study analyzes…

Mar 17, 2016

Diocletian’s “Great Persecutions”: Minority Religions and the Roman Tetrarchy

In the year 303, the Roman Emperor Diocletian and the other members of the Tetrarchylaunched a series of persecutions against Christians that is remembered as the most severe,widespread, and systematic persecution in the Church’s history. Around that time, the Tetrarchyalso issued a rescript to the Pronconsul of Africa ordering similar persecutory actions against areligious group…

Dec 10, 2015

Champagne and Shakespeare: Bricktop and Sylvia Beach in Interwar Paris

The names “Bricktop” and “Sylvia Beach” appear sprinkled throughout histories of the expatriate experience of Paris in the 1920s and ‘30s. Bricktop’s nightclubs on the Right Bank of the Seine River, and Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach’s bookshop on the river’s Left Bank, served as two of the most popular gathering places for Paris’s native…

Nov 6, 2015

Australian Legend, Australian Lives

Burkett, Melanie L. "Australian Legend, Australian Lives: The Interplay Between Representations of Early Nineteenth-Century New South Wales and the Experiences of Free Immigrants." (Under the Direction of Professor Brent Sirota.) The early nineteenth century saw both the onset of Great Britain’s industrial revolution and a substantial wave of emigration to Britain’s colonies. In the Australian colony of New South Wales, the population [...]

May 15, 2015

Sibling Rivals to Mortal Enemies: The Evolution of Ecclasia and Synagoga From the Early to Late Middle Ages

Alexander, Melissa Call. Sibling Rivals to Mortal Enemies: The Evolution of Ecclasia and Synagoga From the Early to Late Middle Ages. (Under the direction of Dr. Julie Mell). This thesis explores the evolution of Ecclesia and Synagoga from their philosophical origins in the fourth-century, up to their image as a wood-carving in the High Middle period. In doing so, its aim is [...]

May 5, 2015

Petra’s Hinterland from the Nabataean through Early Byzantine Periods

Traditionally, research on Nabataea and Roman Arabia has focused on larger cities, centers of trade, and military sites. Hinterland sites, on the other hand, remain almost completely unexcavated. This means that little is known about non-elite or non-urban life from the Nabataean through the Early Byzantine periods (ca. 63 BC-AD 500), nor is Petra’s true…

May 5, 2015

The Economy of Petra from the First Century BC through the Fourth Century AD: An Analysis of the Perfume Industry

This thesis is an attempt to reconstruct the economy of Petra during the third century AD, a period that can be described as a “miniature dark age.” This analysis is made through the lens of a particular type of ceramic vessel, the Nabataean piriform unguentarium or perfume bottle. The Nabataean Kingdom (mostly within what is…

May 4, 2015

In Transition: The United States and South Africa, 1976-1977

The South African government’s 19 October 1977 crackdown on dissent sent shockwaves throughout the country. The “October crackdown” also convinced many members of the United Nations Security Council that it was time to impose mandatory sanctions on South Africa. Jimmy Carter, however, ordered the USUN ambassador to veto sanctions banning trade, investment and nuclear cooperation…

May 4, 2015

Consent and Coercion in the Central Piedmont of North Carolina during the Civil War Era

In recent years the study of Civil War loyalty has gained considerable scholarly attention. Most of these studies demonstrate that many in the North and South struggled to balance conflicting loyalties between nation, state, family, religion, and self-interest throughout the war. This thesis finds that while all of these factors contributed to dissent, an underlying…