KU ScholarWorks

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THE ADAPTIVE MONUMENT: AUTHENTICITY AND ADAPTATION IN NOTRE-DAME’S POST-FIRE REVIVAL
(Department of History, University of Kansas, 2025-04-29) Watt, Ivy
The 2019 Notre-Dame Cathedral fire ignited critical debates about architectural preservation and authenticity. This research examines how preservation theory evolved from 19th-century Romantic ideals to modern international standards, particularly those established by UNESCO and ICOMOS, tracing the influential contributions of four key theorists: French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc's interventionist approach, English critic John Ruskin's conservationist philosophy, Italian architect Camillo Boito's scientific methods, and Austrian art historian Alois Riegl's value-based framework. This evolution in preservation theory marks a transition from pursuing idealized historical appearances to understanding monuments as carriers of accumulated cultural meaning through time, informing contemporary preservation approaches. Through comparative analysis of Notre-Dame's successive restorations, this study uses historical records, preservation charters, and modern media to trace the cathedral's architectural history and theoretical debates, challenging the perceived conflict between innovation and tradition in preservation theory. The cathedral that burned in 2019 was already a testament to centuries of architectural adaptation, where each era's modifications preserved and transformed the structure. The current restoration, integrating traditional craftsmanship with modern technology, demonstrates how these seemingly opposing forces have always coexisted in architectural preservation. This research contributes to ongoing discussions about authenticity in historic preservation, offering a framework for future restoration projects facing modern challenges like climate change and disaster prevention.
NEGOTIATING A HYBRID JAPANESE AMERICAN IDENTITY: AN ANALYSIS OF CULTURAL CELEBRATIONS IN INTERNMENT CAMP NEWSPAPERS
(Department of History, University of Kansas, 2025-05-02) Schumaker, Nataley R.
On February 19, 1942, two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, authorizing the forced removal of people of Japanese descent from their homes along the West Coast to internment camps located further inland. Scholars estimate the United States incarcerated approximately 120,000 from 1942 to 1945. In 1942 the War Relocation Authority (WRA) was established to run the internment camps and regulate daily life within the camps. Specifically, the WRA required the internment camps to publish a newspaper publication that detailed news directly from the WRA but was also used to spread information about upcoming events to the community. I investigated the newspapers from three camps: Rohwer in McGehee, Arkansas; Granada in Amache, Colorado; and Topaz in Topaz, Utah. Japanese American editors published news articles of cultural events, celebrations, and festivals throughout their internment. During their internment, Japanese Americans demonstrated their loyalty as people of Japanese descent in the United States. Yet, at the same time, they found ways to celebrate their Japanese identity. I argue that Japanese Americans in internment camps strategically used both Japanese and American forms of cultural celebration to assert their right to a hybrid identity, despite government attempts to question their loyalty. My primary source research and analysis fills a gap in scholarly work on Japanese American internment camps by using direct examples of celebrations from the newspapers and addressing a Japanese American hybrid identity that was solidified during internment.
THE RIGHT TO MARRY: CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYERING’S INFLUENCE IN LOVING V. VIRGINIA (1967) AND THE QUESTION OF JUDICIAL ACTIVISM
(Department of History, University of Kansas, 2025-04-24) Peters, Brooke O.
Loving v. Virginia (1967) is a civil rights era Supreme Court case that made anti-miscegenation (anti-interracial marriage) laws unconstitutional across the United States. Laws that sound inconceivable to many modern Americans were once common state statutes for over 150 years. As laws and opinions surrounding civil rights changed over the 19th and 20th centuries, some states abandoned their anti-miscegenation statutes. However, at the time of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving, almost one-third of US states still had some form of anti-miscegenation laws on their books. Despite many states repealing their anti-miscegenation statutes without judicial intervention, there was certainly no consensus on whether interracial marriage was socially acceptable across the country. However, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Loving was an important step toward establishing a broader right to marriage – setting up the 2015 landmark case that legalized same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court is, by nature, the most passive of the United States’ three branches of government. The nation’s founders created the Court in such a way that it would avoid the prejudices of ever-changing politics; the Justices serve lifetime appointments, they undergo a strenuous bipartisan confirmation process by the Senate, and they are loyal to the Constitution itself, not to a political party. Throughout its history, however, the Court has been accused of judicial activism – using court cases to bypass the other, democratically elected, branches to create new policy. The question of whether the Court engages in judicial policymaking, and, if so, in what ways it does so, is an ongoing debate. In “The Right to Marry,” I assess how the Loving decision was decided among a changing legal environment and how and why, taken together with similar cases that expanded the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment, the case brought charges of judicial activism.
VEHEMENT VERN MILLER: A NARRATIVE APPROACH TO UNDERSTANDING ANTI-DRUG POLICIES AT THE LOCAL LEVEL
(Department of History, University of Kansas, 2025-05-02) Harstick, Julia Mary Kennis
This paper explores how the early War on Drugs, identified as 1965-1975 in this paper, played out at the local level by focusing on Kansas Attorney General Vern Miller and his campaign to crack down on drug use in Lawrence, Kansas, during the early 1970s. While Nixon framed the drug war as a unified, national effort, its impact varied widely from state to state. Lawrence—a college town known for its counterculture scene and diverse demographics—offers a revealing case study full of contingencies of how local politics, culture, and demographics shaped the enforcement of federal drug policy and emphasizes state power and local officials’ ability to interpret national policy. Miller’s extreme tactics show how state officials interpreted and adapted national drug policy to fit local concerns and conditions. By looking closely at the tensions between federal goals and local realities, this paper sheds light on how the early War on Drugs was not just a top-down campaign, but also a series of local battles that shaped the broader national story in ways that have often been overlooked.
A GREAT MASS OF DEPRAVED AND DEGENERATE: THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR’S FIGHT TO RESTRICT IMMIGRATION, EXCLUDE UNDESIRABLES, AND KEEP LABOR AMERICAN IN THE 1920s
(Department of History, University of Kansas, 2025-04-21) Davisson, Mallory
The American Federation of Labor was a staunch supporter of immigration restriction in the 1920s, and lobbied for the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924, which heavily restricted incoming Eastern and Southern European immigration. Though the AFL denied that they were prejudiced against the affected immigrant groups, they used language which denoted ethnic hierarchies and a desire to preserve American identity. The AFL held an exclusionary attitude towards immigrants, minorities, and women in regards to both who should be allowed in America, and who should be allowed in a trade union. Previous labor histories have characterized the AFL as wary of high levels of immigration for fear of the threats immigrants posed to union bargaining power. Using official AFL publications, AFL leaders’ personal correspondence, and contemporary labor news, this thesis aims to push back against that characterization, and suggest that AFL leadership was prejudiced against perceived un-American peoples. As anti-immigrant rhetoric increases in our country daily, it is time to reexamine the nature of the AFL’s attitude towards immigrants, minorities and women workers more critically. A century later, understanding the connections between American workers’ attitudes towards subjugated groups and national trends of rising conservatism and nativism is more important than ever.