Sewanee: The University of the South
Sewanee DSpace Repository (The University of the South)Not a member yet
4066 research outputs found
Sort by
Dr. Marty Casey Oral History Interview Records
No full textDr. Marty Casey of St. Louis, Missouri was interviewed by Matthew Kennedy, Sewanee student, on February 18th, 2024 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included: the Ferguson Protests in response to the death of Michael Brown and her experiences as a community activist. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.Dr. Andrew Maginn, Visiting Assistant Professor of Histor
Stormy Stewart Oral History Interview Records
No full textStormy Stewart of Sewanee, Tennessee was interviewed by Madelyn Smythia, Sewanee student, on February 18th, 2024 on Zoom. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included: discussing the role of social media and the news in shaping Stewart’s view of the Black Lives Matter movement. We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.Dr. Andrew Maginn, Visiting Assistant Professor of Histor
Religious Issues Within The Supreme Court
Full text linkJehovah’s Witnesses are a religious group that was formed in the 1870s by Charles Taz Russell and continues to be active today. Their millennialism foundation believes in the second coming of Christ, and they seek to share their beliefs with all who are willing to listen. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that society would not be saved without intervention from the second coming of Christ. Many members’ beliefs and values have come into conflict with external factors such as the United States law. We are focusing on how Jehovah's Witnesses interact with the law within the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States, and how their religious beliefs interfere with expectations that are put upon American citizens. We are examining cases of how Jehovah’s Witnesses have acted on their religious beliefs and subsequently come into conflict with the law. How were Jehovah's Witnesses seen as “Un-American” and exempt from the law? Throughout this research project, we will explore three Supreme Court Cases that involve disputes between Jevohah’s Witnesses beliefs and the medical field, education, and property rights. These court cases include Hall vs. Commonwealth, West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, and The People of the State of Illinois v. E.G., a Minor. By examining these court cases separately and then drawing on common themes, our sources will provide insight into how Jehovah’s Witnesses' beliefs adversely interact with outsiders' perspectives. Common themes we hope to further explore are religious freedom, freedom of speech, and individual versus state rights. This research is important because it examines the disconnect between new religious movements and the United States law. Researching Jehovah’s Witnesses specifically can illuminate themes that can be generalized to other religious movements to help us better understand these relationships.Dr. Kati Curt
Elegy for the Living
No full textPoetry, writes Audre Lorde in “Poetry is not a Luxury,” is the “way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest external horizons of our hopes and fears are cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives." "Elegy for the Living" is grounded in articulation of radical hope. The thesis considers, but fails to answer, the questions: How do we hold hope in a grief-filled world? And, what is the process by which hope becomes radical? Looking toward the self, the world, the abstract, and community, this work is a practice of radical imagination
Amy Arrowsmith Oral History Interview Records
No full textAmy Arrowsmith of Chattanooga, Tennessee was interviewed by Teddy Arrowsmith, Sewanee student, on February 17, 2024 via telephone. While their conversation was primarily on the Black Lives Matter Movement, other topics included: The Civil Rights Movement and the Integration of Public Schools in the Southern United States during the 1960s We hope that this conversation will assist scholars with a further understanding of race in the United States during the early twenty-first century. Please click on the link to see the full interview.Dr. Andrew Maginn, Visiting Assistant Professor of Histor
Nuclear Anxiety: A Catalyst of Cold War Counterculture and Transnationalism
Full text linkThe advent of man harnessing nuclear energy has been a defining moment in humanity’s technological history, with some historians pointing at the detonation of atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the marking of a new epoch in our development, the so-called ‘Atomic Age,’ or as the beginning of the Anthropocene. The novelty of the sheer power that nuclear weapons can yield created an entirely new approach to diplomacy, as states now held the power to annihilate others anywhere in the world with the push of a button. Thus, the implication of nuclear warfare’s very existence has produced a psychological effect named ‘nuclear anxiety’ or ‘Angst vor dem Atom’ (fear of the atom) in German with varying intensity throughout history. This pervasive anxiety of momentary annihilation was exacerbated by the tensions during the Cold War between Washington and Moscow, and especially was most geographically intense in a divided Germany, which would be most likely to be a ground zero for the outbreak of nuclear war according to many military simulations and war games. Therefore, out of an environment of Angst (German: anxiety), new cultural trends arose as a counter reaction as nations gained awareness of their new atomic political landscape.
This thesis will investigate, not the political effects of nuclear armament, but its cultural and social impacts in the formation of a population more aware of the globe beyond national borders. I study how the culture of protest emerging in the 1960s and beyond reflects the beginning of a transatlantic population more connected through an awareness of the globality of nuclear issues and a shared concern for the environment as well as the popularization of a shared vision for a future as a ‘global village.’ I focus mostly on the effects of West Germans in their cultural transition post WWII until the end of The Cold War as the epicenter of this cultural change and as a battleground between the two ideologies of the US and Soviets prescribing different solutions to modernity. While I concentrate on local cultural phenomena mostly within Germany, I argue that expanded awareness in response to the nuclear threat intensified a global connectedness as nuclear war became the first truly global or transnational issue. Demonstrations at Wyhl and Bonn, Germany were some of the first protests which included and were supported by a large global network of actors. Beyond a global network of anti-nuclear activism, this paper investigates how this same network was intertwined with and influenced a new Western popular culture. This new culture was informed by the development of heightened American security concerns, exacerbated by the proliferation of nuclear technology which compelled the United States to take a more active role in Germany, thereby instigating a process of American influence within German society. Therefore, with an American security apparatus in mind, I simultaneously explore the penetration of nuclear discourse and anxieties into Cold War era pop culture in Germany and the impact this had on intensifying global/transatlantic culture.Dr. Nick Roberts; Dr. Liesl Allingha
Design and Construction of a Low-Cost Raman Spectrometer For Undergraduate Advanced Laboratory Experiments With Graphene
No full textHigh spatial resolution spectrometers often pose a financial burden to educational institutions due to their high precision fabrication, manufacturing, and maintenance costs associated with using the instrument. An alternative is an in-house design and construction using readily available optical components. This study presents a low-cost Raman spectrometer with an integrated 90X magnification long working distance microscope designed to analyze and characterize graphene and similar two-dimensional materials. These materials have gained significant attention due to their exceptional electronic, mechanical, and thermal properties, necessitating the availability of cost-effective analytical tools, such as a Raman spectrometer. The system is constructed using readily available components, including a 532 nm 300 mW probing laser, a confocal microscope design with integrated Köhler illumination for simultaneous image acquisition, and an education-grade Ocean Optics UV-Vis spectrometer with a customizable open-source LabView application, all within a budget of less than $10,000. The high-magnification microscope incorporated into the design allows for precise sample observation and positioning, thus enhancing the accuracy of graphene identification from Raman measurements on sub-ten micron size samples. We present results from various carbon-based materials, including commercial and exfoliated graphene flakes, along with the detailed layout and design parameters of the apparatus. The intuitive and open-source layout of the design makes it optimal for use in undergraduate advanced laboratory experiments. Students may use it to find, map, and quantitatively analyze exfoliated graphene samples for further experimentation. For students interested in instrumentation, the current design can be customized and improved upon, introducing them to the challenges of the world of optical design. For students interested in condensed matter experimentation, the Raman system serves as a versatile analytical tool for the characterization of materials and the investigation of light-matter interactions in various solid- state samples