Sheinin, David
The Elite Canadian Print Media Construction of the Cuban Revolution, 1956-1962
This study examines the elite national print media reaction to, and coverage of, the Cuban Revolution, between 1956 and 1962. It finds that media, equally alienated by both Fidel Castro and the United States, progressively pursued an independent narrative predicated on an homage to Cuban sovereignty. Specifically, media uniformly adopted veteran New York Times' reporter Herbert L. Matthews' conflation between Cuban postcolonial independence and the Revolution following his exclusive interview with Fidel Castro in February 1957. Media maintained it until 1962 as it remained the only consistent, defensible theme amid Castro's apparent failure to meet expectations and the United States' cautious indifference to a revolution in kind and abject disregard for Cuban sovereignty. Research is based on an exhaustive review of eleven carefully selected elite broadsheets and three national magazines. Overall, this study offers an important counterpoint to the broader body of Canada-Cuba-U.S. postwar historiography that almost exclusively addresses foreign policy.
Author Keywords: Canada-Cuba-U.S. relations, Canadian print media, Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, Herbert L. Matthews, journalism
Sponsoring Private Schools in an Informal Empire: The United States and the Inter-American Schools Service
This thesis analyzes the history of the Inter-American Schools Service (IASS), which ran under the auspices of the American Council on Education beginning in 1943. The program was defined as a private initiative aimed at spreading U.S. democratic values throughout the hemisphere for the mutual benefit of both the United States and Latin America. Yet the program was ultimately one facet of the United States' informal imperialism and a tool for the consolidation of U.S. hegemony, which came at the expense of Latin Americans' pursuit of the very values the IASS was said to facilitate. This theme is explored through a general discussion of cultural policy in the twentieth-century United States as well as the specific history of the IASS program and its relation to U.S. policies of intervention in Guatemala and Bolivia.
Author Keywords: American Schools, Cultural Imperialism, Guatemala, Hegemony, Informal Imperialism, Inter-American Schools Service
Hearing the Invisible Empire: Music and Hatred in Progressive Era Indiana
This study investigates the origins of the music produced by the 1920s Ku Klux Klan in Indiana as well as trying to understand how it facilitated recruitment into the Klan and how it was used as a tool for wider social and political change. The Indiana Klan's newspaper The Fiery Cross is awash in reports of parades and other public performances of music, yet this phenomenon has remained unstudied. Klan musical performances were modelled after the practises of the evangelical revival, which allowed Klansmen to present themselves as an alternative religious community. In so doing the Klan came to dominate the public life of many towns and cities across Indiana. In areas that experienced Klan music, Klansmen, and other protestants, mobilized on issues relating to immigration, education, and elections. This is the first study of its kind and the results in Indiana encourage further study in other states.
Author Keywords: Billy Sunday, Conservative Social Movement, Evangelical Revival, Far-Right, Hate Group, Ku Klux Klan
Civil Aviation and Scheduled Air Services in Colonial Botswana, 1935-1966: A History of Underdevelopment
This thesis provides an in-depth and chronological study of the development of civil aviation in the Bechuanaland Protectorate (today's Botswana), and the role played by the British Government in the development of this form of transport. The thesis argues that Her Majesty's Government's neglect and very little interest in its protectorate's civil aviation represented a form of underdevelopment.
The study also reveals the constant contradiction between the neglect of the imperial government and the constant lobbying on the part of colonial administration in the Protectorate for the establishment of an air service. To the colonial administrators, civil aviation represented a symbol of modernity and progress as well as more practical advantages such as mobility. The thesis finally concludes that the Bechuanaland Protectorate's first airline was established due to growing nationalism both locally and on the continent, at large. The British Government facilitated the establishment of the airline as an attempt to appear benevolent to the protectorate on the eve of independence.
Press Rhetoric and Human Rights in The Carter Era: 1977-81
Jimmy Carter and his administration varied the ways in which they addressed human rights concerns internationally. There was a strong, often emotional evocation of human rights in reference to countries that were less economically, strategically, or politically important to the United States and the foreign policy goals of the Carter administration. This was not present in Carter's approach to addressing human rights concerns in important allies, such as South Korea, or with countries where relations were fragile and important, such as China and the USSR. This ambivalence in addressing human rights in strategically important nations was compounded by Carter's disavowal of linkage policies. It was this ambivalence that made the moral foreign policy a failure. While there were international situations out of his control, his continued leniency and unbalanced application of linkage and focus on adherence to human right practices internationally, lessened the administration's ability to respond to international tragedy.
Author Keywords: American Foreign Policy, Government Indexing, Human Rights, Jimmy Carter, Presidential Press Relations
'Land Displacement and Coping Strategies': A Social History of the Marange People, Eastern Zimbabwe, 1960s-2015
This thesis explores the social history of the Marange people of eastern Zimbabwe from the 1960s to 2015. It uses historical episodes like the recurring droughts, the 1970s war of independence, the 'crisis in Zimbabwe,' that has been traced from the late - 1990s, and the diamond mining story to demonstrate how the inhabitants interacted with their environment. It argues that the relocation project that began in 2010 had a severely disruptive impact on the families relocated to the relocation area - ARDA Transau - making the case that the Marange relocation project was a 'development disaster.' While the provision of accommodation had a notable positive impact on the majority of the displaced households, family needs were not always met. For instance, large families such as those of the dominant polygamous followers of the African Apostolic Church of Johanne Marange were not provided with adequate housing. Also, the livelihoods of the displaced households were shattered by the relocation exercise. In their efforts to creatively adapt to these new constraints, the displacees had diverse coping strategies like selling firewood, illegally extending space for crop cultivation, artisanal mining, vending and begging for food to eke out a living.
Author Keywords: Coping Strategies, Crisis in Zimbabwe, Development, Displacement, Land, Livelihoods