Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
An urban field of dreams: professional baseball and the fruition of new - old Denver
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Miller, Preston, author; Alexander, Ruth, advisor; Gudmestad, Robert, advisor; Dickinson, Greg, committee member; Didier, John, committee member
This thesis examines how Coors Field framed the evolution of Denver's cultural geography and common identity between 1980 and 2010. I focus on the ballpark's connection to the process of "placemaking" as it unfolded between two adjacent "Old Denver" neighborhoods: North Larimer - a multicultural enclave that became the "Ballpark Neighborhood" - and the Lower Downtown historic district, whose founders bemoaned Denver's subsequent transformation into "Sports Town USA." As a contested icon, Coors Field affected notions of place, image, and inclusion for these neighborhoods and the city at large. Given this volatile context, I argue that its fruition highlighted what the Retro Ballpark Movement could and could not do for postmodern urban America. Many observers have heralded this ballpark project as an urban panacea, but an analysis of how ordinary Denverites perceived the new kind of city it left in its wake exposed a growing rift between baseball's working class mythos and the upscale nature of contemporary ballpark projects. Despite its instant success as an economic anchor, Coors Field ultimately contributed to the homogenization (or "Disneyfication") of "Old Denver" - a trend that clashed with baseball's democratic promise and previous notions of this downtown area as a diverse and authentic enclave. Utilizing local periodicals and government documents, I look at how this facility sprang from the hopes, dreams, and qualms of myriad individuals; the finished product representing a new dawn for some and a recurring nightmare for others. The narrative follows, as a central protagonist of sorts, Karle Seydel, an influential urban designer and neighborhood activist who should be recognized as the grassroots "Father of Coors Field." Seydel championed the project as a means to save North Larimer, guided its design, and dealt with its consequences. I wanted to offer a people's history of the "Blake Street Ballpark," and thus his experiences and opinions (as well as those of his allies and opponents) will guide my analysis of how an urban field of dreams contributed to Denver's reinvention as a new - old "city of leisure."
Open Access
Crimson streets and violent bodies: identity, physicality, and the twilight of Colorado's vice districts
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Gunvaldson, Nicholas Ryan, author; Alexander, Ruth, advisor; Lindsay, James, committee member; Hutchins, Zachary, committee member
This master’s project focuses on the changing moral and legal status of Colorado’s vice districts during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The thesis argues that once informally organized vice districts were formally regulated and geographically delineated as “red-light districts” at the behest of middle- and upper-class Progressives near the end of the century they became more vulnerable to actual suppression. This result had not been anticipated. Reformers considered commercial sex an offensive but ineradicable behavior, and they hoped districting would be an effective way to control, document, and tax this vice – while keeping it separate and hidden from respectable society. To the surprise of reformers, the establishment of special vice districts rendered them not only more visible and subject to regulation, but also, more vulnerable to suppression and eradication. This may have seemed like a victory for vice reformers, yet prostitution did not disappear. Rather, the formal elimination of vice districts early in the twentieth century worsened the circumstances in which prostitution was practiced, and widened the differential societal treatment of prostitutes and their customers. Prostitution became more difficult to monitor and prostitutes became more susceptible to control by pimps, organized crime syndicates, and corrupt police. In addition to documenting the emergence and demise of vice districts in Colorado, this project examines the identity and experience of the women and men who frequented vice districts as prostitutes, sexual clients, pimps, and drug dealers.
Open Access
"Learning what to eat": gender, environment, and the rise of nutritional science in twentieth century America
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Steele, Kayla, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Alexander, Ruth, advisor; Howkins, Adrian, committee member; Doe, Sue, committee member
This thesis examines the development of nutritional science from the 1910s to 1940s in the United States. Scientists, home economists, dieticians, nurses, advertisers, and magazine columnists in this period taught Americans to value food primarily for its nutritional components--primarily the quantity of calories, protein, vitamins, and minerals in every item of food--instead of other qualities such as taste or personal preference. I argue that most food experts believed nutritional science could help them modernize society by teaching Americans to choose the most economically efficient foods that could optimize the human body for perfect health and labor; this goal formed the ideology of nutrition, or nutritionism, which dominated education campaigns in the early twentieth century. Nutrition advocates believed that food preserved a vital connection between Americans and the natural world, and their simplified version of nutritional science could modernize the connection by making it more rational and efficient. However, advocates' efforts also instilled a number of problematic tensions in the ways Americans came to view their food, as the relentless focus on invisible nutrients encouraged Americans to look for artificial sources of nutrients such as vitamin pills and stripped Americans of the ability to evaluate food themselves and forced them to rely on scientific expertise for guidance. Advocates' educational methods also unintentionally limited the appeal of nutritionism to middle class women because they leveraged middle class concerns about gender--especially questions of household management and childrearing--to demonstrate the importance of nutrition to a modern society, leading them to ignore the poorer segments of society that could have benefited the most from their knowledge. World War II created an opportunity for advocates to ally with home front defense campaigns to allow the government to extend its control over the natural world by managing the metabolic processes of the human body to create the best soldiers and workers possible, and to help advocates enhance their prestige and expertise as they created the first national nutritional standards and mandated vitamin enrichment programs. I argue that food is a valuable framework for inquiry for environmental and social historians because it reflects how society understands gender and their experiences with the natural world.
Open Access
"The tonic of wildness": religion and the environment at the YMCA of the Rockies
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Blankers, Ellen, author; Alexander, Ruth, advisor; Lindsay, James, committee member; Hutchins, Zachary, committee member
Americans in the 1920s and 30s were fascinated with the idea of a pure, untrammeled wilderness, particularly as an antidote to the perceived depravity and degeneracy of urban environments. Looking for sites of wilderness that might promote environmental engagement among children and adolescents, American educators and parents identified the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park, Colorado, as a place that perfectly embodied the ideal wilderness. Summer programs at the YMCA of the Rockies encouraged participants to actively engage with the wilderness setting of the region while simultaneous reaching for spiritual and moral growth. The summer camps and programs offered at and through the YMCA of the Rockies provided opportunities for children to engage with an ideal wilderness and thereby strengthen their relationship to the divine, improve their moral character, and build up their physical health. By analyzing the culture and context of the 1920s and 30s, the ways in which the summer programs promoted their camps, and the extent to which campers embraced and internalized the lessons offered at these summer programs associated with the YMCA of the Rockies, this thesis will deepen historians' understanding of the critical role that early-twentieth-century wilderness values were intended to have towards leading young boys and girls toward lives of spiritual, moral, and physical uprightness. It will also reveal significant differences in the way that wilderness values and camp settings were expected to shape the maturation of boys and girls.

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