Theses and Dissertations

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Open Access
Feminism comes to campus: women at CSU 1960-1971
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 1994) Russo, Andrea E., author
During the sixties students protested everything from restrictive social regulations to the Vietnam War. In this changing environment women, relying on skills learned in mainstream and protest activities, demanded changes for themselves. By the end of the decade these factors converged to foster the emergence of a feminist consciousness among some CSU women. In addition this thesis examines the important role of male student leaders, who had both a provocative and paternalistic relationship with women, in the development of feminism on campus. Relying upon the student newspaper, the CSU Collegian, oral interviews, and other university materials from that era I demonstrate the importance of the campus to the emergence of feminism in the sixties and early seventies. Chapter One examines the early protests of women and men against restrictive housing regulations and demonstrates that the fights against parietal rules was important for the formation of strategies and tactics that would be used later when feminists explicitly challenged gender-specific forms of university discrimination. Chapter Two explores how local and national events of the mid-sixties influenced women activists at CSU and nurtured a budding feminist consciousness on campus. Chapter Three, through an examination of women's organizations, shows that a feminist consciousness was clearly present on campus by 1968.
Open Access
The development of the Fort Collins Mormon community during the twentieth century
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2000) McGehee, Linda C., author; Leyendecker, Liston E., advisor; Hansen, James E., 1938-, committee member; Boyd, James W. (James Waldemar), 1934-, committee member; Fiege, Mark T., committee member
Separated by the formidable Rocky Mountains from Brigham Young's Utah stronghold, the northern Colorado town of Fort Collins was not numbered among the western settlements founded by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Nevertheless, followers of this sect would be drawn to Fort Collins in ever-increasing numbers. Early Mormons in the town lacked the well-established religious traditions of their Utah counterparts and struggled to define their group identity. Later, the growth of the L.D.S. congregation paralleled the increase in Fort Collins population, as the rapid expansion of Colorado State University attracted large numbers of Latter-day Saint students and faculty after the second world war. The Fort Collins Mormons gathered often for religious and social activities. They gradually formed a community that fit the definition given by Thomas Bender, who describes "community" as a deeply meaningful social network, bound together by close emotional ties, solidarity and communion with other members of the group. Fort Collins Latter-day Saints found a sense of connection through three major influences: shared religious beliefs, development of strong emotional ties, and organizational structure provided by the church headquarters in Salt Lake City. Utilizing primary source material from church records, local newspapers and personal interviews, this thesis traces the history of the Latter-day Saints in Fort Collins, examining ways in which church members created a close-knit, identifiable Mormon community in this northern Colorado city.
Open Access
Beet borderland: Hispanic workers, the sugar beet, and the making of a northern Colorado landscape
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2002) Standish, Sierra, author; Fiege, Mark T., advisor; Orsi, Jared, 1970-, committee member; Ore, Janet, committee member
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the arrival of the sugar beet industry wrought change in northern Colorado. The sugar beet was a totally new plant-it was unlike corn, wheat, alfalfa and other crops that local farmers were familiar with. The biological characteristics of the beet required a particular style of intensive labor, indeed shaping the daily life of laborers. Hispanic migrants to Fort Collins worked and lived under the influence of the sugar beet, but they were not passive participants in the story; they effectively transplanted some of their cultural traditions and left their own imprint in the landscape. Two years after the turn of the twentieth century, the Fort Collins landscape still bears the mark of the sugar beet. Yet even as landscape tells history, history must help explain landscape. Adobe houses still stand in some old neighborhoods, suggesting that Hispanic inhabitants once played a part in the early chronicles of Fort Collins. This thesis endeavors to flesh out that story-to explain the origins of Hispanic beet workers; how the beet changed their lifestyle, bodies, and public identity; and in what ways they modified their environment.
Open Access
Western waters: New Mexico's Big Ditch and groundwater in Colorado's South Platte Valley
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) Kryloff, Nicolai Alexander, author; Orsi, Jared, 1970-, advisor; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Ward, Robert C., committee member
Water is at the heart of history in the American West. This connection ought to be especially lucid to westerners, but in fact the opposite is often true. Water seems to pour out of our faucets by magic – its origins hidden, its journey obscure. Environmental history can help reclaim the lost relationships between people and this vital substance which shapes western landscapes, livelihoods, and lives. The main goal of the essays herein is to contribute to this understanding. This thesis consists of two distinct but related historical threads, both dealing with western water. The advantage of writing two separate, concise pieces of historical analysis for this volume is their added flexibility as publishable items. To achieve the shorter lengths necessary for this approach, extensive historiographical research was condensed in the final articles, though much of it is still evident in the footnotes and bibliography of each essay. An additional benefit derived from two short articles is an expanded temporal, topical, and geographical scope. Western water is a vast subject, and many important stories remain untold. In this pair of essays, I have attempted to recover some fragments of this forgotten past.
Open Access
The art and science of natural discovery: Israel Cook Russell and the emergence of modern environmental exploration
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2008) Sylvestre, Patrick David, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Orsi, Jared P., committee member; Ronda, Bruce A., committee member; Margolf, Diane Claire, committee member
Israel Cook Russell was an aesthetically conscious scientist who helped bridge the gap between the late nineteenth-century's scientific explorers, who looked at how nature could best benefit man, and the late twentieth-century's environmental explorers, who looked at how humans could best benefit nature. My thesis argues that Russell's artistic prose and the sympathetic imagery of nature that his prose invoked was essential to the emergence of modern environmental explorers. Furthermore, my thesis argues that modern environmental awareness did not spontaneously emerge in the 1960s. An environmentally conscious sensibility among scientists and naturalists stretches back centuries and was never fully suppressed by the power and influence of economic, commercial, industrial, and political interests. As Israel Russell's generation of scientists, who conducted much of their research directly in nature, gave way to a new era of professional scientists, who conducted most of their research in academic and government laboratories, the reverential relationship between science and nature became less common. Most early twentieth-century scientists may have been more focused on exploring lines of research that were financially supported by imperialist corporations, but scientist's imaginations and awed reactions to nature always remained. Mid to late twentieth-century scientists had similar feelings, but they were more disposed to getting out into the field and experiencing nature firsthand. To help put the ecosystems into context, they looked to the past for inspiration and, eventually, they used science as the means to achieving a new environmental ethic rather than as an instrument of human domination.
Open Access
When the well's dry, we know the worth of water: groundwater mining in Douglas County, Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Lucking, Carol Hutton, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Lepper, Troy, committee member; Didier, John C., committee member
The 1980s and 1990s saw a huge population explosion in the Denver metropolitan area. In the search for a long term water supply, the Denver Water Board proposed building a massive 1.1 million acre foot dam and reservoir on the South Platte River. Opponents of the project argued that it was unnecessary – conservation was needed before such a radical building project. Additionally, the area that would have been inundated was billed as a unique recreation spot in the state of Colorado. Supporters of the Two Forks Project felt it was necessary for the continued growth of the Front Range, and they worried that without Two Forks, the Front Range community would be forced to rely on non-renewable groundwater and purchasing water from agricultural communities on the plains. Now, more than twenty years after William Reilly of the Environmental Protection Agency rejected the Two Forks Project, Douglas County, a large suburban community south of Denver is on the brink of a water disaster as they rely almost exclusively on water from the nonrenewable Arapahoe Aquifer. This aquifer is being drawn down at an estimated thirty feet per year. Yet because the water source is invisible, people are mining it with little understanding of the consequences. Ultimately, the residents of Douglas County will need another water source – a renewable source.
Open Access
Strategies of the Arapahos and Cheyennes for combating nineteenth century American colonialism
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2009) Hilger, Stephen, author; Smoak, Gregory E. 1962-, advisor; Knight, Frederick C., advisor; Kneller, Jane, 1954-, committee member; Didier, John, committee member
The nineteenth century was a period of turbulence for the Cheyenne and Arapaho people and both tribes relied on existing cultural systems of socio-political organization to confront the new challenges brought by this new era of change. At the dawn of the century, the two tribes elected to embrace the horse and a nomadic equestrian lifestyle on the Great Plains. Although the adoption of the horse offered a path to acquire great wealth, the animal's ascendance as the critical material good within both societies stressed existing social relationships. The second new phenomenon confronting the Cheyennes and the Arapahos during the nineteenth century was the influx of American settlers onto the Front Range following the Colorado gold rush. American settlers not only brought a contending ecological relationship with the natural environment, but also competing conceptions of property and power. These new dynamics threatened the viability of equestrian lifestyles as natural resources were put under high levels of stress and became privatized by the new boundaries of capitalism. To confront the challenges brought by the horse and American expansion, the Cheyennes and Arapahos developed indigenous political strategies expressed through their respective socio-political institutions. In Arapaho culture, males were progressively organized into peer groups through the lodge system. The lodge system directed Arapahos' interactions with foreign actors, as the tribe utilized intermediaries to relay pre-established political decisions made by the tribe's elders known as the Water Pouring Men, functioning to avert instances of violence with the United States and limit tribal factionalism. Similarly, the Cheyennes own socio-political institutions, the Council of Forty Four and the warrior societies, directed their relationship with United States in a different historical trajectory. While the chiefs of the Council of Forty Four strived to use peace and diplomacy in solving critical political issues, the warrior societies preferred methods of violence to advance Cheyenne interests. After the violent massacres of Cheyennes at Sand Creek and along the Washita River, however, a new generation of Cheyenne council chiefs, who embraced policies of both war and peace rose to leadership and were more successful in achieving Cheyenne political goals.
Open Access
Israel and the rise of the neoconservatives, 1960-1976
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Hummel, Daniel G., author; Citino, Nathan J., advisor; Lindsay, James E., 1957-, advisor; Yasar, Gamze, committee member
Despite the importance of neoconservatism in modern American history, inadequate attention has been paid to how the neoconservatives developed their fixation with the state of Israel. The link between the two has either been explained as a natural extension of ethnic loyalty or as part of a conspiratorial plot by un-American, separately Jewish interests. This study complicates the common explanations for the neoconservative fixation with Israel by examining the neoconservatives at their temporal roots in the 1960s and 1970s. Particular attention is given to the context in which neoconservatives coalesced and rallied around Israel as a central component of their new ideology. By reexamining the rise of the neoconservatives in American politics through the lens of their symbolic relationship with Israel, three actors rise as most prominent in their influence on neoconservative thought. On the sub national level Black Nationalists clashed with neoconservatives in the context of 1960s domestic upheaval. On the national level, Kissinger's détente policies were perceived by neoconservatives as posing an existential threat to Israel's survival. Finally, on the international level, Third World denunciations of Israel provided neoconservatives with a stage to present their vision of Israel to the American public. Examining these conflicts substantiates the widely recognized neoconservative fixation with Israel with historical context. This study relies on the writings of prominent neoconservatives, including Norman Podhoretz, Nathan Glazer, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the periodical journal Commentary, and a wide variety of other primary sources that address neoconservative actions and motivations from 1960-1976.
Open Access
Constructing the polar world: the German encounter with the Arctic and Antarctic
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Luedtke, Brandon Patrick, author; Howkins, Adrian, advisor; Jones, Elizabeth, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, 1964-, committee member
This thesis examines how Germans invested the polar environment with both metaphorical and scientific meaning between 1865 and 1914. It argues that German nationalists put the Northern environment to use toward the process of German nation-building in the nineteenth century and maintains that German polar protagonists promoted travel to the Far South for primarily imperial purposes in the early twentieth century. During these years Germans used narratives of travel, science, and industry in various ways to support both the Arctic and Antarctic project. Further, this research contends that doing environmental history of the German exploration of the Polar Regions can reveal wider social, economic, and political priorities pressurizing the German state. By tracing, then, the German construction and representation of polar nature across the late nineteenth century and through the twentieth-century's turn, this thesis insists that German priorities shifted over time as domestic and international circumstances changed. In investigating how the polar environment became increasingly subject to nationalist motivations and imperial ambitions, this thesis hopes to exhibit the earth's Poles as regions where several national destines run alongside one another. To this end, it forwards the Polar Regions as particularly useful sites for examining the intersection of nation-building, empire, and the environment.
Open Access
The challenges of transnational Palestinian terrorism to the era of détente: 1970-1973
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Swails, Nicholas Earl, author; Citino, Nathan J., advisor; Lindsay, James E., 1957-, committee member; Yasar, Gamze, committee member
United States Diplomatic historians have understood Henry Kissinger as the twentieth century's grandest statesmen. His realism and free reign over U.S. foreign policy during two presidential administrations was drawn from his life experiences and historical understandings of the limits of state power in the postcolonial world. He is understood to be an intellectual who drew his realist worldview from the history of nineteenth century concert of Europe and the grand statesmen of the period. His ability to draw lessons from history allowed him to achieve some of the most important foreign policy victories of the twentieth century. His realism recognized the limits of U.S. power in the Vietnam era, but he fell back on the nineteenth century model of interstate diplomacy as the way forward. However, his realist worldview drew exactly the wrong lessons from history in terms of his ability to address the new problem of Palestinian terrorism. In the postcolonial world, and the Middle East in particular, non-state actors such as the PLO and its militant factions became some of the most important elements in Cold War era diplomacy. The transnational terrorism by Palestinian nationalist organizations in the early-1970s (beginning in September of 1970 and ending in March 1973) challenged the Nixon administration's, and most importantly, Henry Kissinger's pursuit of détente in the region, which was based on détente between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Détente was sought for three reasons: in order to maintain the U.S.-Soviet balance of power in the region, to restrict Soviet influence on radical Arab governments, and to ensure important U.S.-Soviet cooperation in a peace process as outlined in "the Rogers Plan." This thesis argues that President Nixon and Kissinger's response to the terrorism proved unsuccessful because it was rooted in Kissinger's realism of interstate diplomacy and the limits of state power. Understanding how the administration did not (and could not) understand the transnational nature of Palestinian terrorism provides a window into how Kissinger's life experiences and historical knowledge shaped his realist worldview during the era of détente.
Open Access
Making meaning in a modern world: place and identity in Leadville, Colorado
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Hawk, Jennifer, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Ore, Janet, advisor; Calderazzo, John, committee member
Leadville, Colorado is one of many former mining towns significant to not only the state of Colorado, but also to the history of the West as a whole. Part of the larger history of the extractive industries on which the Western United States was founded, mining towns like Leadville provide a postindustrial landscape through which to study the ways in which individuals and communities rely on their history and memory to maintain a stable identity in a modem world that no longer accommodates the kind of economic structure that they most strongly identify with. This thesis consists of three parts, two of which offer a more traditional historical study of the ways in which Leadville residents use their past to mitigate the realities of life in the modem world. The third portion, a non-fiction essay, reflects on my own experiences with both Leadville and with the nature of modem life.
Open Access
"The Japanese" in Colorado's racial discourse: fear, anxiety, and spectacle in the reporting of the Denver Post during the interwar years (1919-1941)
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2010) Tenn, Christopher, author; Henry, Todd, advisor; Jones, Elizabeth, committee member; Archie, Andre, committee member
This thesis is comprised of two principle sections. The first two chapters examine the experiences of Japanese immigrants residing in Colorado during the sixty years prior to the onset of World War II. These chapters describe the characteristics of Colorado's Japanese communities, the circumstances which drew them to Colorado, and the demographic changes the community underwent in the decades preceding the Second World War. The way in which the racial background of these individuals shaped their experiences in Colorado is of central importance to this work. Chapters 1 and 2 analyze the ways in which race intersected with transnational politics, local economic contingencies, and cultural attitudes to influence the responses of Colorado's Euro-Americans to their Japanese neighbors, profoundly shaping the experiences of Japanese immigrants in Colorado. The latter half of this work analyzes racial discourses circulating in the Denver Post during the interwar years. During the two decades leading up to the Second World War, the Denver Post was the predominant regional newspaper and regularly featured articles on Japanese Americans, Japanese nationals, Japan, and Japanese culture and society. I argue that the sentiments expressed within the paper were representative of a popular racial discourse that was ultimately essentializing and dehumanizing. The language employed within this discourse lumped together a complex and diverse group of people into the racial category of "Japanese," attributing to that category a series of essential and universal characteristics. In my critique of this language, I reveal that this discourse was often multi-faceted and expressed sentiments that varied from fear and anxiety, to awe and fascination. The result was the production of numerous and varied stereotypes which served as representations of the "Japanese" to readers of Colorado newspapers. Regardless of what characteristics it projected upon the "Japanese," however, this discourse continued to homogenize all individuals of Japanese ethnicity into a singular racial entity, problematically reinforcing the legitimacy of race as a valid means of social categorization in the process. I am critical of such a category and, in this work, seek to demonstrate how the process of constructing a "Japanese" racial identity during the interwar years was in fact a process of othering that contributed to the ease with which negative, vilifying stereotypes were later projected upon Japanese Americans during the Second World War.
Open Access
Cry me a river: the environmental transformation of the Tarim River Basin and its impact on Chinese-Uyghur relations, 1949-2009
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Wang, Xiaoran, author; Didier, John, advisor; Fiege, Mark, committee member; Fisher, Christopher, committee member
This thesis focuses in the study of the environmental, social, political, and economic / resource-extraction history of China's Xinjiang Province. Not only does the author trace the historically most significant environmentally depredating human events in Xinjiang over the past two thousand years, I also explains these events within the context of social, political, economic, and resource-extraction history, thus providing insight into the nature of the political, social, economic, and natural-resource backdrops that created the need of the Chinese to engage in environmentally hazardous / destructive activities in its far western / northwestern borderlands. My treatment in Section Two of the role that the Chinese government saw Xinjiang playing in the development of the Chinese economy and national security on the world stage enables not only China specialists but also non-specialists to grasp the overall impetus of the Chinese economic / security developments of the past 60 years.
Open Access
"I am going to find a new fatherland": nationalism and German colonization societies in the frontier state of Missouri
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Greenway, Stephan Troy Joseph, author; Gudmestad, Robert H., 1964-, advisor; Knight, Frederick C., committee member; Hughes, Jolyon T., committee member
Despite a recent rise in interest among American historians in regard to examining German immigration to the United States, in most cases their methodology remains rooted in the past. American scholars have long shown a tendency to examine the immigrant experience from the moment the immigrants set foot in the New World. Historians in other fields have begun to realize the importance of drawing historical connections that go beyond the borders of the United States. However, scholars studying German immigration to the United States have in large part failed to embrace this transnational methodology. Recent works of transnational history have demonstrated that by making connections to events that occurred outside of the United States, historians can gain a fuller understanding of the forces that shaped the nation's development. A series of German settlement societies worked to create a new Germany in the frontier state of Missouri during the early decades of the nineteenth century. By examining these societies connections will be made between political events occurring in the German-speaking states of Europe and expansion into the American West. It will be demonstrated that events across the Atlantic Ocean, events which fed a sense of nationalism that had been simmering since the middle decades of the eighteenth century, had an effect on the state of Missouri that is visible to this day. This transnational examination of the efforts of German nationalists to create a new Germany in the United States will not only reveal a facet of Missouri's history long neglected by historians, it will challenge American scholars to move beyond the formidable intellectual barrier the nation's borders have placed on their work, allowing them to create more nuanced, more complete narratives of the nation's past.
Open Access
Sun Valley's elite beginnings: European influence on the American ski industry
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Berry, Julie Marie, author; Citino, Nathan J., advisor; Aloisio, Mark, committee member; Cooperman, Matthew, 1964-, committee member
This thesis examines the international influences on the American West through the creation of the American destination ski resort at Sun Valley, Idaho. The American West cannot be understood without broadening analysis outside of the territorial space of the West. Incorporation of global events and transnational themes add to understanding of the American West as portrayed through one of its key identities--the ski industry. In 1936, Averell Harriman, chair of the Union Pacific Railroad, created America's first destination ski resort at Sun Valley, Idaho. Looking to Europe for inspiration, he imported European ideas and ski instructors to capitalize on the mountains of the American West, fostering a transnational industry. Ski mountains throughout the West built off of Sun Valley's success and modeled themselves after this first resort. This thesis explores the development of Sun Valley while also examining tensions which exist between transnational and national ambitions throughout history. Topics examined in this thesis are the development of Sun Valley and the ski industry, national concerns over the believed Nazi sympathies of Austrian ski instructors, the relationship of Hollywood with destination resorts, the Tenth Mountain Division, and changes in consumerism following World War II.
Open Access
Baptists and slavery in frontier Missouri during the antebellum era
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2011) Woodward, Nathan, author; Knight, Fred, advisor; Gudmestad, Robert, committee member; Lindsay, James, committee member; Kim, Joon, committee member
This thesis examines the way residents of the Missouri frontier viewed and reacted to slavery, with a particular emphasis on Missouri Baptist thought. I argue that Baptists were ambivalent toward slavery because of their religion and their unique agricultural position on the frontier far from the large cotton plantations of the Deep South. Their attitude toward slavery manifested itself in Frontier Baptist Conventions and within Baptist newspapers in Missouri. Because of this ambivalence, Baptist slaveholders and slaveholders in the largely Baptist town of Liberty, Missouri, had to find a way to reconcile their growing antislavery thoughts with their largely proslavery surroundings. Their answer came in the form of gradual emancipation of the slaves. Missouri Baptists sought to free and expatriate African Americans in colonization movements to Africa. To gauge these sentiments, this project relies heavily on three newspapers published in Missouri during the antebellum era: The Western Watchmen of St. Louis, The Liberty Tribune of Liberty, and The Border Star of Westport. The first is the only Baptist paper and the latter two are both secular. To ascertain their opinions on slavery, I used the papers to focus on ideas relating to the colonization movement, John Brown, Bleeding Kansas, states' rights, and secession. The final part of the thesis examines how southern Baptists reacted to the newly freed slave population during and after Reconstruction.
Open Access
Power in the pasture: energy and the history of ranching in western South Dakota
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Howe, Jenika, author; Fiege, Mark, advisor; Orsi, Jared, committee member; Richburg, Robert W., committee member
Transitions in the use of energy transformed the landscape, labor, and domestic life of cattle ranching in western South Dakota from the late-nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth centuries. The introduction of new energy sources to the Black Hills spurred the expansion of European Americans into the region, while helping to displace native peoples like the Lakotas. Changing energy use also intensified ranch labor in the pastures and in the household, drawing individual ranches into new connections with their surroundings. Examining cattle ranching through the lens of energy provides new insights into the momentum of energetic systems in societies, affording historians a way to understand past energy use as they consider present and future environmental concerns.
Open Access
Denver goes to the movies: engaging national-scale identity shifts from movie house to movie palace, 1900-1940
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Frank, Nichelle, author; Orsi, Jared, advisor; Ore, Janet, committee member; Dickinson, Greg, committee member
This thesis examines the relationship between film history and movie theater architecture at local and national levels as a window into early twentieth century identity shifts. The argument is that Denver films and movie theaters from 1900 to 1940 manifested national-level identity shifts as well as influenced them. The identity shifts included attitudes of innovation, decadence, and endurance that roughly characterized the 1900s and 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s. These identities represented the dominant identities that were part of the broad shift from nineteenth century frontier identity to post-WWII modern identity. This thesis draws from Denver newspapers, architectural and cinema journals, early film histories, Denver Householder and City Directories, Denver Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, other historic maps, memoirs, and photographs. Through close study of these sources and balancing the national history with Denver history, there emerges a story of how Denverites and Americans have selected ideals to maintain and adopted others as they chase their ever-changing dreams.
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
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."