This paper seeks to explain and dismantle the negative reputation French Revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre has accrued over the last three hundred years. Though considerable efforts have been made to improve his legacy since his execution in 1794, stereotypical portrait of Robespierre as an unfeeling dictator has maintained popularity for centuries. Historians hostile to Robespierre have routinely relied upon dubious sources and political bias in order to justify their depictions of Robespierre as everything from a bloodthirsty murderer to an unfeeling ideologue. This paper reexamines and critiques these representations, as well as the gendered ways in which Robespierre is often interpreted in academic and popular history. Largely ignored by even his greatest supporters, the persistent portrayal of Robespierre as abnormally effeminate has allowed historians to reimagine his revolutionary worth in ahistoric and homophobic ways detrimental to the study of the French Revolution.

As a young princess, Elizabeth Tudor had a precarious position at court. Elizabeth was on her own in defending her honor when her position was put in jeopardy by rumors surrounding her and Thomas Seymour. Their relationship was questioned because of stories that circulated publicly and privately. These stories cast doubt on the character of the teenage Elizabeth and the investigations that followed looked at the involvement she and her household had in Thomas Seymour's plans to marry the princess and her encouragement of his flirtatious advances. Kat Ashley provided accounts that suggested she had been plotting with Seymour on her lady's behalf, and these same accounts show how Elizabeth discouraged his advances. Elizabeth vehemently denied her part in any marriage plans that Seymour may have concocted, though admits her governess's part in the gossip. "Kat. Aschlylye tolde me, after that my Lord Admiralde was married to the Quene, that if my Lorde might have his owne Wil, he wolde haue me " . Historians examine this scandal as a key part of Elizabeth's formative years. Some more speculative than others, such as Gregorio Leti who, in 1693, recorded inaccurate details of the scandal that have been often mistaken for fact. The accounts of William Cecil, Lord Burghley in the state papers detail a princess who was abused by those in power who wanted to remove her from the succession. With the support of her household, Elizabeth defended herself well and maintained her honorable reputation.

The American Revolution is typically viewed as a war for independence between two groups, the revolutionaries and their oppressors, the British. Little is known about another party: the Loyalists. This group of people was set apart from the other players in the Revolution. They were men, and supporting women, who opposed the Revolution, unified by their politics and paternalistic values. These ideologies appealed to a wide array of people. Liberal constitutionalism, a political ideology in which one is open to change within the law of the constitution, generated a population of Loyalists who were white males that had held these views prior to the Revolution. Paternalism ushered in a vast range of other Loyalists, such as women and African Americans, because of their adherence to following the male authority, which in this case was the king. Using evidence from Peter Oliver's manuscript and accounts from various secondary sources, this paper argues that Loyalists were a group defined by their politically moderate and paternalistic values.

Since the end of the French Revolution historians have constantly debated the reasons why the Coup de Brumaire and Napoleon's rise to power was so successful. Napoleon's control and manipulation of propaganda allowed him to develop a cult of personality, that in its most organic form, dictated the mindset and opinion of the people of France during his Italian and Egyptian campaigns. Napoleon's control of media outlets, the creation of his own glorified dispatches, and the formation of six newspapers catering to his every will helped build up the media empire that would aid him in his rise to power. This article details the ineffective use of propaganda by the Directory, the government that ruled France before the Coup de Brumaire, but also shines light on the accomplishments of the governing body during its time in power. In this paper the Directory and Napoleon are analyzed through various historical lens by authors from both the Marxist and Revisionist side of the historiography surrounding the French Revolution. I conclude that it was Napoleon's effective use of his skills as a propagandist, along with the Directory's ineffective use of propaganda, that would eventually allow him to seize power in 1799.

With the Supreme Court's ruling in Oberfegell v. Hodges on June 26 of this past year, the long-standing fight for gay rights finally reached its peak with the national legalization of gay marriage. In comparison to the shift favoring the women's rights and civil rights movements, which happened gradually over nearly two hundred years, public opinion and legal opinion on gay rights reversed in an historical instant in the 35 years since 1980, and even grew to include mass support of gay marriage, a concept that had never even been seriously considered prior to this period. How did this change happen so rapidly? As an analysis of polling data, news articles and government documents demonstrates, no singular event, court case, or public policy was fully responsible; rather it was any event that made the LGBT population more visible and therefore more widely understood and tolerated, beginning with the AIDS crisis and extending to legal and non-legal actions. More hidden than other previously marginalized groups, the gay marriage movement gained momentum so quickly because it was launched into public consciousness through the forced unmasking and voluntary coming out of LGBT people. The act of distinguishing themselves through coming out gave LGBT people a continuous way to assert their identity and keep gay rights, including gay marriage, in the news and in people's minds.

This paper seeks to provide a general template for determining the nature of, and reasons behind, the employment of women in warfare. I focus on groups of women who fought as formal combat components of historical military forces in order to explain the general socio-cultural, military, and situational factors that led to the employment of women in combat. My conclusions are that two factors: societal license to fight and the presence of battlefield roles with able women to fill them, were necessary for the regular employment of women in combat. However, I also found that under desperate circumstances in existential conflicts, societies, regardless of their disposition towards women or traditional battlefield roles, would employ women in combat to stave off destruction. My sources are drawn from a wide variety of historical records of women in combat, including writings of Plutarch and Appian, and modern analyses of archeological findings that suggest martial roles for women. The scope of this paper is from the 6th Century BCE to 1900 CE.

During the religious revival of the nineteenth-century, known as the Second Great Awakening, several Perfectionist communitarian societies were established in the United States. One such society was the Oneida Community, founded by leader John Humphrey Noyes and his followers in Oneida, New York, in March of 1848. Contemporaries and historians alike have debated the unique and controversial practices of the Community members. The members lived in what they called "complex marriage," where all Community members were married to each other, and sexual activity between all men and women was encouraged to promote bonding, pleasure, and a strong sense of community. However, this broad sexual activity was not meant to lead to indiscriminate pregnancies. To prevent such pregnancies, Noyes adopted a practice called coitus reservatus, or male continence, which required men to control their ejaculation during and after sexual intercourse. For many outside the community, this practice was seen as strange and unnatural. Contrary to this belief, members of the community, in their own words, reveal that this practice actually removed many problematic elements placed on women during the nineteenth century, such as anxiety about pregnancy and childbirth, ridicule for various birth control methods, shaming for sexual activity, and even the erasure of components of female sexuality. Therefore, one might argue that male continence actually did achieve progress for Oneida Community women, including preventing unwanted pregnancies, providing for a full, pleasurable sexual experience, as well as an appreciation of the realities of female sexuality. Their contemporaries struggled to gain these liberations, and they remain goals of present-day American women.

During Prohibition immigrants were often made into scapegoats for the rise in illegal activity. The increase in crime was blamed on the rising immigrant population creating an intense fear of immigrants coming into the United States. Popular interpretations have looked at this through the lens of European immigrants coming to the United States. Groups such as the Italian Mafia, and Irish gangs in New York City are a well-rehearsed story within the history of Prohibition. However, Europeans were not the only immigrants that began to flood into the ports of New York City, and they were not the only groups of immigrants to get entangled with the 18th amendment. Within New York City's Chinatown there were various raids revealing rice wine moonshine, secret speakeasies, and crime leading to the formation of gangs just like their European counterparts. New York City's Chinatown quickly gained the reputation of being shady and crime ridden, and going into its midst was called popularly referred to as "slumming". This paper explores the nature of Chinatown during the years of Prohibition and how Prohibition affected the Chinese immigrants. It also examines the ways in which the media of the time contributed to the rising fear of Chinese immigrants' crime, and how it contributed to the idea of the " yellow peril".