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- Creators: Arizona State University
- Creators: Machander, Sina
- Member of: Theses and Dissertations
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
Civic leadership in Phoenix, Arizona promoted the city's performing arts as part of a deliberate plan towards the larger growth agenda after World War II. From the 1940s through the late 1960s, the business and professional leaders who controlled city government served on boards for performing arts groups, built venues, offered financial support, and sometimes participated as artists in order to attract high-technology firms and highly skilled workers to the area. They believed one aspect of Phoenix's urban development included a need for quality, high-culture performing arts scene that signaled a high quality of life and drew more residents. After this era of boosterism ended and control shifted from business and professional leaders to city government, performing arts support fluctuated with leadership's attitudes and the local, state, and national economies. The early civic leaders were successful in their overall mission to expand the city - now the sixth largest in the nation - and many of the organizations and venues they patronized still serve the community; however, the commitment to developing a quality arts and culture scene waned. Today's public, private, and arts and culture leaders are using the same argument as Phoenix tries once again to become a high-technology center. The theory that arts and culture stimulate the economy directly and indirectly is true today as it was in the 1940s. Although the plan was effective, it needed fully committed supporters, strong infrastructure, and continued revising in order to move the vision into the twenty-first century.
ContributorsBickert, Michelle (Author) / Vandermeer, Phiip (Thesis advisor) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This thesis examines the immediate post-World War II operational strategy of Valley National Bank of Arizona, a Phoenix-based institution in operation from 1899 until its 1992 acquisition by Ohio-based Banc One Corporation (now JPMorgan Chase). For the purposes of this study, the immediate post-war period is defined as 1944 to January 20, 1953, a span that opens with the bank's wartime planning efforts for the post-war period and ends with the 1953 retirement of bank president Walter Bimson. By the end of World War II, Valley National ranked as the largest financial institution in the eight-state Rocky Mountain region, as measured by total deposits. However, post-war regulatory issues, competitor expansion, and an inability to generate deposit volume sufficient to meet subject period loan demands challenged bank leaders seeking to maintain market share and grow company profitability and stock value. In response to these difficulties, the bank focused on a three-pronged operational strategy emphasizing advertising, market-appropriate deposit and loan product offerings, and an aggressive branching and acquisition campaign. This strategy did not result in unmitigated success as the bank did experience a decrease in average deposit account balances, lost mortgage market share, and undertook acquisition activity that later resulted in federal antitrust action. However, by the end of the subject period, the three-pronged strategy employed by the bank did result in an increase in deposit dollar market share, as measured by deposits controlled directly and indirectly by the institution, rising annual net profits, and substantial share price appreciation. The findings related to bank strategy and results presented in this thesis are based primarily upon information found in the 169-box Valley National Bank Collection housed at the Arizona Historical Society. Extensive newspaper research conducted using targeted date range and keyword searches and careful consideration of secondary source materials relating to the bank, the banking industry, and state, regional, and national politics, economics, and culture during the subject period provided additional information used in this study, and corroborated much of the material found in the Valley National Bank Collection files.
ContributorsSouthard, John (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Gammage, Jr., Grady (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Mid-Century ranch house architecture and design is significant to the architectural landscape of the Phoenix Metropolitan Area. The increasing age of the city's post-WWII properties is creating a need for renovation and rehabilitation, and new technologies have created modern conveniences for today's homeowners, changing interior space plan requirements. These homeowners will need guidance to alter these properties correctly and to preserve the home's essential features. This thesis analyzes the design trends and materials used during the mid-twentieth century, and demonstrates methods for applying them to a current renovation project. The research outlined in this document proves that it is possible to maintain historic integrity, include "Green" design strategies, and apply contemporary technology to a modern ranch renovation.
ContributorsSimmons, Rachel (Author) / Brandt, Beverly (Thesis advisor) / Warren-Findley, Janelle (Committee member) / Boradkar, Prasad (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2009
Description
This thesis explores the relationship between the ideological justification for civil disobedience in British India in the twentieth century and the contemporary responses to the nonviolent resistance. By evaluating the elements of preparation and reaction to the Champaran, Kheda, Rowlatt Hartal, Khilafat, Bardoli, Dandi, and Quit India satyagraha campaigns, an understanding of the goals and values of civil disobedience and noncooperation was established. By studying the intellectual works of Indian independence leaders, correspondence between British government officials, widely distributed newspapers (The Times of London, The Times of India, Young India, The Spectator, The Manchester Guardian, The New York Times, etc) and first hand participant accounts, I was able to see how the ideas of independence leaders translated into popular participation and policy reform. A wide range of opinions existed amongst British contemporaries ranging from the encouragement of the Indian agitators to a deep hatred of the resistance. In addition, this thesis possesses an accompanying historical comic book which chronicles one family's participation in the Dandi March of 1930. The creative project attempts to introduce audiences to a historical case study of non-violent resistance. Similar to how Mahatma Gandhi chose salt to represent the oppression of all Indians by the British, the Salt March of 1930 was selected as the topic of the comic book in order to introduce all audiences to the experiences of twentieth century satyagrahis. Mass civil disobedience continues to be used as a tool for political change around the world today. "Soul Force" studies the pioneering efforts in mass nonviolent resistance within colonial India.
ContributorsMiller, Kaycee Elaine (Author) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis director) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-12
Description
In the sixty-seven years following the end of World War II, West Germany and Japan underwent a remarkable series of economic and social changes that irrevocably altered their respective ways of life. Formerly xenophobic, militaristic and highly socially stratified societies, both emerged from the 20th Century as liberal, prosperous and free. Both made great strides well beyond the expectations of their occupiers, and rebounded from the overwhelming destruction of their national economies within a few short decades. While these changes have yielded dramatic results, the wartime period still looms large in their respective collective memories. Therefore, an ongoing and diverse dialectical process would engage the considerable popular, official, and intellectual energy of their post-war generations. In West Germany, the term Vergangenheitsbewältigung (VGB) emerged to describe a process of coming to terms with the past, while the Japanese chose kako no kokufuku to describe their similar historical sojourns. Although intellectuals of widely varying backgrounds in both nations made great strides toward making Japanese and German citizens cognizant of the roles that their militaries played in gruesome atrocities, popular cinematic productions served to reiterate older, discredited assertions of the fundamental honor and innocence of the average soldier, thereby nurturing a historically revisionist line of reasoning that continues to compete for public attention. All forms of media would play an important role in sustaining this “apologetic narrative,” and cinema, among the most popular and visible of these mediums, was not excluded from this. Indeed, films would play a unique recurring role, like rhetorical time capsules, in offering a sanitized historical image of Japanese and German soldiers that continues to endure in modern times. Nevertheless, even as West Germany and Japan regained their sovereignty and re-examined their pasts with ever greater resolution and insight, their respective film industries continued to “reset” the clock, and accentuated the visibility and relevancy of apologetic forces still in existence within both societies. However, it is important to note that, when speaking of “Germans” and “Japanese,” that they are not meant to be thought of as being uniformly of one mind or another. Rather, the use of these words is meant as convenient shorthand to refer to the dominant forces in Japanese and German civil society at any given time over the course of their respective post- war histories. Furthermore, references to “Germany” during the Cold War period are to be understood to mean the Federal Republic of Germany, rather than their socialist counterpart, the German Democratic Republic, a nation that undertook its own coming to terms with the past in an entirely distinct fashion.
ContributorsPiscopo, Michael (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Moore, Aaron (Committee member) / Machander, Sina (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor)
Created2012-12