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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,

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
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Description
This thesis explores some of the ways in which Egyptian men and women changed certain aspects of their reality through collective actions in public spaces during and after the 2011 Revolution. This thesis argues that the power of collective action which Egyptian men and women successfully employed in 2011 to

This thesis explores some of the ways in which Egyptian men and women changed certain aspects of their reality through collective actions in public spaces during and after the 2011 Revolution. This thesis argues that the power of collective action which Egyptian men and women successfully employed in 2011 to bring down the thirty year regime of Hosni Mubarak carried over into the post-Revolutionary era to express itself in three unique ways: the combatting of women's sexual harassment in public spaces, the creation of graffiti with distinct Revolutionary themes, and the creation of protest music which drew from historical precedent while also creating new songs. The methodology of this study of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution lies is the use of newspaper reporting and online sources as primary source material. These sources include Egyptian newspapers such as Egypt Independent and Al Ahram, as well as scholarly websites like Jadaliyya, and also personal blogs. These accounts provide topical and up to the minute accounts of history as it unfolded. Primary source material is also drawn from oral interviews done during the summer of 2012 by the author and others in Egypt. The theoretical grounding lies in social movement theories that are centered on the Middle Eastern context in particular. Drawing from newspaper accounts and social movement theories this thesis is built around a notion of collective action expressed in unique ways in post-2011 Revolution Egypt. This thesis is also solidly grounded in the history of Egypt as relevant to each of the topics which it explores: combatting sexual harassment and the creation of graffiti and music. Relevant scholarly books help to inform the historical material presented here as context. This thesis is situated within the existing literature on the 2011 Egyptian Revolution and public history while also contributing something new to this area of study by examining the actions of ordinary men and women acting in public spaces in new ways during and after the Revolution. The existing literature on the 2011 Revolution generally neglects micro-level changes of the sort discussed in the topical areas to follow. The ordinary men and women who contributed to the Revolution are now part of the historical record, an example of the public making history par excellence.
ContributorsSchmidl, Hannah (Author) / El Hamel, Chouki (Thesis advisor) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
Tempe political and business leaders implemented a series of strategies, composed of interconnected economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the city's growth over time. Influenced by a new economic opportunities and challenges, changing ideas about redevelopment and the role of suburbs, and Tempe's own growth issues after 1960,

Tempe political and business leaders implemented a series of strategies, composed of interconnected economic, political, and cultural factors that contributed to the city's growth over time. Influenced by a new economic opportunities and challenges, changing ideas about redevelopment and the role of suburbs, and Tempe's own growth issues after 1960, Tempe leaders and citizens formed a distinct vision for downtown redevelopment. Modified over time, the redevelopment strategy depended on effective planning and financing, public-private collaboration, citizen participation, and a revised perception of growth. After 1980, the strategy gained momentum enabling leaders to expand their ambitions for downtown. Redevelopment manifested through riverfront redevelopment, art and culture, and historic preservation redirecting the city's growth, creating economic development, and revitalizing downtown as Tempe began flourishing as a mature supersuburb. The strategy showed considerable economic success by 2012 and the completion of the Rio Salado Project, the Tempe Center for the Arts, and the preservation of the Hayden Flour Mill made downtown an attractive and diverse urban destination.
ContributorsGerszewski, Alyssa Danielle (Author) / Vandermeer, Philip (Thesis advisor) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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Description
This research explores the various and often conflicting interpretations of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, an event seemingly lost in the public mind of twenty-first century America. The conflict, which pitted United States forces under the command of Major General Andrew Jackson against a militant offshoot of the Creek Confederacy,

This research explores the various and often conflicting interpretations of the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, an event seemingly lost in the public mind of twenty-first century America. The conflict, which pitted United States forces under the command of Major General Andrew Jackson against a militant offshoot of the Creek Confederacy, known as the Redsticks, ranks as the single most staggering loss of life in annals of American Indian warfare. Today, exactly 200 years after the conflict, the legacy of Horseshoe Bend stands as an obscure and often unheard of event. Drawing upon over two centuries of unpublished archival data, newspapers, and political propaganda this research argues that the dominate narrative of Northern history, the shadowy details of the War of 1812, and the erasure of shameful events from the legacy of westward expansion have all contributed to transform what once was a battle of epic proportions, described by Jackson himself as an "extermination," into a seemingly forgotten affair. Ultimately, the Battle of Horseshoe Bend's elusiveness has allowed for the production of various historical myths and political messages, critiques and hyperboles, facts and theories. Hailed as a triumph during the War of 1812, and a high-water mark by the proponents of Manifest Destiny, Jackson's victory has also experienced its fair share of American derision and disregard. Whereas some have criticized the battle as a "cold blooded massacre," others have glorified it as a touchstone of American masculinity, and excused it as a natural event in the unfolding of human evolution. Despite the battle's controversial nature, on 3 August 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a strong supporter of the National Park Service, approved act HR 11766 establishing Horseshoe Bend National Military Park, the very first national park in the state of Alabama. Hailed and forgotten, silenced and celebrated, exploited and yet largely unknown. This research explores what happened after the smoke cleared at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend. It is a story about the production of history, the power of the past, and the malleability of the American mind.
ContributorsWeiss, Justin Scott (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Schermerhorn, Calvin (Committee member) / Dallett, Nancy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014