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International Student Orientations: Indian Students At American Universities Around The Turn Of The Twentieth Century, Param S. Ajmera

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more generally, are related to structures of racialized and colonial dispossession in India. I build these arguments by reading archival sources such as university administrative records, student publications, personal and official correspondence, as well as understudied aesthetic works, such as memoirs, travel narratives, essays, doctoral dissertations, and public lectures. These historical …

Irish Harps, Scottish Fiddles, English Pens: Romantic Satire And British Nationalism, Shannon Raelene Heath

Doctoral Dissertations

"Irish Harps, Scottish Fiddles, English Pens: Romantic Satire and British Nationalism" discusses the intersection between satire and nationalism in late eighteenth- and early nineteenthcentury British Romantic poetry. Using case studies of three prominent satirists, Robert Burns, Thomas Moore, and George Gordon, Lord Byron to represent marginalized nationalities within the British state, I examine the ways in which each poet expresses a sense of dis-ease or uncomfortableness with their own national identity, an anxiety caused either by the ways in which their nationality was perceived within the British public, or by their own ability or inability to express that nationality. Thus, …

Identity To Be Determined: The Development Of The American Ideal In The Early Republic, Andrew S. Mills

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Late victories in the War of 1812, like General Andrew Jackson’s triumph in the Battle of New Orleans rekindled the growing sense of nationalistic fervor that had appeared after the American Revolution. Americans saw themselves as a people with a unique destiny granted by God. Between the 1780s and the 1820s, different political party visions of American identity competed. The Jeffersonians were agrarian-focused. They envisioned a nation based on the morality of citizens. Federalists saw a more hierarchical, European-like society as the best hope for the American cause. These competing visions of identity led to continued attacks by the leading …

A National Style: A Critical Historiography Of The Irish Short Story, Andrew Fox

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the artistic, historical and theoretical concerns that, for the past century, have shaped the Irish short story, the Irish nation and the body of criticism that mediates between the two. In Ireland, I argue, the prevailing critical narrative of the short story’s emergence and ongoing literary purpose has been bound up with the political narrative of the nation state’s decolonization. This process I view as symptomatic of a broader critical tendency to view Irish cultural narratives as inextricable from national ones, whereby literary interventions either are viewed as mere reflections of, or are assimilated to systems of …

Thomas Davis, The Nation, And Songs Of Irish Nationalism, Timothy Mason Love

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Thomas Davis was a significant figure in the flourishing movement of cultural nationalism in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland. A cofounder of _The Nation_, Davis used the journal’s pages as a medium through which to promote a nationalist vision for Ireland distinctive for its nonsectarian appeal. Along with impassioned editorial prose, Davis employed poetry and song to carry his message to the public. “Young Ireland,” as Davis and his colleagues became known, focused their efforts especially on the traditional Irish song, elevating it as a symbol for their cultural heritage while harnessing its emotional power to strengthen their political cause. The songs printed …

July 4, 1865: A Nation In Search Of Itself, Sorn A. Jessen

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The eighty-ninth anniversary of the declaration of American independence from Britain, on July 4, 1865, caught the nation at a critical time in its history. The great national crisis of civil war was over, but the nation had not yet re-united. The thesis argues that in the aftermath of the Civil War, American nationalism could not be reconstituted on neither an ethnic nor a civic model. Rather, on the eighty-ninth anniversary of Independence, the course of American Nationalism fell out along lines decreed by historical memory. The narrative construction of the past in the present constituted the only common thread …

A Global Joyce: Early Sightings Of Cosmopolitan Ethics In Ulysses, Matthew Zeller

Theses and Dissertations

'Ulysses is like a great net let down upon the life of a microcosmic city-state, Dublin, wherein lie captured all sorts and conditions of men and minds,' wrote Stuart Gilbert, the famous literary scholar whose landmark 1930 book-length investigation into Joyce's magnum opus cemented his legacy as one of the first Joyceans. In saying so, Gilbert quietly proposes an early reading of Joyce's global ethics long before the study of humanities had developed the post-colonial focus necessary to more fully grasp the cosmopolitan ethics asserted in Ulysses. Gilbert was not alone. Because of his self-imposed exile and thematic insistence on …

"The Centre Of Our Union" : George Washington's Political Philosophy And The Creation Of American National Identity In The 1790s, Ryan Staude

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

For most of his presidency (1789-1797), George Washington worked to establish the federal government's legitimacy in the eyes of America's citizens while trying to gain international respect for the new nation. Although there was a broad elite consensus at the start of the decade it quickly dissipated in the face of basic questions about the federal government's power and scope of authority. Domestic political issues became entangled with foreign policy problems to create an intractable divide between opposing groups of Americans termed the Federalists and the Republicans. The two parties contended to see not only who would administer the government, …

Divided On Unity : The Competing Strategies Of The Republican And Nationalist Movements During The Northern Irish Troubles, Matthew James Roche

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Divided on Unity:

British Identity And The German Other, William F. Bertolette

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

British identity evolved through conscious comparisons with foreigners as well as through the cultivation of indigenous social, economic and political institutions. The German other in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, like the French other in previous centuries, provided a psychological path toward unity against a perceived common enemy. Because German stereotypes brought into sharp focus what the British believed themselves not to be, they provided a framework for defining Britishness beyond Britain’s own internal divisions of race, ethnicity, class, religion, gender and politics. Post-World War II devolution and European integration have since revived British internal national divisions. The image of innocuous …

From Native To Nation: Copway’S American Indian Newspaper And Formation Of American Nationalism, David Shane Wallace

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that the publication of Copway’s American Indian (1851) challenges accepted representations of nineteenth-century American Native peoples by countering popular stereotypes. Interrogating a multiplicity of cultural artifacts at the moment of their meeting and investigating the friction created as they rub against one another within the columns of the periodical, I argue that the texts that contribute to the make-up of Copway’s American Indian are juxtaposed in such a way as to force nineteenth-century readers to reconsider the place of the indigenous inhabitants in the American nation. Seemingly disconnected tidbits of information, presented not individually but as components …

Catholic Nationalism And Feminism In Twentieth-Century Ireland, Jennifer M. Donohue

Honors Theses

In the early 1900s, Ireland experienced a surge in nationalism as its political leanings shifted away from allegiance to the British Parliament and towards a pro-Ireland and pro-independence stance. The landscape of Ireland during this period was changed dramatically by the subversive popularity of the Irish political party, Sinn Fein, which campaigned for an Ireland for the Irish. Much of the political rhetoric surrounding this campaign alludes to the fact that Ireland was not inherently “British” because it defined itself by two unique, un-British characteristics – the Gaelic language and the Catholic faith.

As Sinn Fein’s hold on Ireland increased, …

Joyce...Beckett...Dedalus...Molloy: A Study In Abjection And Masochism, Patricia A. Mccabe-Remmell

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Irish male identity in James Joyce's and Samuel Beckett's novels shows evidence of abjection. The oppressive natures of the Church and State in Ireland contribute to abjection in some Irish men. Furthermore, the state of abject being can lead to masochistic practices. According to Julia Kristeva, abjection translates into a ìconceptual spaceî that has its roots in the Freudian Oedipal complex. Kristeva, following Lacan, also points to the connection between abjection and language. Joyceís character Stephen Dedalus and Beckettís Molloy/Moran both utilize this conceptual space and language in the narrative provides clues to their abject states. Joyceís A Portrait of …