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Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities In Elizabeth Gaskell’S Social Problem Novels, Hunter Nicole Duncan
Reforming Victorian Sense/Abilities: Disabilities In Elizabeth Gaskell’S Social Problem Novels, Hunter Nicole Duncan
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation rewrites the representations of disability, impairment, and illness throughout Elizabeth Gaskell’s fiction. The project’s four chapters examine blindness in Mary Barton, pregnancy, deformity, and typhus fever in Ruth, tuberculosis and hysteria in North and South, and hysteria and disfigurement in Sylvia’s Lovers, in order to intervene with disability in its literary, historical, medical, and social contexts by uniting methodologies ranging from Disability Studies, Medical Humanities, feminist theory, and Victorian studies. By looking at the novel and rethinking it through Disability Studies, this dissertation joins contemporary theory with historical context, refreshing scholarly attention toward under-represented bodies and minds. This …
The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics In The American Renaissance, Michael William Keller
The Pulpit's Muse: Conversive Poetics In The American Renaissance, Michael William Keller
Dissertations (1934 -)
This dissertation focuses on the interaction between poetic form and popular religious practice in the nineteenth century United States. Specifically, I aim to see how American poets appropriated religious tropes—and especially religious conversion—in their poetry with specific designs on their audience. My introduction analyzes the phenomenon of religious conversion up through the nineteenth century with help from psychologists and historians of religion, including William James and Sydney Ahlstrom. In the introduction, I also explore how revivalist conversion helped inform the poetics of Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Chapter one focuses on Emerson’s poetry, particularly as it enacts Emerson’s poetic …