Digital Commons Network^™

“The Youngest Of The Great American Family”: The Creation Of A Franco-American Culture In Early Louisiana, Cinnamon Brown

Doctoral Dissertations

On April 30, 1803, the Jefferson administration purchased French Louisiana. Initially American lawmakers rejoiced at the prospect of American domination of the Mississippi River. Yet within a few short months this optimism was replaced with uncertainty and alarm as lawmakers faced the task of incorporating Lower Louisiana into the Union. As Americans tackled the many unintended consequences of the Louisiana Purchase, Louisianans also had to confront the ramifications of the landmark acquisition and the encroachment of a new American government in their lives. From 1803 to 1815, American lawmakers and Louisianans embarked on a parallel journey to incorporate Lower Louisiana …

Ammianus And Constantius: The Portrayal Of A Tyrant In The Res Gestae, Sean Robert Williams

Masters Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate that the late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus used his portrayal of the emperor Constantius II (r. 337-361) as a response to Christian polemic against the pagan emperor Julian (r. 361-363). It argues that, based on the similarities between Ammianus’ account of Constantius and some Christian polemical accounts of Julian, the Res Gestae should be seen as part of the broader discourse between Christians and pagans that began after the death of Valens at Adrianople in 378. By examining the narrative similarities Ammianus shares with several of his prominent Christian contemporaries—notably Gregory of …

A Study Of The Social And Political Implication Of Friedrich Schlegel’S ‘Comedy Of Freude’, Manjit Singh Bhatti

Masters Theses

Generally speaking, scholarship in the field of Germanistik has taken an interest in Friedrich Schlegel’s early publication, “Vom aesthetischen Werte der griechischen Komoedie” (1794), either because of its perceived influence on German Romantic Comedy [(Catholy 1982), (Kluge 1980), (Holl 1923), (Japp 1999)], or else because of its relevance as an example of Schlegel's still inchoate aesthetic philosophy [(Dierkes 1980), (Behrens 1984), (Schanze 1966), (Michel 1982), (Dannenberg 1993), (Mennemeier 1971)]. As a theory of comedy in its own right, Schlegel’s essay has garnered little attention, in part because of its supposed inapplicability to comedic praxis and at times utopian implications, in …

Anti-Judaic Religious Polemic And Apocalyptic Thought In The Disputation Of Majorca And Its Later Manuscript Tradition, Geoffrey Kyle Martin

Masters Theses

In this study, I first examine the Disputation of Majorca (1286) and analyze how its Christian disputant, Inghetto Contardo, blended apocalyptic thought and anti-Judaic discourse. Although other studies, most notably Ora Limor’s critical edition, have touched upon the nature of Inghetto’s arguments, none have discussed his clear implementation of intertwined anti-Judaic religious polemic and apocalyptic thought in a satisfactory manner. I place Inghetto in an apocalyptic milieu of the later thirteenth century that especially emphasizes the imminence of the Last Days. In effect, Inghetto’s employment of St. Jerome’s Daniel exegesis is perfectly suited to 1286, when Jews are most likely …

The Pi Beta Phi Settlement School: Progressive Reform In Gatlinburg, Tennessee, 1910-1965, Shirley Marie Robinson

Masters Theses

During the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, reformers, intellectuals and travel writers drew the attention of the American public to Southern Appalachia. Although the region had previously not been viewed as distinct from other parts of the rural South, a mythology about mountain deviance emerged after the Civil War. Commentators identified mountaineers as aberrant based on exaggerated accounts of violence, poverty and ignorance. As the urban middle class became identified as the core of American society, efforts to “Americanize” other groups brought organizations such as the Pi Beta Phi into the Mountain South.

Founded in 1867 at …

Captive To The American Woods: Sarah Wakefield And Cultural Mediation, Sophia Betsworth Hunt

Masters Theses

The life and narrative of Sarah Wakefield, an Anglo migrant who spent six weeks as a captive of the Santee Dakotas during the US-Dakota Conflict, show one woman's experience navigating the changing racial dynamics of the nineteenth-century Minnesota frontier. Using recent conceptualizations of “the frontier” as either a middle ground or woods, this thesis reconsiders Wakefield as a prisoner, not of Indians or her own conscience but of her region‟s ossifying racial divisions. Wakefield's initial attempts at intercultural communication, which included feeding starving Dakotas who knocked on her door, were consistent with Anglo notions about womanhood and Indian-white relations. But …

“To Be True To Ourselves”: Freedpeople, School Building, And Community Politics In Appalachian Tennessee, 1865-1870, Albin James Kowalewski

Masters Theses

This thesis explores the ways communities of ex-slaves and free blacks in Appalachian Tennessee mobilized to build schools in the five years after the Civil War. Historians have long asserted that black schools were central institutions in the movement by Southern blacks to create an autonomous culture following the Civil War. And scholars have traditionally used the creation of cultural institutions (such as schools) to demonstrate the collective efforts by freedpeople in their pursuit of common aspirations. But the question remains what the school-building process can tell historians about how freedpeople understood themselves and their communities within local, regional, state, …