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Excavating The Landscapes Of American Literature: Archaeology, Antiquarianism, And The Landscape In American Women's Writing, 1820--1890, Christina Healey

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the ways that women writers made use of the discourses of antiquarianism and archaeology between the years 1820 and 1890. Focusing especially upon the writings of Sarah Josepha Hale, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Celia Thaxter, and Constance Fenimore Woolson, the project examines depictions of artifacts, ruins, relics, and other antiquities in literary landscapes. Each of these women presents a unique way of knowing the world that is manifested in the ways their texts join different ways of understanding the landscape, its occupants, the artifacts it contains, its strata and geological history, and its aesthetic value. …

Material Culture And Domestic Texts: Textiles In The Texts Of Warner, Adams, Wilson, Sadlier, Stoddard, And Phelps, Laura Smith

Doctoral Dissertations

In "Material Culture and Domestic Texts: Textiles in the Texts of Warner, Adams, Wilson, Sadlier, Stoddard, and Phelps," I draw from recently revised notions of the discourse of domesticity to argue that the imagery of textile production, consumption, and containment enables authors to configure experimental domestic forms. Mid-nineteenth-century authors used textiles---including their inherent "textility" and feminine associations---to play out new domestic configurations in response to exigencies of economy, race, intemperance, competitive desire, and labor. Their literature demystifies textiles' ability to invest social hierarchies of race, class, gender, and religion; it also enacts material changes of women's domestic spaces and roles …

Toward Eco -Citizenship: A Praxis For Empowerment, Penelope S. Morrow

Doctoral Dissertations

My teaching practice and research is about holistic education which assumes that, at some fundamental level, everything is connected. Holistic education is a philosophy, a worldview, that challenges the fragmented, reductionist, mechanistic and nationalistic assumptions of mainstream culture and education. The ultimate goal is to transform the way people look at themselves and their relationships in/to the world from a fragmented to an integrative perspective. This emerging paradigm can also be called ecological, evolutionary, spiritual and global. There is a growing belief that such education is fundamentally spiritual, in its search for wholeness.

Western civilization has been dominated from its …

Parenting In The Age Of Prozac: Parental Decision -Making In Social Context, Nena F. Stracuzzi

Doctoral Dissertations

Within recent years, prescriptions written for children's emotional and behavioral problems have increased significantly. Although this issue has garnered a great deal of public notice, it has received scant sociological attention. In this study, I investigate parents of children with problems, and those without, in an effort to gain insights into the social contexts that shape decisions around diagnoses and treatment. The bases of the theoretical underpinnings of this research are situated at the intersection of medicalization and mother-blame.

Survey data were collected from 235 parents in a single New Hampshire community. Respondents answered several open-ended questions on the questionnaire …

Playing The Man: Masculinity, Performance, And United States Foreign Policy, 1901--1920, Kim Brinck-Johnsen

Doctoral Dissertations

"Playing the Man": Masculinity Performance, and US Foreign Policy, 1901--1920 argues that early twentieth century conceptions of masculinity played a significant role in constructing US foreign policy and in creating a new sense of national identity. It focuses on five public figures (Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, John Reed, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson). Although their conceptions of masculinity varied, each of these central historical figures based his or her US foreign policy position on the idea that in the conduct of US foreign relations, the United States needed to "play the man." Similarly, even when their policy …

Asanti Daughter Of Zion: The Life And Memory Of Harriet Tubman, Katherine Clifford Larson

Doctoral Dissertations

We all believe that we know Harriet Tubman (1820--1913): slave, famous conductor on the Underground Railroad, abolitionist, spy, nurse, and suffragist. Her successful, secret journeys into the slave states to rescue bondwomen, men, and children have immortalized her in the minds of Americans for over one hundred and thirty years. One of the most famous women in our nation's history, we have come to know the narrative of her life only through juvenile biographies. These stories made Tubman's life a legendary one by reconstituting her into a historical and cultural icon suitable for mass consumption as the "Mother of her …

Individuals With Disabilities As Parents And Their Earliest Connections To Systems Of Support, Mary Clare Schuh

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to better understand the experiences of individuals with disabilities as parents, and the variables influencing the referral processes used by pre and postnatal care professionals to connect parents with disabilities to systems of family support. This process was examined through the experiences, beliefs, and attitudes of pre and postnatal care professionals as well as through the experiences and perspectives of parents with disabilities. Research objectives included both an increased understanding of the relationship between parents with disabilities and their earliest connections to systems of support and policy and practice recommendations for pre and postnatal …

Gendered Work: Women's Paid Labor In Barre, Vermont And Trinidad, Colorado, 1880--1918, Susan L. Richards

Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1880 and 1918, thousands of women in Barre, Vermont and Trinidad, Colorado entered the paid labor force. They worked as boardinghouse keepers, domestic servants, waitresses, laundresses, prostitutes, office workers, saleswomen, telephone operators, business owners, teachers, nurses, doctors, lawyers, artists, musicians, and midwives. By compiling and manuscript census records for 1880, 1900, and 1910, and city directories for the period 1880 to 1918, this study identified 3,634 working women in Barre and 3,886 working women in Trinidad. Cross-checking these names against probate, city, and county court records, marriage and death records, newspapers, local manuscript collections, and oral histories, stories of …

A Gender And Development (Gad) Implementation Evaluation: Testimonios Reveal The Successes, Challenges, And Unpredicted Results For Women's Equality And Community Sustainability, Melinda Salazar

Doctoral Dissertations

This is a case study of a Gender and Development implementation evaluation in several rural, Baha'i communities in Andean Bolivian. "Traditional Media as Change Agent," funded by UNIFEM (UN International Fund for Women) and implemented by BIC (Baha'i International Community), was an innovative, non-economic approach to change gender attitudes and behaviors by including men in a consultative process using traditional media. This study responded to criticism that GAD ignored the environment, was lodged squarely in Western economic development thought and Western feminist values, and lacked the voices of the women and men for whom development aims to benefit.

This study …

Faith Positions: Re -Reading Gender, Race, And Christianity In Nineteenth -Century American Women's Writing, Mary L. Doyle

Doctoral Dissertations

Faith Positions is a study of the ways in which various modes of nineteenth-century religious belief are intertwined with the strained threads of an "American" national narrative. Specifically, I focus on the texts of four nineteenth-century American women---Jarena Lee, Rebecca Harding Davis, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, and Frances Harper---to consider the ways in which religious belief, and the narratives shaped by belief, respond to experiences defined by gender and race.

As Jenny Franchot and Carolyn Haynes (among others) have noted, contemporary American literary scholarship tends to evade concerns of religion and belief. "About those who 'had it' [religious belief] in the …

Reading For *Class: Virginia Woolf, Rebecca West, And Sylvia Townsend Warner, Laurie Ann Quinn

Doctoral Dissertations

Reading for Class is a feminist materialist study of three twentieth-century British writers: Virginia Woolf (1882--1941), Rebecca West (1892--1983), and Sylvia Townsend Warner (1893--1978). In triangulation, Woolf, West, and Warner provide the specific grounding for the project's more general exploration of the intersections between class issues and literature. The Introduction forges the eclectic critical method defined as reading for class, and articulates the historical-political purposes of the method and of the study itself. In Chapter One, analyses of two of Woolf's lesser-known texts, the "Introductory Letter" to the collection Life as We Have Known It (1931) and Nurse Lugton's Golden …

Piety, Politeness, And Power: Formation Of A Newtonian Culture In New England, 1727--1779, Frances Herman Lord

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores how men and women deployed the mathematical and experimental science of Isaac Newton and the new science based upon his work as the framework for a "Newtonian culture" in New England between 1727 and 1779, which established our modern view of the natural world and the authority of science. Their endeavors often involved co-opting the authority, and the cachet, of Newton's name and redirecting it toward new ends that involved both the affirmation and challenge of prevalent cultural, religious, and social values. This study examines the uses of Newtonian natural philosophy within the context of the cultural …

Number, Please: New Hampshire Telephone Operators In The Predial Era, 1877--1973, Judith N. Moyer

Doctoral Dissertations

The predial telephone era in New Hampshire stretched from about 1877 to 1973. This dissertation examines predial telephone operating in the state as a category of women's work. While growing out of and responding to technical invention and development, telephone operating had deep roots in women's social roles; gender defined occupational options, the work environment, the rules of employment, wages, and expectations. As the telephone system developed, differences between telephone operating in large and small exchanges developed; the urban operator eventually worked under conditions of traffic volume, supervision, and control that the rural operator often did not. To uncover the …

Ordinary Women: Government And Custom In The Lives Of New Hampshire Women, 1690-1770, Marcia Schmidt Blaine

Doctoral Dissertations

The prominence of patriarchy and common law has caused many historians to concentrate on the limitations placed on eighteenth-century Anglo-American women. The results often present women as objects, rather than subjects, of study. Using four major primary sources: Governor, Council and Assembly records, petitions, licensing materials, and treasury records, this study examines the relationship between ordinary women and the provincial government of New Hampshire in order to explain the customary options available to women in proceedings with the government. Even with a spouse still living, Anglo-American women acted as family agents and representatives when captured by the Native Americans and …

Motherwork, Artwork: The Mother/Artist In Fiction By Parton, Phelps, Chopin, Woolf, Drabble, And Walker, Nancy Hoyt Lecourt

Doctoral Dissertations

This study asks the question, What happens to a practicing (fictional) mother who also tries to be a practicing artist? How do literary texts represent such people? How do they represent the relationship between material and artistic work? The primary works studied are Sarah Parton's Ruth Hall, (1855), Elizabeth Stuart Phelps' The Story of Avis (1877), Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927), and Margaret Drabble's The Millstone (1965). The conclusion focuses on Alice Walker's short story, "Everyday Use."

Mother-artists finds themselves on the "wrong" side of the nature/culture binary, where ideologies about "true womanhood" and …

When Does Gender Matter? Explaining The Transition To Adulthood As A Gendered Process, Kimberly Autumn Mahaffy

Doctoral Dissertations

Most gender theory and research focuses on two points in the life course: childhood and middle adulthood. Less attention is given to the period in between. The purpose of this dissertation is to determine whether and how the transition to adulthood is gendered. To what extent do school, family, and labor market contexts have a different effect on adolescent girls and boys as they become adults?

Using data from the High School and Beyond 1980 Sophomore Cohort Study (1980--1992), 1 examine how social context differentially affects the plans for the future and adult status outcomes of young women and men. …

Class In Seventeenth-Century British Drama By Women, Erika Mae Olbricht

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that seventeenth-century drama by women should be analyzed as a public discursive practice rather than as privatized "closet drama." This study focuses on class in order to delineate the texts' participation in public modes of representation and offers post-marxist readings as an alternative to the gynocritical/biographical model that dominates criticism on literature by women of the early modern period.

Chapter one of this dissertation problematizes separate spheres ideology, lest texts by women become separated from the economic sites that inform them. I consider the ideological importance of generic conventions, arguing that conventions of tragedy and comedy are …

Predicting Ageist And Sexist Attitudes And The Conditions For Their Existence, Heather Frasier Chabot

Doctoral Dissertations

Prejudice and discrimination are pervasive and problematic and affect intergroup relations (Allport, 1954). The purpose of the current research was to expand our understanding of ageist and sexist attitudes. The Pilot Study indicated some of the significant predictors of ageist attitudes among college students. The results of Study I indicated that college students view younger adults as more instrumental than older adults but they do not differentiate between older adults who are 65 to 74 years of age, 75 to 84 years of age, and 85 years or older. Study 2 indicated that intergroup distinctions among younger (17--28 years of …

Queering/Querying Identities: The Roles Of Integrity And Belonging In Becoming Ourselves, Cari Ann Elizabeth Moorhead

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation presents a picture of the complexities and contradictions in the daily lives of people in the Seacoast area of New Hampshire who identify as, or are identified as, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning and allied people (LGBTQQA). The focus of this study is the "Create Our Destiny" conference, a social change project. Philosophically, I viewed this project through a Postmodern feminist lens, and methodologically I used a grounded theory approach.

This dissertation is divided into three sections. Within section one, I present more detailed descriptions of my philosophical and methodological approaches, a description of the geographical and …

Issues Of Engendered Entitlement: Who Owns The Classroom? Who Owns Knowledge?, Dorothy Radius Kasik

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which first year female college students have been prepared by educational systems in our culture to handle knowledge and the acquisition of knowledge during the first year of college experience. It is the contention of the author that women are not actively encouraged in our culture to take ownership of educational concepts in the same way as men. This happens for two reasons, first that because women's methods of interaction in the classroom might differ from men's those methods might not be perceived as acceptable or taken seriously; and second that a woman's discomfort …

Silent Partners: The Economic Life Of Women On The Frontier Of Colonial New York, Aileen Button Agnew

Doctoral Dissertations

The Hudson-Mohawk frontier of eighteenth-century New York made both a boundary and a meeting place for several cultures. The shops and retail spaces of this borderland provided a common space for the convergence of women and their work with the more visible male-dominated economy. As recorded in local account books, black, white, and Indian women took part in many aspects of local commerce. As retailers, as producers, and as consumers, women participated in the world of business and accounts.

Settled in the seventeenth-century by the Dutch, this part of New York had long been occupied by Iroquoian tribes. Trade between …

Factors That Influence The Decision Regarding Hormone Replacement Therapy In Postmenopausal Women, Ruth A Rogers Reilly

Doctoral Dissertations

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in women in the United States today. Prior to menopause women have lower rates of heart disease than men; however, after menopause a woman's risk for heart disease rises dramatically. This is thought to be due the ovaries' decreased production of estradiol, but the mechanisms for this effect have not been fully elucidated. The need exists to investigate the impact of healthy lifestyles on attenuating the risk of cardiovascular disease in women as they age.

The majority of research on hormone replacement therapy (HRT) has focused on the biomedical model suggesting that …

The Sexual Harassment Paradox In Graduate School: Experiences And Answers, Kimberly Ann Smirles

Doctoral Dissertations

Sexual harassment is a pervasive problem in higher education (Truax, 1996). Graduate students occupy a unique power position in academia as both students and teachers. As such, they are potentially victims and perpetrators of sexual harassment. The purpose of the current research was to (a) understand the dynamics of sexual harassment by examining the experiences and perceptions of graduate students and (b) assess whether a commonly utilized education program was effective in raising awareness and changing the attitudes of graduate students. Graduate students from both the University of New Hampshire (Study 1) and around the country (Study 2) were asked …

The Social Construction Of Feminine Sexualities In Women's Popular Periodicals: 1920-1996, Judith Jackson Pomeroy

Doctoral Dissertations

Some of the most significant changes in women's statuses and roles have occurred over the last eight decades. These changes in women's lives have been precipitated by social, economic, political, and cultural arrangements and technological developments. In varying degrees, some of the most significant of these events have had the effect of transforming women's lives in this century. Since these events have also led to shifts in perceptions of feminine status, roles, and sexuality that mirror and reinforce women's changing reality, we might anticipate a parallel transformation in cultural representations of feminine sexuality.

This study relies on two popular women's …

Skillful Women And Jurymen: Gender And Authority In Seventeenth-Century Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Edith Murphy

Doctoral Dissertations

Through analysis of about one thousand cases that appeared before the Middlesex County, Massachusetts, court between 1649 and 1679, this dissertation asks how authority, derived from patriarchal power, operated on the day-to-day level in colonial New England society. It argues that women were integral to colonial communities and to the effective maintenance of social order. While gender determined the roles people played in colonial society, and women were subordinate to their husbands and fathers, women and men shared agency in efforts to maintain social order.

The dissertation begins by tracing the process by which cases came to the county court, …

The Field Of Meanings Of Childlessness In Contemporary Film Culture, Susan Marie Ross

Doctoral Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to examine contemporary cultural meanings of female childlessness and come to understand these meanings in relation to historical meanings of childlessness. The contemporary shifts in the meaning of childlessness reflect America's struggle with women's changing social roles, particularly since the mid-1960s. As more women are stepping outside of the domestic sphere and forging new nondomestic pathways, the meaning of childlessness is undergoing changes and reflects our culture's ambiguity about women's new roles.

In order to examine the shifts in themes regarding childlessness, this study focuses on the thematic analysis of 67 films released by …

Pray Don't Tell Any Body That I Write Politics: Private Expressions And Public Admonitions In The Early Republic, Elisabeth Briggs Nichols

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the intersection between personal letters and published admonitions during the decades following the American Revolution. Based on the analysis of letters and diaries composed between 1776 and 1830 by elite white women situated in the northeast, it reveals the extent to which correspondents appropriated, manipulated, or rejected the vocabulary and messages they discovered in novels, magazines, etiquette manuals, and social experts' pronouncements.

Uncertain about the cultural authority invested in the written word, correspondents self-consciously explored the meaning of writing as they composed their letters. As they wrote about writing, reading, the contrasts between rural and urban living, …

The Female Coach In The World Of Collegiate Sport: Accommodation And Resistance To The Dominant Sport Culture, Nita Marie Lamborghini

Doctoral Dissertations

This research explores the nature and meaning of collegiate coaching as an occupation for women and the extent to which women coaches accommodate to and resist the dominant sport culture. This study includes a brief historical analysis of the roots of coaching as an occupation for women and the emergence and nature of the "female model" of sport. To further explore the nature and meaning of coaching and the extent of accommodation and resistance to the dominant sport culture, forty-six (46) in-depth interviews were conducted with women collegiate coaches currently employed at an NCAA affiliated institution. A brief survey and …

Bodily Discourses: When Students Write About Sexual Abuse, Physical Abuse, And Eating Disorders In The Composition Classroom, Michelle Marie Payne

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation analyzes student texts about bodily violence written for Freshman English and advanced writing courses at the University of New Hampshire between 1994 and 1996. All the volunteers were white women, most aged 18-21. The project addresses four central questions: Why are students writing about these experiences? How are they writing about them? What assumptions inform teachers' responses to such essays? What larger cultural contexts shape how such experiences are represented and understood by students and teachers?

The primary materials are twenty-five student essays; interviews with students, teachers, and campus personnel; and observations of classrooms and staff meetings. Information …

American Business Women, 1890-1930: Creating An Identity, Candace A. Kanes

Doctoral Dissertations

Between 1890 and 1930, many thousands of women in fields ranging from millinery, corset making and dressmaking trades to medicine, social work, and advertising called themselves "business women." Organizations of business women and publications aimed at them helped create an identity for "business women" that served to acknowledge and inspire such women. Business women saw themselves as serious, ambitious, competitive, economically independent, career-oriented, and successful. They focused on gaining recognition for women's achievements, opening new opportunities for women, and instilling high ethical values into business. These self-defined business women, most of whom were single, looked to like-minded women for economic, …