Digital Commons Network^™

Edward H Durell, New Orleans Civic Reformer And Reconstruction Judge, Sean C. Perry

Master's Theses and Capstones

Judge Edward Henry Durell has faded from the historiography of New Orleans, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. When he does appear, the long held belief that he was a drunkard, corrupt and feeble man sometimes remain. This Thesis utilizes his virtually untouched personal papers to reveal a far different picture. Edward Durell exerted great effort to never be corrupt, despite numerous opportunities to enrich himself at the public expense. He was a brilliant man, who played an important role in modernizing the infrastructure and government of New Orleans in the years 1850 through 1856. He served in his many public …

Inventing George Whitefield: Celebrity And The Making Of A Religious Icon, Jessica M. Parr

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the making of the public image of eighteenth-century Anglican missionary George Whitefield through his use of trans-Atlantic public print networks. Whitefield, who was a consummate self-promoter and publisher of his own work, played a central role in the development of his image. The success of his publishing campaign meant that he reached iconic status, his every move seemingly documented in newspapers and pamphlets around Great Britain and its American dominions.

Owing to Whitefield's successful use of the trans-Atlantic public print networks and his itinerant preaching, Whitefield's influence extended well beyond national, denominational, racial and ethnic boundaries. The …

The Political Assassination Of Edmund Randolph: George Washington's Presidential Affair Of Honor, John C. Kotruch

Master's Theses and Capstones

On 19 August 1795 George Washington ambushed Secretary of State Edmund Randolph in an impromptu tribunal to face the allegation of treasonous corruption in the service of France with evidence covertly provided by Great Britain.

A synthesis of the biographies of Washington and Randolph, histories of Jay's Treaty, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Battle of Fallen Timbers, and the diplomatic correspondence between Great Britain and the United States during the early republic reveals the motivations behind a British plot to manipulate the composition of the United States' government by implicating Randolph. The study dispels the myth that the intercepted French diplomatic …

The Social Construction Of Disability And The Modern-Day Healer, Jennifer Anne Vanderminden

Master's Theses and Capstones

Ramon Cuevas is a physical therapist and the founder of Cuevas Medek therapy (CME), a physical therapy for children with severe physical impairments. Since creating CME he has taught and practiced throughout the world. Families bring their children to see Ramon in his Chile office and elsewhere around the world to see him for therapy. I have conducted in-depth interviews with parents and Ramon, more than five weeks of participant-observation, and analyzed various online materials related to CME. I found that the community that is formed around these families and Ramon provides an excellent example of how disability is constructed …

John Robinson: The Man They Would Not Let Us Forget, Kathleen C. Beliveau

Master's Theses and Capstones

Very little is known of John Robinson. This paper endeavors to partially remedy this problem. In order to attempt such a significant project a variety of works were consulted.

While there is very little information about Robinson's first eighteen years, we can piece together insight from the times in which he lived. Further clues come from his own writings while the reminiscences of those who knew him offer additional insight.

Secondary writings include authors such as the late O.S. Davis, William Wallace Fenn, and Perry Miller. Contemporary authors encompass Stephen Brachlow, Timothy George, and Keith Sprunger. A few pictures have …

Arthur Raper: Modern Realist In The New Deal South, Louis Mazzari

Doctoral Dissertations

Arthur Raper was a progressive sociologist and controversial voice for racial and social equality in the South during the 1920s and 1930s. Son of a white, North Carolina farm family, Raper became allied with modernist voices at Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago. Raper's research was widely discussed through the region and greatly influenced Southern race relations in the years leading to the civil rights movement.

Raper was the first white southerner to look critically and scientifically at the causes of racial violence. The Tragedy of Lynching (1933) was reviewed in hundreds of Southern newspapers and discussed throughout the …

Intelligence Versus Impulse: William H Seward And The Threat Of War With France Over Mexico, 1861--1867, Albert Joseph Griffin Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation argues that U.S. Secretary of State William Seward conceived a diplomatic strategy that enabled the U.S. to oust the French and their puppet emperor, Maximilian, from Mexico in 1867. The genius in Seward's approach lay in accomplishing this goal without committing U.S. forces. Using original diplomatic correspondence, this dissertation shows how Seward capitalized on both the weaknesses of the French, and the strengths of republican Mexico. It demonstrates how Seward bargained for the time needed for his strategy to work, even when many around him were pressing for precipitous action. It argues that Seward's diplomatic strategy succeeded in …

Performing Texts; Playing With Jazz Aesthetics, Richard (Rick) Walters

Doctoral Dissertations

Despite all the critical attention jazz has received in recent years from scholars in other fields---literature, history, political science, cultural studies---very little headway has been made in understanding what jazz aesthetics are and how they might inform other forms of cultural and artistic expression. Part of the difficulty lies in the time-bound, performative nature of the artform and the fact that it is primarily a non-discursive means of expression; that is to say, jazz does not translate well.

This dissertation attempts to evoke and inhabit jazz aesthetics rather than trying to define, categorize or delineate them. Alternating between close reading, …

Reading The Personal: Toward A Theory And Practice Of Self -Narrative In Student Writing, Megan Fulwiler

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines students' personal essays as rhetorical projects of self-representation. The debate over the role of personal writing in composition studies has created a binary opposition between a modernist transcendent notion of self and a postmodern discursive subject. As a result, the complex issues of self and representation in student work is often dismissed in favor of what is traditionally called "academic discourse." The concept of "narrative identity" provides a way to identify the strategies that student writers use to establish ethos, assert agency, and negotiate codes of belonging within multiple social communities. Chapter 1, "Situating Personal Writing," considers …

"In Passion And In Hope:" The Pilgrimage Of An American Radical, Martha Dodd Stern And Family, 1933--1990, John Francis Fox Jr.

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the literary/political pilgrimage of Martha Dodd Stern (1908--1990), an unusually promising writer. Using Martha's writings, government intelligence files like the Venona Transcripts, I develop a narrative and analytic family biography to analyze the faith of this leftist and develop a typology of the fellow traveler that shows its roots in the Progressive Era and their radicalization under the Great Depression and growth of fascism.

Martha's father, historian William E. Dodd (1869 to 1940), imparted to Martha his Wilsonian progressivism and resentment of social distinctions. Martha's experience in Nazi Germany (1933 to 1937) radicalized these roots. She placed …

"There Is No School Like The Family School": Literacy, Motherteaching, And The Alcott Family, Lisa Margaret Stepanski

Doctoral Dissertations

By the mid nineteenth century, Americans were increasingly recognizing the need for public education and literacy for all citizens if the United States was to survive, if not thrive. In addition, new industries and technologies were developed that would slowly transform the agrarian New England landscape into a terrain of mill towns and manufacturing sites. The industrialization of New England altered family life, as well, and lead to the rise of the "motherteacher" ideology, a cultural paradigm that profoundly influenced discussions of childrearing and public education in the United States.

This dissertation examines the motherteaching of three famous nineteenth-century figures, …

Bodies Of Life: Shaker Literacies And Literature, Etta Maureen Madden

Doctoral Dissertations

I examine the roles of literacy and literature among the Shakers from the opening of "Mother" Ann Lee's testimony in 1780 through the early twentieth century to propose that the sect persistently resisted and revised "the world's" literacies. I assert that multiple kinds of reading and writing acts reinforce the beliefs of individuals and the church as a whole, and I argue that the increase in literary acts which appear to contribute to individualism and fragmentation of the institution actually allows Believers to revise their theology so that they see their sect as continuing to grow rather than declining.

In …

The World Of Kavanagh And Cottril: A Portrait Of Irish Emigration, Entrepreneurship, And Ethnic Diversity In Mid-Maine, 1760-1820, Edward Thomas Mccarron

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines a remarkable and little known episode in the peopling of early New England: The founding of an Irish-Catholic community in Lincoln County, Maine, 1760-1820. It details the experience of over three hundred Irish families, tracing them to their Old World origins, following their progress across the Atlantic, and documenting their efforts to establish an ethnic and religious identity on the Maine frontier.

Their story parallels the lives of two immigrants, James Kavanagh and Matthew Cottril, who made a fortune in the Maine timber trade and encouraged kin and countrymen to settle in the new land. Their career …

The Rhetoric Of Authority In The "New-England Courant" (Volumes I And Ii), Preston Tuckerman Shea

Doctoral Dissertations

This study analyses the themes, rhetoric and imagery in the weekly newspaper The New-England Courant published in Boston from 1721 to 1726 by James and Benjamin Franklin and examines the way in which the circle of writers who produced it presented the topic of authority in civil and church politics.

James Franklin's printing business found its niche in the already crowded world of Boston printers and booksellers by becoming the first opposition press in the American colonies. As the first printer to publish the Real Whig doctrines of Henry Care, John Trenchard, and Thomas Gordon, Franklin supplied discontented members of …

Amos Kendall: A Political Biography (Jackson; Kentucky; Banking), Terry L. Shoptaugh

Doctoral Dissertations

This study is a political biography of Amos Kendall (1789-1869), a newspaper editor who became one of the principal advisers to President Andrew Jackson. The study is based on primary sources and documents, as well as the standard secondary literature on the Jacksonian period of American history.

Kendall's career in politics is examined in its entirety, including his activities in Kentucky, his tenure as Postmaster General, and his contributions to the development of the Democratic Party. Emphasis has been placed on Kendall's commitment to republican theories of popular government, particularly as he implemented these theories during the struggle between the …