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Oxen: Status, Uses And Practices In The U.S.A., Encouraging A Historic Tradition To Thrive, Andrew B. Conroy

Faculty Publications

Oxen in the United States of America have played an important role throughout its history. Unlike other countries,oxen were never completely given up for horses, mules, or tractors. Instead, the culture of keeping oxen has been maintained by a small group of teamsters in the North- eastern states collectively called New England. Their continued presence has been largely due to agricultural fairs and exhibitions where they have been used in competition for the last 200 years. Ox teamsters were sur- veyed in 2021via social media using Qualtrics. The 423 ox teamsters responding owned 1791 oxen in 39 states, with the …

Edward Channing’S Writing Revolution: Composition Prehistory At Harvard, 1819-1851, Bradfield Edward Dittrich

Doctoral Dissertations

My dissertation, building on the work of John Brereton, Robert Connors, and others returns to the Harvard University Archives to reconstruct the Harvard rhetoric program under the leadership of Edward Tyrrel Channing from 1819 to 1851. During that time, coincident with the industrial revolution, U.S. publishers experienced a period of rapid growth as the cost of production for books, newspapers, and magazines dropped, and demand for print grew among a nascent middle class. Against that backdrop, and in spite of considerable resistance, Channing engineered a substantial shift at Harvard from an oratory-based curriculum to a writing-based one, just as the …

From Subject To Citizen And From Slave To Freedman: Labor Contracts At Two Moments Of American Transition, Rose Julia Phipps

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Had Feminists Only Thought Of Food: Men's And Women's Relationship With Food, 1963-1981, Laura Crean

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis explores whether the women's movement changed how men and women interacted with food between 1963 and 1981. Through the examination of popular magazines Esquire and Mademoiselle , this thesis analyzes articles and advertisements to gauge where there was change. Men's relationship with food did not change. Men continuously cooked only as a hobby, recreating dishes they ate at fine-dining restaurants promoting themselves as connoisseurs. On the other hand, women experienced positive and negative changes as well as stagnation. Sexual liberation allowed women to embrace the sexual connotations of food for the first time in over a century. Yet, …

"This Wilderness World": The Evolution Of A New England Farm Town, 1820--1840, Mary Babson Fuhrer

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation uses the extraordinary conflict that roiled one rural town in central Massachusetts during the second quarter of the nineteenth century as a lens through which to observe communal relationships in transition. Using the Amish as a model, the dissertation identifies traditional communal social organization as agrarian, patriarchal, communal, homogeneous, localistic, and consensual -- as well as closed, conformist, and suspicious of difference and innovation. The dissertation argues that conflict arose in Boylston during the 1820s and '30s as these traditional relationships gradually gave way to more modern ways of belonging, associating, and envisioning one's place in the wider …

Prodigal Sons: Indigenous Missionaries In The British Atlantic World, 1640--1780, Edward E. Andrews

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the hundreds of black and Native American preachers who worked as Christian missionaries in the early modern British Atlantic world. While scholars have generally accepted the convention that most missionaries were white Europeans who knew little about the native peoples they were trying to convert, there were practical and theological explanations for why native preachers not only became ubiquitous, but often outnumbered their white counterparts in Protestant missions. The language barrier, the opportunity to tap into extensive kinship networks, and early modern interpretations of black and Indian bodies all catalyzed the formation of an indigenous evangelical corps …

"The Invisible Lines Between Us": Border-Making In Anglo-America, 1750--1800, Cameron B. Strang

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis explores how the boundary-making practices of white officials came to be the dominant way of dividing and claiming the American landscape. It argues that, in the late colonial era, neither Indians nor officials could actualize their desired boundaries. Indians' map-based boundaries were annulled by white officials while officials' land surveys were subject to onsite termination and manipulation by Indian groups. White frontier settlers, however, developed powerful ways to establish their land claims---namely informal delineations backed by actual settlement---that could not be prevented by officials or Indians. In the final years of the colonial era and the first decades …

Dissecting The Pennsylvania Anatomy Act: Laws, Bodies, And Science, 1880--1960, Venetia M. Guerrasio

Doctoral Dissertations

When the Pennsylvania Legislature passed a mandatory anatomy law in 1883, they were conceding to medicine and science the need for human dissection "material." The legislature was also conceding authority, entrusting physicians and scientists to regulate the messy business of human dissection. In addition to providing bodies for dissection, the Pennsylvania Anatomy Act of 1883 created a modern, state-level bureaucratic entity run by medical experts empowered with self governance: the Anatomical Board of Pennsylvania. Scholars have paid scant attention to the post grave-robbing history of anatomy and dissection in the United States. When the state engaged in body procurement for …

Accounting For Taste: The Early American Music Business And Secularization In Music Aesthetics, 1720--1825, Peter S. Leavenworth

Doctoral Dissertations

This study redefines popular music in early America as sacred music sung and performed in most churches and, starting in the 1790s, theater music imported from England. Rather than more static secular ballads and traditional dance pieces customarily understood as popular music, sacred and theater music intersected with more people more often and did so with more participation. Conflicting tastes of practitioners of religious music and secularizing influences from the theater created a series of reforms and counter measures that featured regional, as well as personal, fractures in American society. These personal and public debates, carried out in diaries, letters, …

Oil, Honor And Religion: United States Foreign Policy Towards Turkey, 1923--1927, Aykut Kilinc

Master's Theses and Capstones

The U.S. and Turkey signed the Lausanne Treaty in 1923 and established equal relations. In 1927, the U.S. Senate rejected this treaty. The Coolidge administration, however, ignored the Senate's rejection and activated the Treaty shortly thereafter. This study was conducted to determine why the Lausanne Treaty was rejected and how it survived. Under investigation were: the origins of the U.S. foreign policy in the Near East, the Lausanne Conference negotiations, and the American public's reaction to the Lausanne Treaty. The Lausanne Treaty was a result of a persistent U.S. Open Door foreign policy that was supported by the new Turkish …

Slavery In New Hampshire: Profitable Godliness To Racial Consciousness, Jody R. Fernald

Master's Theses and Capstones

The goal of this thesis is to restore complexity, normalcy, and the later development of racism to the history and culture of slavery in New Hampshire. In addition to its role as a normal aspect of life in a hierarchical Atlantic world, slavery in New Hampshire gave birth to both racism and racial consciousness after its gradual demise in the state. The roots of slavery, the acculturation of different populations, changing interpretations of the state's history of slavery, and contemporary examples of its influence are presented here in an effort to correct the perception that slavery was inconsequential in the …

Swing Voters? Roman Catholics From 1992 To 2004, Lori Gula Wright

Master's Theses and Capstones

This thesis evaluates whether Catholics are swing voters, how their voting behavior has changed from 1992 to 2004, and what issues are influencing their voting behavior. National Election Survey datasets from 1992, 1996, 2000 and 2004 are used. Two models are evaluated, the ethnoreligious model and the culture wars thesis. In addition, this thesis looks at whether Catholics tend to be single-issue voters.

The research and analysis of this thesis support the conclusion that Catholics are not swing voters and that their voting patterns are more similar to the general electorate than ever before. Although religious, class and cultural issues …

"Woke Up This Morning With My Mind On Freedom": Women And The Struggle For Black Equality In Louisiana, Shannon L. Frystak

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the role of female civil rights activists in the black struggle for equality in Louisiana. Drawing on the fields of history, sociology, political science, and gender studies, this project demonstrates that women were indispensable figures in the freedom struggle in Louisiana throughout the twentieth century, and highlights their roles as organizers, participants, and leaders.

The project focuses on the entire state of Louisiana, but more specifically in areas where civil rights organizations concentrated their efforts. While many historical studies of the movement begin with the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, this …

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 …

"The Cradle Of Liberty": Faneuil Hall And The Political Culture Of Eighteenth-Century Boston, Jonathan Mcclellan Beagle

Doctoral Dissertations

Built in the early 1740s as a combination marketplace and town hall, Boston's Faneuil Hall became famous for its role in the American Revolution, earning it the affectionate nickname "The Cradle of Liberty." This dissertation examines the building as an expression of Boston's evolving political culture and community identity in the eighteenth century. At the time of Faneuil Hall's construction, the seaport was struggling to reconcile its proud Puritan heritage with the demands of an imperial existence as part of the British Empire, a process that provoked controversy. Among the most explosive issues was that of a fixed and regulated …

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 …

Juggling With Three Identities: Ideology Of Yugoslavism Among The American Serbs (1900--1993), Vladimir B. Pistalo

Doctoral Dissertations

During the late 19th century and throughout the 20 th century, three waves of Serbian immigrants left the constant political flux of the Balkans to arrive in a constantly changing America. This dissertation examines how the political changes in the mother country and in the United States influenced the self-identification of each wave of immigrants as Serbs, Yugoslavs and Americans. I draw upon oral histories of Serbian-American intellectuals, Serbian language newspapers in the United States, immigrant memoirs and literature, and secondary sources in both Serbian and English to document the construction and reconstruction of Serbian, Yugoslav and American identity.

Before …

Exploring Other Worlds: Margaret Fox, Elisha Kane, And The Antebellum Culture Of Curiosity, David Alexander Chapin

Doctoral Dissertations

Antebellum Americans had a strong interest in the unknown, which manifested itself simultaneously in highbrow, middlebrow, and lowbrow culture. Venues such as scientific institutions, lyceums, lecture halls, the "penny-press," and the dime-museum all catered to American curiosity. Exploring Other Worlds examines this "culture of curiosity," arguing that curiosity was a defining trait of antebellum America, transcending many of the boundaries we often associate with the era. Curiosity promoted intellectual interest in science, but it also led to the sensationalism of modern commercial popular culture.

The inter-related lives of Elisha Kane and Margaret Fox demonstrate this thesis. Kane was America's first …

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 …

Domestic Visions And Shifting Identities: The Urban Novel And The Rise Of A Consumer Culture In America, 1852-1925, Nancy Helen Von Rosk

Doctoral Dissertations

Domestic Visions reexamines the tradition of the urban novel in America by reading the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry James, William Dean Howells, Theodore Dreiser, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Edith Wharton, Abraham Cahan and Anzia Yezierska within the historical and cultural contexts of an evolving urban consumer culture. Bringing together not only a wide range of canonical and non-canonical texts, but also an analysis of America's shifting domestic ideals over the last half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this study traces the impact of a new spectacular urban public culture on both the private realm and those who are …

"The Law Will Make You Smart": Legal Consciousness, Rights Rhetoric, And African American Identity Formation In Massachusetts, 1641-1855, Scott Hancock

Doctoral Dissertations

In 1834, one of the informal leaders of Boston's black community rebuked a black defendant in court, declaring "the law will make you smart." This dissertation uncovers how African Americans in Massachusetts did indeed become 'smart' through an ongoing engagement with the law for over two hundred years. While the law could be oppressive, the accessibility of the legal system in Massachusetts enabled black women and men, slave and free, to learn to use the law in efforts to exercise some control over their daily lives. In the deteriorating racial atmosphere during the first half of the nineteenth century, the …

In The Name Of The Father: The Continuity And Paradox Of Puritan Theology And Pastoral Authority, Patricia J. Hill-Zeigler

Doctoral Dissertations

American scholars have long been interested in the intellectual and social impact of the eighteenth-century religious revival, the Great Awakening. This dissertation uses a colonial family as a case study of the significance of this major colonial event. It traces and compares the intellectual and theological development of Michael Wigglesworth, and his two sons, Samuel and Edward. The Wigglesworth family represents both the foundation of Puritan thought in the seventeenth century and the transformation of that thought in the eighteenth century. Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705), a tutor and Fellow at Harvard College and pastor of the church in Malden, Massachusetts, was …

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 …

"The Tawnee Family": The Life Course Of Indian Value Adaptation For Eleazar Wheelock's Indian Scholars, Stacy Lynn S Hogsett

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation is a study of value adaptation by the southern New England Indians who attended Moor's Charity School, in Lebanon, Connecticut, between 1743 and 1770. These Indians were part of New Light Minister Eleazar Wheelock's extended household, dubbed by one student, the "tawnee family." This designation distinguished these Indian scholars as surrogate members of the Wheelock family. I analyzed how the Indian students adapted to, resisted and reformed the values taught at Moor's as they grew to adulthood.

I drew my analysis from letters collected in the Eleazar Wheelock Papers housed at Dartmouth College. My arguments are drawn principally …

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, …

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, …

Friend Of Government Or Damned Tory: The Creation Of The Loyalist Identity In Revolutionary New Hampshire, 1774-1784, James Leslie Walsh

Doctoral Dissertations

The dissertation examines the creation of loyalist identity during the American Revolution. Two distinct identities were fashioned, one by the loyalists themselves and a second competing identity which was created for them by their opponents, the radical faction of the revolutionary movement. Both identities were created consciously and for political or economic motives.

The identity created by the loyalists through their actions and words is to be found in a close reading of the claims filed with the Claims Commission created by Parliament in 1783. The dissertation argues that loyalists self-fashioned an individual political identity, as part of the creation …