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Local, Jane Barnes May 2020

Local, Jane Barnes

English Honors Theses

"Local" is a collection of poems broken into five sections: Locale, Catholicism, Maman, Death & Ghosts, and an epilogue. This collection explores the particular milieu of Allentown, Pennsylvania, and focuses on my experiences attending a Catholic school there and the deaths and losses I dealt with during that time. A number of these poems follow a long, narrative style and employ a confessional tone; the locale of rural Pennsylvania is present, either directly or indirectly as an undercurrent, in every piece. It was heavily influenced by Gwendolyn Brooks' work cultivating a poetic locale in her works, such as "A Street …


Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer Dec 2019

Georgic Rhetoric, Virtue And The Commercialization Of Agriculture In Pennsylvania From 1785 To 1870, Naomi Ulmer

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

This research examines how farmers in Pennsylvania between 1785 and 1870 were persuaded by georgic agrarianism to take social, economic and even moral risks to abandon a semi-subsistence mode of production in favor of commercial production. The georgic rhetoric is derived from Virgil’s poem “The Georgics.” It discusses agriculture and man’s labor in nature. Virgil discusses the relationship between man, nature and his ability, or inability, to control nature to ensure his own survival. Beginning in the late 18th century, supporters of improved agriculture, mostly wealthy and upper-class gentlemen, tried to persuade common yeomen farmers to produce for the …


A Charitable Scheme: William Smith, Michael Schlatter, And The German Free Schools, Daniel M. Crown May 2017

A Charitable Scheme: William Smith, Michael Schlatter, And The German Free Schools, Daniel M. Crown

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis describes William Smith’s development of “German Free Schools” in Pennsylvania between 1753-1755. It argues that these schools, ostensibly meant to acclimatize German immigrants to a British colony, were in fact intended to increase pro-Proprietary sympathy, isolate sectarian preachers, and end Quaker dominance over the Pennsylvania General Assembly.


The Best Poor Man's Country?: William Penn, Quakers, And Unfree Labor In Atlantic Pennsylvania, Peter B. Kotowski Jan 2016

The Best Poor Man's Country?: William Penn, Quakers, And Unfree Labor In Atlantic Pennsylvania, Peter B. Kotowski

Dissertations

William Penn’s writings famously emphasized notions of egalitarianism, just governance, and moderation in economic pursuits. Twentieth-century scholars took Penn’s rhetoric at his word and interpreted colonial Pennsylvania as nothing less than “the best poor man’s country,” as reflected in the title of one of the most popular histories of the colony. They also imagined a world where all men had access to economic opportunity and lived free from the barbarity endemic to Atlantic world colonies. Despite this halcyon vision of the Peaceable Kingdom, the reality was the opposite: a colony where religious convictions justified what we today (and radicals then) …