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English Language and Literature

University of Massachusetts Amherst

American Studies

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The Burdens And Blessings Of Responsibility: Duty And Community In Nineteenth- Century America, Leslie Leonard Jun 2022

The Burdens And Blessings Of Responsibility: Duty And Community In Nineteenth- Century America, Leslie Leonard

Doctoral Dissertations

The Burdens of Responsibility traces the emergence of moral responsibility as both a concept and problem in the nineteenth-century United States. Drawing on a range of sources –works of literature, philosophy, domestic manuals, newspaper archives – I show how many Americans began to conceive of moral responsibility as distinct from both duty and rules of behavior prescribed by traditional social roles. Although ethicists today take this distinction for granted, it was an emergent and problematic space in the nineteenth-century United States, brought into being by historical forces, including the rise of market capitalism, abolition, changing women’s roles, and increasing concern …


A Multidirectional Memory Approach To Representations Of Colonization, Racism, And Genocide In Literature, Pamela Lagergren Williams May 2013

A Multidirectional Memory Approach To Representations Of Colonization, Racism, And Genocide In Literature, Pamela Lagergren Williams

Open Access Dissertations

Directed by: Professor James E. Young This dissertation explores where historical memories concerning colonization, genocide, and racism intersect, merge, and overlap in multidirectional ways. The text opens by exploring the possibilities of using a multidirectional model of world history and then moves to a discussion of certain aspects of world political history that interrogates why some nations have dominated others. The focus then shifts to England's attitude toward perceived "others" in the crucial late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by examining contemporary theater drama. From there, the text moves on to current voices that have spoken out against the racism …