American Studies Commons^™

A Repurposed Narrative: Mary Rowlandson’S Narrative And Pre-Revolutionary Sentiment, Steven F. Thomas

Theses and Dissertations--English

Leading into the American Revolution, Puritan captivity narratives gained a resurgent popularity as nationalized sentiment burned towards political upheaval. Mary Rowlandson’s Narrative (1682) was reprinted six times between 1770-1776, signifying an incredible interest in Puritan stories that seemed to antithetically inspire a progressive and radical revolution against England. The Sovereignty and Goodness of God or A True History of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson enhanced an already fervent revolutionary sentiment, transforming a seemingly straightforward captivity narrative into a totem meant to represent the oppressive struggle between England and her most coveted colony.

Such a literary revival taps …

Modern Charity: Morality, Politics, And Mid-Twentieth Century Us Writing, Matt Bryant Cheney

Theses and Dissertations--English

Scholars over the past two decades (Denning, Szalay, Edmunds, Robbins) have theorized the different ways literature of the Mid-Twentieth Century reflects the dawn of the liberal US welfare state. While these studies elaborate on the effect rapidly expanding public aid had on literary production of the period, many have tended to undervalue the lingering influence on midcentury storytelling of private charity and philanthropy, those traditional aid institutions fundamentally challenged by the Great Depression and historically championed by conservatives. If the welfare state had an indelible impact on US literatures, so did the moral complexity of the systems of charity and …

“I’Ve Known Rivers:” Representations Of The Mississippi River In African American Literature And Culture, Catherine Gooch

Theses and Dissertations--English

My dissertation, titled “I’ve Known Rivers”: Representations of the Mississippi River in African American Literature and Culture, uncovers the impact of the Mississippi River as a powerful, recurring geographical feature in twentieth-century African American literature that conveys the consequences of capitalist expansion on the individual and communal lives of Black Americans. Recent scholarship on the Mississippi River theorizes the relationship between capitalism, geography, and slavery. Walter Johnson’s River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton: A Global History, and Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the …