History Commons^™

Philosophical Vagabonds: Pedestrianism, Politics, And Improvement On The Scottish Tour, Nigel Leask

Studies in Scottish Literature

Discusses John Bristed's "facetious, digressive" memoir, Anthroplanomenos (1803), about a walking tour through the Highlands of lScotland in 1801 by two young students "disguised as American sailors, with little money and no identity papers,” describing their adventures and misadventures as they encountered suspicion, hostility and sometimes surprising kindness; brings out the two travellers’ often-self-contradictory responses to what they saw and experienced; and shows how the tour contributed to their changing political perspective, mirroring the turn away from 1790s radicalism in better-known writers in the same years. An edited version of the 2017 Marilyn Butler Lecture, for the British Association for …

A Space Of Her Own: Genderfluidity And Negotiation In The Life Of Christina Of Markyate, Meghan L. Nestel

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper draws on transgender studies and theories of gender performativity and genderfluidity to consider how twelfth-century holy woman Christina of Markyate resists traditional and third-gender binary policing. It argues that Christina is genderfluid, and that as a secular, masculinized, and religious virgin, she co-exists within and moves among multiple gender spaces that allow her to establish her own authority.

Imperatrix, Domina, Rex: Conceptualizing The Female King In Twelfth-Century England, Coral Lumbley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This article draws on methods from transgender theory, historicist literary studies, and visual analysis of medieval sealing practices to show that Empress Matilda of England was controversially styled as a female king during her career in the early to mid twelfth century. While the chronicle Gesta Stephani castigates Matilda’s failure to engage in sanctioned gendered behaviors as she waged civil war to claim her inherited throne, Matilda’s seal harnesses both masculine and feminine signifiers in order to proclaim herself both king and queen. While Matilda’s transgressive gender position was targeted by her detractors during her lifetime, the obstinately transgender object …

From The Shire To The Somme: Comparing Military Themes In The Hobbit And Up To Mamtez, Alexander M. Remington

Student Publications

The Hobbit, by J.R.R Tolkien, tells the story of the titular Bilbo Baggins who goes on an adventure to help a band of dwarves retake their home from a dragon. Throughout the adventure, Bilbo and the dwarves endure many hardships similar to those of a British soldier fighting on the western front in the First World War. These hardships are especially comparable to Llewelyn Wyn Griffith's World War One experience described in his book Up to Mametz. Military themes of enforced adventure, constant and escalating danger, comradeship, and the devastation of war can also be found in both the Hobbit …

“Æthelthryth”: Shaping A Religious Woman In Tenth-Century Winchester, Victoria Kent Worth

Doctoral Dissertations

It is well established that Anglo-Saxon writers were concerned with a specific set of principles (chastity, wisdom and piety) articulated in monastic life. However, the representation of women’s religious lives and the exemplification of their values influencing male saint’s Lives and their authors have to date been largely overlooked. To rectify this omission, I focus on Wulfstan’s tenth-century Vita St. Æthelwoldi, in which Æthelthryth’s character plays a far more significant role than we have heretofore noticed. Apart from the traditional figurae the author uses to depict her virtuous devotion, Wulfstan’s account of Æthelthryth is a testimony of a particular …

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

Janeites And Their Benefactors: The Heritage Industry And The Commodification Of Nostalgia, Emma Swidler

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This project sets out to understand how Jane Austen's House Museum and Chawton House have told the stories of Jane Austen and British heritage over the course of the past 72 years. The two houses are nine minutes apart by foot, a walk taken regularly by Austen herself from her home at Chawton Cottage (now the Museum) to her brother’s home down the road (Chawton House). However, since the Museum’s establishment in 1947 and the House’s founding in 2003, the two houses have remained separate nonprofit cultural institutions with distinct purposes: the Museum preserves Austen’s home and legacy, and the …

The Long Defeat – Glimpses Of Final Victory: The Years Of The Locust, Evan B. Lanning

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

An examination of Tolkien’s conception of history, the crisis of unpreparedness preceding the Second World War, and a relating of the story of Churchill’s warnings and eventual ascension to the position of Prime Minister. This study will compare the historical perspective of Tolkien, as represented in his fictional works, with the turmoil that transpired during the early days of WWII. Mostly, it will demonstrate how Tolkien’s view of history manifested itself within the context of the very perilous realities leading up to WWII. Nonetheless, a larger portrait of the nation of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and their joint struggle to …

Demonic Pedagogy And The Teaching Saint: Voice, Body, And Place In Cynewulf's Juliana, Christina M. Heckman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In Cynewulf’s Old English poem Juliana, the saint frames her encounters with her adversaries as pedagogical confrontations, refusing the lessons they attempt to “teach” her and ultimately adopting the identity of a teacher herself. These confrontations depend on three key tropes in the poem: Juliana’s voice, as a material manifestation of language deployed by the saint; her body, both as living body and as relic; and place, especially the place of the saint’s martyrdom and/or burial. Viewed through theories of material feminism, these tropes reveal diverse forms of agency in the poem, as both human and non-human agents make …

Chaucer's Pardoner: The Medieval Culture Of Cross-Dressing And Problems Of Religious Authority, Larissa Tracy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

One of the most ambiguous and contentious characters in Geoffrey Chaucer’s fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales is the Pardoner, the last (and arguably worst) of the pilgrims described in the General Prologue. The Pardoner accused of being a gelding or a mare endowed with several effeminate traits, plays on multiple gendered associations—including that of a cross-dressing woman. Throughout the Canterbury Tales Chaucer manipulates gender expectations and assumptions in the figure of the Pardoner without fully clarifying the Pardoner’s sex, sexuality or gender, leaving the text open to potentially subversive interpretations. By the fourteenth century, cross-dressing was a relatively common literary motif, …

“A Drunken Cunt Hath No Porter”: Medieval Histories Of Intoxication And Consent, Carissa M. Harris

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This essay traces medieval representations of intoxication and consent and links them to contemporary cases, including Brock Turner’s 2016 rape trial and the 2017 slew of lawsuits filed against Baylor University. Through an examination of medieval texts from a range of genres, including the Biblical stories of Lot and Noah, the Digby Mary Magdalene play, proverbs, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the 1292 legal case of Isabella Plomet, and Robert Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne, this essay explores past views of gender, perpetrators, culpability, alcohol, and consent. It argues that victim-blaming those who have been assaulted while intoxicated has …

"We Are Strangers In This Life": Theology, Liminality, And The Exiled In Anglo-Saxon Literature, Nathan John Haydon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In “‘We Are Strangers in this Life’: Theology, Liminality, and the Exiled in Anglo-Saxon Literature,” I analyze the theme of exile in the theological literature of the Anglo-Saxon era as a way of conveying the spiritual condition of eschatological separation. The anthropological theory of liminality will be applied in this dissertation as a way of contextualizing the existence of the exiled, and the multiple ways in which exile is enacted. The intervention of the theory of liminality in this dissertation offers a methodology and vocabulary for assessing what exile means in terms of a spiritual identity, how it operates in …

Strict Restraints: Abstinence's Gender Problems In Measure For Measure, Joseph Makuc

History Honors Papers

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure poses questions about sexual coercion and governmental corruption that resonate today. Recent scholarship has examined sexual abstinence in Measure for Measure in terms of its historical economic and religious context regarding Isabella. However, Angelo and the Duke, the play's other central characters, also make claims about the value of abstinence. I put these characters’ claims into dialogue with Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity and extensive scholarship on Shakespearean England. I argue that abstinence is the axis around which Measure’s main characters revolve, and that Measure locates these characters’ abstinences as competing performances of manhood and …

Interview Of Kevin J. Harty, Ph.D., Kevin J. Harty Ph.D., Meghan Skiles

All Oral Histories

Dr. Kevin J. Harty was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1948. He grew up in Brooklyn until his family moved to Chicago when he was about twelve years old. His father worked for the telephone company, which spurred the family’s move to Chicago, and his mother stayed home and cared for the family. Dr. Harty attended high school in the suburbs of Chicago, graduating when he was fifteen and a half years old. Between high school and college, he worked for a year in a department store, and briefly considered going into the fashion industry. He attended Marquette University …

Englands Happie Queene: Female Rulers In Early English History, Emily Benes

Honors Theses

This paper examines the historical records and later literature surrounding three early mythic and historical British queens: Albina, mythic founder of Albion; Cordelia, pre-Roman queen regnant in British legend; and Boudica, the British leader of a first-century CE rebellion against the Romans. My work focuses on who these queens were, what powers they were given, and the mythos around them. I examine when they appear in the historical record and when their stories are expanded upon, and how those stories were influenced by the political culture of England through the early seventeenth century. In particular, I examine English attitudes toward …

Queen Catherine's Material Body, Kyra Zapf

Summer Research

In an era when most women were at the mercy of their husbands and the courts who ruled in their favor, Catherine managed a long and drawn out fight against being divorced by the most powerful man in England. Material goods contributed to much of Catherine's autonomy. Examples include: naming of items in her will, royal jewels she owned as personal property, and gifts she gave and received. Catherine used her wardrobe as a political statement. For centuries England's queens have been instrumental in creating an image for the monarchy, one tied not only to their clothing and jewels but …

The Greater Torment: Religious And Secular Desire In The Poetry And Criticism Of T.S. Eliot, Katie Buonanno

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

How The “Ploughman Poet” Jumpstarted Highlandism:, Allison Ward

Regis University Student Publications (comprehensive collection)

Begging the question of how the Scottish society has been reduced and commercialized to the romanticized, Scottish fantasy we see Scotland as today because of a process labeled ‘Highlandism’. The eighteenth-century poet Robert Burns became the focal point because of the impact of his major role in this creation and spread of this Sottish fantasy. Burns used his poetry as a method of delivery to sell nostalgia for a fictional, romantic, and exotic Scotland that had been created from symbols once associated with the Highlands to a now global audience.

Breaking down the historical, economic, and cultural shifts occurring around …

George Eliot’S Middlemarch And Florence Nightingale: Friendship And Respect Influences Reform In Sanitation, Hospitals, And The Training Of Nurses, Kerrie A. Patterson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

George Eliot and Florence Nightingale were certainly two of the most influential women of their Era. George Eliot was known for her genius at writing intelligent novels that address societal and historical issues, and Florence Nightingale was known for her work in sanitation reform, hospital design, and as the founder of nursing as a profession. These two women met when they were thirty two years old, and from that meeting onwards, they shared a friendship and a high regard for each other’s work. This paper explores the influence that Nightingale had on George Eliot’s novel, Middlemarch, and it explores the …

"The More They’Re Beaten The Better They Be": Gendered Violence And Abuse In Victorian Laws And Literature, Danielle T. Dominguez

CMC Senior Theses

During the Victorian age, the law and society were in conversation with each other, and the law reflected Victorian gender norms. Nineteenth-century gender attitudes intersected with the law, medical discourse, and social customs in a multitude of ways. Abuse and gender violence occurred beneath the veneer of Victorian respectability. The models of nineteenth-century social conduct were highly gendered and placed men and women in separate social spheres. As this research indicates, the lived practices of Victorians, across social and economic strata, deviated from these accepted models of behavior. This thesis explores the ways that accepted and unaccepted standards of female …

The Good Bloke In Contemporary Australian Workplaces: Origins, Qualities And Impacts Of A National Cultural Archetype In Small For-Profit Businesses, Christopher George Taylor

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This study explored the nature and significance of a common but widely misunderstood phrase encountered in Australia: The Good Bloke. Underlying this enquiry was awareness, based on the researcher’s personal and professional experience, that the idea of a Good Bloke powerfully influences individual perceptions of leaders in Australian small-to-mid sized for-profit firms. The study commenced with an exploration of the origins and history of the phrase, tracing it to the 1788 arrival of a disproportionately male Anglo-Celtic population was composed significantly of transported convicts. The language and mores of this unique settler population evolved for two centuries based on relationships, …

Southern Chapter Of The American Conference For Irish Studies Records, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection consists of records of the Southern Chapter of the American Conference for Irish Studies. Materials include correspondence, meeting programs and minutes, reports, and membership lists. Much of the material concerns the annual meeting and other activities of the organization from 1989 to 2014.

Find this collection in the University Libraries' catalog.