Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Life Matter: Women Subjects And Women's Objects In Innovative American Poetry, Jenna L. Goldsmith

Theses and Dissertations--English

Gertrude Stein, Lyn Hejinian, and Juliana Spahr employ innovative poetic practices attuned to nature and environment in order to understand their personal lives and depict these understandings for readers. My dissertation investigates how these poets enact an inclusive posture toward environment that many innovative and experimental women poets of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries possess, but are rarely recognized for. To this end, my dissertation provides counterarguments to characterizations of innovative or experimental poetic practices as reclusive, language-centric, opaque, and/or disconnected from the material world. I offer readings of poems, prose pieces, film, and art, to illustrate how materially innovative …

Socio-Spatial Mobilities In An Immigrant Gateway City: Analyzing Latina\O Experiences In East Boston, Mitchell Beam Snider

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which Latino migrants in East Boston represent their material and imagined socio-spatial mobilities in the city. It considers the ways in which participants discuss the relationship of their mobilities to experiences of social exclusion and inclusion as well as feelings of belonging. The first empirical chapter specifically analyses how participants’ motility—or capacities for being mobile—interfaced with their experiences (or lack thereof) of onward migration. It finds that there is a complex relationship between onward migration and participants' motility. The second empirical chapter considers how participants represented encounters with others in the city as emotional …

Distinctly American: Performing Humanity In African American Literature From Proto To Post New Negro Renaissance, Julie A. Naviaux

Theses and Dissertations--English

This project demonstrates how African American literature from the 1910s through the 1940s uses performance in order to stage debates within African American identity and American culture. Drawing on recent literary scholarship, performance studies, and early critical writing on African American art and performance, the project examines scenes of public performance in order to show how these literary scenes create space to investigate social and cultural constructions. The project investigates the ways performances within the texts also critique performances of race, gender, and class. Within these performance scenes, the literary texts also critique the audiences’ reactions to the artistic product …

A Plural And Uneven World: Queer Migrations And The Politics Of Race And Sexuality In Sydney, Australia, Derek Ruez

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

This dissertation examines how the geographies of sexuality and race shape queer migrants’ experiences of settlement and citizenship in Sydney, Australia. Against a backdrop of economic shifts in the Asia Pacific and Australia's long history of racialized exclusion, I conducted 43 in-depth interviews with queer migrants and '2nd generation' adult children of migrants who reflect the diversity of Australia's migration streams, including historically important migration from Southern and Eastern Europe and increasingly significant movements from South, Southeast, and East Asia. Through those interviews, I examined participants' migration histories, everyday spatial trajectories in the city, and involvement with queer and ethnic …

The Contest Of Marriage: Domestic Authority In The Victorian Novel, Morgan Richardson

Theses and Dissertations--English

In “The Contest of Marriage: Domestic Authority in Victorian Literature”, I argue that depictions of engaged and newlywed couples in the Victorian novel consistently dismantle the concept of marriage, depicting the process of two individuals attempting to become one couple as a tenuous and even dangerous project to be undertaken during the nineteenth century. By looking at works where the decision to marry comes at the beginning of the novel rather than the conclusion, I examine the ways in which different novelists document and anatomize the consistent failures in the theoretical underpinnings of domesticity and conjugality. Given that gender, separate …

Northside, Jesse L. Houk

Theses and Dissertations--English

The Northside of Lexington, Kentucky is an area with its own culture, community and art. While living in this community I was able to learn, grow and develop alongside this newly renovated area. The people and their lives intersect in such a way that creates a tension at times. However, many social awareness advocates vie for the success of this neighborhood for many years to come. The objective of studying such an area as the Northside in Lexington is to focus on the similarites rather than the differences in culture, community and artistic endeavor. With a collection of essays and …

Come Together: Desire, Literature, And The Law Of The Sexual Revolution, Eir-Anne E. Edgar

Theses and Dissertations--English

While some scholars have viewed the Sexual Revolution as a “war” with winners and losers, this project finds that all Americans were subject to the fantasy of liberation. This fantasy takes different forms during the era, including relaxed sexual strictures against pre-marital sex, the availability of birth control, and an increased focus on sexual pleasure. However, the seemingly liberatory quickly becomes conservative, coming into focus through the analysis of court cases and legal mandates that protected the declining structures of marriage and heteronormativity. Beginning with widespread fears about interracial mixing in the early 1950’s, escalated by the end of segregation …

Minding The Gap: Uncovering The Underground's Role In The Formation Of Modern London, 1855-1945, Danielle K. Dodson

Theses and Dissertations--History

My research examines how the London Underground – the first subway in the world - provided new public spaces and forms of mobility that redefined how Londoners interacted in, moved through, and imaged the city.

Perhaps nothing embodies the Underground’s iconic status in London quite as completely as the phrase, “Mind the Gap.” This phrase, which originally referred to the gap between the train and the platform at Embankment station on the Northern line, has since become an enduringly popular symbol of London in the minds of travelers and visitors. The fact that a behavioral command about how to move …

Patient-Prisoners: Venereal Disease Control And The Policing Of Female Sexuality In The United States, 1890-1945, Evelyn A. Sorrell

Theses and Dissertations--History

Sexual politics were central in the United States’ venereal disease control movement in the early decades of the twentieth century. This dissertation analyzes the evolution of the venereal disease control movement from the Progressive Era reformers focus on creating a single standard of morality to the Public Health Service’s (PHS) concern over maternal and economic health during the Great Depression. I examine the intersections of public health, gender, sexuality, and citizenship through reactions and policies addressing venereal disease. In particular, the United States’ entry into World War I heightened fears of moral and health crises, as military physicals uncovered a …

Epidemic And Opportunity: American Perceptions Of The Spanish Influenza Epidemic, Jonathan Chilcote

Theses and Dissertations--History

During the final months of the Great War, the loss of human life was not confined to the battlefields of Western Europe. The Spanish influenza virus was rapidly spreading around the globe¸ and would ultimately leave millions dead in its wake. Some American groups, both public and private, saw the pandemic as a blessing in disguise. They interpreted the pandemic as a sign that their work, whether religious, political, commercial, or health, was more vital to the world than ever before. Influenza reinforced their existing beliefs in the rightness and necessity of their causes, and used the pandemic as a …

Transforming Emergencies: The Rise Of A Humanitarian Ideology In The United States, 1959-1987, Bethany A. Sharpe

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation is situated within the historiography of humanitarianism in U.S. Foreign Relations and seeks to make better sense of when and how Americans choose to act in humanitarian encounters. To fully explore the dynamism of modern humanitarianism, this work traces its meteoric rise between the years 1959 and 1987 and analyzes key ideas that propelled forward the movement. It argues that conceptions and perceptions of children were the central ideas that spurred emotional, financial, and security investment in emergencies abroad from the American public. A variety of actors, including large and small NGOs, government agencies, and the media, grappled …

"An Everlasting Service": The American And Canadian Legions Remember The First World War, 1919-1941, Mary E. Osborne

Theses and Dissertations--History

The public tends to think of war memorials as fixed monuments, but I argue that the American and Canadian Legions served as living memorials that acknowledged veterans’ war-time service by providing service to veterans and to the public. This dissertation focuses on how Legionnaires interacted with one another and with their local communities during the interwar years to construct memories of the First World War. By analyzing local chapter records from Michigan, New York, and Ontario, Canada, this case study highlights the contrast between the organizations’ national and local activities. The local posts’ and branches’ wide range of activities complicated …

The Language Of Race In Revolutionary France And Saint-Domingue, 1789-1792, Jeffery L. Stanley

Theses and Dissertations--History

This project studies the historical development of racialist language during the French Revolution as politicians, free people of color, and colonial whites debated the political status of France’s free people of color population. It examines the negotiation of a racialist language that bolstered colonial racial hierarchies with an egalitarian language that sought to level the corporate structures of the Old Regime. I look especially at the ways that language served as a management device to articulate and legitimize new relationships of power in the political culture of the French Revolution. I connect developments in France to the colonies by showing …

Run Of The Mine: Miners, Farmers, And The Non-Union Spirit Of The Gilded Age, 1886-1896, Dana M. Caldemeyer

Theses and Dissertations--History

“Run of the Mine” examines why workers refused to join unions in the late nineteenth century. Through a focus on the men and women involved in the southern Midwest coal industry who quit or did not join unions, this dissertation analyzes the economic, geographic, and racial factors that contributed to workers’ attitudes toward national unions like the United Mine Workers of America (UMW). It argues that the fluidity between rural industries that allowed residents to work in multiple occupations throughout the year dramatically shaped worker expectations for their unions. This occupational fluidity that allowed miners to farm and farmers to …

Indigenista Heroes And Femmes Fatales: Myth-Making In Latin American Literature And Film, Megan O'Neil

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation explores myth-making in Latin America by focusing specifically upon four Amerindian and mestizo figures: Doña Bárbara, mestiza protagonist of Rómulo Gallegos’ 1929 novel; Anacaona and Hatuey, Taíno caciques who first appeared in Bartolomé de las Casas’ Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias (1552); and Andrés Chiliquinga, indigenous protagonist of Jorge Icaza’s Huasipungo (1934). The present analysis examines the evolution of these myths from their original appearance to literary and film versions throughout the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries in the Caribbean and Andean regions. The project focuses upon the ways in which artists have interpreted these …

The Burden Of The Past: Spectral History In The Works Of Carlos Fuentes, 1962-80, Lee Elizabeth Kirven

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The works of Carlos Fuentes are well known for their thematics of History, how the past continues to influence the present despite mechanisms of historical omission, oblivion, or repression. This dissertation offers a spectral reading of a selection of Fuentes’ works—La muerte de Artemio Cruz (1962), Aura (1962), Cambio de piel (1967), Terra nostra (1975), and Una familia lejana (1980)—that represents his vision of Mexican, Latin American, and Transatlantic history. A spectral reading refers to the hidden or indirect ways that the past continues to manifest in the present as specters, ghosts—unconscious and unwitting remembrances of repressed or unknown …

An Internal Dilemma: Different Approaches To Handling Melancholia In Early Modern Spanish Religious Orders, Jesse T. Nau

Theses and Dissertations--History

This study argues that religious orders in early modern Spain developed informal sets of procedures to handle the consequences of melancholia in their communities. It also argues that three influential members of these orders, San Ignacio de Loyola of the Jesuits, and San Teresa de Avila and San Juan de la Cruz of the Discalced Carmelites, tailored these protocols according to their own private concerns and experience with the disease. The changing discourse surrounding melancholia and similar diseases during the early modern period, alongside the unique environmental concerns of these newly founded orders, created a need for new methods of …

Utopian Dreams, National Realities: Intellectual Cooperation And The League Of Nations, Juli Gatling Book

Theses and Dissertations--History

Utopian Dreams, National Realities: Intellectual Cooperation and the League of Nations chronicles the work of the League of Nations’ International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (CICI). This dissertation demonstrates how the CICI’s utopian vision of international peace was actively challenged by national tensions and agendas in the interwar period. It examines the idealistic goals of the movement by focusing on the narratives and motivations of key committee members as they worked toward their own ideas of peace. The challenge of nationalism is illustrated through an analysis of major disagreements between CICI members as well as through biographical case studies of lesser-known …

Freedom From Want: Famine Relief In The Horn Of Africa, Christian T. Ruth

Theses and Dissertations--History

The United States, during both the Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan administrations, pursued humanitarian relief in the Horn of Africa and East Africa with an eye towards Cold War politics. During the Carter administration the focus was on Ethiopia and the regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, while during the Reagan administration the United States’ efforts were mainly targeted towards Sudan and the regime of Gaffar Nimeiry. In both instances, the United States was concerned with the politics of the Cold War, trying to create a more positive image of the U.S. abroad by relieving world hunger, while also propping up …

Negotiating An Electorate: Gender, Class, And The British Reform Acts, Jill Marie Abney

Theses and Dissertations--History

Five Reform Acts passed over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries gradually increased the size of the British electorate. Negotiations over lowering property, rent, and lodging restrictions led to new Acts that slowly increased the number of Britons deemed worthy to vote. This dissertation examines the extent class and gender were relevant to those negotiations of British citizenship over the course of those five Acts. The project scrutinizes the language used in Parliamentary debates, political pamphlets, and political correspondence to reconstruct the constantly-changing conceptualization of the ideal citizen’s gendered identity in Britain and Europe. This project illuminates the …

The Christmas Truce: Myth, Memory, And The First World War, Theresa B. Crocker

Theses and Dissertations--History

The 1914 Christmas truce, when enemy soldiers met, fraternized and even played football in No-Man’s-Land, is frequently used to support the popular view of the First World War as a “stupid, tragic and futile” conflict, the ultimate “bad” war. The truce, which one historian describes as “a candle lit in the darkness of Flanders,” is commonly perceived as a manifestation of the anger that soldiers felt towards the meaningless war which they had been tricked into fighting. However, contemporaneous sources show that the impromptu cease-fire was not an act of defiance, but rather arose from the professionalism of the soldiers …

Imagination Bound: A Theoretical Imperative, Robert Michael Guerin

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Kant’s theory of productive imagination falls at the center of the critical project. This is evident in the 1781 Critique of Pure Reason, where Kant claims that the productive imagination is a “fundamental faculty of the human soul” and indispensable for the construction of experience. And yet, in the second edition of 1787 Kant seemingly demotes this imagination as a mere “effect of the understanding on sensibility” and all but withdraws its place from the Transcendental Deduction.

In his 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Martin Heidegger provided an explanation for the revisions between 1781 and 1787. …

Self-Respect And Objectivity: A Critique Of Rawls, Benjamin A. Logan

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls names two conditions as necessary and sufficient for an agent to have self-respect. I argue that Rawls’s two conditions constitute an inadequate understanding of self-respect. Contrary to Rawls, I argue that self-respect requires moral desert, and that self-respect is a distinct concept from self-esteem.

The Normative Architecture Of Reality: Towards An Object-Oriented Ethics, Justin L. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The fact-value distinction has structured and still structures ongoing debates in metaethics, and all of the major positions in the field (expressivism, cognitivist realism, and moral error theory) subscribe to it. In contrast, I claim that the fact-value distinction is a contingent product of our intellectual history and a prime object for questioning. The most forceful reason for rejecting the distinction is that it presupposes a problematic understanding of the subject-object divide whereby one tends to view humans as the sole source of normativity in the world. My dissertation aims to disclose the background against which human ethical praxis is …

A Pedagogy For Justice: Kant, Hegel, Marcuse And Freire On Education And The Good Society, Michelle J. Johnson

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Rousseau’s educational treatise Emile is a well-known pedagogical work often noted for its progressive educational insights. Although Kant’s Lectures on Pedagogy is much less well known, Kant suggests a solution to an educational problem Rousseau is unable to solve: the problem of whether or not education can work for the good of humanity. Rousseau is concerned that society, and the schools in society, inflames people’s passions and leads to inequality and enslavement. Rousseau sketches an educational program that ideally develops students’ autonomous moral reasoning untainted by inflamed passion, an education which enables students to be moral and just citizens, working …

Anthropocentrism As Environmental Ethic, Kyle L. Burchett

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

Ever since the environment and nonhumanity became major ethical topics, human-centered worldviews have been blamed for all that is morally wrong about our dealings with nature. Those who consider themselves nonanthropocentrists typically assume that the West’s anthropocentric axiologies and ontologies underlie all of the environmental degradations associated with our species. On the other hand, a handful of environmental philosophers argue that anthropocentrism is perfectly acceptable as a foundation for environmental ethics. According to Bryan Norton’s convergence hypothesis, "If reasonably interpreted and translated into appropriate policies, a nonanthropocentric ethic will advocate the same [environmental] policies as a suitably broad and long-sighted …

Becoming What We Are: Virtue And Practical Wisdom As Natural Ends, Keith Buhler

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

This dissertation is about ethical naturalism. Philippa Foot and John McDowell both defend contemporary neo-Aristotelian ethics but each represents a rival expression of the same. They are united in the affirmation that virtue is ‘natural goodness’ for human beings. Nevertheless, they are divided in their rival conceptions of ‘nature.’ McDowell distinguishes second nature or the "space of reasons" from first nature or the “realm of law.” Foot rejects this division.

On Foot's naturalism, natural goodness is just as much a feature of first nature as health is, even though human practical reasoning is unique in the biological world. I defend …

Forget Not The Whip! Nietzsche, Perspectivism, And Feminism: A Non-Apologist Interpretation Of Nietzsche’S Polemical Axiology, Jennifer L. Hudgens

Theses and Dissertations--Philosophy

The nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is notoriously a misogynist according to many feminists. In parallel, Nietzsche’s theory of value, perspectivism, is relativist according to many philosophers. However, I propose a counter-reading of both Nietzsche’s comments regarding women and his comments regarding perspective in which I interpret Nietzsche as neither misogynistic nor relativistic. I adopt a stance which is non-apologist, in that I do not merely wash my hands of Nietzsche’s apparently sexist remarks about women as Walter Kaufmann does, for example. Rather I demonstrate that Nietzsche is performing a polemical attack on a particular kind of naïve feminism which …

¿Pero Tú Qué Te Has Creído, Que La Guerra Es Una Broma? La Seriedad Del Humor En Diferentes Representaciones Culturales De La Guerra Civil Española, Maria Jesus Lopez Soriano

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation analyzes selected pieces of work related to the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) produced during the twenty-first-century as cultural artifacts to be considered in their historical and socio-political context. Specifically, my dissertation focuses on the relationship between the way the conflict is depicted and the message it conveys. Parting from the premise that there has been an overproduction of lieu de mémoire that has transformed the Spanish war into a cultural trend, the civil war-esque, I study a number of humor works. Precisely, these humorous works deconstruct such trend by considering its most common characteristics: the use of metafiction …

Blancura Situacional E Imperio Español En Su Historia, Cine Y Literatura (S.Xix-Xx), Jose Maria Perez Sanchez

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

This dissertation studies identity formation and race informed by the discipline Whiteness Studies. As such this dissertation conceptualizes Spanish Whiteness historically and analyzes its representation in Spanish narrative in prose and film. This research responds to two questions: 1) How has Spanish culture historically instrumentalized Blackness thus contributing to the creation of the Western’s conceptualization of Whiteness? 2) What does Spanish representation of Empire say about its Whiteness? In an effort to answer these questions, this study is divided into two parts that correspond to the conceptualization and representation of what are termed ‘Situational Whiteness’ and ‘Imperial Spanish Orientalism.’ I …