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Full-Text Articles in American Literature
Apparitional Economies: Spectral Imagery In The Antebellum Imaginaton, Holly F. Osborn
Apparitional Economies: Spectral Imagery In The Antebellum Imaginaton, Holly F. Osborn
Theses and Dissertations--English
Apparitional Economies is invested in both a historical consideration of economic conditions through the antebellum era and an examination of how spectral representations depict the effects of such conditions on local publics and individual persons. From this perspective, the project demonstrates how extensively the period’s literature is entangled in the economic: in financial devastation, in the boundaries of seemingly limitless progress, and in the standards of value that order the worth of commodities and the persons who can trade for them.
I argue that the space of the specter is a force of representation, an invisible site in which the …
The Power Of Multiplying: Reproductive Control In American Culture, 1850-1930, Virginia B. Engholm
The Power Of Multiplying: Reproductive Control In American Culture, 1850-1930, Virginia B. Engholm
Theses and Dissertations--English
Prior to the advent of modern birth control beginning in the nineteenth century, the biological reproductive cycle of pregnancy, post-partum recovery, and nursing dominated women’s adult years. The average birth rate per woman in 1800 was just over seven, but by 1900, that rate had fallen to just under than three and a half. The question that this dissertation explores is what cultural narratives about reproduction and reproductive control emerge in the wake of this demographic shift. What’s at stake in a woman’s decision to reproduce, for herself, her family, her nation? How do women, and society, control birth?
In …