19th century

Women in Britain in the nineteenth century were expected to fulfill the traditional roles of wife and mother as determined by British society. Over the course of the nineteenth century, these ideals evolved, but the core functions of wife and mother remained at the center. Woman's participation outside the household was limited. British women travelers during the nineteenth century found themselves in many different environments. By examining samples of women's travel narratives from various locations in the Empire, this study analyzes the daily lives of British women in the Empire and determines that, while maintaining their roles within the private sphere as wives and mothers, women's activities in the colonies were less restricted than they would have been in Britain.

This thesis argues that the British Public Health movement did not begin in 1842 with Edwin Chadwick's publication, Report on the Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain (1842), or in 1848, with the subsequent passage of the Public Health Act. The beginning of the public health movement was instead the product of local initiatives such as the Manchester Board of Health, administered not by central government, but by members of the local community supported by predominantly philanthropic funding. The Manchester movement predated Chadwick's efforts by at least half a century and bore a greater resemblance to the modern idea of an organized public health system than that advanced by Chadwick and his contemporaries. This is because the Manchester movement emphasized not only those sanitary ideas ascribed to Chadwick but also included a broader spectrum of public health measures, including but not limited to ; preventative medicine, occupational health, and the reduction of contagious diseases.

Unitarian preacher and Union Army officer Liberty Billings arrived in Florida in 1863 with the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry. Billings settled in Fernandina and became active in Florida Reconstruction politics as a Radical Republican. Most ot the rhetoric regarding Billings focuses on his participation in the 1868 Florida Constitution Convention even though he went on to be State Senator and an influential citizen in Fernandina. This thesis examines the life of Liberty Billings focusing on events preceding and following the Convention. In doing so, it argues that Billings' participation in Reconstruction politics derived from his experiences prior to the Civil War as did his transition from emancipationist to reconciliationist. By examining the earlier years of Billings' life as well as the evidence of his campaigns during 1867, his term as State Senator and Supreme Court cases, it will be demonstrated that Billings abandoned racial equality for class supremacy.

Following the work of Sara Houghton-Walker and Edward Strickland, this thesis theorizes the "mundane sublime" as encountered in romanticist John Clare's poetry. Instead of being oriented upward, as with Longinus's elevatory sublime, Clare's mundane sublime brings the subject downward to earth. While the sublime of the Burkean tradition begins with terror, I claim that the mundane sublime emerges out of love for that which is commonplace. Still revelatory, it may be further characterized by an engagement with ecosystems, eternity, divinity, and nature as a whole. Clare's style scaffolds images resulting in a profusion of detail that arrests the mind and allows it to reflect on its own position in nature. As Clare's mundane sublime takes up simple natural objects and posits an ecological interconnectedness, it implies a more environmentally responsible relationship to one's surroundings, making it increasingly relevant for green studies.

This project explores the use if illegitimacy within Western discourse over the last three centuries. Illegitimacy was used in Victorian literature as a literary device to drive plot but evolved into a touchstone for Western discourse to explore the bounds of what is considered respectable society. Over time, as illegitimacy has become more mainstream, I contend illegitimate identities have been utilized to serve as a mirror for Western hegemony. In the first chapter, I explore the origins of illegitimacy being used as a literary device in novels by Victorian authors Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. In the second chapter, I examine the role illegitimacy plays in the origin stories of canonical comic book superheroes Batman and Superman. Lastly, in the third chapter, I scrutinize the role illegitimacy plays in defining the human condition within science fiction as human culture continues to advance technologically towards a post human world.

This thesis examines Walt Whitman's use of the body in his poetry as a location for spiritual experience, and how his use of the body bears strong connection to its use by medieval Persian Sufi poets. The first chapter focuses upon Sufi poetry's role as a shared point of interest between Whitman and his onetime mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Their differing philosophies regarding the cultivation of the soul caused them to absorb Sufi ideas into their own bodies of work in separate ways, and contributed to the split that eventually occurred between them. The second chapter focuses upon connections between Whitman's poetry and that of Jalaluddin Rumi, one of the greatest Sufi poets yet an oftoverlooked figure in Whitman scholarship. The final chapter examines multiple ways in which Whitman expresses the divine nature of the body in several poems from Leaves of Grass, and how those expressions reflect Sufi influences.

Scholars of southern Jewish history maintain that ante-bellum southerners displayed genuine philo-Semitism towards their Jewish neighbors. Historians attribute this to the southern Jews "effort to assimilate into southern society and to the presence of other, more preferred, targets of the southerners" animus, namely blacks and Catholics. This analysis, however, is not sufficiently broad to explain the South's Protestant-Jewish dynamic. It neither appraises the relationship from the perspective of the Protestants, nor accounts for the intellectual inconsistencies such a conclusion presents regarding both Protestants and southerners, generally. This thesis identifies and responds to these shortcomings by examining southern philo-Semitism through the eyes of the Protestants and thesis argues that pro-Judaic rhetoric of southern evangelical clergy inundated southerners with favorable references and images of the biblical Jews, causing southerners to develop a high degree of reverence and respect for Jews, whom they saw as their spiritual kinfolk.

This thesis will examine the governmental settlement policies in two similar topographical areas, the North American prairie and the South American pampas. Specifically, three novels by Willa Cather, will be included: My Antonia, O Pioneers!, and A Lost Lady. They will be discussed in relation to the development of Nebraska as afforded by the Homestead Act of 1862 and compared to the very different land settlement policies of Argentina as conveyed through the Argentinian national epic poem El Gaucho Martin Fierro by Josâe Hernâandez. Particular attention will be made to the influence of the land and its creatures as a shaping influence on the characters created by the authors. There will be additional examination of the effect these works had on historical development within their respective countries, which will involve social and political analysis to place the literature within the historical perspectives of both countries.

In the fall of 1864, Maryland became the first Border State to abolish slavery with the adoption of a new state constitution. In order to best understand the evolution of this event, the purpose of this study was to examine the civil-military relations of Maryland during the Civil War and how these relations affected the institution of slavery in the state. Therefore, the main argument is that the conflict between military and civil authorities in Maryland during the war revealed two points: first, that the federal government maintained a faithful vigilance over the state during the war and second, that the federal government exploited a fading slavery system to not only eliminate any possibility of Maryland entering the Confederacy, but also destroy any degree of Border State neutrality.

Beethoven is widely considered to be one of the most influential composers of all time. His compositions denote a crucial turning point in the history of western music, and his influence can be discussed in numerous ways - musically, technically, theoretically and even philosophically. This treatise discusses one of the primary aspects of Beethoven's influence on later generations: the way that his symphonies contributed to the expansion of the genre and, consequently, to the development of the orchestra. Included is a detailed analysis of his nine symphonies, an overview of his personal life, and an exploration of the historical, social, and political time in which he lived. This thesis collects and examines relevant documents in order to inquire about and better understand the changes and innovations that transformed the standard orchestra of the eighteenth century, opening the doors to the symphonic music of the Romantic Era.