This thesis examines the connection between participation in the British empire and constructions of Scottish national identity, through investigating the activities of civil society organisations in Scotland, in particular missionary societies and the Presbyterian churches in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Though empire is commonly thought to have had a significant impact on Scots' adoption of a British identity. The process of how representations of empire were transmitted and understood at home has been little explored. Similarly, religion is thought to have played an important role in supporting a sense of Scottish identity. but this theme has also been little explored. This thesis, then, examines evidence of civil society activity related to empire, including philanthropic and religious, learned and scientific, and imperial propagandist activities. In order to elucidate how empire was understood at home through the engagement with empire by civil society organisations. Of these forms of organisation. missionary societies and the churches were the most important in mediating an understanding of empire. The pattern of the growth and development of the movement in support of foreign missions is described and analysed, indicating its longevity, its typical functions and membership, and demonstrating both its middle class leadership and the active participation of women. Analysis of missionar) literature of a variety of types shows that dominant discourses of religion, race. gender and class produced iconic representations of the missionary experience which reflected the values of middle class Scots. The analysis also demonstrates both that representations of Scottish national identity were privileged over those of a British identity, but that these were complementary rather than being seen as in opposition to each other. Through examining the public profile of the missionary enterprise in the secular press it is shown that these representations were appropriated in the secular sphere to represent a specific Scottish contribution to empire. The thesis concludes that the missionary experience of empire. embedded as it was in the institutional life of the Presbyterian churches, had the capacity to generate representations and symbols of Scottish national identity which were widely endorsed in both religious and secular spheres in the age of high imperialism.

This dissertation explores vampire logic in Hispanic short fiction of the last decade of the 19th century and first three decades of the 20th century, and is thus a comparative study; not simply between Spanish and Latin American literary production, but also between Hispanic and European literary traditions. As such, this study not only draws attention to how Hispanic authors employed traditional Gothic conventions—and by extension, how Hispanic nations produced “modern” literature—but also to how these authors adapted previous models and therefore deviated from and questioned the European Gothic tradition, and accordingly, established trends and traditions of their own. This study does not pretend to be exhaustive. Even though I mention poetry, plays, and novels from the first appearance of the literary vampire in the mid-18th century through the fin de siglo and the first few decades of the 20th century, I focus on short fiction produced within and shortly thereafter the fin de siglo, as this time period saw a resurgence of the vampire figure on a global scale and the first legitimate appearance in Hispanic letters, being as it coincided with a rise in periodicals and short story production and represented developments and anxieties related to the physical and behavioral sciences, technological advances and urban development, waves of immigration and disease, and war. While Chapter 1 establishes a working theory of the vampire from a historical and materialist perspective, each of the following chapters explores a different trend in Hispanic vampire literature: Chapter 2 looks at how vampire narratives represent political and economic anxieties particular to Spain and Latin America; Chapter 3 studies newly married couples and how vampire logic leads to the death of the wife—and thus the death of the “angel of the house” ideal—therefore challenging ideas surrounding marriage, the family, and the home; lastly, Chapter 4 explores courting couples and how disruptions in the makeup of the public/private divide influenced images of female monstrosity—complex, parodic ones in the Hispanic case. One of the main conclusions this study reaches is that Hispanic authors were indeed producing Gothic images, but that these images deviated from the European Gothic vampire literary tradition and prevailing literary tendencies of the time through aesthetic and narrative experimentation and as a result of particular anxieties related to their histories, developments, and current realities. While Latin America and Spain produced few explicit, Dracula-like vampires, the vampire figures, metaphors, and allegories discussed in the chapters speak to Spain and Latin America’s political, economic, and ideological uncertainties, and as a result, their “place” within the modern global landscape. This dissertation ultimately suggests that Hispanic Gothic representations are unique because they were being produced within peripheral spaces, places considered “non-modern” because of their distinct histories of exploitation and development and their distinct cultural, religious, and racial compositions, therefore shifting perceptions of Otherness and turning the Gothic on its head. The vampire in the Hispanic context, I suggest, is a fusion of different literary currents, such as Romanticism, aesthetic movements, such as Decadence, and modes, such as the Gothic and the Fantastic, and is therefore different in many ways from its predecessors. These texts abound with complex representations that challenge the status quo, question dominant narratives, parody literary formulas, and break with tradition. / Spanish

Cette thèse met en lumière l'histoire de l'éducation des filles arméniennes du milieu du XIXe au début du XXe siècle en analysant pour la première fois cette histoire dans le contexte général des événements politiques qui ont influencé son développement. Elle explore également le travail des femmes arméniennes en tant que pédagogues, organisatrices et donatrices des écoles de filles. Cette recherche est fondée sur un large éventail de sources publiques et privées : rapports, programmes et règlements scolaires, publications de presse (éditoriaux, correspondances, nouvelles, annonces générales et publicitaires), œuvres littéraires, discours publics, mémoires, journaux intimes, autobiographies et lettres. Celles-ci révèlent la progression de l'éducation des filles des cours particuliers et de la formation archaïque par des femmes pieuses et des diaconesses jusqu'à la fondation d'écoles régulières pour les filles et à une forme d'éducation similaire à celle de leurs frères. Le développement de l'éducation et des écoles de filles arméniennes s'est déroulé dans le contexte triplement tumultueux des politiques coloniales et répressives du gouvernement russe au Caucase, des efforts de l'Église arménienne pour maintenir son autorité et son pouvoir sur les communautés arméniennes, et de la croissance du mouvement national et révolutionnaire des arméniens. Cette recherche souligne la façon dont la question de l'éducation des filles arméniennes a émergé et évolué. Elle montre également comment ce changement a amené les femmes arméniennes à assumer un rôle public, à établir des écoles, des organismes de bienfaisance, des bibliothèques, à écrire et à traduire de la littérature pour enfants, à organiser une série d'activités de collectes de fonds pour les écoles de filles (bazar de charité, loterie publique, vente de broderies, théâtres et concerts) et à participer au mouvement révolutionnaire. Cette thèse s'inscrit dans l'actualité des recherches en sciences de l'éducation sur la scolarisation, les programmes et les institutions scolaires du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle. Elle s'engage également dans les débats sur l'éducation des filles et l'histoire des femmes dans l'Europe de l'Est et au Caucase. Cette recherche contribue enfin aux Études Arméniennes en écrivant un chapitre essentiel et inédit de l'histoire arménienne sur la présence et le rôle des femmes dans les événements politiques, sociaux et culturels majeurs du XIXe et du début du XXe siècle. / This dissertation brings to the light the story of the late-mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth-century education of Armenian girls for the first time by placing it in the context of the general political events that influenced its development. It also examines Armenian women's work as educators, organisers and sponsors of girls' schooling. The research is based on a wide array of public and private sources: school reports, programs and regulations, press publications (editorials, correspondences, news, announcements and advertisements), literary works, speeches, memoirs, diaries, autobiographies and letters, which reveal the period's progression from girls receiving private tutoring and an archaic training by deaconesses and celibate devotees to establishing regular schools for girls and providing them a similar form of education as their brothers. The development of Armenian girls' schools and education took place in the turbulent context of the repressive colonial politics of the Russian Government in the Caucasus, the efforts of the Armenian Church to maintain its authority and power over the Armenian communities and the growing Armenian national-revolutionary movement. The research uncovers the nuances of changing consciousness about Armenian girls' education and shows how it led Armenian women to assume public roles, establish schools, charities, libraries, write and translate children's literature, undertake a wide range of fund-raising public activities for girls' schools (charity bazaars, public lotteries, embroidery sales, theatres and concerts) and enter the revolutionary movement. This dissertation joins a vibrant conversation in the educational sciences about nineteenth and early twentieth-century schooling, programs and institutions. It also engages in the discussions about Eastern-European and Caucasian girls' education and women's history. The research also contributes to Armenian Studies by restoring to Armenian history a missing and vital chapter about women's presence and role in the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century major political, social and cultural developments.