Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1911. / Also available in digital form on the Internet Archive Web site.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, March 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 346-372).

This study examines the paradoxical and at the same time interesting relationship between Christian religion and the system of slavery in the American historical context. Through the use of Kenneth Burke’s concept and theory of Perception by Incongruity as a theoretical and conceptual framework, this study examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. In the view of this study, Perception by Incongruity, as a theoretical and conceptual tool has the literary and the rhetorical resources to unmask the ironies and paradoxes involved in slave holding religion and religion holding slaves. The principal research question of the present study seeks to probe the usability of the Christian faith by slave owners to dominate and pacify the slaves, and the instrumentalisation by the slaves of the Christian faith as a liberatory and emancipatory belief. Perception by Incongruity enriches the present study in so far as it unmasks the incongruity and paradox of masters and slaves sharing the same definition of God and faith and still remaining in their conflictual positions of masters and slaves. Since this study is a study in literature, the methods of literature study and textual analysis are deployed in examining the primary texts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. A multiplicity of secondary texts; in form of critical and empirical literature; are used throughout this study to support observations, arguments and conclusions that are advanced by the study. Summatively, this study observes and concludes that religion, in this case Christianity occupies a perceptively incongruous position where it is suable by people in conflicting situations. Further, where domination, power and capitalism as an economic system meet, religion belongs in the mind and the eye of the beholders who seeks to use it to justify and defend their particular interests and positions. / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)

This study examines the paradoxical and at the same time interesting relationship between Christian religion and the system of slavery in the American historical context. Through the use of Kenneth Burke’s concept and theory of Perception by Incongruity as a theoretical and conceptual framework, this study examines Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Frederick Douglass’ The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. In the view of this study, Perception by Incongruity, as a theoretical and conceptual tool has the literary and the rhetorical resources to unmask the ironies and paradoxes involved in slave holding religion and religion holding slaves. The principal research question of the present study seeks to probe the usability of the Christian faith by slave owners to dominate and pacify the slaves, and the instrumentalisation by the slaves of the Christian faith as a liberatory and emancipatory belief. Perception by Incongruity enriches the present study in so far as it unmasks the incongruity and paradox of masters and slaves sharing the same definition of God and faith and still remaining in their conflictual positions of masters and slaves. Since this study is a study in literature, the methods of literature study and textual analysis are deployed in examining the primary texts, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave. A multiplicity of secondary texts; in form of critical and empirical literature; are used throughout this study to support observations, arguments and conclusions that are advanced by the study. Summatively, this study observes and concludes that religion, in this case Christianity occupies a perceptively incongruous position where it is suable by people in conflicting situations. Further, where domination, power and capitalism as an economic system meet, religion belongs in the mind and the eye of the beholders who seeks to use it to justify and defend their particular interests and positions. / English Studies / M.A. (English Studies)

This thesis seeks to offer new perspectives on the role of women in African-American Christian denominations in the United States in the period between the Civil War and the turn of the twentieth century. It situates the changes in the roles available to black women in their churches in the context of ecclesiastical politics. By offering explanations of the growth of black denominations in the South after the Civil War and the political alignments in the leadership of the churches, it seeks to offer more powerful explanations of differences in the treatment of women in distict denominations. It explores the distinct worship practices of African-American Christianity and reflects on their relationship to denominational structure and character, and gender issues. Education was central to the participation of women in African-American Christianity in the late nineteenth century, so the thesis discusses the growth of black colleges under the auspices of the black churches. Finally it also explores the complex relationship between domestic ideology, the politics of respectability, and female participation in the black churches.