This thesis explores the various perspectives that Northern Americans had on Russian serfdom and its emancipation. This era was significant to both Russia and the United States because each country experienced tremendous reforms including the abolitions of their unfree labor institutions. Generally, Northern Americans viewed serfdom as a milder form of forced labor and suspected that it would be eradicated soon. Abolitionists used rumors of Russian emancipation to advocate for the end of American slavery. Diminishing the realities of serfdom in the American media was a way for abolitionists to condemn the brutality of American slavery by comparison. After the Civil War ended, Reconstruction era politics shaped the way political party-endorsing newspapers would report on the progress of emancipation and reforms in Russia. This thesis will also analyze the frequency of American reports on Russian serfdom and the progress of its emancipation during the Antebellum era while considering the political affiliation of the news sources when possible. Overall, this thesis provides a much-needed examination of the transnational effect of Russian Emancipation on Northern Americans, the Union effort, and the movement to abolish slavery in America.

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In October 1852, Amy Fiske (1785-1859) of Sturbridge, Massachusetts, stitched a sampler. But she was not a schoolgirl making a sampler to learn her letters. Instead, as she explained: “The above is what I have taken from my sampler that I wrought when I was nine years old. It was w[rough]t on fine cloth it tattered to pieces. My age at this time is 66 years.” Drawing from 167 examples of decorative needlework – primarily samplers and quilts from 114 collections across the United States – made by individual women aged forty years and over between 1820 and 1860, this dissertation explores how Fiske and women like her experienced social and cultural change in antebellum America, and probes their personal reactions to growing older. Falling at the intersection of women’s history, material culture study and the history of aging, this dissertation brings together objects, diaries, letters, portraits, and prescriptive literature to consider how middle-class American women experienced the aging process. Chapter 1 explores the physical and mental effects of “old age” on antebellum women and their needlework. It considers samplers modified later in life through the removal of the maker’s age or the date when the sampler was made. Chapter 2 examines epistolary needlework, that which relates a message or story in the form of stitched words. Chapter 3 focuses on technological developments related to needlework during the antebellum period, particularly indelible ink and the rise of the sewing machine, and the tensions that arose from the increased mechanization of textile production. Chapter 4 considers how gift needlework functioned among friends and family members. The materials, style and techniques represented in these gifts often passed along an embedded message, allowing the maker to share her opinions, to demonstrate her skill and creativity, and to leave behind a memorial of her life. Far from being a decorative ornament or a functional household textile, these samplers and quilts served their own ends. They offered aging women a means of coping, of sharing and of expressing themselves. In the end, the study argues that these “threads of time” provide a valuable and revealing source on the lives of mature antebellum women.

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Since Roland Barthes published Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography in 1982, the prevailing theory about photography has revolved around its primary role as a manifestation of transience, death, and mortality. Whether one promotes the philosophy that the photographic image steals away the soul and promotes death, or that it simply captures images of those that have died or will die, the photograph has been commonly interpreted as a visual reminder of the finality of human life. At no time does such an interpretation appear to be more tangibly true than during the mid-nineteenth century when the photograph was commonly used to preserve the actual visage of death in post- mortem portraiture. Here, death is not suggested or implied, but is vividly present. However, the theoretical emphasis that Barthes placed on death has limited our understanding of such images by eliding other meanings historically associated with them. As an addendum to Barthes, I propose that post-mortem images - particularly those of children - represent a more complex relationship between life and death as it pertained to nineteenth-century American culture. Moreover, I believe that it is important to consider post-mortem photography in tandem with painted mourning portraiture, and to contemplate both within a larger visual and cultural context in order to gain a more holistic understanding of these images in antebellum America. My dissertation will re-situate post-mortem representations of children within the material and religious culture of antebellum America, amid evolving historical beliefs about the life of children, the concept of childhood, and ideas about child-rearing, not just postmodern theoretical notions of death. My particular focus on children responds to the poignancy of childhood death in antebellum America and the way in which these images particularly embody the belief in continued existence through the afterlife. By placing such images within the wider context of nineteenth-century culture, I will demonstrate that life existed in death for antebellum Americans through the physical or material presence of the photograph along with Christian spiritual associations regarding the soul and the afterlife. In other words, belief in an ongoing relationship between material and immaterial "bodies" was exteriorized in the painted or photographic representation of the physical corpse, enabling antebellum Americans to interpret the image as both the icon and physical residue of the soul. I will demonstrate that the materiality of the post- mortem image allowed antebellum Americans to preserve that sense of life within death. While the material presence of the image acted as a reflection of "being," spiritual beliefs in a heavenly afterlife permitted nineteenth-century viewers to meditate on the perpetuation, rather than the impermanence, of existence. While this complex historical dimension of post-mortem imagery - a dimension largely ignored by Barthes - provides the central focus of my dissertation, I will also analyze how these images were produced, commissioned, displayed, viewed, touched, cherished, and otherwise utilized in antebellum American culture. / Art History

This study was designed to identify recurring themes in Civil War legends that are told in reference to antebellum homes in regions of Southwest Virginia. Existing literature indicates that collecting these legends is an important task because doing so helps others to better understand the community of legend-tellers. Previous research has also indicated that legends form a type of American mythology with reveals the way the legend-tellers perceive the specific subject they describe in the legends. Eight historic homes were visited in six southwestern counties of Virginia. Qualitative data were collected from a purposive sample of 12 participants who lived in these houses, previously lived in an historic house, or worked in an historic house museum. Each house was chosen as a site of inquiry because it has some significance for those interested in the Civil War or because it represents typical houses in similar southwestern Virginian communities during the Civil War era. In-depth interviews were the sole means of data collection and provided detailed and unlimited legends used to identify themes. The data were collected analyzed using a multiple case study approach. The findings from this study indicate that Civil War legends are being told in reference to antebellum homes in Southwest Virginia. Additionally, the tellers of the legends have common thoughts about the Civil War. The three major conclusions made in this study are (1) northern soldiers were aggressors during the Civil War; (2) southerners were strong during the Civil War; and (3) ghosts and ghostly activity serve as reminders of the Civil War. By continuing to share these legends, the tellers indicate their own perspectives of the Civil War as well as the perspectives of those who originate the legends. The legend-tellers also provide insight into the culture of today's southwestern Virginians as well as the Civil War era southwestern Virginians. / Master of Science

Une théorie unifiée donnant à Poe une cohérence dans sa diversité est possible lorsqu’on base l’analyse de son œuvre sur sa cosmogonie, c’est-à-dire sur sa conception de l’univers. Celle-ci repose sur un dieu devenu universel en se matérialisant, puis en se divisant en la quasi-infinité de matière formant le monde que nous connaissons. La division de l’âme divine est selon lui reflétée dans la nature intrinsèquement divisée de l’âme humaine. En cela, les notions de temps, de mort et de destinée sont interconnectées : l’histoire cosmique est identique à celle de l’homme, toutes deux régies par le temps et circonscrites par la mort. Cette même histoire se répétant tout au long de son œuvre, elle constitue donc le motif archétypal qui l’unifie. / A unified theory of Poe’s works, bringing his diverse writing together into one coherent story can be found in his cosmogony, that is to say, in his understanding of universal mechanics. This latter understanding is based on the idea of a god dividing himself into the almost infinity of matter that makes up the universe, building it in his literal image. The division of the divine soul is, according to Poe, echoed by the intrinsic division of the human soul. As such, Time, Death, and Destiny are fundamentally interconnected: cosmic history and human history are one and the same, ruled by time and circumscribed by death. This story can be found all throughout Poe’s works and is thus the archetypal pattern at the core of this unified theory.

American Literature and Global Time, 1812-59 explores the effects of the early stages of globalization on time consciousness in antebellum American literature and non-fiction. It argues that oceanic trade, extracontinental imperialism, immigration, and Pacific exploration all affected how antebellum Americans configured their national pasts, presents, and futures. The ensuing pluralisation of time that followed disallowed cogent conceptions of national identity. It analyses transnational geographies to examine how they transmit heterogeneous times. The project’s interest is in U.S. national sites that counterintuitively acted as fulcrums for the importations of foreign times and non-U.S. sites that interacted with and modified the homogenous progressive time of nationalism. As such, my project seeks to combine the transnational and temporal turns. It argues that the ethnic, racial, and geographic contestation emphasized by transnational critics found parallels in how antebellum Americans conceived of time. Conversely, it suggests that there were profound links between globalization and the sorts of instabilities in time identified by the critics of the temporal turn. Over its course my project identifies a series of “global times” that came into being in the years between the War of 1812 and the discovery of petroleum in 1859. These fall under three broad headings. First, what I term, entangled times that came about as a result of the movement of ships across borders and different social contexts; secondly, foreign local times that re-set the clock of imperialism and national progress; and, thirdly, a huge mass of reconfigurations in the origins and futures of the still-young United States.

Despite the popularity of free people of color in New Orleans as a research topic, the history of free people of color remains misunderstood. The prevailing view of free people of color is that of people who: engaged in plaçage, attended quadroon balls, were desperately dependent upon the dominant population, and were uninterested or afraid to garner rights for themselves. Contemporary historians have endeavored to amend this stereotypical perception; this study aims to be a part of the trend of revisionist history through an in-depth analysis of the co-plaintiffs in Boisdoré and Goulé, f.p.c., v. Citizens Bank and their case. Because Boisdoré and Goulé sue at critical time in New Orleans history, three decades after the Louisiana Purchase during the American transformation of New Orleans, their case epitomizes the era in which it occurs. In bringing suit, Boisdoré and Goulé attempted to thwart some of those forth coming changes.