The American foreign mission movement was spawned in New England during the early years of the nineteenth century, in the ferment of the second great awakening. This outburst of evangelical energy and nationalist zeal was harnessed in service of a global agenda, which would be realized in part through the efforts of women. In my thesis, I explore the various convergences of home, nation, and Protestant mission in the journal-letters of three missionary women of the first half of the century--Harriet Newell, Caroline Pilsbury, and Narcissa Whitman. In a time when empire was driven by moral as much as territorial imperatives, these women were transformed into agents of imperial domesticity, expected to convert the world's "heathen" through the power of sheer feminine influence. Through letter writing, they negotiated these expectations before an emerging evangelical reading public, revealing in their texts the complex, and often-contradictory, discourses that shaped their sense of mission in an era of American expansion.

A rapidly accelerating consumer culture increasingly defined Mexican urban society during the rule of Porfirio Díaz, 1876-1911. The significance of this global process at a national level can best be understood within the context of the economic and cultural modernization drive of the Porfirian regime. It manifested itself in a growing domestic consumer market and manufacturing base, an evolution of retailing and advertising forms, and the social and cultural implications of these developments. This consumer culture helped to define the visual and social reality of Mexico City and other cities, influencing architecture, street life, and other public as well as private spaces of urban Porfirians. Equally importantly, its presence permeated public discourse, with consumer goods, institutions, and values providing the vocabulary and metaphors many used to help explain and understand the rapid changes that characterized their lives. In other words, goods and the language of goods gave shape and form to the abstract condition of modernity in which Porfirian Mexicans lived. Using both written and visual sources, this dissertation outlines the form, institutions, and several of the major actors creating this consumer culture. This includes tracking the rise and evolution of the cigarette industry, advertising, department stores, and modernizing crime during the Porfiriato.

This thesis demonstrates the importance of, and historical necessity for a quick reaction, riverine based force to combat the growing problem of rebel guerrilla warfare attacks on the Mississippi River traffic. The Thesis takes a chronological view on the formation of the Mississippi Marine Brigade froms its predecessor, the Mississippi Ram Fleet. This work examines how it formed, the ships involved, the various commanders who guided their actions, and how effective the unit performed under adverse copnditions and changing command structures.

This project addresses the issue of womens agency (i.e., power) in nineteenth-century America, specifically how women worked within gender and religious conventions in order to exert power. The texts that are highlighted are James Fenimore Coopers The Last of the Mohicans (1826), William Apesss The Experiences of Five Christian Indians (1833), and Susan Warners The Wide, Wide World (1851). The acts of singing hymns, reading the Bible, and preaching/proselytizing allowed women to use their voices in religious affairs, which could then allow women more opportunities to read other texts and voice their opinions. By reevaluating female characters in Coopers, Apesss, and Warners textscharacters who are often either ignored or portrayed as powerlessscholars can note that these women claim agency in sometimes subtle and sometimes overt ways, acting within societys conventions while using their voices to convert, sway, resist, please, and teach others.

This dissertation examines the process of desegregating Fort Worth's public schools from the inception of the public school system to the 1994 conclusion of the local desegregation case. When members of the African American community filed a suit against the school district in 1959, the subsequent court case, Flax v. Potts, made Fort Worth a petri dish for experimentation with the implementation of Supreme Court cases. Despite the city's claim to a western heritage, it had roots in the South, especially in the realm of race relations. The opening chapters trace the formation of Fort Worth's public school system, its pride in providing "equal" educational opportunities, and the status of race relations before the desegregation battles. While Brown v. Board of Education and the subsequent Flax case made black activism visible, local African Americans made their voices heard in Fort Worth decades earlier, particularly through NAACP membership and activism. Chapter Three explores responses to Brown, revealing many Fort Worth white residents' racism and self-denial regarding Brown's implementation. Chapter Four and Five examine the early impact of Flax and the school board members' responses to the case's filing. School desegregation propelled a fight to integrate public spaces, which in turn spurred demands for increased integration in public schools. After the Supreme Court's decision in Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg, Fort Worth Independent School District began busing its students. Chapter Six addresses the district's attempts to create a truly integrated school district as defined by Swann and the new issues Swann introduced. Busing served as the primary catalyst for white flight in Fort Worth. Chapter Seven reviews efforts by local education leaders, and even the federal judge presiding over the case, to find avenues to address integration demands and curb white flight into private schools and suburban areas. This dissertation is a narrative of the battle for equal access to Fort Worth's public schools, but it is also the story of a city and its startled response when confronted with the jarring reality that its self-identity differs dramatically from the perception of those who live on its racial, cultural, and economic periphery.

This dissertation is a teacher-research study of integrating a performance-based practice, students oral presentations on their writing, into the writing classroom. Drawing on Performance theory, this study demonstrates that a performance-based analysis and approach to the writing classroom heightens sensitivity to aesthetics in non-mimetic works and ultimately argues that aesthetics should be re-approached through the heuristic of Performance to enhance students writing and to facilitate sensitivity in the production and analysis of texts. Chapter One establishes the connection between composition and Performance studies by looking at four historical traditions which bring to light the oral, literate and performantive dimensions of Composition and Rhetoric. The similar roots between Rhetoric and theatre, the canon of Delivery in Rhetorical History, elements of Performance in Composition history, and the connections between speaking and writing demonstrate how the presentation possesses performance-based elements that are infused within these traditions and directly correlate to the writing classroom. Chapter two explores the feminist and teacher research methodology which informs the design and implementation of the study of students oral/visual presentations as performance-based acts. Chapter three analyzes eight students oral/visual presentations and written reflections on speaking and writing for their aesthetic performances. These performances demonstrate how students embodied authority in the writing classroom by taking on various roles, by performing as experts, by identifying with the audience, and resisting the assignment. Chapter four looks at the implications of integrating performance-based pedagogy in the writing classroom as they bear directly on how students understand ethos, audience, and other rhetorical strategies Larger implications for this study reach beyond the classroom and across disciplinary divisions. Rhetoric and poetic are two divisions that have long been separated in the History of Rhetoric, in the production and analysis of texts and, by consequence, in the writing classroom. The aesthetic qualities of rhetoric, which rhetoric has distinguished from performance, need to be considered in order to render a more accurate account of the rhetorical situation and thus restore performance to the canon of delivery.

The erroneous expectations of the first group of American missionaries sent to Hawaii directly led to immense initial skepticism and worry on the part of the proselytizers, but fears and reservations gradually fell away as progress slowly emerged from the troubled effort. New impressions collided with preconceived notions to shape decades of Christian / Hawaiian interaction as the first two groups of New England proselytizers grappled with an unceasing series of surprises. Many historians have written about this intersection of cultures, but few have analyzed the intentions behind the missions actions, preferring to simplify the Christians as either saints or demons. This study seeks to find the reasons behind missionary surprise in Hawaii, using their own words to narrow the gap between hagiography and demonization.

The United States government has consistently initiated increased access to higher education for all citizens. From the GI Bill of 1944 through the recent debates surrounding the Commission on the Future of Higher Education, federal legislation has regulated institutions awarding advanced degrees and certifications. Mandates have occurred in every component of higher education from admissions, finances, and services to the content of higher education. The most recent debates not only extend these efforts, but threaten the regional accreditation process that has been in place for almost one hundred years. The current national discussion concerning issues related to higher education has been focused on the ideals of improving student access, student success, student learning, and the federal government's fundamental concerns with student loan default rates. Ultimately, interference with education may not only cripple the success of the American higher education system but also artificially inhibit its ability to compete in an increasingly competitive global market.

Since the late nineteenth-century, one of the most important industries to East Texas has been timber. Several studies have examined the timber industry during the boom years from 1890 to the 1920s as well as the labor practices those companies employed. None, however, has examined the role of women inside of timber products plants. Beginning in the 1930s, women entered the timber products industry as industrial workers. Their numbers increased with World War II, and timber companies retained their female industrial workforce after the end of the war due to a labor shortage, women's lower wages, and the lack of a strong masculine identity tied to timber. Far from cooperating in a new gender-line-breaking experiment, however, this study argues that the companies needed women's employment to lower their costs, and women in East Texas needed the positions due to a lack of other suitable jobs in the area.

This dissertation includes six total chapters, one devoted to annotations for the poems in Poems Before Congress by Elizabeth Barrett Browning first published by Chapman and Hall in London, 1860. The volume has not been reprinted since that time except in a few collected works but never with substantial annotation or critical attention. Chapter 1 includes a brief introduction to the volume, information on Elizabeth Barrett Brownings (EBB) life in Italy, and a chronology of her years in Italy. Chapters 2-4 explore various aspects of her work as a political poet. Chapter 2 examines how she claims her place among poets of the Risorgimento, suggesting the risks she took for publication and her determination to speak on political issues. Chapter 3 explores the influence of Carlylean heroics on her response to Napoleon III, and in contrast, the responses of Alfred Tennyson, Coventry Patmore, Frederick Tennyson, and Robert Bulwer Lytton in an effort to contextualize the role she assumed as Hero-Poet. Chapter 4 compares the women EBB created for Poems Before Congress (PBC) in light of Germaine de Staëls famous character Corinne from Corinne, or Italy, a novel whose influence has been traced to EBBs verse-novel, Aurora Leigh. Chapter 5 includes a brief introduction to the poems, information on the order of poems based in manuscripts, head notes for each poem and substantial annotations. Chapter 6 follows the trajectory of reception from contemporary through modern critical and scholarly response and suggests a second edition of the volume with possible contents.