Global ETD Search

1	Grave Concerns: Decay, Death, and Nature in the Early Republic Leone, Steven 06 September 2018 (has links) While multiple questions drive this project, one fundamental query lays at its center. How did American approaches to mortality, their own and others, during the early national period (roughly 1770 to 1850) shape both their understanding of themselves and their environment? The answer to that question exposes a distinct set of values revolving around preparation for death, and acknowledgment and respect for their own (and others mortality), which Americans imbibed from various and disparate sources. More specifically, the first half of the project examines how the letters they wrote and read, the sermons they listened to, the mourning rituals they practiced, the burial grounds they utilized, and the novels and poetry they consumed all combined to create a shared knowledge base and approach to death during the early republic. Uniquely, these principles found strength through a conscious linking of mortality to the natural world. Americans understood their own death as part of a larger, both positive and negative, perfected natural system created and perpetuated by God. The American approach towards mortality, however, was not static and the nineteenth century bore witness to the emergence of a sentimentalized, sanitized, and less human inclusive vision of mortality during 1830s and beyond. Ironically, nature remained central to the way Americans experienced death, however, in a consciously aesthetic, romantic, controlled manner. It is written into the present where rolling and manicured lawns combine together with still ponds to create bucolic scenes of peaceful rest among scenes of beauty. The old, grim, but no less natural lessons of worms, dirt, decay, and dissolution no longer hold sway, ignoring the vital and humbling connection between human bodies and the natural world that was understood in the early republic. This shift (and the focus of the second half of the dissertation), was spurred on by numerous interrelated but distinct factors ranging from urban growth, disease, foreign immigration, and changing cultural sentiments. Americans during the 1830s, 40s, and 50s redefined their relationship to death and in doing so consciously turned away from a vibrant, dynamic, and humbling vision of mortality grounded in the natural world. Death history Early National Period Environmental history
2	Instruments of Empire: Colonial Elites and U.S. Governance in Early National Louisiana, 1803-1820 Beauchamp, Michael Kelly 2009 December 1900 (has links) The United States confronted new problems of territorial expansion with the Louisiana Purchase, as it involved, for the first time, the transfer in sovereignty of a territory that contained a population who by birth, language and religion differed substantially from the inhabitants of the United States, but who had been guaranteed the rights of full citizens. A series of other colonial powers faced these same problems on the North American continent, notably the Spanish in Louisiana. As with those earlier powers, ultimately the United States pursued processes that both brought Louisiana government and law into line with its institutions, and allowed for continued local control. County and parish officeholders through their interactions with U.S. authorities prove especially useful for an examination of the processes that gradually integrated the Territory of Orleans into the United States. Neither a study of high political figures in Washington nor marginalized groups in Louisiana can accurately demonstrate how this process of accommodation worked. Local elites and U.S. officials served as the middlemen who oversaw the implementation of new policy and therefore were in a position to obstruct these policies if they so chose. Native-born Louisiana elites confronted significant challenges in dealing with a U.S. administration that in some areas chose to accommodate them, but in many others chose to implement policies through Anglo- American or foreign French newcomers to the territory. The change in sovereignty to the United States offered many individuals from local elites new pathways to power in the territorial legislature, and later in a stronger state legislature. Local governance played a central role in the success of U.S. sovereignty within Louisiana. Louisiana Elites Early National Louisiana Louisiana History
3	Dufilho, Grandchamps, or Peyroux? The Development of Professional Pharmacy in Colonial and Early National American Louisiana Dorrance, Laurel A. 20 May 2011 (has links) This paper will examine the hidden history of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum and investigate the claims regarding the first licensed pharmacist in the United States. Drawing from legislative, church, medical, legal and institutional records, this study argues that colonial control, such as regulations governing medical practice and licensing requirements, established by continental powers in their overseas colonies, tended to recreate traditions and laws found in the home countries. For instance, the more rigorous licensing requirements for medical professionals, as practiced in France and Spain, were also the custom in Louisiana. However, when Louisiana became part of the Unites States, these regulations were relaxed, reflecting the laissez-faire policy of English laws and custom. This work challenges the bias often found in the presentation of American historical experience that makes claims for English colonial traditions informing the entire American experience. Pharmacy Louis Joseph Dufilho Jr. FranÃ§ois Grandchamps 19th Century Colonial Early National Examination Museum New Orleans Louisiana United States David L. Cowen Licensing Legislation
4	The Financial History of the War of 1812 Morales, Lisa R. 05 1900 (has links) The War of 1812 brought daunting financial challenges to the national government of the United States. At the onset of war, policymakers were still in the process of sifting through a developing body of American economic thought while contemplating the practicalities of banking and public finance. The young nation's wartime experience encompassed the travails of incompetent and cautious leadership, the incautious optimism that stemmed from several previous years of economic growth, the inadequacies of the banking system, and, ultimately, the temporary deterioration of the financial position of the United States. While not equivalent to great tragedy, the war did force Americans to attend to the financial infrastructure of the country and reevaluate what kinds of institutions were truly necessary. This study of the financing of the War of 1812 provides a greater understanding of how the early American economy functioned and the sources of its economic progress during that era. Financial studies have typically not been a primary focus of historians, and certainly with regard to the War of 1812, it is easy to understand a preoccupation with political and military affairs. To a large degree, however, economic realities and financial infrastructure determine a nation's capacity for growth and change as well as national strength. The War of 1812 offers a prism through which to view the tensions of economic and financial policymaking during an emergency situation and reveals an important turning point in the development of distinctly American financial ideas and institutions. U. S. economic history War of 1812 United States financial history U. S. financial history early national ear
5	Rewriting Eden With The Book of Mormon: Joseph Smith and the Reception of Genesis 1-6 in Early America Townsend, Colby 01 December 2019 (has links) The colonists living in the new United States after the American War for Independence were faced with the problem of forming new identities once they could no longer recognize themselves, collectively or individually, as subjects of Great Britain. After the French Revolution American politicians began to weed out the more radical political elements of the newly formed United States, particularly by painting one of the revolution’s biggest defenders, Thomas Paine, as unworthy of the attention he received during the American War for Independence, and fear ran throughout the states that an anarchic revolution like the French Revolution could bring the downfall of the nation. State, local, and regional organizations sprang up to fight Jacobinism, the legendary secret group of murderers and anarchists that fought against the French government. This distressing situation gave rise to new literature that sought to describe the “real” origins and background of Jacobinism in the War in Heaven and in Eden, and a new movement against Jacobinism was established. Fears about the organization of secret societies did not wane in the decades after the French Revolution, but worsened in the last half of the 1820s when a Freemason, William Morgan, disappeared under mysterious circumstances in connection to an exposé of Masonry he had written. Most Americans assumed that Freemasons had abducted and murdered Morgan in order to keep their oaths and rites secret. One influential early American who was influenced by this socio-historical was Joseph Smith, Jr., the founding prophet of Mormonism. Smith interpreted the Eden narrative in light of the movement against secret societies, and literary motifs common to anti-Jacobin literature during the period provided language and interpretive strategies for understanding the Eden narrative that would influence how Smith produced his new scripture. Only a few months after the publication of the Book of Mormon Smith edited the version of Eden found there into the text of the Bible itself and made the biblical narrative conform to the version found in the Book of Mormon through his own revisions and additions. Mormonism Religion Literature Book of Mormon Book of Moses Joseph Smith Genesis Eden Adam and Eve Cain and Abel Paradise Lost Tom Paine Thomas Paine Secret Combinations Masonry Freemasonry Early America Colonial America Early National Period Reception of the Bible Biblical Studies Baruch Spinoza Humanist scholarship intellectual history Transatlantic thought History
6	Xenotopia: Death and Displacement in the Landscape of Nineteenth-Century American Authorship Lewis, Darcy Hudelson 12 1900 (has links) This dissertation is an examination of the interiority of American authorship from 1815–1866, an era of political, social, and economic instability in the United States. Without a well-defined historical narrative or an established literary lineage, writers drew upon death and the American landscape as tropes of unity and identification in an effort to define the nation and its literary future. Instead of representing nationalism or collectivism, however, the authors in this study drew on landscapes and death to mediate the crises of authorial displacement through what I term "xenotopia," strange places wherein a venerated American landscape has been disrupted or defamiliarized and inscribed with death or mourning. As opposed to the idealized settings of utopia or the environmental degradation of dystopia, which reflect the positive or negative social currents of a writer's milieu, xenotopia record the contingencies and potential problems that have not yet played out in a nation in the process of self-definition. Beyond this, however, xenotopia register as an assertion of agency and literary definition, a way to record each writer's individual and psychological experience of authorship while answering the call for a new definition of American literature in an indeterminate and undefined space. authorship land landscape death mortality deathscape nineteenth century Washington Irving William Cullen Bryant Mary Prince Nat Turner Edgar Allan Poe Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Margaret Junkin Preston Emily Dickinson xenotopia dystopia defamiliarization nature ecocriticism sustainability literary marketplace environment literary history indeterminacy antebellum early national black African-American Civil War American Studies Death in literature Landscapes in literature nineteenth century (dates CE)

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