This dissertation examines women's involvement with a Christian religious order—the Premonstratensians—from the foundation of that order in 1120 to the end of the twelfth century. The order's charismatic leader, Norbert of Xanten, attracted many hundreds of members to it, who were intrigued by his call for a return to the principles of the early church. Unlike most previous monastics, who had lived apart from the secular world, the first Premonstratensians—both male and female—served their wider communities in hospitals and through preaching. This dissertation maps out the ways in which, amid the wider religious reform movement which shook twelfth-century western Europe, women's financial contributions, familial links and spiritual vocations were fundamental to the cohesion of this religious organization. Despite its prominence in the Middle Ages, the Premonstratensian Order is most often discussed by modern scholars as a case study of how misogyny limited women's roles in the ever-more institutionalized medieval church. Textbooks on medieval religious history state that the Premonstratensians rejected all involvement with women in 1198—yet this is not the case. By delving into a sourcebase largely ignored by previous scholars because of its scattered and interdisciplinary nature—textual, art historical, and archaeological—this dissertation makes a contribution to the burgeoning scholarship on the religious, social, and economic activities of medieval women while also challenging mainstream histories to reconsider the assumptions on which they are built.

This is a study of eighteenth-century local care networks in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The letters and petitions of desperate women and men document the channels those in need travelled. Details of sufferers' lives and their interactions with town authorities and care providers illuminate community-based relief pathways. Mapping the geography of poor relief through the experiences of individuals illuminate vibrant networks of local relief channels that sufferers not only knew about, but contributed to in an active way.

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Inspired by feminist historians who called upon scholars to examine gender as a socially constructed phenomenon, this project's overarching goal is to historicize manhood by providing a survey of men's experiences as men from the late sixteenth- to the late-eighteenth-century. Specifically, it explores, how, why, and in what ways hegemonic norms of manhood changed in Massachusetts from its founding to the ratification of the United States Constitution. It also investigates the formation of and relationships between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities in the early modern British Atlantic. Both the transmission and reception of manhood in early Massachusetts are explored. That is, I have consulted the books, novels, plays, newspapers, and laws, that formulated, established, and enforced hegemonic norms, and men's letters, diaries, letterbooks, and commentary which evince their assimilation. I have tried to explain what masculine ideals obtained over time, and what men did to reach those standards. Not all my conclusions fit tidily into the existing historiography on early American manhood. Early chapters complicate the picture typically painted of Puritan Massachusetts's patriarchal gendered order. By highlighting its fraternal networks of gendered power, I found that a bifurcated gendered order was largely responsible for the civilization's unique social stability. Historians examining this subject generally conclude that men's ideas about what it meant to be a man changed little from the founding of the colonies to the outbreak of the American Revolution. The standard narrative is that a communal manhood prevailed throughout America until the very end of the eighteenth-century when it was suddenly replaced by a more individualistic "manliness." Not until after the liberating forces of the Revolution, the market economy, and political democracy had reshaped American society, it is asserted, were men truly able to pursue individualistic goals in their personal and professional lives. I discovered that this dating is late by about a century, and that historians have mistaken causes for effects in the relationship between the American Revolution and the rise of autonomous manhood. It was not a consequence of the Revolution, I argue here, but a cause of the event.

Images of the American West in Britain became prevalent in British popular culture during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This popularity arose out of the shared ethic of the Anglo myth. This myth was based upon the confidence gained from a growing industrial complex and the application of the Christian "Genesis" to the new Edens, the American West and the British Empire. The Anglo myth could be found in British adventure novels set in both the West and empire. "Buffalo Bill" Cody used it in his Wild West, and Samuel Franklin Cody utilized it in his frontier melodramas as well as in creating his own flamboyant self-image. The continued existence of romantic, western imagery raises questions concerning myth and reality in the formation of thought about both the American frontier and the British Empire.

This thesis traces the efforts of rural county in Utah attempting to create a professional medical system and addresses the challenges community faced in this effort including divisions among local and national medical societies, women and gender issues, and opposition to religious hierarchy. Navigating these conflicts, the local leaders in San Juan County established a medical cooperative which enable the permanent residence of a physician and later the construction of a hospital. San Juan County provided these medical services for its residents at a time when many of counties in the United States failed to expand their health services. San Juan succeeded due to dynamic leadership, support of local medical association, and the slow expansion of the medical system.

The purpose of this work has been to provide a working biography on the life of James Grey Willie for the field of history, and also to provide a useful and meaningful volume for the James Willie descendants. The work covers James' life from its beginnings in England in 1814, to his death in Mendon, Utah, in 1895. It covers the surviving traces that exist on his life, with the notable accomplishments of Pastor in the Mormon mission field in England (1853-1856), and Bishop of the Salt Lake City Seventh Ward between 1856 and 1859, with major emphasis on his most famous deed, that of captain of the ill-fated handcart company of 1856.

This paper examines the historical process of water resources development in the Bear River Basin and is based on the thesis that the attitudes of Bear River water users towards development reduce to a concern over the scarcity of water or the potential shortage of water. This concern has been a constant and primary focus of water resources development in the Bear River Basin even as water resources technology became increasingly more sophisticated and the legal and political consideration of water resource development became more complex. From the time of the original Mormon settlements in the Bear River Basin Water resource development in the basin has gone through several periods, each marked by the necessity for larger aggregations of capital and increased technical skill. Each of these developments has been met with distrust until the developer was able to convince the water users of his concern for an adequate water supply for basin water users.

The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union was an interracial organization of tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and wage laborers that emerged from northeastern Arkansas in the mid-1930s. The STFU became the most important social action on the part of landless agricultural workers during the Great Depression and one of the most significant critics of the New Deal and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration. This study examines the STFU as a dramatic expression of the Social Gospel in the South during the 1930s and as a representation of the cooperative work of radical and moderate American leftists during the interwar period. From its inception, the STFU faced the violent opposition of planters and local authorities, yet the union managed to survive until the end of the decade as a result of talented leadership, the effectiveness of its organizational strategy, and the patronage of influential leftist leaders around the nation. The plight of the sharecroppers attracted the concern and attention of the eastern liberal establishment, Socialist leaders such as Norman Thomas, and the Communist Party. However, southern progressive leaders such as Harry Leland Mitchell, a former sharecropper turned political radical from west Tennessee, always led the union. The STFU also drew members of a new generation of southern seminary-trained social activists. These "Radical Prophets," through work with southern labor and national organizations such as the NAACP and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, injected the Social Gospel theology taught by social activists and university professors such as Alva Taylor at Vanderbilt University with a Marxist inspired desire to revolutionize southern economic and social institutions in keeping with the philosophy of modern theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr. Southern labor leaders, radical ministers, regional black leaders, and white and black country preachers, combined in the STFU, and the potent mixture allowed the union to quickly organize thousands of the nation's most impoverished and disenfranchised in a valiant though ill-fated effort to reform southern society. This thesis also presents the STFU as a microcosm of the dissolution of the American left consensus as the Great Depression came to an end. By the early 1940s, the union had all but disappeared after having reached a peak of 35,000 members. Although the pressures associated with affiliation with an international union and the changing demographics of the Delta South were the direct causes of the union's failure, ideological rifts between the radical and moderate leaders of the union, as closely observed below in the split between the "Radical Prophets" Howard Kester and Claude Williams, hastened the STFU's demise. By analyzing the letters and first-hand accounts of STFU leaders and organizers in the context of radical Christianity and leftist political and social thought, this study provides a new perspective concerning the STFU which addresses the place of the union in 1930s intellectual history and as a manifestation of the often overlooked radical progressive tradition that existed in the South during the period. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2004. / Date of Defense: March 30, 2004. / Harry Leland Mitchell, Prophetic Religion, Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, Social Gospel, Howard Kester, Claude Williams, STFU / Includes bibliographical references. / Valerie Jean Conner, Professor Directing Thesis; James P. Jones, Committee Member; Jonathan Grant, Committee Member.

Henri-Gatien Bertrand is perhaps the least known of the generals who occupied a prestigious position near Napoleon during the years of the First French Empire. Born in 1773 to a family of the lesser nobility, Bertrand's life encompassed all of the great and momentous events that shook France and Europe during the ensuing fifty years. He played a direct role in many of these events. Commissioned into the French army as an engineer officer in 1793, Bertrand served as an engineer during the siege of Metz in 1794, in the Egyptian Campaign from 1798-1801, at the camp de Boulogne from 1802-04, and during the 1809 Campaign. He also served as an aide-de-camp to Napoleon during the 1805, 1806, 1807, and 1808 Campaigns. In 1811, the Emperor appointed him to serve as the Governor General of the Illyrian Provinces where he remained until being recalled to the army in 1813. He served in the ensuing 1813 Campaign as the commander of the 4th Corps, leading his corps in the battles of Lützen, Bautzen, Gross Beeren, Dennewitz, Wartemburg, Leipzig, and Hanau. At the end of that campaign, Napoleon elevated Bertrand to the position of Grand Marshal of the Palace. Bertrand retained that position during the 1814 and 1815 Campaigns and throughout the Emperor's exiles to Elba and St. Helena. He remained with Napoleon on St. Helena until the Emperor's death in 1821. Bertrand's service to France and Napoleon during these many years is singular for its length and the devoted manner in which he performed it. He possessed an unshakeable conviction in Napoleon's greatness and he conducted himself in both victory and adversity in a distinguished and dignified manner that speaks highly of his character and integrity. He garnered the admiration, respect, and esteem of many for his unimpeachable service to France and Napoleon during these momentous years. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Degree Awarded: Summer Semester, 2005. / Date of Defense: June 15, 2005. / Bertrand, Napoleon / Includes bibliographical references. / Donald D. Horward, Professor Directing Dissertation; Alec Hargreaves, Outside Committee Member; William Oldson, Committee Member; Michael Creswell, Committee Member; Jonathan A. Grant, Committee Member.