While many studies place masculinity and whiteness in Modernist contexts, and other studies isolate the function of apocalypse in Modernism, "American Apocalypse" is the first study to understand how literary Modernism, American whiteness, and apocalypse function together to reinscribe American racial hierarchies in interwar American literature. By intersecting the fields of Modernism, whiteness, masculinity, Biblical studies, and adaptation theory, my dissertation argues how writers and visual artists contrive normative American whiteness through the use of the apocalyptic motif and its literary equivalent, epiphany. In religion and in literature, apocalypse seeks to reveal a hidden, more powerful reality, and I argue how Modernist writers adapt the apocalypse to define whiteness in an increasingly multi-racial America. What makes American whiteness especially normative and powerful is its organicism--its ability to mask itself as an element of the demi-monde in order to assert itself more powerfully in literary epiphanies. I survey Modernist American literature and various visual adaptations to show how writers apocalyptically inscribe whiteness with its properties of universality and masculinity. <bold>Chapter 1</bold> explores the dialectic of American whiteness and apocalyptic themes of hiddenness and revelation conjured by the brief allusions in F. Scott Fitzgerald's short story "The Offshore Pirate" to Anatole France's <italic>The Revolt of the Angels</italic>. <bold>Chapter 2</bold> turns to the contrast of Biblical apocalyptic motifs in the American rural and urban narratives of Zora Neal Hurston's <italic>Their Eyes Were Watching God</italic>, John Steinbeck's <italic>The Grapes of Wrath</italic>, and John Dos Passos's <italic>Manhattan Transfer</italic>. <bold>Chapter 3</bold> explores the apocalyptic relationship of American white masculinity and American place in Zane Grey's <italic>The Vanishing American</italic>, F. Scott Fitzgerald's <italic>The Great Gatsby</italic>, and George S. Schuyler's <italic>Black No More</italic>. <bold>Chapter 4</bold> isolates the roles of irony and parody in constructions of American whiteness in Sherwood Anderson's <italic>Dark Laughter</italic>, William Faulkner's <italic>Mosquitoes</italic>, and Ernest Hemingway's <italic>The Torrents of Spring</italic>. I end the dissertation with a brief analysis of Humphrey Bogart's role as Frank Taylor in the anti-nativist film <italic>Black Legion</italic> and Santa Claus in John Henrik Clarke's "Santa Claus is a White Man" to show ultimately how the American process of becoming raced is inseparable from apocalyptic discourse.

This research offers a new approach to the history of criminology in Peru. It focuses on the different ways Peruvian criminologists imagined crime, criminals, and themselves from 1890 to 1934. I argue that criminological texts are spaces were Peruvian intellectuals expressed academic curiosity, moral sensitivity, and personal interest. The way criminologists imagined criminals and themselves reflected the urban, demographic, political, and socio-economic transformations in Lima. They also reflected the process of professionalization developed throughout the nineteenth century. Through their studies, criminologists contributed to the elite's project of modernization by criminalizing people that did not match their exclusive concept of order and progress. They also used the criminological discourse to link the country to broader processes in which increasing criminality resulted from modernity. Thus, Peruvian criminologists interpreted criminality not only as a threat but also as a sign of progress.

This new commentary on Aristotle's Rhetoric III serves the purpose which the text held at the Classical Lyceum: elucidating Aristotle's theory of style (lexis) and arrangement (taxis) for scholars, teachers, and practitioners of rhetoric. This commentary provides a much needed update because the last commentary, written by Cambridge classicist E.M. Cope in 1877, is now understood as a misinterpretation that reads Aristotle Platonically, takes seriously only rational appeals, assumes a mimetic theory of language that depreciates style, and misdefines central concepts like the enthymeme and common topics. Providing a new interpretation, this commentary may be summarized by three adjectives: Grimaldian, rhetorical, and accessible. First, this Grimaldian commentary applies the new rhetoric philosophy of William M.A. Grimaldi, S.J., which he explicates in Studies in the Philosophy of Aristotle's Rhetoric (1972) and in his two-volume Commentary (1980-1988), wherein Grimaldi develops an integrated and contextual interpretation of the Rhetoric. Second, this rhetorical commentary observes the rhetoric in the Rhetoric since Aristotle typically practices what he teaches: writing with enthymemes, defining by metaphor, clarifying by antithesis, and arranging units by thesis, analysis, and synthesis. This commentary observes how Aristotle applies his three rhetorical appeals (êthos, pathos, logos), his theories of propriety (prepon), exotic (xenos), and virtue (aretê) in style, and the systems of Greek imagery, all of which develop a unified and interactive theory of invention, style, and arrangement. Attention is given to Aristotle's creative theory of metaphor, being a tropos (turn) and a topos (place) of invention, functioning as a stylistic syllogism for creating knowledge with quick, pleasant learning. Arrangement also functions creatively with localized topical procedures for responding to the particular needs of each part of a composition. Third, this accessible commentary features text, translation, comments, and glossary for readers who may not be familiar with Aristotle's idiom but who have an interest in his rhetorical theory and technical terms. Finally, incorporating recent scholarship, this commentary provides insights from classical rhetoric and new rhetoric, showing their interrelationship and how contemporary research in rhetoric builds on and helps to elucidate Aristotle's expansive rhetoric as a general theory of language.

Since 1968, the Tlatelolco Massacre has been called, by some, a dividing line in Mexican history. For intellectuals, it represents the fourth break in Mexican history. The first three breaks were the Conquest in 1521, the wars of independence beginning in 1810, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910. The Tlatelolco Massacre, then, has been seen as a nation-defining event. But intellectuals were not the only ones for whom Tlatelolco was important. The ruling Partido de la Revolucion Institucional (PRI) had a vested interest in forgetting the massacre. For the PRI, which saw itself as the Mexican Revolution's ideological guardian, the massacre was an unfortunate, but minor event. For the forty years considered in this study, the battle between the two groups has been over how to remember the massacre and how to fit it into the revolutionary narrative. Using memory studies, I examine how the massacre has been remembered and forgotten, and how memories have changed over time. Pioneering studies by Maurice Halbwachs, regarding collective memory, and Pierre Nora, regarding how memory and history converge, have guided my analysis. Emily S. Rosenberg's <italic>A Date Which Will Live</italic> (2003) is another important influence for its discussion of how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has been seen since 1941. Also important have been works by Tlatelolco veterans like Elena Poniatowska, Carlos Monsivais, Ramon Ramirez, Gilberto Guevara Niebla, and Raul Alvarez Garin, which illustrate the intellectual idea of the fourth break. While the concept of the fourth break is interesting, intellectuals never convince the broader Mexican public of its efficacy. Consequently, intellectuals withdrew from the leadership position they assumed after the massacre and stopped engaging the public. Instead, they published the same arguments time and again, but only for themselves. At the same time, Tlatelolco never fully disappeared from the public eye. Jorge Fons reinforced the intellectual theory of the fourth break with his film <italic>Rojo amanecer</italic> (1990). Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas declared a day of mourning on 2 October 1998, and Vicente Fox appointed Special Prosecutor Ignacio Carrillo Prieto to investigate not just Tlatelolco, but all the social movements from the 1940s to the 1970s. Thus, despite new information becoming more available, the intellectual pole refused to evolve and take it into consideration. As a result, Tlatelolco still exists in a netherworld.

This dissertation confronts the absence of biological sisterhood in modern critical examinations of nineteenth-century literature. Seizing upon the popular pattern of using familial rhetoric to frame political and social debates in early U.S. history, this project explores women writers who entered those debates via their fictional biological sisters. The biological tie equalizes the sisters' social standing and allows them to function as citizen models within the family - symbolic of the nation. Using popular nineteenth-century serial fiction and collected letters among actual sisters of the same period, chapter one identifies three traits of sisterhood that dominate the fiction and the letters: the importance of the elder sister as a behavioral model, a deep commitment to the long-term well-being of a sister, and the authorial trend of comparing and contrasting sisters. Taken together, these traits allow authors to wield their sisters as models who offer behavioral cues for citizen readers while insisting upon the dedication of one sister-citizen to the well-being of her national sister-citizens. Chapter two addresses Rebecca Rush's Kelroy, a novel that follows the Hammond sisters as they react to the machinations of their mother, Mrs. Hammond, a metaphorical stand-in for Britain. The text is Rush's warning to citizens who do not adequately resist "Mother Britain's" interference. Chapter three examines Ann S. Stephens' Mary Derwent, a text that follows the Derwent Sisters and casts younger sister Mary as the Indian-equivalent "Other" through her physical deformity, a hunchback. Rush disparages those who support Indian Removal policies and advocates for Indian inclusion into the American family. Finally, chapter four examines Elizabeth Stoddard's The Morgesons, a novel published during the Civil War. Despite no overt war references, Stoddard's setting keenly reflects the national landscape, as sisters Veronica and Cassandra exist within a house divided. Following the death of Mrs. Morgeson, Stoddard ponders the post-war future of the United States as the sisters rebuild their lives in a newly reconfigured house under new leadership. Each novel in this project begs for reconsideration as a text that is actively engaged with contemporary national concerns, an engagement that is voiced through the authors' sororal creations.

This dissertation surveys diplomatic relations between the United States and Uruguay between 1903 and 1929, when enigmatic reformer José Batlle y Ordoñez dominated Uruguayan politics and, according to most historians, implemented the first welfare state in the Western Hemisphere. I argue that ideological affinity between Batllistas and Progressive reformers in the United States allowed for significant political, economic, and social interchange between the two states in the period under review. Indeed, Batlle incoprated many US experts and North American ideas in building his model country. This borrowing led to diplomatic amity between the two states, especially in light of the fact that Batlle sought to separate Uruguay from its neo-colonial relationship with Brazil and, much more importantly, Argentina and Britain. This amity resulted in Uruguayan support for the US cause in World War I and, even after Progressives and Batllistas lost power in the 1920s, some semblance of international friendship remained during that decade. I end the dissertation in October 1929, when Batlle died and the New York Stock Exchange crashed. These two events caused a conservative turn in Uruguay and ushered in a new phase in US-Uruguayan relations.

This dissertation argues that German Lutheran women living in south and central Texas from 1831 to 1890 involved themselves in family, church, and community to reconstruct their conservative notions of society in a frontier setting. Going beyond the traditional interpretations of kinder, kuche, und kirche, I show that the women's Lutheran faith informed how they reacted to the immigration process. Frontier conditions allowed these frauen to assume more active and often public roles than they would have done in Germany. However, the women undertook these duties to establish conservative notions of family, church, and gender in their new land. Moreover, even as their faith helped assuage much of the dislocation of immigration for first-generation frauen, they emphasized Lutheran values to descendants whom the women feared were becoming Americanized. Ultimately, Lutheranism informed how these women constructed understandings of family and community while providing a template for what it meant to be a German-Texan.

From 1620 to 1670, four archbishops of Lima attempted to enforce ecclesiastical legislation that aimed at establishing a powerful homogenous institution. Nevertheless, parish priests' particular interests and conflicts between them and their parishioners appeared as reasons for the failure of the archbishops' project for the centralization of the church. Other important reasons for this failure are the distances between the settlement of the parishes and their poorly-defined jurisdictions, which complicated the priests' administration and the church's inability to establish a long-term system of control over the activities of the parish priests. Thus, I present a central church that looked forward to connecting with the local church; but within this project, these issues appeared as obstacles for the implementation of such centralization. Even with the political effort that the archbishops placed on increasing their power in rural areas during the period between 1620 and 1670, the church remained a weak institution.

A test

Presidential dining in the early republic influenced the political climate and shaped diplomatic policy. The materials used, the food chosen, and the manner of accepting guests by each president adapted to changing social norms. After the establishment of presidential dining protocols set forth by the Federalists, and the decidedly more democratic changes implemented by the Democratic-Republicans, the second generation of American presidents reinterpreted the ever-important ideal of "republican simplicity" in the early-nineteenth century.