Thesis advisor: Paul Mariani / Robert Lowell, Lyric and Life investigates the meaning of autobiography as it is represented and produced by the work of art. I begin by tracing Lowell's poetics to the highly personal Romanticism of William Wordsworth and the highly impersonal Modernism of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, and Allen Tate. Reading Lowell's writing in light of this dual inheritance, I am able to point out the limitations of calling Lowell's poetry "confessional" and to propose a model of the lyric self that accounts for the significant semiotic and psychological complexity that goes into the making of a lyric "I." I argue that, from a reader's point of view, Lowell's autobiographical poems are more creations of experience than they are records of experience; that, although the reader is supposed to believe he is "getting the real Robert Lowell," what he really gets is a fictive representation. Taking hold of what Robert Lowell called the "thread of autobiography" that strings together his life's work, I then trace the changing role of Lowell's autobiographical lyric self in a series of three chapters. The first of these chapters concerns the manuscript drafts and published poems of Life Studies (composed from 1953-1959) and, through attention to Lowell's revisions, demonstrates the great extent to which Lowell fictionalized his experience: for instance, by omitting some of the most personal details of the poems in favor of elegant prosodic or thematic composition. The next chapter takes up what I designate "the Notebook poems" (the sonnets published between 1967 and 1972 in the volumes Notebook 1967-68, Notebook, History, and For Lizzie & Harriet), examining the ways in which Lowell's move to New York City and his readings of Hannah Arendt, Eric Auerbach, Simone Weil, and Herbert Marcuse (among others) affected his views of the lyric self in relation to history. This chapter ends by arguing for the Dantesque contours of the Notebook poems, and again takes a close look at Lowell's drafts, including an unpublished essay on Dante. A final chapter examines two ekphrastic autobiographical poems ("Marriage" and "Epilogue"), from Lowell's final volume, Day by Day (1977), in relation to poems by Elizabeth Bishop and William Wordsworth. It concludes by showing, through a close reading of "Epilogue" and its drafts, Lowell's own retrospective concern to question and doubt the autobiographical pursuits of his poetry. A brief epilogue draws the variegated threads of these chapters together and offers a final reflection on the inextricable knot of Lowell's lyrics and his life by way of reading his final poems and the biographical record of his death. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

Thesis advisor: Dennis Shirley / In 1814, a group of wealthy Boston merchants led by Francis Cabot Lowell established the Boston Manufacturing Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. In the decades before the Civil War, Lowell and his partners constructed public schools for Waltham children living in the vicinity of the mills and paid many of the schools' educational expenses, including teachers' salaries. The company also promoted adult education through its establishment of the Manufacturers' Library and its support of the Rumford Institute for Mutual Instruction, one of the first lyceums in the United States. Previous research on the Boston Manufacturing Company has primarily focused on its unique labor force ("mill girls") and its role as America's first modern industrial corporation, while the story of the company's involvement in education has been neglected. Based on company records, school committee reports, newspaper accounts, Francis Lowell's personal correspondence, and other archival sources, this study highlights the forgotten history of corporate support for education in antebellum Waltham. The findings indicate that the support given to Waltham educational institutions by Francis Lowell and his business partners can be attributed to their patriotism, generosity, and belief in civic virtue. Implications for the history of American education, the Industrial Revolution, and twenty-first century public/private sector educational partnerships are addressed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

Thesis (M.C.P.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning; and, (M. Arch. in Advanced Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1976. / Microfiche copy available in Archives and Rotch. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Dennis Frenchman. / M.C.P. / M.ArchAS.

In Lowell, Massachusetts, a city with a long history of serving as a magnet for immigrants, the Cambodian community is both the most recent and most populous immigrant group that has helped transformed this postindustrial city into one of the most ethnically diverse in New England. This research seeks to explore the ways in which the development and growth of an ethnic community can influence the place-making process and built environment of cities. Specifically, this thesis conducts a case study of the Cambodian community in Lowell, Massachusetts, and examines the ways in which the development of this specific urban ethnic community has helped to shape the post-industrial city in which it is found, and how Lowell has influenced Cambodian-American ethnic identity.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-199). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

This report argues that through his lived experiences of growing up in his hometown of Lowell, MA, and the joys and traumas he accrued from early childhood and into early adulthood, Jack Kerouac began to rewrite, reimagine, and reconstruction Lowell in several different works and iterations to attempt to address and exorcise the ghosts of his past. For my argument, I study several of Kerouac’s works: Visions of Gerard (1963), Doctor Sax: Faust Part Three (1959), Visions of Cody (1972), and Book of Dreams (1960). Pulling from the fields of Beat studies, literary criticism, childhood studies, psychology, geocriticism, and American cultural history, I attempt to highlight the translation and transformation of Lowell in Kerouac’s texts into a psycho-literary space. / text

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2005. / Advisers: Deborah Digges; Jesper Rosenmeier. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 178-190). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Pennsylvania, 1944. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 216-219).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1955. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 195-197).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2002. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 176-199). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.