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This thesis demonstrates the intersection of caste, doctrine, religious authority and monasticism in the Swaminarayan sampradāy, a Hindu devotional tradition founded by Sahajānand Svāmī. Religious traditions affected indirectly or minimally by colonialism or the nationalist struggle have seldom been rigorously studied. This thesis brings attention to the Swaminarayan sampradāy to highlight how pervasive societal discourses like that of caste and internal doctrinal developments, impacted religious developments concerning authority, hierarchy, and power. The reification of a doctrine and the creation of a theological office, coupled with the deification of a monk, Guṇātītānand Svāmī, and his low-caste disciple Prāgjī manifested a fractious environment in which theology, authority and ideas about monasticism came to be contested. Theological ideas drove Prāgjī’s developing community, who adapted their devotion to Prāgjī as a result of stifling institutional politics and a modernizing Gujarat. Prāgjī’s incessant preaching, distinct theological beliefs and own budding community, which adored him, changed the course of Swaminarayan Hinduism in western India.

This thesis consists of the two opening chapters of American Odyssey, a nouveau plantation novel that has its roots in two American fiction traditions---the nineteenth-century plantation novel and the twentieth-century neo-slave narrative. It is 1855 and Charles DeCoeur's only motivation to remain Riverwood's owner and master is that his widowed mother and sickly sister rely on the profits of the estate. Charles chafes under the responsibility and physicality of plantation life, unable to reconcile himself to the role of master of a cotton estate in the forgotten heart of East Florida. Then a female Negro, Hellcat, wanders onto the Riverwood estate. Attracted to the woman's unusual appearance and disposition, Charles readily claims her as his property. It is not long before Charles channels his ennui into a renewed interest in Riverwood's workings, a thinly-veiled attempt to hide his growing obsession with the mysterious slave woman. However, tensions are mounting all around Charles. The estate is approaching bankruptcy, the overseer and slaves believe Hellcat has dark intentions, and Charles' mother believes the slave is a bastard child from her husband's scandalous past. But Charles refuses to listen to those around him and continues to let his desires guide his actions, while Hellcat's presence at Riverwood opens new wounds that threaten everyone around her.

Abstract This thesis examines the progress of pupils through New Zealand schools in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century. The purpose of this study was to apply demographic techniques to primary historical education data to enable the progress of pupils to be quantified and to allow comparisons to be made among different Education Districts and longitudinally over a period of some three decades. The present work applies demographic methods using cohort and period analyses to overcome difficulties in direct comparisons of historical education data because of differences in population structure and differing examination pass rates in various Education Districts. This approach allows the determination of retention rates of pupils both by age and by level from Standard 4 to Standard 6 using primary data from the nineteenth century. In addition, gender differences in retention by age are analysed from the 1880s to the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. Previous published work considered school attendance only in general terms and usually on a national basis, but generally without analysing specific educational data on gender differences. Studies prior to the present work have suggested that in the nineteenth century Education Districts differed in school enrolments (Hodder, 1996) and it is thus likely that there were differences in school retention of pupils between various Education Districts. Pilot research to the present work developed demographic methods for studying retention of pupil populations allowing for changes in the number and structure of the pupils populations over time (Hodder, 2005). These pilot methods are applied in the present research to study pupil retention in all thirteen Education Districts over the approximately 30 years from the 1880s. In addition to age and level cohorts, gender differences are analysed. Direct comparisons among all Education Districts and over time are now possible. This study has used a novel approach to the analysis of historical education data. The results enable comparisons to be made among all thirteen Education Districts and across several decades; such comparisons have not previously been possible and will facilitate future research on the possible factors affecting pupil retention particularly in relation to employment opportunities for school leavers and differences according to gender. __________ Hodder, C. (1996). Cambridge District High School and its community, 1880 - 1888. Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, Department of Education Studies, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Hodder, C. (2005). Old data, new methods: the use of demographic methods to study historical education data. Unpublished Directed Study, Department of Societies and Cultures, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand.

James McGeoch's headstone, which can be seen at the Presbyterian Cemetery in Symonds Street, Auckland, carries a simple sentiment in the Scottish dialect that resonates with first generation migrants everywhere: 'It was hard to die frae hame'. This thesis is an investigation into the experiences of death and mourning among nineteenth century Scottish migrants to New Zealand. It considers the ways in which death, and the framework of social conventions through which it is interpreted and dealt with, might provide evidence for the persistence or renegotiation of cultural behaviours among migrant communities. The focus of this study is on the working classes and in particular those who resided in, and emigrated from, Scotland's larger cities and towns. A complex of ideas and customs informed cultural practices regarding death among the working classes. This thesis highlights the multiple challenges that the process of migration posed to these cultural practices. The ongoing renegotiation of such ideas and customs were important components in the formulation of cultural and religious identities in New Zealand. This thesis is simultaneously an investigation of deathways, a migration study, a consideration of the working class experience, and a tentative venture into the history of emotion. Using a diverse range of sources, including New Zealand coroners' reports, gravestone inscriptions, and personal autobiographical accounts as written in journals, diaries and letters, this study highlights the complexity and variety of migrants' experiences of death and attempts to uncover the multiple meanings of these experiences.

This thesis examines the history of the performance and dissemination of chamber music in Melbourne during the period 1877 to 1901. It explores the role and development of chamber music in concerts held by Melbourne’s leading musical societies and public subscription series, and various concerts featuring local and touring performers. Discussion is placed within an international context and the thesis asks whether local musicians were influenced by contemporary developments in Europe and if so, was the primary influence English or German? / The bulk of the thesis explores the history of some of Melbourne’s musical societies and public concerts and focuses in particular on the repertoire that was performed, methods of program construction, the perceived ‘educational’ value of chamber music and performances within educational institutions. It demonstrates that performances of chamber music flourished during Melbourne’s economic boom of the 1880s, and that although performances declined during the following depression of the 1890s, standards of performance had improved, audiences were better educated and informed about chamber music, and Melbourne was relatively quick to introduce contemporary chamber repertoire. The first chamber works by local musicians and composers were also composed and performed in Melbourne during this period. / The availability of competent musicians was a significant factor and played a role in determining the type of repertoire that was performed. With large numbers of competent pianists and string players, and very few wind players, present in Melbourne during this period, for example, the repertory tended to focus on works for piano and/or strings. The contribution of local and international performers, particularly English and German-born and/or trained instrumentalists, is also considered. English and German musicians not only had an impact on the shaping of the repertory, but also influenced the way that concerts were organized. These influences, however, often overlapped and were not always clearly defined.

"Scenes of Reading: Forgotten Antebellum Readers, Self-Representation, and the Transatlantic Reprint Industry" argues that African-American and white working-class people participated in transatlantic antebellum literary culture in a far more central and sophisticated manner than has been assumed. Employing "scenes" of reading--self-representations of what, where, how, and why African Americans and the white working classes read--as primary texts, this dissertation asserts that these groups, in differing degrees and under distinct circumstances, were able to learn to read, to appropriate reading materials from mainstream literary culture, and, most importantly, to transform their acts of reading into acts of politicized self-representation. Their literary practice was possible because of the transatlantic reprint industry that flourished during the antebellum era resulting from the lack of a copyright agreement between Britain and America. This meant that in both nations, texts from across the Atlantic could be reprinted and sold more cheaply than domestic texts, making novels, poetry, and non-fiction available to wider readerships. Reprinted texts in multiple inexpensive formats were ubiquitous, allowing even marginalized readers to encounter them in the context of everyday life. More importantly, reprinted texts legally belonged to no one, meaning that they could be appropriated by anyone, including black and working-class groups whose political values threatened to undermine accepted social hierarchies. With no permission or payment required for reprinting, reprints were easily grafted into new ideological contexts, meaning that black and working-class newspapers had access to free literary content that they could employ toward counter-hegemonical self-representations. The practices and implications of reprinting enabled free blacks, slaves, and white workers to participate in mainstream literary culture subversively through "underground literacy": set of literary practices that were counter-cultural yet also dependent upon the apparatus of mainstream print culture in order to carry out subversive aims. Reading reprinted texts and assimilating them into the context of their everyday lives, African Americans and the white working classes in America and Britain formed similar strategies for practicing literacy beneath the surface of a transatlantic print culture. This dissertation examines scenes of reading that exemplify these underground reading strategies and represent the literacy of these groups. / McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts; / English / PhD; / Dissertation;

<p>From 1852 to 1910 Congress labored to find the right instruments to eliminate polygamy among the Mormons and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints struggled to retain its claim as the most American of institutions. What these struggles reveal about the shifting role of religion in the developing definition of American citizenship is at the heart of this dissertation. By looking at developing ideas about citizenship in this particular frame, the social and political history of exclusion and inclusion comes into focus and exposes the role religion played in determining who could lay claim to citizenship and who could not, who tried and failed, who succeeded, and why. In the end, the coercive measures of the state and their own desire to join the body politic drove the Saints to unquestionably abandon the practice of polygamy, a central tenet of their faith, so that they could be accepted as American citizens. </p><p>The battle over polygamy and the rights of polygamists was not limited to the floor of the U.S. Congress or the Supreme Court, although those sources are carefully examined here. Debates over polygamy and Mormons' right to be Americans also took place in sermons, novels, newspapers, and popular periodicals. Official actions of the state and popular discourses simultaneously defined citizenship and influenced how Mormons understood their own citizenship. This dissertation is a history of the discourse generated by Mormons and their antagonists, laws passed by Congress, and court cases fought to defend or deny the civil, political and social rights of Latter-day Saints.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis argues that what it terms fever narratives figure prominently in Charles Dickens’s fiction. Fever was regarded not as a symptom but as a generic disease that had sub-species, such as cholera, smallpox, typhus and typhoid, and that presented itself through devastating epidemics that frightened the public and drove the government to enact public health legislation. The core elements of the fever narrative – such as fever’s cause, pathology, treatment and prevention – were still not clearly understood. This inevitably heightened public anxiety and frustration, particularly given lengthy delays in the bureaucratic processes of Parliament and local governments in dealing with fever’s perennial threat. The politically favoured sanitarian narrative influenced Dickens significantly. Sanitarians believed that water and sewer projects in urban localities and improved sanitary practices would prevent most diseases. However, Dickens was influenced also by an alternative approach that this thesis calls the “medical narrative,” comprising a more holistic vision of public health, reliant on improved treatments, greater medical professionalism, and specialized hospitals, in addition to sanitary reform. Dickens’s 1840s novels reflected both approaches, but he emphasized the medical narrative in portrayals of the fevers of individual characters. In the 1850s, the predominant focus of fever narratives in Dickens’s journals and novels became fever of the social body – fever that figuratively infected English institutions or the country as a whole. Dickens’s fever narratives became progressively darker during these two decades and, with each novel onward from Dombey and Son (1846-48), his representations of fever apocalypses infecting both the rich and the poor became more strident, even to the extent of suggesting that the whole institutional and economic infrastructure of the country would suffer an irrevocable blow. The thesis argues that Dickens presented these minatory scenes of vengeance in response to what he perceived as the blindness of the middle class to the condition of the sick and poor of England. This reached a climax with “Revolutionary fever” in A Tale of Two Cities (1859). The thesis presents a final argument that Dickens’s stories of the early 1860s and Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) provided both a continuation of and a denouement for the two previous decades’ fever narratives, by offering a view of the dust of corpse upon corpse of those who were mowed down by fever, and of a river polluted by this dust. However, he foresees also the possibility of the fundamental regeneration of a more humane physical, social and institutional environment in England.

The aim of this essay is to examine Janes personal progress through the novel Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. It addresses the issue of personal development in relation to social position in England during the nineteenth – century. The essay follows Janes personal journey and quest for independence, equality, self worth and love from a Marxist perspective. In the essay close reading is also applied as a complementary theory.