This thesis explores the role of Quaker women in science in an attempt to arrive at some understanding of what motivated Quaker women in nineteenth century America to go into the sciences. George Fox founded the Society of Friends in the mid-seventeenth century in England and the Quaker theology centered on the concept of the Inner Light, which is the idea that everyone has the capacity to perceive, recognize, and respond to God. Following their Inner Light to find God, Quakers also referred to themselves as "seekers of truth." Additionally, Quakers have believed since their inception in the equality between men and women. Given the Quaker desire to pursue truth and their belief that women have the same capacity to do so as men, it is not surprising that there were a number of Quaker women in science. Through an examination of three Quaker women in science, I discuss the Quaker influences in their lives and works with the larger goal of demonstrating the inherent connections that exist between Quaker theology and the pursuit of science in the nineteenth century. One such connection lies within the tradition of natural theology, which was prevalent in the larger scientific community in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The connection that is unique to Quakers, though, relates to their idea of the search for truth, which led many Quakers to employ scientific methods. The three Quaker women examined in this study, astronomer Maria Mitchell, naturalist Graceanna Lewis, and medical doctor Ann Preston, were all truth-seekers in some sense who wanted to find evidence of God's work within nature. / Graduation date: 2005

This qualitative research study aims to investigate how eight members of the Society of Friends (also known as Quakers) experience a divine presence in their Meeting for Worship. The purpose is also to find out how their identity as Quakers has been created, and to see how they look at their Meeting of Worship when it comes to ritual as a concept. The method used in this study is individual, semi-structured interviews and observations of Meeting of Worship. The results show a relatively homogeneous group of individuals from a secular upbringing who as adults sought out a community where silence is appreciated and used to achieve an experience of a divine presence. Berger and Luckmann's theories of socialization have been applied to the results and the discussion reveals how the secondary socialization has been essential in the process of forming the individual into being a Quaker. There is however one exception, in the form of one participant who grew up in the Society of Friends. Catherine Bell’s ritual theory, that no ritual can be defined without its context, can be applied to the Quaker’s view of a ritual. The view Bell has on rituals can be used to understand the views shared by the participants in the study.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1999. / Title from electronic submission form. Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2005. / Thesis directed by James Turner for the Department of History. "July 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 367-414).

This thesis offers a reconsideration of Amelia Opie’s career as a novelist in the light of her developing religious allegiances over the period 1814-1825 in particular. In twentieth-century scholarship, Opie (1769-1853) was often treated primarily as the author of Adeline Mowbray (1805) and discussed in terms of that novel’s relationship with the ideas of Wollstonecraft and Godwin. Recent scholarship (Clive Jones, Roxanne Eberle, Shelley King and John B. Pierce) has begun a fuller assessment of her significance, but there is still a need for a thorough discussion of the relationship between her long journey towards the Quakers and her commitment to the novel as a moral and entertaining medium. Many scholars (Gary Kelly, Patricia Michaelson, Anne McWhir and others), following Opie’s first biographer Cecilia Lucy Brightwell (1854), have represented Opie as giving up her glittering literary career and relinquishing fiction-writing completely: this relinquishment has been linked to Quaker prohibitions of fiction as lying. My thesis shows that Quaker attitudes to fiction were more complicated, and that the relationship between Opie’s religious and literary life is, in turn, more complex than has been thought. This project brings evidence from a number of sources which have been overlooked or under-utilised, including a large, under-examined archive of Opie correspondence at the Huntington Library, Opie’s last novel Much to Blame (1824), given critical analysis here for the first time, and the republications which Opie undertook in the 1840s. These sources show that Opie never abandoned her commitment to fiction; that her move to the Quakers was a long and fraught process, but that she retained a place in the fashionable world in spite of her conversion. My Introduction gives a nuanced understanding of Quaker attitudes to fiction, and the first chapter exposes the ‘white lies’ of Opie’s first biographer, Brightwell, and their legacy. I then move on to examine Opie’s early works – Dangers of Coquetry (1790), “The Nun” (1795) and The Father and Daughter (1801) – as she flirts with radicalism in the 1790s, and Adeline Mowbray is explored through a Quaker lens in chapter 3. I juxtapose Opie’s correspondence with her Quaker mentor Joseph John Gurney and the celebrated writer William Hayley with her developing use of the moral-evangelical novel – Temper (1812), Valentine’s Eve (1816) and Madeline (1822) – as Opie was increasingly attracted to the Quakers. Chapter 5 analyses Opie’s anonymous novels – The Only Child (1821) and Much to Blame (1824) – alongside her Quaker works (especially Detraction Displayed (1828)) around the time of her official acceptance to the Quakers (1825). The final chapter investigates how Opie balanced her Quaker belonging with her ongoing commitment to fiction, exemplified in her 1840s republications, which I present in the context of her correspondence with publisher friends Josiah Fletcher and Simon Wilkin, and with Gurney. Opie’s ‘white lies’ of social negotiation reveal her difficulties in maintaining a literary career from the 1790s to the 1840s, but her concerted effort to do so in spite of such struggles provides a highly significant insight into the changing religious and literary climates of this long period.

This thesis considers the development of Quakerism from 1647 to 1700. Changes affecting the movement in this period are often explained as the result of the Quakers' desire for socio-political respectability – that is, their desire to reduce persecution and social exclusion. This thesis does not deny the importance of socio-political factors. However, it argues that they have been exaggerated as a historical force, and that theological factors driving change have been comparatively neglected. The thesis therefore explores the Quakers' desire for 'theological respectability', by examining the scope and impact of their constructive engagement with outsiders. The project begins with an investigation into the Quakers' understanding of their personal experience, noting both continuities and underlying theological changes which cannot be explained in socio-political terms – namely, a changed view of divine immanence, a strengthened group identity, and the loss of a sense of prophetic vocation. The rest of the thesis explains these developments in their theological context. The Quakers' engagement in Christological debate forms the central case-study. Individual chapters examine the Quakers’ earliest Christology, first responses to criticism, the early career of William Penn, the intellectual development of Robert Barclay's Vehiculum Dei, the Quakers' place in the early Enlightenment, and the Keithian controversy. In particular, the need to articulate a positive theology of the Incarnation led the Quakers into conversation with many influential figures outside the movement, which in turn encouraged an increasingly derivative understanding of the Light within and more optimistic view of physical matter. These shifts relate directly to the religious changes explored in the first part of the thesis. This study illustrates the necessity of theological analysis as part of historical investigation and provides a sustained intellectual history of seventeenth-century Quakerism, demonstrating its important contribution to the intellectual landscape of the early Enlightenment.

On December 27, 1657, the men of Flushing, Long Island, signed a letter of protest addressed to the Governor-Director of New Netherlands. Though the law of the colony demanded otherwise, the men of Vlissengen pledged to accept all persons into their township, regardless of their religious persuasion. Their letter, called the Flushing Remonstrance, not only defied the laws of one of the most powerful, religious governors of the colonial age, it articulated a concept of religious freedom that extended beyond the principles of any other contemporary document. Given its unique place in early American colonial history, why have historians not devoted more research to the Flushing Remonstrance? The answer to that question had roots in suppositions widely accepted in the academic community. This thesis addresses and refutes these assumptions in full historical context.

This project uses the archive at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an international Quaker peace and social justice organization headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, in order to shed light on the globalization resistance labor of the Nationwide Women's Program (NWP) and its transnational networks. The NWP was an internal program at the AFSC, initiated by women staff and committee members who challenged the practices of gender discrimination within the organization and initiated external AFSC programs that served women's unique needs in peace and social justice initiatives. By focusing primarily on the serial inserts of the group's newsletter from 1978 to 1988, entitled Women and Global Corporations: Work, Roles, Resistance, this project draws attention to the dense networks of transnational communication and resistance against global economic restructuring during this time. It uses and challenges social movement scholarship by suggesting that the analytical frameworks of transnational advocacy networks and social movement mobilization more accurately capture the antiglobalization activity that took place several decades prior to when it is conventionally identified in 1999. The project highlights the NWP's social movement brokerage and the embodied social movement activities of the activists, scholars, and laborers in its orbit. These social movement activities included boycotts, letter-writing campaigns, labor organizing, and a plethora of other on-the-ground activities and discursive practices against global corporations and the institutions that supported them. An investigation into the sources of the NWP's knowledge production in brokering this movement reveals both Quaker and feminist influences that call into question the conventionally accepted binary between religion and secularity in the Western imaginary. The presence of Quaker and feminist influences on the NWP's understandings of globalization provides the opportunity for thinking through at least two possibilities: how a tacit Protestant secularism within the organization contributed to its own erasure, and how contemporary globalization narratives are infused with a Protestant secularism that insidiously frames globalization resistance as retrograde and fuels a universalizing (and therefore exclusionary) notion of progress and unsustainable growth. / Religion

Creating cross-cultural understanding amongst students and incorporating music from various cultures around the world has become essential in the field of music education, but still has a long way to go to become more mainstream. The incorporation of world music in teacher preparation programs and music classrooms varies greatly. While many researchers have studied these elements separately, very little research exists on the connection between the type of music teacher preparation, performance life outside the classroom, and world music experiences a teacher creates in the curriculum. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine the relationship between: type of music teacher preparation, performance life outside of school, and world music experiences an individual teacher incorporates into their curriculum. This study used the sequential explanatory design model using a survey instrument (n=11) and participant interviews (n=9). Specifically, participants included secondary general music teachers working in Quaker schools in the United States with at least a bachelor's degree in music education. Quaker educators were included due to the population’s virtual exclusion from all current literature as well as their progressive outlook on education and inclusivity. Findings suggest that Quaker educators overwhelmingly have a desire to teach music from various cultures and utilize it in their classrooms mostly from professional development opportunities, despite their overall lack of training during their undergraduate coursework. While generalizable findings were difficult to explain due to a low number of participants in the survey, the qualitative interview data sheds a unique outlook on Quaker school teacher background and experience with world music. Implications for the field of music education and further research opportunities are also discussed. / Music Education

Over the course of the Civil War the small community of Waterford, Virginia maintained Unionist sentiments regardless of being a part of the Confederate States of America. These sentiments were rooted in loyalty to the United States, their ostracization from southern culture, and their Quaker faith. In particular, the women of this community became exceptionally vocal with their displeasure with the Confederacy. In the last year of the Civil War they made the deliberate choice to publicly assert their Unionist convictions with their newspaper The Waterford News. The experience of this community, particularly that of its female residents, was influenced by the variety of identities that they held. The women of Waterford were Quakers, female, southern, unionist and editors/producers of a newspaper. The community of Waterford, Virginia was placed in the margins of Southern society because of the cultural differences rooted in their Quaker faith. The Civil War created a chaotic historical moment where those on the margins of society experienced it differently than those around them. By examining their identities as newspaper producers, as citizens of different groups, and within their interpersonal relationships the reality of how war is lived is brought to light. All of these factors reveal how war is lived, and how lives are manipulated to fit within times of chaos. Motivation matters. / Master of Arts / Over the course of the Civil War the small community of Waterford, Virginia maintained loyalty to the United States rather than support the Confederate cause. These sentiments were rooted in patriotism to the United States, their exclusion from southern culture, and their Quaker faith. Women of this community were extremely vocal with their anger over Confederate occupation. In the last year of the Civil War they made the choice to publicly assert their convictions with their newspaper The Waterford News. The experience of this community, particularly that of its female residents, was influenced by the variety of identities that they held. The women of Waterford were Quakers, female, southern, unionist and editors/producers of a newspaper. The community of Waterford, Virginia was excluded from the rest of Virginian society because of their Quaker faith. The Civil War was a traumatic historical event where communities like Waterford experienced it differently than the majority around them. By studying the identities of these women as newspaper producers, as citizens of different groups, and within their interpersonal relationships the reality of how war is lived is revealed. All of these factors reveal how war is lived.