This dissertation argues that John Quincy Adams’s American identity and views on the United States’ nation building process in the early republic were directly influenced by Great Britain’s politics and culture over his lengthy public service career. From this argument, this project inverts historiographical trends that tend to treat Adams as a footnote to the rise of Jacksonian Democracy or focus on his late career battles against slavery in the House of Representatives. Instead of these limiting approaches, I examine Adams’s complicated relationship with Britain by unpacking the distinct periods when he lived in London from the 1783 to 1817. Over six chapters, I focus on his three stays in London in the 1780s, diplomatic missions of varying lengths from 1794 to 1797, and his two years as ambassador in Britain from 1815-1817. I reveal how Adams, with unquestionable ties to the American Revolution through his parents John and Abigail, navigated a paradoxical relationship with Britain as a prominent public figure in the United States. He both engaged with and admired Britain’s relative stability, social life, and spectrum of reforming ideas while remaining wary of its diplomacy and perceived corrupting influences. Given Adams’s career longevity, he can be viewed as a central link between the American Revolution and the Civil War and, by proxy, both his and his nation’s complicated uncoupling from Britain as he served his nation nearly continuously from 1781 to 1848. This dissertation argues that even after the United States declared its independence from Britain, Adams’s worldview continued to be shaped by his travels to Britain, marriage to an Englishwoman, and consumption of British culture. They ensured his life-long, inextricable ties to Great Britain and are valuable lenses to illustrate America’s nation building into the 1840s from a biographical perspective. In constructing these arguments, my research draws primarily from Adams’s voluminous personal papers, namely his 14,000-page diary. These sources are contextualized by underutilized British sources on Adams from the Public Record and Foreign Offices in addition to personal papers from his British associates. / 2025-11-30T00:00:00Z

L'étude examine les rapports entre théorie de l'architecture et réflexions sur l'art à la fin de l'âge classique. À travers l'analyse du discours sur l'architecture, en considérant l'architecte comme un auteur, la recherche envisage la question de l'expressivité de l'objet architectural. Elle porte sur l'esthétique des architectes, en tant que théorie de la sensation du beau. Deux mots sont ainsi étudiés dans leur discours : caractère et type. Deux concepts qui résument à eux seuls deux théories de l'art antagonistes, car ils renvoient à deux visions du monde distinctes : celui de Blondel, Boullée et Ledoux, qui se tient au plus près de la nature, et celui de Quatremère de Quincy, qui est déjà rentré dans l'Histoire. L'enquête s'arrête sur son rôle déterminant dans le paysage artistique de la France du 19ème siècle, et sur son application à y introduire une théorie de l'art idéaliste empruntée à la critique d'art allemande et écossaise. En forgeant le concept de type, Quatremère de Quincy a contribué à renverser durablement les valeurs des architectes, jusqu'au 20ème siècle, en imposant une conception universaliste et abstraite contre une appréhension empirique de la réalité, une représentation de l'imagination contre une réflexion par l'entendement discursif, une imitation idéale contre l'antique principe d'imitation de la nature. Le concept de type idéal a été forgé à l'appui des écrits des philosophes, des naturalistes et des philologues, qui eurent de tout temps une forte influence sur les théories artistiques. Aussi, l'étude se propose d'inscrire le discours de l'architecte dans un champ épistémologique plus général pour confronter sa parole à celles de ces savants et penseurs. À travers l'analyse comparée des notions d'imitation, de jugement de goût et de style, thèmes centraux des théories sur l'architecture, l'étude questionne la place de l'histoire dans le processus conceptuel, ainsi que le rôle de la mémoire et de l'habitude au moment de la réception de l'œuvre

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / In the following thesis I have attempted to illustrate words of a hundred years ago with appropriate photographs of present-day remains of an era. The years covered in the major sections are 1831 to 1848; the subject is slavery and abolition in New England. The Liberator was the most renowned antislavery paper. Selections from it form the text of the major part of this thesis. Complete bound editions of The Liberator may be found in the Boston Public Library, Main Branch, Copley Square. With the permission of the Supervisor I was able to photograph portions of the paper.

Review of Nation Builder: John Quincy Adams and the Grand Strategy of the Republic by Charles N. Edel.

'The core of the theatre is an encounter. The [character) who makes an act of self revelation is, so to speak, one who establishes contact with himself. That is to say, an extreme confrontation, sincere, disciplined, precise and total - not merely a confrontation with his thoughts, but one involving his whole being from instinct and his unconscious right up to his most lucid state'. (Jerzy Grotowski, in Catron, 2000:19) This dissertation investigates the construction of the marginalised self, an identity, and the impact that context, pre and post-apartheid South Africa, may have on that constructed masculine identity. This examination of the self is mediated through the medium of theatre. It is this 'encounter', which theatre offers, that becomes an important instrument through which the self, society and social issues may be examined and critiqued; and it is through this critique that change may be sparked and brought about. This investigation of the self, the construction of a masculine identity, is looked at through the writings of, amongst others, Stuart Hall (1996 (a) & 1996 (b); 1997), Lawrence Grossberg (1996), Judith Butler (1993, 1999), Robert Connell (1987; 2002) and Robert Morrell (1998, 2001(a) & 2001 (b)). Further discussions around the construction of identity and its relationship to context (a multicultural and multiracial context) is examined via the writings of Richard Schechner (1991) and Patrice Pavis (1992). The theatrical forms of self-standing monologues and stand-up comedy are useful forms through which 'protest' against the status quo may be engaged. These forms are utilised by Quincy Fynn (self-standing monologues) and Kaseran Pillay (stand-up comedy); and it is through their performance works Walking like an African (2004) and My Cousin brother (2003), respectively, that this dissertation looks at their challenges to hegemonic forms of masculinity. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

Scholarly attention to late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French art has focused on the importance that Johann Joachim Winckelmann attributed to the male nude figure in his definition of ideal beauty, and the impact of his work on debates over the 'beau idéal' in French art and art criticism. In contrast, Winckelmann's extensive interest in the detail of ancient costume, the folds of drapery, and the teleological and aesthetic significance that he ascribed to them, has been underplayed. The role played by costume and drapery as components of the 'beau idéal' in French art and aesthetics has also not been fully explored. This thesis examines the way in which costume and drapery formed an important component and embodiment of ideal beauty in the work of Winckelmann and in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century French artistic circles, providing new insights into the arguments over the meanings of Truth, Beauty and Nature in this period. The thesis proposes that ideal beauty in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century France was conveyed in works of art through the accurate rendering of costume and the expressive qualities of drapery in combination with the perfect form and contour of the nude body. The first part of the thesis sets up a proposition that costume and drapery formed part of the definition of ideal beauty in the work of Winckelmann. Highlighting the significance of Winckelmann's work on costume and drapery in French art theory, it demonstrates how the definition of ideal beauty in France also incorporated the accurate rendering of costume and the aesthetic impact of drapery. In demonstrating the significance of costume and drapery to both Winckelmann and French theorists it is proposed that the application of a meta-historical approach of costume and drapery to French art theory can provide new understandings and readings of the definition of ideal beauty, the hierarchy of the genres and the broader aesthetic concerns of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth- century French art. The second part of the thesis applies the proposed hermeneutic of costume and drapery to a small selection of theoretical work on the nature of ideal beauty and on a significant collection of Salon criticism. With this approach to the primary material this thesis demonstrates how French artists were able to express the 'beau idéal' within the traditional academic conventions and hierarchies, and negotiate the sense of public unease over the use of nudity in contemporary art.

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