In nineteenth-century Cuba, patriarchy operated at all levels of society. Cuban elites prescribed the place of slaves and that of women. The idealized familial ordering, or the notion that elites benevolently governed society as a father did his family, provided a ready model for the maintenance of order. The male, father-figure occupied the highest position in the societal hierarchy, the female, mother-figure served as his "helpmate," and the children obeyed. Elites' children included their actual children as well as lower orders of Cuban whites, and blacks, both enslaved and free, child and adult. This work examines how patriarchy functioned outside the confines of the family unit by scrutinizing the theoretical foundation on which nineteenth-century Cuban patriarchy rested, and investigating how patriarchy functioned as a method of social control for elite and non-elite women, as well as the enslaved women of Cuba. Through an examination of family, marriage, divorce, public charity, and education, this study provides insight into the Caribbean's longest lasting slave society. Over the last twenty years, scholars have increasingly recognized the important role of gender in the study of slavery in the Americas. However, gendered analysis of nineteenth-century Cuban slave society has yet to attract the same level of scholarly inquiry as have other Latin American nations. Based on a variety of archival and printed primary sources, my study illuminates how gender provides an important lens of analysis for nineteenth-century Cuban society. My project uses gender to examine nineteenth-century Cuban history in order to explore how patriarchy functioned in the lives of both white women and women of color. Moreover, it analyzes the social constructions of gender within the context of race and class. The study of gender implies a relational concept. Gender’s social construction, for both men and women, means it cannot be studied in a female vacuum. The work focuses on women, although in order to understand them better I also examine the place of men. Notions of discourse and power provide insight into the social constructions of gender and further the analysis of women who have long been held at society’s margins. / PhD

Excavations conducted in June of 2004 at 71 Park Place, then a vacant residential lot located in downtown St. Augustine, yielded a significant artifact and faunal assemblage. Historic maps and documents indicate that this property was once part of a 10¼ acre orange grove and cornfield that existed from approximately 1790 until the late 1880s. Historic maps show that three structures once stood on this property, which is corroborated by the archaeological findings at 71 Park Place of post-holes that outline a two-room structure. As the majority of the artifacts and faunal remains recovered from the site were found around this possible structure, it is likely that these remains were left behind by the former occupants of this structure. Historic deeds indicate that the antebellum owners of the property were wealthy individuals and slaveholders, which raises the possibility that the former occupants of the structure identified on the property were slaves and that the artifacts and faunal remains recovered from 71 Park Place are representative of the material culture of urban slaves. This thesis examines this possibility by looking for previously determined ethnic markers of slavery within the assemblage, as well as by comparing the artifact and faunal remains to three plantation slave and three middle-to-upper class St. Augustine assemblages. Results indicate that although an urban salve occupation cannot be shown archaeologically, the possibility still remains, and further archaeological research in the thus far little studied field of urban slavery would be greatly beneficial to this study. / Thesis / Master

A pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar os usos do espaço agrário como um dos elementos centrais para os mecanismos de dominação senhorial e também para as estratégias de resistência escrava. Tendo como base os processos criminais do município de Bananal, o trabalho procura entender que o espaço foi vetor fundamental para produzir o controle senhorial sobre o conjunto dos homens livres e dos escravos. No entanto, o desejo de ordem e disciplina imposto pelos senhores era constantemente burlado pelos cativos, que se valiam dos conhecimentos adquiridos dos espaços e dos tempos permitidos e proibidos para realizarem um grande número de ações de resistência. Nesta pesquisa, a geografia da escravidão refere-se à dialética existente entre os usos alternativos ou não que os escravos faziam do espaço de plantação e os controles realizados por feitores, administradores e senhores sobre a mobilidade e o corpo dos cativos. Dos conflitos que se originavam desses embates tem-se a possibilidade de se compreender uma nova dinâmica para a resistência escrava. A pesquisa procurou também ultrapassar a escala do município e ampliar os horizontes. Desse modo, conseguiu-se entender a localidade de Bananal não como um estudo de caso , mas como um município articulado a um quadro mais amplo de consolidação, transformação e crise do Estado Imperial. Deste modo, a escravidão e seus corolários geográficos estavam interligados com o momento de crise da escravidão no plano nacional. Por esta razão, foi possível delinear uma nova dimensão da geografia, relacionada com as redes desenvolvidas pelos sujeitos para além dos limites do município / The aim of this research is to investigate the uses of plantation space as a central tool to slaveholders domination and the strategies used by slaves to resist it. Studying the county of Bananal, an important town of coffee production in the nineteenth century, the work focuses on the understanding of the space as a crucial vector to produce control over free men and slaves. Nonetheless, slaves usually challenged slaveholders. In this way, they used to apply their knowledge about the uses of the permitted and prohibited times and spaces in order to act against and resist slaveholders impositions. In this work, the Geography of slavery is related to the dialectic between slave uses of plantation space and the controls made by slaveholders and their agents. This relation provoked many conflicts and this shed light to the issue of slave resistance and their reaction to power. Therefore, it is possible to comprehend a new dynamics of slave resistance. On the other hand, the research is not simply a case study, because slavery in Bananal and its geographical corollaries were intertwined with the moment of crisis of slavery in Imperial Brazil. For this reason, it was possible to figure a new dimension of geography, related to the networks developed by the subjects beyond the limits of the municipality

No amplo domínio da discussão historiográfica que cobre o tema da população livre de cor ou dos pobres livres, o trabalho se propõe a discutir a inserção social de indivíduos oriundos de setores populares na primeira metade do século XIX na Bahia, debruçando-se especialmente sobre a experiência de homens e mulheres de cor preta, livres ou libertos, nascidos na América, responsáveis por fundar e transformar experiências de mutualismo popular na Bahia do século XIX. A investigação se concentra nas conexões entre as tradições religiosa e secular da ajuda mútua popular promovida por negros no Brasil, por meio da ênfase no estudo das decisões e dos modelos institucionais adotados por integrantes de uma irmandade de pretos fundada em 1832 e de uma sociedade mutual de cor (1851). Saída de uma dissidência entre os irmãos, a Sociedade Protetora dos Desvalidos foi, até onde se sabe, a única mutual autorizada a funcionar oficialmente como uma sociedade de cor, num período de não reconhecimento, e de repressão, da identidade racial de pretos pelo Estado brasileiro. / This thesis aims to discuss the experience of free colour people in Bahia nineteenth century, on the vast theme of popular social mobility that recent historians have been facing in Brazilian historiography. These individuals were black, american born, free or freed men and women, and they helped to create and to change patterns of popular mutual aid in Bahia nineteenth century. This research focuses on connexions between religious and secular traditions of mutual aid of black individual associations by analysing institutional models and strategic decisions made by the members of a black lay sodality founded in 1832 and of a black mutual society, created in 1851. The Sociedade Protetora dos Desvalidos (1851) resulted from a dissidence within the sodality and it was the sole mutual black association officially authorized by the government within an age when black racial identity was not likely to be recognized by Brazilian state.

Thesis advisor: James Keenan / Thesis advisor: Shawn Copeland / Despite its stated opposition to racism, the Catholic church in the United States remains both complicit in and shaped by the United States' persistent white supremacy. Largely due to the habituating effect of racial segregation, many of the church's practices have been turned into habits of white supremacy. For this reason, I contend, white supremacy operates in the church as a corporate vice, impeding the church's ability to achieve its identity as the body of Christ. This dissertation uncovers the Catholic parish as well as the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist as habits of white supremacy in order to propose a new approach to the problem of racial inequality and injustice, corporate re-habituation. The church must re-make itself while re-making the spaces it inhabits. As long as the Catholic church continues to reside in racially segregated space, it will continue to carry the vice of white supremacy in its body. In addition to re- drawing parochial borders in defiance of regnant patterns of racial segregation, the church must also work to dismantle both the hypersegregated black ghetto and the hyperprivileged white enclave. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2014. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Theology.

Thesis advisor: Robert C. Bartlett / This dissertation investigates Aristotle’s famous claim that “the human being is by nature a political animal.” This claim seems to express a basic disagreement between Aristotelian political philosophy and the contractarian political philosophy that informs modern liberalism. Aristotle asserts, contrary to Hobbes, for instance, that the political community is not a convention between naturally individual human beings but a natural entity in its own right prior to and authoritative over the individual. Yet not only are Aristotle’s reasons for supposing that we are naturally political obscure and questionable, but the meaning of Aristotle’s claim that we are naturally political is not altogether clear. For not only does Aristotle suggest that we are naturally political because the city is naturally prior to and authoritative over us, but he suggests we are political animals above all due to our distinctive faculty of reason, or speech, which, because it is the medium of the perception of advantage and justice that informs our actions, is what constitutes the city. Speech, in other words, is what brings the city to sight as the natural whole Aristotle asserts it to be. This suggests, however, that the naturalness of politics must be evaluated on the basis of such speech, which admits of clarification, and not on the basis Aristotle originally offers, which is speculation about the origins of the city. We argue that Aristotle’s dialectical examinations of despotic, political, and kingly forms of rule provide an outline of this task of clarification, which alone can permit us to evaluate the naturalness of politics. A close reading of these examinations, however, indicates that Aristotle ultimately rejects the view that the city is the natural whole it presents itself as being. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Cynthia L. Lyerly / Examines the rise and fall of slavery in Connecticut from the American Revolution to the state's 1848 law abolishing slavery. Also explores the racism present among the state's abolitionists and general populace that differentiated it from surrounding New England states. Explains the distinct nature of Connecticut abolitionism when compared to the national organization. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2008. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: History Honors Program. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Thesis advisor: James O'Toole / This dissertation examines the development of historic house museums in the United States from the mid-nineteenth century to the present to unravel the complex relationship between public presentations of slavery and popular perceptions of the institution. In conducting the research for this project, I examined the historic and contemporary public programming at nineteen separate museums. This sample of museums includes both publicly funded and private sites in both the North and South. By bringing together a diverse group of museums, this project examines national trends alongside regional traditions as well as the role of organizations such as the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the National Park Service, and a host of private institutions in determining different interpretive foci. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Thesis advisor: Marc Landy / The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that the Civil War was indeed brought about because of the presence of slavery in this country. It is this paper's thesis that not only did slavery provide a demonstrable economic incentive for the South to secede from the Union but also provided a social impetus as well. Slavery created a society in the South that favored the economic independence of states rather than economic integration not just because of a love for state's rights but also because any form of economic integration would diminish returns from the sizeable investment they, slave-owners, had made in slavery. Furthermore, slavery created a type of siege mentality in the South. This mentality, while helpful in muting the class tensions between the slave holding elites and poor whites, created a narrow identity amongst southerners that would have made secession that much easier. This paper will look at how the concepts of social distance and social capital helped make secession a likely outcome for the southern states. With these two factors in play, the cost of leaving the Union, of re-coordinating a new constitutional arrangement, was less costly than it might have been if not for slavery. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2011. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: S Anukriti / Thesis advisor: Robert Murphy / It is widely believed that natural disasters increase human trafficking from the affected region or country; however, credible analyses of the causal relationship are lacking. This paper estimates the causal effect of natural disaster occurrence on economic factors and the probability of human trafficking. I find that there is a significant, positive effect of disasters—as measured by an indicator for occurrence as well as disaster intensity—on human trafficking. Moreover, disasters negatively impact economic outcomes, suggesting a potential mechanism through which disasters indirectly affect trafficking. These findings are policy-relevant for anti-human trafficking and disaster relief organizations as they provide empirical evidence for a previously hypothesized relationship and may help prioritize the underemphasized rise in trafficking during times of inevitable chaos. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Arts and Sciences Honors Program. / Discipline: Economics.