The study of social allies in the field of American Civil Rights and Liberties History is largely an underappreciated aspect of this historical era. This work argues that social allies and their stories are worthwhile histories that are beneficial to the study of American Civil Rights and Liberties using Louisiana lawyer Herman Lazard Midlo as a case study. Midlo worked as a Louisiana lawyer from the 1930s to 1960s and fought tirelessly for the religious liberties of the Jehovah’s Witness community in the state. His story shows how beneficial and consequential the actions of social allies have had and can have on the protection and expansion of civil rights and religious liberties.

‘Celebrity’ has become a growing field of critical inquiry and cultural interest in twenty-first century society. Celebrities embody a host of meanings and engender larger ideological and discursive practices, in which they articulate expressions of social, cultural and political power that attach meaning to public individuals. Beginning with the late-twentieth century, celebrities have come to occupy spaces that exist beyond popular culture platforms, most notably in politics and international diplomacy. In spite of its typical association with superficial discussions of gossip and cheap entertainment, celebrities have become the site of anxiety in a capitalist society. To come to terms with these growing anxieties concerning celebrity and its accoutrements, this thesis explores the embedded complexities and consequences of the celebrity system within the framework of what has dubiously been called ‘celebrity politics.’ Through a detailed examination of this phenomenon, this thesis explores the coalescing spheres of Hollywood and the White House, where ‘celebrity’ and ‘politician’ have become interchangeable monikers. In addition to examining the historical conditions that have given rise to the phenomenon, this study examines contemporary articulations of the ‘celebrity politician,’ focusing on Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn and President Barack Obama. Discussion of these figures is framed by critical theory and media studies to better understand their location within the contemporary Western landscape.

This PhD Dissertation was completed through 2011 to 2016 and was nominated for a CAGS-UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award. / My dissertation explores transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents as a site through which to think about global affective relationality and transnational histories within intimate proximities. The image of an interracial, transnational family can seem to be a fulfillment of the potential for transcendent love symbolized by humanitarian fundraisers such as Live Aid— a love that collapses borders and brings together races in multicultural bliss. Furthermore, adoptions of African children can potentially challenge discursive systems of categorization that frame the black body as existing outside the body politic. At the same time, however, we cannot understand transnational adoption without taking into account the histories of power that make possible and potentially limit the contours of these affective orientations. Indeed, representations of a transnational family consisting particularly of black African children and white Western parents not only invoke the logic of white moral motherhood within the context of contemporary globalization; they also point to European philosophical traditions that presuppose the colonizer’s right to the black body. In this project, thus, I ask: what are the sociopolitical and cultural motivations behind the desire to express humanitarian love towards African children through the act of adoption? How might these motivations create avenues for exclusion and exploitation even as they create new geographies of belonging? To answer these questions, this project brings the affective domain of contemporary transnational adoption between African children and white American parents into conversation with histories of colonial transnational intimacies and the precarious lived experiences of classed and racialized individuals in the African postcolony. In challenging popular celebratory fictions of the transnational family, it critically examines not only the utopian aspirations and social costs of transnational adoption as a humanitarian project, but also the very affect produced and channeled through adoption as a humanitarian act. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents. It offers answers to the following questions: 1. How do the ghosts of colonialism, along with the violent realities of globalization, expose the inequities hidden within idealized humanitarian narratives of rescue underlying global adoptions while at the same time revealing their transformative potential? 2. How can we account for the experiences and psychic struggles of the African adoptee, and what do their contradictions of idealized Western narratives tell us about the fantasies and anxieties of their Western parents? Ultimately, I argue that while the transnational family suggests transformative transnational connections, Western humanitarian frameworks have also sought to manage the messiness of these connections, to fix white and black bodies into old colonial roles, and to exclude certain bodies, namely those of the African birth mothers, out of the affective realm of transnational adoption. At the same time, these attempts at management, I argue, only speak to the productive potential of these messy relations to transform and exceed colonial limitations.

The thesis uses the case study of the experience of middle-class northern white women in America during the period 1800-1860 to explore several issues of wider significance. Firstly, the research focuses upon the dynamic relationships between the culturally-constructed categories of public/formal and private/informal power and participation at both the practical and symbolic levels, suggesting ways in which they intersected on the lives of women. Secondly, consideration is given to the validity of the stereotyped view that 'domestic' women were necessarily disadvantaged and dominated relative to those who aspired to public political and economic roles. Thirdly, the relationship of religious belief to these two areas is discussed, in order to discover its relevance to the way in which women both perceived themselves and were perceived by others. In seeking to explore these issues, the research has analysed the patterns of social and cultural change in the era under question, indicating how those changes influenced the perceptions and experiences of both women and men. Their reactions in terms of discourse and activity are located as strategies of negotiation in redefining both social role and participation for the sexes. The rhetoric of 'separate spheres', which was used by men and women to order their mental and physical surroundings, is reduced to its symbolic constituents in order to illustrate that the distinction between male and female arenas was more perceptual than actual. The motivating forces behind the activities and ideas of women themselves are investigated to determine the role of religion in the construction of both female self-images and wider negotiational strategies. The context of nineteenth-century social dynamics has been revealed by detailed analysis of extensive primary sources originated by both women and men for private as well as public consumption. Feminist tools of analysis which enable the conceptualisation of 'meaningful discourse' as including female contributions have further enhanced the specific focus on how women constructed their own world-views and approaches to reality. 'Traditional' approaches and tools are shown to have seriously skewed and misrepresented the reality and variety of both discourse and female experience in the era. Great efforts have been made to allow women to speak in their own words. This has produced an insight into a richness of female social participation and discourse which would otherwise be obscured. The research indicates that women were indeed actors and negotiators during the period. Those women who advocated as primary the duties of women in the domestic and social arenas were by no means setting narrow limitations on female participation in both society and discourse. The religious impulses and eschatological frameworks derived by women (varied as they were) served to order and renegotiate reality and meaning, whilst they produced female roles and influence of great significance. Women were not passive victims of male oppression. Religion can thus be perceived as a positive force which women were able to approach both for its own sake, and for their own particular ends.