The frontier was once described as lands on the periphery of a culture. I argue that frontier spaces are a third space where hybridity can occur. Several of these areas existed in the medieval world with many centering around the Mediterranean and its surrounding lands. The Norman kingdom of Sicily is one such place. Utilizing three chronicles of the time, while looking through the lens of the frontier, something not done by other modern historical texts, a distinctiveness begins to become apparent. The geographic location, the island's past, and the eventual conquest by the Normans provide a base for hybridity to appear. The eventual kingdom came to have more than Christian subjects, they would have Muslim, Jewish and Byzantine Greeks as well. These communities entangling with one another eventually adopted ideas, languages, building styles, and more which is common in a frontier environment. They created something unique when compared to other Norman settlements such as Antioch, Edessa, or in Wales. When looking at the administration, propaganda, toleration and material culture of the kingdom and these settlements a uniqueness becomes clear. After usurping the former ruler and instilling their own administration the Normans had maintained the former structures of power; they had also utilized their subjects to help create a lasting legacy, one which is admired even today. The other settlements shared similarities, Antioch, for instance, was conquered the same way as Sicily. The Norman administration pushed for full integration, but the Christian subjects often still clashed showcasing a long-held unease with the other cultures in the kingdom. The administration also experienced their own cultural entanglement adopting Muslim thinking. The hybridity of cultures experienced in Sicily went unmatched by any other Norman settlement and would be the cause of their unique identity.

The Fall of Rome (or more specifically the Western Roman Empire) remains a hotly debated subject in the history of Late Antiquity. The Battle of Adrianople can be argued to be the beginning of Rome's end, but the cause of the battle lay more with Rome's imperial mismanagement than any deliberate attempt at war from the barbarians. Rome turned against those who would have defended the empire, and for many centuries had done just that. Despite being forced into an antagonistic relationship with Rome, their reputation as the cause of Rome's calamity has remained to the present day. This thesis will first argue that the fault lies more with Rome than with the various barbarian tribes. After making that argument, it will investigate why the "barbarian invader" myth has remained in the public consciousness for more than 1500 years after Rome's fall.

This dissertation examines forms of collaboration among a small group of German-speaking artists and intellectuals between 1911 and 1941, illuminating the mechanics and meaning of their life and work together. The group, which included the writers Karin Michaëlis, Walter Benjamin, and Bertolt Brecht, the actress Helene Weigel, and the dramaturge Margarete Steffin, had its roots in turn-of-the-century Vienna and in Weimar Berlin, but found its fullest expression in southern Denmark, where most of its members spent the first six years of their exile from Nazi Germany. It argues that because of their commitments to socialism and their relative disinterest in liberal notions of singular authorship, these figures devised a system of intellectual cooperation that included co-writing, conversation, criticism, correspondence, editorial intervention, and performative experimentation. It prioritized notions of labor, rigor, mutual obligation, and togetherness over more conventional concerns about accreditation and authorship. Rejecting a model based on sex and competition between "Brecht's women" or on an asymmetrical friendship between Brecht and Benjamin, this dissertation shows that, during their exile in the area of southern Denmark around the Svendborg Sound (1933-1939), the group developed a stable division of labor and a daily routine which resisted hierarchy to a significant degree. Reaching across their differences in gender, ethnicity, health- and exile-status, and across their differing understandings of socialism, this group strove for a unity that would make good use of their dissimilarities. They sometimes failed to achieve this, however, because of discriminatory habits of mind and behavior. Their lapses into sexism or anti-semitism necessarily complicate an understanding of their priorities and limits, delineating the boundaries of the group and illuminating the difficulties of pushing against the norms of the Europe of the 1930s. A repertoire of care that included conversation, leisure, and the giving of advice, help, and gifts smoothed the way for productive intellectual collaboration as well as a sustainable daily life on the Svendborg Sound. Thus, this project raises questions about the study of intellectual history beyond the study of ideas and texts to incorporate the social, material, and spatial realities of every day life. / 2022-07-31T00:00:00Z

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<p>This dissertation examines sermons delivered by Confessing Church pastors in the Nazi dictatorship. The approach of most historians has focused on the history of the Christian institutions, its leaders, and its persecution by the Nazi regime, leaving the most elemental task of the pastor ? that is, preaching ? largely unexamined. The question left unaddressed is how well did Confessing pastors fare in articulating their views of the Nazi regime and the persecution of the Jews through their sermons? To answer this question, I analyzed 910 sermons by Confessing Church pastors, all delivered or disseminated between 1933 and the end of World War II in Europe. I argue that new trends in preaching popular among Confessing Church pastors discouraged deviation from the biblical text in sermons, and thus one result was few criticisms concerning German politics and society. Nevertheless, a minority of pastors criticized the Nazi regime and its leaders for their racial ideology and claims of ?Aryan? superiority, and also for unjust persecutions against Christians. They condemned Nazism as a morally corrupt ideology in contradiction to Christianity. Further, I argue that these sermons provide mixed messages about Jews and Judaism. While on the one hand, the sermons express admiration for Judaism as a foundation for Christianity and Jews as spiritual cousins; on the other hand, the sermons express religious prejudice in the form of anti-Judaic tropes that corroborated the Nazi ideology that portrayed Jews and Judaism as inferior. In the final section of the dissertation I explore the ministries of German pastors of Jewish descent and argue that they not only experienced persecution from the Nazi state, but also from their own congregations. Nevertheless, the themes of their sermons are consistent with those found in those of their colleagues. My research demonstrates that the German churches were in fact places to offer criticism of the Nazi regime, which was often veiled through biblical imagery and metaphor. Yet the messages reveal criticism from a position of obedience and subservience to the state, and at the same time the expose a confused ambiguity about the Jews and Judaism and their relation to Christians in Nazi Germany.

<p> In the study of the Holocaust and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime, emphasis is most frequently placed on the attempted extermination of the Jewish population of Europe. While this focus is not misplaced, the result of this focus often forces other persecuted groups into the background. The persecution of the Jehovah&rsquo;s Witnesses of Germany is often given limited attention in Holocaust historiography. Although not designated for extermination like the Jews, the Nazi regime sought to bring about an end to the presence of this religious sect, viewing the Witnesses as a threat to the unity of the German Reich. This paper draws on the theories of Benedict Anderson and Hannah Arendt and uses the region of present-day North Rhine-Westphalia as a case study in an effort to explain how and why the Jehovah&rsquo;s Witnesses (unlike other sectarian religions) came to be seen as enemies of the Reich. It is estimated that there were 2,500 documented cases of state-sponsored persecution inflicted upon Witnesses living in North Rhine-Westphalia. The types of persecution varied from trial and imprisonment in concentration camps, to the removal of children from the care of their parents, to execution. Although the numbers of individuals targeted do not rival those of the Jews, their marginalization in the study of the Holocaust and genocide limits our understanding of the scope of this crime against humanity. This paper is an attempt to correct this deficiency.</p>

<p> This dissertation discusses how Victorian writers, artists, and critics represent historical queens as shadows of Queen Victoria throughout her long reign (1837&ndash;1901). Focusing on Victorian representations of four queens&mdash;Catherine de Medici, Mary Stuart, Queen Elizabeth I, and Marie-Antoinette&mdash;this project seeks to establish a literary genealogy by showing how British writers drew upon historical interpretations of dead French and English queens to express psychological ambivalence, political anxiety about female monarchy, national, confessional difference, and complex sexual and erotic dimensions. Rather than approach these queens as historical persons, this dissertation concentrates on the literary, figural, and spectral qualities that translate unevenly across cultural, religious and historical lines. The dissertation uses interdisciplinary methods drawn from history, psychoanalysis, and feminism to examine how Victorian writers relate their representational strategies to novels, dramas, visual texts, and historiographies in which the queens are sources of sensation, fascination, English moral exceptionalism, and spectacle. The mix of canonical and non-canonical writers recasts the familiar images of these queens in a new light and brings unfamiliar and long forgotten writers into the discussion. In examining how these cultural texts work against the grain of more canonical texts, the dissertation shows how they have the potential to unsettle what it is thought is known about Victorian attitudes toward female monarchy. Finally, I argue that it matters that Queen Victoria is on the throne because she casts her shadow over these cultural texts while they are being produced and consumed.</p>

This thesis focuses on work relations within the ironworks established at Merthyr Tydfil, Glamorgan, in the second half of the eighteenth century. From the 1780s, theseconcerns expanded at high speed, to rank amongst the largest industrial plants in Britain. A variety of manuscript sources are exploited to provide an unusually detailed account of eighteenth-centuryworkplace practice. Particular attention is paid to the problems of capitalist control that arose in enterprises which were of unparalleled size, and growing at breakneck pace. The ways in which the slippage of capitalist control was offset are examined. Firstly, the 'culture' of work in the iron trade, the set of protocols which governed the organisation of work by senior workmen, is anatomised. Secondly, an analysis of the peculiar forms of working practice in the collieries and mines of Merthyr is developed to provide an explanation of the fierce loyalties which the rival ironworks could command. The second part of the thesis examines the power of the Merthyr ironmasters, both in south-east Wales, and, more especially, in the corporate politics of the national irontrade. The evolution of a piece of legislation which was sponsored by the ironmasters of South Wales is traced in an effort to understand the extent and nature of their power. Lastly, an account is given of Merthyr's development as an urban settlement, attending closely to the difficulties which industrialisation presented for the district's radical tradition. Stress is laid on the demoralising defeat of Merthyr's radicals in the late 1790s, and the ascension to local power of the ironmasters.

The corporation of St Albans, from the time they obtained their first charter from Edward VI in 1835, were a select body. For most of the period 1685 to 1835 they showed a decreasing concern for the government of the borough, though they jealously guarded their rights to govern. The chief administrators in the town were the borough magistrates and the trustees and commissioners of the statutory authorities. The most active of the borough's courts was granted by act of Parliament. A turnpike trust maintained the principal road through the borough. Early in the 19th century paving and lighting commissioners took over the duties of parish and borough officers and provided a minimum of health and cleanliness in the borough. The chief function of the corporation was political. Their ability to create freemen and the mayor and town clerk's activities at the poll enabled the corporation to play a decisive part in the return of members for the borough. At the beginning of the period, the borough was subjected to the influence of two of the most powerful figures of the age, the 1st Duke and Duchess of Marlborough. Much of the political history of the borough is concerned with the struggles of the Marlboroughs and their heirs with the Grimston family, the largest landowners in the immediate neighbourhood of St Albans. The opponents of the corporation were to be found mainly in the vestry of the Abbey parish, the most populous of the three parishes within the borough's boundaries. An action that the vestry brought in the Court of Chancery in 1724 ended disastrously for the corporation, and the after effects of this law suit can be traced for almost a century in the corporation's affairs. But, on the whole, the town's inhabitants showed an amused toleration of the corporation and its workings. Dissenters, renowned for their probity, readily accepted their guineas after an election. There were troublesome individuals, but the corporation possessed the ability to transform the irritants that entered their shell into useful ornaments--thus ambitious attornies became town clerks. In theory, the act regulating municipal corporations is a logical point at which to conclude, for it marks the end of the old corporation founded upon chartered rights. In practice it is not so logical. The ease with which the members of the old corporation carried on their activities in the new council suggests that it was not charters or acts of Parliament but custom that provided the animus to the government of the borough.

<p> Historians of the Middle Ages have long reflected on the chronicles and archival sources of Western Europe, seeking to find the birth of the modern state. This thesis represents one such contribution to this historical problem, exploring the question of political centralization in the kingdom of France during the reigns of Capetian kings between 1151 and 1247. Focusing on the county of Anjou, this thesis contends that local aristocrats not only constructed their own political community but also used local customs to shape the contours of centralization in Anjou. Angevin sources suggest that state-building in France emerged less from conquest and occupation than as the result of cooperation between the political center and peripheral communities. The kings of France benefited from the loyalty of the Angevin political community, while local elites used royal concessions to define and defend their political and legal rights as Angevins.</p>