This study focuses on the religious conversions of Catherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and Katherine Parr, Queen of England throughout the English Reformation and attempts to explain why their conversions proceeded at different rates. Both women came from similar backgrounds, yet Parrs conversion to Evangelicalism occurred much sooner than Willoughbys. Although Willoughby and Parrs reformist leanings are well researched, their conversion to the new faith is a topic which deserves further attention. Studying their individual conversions will not only add to the histories of their lives, but to the understanding of why they became such passionate advocates of reform. This study also focuses on the personal events which caused Willoughby and Parrs conversions to Evangelicalism and argues that their conversions were not explicitly due to any political pressure, governmental changes, or blind devotion to the Crown. Rather, their religious evolution was due to a series of personal events which eliminated the Catholic influences on their lives, exposed them to Evangelical teachings, and transformed them into fervid advocates of reform.

During the five decades between the War of 1812 and the end of the Civil War, southern Louisianans developed a society unlike any other region. The vibrant traditional image of moonlight and magnolias, the notion that King Cotton dominated the Souths economy as Anglo-Saxon masters lorded over their enslaves African-American workers still dominates the image of the American South. This image of a monolithic South, however, does not give a clear indication of the many sub-regional distinctions that both challenged and rewarded the inhabitants of those areas and provides exciting ways to understand slaveholding society culturally. Louisianas slaveholding class consisted of Creoles and Anglo-Americans who stared at one another across a chasm of cultural tension for much of this period. Only the necessity of achieving a profit through sugarcane production that demanded the two ethnic communities come together helped to blend the distinct characteristics that separated them. Slavery slowly bound them together as the Civil War approached. While they maintained a strong cultural awareness that made them either Creole or Anglo-American, the distinctions between the two groups in terms of slaveholding began to disappear. The Civil War and the abolition of slavery largely ended the tension between the two groups. Both Creoles and Anglo-Americans entered the Reconstruction period believing that they needed to work together in order to ensure that white Louisianans remained at the top of the social ladder. Essentially, Creoles and Anglo-Americans turned their attention away from the ethnicity that separated them and focused their attention on the ways in which race brought them together.

Beginning in the early 1990s, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, along with a number of non-government organizations, formulated a plan to bring grizzly bears back to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Many of the people who developed the plan previously had worked on wolf recovery efforts in central Idaho and Yellowstone National Park, and the plan they developed for grizzly bears sought to avoid many of the controversial aspects of wolf reintroduction. The plan for the Bitterroots not only relaxed the restrictions of the Endangered Species Act, but also allowed unprecedented local management of the grizzly bear population. The planâs advocates believed that their innovative approach would be the model for future endangered species restoration. Despite criticism from both conservatives and liberals, the plan marched steadily forward over the closing years of the twentieth century. In November of 2000, the FWS approved the project and expected to begin implementation in the summer of 2002. But when the Bush Administration took office in January, 2001, the new Secretary of the Interior promptly shelved the project. This thesis situates the collapse of the project as a product of the political, economic, and cultural divide that characterized the West during this period. Although the New West, which championed environmentalism, ecotourism, and recreational opportunities, had made great inroads in the region, the Old West of extractive industries such as ranching, logging, farming, and mining retained significant political clout.

This thesis is a study of missionary interaction with the Dakota language in the nineteenth century. Specifically, I look at missionaries from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) who arrived among the Dakotas of Minnesota Territory in the mid- to late-1830s. I also examine these missionaries children who became missionaries to the Dakotas by the 1870s. By studying the missionaries correspondence, memoirs, propaganda, scholarship, and religious tracts, I arrive at conclusions concerning how they viewed the Dakota language, how they planned to use it to their advantage, and the changes they imposed on the Dakota tongue as a result. On the whole, I argue that national attitudes and federal Indian policy influenced how the missionaries viewed and interacted with the language. With each new national attitude or policy, new changes came to the Dakota language. Chapter 1 shows how an intense belief that Indians could be spiritually saved before becoming civilized convinced the missionaries they should turn the Dakota tongue into a written, Christian language. Chapter 2 details how the missionaries used their knowledge of Dakota peoples and the Dakota language to become recognized scholars in the field of ethnology. In the mid-nineteenth century, the ABCFM missionaries started to accept the false idea that Indians were vanishing from the face of the continent. As a result, the missionaries believed that a preservation of Dakota customs and language could serve a beneficial academic purpose, as well as aggrandize their own careers. Chapter 3 explores the careers of the missionary children. After growing up, these children established schools in Dakota Territory and Nebraska that used the Dakota language as a pedagogical tool of assimilation. This, of course, was not a popular choice. Thus, I examine the tension between the missionaries and Bureau of Indian Affairs officials who adamantly pushed an English-only policy in Indian schools. Last, my conclusion offers some analysis of how modern day policies and attitudes toward Indian peoples may further influence changes in the Dakota language. Here, I look specifically at the trend of tribal self-determination and the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act.

Mrs. Meer Hassan Alis book Observations on the Mussulmauns of India stood as a benchmark of British knowledge about Islam in South Asia throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although Alis book was a seminal and highly regarded book, modern intellectual and womens historians have largely ignored her contribution towards the mainstream perception of Islam in colonial India. Published in 1832, Observations on the Mussulmauns countered many negative stereotypes about Islam that had become common in the works of Indologists by putting forth a new perspective gleaned from Alis decade-long stay in India, where she lived with her husbands family in Lucknow. Ali has a uniquely insightful perspective on Islam because she was living in India after marrying into a family from Lucknow that belonged to the Shia sect of Islam. Straying from anti-Muslim ideas present in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Orientalist literature, Observations on the Mussulmauns contended argued that Islam called for the fair treatment of women and was closer to Christianity than most Britons previously thought. After its publication, British scholars and popular writers constantly referred to Observations on the Mussulmauns due to Alis detailed descriptions of Muslim beliefs and practices. Alis positive, firsthand experiences with Islam helped to change the perception of Islam in early nineteenth-century British literature.

This dissertation analyzes intersections of religion, gender, and public policy in nineteenth-century Britain through the life of Elizabeth Fry (1780-1845), a Quaker minister and prison reform activist who founded the British Ladies Society for the Reformation of Female Prisoners. It examines gendered distinctions between public and private and the strategies women used to open up spaces within this separate spheres paradigm; attitudes about the relationship between private moral principles and public action; and the role religion and gender played in the tension between reformation and punishment in the criminal justice system and who was qualified to make knowledge claims about the female criminal. Religion played a key role in Frys prison reform activities, yet previous scholarship has not analyzed how religion became important to her identity. This dissertation draws on gender performativity scholarship to examine how Fry created her personal moral code and then manifested that ethic. When she began working in Londons Newgate prison in 1813, the venue was unusual for a womanparticularly one with young children. Her work in Newgate to improve prison conditions and reform prisoners, coupled with the public attention she received after an article about her work appeared in The Times in 1817, transformed her into an internationally-recognized activist for prison and criminal justice reform. In an era when legal and institutional barriers restricted womens public sphere activities, Frys expert status enabled her to inspect over 100 prisons across the United Kingdom, work with government officials to enact criminal justice reforms, write about the importance of womens work, and testify three times before Parliament. This dissertation deconstructs the meaning of and challenges to Frys celebrity during her lifetime. While celebrity was instrumental in making her activism possible, it was an unstable commodity that Fry actively managed in order to protect her personal reputation and public authority. Finally, the dissertation analyzes Victorianera biographies of Fry, which constructed ideologically-driven narratives of her life that either championed her as a proto-feminist icon or hailed her as a model Christian woman.

This dissertation explores female criminality and punishment in Pennsylvania from 1820 to 1860. I argue that antebellum societys definitions of proper womanhood dictated womens experiences as offenders and as convicted inmates. At the same time, female offenders, through their criminal behavior, actively, albeit unknowingly, helped to shape the same antebellum definitions of acceptable womanhood by exemplifying how not to behave. Once fallen from the realm of proper womanhood, female offenders faced continuous opposition in their pursuit to redeem their reputations. Societal expectations and definitions of respectability influenced the reasons why female offenders committed crimes, how they were treated as defendants during their criminal trials, their experiences as inmates in county and state prisons, and their relationships with reformers. This dissertation emphasizes the actions and experiences of the female offenders themselves, in an attempt to recover the experiences of the women a shift from past studies focusing on the structure and leadership of penal institutions and reform organizations. My project takes into consideration not only antebellum gender issues, but also the influence of race, ethnicity, and class on female offenders experiences.

Since the end of World War II, a rather consistent narrative has appeared regarding the origins of this terrible conflict: Hitler started it. The victorious western powers emerged as innocent victims in the titanic struggle while the USSR, once allied to both Hitler and the west, took on the role of principal villain during the Cold War. With the collapse of communism and the partial opening of Soviet archives, a re-assessment appeared, principally under the heading of the Collective Security School. As politically incorrect as it may seem, sober reflection indicates that the Soviet Union was actually the peacemaker in the inter-war period, while Britain and France engaged in a dangerous game of deception and underhandedness regarding the USSR. With all options exhausted, the Soviets turned to Hitler, making the attack on Poland easier. In this dissertation, I present documentary evidence of Soviet intensions and western duplicity. The Soviets did not seek to divert a conflict; they did not want war in any manner. The USSR was undergoing massive internal upheaval in economic, social, political, and military spheres. Soviet leaders could not risk an open contest for fear of losing the bigger prize: the Soviet Revolution. Soviet diplomacy pursued a consistent path of collective security until western intransigence became too great. The Nazi-Soviet Non Aggression Pact of August 23, 1939, far from being a goal of Soviet policy, was simply a last resort.

Between 1919 and 1935, the lions share of the interwar era, the British governments most important overriding task was constitutional reform of India. The subcontinents importance to Britain was undoubted: economically as an important trading partner and militarily a source of fighting men and material, as demonstrated in the Great War. However, scholars have relegated India to a relatively minor topic and instead have portrayed Britains interwar period as the era of appeasement. Appeasement only became an issue in 1935 and a major topic with the Munich crisis of September 1938. Voluminous press coverage of the India issue throughout the interwar period demonstrates that India was the major issue of the era, not just the final few years. This dissertation examines the coverage of the English press and the paramount issue in interwar Britain: The press played an important role in the debate over the political future of Britains most important possession as newspapers and periodicals still enjoyed a veritable monopoly in disseminating information; radio was still in its infancy and television only existed in research laboratories. The newspaper and periodical owners, editors, and leader writers, part of the chattering class, held enormous sway in setting the parameters and tone of the India debate: press views of the British imperial mission, Indians, as well as the reforms process colored the discussion over political changes on the subcontinent. Press coverage of the India issue also helped mold the identity of the Conservative Party, and, ultimately, of imperial Britain between the wars.

In the two decades prior to Cherokee Removal, Georgians discussed removal as a way for the state to create and maintain order, a cluster of ideas that revolved around a social system that championed white superiority, a political system that adhered to republican thinking, and a legal system that prevented lawlessness. To create a well-ordered society, Georgias leaders believed that authority flowed from white settlers to civil institutions, which benignly administered over the idealized society. In the Cherokee-Georgia borderlands, no single political entity could claim sovereignty, so the Cherokee Nation, federal government, and state of Georgia each sought to impose its own laws over the territory. Instead of a peaceful settlement, Georgias leaders had to regulate the social landscape of the borderlands, or impose social control through violence. A multitude of groups, including a multiracial vigilante group, the Slicks, a state sponsored military unit, the Georgia Guard, and a large-scale use of federal troops and state militiamen, all sought to regulate the social landscape of the borderlands. In the highly partisan world of the antebellum south, state politics and a democratic ethos collided with the violent actions of local, state, and federal actors in the borderlands crucible. Whiteness became less of a negotiated identity as state legislators sought to safeguard and codify the rights of white citizens. The use of violence in the backcountry served political and social ends, but it left ambivalent legacies. State-sponsored violence against disorderly whites showed just how comfortable the state was with using violence in its pursuit of order. That state militiamen showed restraint during Cherokee Removal in 1838 showed just the opposite. Still, two decades of violence aimed at the expulsion of the Cherokee demonstrated the earnestness white Georgians felt when they discussed the extension of the white republic.