Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis studies the way Indianapolis women and men from the 1820s to 1890s influenced the social development of the city through the creation and operation of benevolent institutions. Before the Civil War, Indianapolis citizens created benevolent institutions to aid individuals who could not care for themselves—specifically, individuals with physical and mental needs. When the city’s population drastically increased following the Civil War (and the emergence of railroads), Indianapolis citizens began founding benevolent organizations intended to shape certain behaviors/control specific societal problems—specifically, juvenile offenders and prostitution. A study of two Indianapolis orphanages reveals that some Indianapolis citizens established childcare institutions to care for individuals who could not care for themselves (i.e., dependent children) while other individuals created childcare institutions in attempts to control how children were raised. Founded in 1849 by white, Protestant Indianapolis women, the Widows and Orphans Friends’ Society (WOFS) subscribed to the belief that poor children should be raised away from the influence of their parents in orderly environments so they would grow into productive, contributing members of society. Established in 1870 by Quaker women, the Indianapolis Asylum for Friendless Colored Children (IAFCC) did not subscribe to this belief. Rather, African American parents used the IAFCC as a means of temporary childcare during a family crisis. The rich records left behind by the WOFS and the IAFCC allow for a study of these organizations’ founding, finances, and operations. This thesis concludes that African American parents had more agency with the Quaker-run IAFCC than white parents had with the WOFS.

This thesis project investigates the relationship between education, sympathy, and marriage by analyzing the courtship process in three early nineteenth-century novels alongside three female educational texts. The role education plays in Austen’s Emma, Brontë’s Jane Eyre, and Gaskell’s North and South, particularly in terms of female characters’ marriage prospects, shows how writers at this time conceived of intellectual equality and opportunities for women, and how the terms in which they did so actively engaged with conduct book discourse. This project expands on Nancy Armstrong’s foundational study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British fiction, Desire and Domestic Fiction, to show the continued interplay between novels and conduct literature through the mid-nineteenth century, a relationship she sees as defunct after the eighteenth century, as well as the vital role that the sympathetic exchange plays in completing a woman’s education. The thesis demonstrates how this fiction transformed possibilities for female characters’ social interactions, equality, and intellectual fulfilment by reimagining the terms of their domestic and romantic relationships in a dynamic engagement with the language and precepts of key conduct texts from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This thesis examines the life of Mary Brown, a farmer’s wife in mid to late nineteenth century Indiana, through a detailed look at primary source materials including the journals of her husband, letters, and occasional journal entries by herself and her daughters. Mary’s story serves as a case study of the lived experiences of Indiana farm women. This research includes pertinent information regarding the farm tasks she took on both in the house and in the fields. Women did what they had to in order to assure the success of their household. This challenges and rejects the narrative of the homebound and devalued wife. In the case of the Browns, they operated as one unit, wholly committed to the success of the family and farm, not dictated by middle class or urban gender norms. Even in the face of illness, childbirth, and death, these women persevered. Women farmers are an underappreciated historical player in the development of Indiana. The comparative paucity of established works which explore the role of Indiana farmer’s wives’ duties and value shows the need for in-depth research of what life really was like for women in rural Indiana. This lack of scholarship has led to the anonymity of generations of women in Indiana. Farm women were foundational to agricultural enterprises and deserve recognition. To make certain that Hoosier farm women did not remain forgotten, an exhibit was created and story of Mary Brown was shared with the public in a way that allowed new perspectives of the past to be cultivated. This thesis will also share the process and final product of the exhibit component.

No description available.

The present dissertation argues that more fully than any other fictional work in the latter third of the nineteenth century, Harold Frederic's _The Damnation of Theron Ware_ illuminates the cultural controversies within fin de siecle America. Given the inconsistent nature of its subsequent critical examination, Theron Ware lends itself to a type of new as well as traditional forms of historicist inquiry. While recent efforts by Lisa MacFarlane and Donna Campbell have broadened earlier perspectives to include the gender and theological controversies of the post bellum era, Theron Ware remains unexplored by still another vehicle that Frederic provides (127-143; 80-81). Within a complex and repeated series of episodes, Frederic uses standards of personal etiquette enunciated through a century-long series of published manuals to ponder both the inevitability and the likely consequences that will result from these "compendium of intellectual currents" (Campbell 80).

This study is an examination of the cultural interaction that occurred between Native and European peoples in Illinois between 1795-1830. During this period many Native groups splintered into factions--nativists and accommodationists--that advocated opposing strategies for dealing with Euro-Americans. Nativists equated the use of Euro-American foodways and selected material culture items with a loss of traditional values while accommodationists adopted Euro-American faming methods, clothing styles, and foodways in an attempt to avoid removal west of the Mississippi River. Drawing upon historical and archaeological information recovered from Kickapoo and Potawatomi sites in Illinois, I argue that early nineteenth century nativist peoples in Illinois actively created and maintained a social identity expressed through continuity in Indigenous forms of subsistence, settlement, and artifact manufacture; the recycling of Euro-American metal artifacts into tools and ornaments that expressed a Native identity; and the use of selected Euro-American material culture items compatible with such an identity. Change did happen, but it occurred within a Native context and served Native needs.

No description available.

The American Transcendentalists are often equated with Romanticism in nineteenth-century America. This dissertation thoroughly complicates that equation, arguing that a group of "Cautious Romantics" emerged as an alternative and conservative Romantic religious tradition. Drawing on history, art history, philosophy, literature, and theology, this dissertation provides a much fuller picture of the way European Romantic texts and authors functioned in American intellectual, cultural, and religious history by highlighting the contribution of these Cautious Romantics. Taken together, the Cautious Romantics represented a distinct religious discourse. They were American Romantics: relentless and introspective questers who emphasized epistemological intuition, artistic inspiration, and spiritual experience. In fact, some of them were the first Americans to promote European Romantic influences. Nevertheless, the Cautious Romantics continued to embrace Trinitarian Christianity, and they celebrated institutions--colleges and churches--in contrast to the often anti-institutional temperament of the Transcendentalists. Moreover, the Cautious Romantics defied religious categorization among standard antebellum groups. They were neither evangelicals, nor traditional Congregationalists, nor Unitarians. Although many became Episcopalians or Catholics, their Romantic intellectual lineage and historical relationships with one another distinguished them from their denominational kindred. Functioning on two levels, this dissertation resituates several well-known American artists and intellectuals such as Washington Allston, Orestes Brownson, Richard Henry Dana Jr., and Harriet Beecher Stowe by connecting them historically and intellectually with a wider discourse. This dissertation also unearths or re-contextualizes numerous lesser-known religious intellectuals such as Richard Henry Dana Sr., James Marsh, Sophia Dana Ripley, George Allen, Henry Hope Reed, Gulian Verplanck, Leonard Woods Jr., and Isaac Hecker. While conservative, these intellectuals were neither committed to the antebellum American South's unique conservative vision nor did they celebrate the free-market conservatism common in twentieth-century America. Thus, in addition to its contribution to intellectual and religious history, this dissertation contributes to a growing body of literature on cultural conservatism in America. Moreover, although the Cautious Romantics were American, this dissertation highlights the important historical relationships between the Cautious Romantics and Coleridge, Wordsworth, the Roman Catholic Church, and, in Harriet Beecher Stowe's case, transatlantic social reform, thereby demonstrating the transatlantic nature of Romanticism in the nineteenth century.

This dissertation explores a history of prosperity in Egypt from the vantage point of engineering works. It examines an Ottoman-Egyptian conception and organisation of prosperity and shows how it was unmade by practices of profit-making implemented by British civil engineers and colonial officials. The dissertation explores the case of one engineering project, namely the Egyptian railways, which were built over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. In disputes over routes, connections, construction methods, costs and accounts, Ottoman-Egyptian engineers and officials attempted to organise the country's possibilities through “entanglements” with agrarian forms of life and particular configurations of debt, money and commodities. Ending with the decades of the Anglo-French financial control and British occupation of Egypt, the dissertation shows how “interest” and “development” emerged to reflect the priorities of European bondholders to whom the railways were pledged. In considering “interest” and “development,” the dissertation provides a colonial history of two of the most persistent economic categories.

<p> "A Worthy Cause" brings to life a topic never before researched on the nineteenth-century Regular Baptist position surrounding the preservation of the Lord's Day (also known as Sabbatarianism) in Upper Canada. Within nineteenth-century Evangelicalism in the province the crusade for the protection of the Lord's Day was preeminent among social reform initiatives. Canadian Regular Baptists in Upper Canada viewed the observance and celebration of the Lord's Day as vital and of paramount significance in the quest for social reform and religious piety. Viewing this topic through the lens of various newspapers that made up the Regular Baptist press, this thesis demonstrates why the Lord's Day was considered to be one of the most worthy causes among nineteenth-century Upper Canadian Regular Baptists. The thesis contends that Baptist support for the Lord's Day was rooted in a number of interrelated convictions: its scriptural, doctrinal and confessional significance, its observation strengthened personal holiness and the family unit, its desecration was harmful to society, and lastly, its observance would bring a blessing to the nation. The Baptist approach was especially unique in that Baptists, champions of the separation of Church and State and religious liberty, deviated from their evangelical counterparts when it came to the legal enforcement of the Lord's Day. The thesis is an original contribution to the social and intellectual history of Baptists and the province at large.</p> / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)