Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009. / Title from screen (viewed on August 27, 2009). Department of History, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Jason Kelly. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 106-113).

Zugl.: Leipzig, Univ., Diss., 1999.

O objetivo desta tese é analisar como o romance A Tale of Two Cities de Charles Dickens reflete em sua estrutura questões políticas importantes que estavam presentes na sociedade inglesa no século XIX, principalmente a formação na Inglaterra de uma cultura antirrevolucionária que pintava a Revolução, usando o exemplo Francês, como um episódio comandado por uma multidão desvairada e fora de controle. Essa cultura encontra-se presente na forma como Dickens figurou a Revolução Francesa, nas incessantes comparações que faz entre a França e a Inglaterra e na constante oscilação no posicionamento do narrador. Ao mesmo tempo, a análise do romance nos permite ver que essa mesma cultura não excluiu totalmente a percepção de que a situação clamava por mudanças. Nossa hipótese é que subjacente ao enredo do romance e aderido à sua estrutura encontra-se a discussão acerca de duas soluções para a crise pressentida: a Reforma e a Revolução. O romance suscita, por causa da volubilidade do narrador, a defesa das duas posições, ora pendendo para a Revolução, pela crítica à aristocracia, ora para a Reforma, ao promover a demonização das massas. Defenderemos que essa oscilação culmina na construção de uma terceira solução, que, apesar de ser à primeira vista conservadora, torna-se radical ao expor a impossibilidade de outra saída política quando a Revolução é excluída do horizonte de possiblidades. / The objective of this thesis is to analyze how the novel A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens reflects in its structure important political issues which were part of the English society in the 19th Century, mainly the construction of a counter-revolutionary culture which portrayed the Revolution, using the French example, as an episode led by a crazed mob. This culture is present in the way Dickens depicted the Revolution, in the recurrent comparisons between France and England and in the continuous shift in the narrators opinion. At the same time, the analysis of the novel enables us to observe that this very culture did not exclude the perception that the situation claimed for changes. Our hypothesis is that the issue underlying the plot of the novel and interwoven in its structure is the discussion about two solutions to the perceived crisis: Reform and Revolution. The novel raises, because of the volubility of the narrator, arguments in the defense of both positions, sometimes advocating the Revolution in the criticism against the aristocracy, sometimes supporting the Reform, in the demonising of the mob. We argue that the alternation between these two positions culminates in the construction of a third solution, which, althought conservative at first sight, turns out to be radical for exposing the impossilbity of any other political solution when the Revolution is excluded as a possiblility.

This dissertation employs a qualitative case study approach to investigate the 2010-2012 Arab Spring. It addresses two research questions: 1) what are the Arab Spring events instances of, and 2) what gave rise to the variation across the Arab Spring outcomes? The ultimate objective of this research is to go beyond theorizing the Arab Spring to advance a typological theory on popular revolution. To that end, the study reviews several bodies of literature in the social sciences, and employs a structured, focused comparison approach to analyze variance across six Arab Spring cases: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. As a result, four theoretical types of revolutionary action have been identified: elite-imposed popular evolution (EIPR), foreign-imposed popular revolution (FIPR), foreign-blocked abortive revolution (FBAR), and elite-blocked abortive revolution (EBAR). In addition, the research found EIPR to have been the case in Tunisia and Egypt, FIPR in Libya and Yemen, and FBAR in Syria and Bahrain; EBAR was an empty cell in the Arab Spring. Furthermore, the study proposes that cases of EIPR are likely to culminate in a quasi-coup by autonomous elites; FIPR in a foreign-imposed regime change (FIRC) by international intervention; FBAR in a foreign-imposed regime maintenance (FIRM) by foreign patrons; and EBAR in an elite-imposed regime maintenance (EIRM) by subservient elites. The contingent generalizations offered by this theory should help scholars and policy makers approximate the trajectory of future revolutionary events by tracing them to the above theoretical types. This should help them improve their overall response to recent and ongoing revolutionary events, especially in the area of conflict resolution.

The outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789 was accompanied by widespread demands for equality. While much has been written on the social privileges and political inequalities denounced by revolutionary leaders, relatively little has been said on the economic inequality that plagued eighteenth-century France and was a central issue for the urban and rural poor. This paper seeks to fill that gap by examining the role of economic inequality in the French Revolution, both as it shaped and was shaped by the events of the revolutionary decade. Preliminary cahiers, popular petitions, legislative records, and political pamphlets make it possible to illustrate both the attitudes and demands of the lower classes and the reactions of the middle-class revolutionary leadership, and reveal that economic inequality had significant material and ideological impacts. Although little progress was made toward actually reducing inequality, popular demands and legislative responses created a framework for the modern welfare state which would be realized in the post-revolutionary world. Ideologically, lower-class efforts to achieve economic equality were distilled in their most radical form by Gracchus Babeuf, whose Conspiracy of Equals would become an important forbearer for the socialist and communist movements of the nineteenth century. These institutions and ideologies remain prevalent in our own society, and studying the role of economic inequality in the French Revolution illuminates their origins and subsequent development. / Graduate / 2023-06-20

Americans view neutrality in the 1790s as the far-seeing wisdom of the Founders and a weak power's common-sense approach to a transatlantic war in which it could not afford to get involved. Far from this benign image of prudence, however, neutrality in the Early Republic was controversial: it was a style and paradigm of foreign policy that grappled with the consequences of a democratic politics exacerbated by diplomatic crises. Far from promoting tranquility, neutrality provoked uproar from the very beginning. Intense print battles erupted over sensational exposés of foreign influence and conspiracy, reverberating through the international, national, and local levels simultaneously. Print exposés of foreign intrigue provoked partisan warfare that raised the larger, unsettled (and unsettling) issues of the national interest, the exercise of federal power, and the relationship between the people and their government. This dynamic reflected and exacerbated preexisting sectional fissures in the union, triggering recourse to the politics of slavery. As a result, the politics of slavery calibrated the competing national visions of the emerging Federalists and Republicans, defining the limits of American independence while challenging the ability of the United States to remain neutral. Drawing on the efforts of diplomatic historians, political historians and literary scholars, this work illustrates the mutually constitutive relationship between print politics, foreign relations, and the politics of slavery in the Early Republic. It argues that neutrality was a style of foreign policy that both political parties used to contain sectionalism and faction, and that print politics and the politics of slavery combined to create a dynamic that made that style malleable. / History

Egyptian women played an integral and important role in the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Egypt witnessed different forms of struggles and fights over power since January 25, 2011. The last decade can be understood as episodes of contention. Women played vital roles in each of these episodes. Both the complexity and dynamics of the different roles played by women problematized the various conceptual frameworks that are usually used in analyzing Egyptian women’s various forms of activism. Resultantly, this dissertation suggests a new analytical framework that can be applied to understand Egyptian women’s struggles and ways of expressing their agency. The theory of intersectionality by Collins and Bilge was used to analyze six documentaries produced by either female filmmakers or focused on women’s struggles and activism after the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. The Triple C Model (Context, Contradictions, and Commonalities) analytical framework could fill the analytical gap in understanding the complex discourses surrounding Egyptian women’s oppression and activism.

This thesis examines the imagery of Jose Guadalupe Posada in the context of the Mexican Revolution with particular reference to the corrido as a major manifestation of Mexican culture. Particular emphasis is given to three corridos: "La Cucaracha," "La Valentina," and "La Adelita." An investigation of Posada's background, style, and technique places him in the tradition of Mexican art. Using examples of works by Posada which illustrate Mexico's history, culture, and politics, this thesis puts Posada into the climate of the Porfiriato and Revolutionary Mexico. After a brief introduction to the corrido, a stylistic analysis of each image, research into the background of the song and subject matter, and comments on the music draw together the concepts of image, music, and text.

Amid the 2011 Arab Revolts, and the subsequent worldwide Occupy movement, social movement scholars faced sudden, powerful mass mobilisations without easily identifiable resources, networks, or forms of organisation underlying them. These instances of mobilisation beyond the scope of what we traditionally consider ‘the movement’ have stretched existing theories of social movements to their limits, defying both conventional theoretical frameworks and existing approaches. This work undertakes a novel analysis of mobilisation which accounts for these new, disruptive cases. It advances the concept of Affinity: a predisposition to participate in certain causes based on social or psychological traits. Alongside this concept, it outlines conditions of Convergence: emergent situations, frames and spaces which encourage those with such Affinity to temporarily participate in mass mobilisations. These two concepts are advanced and developed through a study of the 2011 Egyptian Revolt and Occupy Wall Street movement, alongside the classic case of the 1789 French Revolution. These cases are analysed in comparative perspective to develop a powerful analytical tool with which scholars can augment conventional analyses: The Affinity-Convergence Model of Mobilisation.

In “Translating Revolution in Twentieth-Century China and France,” I examine how the two countries translated each other’s revolutions during critical moments of political and cultural crisis (the 1911 Revolution, the May Fourth Movement (1919), the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and May 1968 in France), and subsequently (or simultaneously), how that knowledge was mobilized in practice and shaped the historical contexts in which it was produced. Drawing upon a broad range of discourses including political journals, travel narratives, films and novels in French, English and Chinese, I argue that translation served as a key site of knowledge production, shaping the formulation of various political and cultural projects from constructing a Chinese national identity to articulating women’s rights to thinking about radical emancipation in an era of decolonization. While there have been isolated studies on the influence of the French Revolution in early twentieth-century China, and the impact of the Chinese Cultural Revolution on the development of French Maoism and French theory in the sixties, there have been few studies that examine the circulation of revolutionary ideas and practices across multiple historical moments and cultural contexts. In addition, the tendency of much current scholarship to focus exclusively on the texts of prominent French or Chinese intellectuals overlooks the vital role played by translation, and by non-elite thinkers, writers, students and migrant workers in the cross-fertilization of revolutionary discourses and practices. Given that potential solutions to social and political problems associated with modernity were debated through the recurring circulation of translations (and retranslations) of ideas such as “democracy”, “natural rights,” “women’s rights,” and so on, I examine: who was translating whom, and for what purposes? What specific concepts and values are privileged, and why? Taking translation and translingual contact as my point of departure, I illuminate how French and Chinese intermediaries envisioned and attempted to create a just society under fraught historical conditions.