This thesis analyzes the differences between the fictionalized madam of the American West and the historical madam are analyzed to understand how racial and gender hierarchies normalized themselves in the American West and disempowered women and people of color. This thesis uses Gold Rush San Francisco, and two madams, as a case study of this phenomenon.

U.S. military camptown prostitution in South Korea was a system ridden with entangled structures of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality. This thesis aims to elucidate the ways in which racial ideologies, in conjunction with gendered nationalist ideologies, materialized in the spaces of military base communities. I contend that camptowns were hybrid spaces where the meaning and representation of race were constantly in flux, where the very definitions of race and gender were contested, affirmed, and redefined through ongoing negotiations on the part of relevant actors. The reading of camptown prostitutes and American GIs as sexualized and racialized bodies will provide a nuanced understanding of the power dynamics unique to camptown communities. The first part of this study consists of a discussion of Korean ethnic nationalism and its complementary relation to U.S. racial ideologies. Denied of an ethnonational identity, camptown prostitutes denationalized themselves by rejecting Korean patriarchy and resorting to White American masculinity to craft a new self-identity. Another component of this thesis involves American GIs and their racialized self-identities. Recognizing American soldiers as products of a specific political and social context, I argue that military camptowns were largely conceived as spaces of normalized abnormality that provided a ripe opportunity to challenge existing social, economic, racial, and sexual norms.

This project examines Dr. C. DeLores Tucker’s efforts to abolish the production and distribution of gangsta rap to the American youth. Though her efforts were courageous and daring, they were not sufficient. The thesis will trace Tucker’s crusade beginning in 1992 through the end of the 1990s. It brings together several themes in post-World War II American history, such as the issues of race, gender, popular culture, economics, and the role of government. The first chapter thematically explores Tucker’s crusade, detailing her methodology and highlighting pivotal events throughout the movement. The second chapter discusses how opposition from rap artists, and the music industry, media coverage of Tucker and her followers, and resistance from members of Congress contributed to the failure of her endeavor.

This paper crafts a narrative about how elite, white Richmond women experienced the fall and rebuilding of their city in April and May 1865. At first, the women feared the entrance of the occupying army because they believed the troops would treat them as enemies. However, the goal of the white occupiers was to restore order in the city. Even though they were initially saddened by the occupation, many women were surprised at the courtesy and respected afforded them by the Union troops. Black soldiers also made up the occupying army, and women struggled to submit to black authority. With occupation came the emancipation of slaves, and this paper also examines how women adjusted to new relationships with freed blacks. By the end of May, white women and white Union soldiers bonded over their attempt to control the black population, with some women and soldiers even beginning to socialize.

Many of the Harlem Renaissance anthologies and histories of the movement marginalize and omit women writers who played a significant role in it. They neglect to include them because these women worked outside of socially determined domestic roles and wrote texts that portrayed women as main characters rather than as muses for men or supporting characters. The distorted representation of women of the Renaissance will become clearer through the exploration of the following texts: Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun, Caroline Bond Day’s “Pink Hat,” Dorothy West’s “Mammy,” Angelina Grimke’s Rachel and “Goldie,” and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s A Sunday Morning in the South. In these texts, the themes of passing, motherhood, and lynching are narrated from the consciousness of women, a consciousness that was largely neglected by male writers.

The demands of WWII mobilization led to the creation of the first standing women's army in the US known as the Women's Army Corps (WAC). An unintended consequence of this was that the WAC provided queer women with an environment with which to explore their gender and sexuality while also giving them the cover of respectability and service that protected them from harsh societal repercussions. They could eschew family for their military careers. They could wear masculine clothing, exhibit a masculine demeanor, and engage in a homosocial environment without being seen as subversive to the American way of life. Quite the contrary: the outside world saw them as helping to protect their country. This paper looks at the life of one such queer soldier, Dorothee Gore. Dorothee's letters, journals, and memorabilia demonstrate that for many lesbians of her generation, service in the WACS during WWII was a time of relatively open camaraderie and acceptance by straight society.

A conquista da independência em Moçambique se deu através da luta armada. Iniciada em 1964, foi capitaneada pela Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), um movimento de 1962 que contou com uma organização feminina, a Liga Feminina de Moçambique (LIFEMO) e, posteriormente, com um Destacamento Feminino (DF) de caráter guerrilheiro. A entrada das mulheres no combate impôs a formulação de políticas específicas sobre emancipação e direitos que, em 1973, passaram a ser centralizadas pela Organização da Mulher Moçambicana. É também neste período que se construiu a figura heróica de Josina Muthemba Machel cuja data de morte, em 7 de abril de 1971, passou a marcar o calendário oficial como o dia da mulher moçambicana. Esta pesquisa propõe identificar e compreender o processo de construção dessa personagem como símbolo do movimento de mulheres, tendo como foco sua trajetória no âmbito de sua atuação com a de outras combatentes e com a FRELIMO. Tem como balizas cronológicas os anos de 1962, de fundação do movimento e de gestação da luta armada que resultou na conquista da independência em 1975, até a década de 1980 quanto teve lugar a Conferência Extraordinária da Organização de Mulheres Moçambicanas e o V Congresso da FRELIMO, quase duas décadas após a morte de Josina. Para tanto, além da pesquisa bibliográfica sobre gênero na África com especial ênfase em Moçambique, foram considerados os dados biográficos de Josina Machel, obras relativas à participação das mulheres na luta de libertação, periódicos da imprensa de Moçambique (Brado Africano, Revista Tempo e a Voz da Revolução) e os documentos da OMM e da FRELIMO (1962 a 1983). / The conquest of the independence in Mozambique took place through an armed struggle. Initiated in 1964, it was led by the Liberation Front of Mozambique (FRELIMO), founded in 1962. The movement had an organization of women, the Women\'s League of Mozambique (LIFEMO) and, later on, a Female Detachment (DF) of guerrilla characteristics. The entry of women imposed a call for emancipation and rights that, in 1973, came to be centralized by the Mozambican Women\'s Organization. At this moment, the heroic figure of Josina Muthemba Machel was created, whose deaths date, on April 7, 1971, became an official landmark for the day of the Mozambican woman. This dissertation focuses in identify and comprehend the construction process of Josina Machel as a heroic symbol of the women\'s movement, concentring on her trajectory in her scope of action with other combatants and also with FRELIMO. The chronological frame considers the years of 1962, when the movement was officially established as well the armed struggle that leads to the independence in 1975, until the 1980s, when the Especial Conference of the Organization of Mozambican Women occurred during the FRELIMO\'s government - almost twenty years after Josina´s death. Besides the bibliographical research on gender in Africa with a special emphasis on Mozambique, the dissertation deals with biographical data of Josina Machel, with the research on women\'s participation in the struggle for independence, also with the press periodicals O Brado Africano, Revista Tempo and A Voz da Revolução and, finally, with the documents of OMM and FRELIMO (1962 to 1983).

This thesis investigates the economic accountability of women in eighteenth-century England, particularly within the informal credit market. In the past few decades, substantial scholarship has demonstrated women's regular involvement in active income generation. At all levels of the economy - from servants to investors - and stages of working life - from training to retirement - women have been shown to have engaged in a far more active manner than was previously appreciated. Older narratives of working opportunities being eroded by capitalism or the industrial revolution have been significantly challenged and the continuity of women's work largely demonstrated, with women whether single or married trading under their name, sometimes with phenomenal success. However, there have been no detailed examinations of how, or even if, women were held accountable when their business was not successful and failed. This thesis examines the extents to which women were held accountable for their own failures, asserting that, to understand female business in this period, it is not merely enough to prove its continued existence. The degree and extent of female business independence must also be determined. To achieve this it focusses on the often underappreciated role that debtors' prisons played in the eighteenth-century economy. Bankruptcy, traditionally the mechanism used to examine failure and insolvency, was artificially restricted during the period to those owing over £100 and who were defined as a 'trader' by a 1571 statute. Therefore principally only the wealthier merchants went bankrupt. Debtors' prisons were much less restrictive. Anyone owing over £2 could be imprisoned indefinitely under the common law on a pre-trial basis with little guarantee that trial would ever take place. However, debtors' prisons have received little scholarly attention due to untested assumptions about their lack of effectiveness. That which exists has focussed upon conditions or reform and has broadly ignored or denied the presence of women as prisoners. Due to the lack of existing knowledge about how prisons functioned, the thesis is split into complementary sections, first exploring the prisons themselves before turning to female prisoners within them. Part One reconfigures eighteenth-century debt imprisonment from a medieval hangover to a fundamental element of the credit market. It posits that, as contemporary sales credit was substantially based upon individual reputation rather than entirely upon financial reality, it was logical that prisons focussed on the confinement of the body behind reputation to enforce informal contracts. The first chapter illustrates the hypothesis fully, demonstrating the importance of debtors' prisons over bankruptcy and court process. It also examines the hierarchy of prisons. Superior court prisons like the King's Bench and the Fleet, catering generally for higher status prisoners, functioned as an obstacle to easy debt recovery by allowing debtors to live outside in relative liberty. Much of the existing scholarship has been skewed by focus on these prisons. The second chapter tests the hypothesis through a quantitative analysis of the surviving commitment registers of the Wood-Street Compter, later the Giltspur-Street Compter (1741-1815). Analysing commitment rates, monthly population estimates, release mechanisms, length of commitment, debt averages, as well as providing indicative data on debtor occupational structure the chapter demonstrates that prisons underlined the credit system by providing the trading classes with a speedy debt recovery mechanism. Chapter Three acts as a caveat to this evidence by demonstrating the fragility of the system of debt imprisonment and that simple reforms, intended to improve the rights of the debtor, undermined the purpose of debtors' prisons by diluting indefinite confinement. It focusses on the 1761 Compulsive Clause and the schedules of debtor estates produced out of it, as well as the qualitative change to imprisonment by the imposition of term limits on those owing less than £2 from 1786. Part Two uses the knowledge that debt imprisonment was an effective and normal facet of the credit market which processed both those who had temporarily found themselves unable to meet the demands of creditors and those whose economic ventures had failed absolutely. Chapter Four, acknowledging that the very existence of female prisoners for debt has been readily denied, investigates how the women within came to be confined through prison records along with memoirs and other personal documents relating to prisoners. It questions the absolute nature of coverture, demonstrating that some married women were confined for their debts, contrary to the letter of the law. It also argues that simply because the majority of female prisoners were either spinsters or widows, this did not mean their confinement was the result of anyone other than themselves. We should see female imprisonment as an action of their being held accountable. Finally, Chapter Five examines the quantitative reality of female debt imprisonment to measure accountability over time. It shows that the female experience was not substantially different from that of men within debtors' prisons, though some degree of separation appeared after 1780 particularly in the size of the debt for which they were committed. Finally, by combining the compter data on female percentages with that of other prisons in London with limited surviving material and with nationwide data drawn from the Insolvency Acts it is able to suggest the female accountability over the long eighteenth century. It posits that female accountability and therefore economic independence, declined across the period as the number of permanent spinsters and the age at first marriage fell. While it does not suggest that the rate of business run by women declined in this period, that more of them were covered by male ownership suggests a significant qualitative change in female business's societal place.

<div>This study analyzes eleven collections created, saved, and preserved by rural Iowa women, during the middle of the twentieth-century to interpret change in the experience of rural American women, and consider their role in the preservation of historical evidence. Analysis of privately-held and institutional collections of calendars, journals, scrapbooks, notebooks, and club meeting records provides details of farm life, rural communities in transition, and the way collection creators conceptualized and enacted the identity of rural womanhood. In making decisions about which events to write down in a journal or clip-and-save from the local newspaper, these women “performed archivalness” in preserving their experience for family and community members and scholars. </div><div>The women who created the collections considered in this study experienced a rural landscape altered by the continuation and aftermath of agricultural specialization, mechanization, and capital consolidation. These changes altered rural community systems, economies, and institutions reshaping the experience of rural womanhood, as women upheld and adjusted the norms and values that defined the rural way of life. This study takes a three-part approach to considering the eleven collections as case studies. Chapter two analyzes five of the collections as unconventional forms of autobiographical writing, finding that nowhere else were women truer to themselves and their experiences than in their daily writing. In journals or on calendars, these women wrote their life stories by recording the daily details of work, motherhood, and marriage, and occasionally providing subtle commentary on local and national events. Changes in women’s work, education, responsibilities in marriage and motherhood, and involvement in public life and civic affairs happened in gradual and rapid ways during the middle of the twentieth-century. The third chapter in this study analyzes the collections of three women who used their writing to document, prescribe, and promote notions of rural womanhood during this time of change. Chapter four provides a meditation on the relationship between evidence and history by examining the ways in which three women performed archivalness in creating their collections. Consideration of the means by which the collections have been saved, provides insight into the importance of everyday individuals in the preservation of historical evidence. </div><div><br></div>

This dissertation, "Uniting Interests: Money, Property, and Marriage in America, 1750-1860," examines how marriage was an essential economic transaction that responded to the development of capitalism in early America. Drawing on scholarship on the history of economic development, household organization, law, and gender, I argue that families actively distributed resources at marriage as part of larger wealth management strategies that were sensitive to regional and national economic growth. I focus particularly on women's property holding and how families deployed the legal protection of women's property as bulwarks against financial disaster. This project restores the family and women to the narrative of capitalistic development, breaking down the fictive divide between public and private economies. Early chapters explore how families planned for wealth distribution when children married and the strategies they employed to attract financially suitable partners. Subsequent chapters explore how some couples negotiated or rejected protection for married women's property, how individuals mobilized kinship networks created by marriage to their advantage, and the balance related families struck between financial assistance and self-interest. The final chapters explore how property was central to families' responses to married women's distress and to suspicions of female infidelity. In so doing, I demonstrate that the economic functions of marriage fundamentally shaped American families and relationships throughout the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century. Despite regional differences in social and economic development, the legal structure of marriage was widely shared and remarkably durable. I argue that even progressive developments in marriage law and practice were often motivated more by the desire for financial security than by concerns for female independence. More broadly, this project reveals how sexual inequality in early American was in large part created and maintained through the laws and practices of marriage.