This is a micro-history that explores everyday life on a small scale by tracing the common, if elusive lives of Thomas Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster, and the communities they lived in, to explore the culture in which they lived—and died. Reactions to the murder unleashed an outpouring of discourse embedded in broader, national debates concerning gender roles. The dominant cultural theme that emerged from the murder trials as reflected in middle-class newspapers maintained that true women did not kill and real men acted as gentlemen and defenders of women’s honor. The project mines a wealth of primary source material: court documents, population censuses, and newspapers. By examining the discourse surrounding Tom Dula’s execution and Ann Melton’s acquittal for the murder of Laura Foster it illuminates the murder narrative as a public forum for discussing gender roles and power in 1860s America.

This research argues that with the rise of the middle-class, Victorian England saw the development of a power model in which middle-class men, middle-class women and disenfranchised bodies of children and lower-class women suffered from the demands of bodily domination. Because the bodily health of middle-class men was believed to represent national health, it was imperative that he dominate his body, particularly with regard to sexual urges. Consequently, the bodies of women with whom he sought sexual release suffered from forms of bodily domination as well. Through an analysis of journals and private writings of those living in Victorian England, magazines, books, and advisory texts published during the nineteenth century, and philosophical interpretations of Victorian sexuality by historians, an image emerges in which Victorian sexuality is categorized by the need to dominate the body.

One dressmaker, Mrs. A. H. Taylor of Bowling Green, Kentucky, was studied in order to draw attention to the role of the dressmaker in American fashion. A biography of Mrs. A. H. Taylor and the business history were compiled; available designs were analyzed in relation to current fashion; and an investigation of the business organization was made. It was found that the dressmaking establishment played an important role in the lives of women of that time period. Fashionable custom fit clothing was made available to local residents and to mail-order customers. The establishment was one of the few businesses which offered women employment in that area. Through a comparison with contemporaneous fashion magazines, the examples of Mrs. Taylor's work which were available were found to be in current fashion, although many distinctive individual characteristics were noted. By the late 1920's the acceptance of ready-to-wear items and the death of Yrs. Taylor had brought about the decline of the dressmaking establishment, thus ending an important phase of American life.

Biography of Alice Hegan Rice, author from Louisville, Kentucky.

Several books have been written about the various natural resources of the state of Kentucky. A number of excellent histories of the state have been published with descriptions of the pioneer and outlaw days when the state numbered its inhabitants by the very few thousands. The industrial, economic, and social activities of the Kentucky people have been written about for several years. But Kentucky literature has had practically no recognition. The average person has known very little about Kentucky writers who probably have deserved to be placed among those in the Hall of Fame. From the pen of Kentucky writers one may see a realistic picture of Kentucky life, people, customs, and history.

Statement of problem - To observe the conditions of the Sulphur Well Camp of the Kentucky Emergency Relief Administration with the aim of seeking answers to the following questions: What is the history and the purpose of the Kentucky Emergency Relief Administration Educational Camp? What type of girls compose the camp? Is it worthwhile for a girl to spend her time and effort for a period of six weeks in such a camp? What is the correlation between IQ and achievement in class work at camp? What is the correlation between IQ and English tests given in the camp? What is the correlation between IQ and ranking in socio-economic test? What is the correlation between IQ's determined from Terman's Intelligence Test and National Intelligence Test? What is the girl's reaction to the benefit, value, or worthwhileness of the camp now since it is over?

A biographical study of the life of Eleanor Roosevelt was undertaken to explore the various obstacles she was required to overcome as she grew to become an influential figure in the world of liberal politics. During the New Deal years her influence was most visible as she traveled across the country and relayed to her husband the concerns of the average man. As a delegate to the United Nations, after the death of her husband, Eleanor's devotion toward attaining a United Nations which would keep peace among all nations and her ability to carry out tasks in a patient and persistent manner, gained for her the respect of all other United Nations delegates. Even later, in the area of Democratic party politics, Eleanor continued to be a living example of the humanitarian ideas for which she and the Democratic Party stood; as such, her symbolic influence served to strengthen the humanitarian image of the Democratic Party and its leaders. Though her influence was little more than a symbolic one, Eleanor Roosevelt stood as proof that politics is more than campaign tactics and party organization; that symbolism and idealism do, in fact, play a large role in determining the popularity and success of a political party.

The purpose of writing about the Greens of Falls of Rough is to record the extraordinary lives of three generations of a prominent, but somewhat neglected, Kentucky family that contributed greatly to the history of the Commonwealth. This family’s activities parallel that history in social, economic and political aspects from the state’s inception to the 1960s. In addition, this thesis should alleviate a pervasive misunderstanding regarding the identity of Willis Green, founder of the Greens of Falls of Rough. Mr. Green, a prominent Kentuckian in his own right, has been confused with another Kentuckian, a Willis Green of Danville. The misidentification has indicated that they were either the same man or father and son. This research offers evidence that they were neither the same man nor father and son; they were apparently not even related, or at most, only very distantly so. The Greens of Falls of Rough follows the lives of the three generations of Greens and spans the years 1795 through 1965. The principal issues addressed fall into four main categories: politics – Kentucky (1827-1845; 1859-1860; 1881-1884) and United States (1839-1845); Falls of Rough businesses, 1830s-1960s – farming, milling (saw and grist), and merchandising; domestic activities, 1860s-1960s; and social life, 1860s-1960s. Political subjects include some movements of Kentucky’s militia in the War of 1812, the national political campaigns of 1840 and 1844, Whig issues, and Willis Green’s relationship with Henry Clay. Business-related information includes entrepreneurial land acquisition activities in Kentucky’s Grayson and Breckinridge Counties (1820s-1830s), procedures of sawmilling and related transportation (river and railroad), farm commodities trading (1818-1900), and farm and business practices and their economic ramifications. Domestic issues encompass food-related procedures/habits and household practices – servants, remodeling/decorating, cleaning (1870-1890). Social aspects revolve around courtship (1860s) and rearing a family (1860s-1900), especially educational (Kentucky Military Institute, Centre College, Princeton Collegiate Institute) and moral training. In additions, some details of family disease/area epidemics and their treatments are discussed as well as entertainment activities. Materials for this thesis were obtained almost entirely from political and family correspondence with some contribution from military and business records. More than six thousand items of correspondence were thoroughly studied and analyzed in this research. These materials are located in the Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky; Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky; University of Louisville Library, Louisville, Kentucky; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; M.I. King Library, Lexington, Kentucky; and Eastern Kentucky University Library, Richmond, Kentucky. Some materials are in the possession of Mrs. Mary O’Neill (owner of Green property), Falls of Rough, Kentucky and Hugh Ridenour (author of this work), Hanson, Kentucky.

This thesis investigates the affects of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Mexican Revolution of 1910 on gender roles in their respective societies. Women that contributed to political discourse challenged separations of public and private spheres, which dictated order in the late and postrevolutionary periods of France and Mexico. Given the deliberate acts by both postrevolutionary governments to send women to the periphery of their respective societies, it is vital to revisit the examples of female influence that shaped the early French and Mexican Revolutions. The understanding that comes from a detailed analysis of the parameters of gendered spaces before, during, and after revolution sheds light on the relationships between order and gender that determined the future of women in their respective postrevolutionary worlds.

In my dissertation, I argue that both white and black authors of the late-1850s and early-1860s used scenes of race-centered hospitality in their narratives to combat the pervasive stereotypes of black inferiority that flourished under the influence of chattel slavery. The wide-spread scenes of hospitality in antebellum literature—including shared meals, entertaining overnight guests, and business meetings in personal homes—are too inextricably bound to contemporary discussions of blackness and whiteness to be ignored. In arguing for the humanizing effects of playing host or guest as a black person, my project joins the work of literary scholars from William L. Andrews to Keith Michael Green who argue for broader and more complex approaches to writers’ strategies for recognizing the full personhood of African Americans in the mid-nineteenth century. In the last fifteen to twenty years, hospitality theory has reshaped social science research, particularly around issues of race, immigration, and citizenship. In literary studies, scholars are only now beginning to mine the ways that theorists from diverse backgrounds—including continental philosophers such as Derrida and Levinas, womanist philosopher and theologian N. Lynne Westerfield, and post-colonial writers and scholars such as Tahar Ben Jelloun—can expand the reading of nineteenth century literature by examining the discourse and practice of hospitality. When host and guest meet at the threshold they must acknowledge the full personhood of the other; the relationship of hospitality is dependent on beginning in a state of equilibrium grounded in mutual respect. In this project I argue that because of the acknowledgement of mutual humanness required in acts of hospitality, hospitality functions as a humanizing narrative across the spectrum of antebellum black experience: slave and free, male and female, uneducated and highly educated. In chapter one, “Unmasking Southern Hospitality: Discursive Passing in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Dred,” I examine Stowe’s use of a black fugitive slave host who behaves like a southern gentleman to undermine the ethos of southern honor culture and to disrupt the ideology that supports chattel slavery. In chapter two, “Transformative Hospitality and Interracial Education in Webb’s The Garies and Their Friends,” I examine how the race-centered scenes of hospitality in Frank J. Webb’s 1857 novel The Garies and Their Friends creates educational opportunities where northern racist ideology can be uncovered and rejected by white men and women living close to, but still outside, the free black community of Philadelphia. In the final chapter, “Slavery’s Subversion of Hospitality in Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” I examine how Linda Brent’s engagement in acts of hospitality (both as guest and host) bring to light the warping influence of chattel slavery on hospitality in Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In conclusion, my project reframes the practices of antebellum hospitality as yet another form of nonviolent everyday resistance to racist ideology rampant in both the North and the South. This project furthers the ways that American literature scholars understand active resistance to racial oppression in the nineteenth century, putting hospitality on an equal footing with other subversive practices, such as learning to read or racial passing.