As a significant act of U.S. imperialism, the Mexican War doubled the territory, erected an international border between the two nations, and significantly complicated nineteenth- and early twentieth-century notions of race and gender relations. The Southwest territory, old Spanish borderlands, was the site of the first foreign war for the United States and it witnessed the most nationally-informing debates regarding the Indian question, the woman question, and how citizenship could be imagined and transformed in the age of Manifest Destiny.
This dissertation interrogates the mimetic link between nation and the domestic through a reconfiguration of the republican family romance and its monomaniacal preoccupation with gatekeeping whiteness as the sole signifier of political privilege and power. I examine Manifest Destiny in the context of U.S./Mexico relations framed by the Mexican War (1846--8) and the Mexican Revolution (1910). I look specifically at how Mexican and Anglo-American women in the Southwest forge relationships between and among familial, cultural, and national spheres.
Chapter one examines the role of Enlightenment ideology and the captivity narrative in post-Mexican War interracial marriages. Chapter two probes the legal and racial consequences of Manifest Destiny expressed in interracial adoption plots. The third chapter investigates female travel narratives in the Southwest. Women soldiers and spies during the Mexican War, Civil War, and Mexican Revolution (1910) comprise the fourth chapter. The final chapter looks at women's fight for suffrage during the Mexican Revolution. Among the authors and historical figures featured in this study are recovered authors Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jovita Gonzalez, and Maria Cristina Mena. Also featured are the personal narratives of Eliza Allen, Loreta Janeta Velazquez and the newspaper articles of Jane McManus Storms (Cora Montgomery).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:RICE/oai:scholarship.rice.edu:1911/18037 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Tinnemeyer, Andrea Jill |
| Contributors | Aranda, Jose F., Jr. |
| Source Sets | Rice University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis, Text |
| Format | 209 p., application/pdf |
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