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"A Laudable Ambition Fired Her Soul": Conduct Fiction Helps Define Republican Womanhood, Community, and Education in the Works of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susanna Rowson
Title
"A Laudable Ambition Fired Her Soul": Conduct Fiction Helps Define Republican Womanhood, Community, and Education in the Works of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susanna Rowson.
Creator
Workman, Jessica, Logan, Lisa, Kamrath, Mark, Oliver, Kathleen, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This study examines the major works of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susanna Haswell Rowson, three major writers of the 1790s whose writing responds to the ideologies of the early American Republic. I suggest that Murray, Foster, and Rowson write conduct fiction which responds to the changing attitudes toward women and education after the American Revolution. Using fiction, these authors comment on the republican woman, the need for women's education, and the necessity for...
Show moreThis study examines the major works of Judith Sargent Murray, Hannah Webster Foster, and Susanna Haswell Rowson, three major writers of the 1790s whose writing responds to the ideologies of the early American Republic. I suggest that Murray, Foster, and Rowson write conduct fiction which responds to the changing attitudes toward women and education after the American Revolution. Using fiction, these authors comment on the republican woman, the need for women's education, and the necessity for women to gather in communities for support. Despite the prevailing notion that reading too many novels would corrupt young women, Judith Sargent Murray's novella, The Story of Margaretta (1786), Hannah Webster Foster's novels, The Coquette (1797) and The Boarding School (1798), and Susanna Rowson's novels, Charlotte Temple (1794) and Reuben and Rachel; or, Tales of Old Times (1798), were some of the most popular books in the late eighteenth century. If these novels were not meant to be read by young women, who were the authors' primary audience, why were they so popular? This project situates these questions in the political environment the authors were writing in to show that a relationship exists between what women were reading and how authors of conduct fiction helped facilitate the changing roles of women in the early Republic.
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Date Issued
2011
Identifier
CFE0004180, ucf:49039
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004180
ESTHER REED'S POLITICAL SENTIMENTS AND RHETORIC DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR
Title
ESTHER REED'S POLITICAL SENTIMENTS AND RHETORIC DURING THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
Creator
Harkins, Kennedy, Kamrath, Mark, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
In 1780, during the final leg of the American Revolutionary War, Esther Reed penned the broadside "Sentiments of an American Woman." It circulated in Philadelphia, persuading citizens to turn over their last dollars to the cause. Reed's broadside called to action the women of Philadelphia; they knocked on doors, campaigned with words, and stepped firmly into the "man's world" of politics and revolution. Reed's words were so effective that women in cities across the colonies took to raising...
Show moreIn 1780, during the final leg of the American Revolutionary War, Esther Reed penned the broadside "Sentiments of an American Woman." It circulated in Philadelphia, persuading citizens to turn over their last dollars to the cause. Reed's broadside called to action the women of Philadelphia; they knocked on doors, campaigned with words, and stepped firmly into the "man's world" of politics and revolution. Reed's words were so effective that women in cities across the colonies took to raising money as well. Using New Historicist and feminist reading strategies, this study compares and contrasts Reed's rhetoric to Thomas Paine's Common Sense, another revolutionary propaganda piece of the era. I argue that the two pieces differ in key aspects due to Paine's existence in the public sphere and Reed's in the private. From her position in the private sphere, Reed was able to produce a provocative piece of rhetoric that stands out against other female literature at the time.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFH2000323, ucf:45712
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000323
Harvesting the Seeds of Early American Human and Nonhuman Animal Relationships in William Bartram's Travels, The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist, and Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories
Title
Harvesting the Seeds of Early American Human and Nonhuman Animal Relationships in William Bartram's Travels, The Travel Diary of Elizabeth House Trist, and Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories.
Creator
Vives, Leslie, Logan, Lisa, Murphy, Patrick, Kamrath, Mark, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis uses ecofeminist and human-animal studies lenses to explore human animal and nonhuman animal relations in early America. Most ecocritical studies of American literature begin with nineteenth-century writers. This project, however, suggests that drawing on ecofeminist theories with a human-animal studies approach sheds light on eighteenth-century texts as well. Early American naturalist travel writing offers a site replete with human and nonhuman encounters. Specifically,...
Show moreThis thesis uses ecofeminist and human-animal studies lenses to explore human animal and nonhuman animal relations in early America. Most ecocritical studies of American literature begin with nineteenth-century writers. This project, however, suggests that drawing on ecofeminist theories with a human-animal studies approach sheds light on eighteenth-century texts as well. Early American naturalist travel writing offers a site replete with human and nonhuman encounters. Specifically, naturalist William Bartram's travel journal features interactions with animals in the southern colonial American frontier. Amateur naturalist Elizabeth House Trist's travel diary includes interactions with frontier and domestic animals. Sarah Trimmer's Fabulous Histories, a conduct manual that taught children acceptable behavior towards animals, provides insight about the social regulation of human and nonhuman relationships during the late eighteenth century, when Bartram and Trist wrote their texts. This thesis identifies and analyzes textual sites that blur the human subject/and animal object distinction and raise questions about the representation of animals as objects. This project focuses on the subtle discursive subversions of early Euroamerican naturalist science present in Bartram's Travels (1791) and the blurring of human/animal boundaries in Trist's Travel Diary (1783-84); Trimmer's Fabulous Histories (1794) further complicates the Euroamerican discourse of animals as curiosities. These texts form part of a larger but overlooked discourse in early British America that anticipated more well-known and nonhuman-centric texts in the burgeoning early nineteenth-century American animal rights movement. ?
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004451, ucf:49329
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004451
Experiencing the World of Franklin: The Making of an Immersive and Interactive Historical Exhibit
Title
Experiencing the World of Franklin: The Making of an Immersive and Interactive Historical Exhibit.
Creator
Webster, Daniel, Beiler, Rosalind, Larson, Peter, Lester, Connie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis involves the creation of a historically-themed museum element. The element, titled (")Improving Community,(") is a virtual interactive game that allows players to explore certain realities of colonial American life. Within the game, players are presented with a number of civic-related issues that existed throughout the eighteenth century, and they are then given options to improve the situation. Interactivity and immersion are key features of the game, and they have been...
Show moreThis thesis involves the creation of a historically-themed museum element. The element, titled (")Improving Community,(") is a virtual interactive game that allows players to explore certain realities of colonial American life. Within the game, players are presented with a number of civic-related issues that existed throughout the eighteenth century, and they are then given options to improve the situation. Interactivity and immersion are key features of the game, and they have been incorporated so that players may engage with the past and assume a more active role in the process of historical reconstruction. Research for the games draws mostly upon historical primary sources, including first-hand accounts, letters, diaries, periodicals, pamphlets, meeting minutes, and legal documents. In addition, the process of developing the games was informed by a number of secondary source works, and therefore this study inspects the ways in which (")Improving Community(") fits within the ongoing scholarly debates. Ultimately this project contributes to the field of public history by demonstrating the usefulness of games as a tool for historical exhibition. (")Improving Community(") is both entertaining and educational, and as a result, the game provides individuals with a unique outlet for exploring and experiencing the past.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004196, ucf:49005
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004196
"ANIMAL-LIKE AND DEPRAVED": RACIST STEREOTYPES, COMMERCIAL SEX, AND BLACK WOMEN'S IDENTITY IN NEW ORLEANS, 1825-1917
Title
"ANIMAL-LIKE AND DEPRAVED": RACIST STEREOTYPES, COMMERCIAL SEX, AND BLACK WOMEN'S IDENTITY IN NEW ORLEANS, 1825-1917.
Creator
Dossie, Porsha, Lester, Connie, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
My objective with this thesis is to understand how racist stereotypes and myths compounded the sale of fair-skinned black women during and after the slave trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. This commodification of black women's bodies continued well into the twentieth century, notably in New Orleans' vice district of Storyville. Called "quadroons" (a person with 1/4 African ancestry) and "octoroons" (1/8 African ancestry), these women were known for their "sexual prowess" and drew in a large...
Show moreMy objective with this thesis is to understand how racist stereotypes and myths compounded the sale of fair-skinned black women during and after the slave trade in New Orleans, Louisiana. This commodification of black women's bodies continued well into the twentieth century, notably in New Orleans' vice district of Storyville. Called "quadroons" (a person with 1/4 African ancestry) and "octoroons" (1/8 African ancestry), these women were known for their "sexual prowess" and drew in a large number of patrons. The existence of "white passing" black women complicated ideas about race and racial purity in the South. Race as a myth and social construct, or as Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham explains in her essay, African-American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race, a "metalanguage" exposes race not as a genetic fact, but rather a physical appearance through which power relations and status were to be conferred. My methodology uses race and gender theory to analyze primary and secondary sources to understand and contextualize how population demographics, myths, and liberal 18th century colonial laws contributed to the sale of black women's bodies. The works of Emily Clark, Walter Johnson, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall and other historians who utilize Atlantic history have been paramount in my research. Emily Clark has transformed the "white-black" women from a tragic, sexualized trope into a fully actualized human being, while Hall has tackled the racist underpinnings inherent in the neglect of black women's history. The writings of bell hooks, particularly her essay Eating the Other, establishes the modern day commodification of black women vis-a-vis their representation in media, as well as through the fetishism of their bodies by a white patriarchal system. During slavery plantation owners could do virtually anything they wanted with their property, including engaging in sexual intercourse. By depicting black women as hypersexual jezebels, they could justify their rape, while establishing their dominance and place in the white male hegemony of that time period. For the right price a white male of a lesser class could achieve the same thing at a brothel down in Storyville at the turn of the twentieth century, for as Emily Clark argues in her book, The Strange History of the American Quadroon, these brothels were a great equalizer, allowing all white men to experience "sexual mastery enjoyed only by elite planters before the Civil War." By democratizing white supremacy, the quadroon and others like her forged solidarity that bridge across all classes, while upholding whiteness and oppressing people of color at the same time.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFH0004652, ucf:45310
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004652