Thesiss

This dissertation places early Americans in the midst of a global conflict that pit the Greeks against the Ottoman Turks. Although historians have focused a great deal of attention on American support for the French Revolution, few have examined a similar conflict, the Greek War…

In the mid-nineteenth-century United States and Europe the idea arose that "race" is a matter of biology, internal "essence," a thing having real existence and permanence. Fifty years earlier, the Enlightenment had seen race as an ephemeral function of climate, geography, and mo…

In “Lucretia Mott: Theology is Reform's Foundation” I articulate the theology of Lucretia Coffin Mott, a nineteenth-century Quaker preacher who was one of the leaders in the abolitionist movement, and a founder of the woman's rights movement in the U.S. Although she has been stu…

This dissertation explores the nature of religious militancy---in particular, the mechanics of the decision that a potential militant makes to embrace or reject violence in pursuit of his or her aims. To situate this project, it is worth comparing it to the two general sets of a…

Enacted in 1833, Great Britain's abolition of West Indian slavery confronted the United States with the complex interrelationship between slavery and progress. Dubbed the Great Experiment, British abolition held the possibility of demonstrating free labor more profitable than sl…

Migration is a decidedly human condition that has influenced the development of all nations. Yet the cultural and demographic impacts upon the United States during the long nineteenth century brought about by the mass movements of peoples from Africa, Europe, and beyond were esp…

This study explores the eighteenth-century and nineteenth-century German dramatic genre Sklavenstücke (slave plays). These plays, which until recently have not received any significant attention in scholarship, articulate a nuanced critique of slavery and the transatlantic slave…

In American political thought, it is commonly supposed we make political communities more democratic by making them more equal. In this dissertation, I show that this common supposition is a mistake: efforts to enact equality in America in fact frequently undermine democratic in…

An examination of the abolitionist John Brown (1800-1859) as portrayed in paintings by three early twentieth-century artists: Horace Pippin, John Steuart Curry, and Jacob Lawrence. This thesis grapples with questions of Brown's legacy among Black and white artists and how their …