Thesiss

American studies and literary scholarship have long operated on the assumption that the United States has no official religion. That assumption has led naturally to a circumscribed and incomplete, if not inaccurate, set of traditionally accepted literary-critical conclusions whe…

The Declaration of Independence is a document with a rich history in American public discourse. Countless books, speeches, and films have relied on its rhetoric to argue their points. However, it is not clear what method we should use to apply the Declaration outside of its orig…

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…

This dissertation examines the scholarship and political writings of Harry V. Jaffa (1918-2015), who taught for many years at Claremont McKenna College and Claremont Graduate University.

The arguing principle of the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [sic] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”, sp…