Thesiss

This dissertation looks to the early American literary marketplace and argues that the American maritime genre, assumed to have begun with James Fenimore Cooper’s novel The Pilot in 1824, was not an uncontested genre prior to Cooper’s popularization of maritime nationalism. Inst…

This thesis will examine nineteenth-century women and their primary role in the cultural formation of frontier sentimentalism. White, middle class women primarily moved west with their husbands and families, initially to the Midwest in the early nineteenth century, and were cont…

The work of nineteenth-century American poet Phoebe Cary presents a complex puzzle of exigence and purpose that combines social structure, political climate, and personal history. Known for her somber and spiritual sentimental poetry, Cary shocked readers and reviewers alike whe…