Thesiss

This dissertation examines the ways in which the missionary tract, the captivity narrative, and the texts of literate Native Americans all participate in the highly contested process that defines the cultural position of the "Christian Indian." Focusing on New England missionary…

Scholars have claimed that the commercial waning of the Mediterranean at the turn of the seventeenth century and the increasing volume of captives reflected how the sea had lost its earlier characteristic unity, and subsequently began a decline. This project argues that the rumo…

This study, which examines the French experience of captivity in the Barbary States of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Morocco, considers both the mechanics and perceptions of an often forgotten phenomenon that pitted Crescent against Cross and implicated tens of thousands of subjec…

North American literary studies defines captivity narratives by examples like Mary Rowlandson’s The Sovereignty & Goodness of God (1682), which describes a white woman taken captive by a Native American man. Through such narratives, the captive’s inevitable rescue by white men h…

In 1697 Massachusetts settler Hannah Duston was taken captive by a group of Abenaki Indians. Duston and her companions escaped captivity by using a tomahawk to kill ten of her captors. Within her captivity narrative, Duston inhabits the role of captor rather than captive, provid…

With early modern increases in travel, slavery practices, and colonial efforts, the English experienced increased collisions with other cultures that forced them to determine their own space and identity in the world. One form of cultural contact that was particularly definition…