DOCSLIB.ORG

UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title American maritime industry and a charity of wages, 1790- 1850 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/102152ms Author Eyring, Mary Kathleen Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO American Maritime Industry and a Charity of Wages, 1790-1850 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Literature by Mary Kathleen Eyring Committee in charge: Professor Nicole Tonkovich, Chair Professor Michael Davidson Professor Sara Johnson Professor Rachel Klein Professor Kathryn Shevelow 2012 Copyright Mary Kathleen Eyring, 2012 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Mary Kathleen Eyring is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Chair University of California, San Diego 2012 iii DEDICATION To my mother, whose voice I can still hear in the lines of the books we loved. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page…………………………………………………………………….. iii Dedication…………………………………………………………………………. iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….. v Acknowledgments…………………………………………………………………. vi Vita.………………………………………………………………………………... ix Abstract.…………………………………………………………………………… x Introduction: American Maritime Industry and a Charity of Wages, 1790-1850..................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1: “To be the medium of her charity”: The Performance of Vicarious Charity During Philadelphia’s Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793………….. 51 Chapter 2: To “make them a useful part of the human race”: The Benevolent Education of Maritime Laborers at America’s First Schools for the Deaf…………...................................................................... 115 Chapter 3: “A field of usefulness seemed spread out before me”: Nancy Prince and the Economics of Evangelizing in Postemancipation Jamaica…..….... 178 Chapter 4: “A Charity of Wages”: Sarah J. Hale and the Business of Maritime Benevolence.………………………………………………………………. 232 Conclusion: The City of Brotherly Love in 1840: A Charitable Workplace Transformed.................…………………………………………………..... 282 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………..... 293 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS From the moment she strode across a room crowded with her colleagues and new students to welcome me to the Literature Department at the University of California, San Diego, Nicole Tonkovich has made me feel like a valued, informed, well-connected, and capable member of an inclusive academic community. As a professor, editor, and the chair of my dissertation committee, she’s displayed an incredible knack for nudging me in the direction of clearer and more responsible scholarship and then letting me believe I’ve arrived at it myself. She’s given me not only the confidence that I can succeed professionally, but also the experiences and tools that make success likely. I join the host of students who owe their achievements in academia and their sense of pride and belonging in higher education largely to her guidance and support. I am grateful to the other professors on my committee, Michael Davidson, Kathryn Shevelow, Sara Johnson, and Rachel Klein, for their similarly valuable contributions to my education and to this dissertation. Each has shown a willingness to meet with me, to read carefully over my work, and to offer trenchant and useful critiques. Even more remarkable, given the demands on their time, is that none of them has ever made me feel like this support has been an imposition in the least. I could not have completed this dissertation without their generosity and expertise. A number of people have supported my research at libraries and universities where I’ve collected source materials. Rob Melton at the Social Sciences and Humanities Library at UCSD helped me locate a wealth of information on nineteenth-century women writers stored practically at my fingertips. Nic Butler, the manager of the Charleston Archive at the Charleston County Public Library, shared his encyclopedic knowledge of vi everything published in and about Charleston and located many of the sources upon which sections of this dissertation depend. I’m grateful to Nicole Dittrich at the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library for lending me assistance and sharing her talent for deciphering illegible handwriting from centuries past. I also appreciate the staff at the New York Historical Society, Michael Pittman of New York University’s Bobst Library, the staff at the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Linda August at the Library Company of Philadelphia for their time and knowledge. I’ve benefitted immensely from the presentations, discussions, and criticism offered by my colleagues at The Atlantic World Workshop at NYU. And I owe sincere thanks to the editor, editorial board, and consultants at Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers and to the members of the Southern California Society for the Study of American Women Writers for their commitment to publishing extraordinary scholarship and encouraging me to follow suit. Chapter 2, in part, has been accepted for publication and will appear in a special issue of Legacy 2013. Eyring, Mary Kathleen, University of Nebraska Press, 2013. Closer to home, I’ve been supported by individuals who’ve let me blur all reasonable distinctions among friend, editor, family member, and research assistant. Melissa Milewski read and commented extensively on chapters of this dissertation even as she worked assiduously to finish her own book. Kaeli Andersen provided me access to New York City’s secret sanctuaries of study, made even more distinctive by her warm and engaging presence. Lisa Thomas has been a good editor, a good sport, and a great friend. Roger and Kathy Carter made it possible for me to shuttle between diverse parts of the country as I researched and wrote. My parents gave me everything worth having, vii and then taught me to use reading and writing to make sense of it all. My siblings and their spouses cheered me on as I worked. Finally, my most heartfelt thanks go to Jacob Carter, who, had he known the long hours of technical assistance, driving to archives hither and yon, hauling books to and from various libraries, wrestling with unwieldy reels of microfilm, and tinkering with pictures, slides, and photocopies that this adventure of dissertating would require of him, might never have urged me to apply to UCSD in the first place. But knowing him, he probably would. viii VITA 2002-2006 Bachelor of Arts in English, Brigham Young University 2007-2009 Master of Arts in Literature, University of California, San Diego 2007-2012 Doctor of Philosophy in Literature, University of California, San Diego SELECT PUBLICATIONS “To ‘make them a useful part of the human race’: The Benevolent Education of Maritime Laborers at America’s First Schools for the Deaf.” Legacy, forthcoming. “The Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West.” The Encyclopedia of Jewish-American Literature. Ed. Gloria L. Cronin and Alan L. Berger. New York: Facts on File, 2009. ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION American Maritime Industry and a Charity of Wages, 1790-1850 by Mary Kathleen Eyring Doctor of Philosophy in Literature University of California, San Diego, 2012 Professor Nicole Tonkovich, Chair This dissertation studies organized charity work as it was performed in Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Kingston, Jamaica from the last decade of the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. I study the writings of Charles Brockden Brown, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones, Sarah Pogson Smith, Nancy Prince, and Sarah Josepha Hale alongside other primary and secondary texts to show the mutually sustaining bond between benevolence and other forms of capitalistic labor of this period, particularly literary production. I argue that charity work functioned during the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as an innovative and profitable form x of labor that allowed marginalized individuals to contravene the strictures surrounding race, gender, and class that determined a laborer’s earning potential within the American workforce. My research closely analyzes a variety of literary and historical sources to demonstrate that women, people of color, the disabled, and other disenfranchised groups carefully positioned themselves along circuits of exchange in a global economy because they recognized that charity was not a hobby but a business, successful only to the extent that it adapted itself to viable economic models and responded rapidly to shifts in larger market trends. xi Introduction: American Maritime Industry and a Charity of Wages, 1790-1850 When Sara Josepha Hale, the Boston-based editor of the Ladies Magazine, founded the Seaman’s Aid Society in 1833, her charity eschewed the one-sided distribution of alms—the model then operative among the city’s impoverished—and instead embedded itself in the profit-and-loss structure of a competitive business. Under the management of the Society’s leaders, seamen’s wives and children sewed clothing for sailors to be sold at a store they also staffed. Their compensation, as Hale conceived of it, was a way to refigure alms as “a charity of wages” awarded according to the performance of the supplicants (“Extracts from the Annual Report” 1836). Hale’s social influence and earning potential as an editor rose in direct
Recommended publications
  • African American Religious Leaders in the Late Antebellum South

    African American Religious Leaders in the Late Antebellum South

    Teaching Christianity in the face of adversity: African American religious leaders in the late antebellum South A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of English and American Studies PhD in the Faculty of Humanities 2011 Thomas Strange School of Arts, Histories, and Cultures Table of Contents Table of Contents 1 Abbreviations 2 Abstract 3 Declaration 4 Copyright Statement 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7 Chapter 1: „For what God had done to their souls‟: the black preacher in the 19 colonial and early antebellum South Chapter 2: Preacher, teacher, counsellor or rebel: The multiple functions of 66 the black preacher on the plantation Chapter 3: The licensed black minister in the biracial and independent black 107 churches in the late antebellum South Chapter 4: The white evangelical reaction to African American religious 148 leaders and slave Christianity Conclusions 196 Appendix 204 Table 1: Statistics on WPA interviewee relocation 204 Table 2: Statistics on the location of black preachers in the WPA 205 narratives Bibliography 206 Word Count: 79,876 1 Abbreviations used Avery Avery Research Center, Charleston Caroliniana South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia Duke Duke University Special Collections, Durham ERO Essex Record Office, Chelmsford SHC Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill VHS Virginia Historical Society, Richmond VSL Virginia State Library, Richmond 2 Abstract Religious leaders were key figures within African American society in the late antebellum South. They undertook a vital religious function within both the plantation slave community and the institutionalised biracial and independent black church and many became a focal point for African American Christianity amongst slaves and free blacks.
  • Yeoman Due Tomorrow

    Yeoman Due Tomorrow

    Z- VOLUME 77 S72 OBERLIN OHIO TUESDAY MAY 24 1949 NUMBER 58 Navy Psychiatrist ODA Hears Horton Council Meets Assumes Blame To Determine Yeoman Due Tomorrow ForForrestal Leap Disclaim Famous Feats FROM UNITED PRESS FateofShansi WASHINGTON Capt George In an attempt to up Boasts clear all New Art Section V top Navy psychiatrist Raines unfinished business responsibility today for at its final took full tl meeting tonight the Student the tnai made pos circumstances Council will take action on the sible James Forrestals suicide I Shansi allotment the remainder of nos Raines said he ordered the the Activity Fee allotments For- Report States Seven Newcomers Contribute um Board chairmanship appoint- because he felt such treatment was ment and will discuss a request Radio Station Smith Two Millers necessary if the former Defense for funds for an Oberlin radio Featured Secretary was to be cured of the station and the Council program psychoneurotic depressive condi for next year To Cost 600 By CHARLIE BLACKWELL tion he was sunenng ine psy The main discussion on Shansi Featuring an art section an experiment never before acknowledged chiatrist that the according to Henderson will cen- attempted in its history the 40- page Spring edition of the The minimum amount necessary treatment he prescribed involved ter around getting full information Yeoman will appear tomorrow according to Editor to build the proposed College Jonah a calculated risk of suicide He about the school Since the Coun- Kalb attributed Forrestals death leap cil desires Ur represent
  • The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720-1820

    The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720-1820

    The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Dissertations Spring 5-2012 Slavery and Empire: The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720-1820 Christian Pinnen University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations Part of the Cultural History Commons, Social History Commons, and the United States History Commons Recommended Citation Pinnen, Christian, "Slavery and Empire: The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720-1820" (2012). Dissertations. 821. https://aquila.usm.edu/dissertations/821 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi SLAVERY AND EMPIRE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVERY IN THE NATCHEZ DISTRICT, 1720-1820 by Christian Pinnen Abstract of a Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2012 ABSTRACT SLAVERY AND EMPIRE: THE DEVELOPMENT OF SLAVERY IN THE NATCHEZ DISTRICT, 1720-1820 by Christian Pinnen May 2012 “Slavery and Empire: The Development of Slavery in the Natchez District, 1720- 1820,” examines how slaves and colonists weathered the economic and political upheavals that rocked the Lower Mississippi Valley. The study focuses on the fitful— and often futile—efforts of the French, the English, the Spanish, and the Americans to establish plantation agriculture in Natchez and its environs, a district that emerged as the heart of the “Cotton Kingdom” in the decades following the American Revolution.
  • George Liele :Negro Slavery's Prophet of Deliverance

    George Liele :Negro Slavery's Prophet of Deliverance

    George Liele :Negro Slavery's Prophet of Deliverance EORGE LIELE (Lisle, Sharpe) is o:p.e of the unsung heroes of Greligious history, whose exploits and attainments have gone vir­ tually unnoticed except in a few little-known books and journals of Negro history. Liele's spectacular but steady devotion to the cause of his Master began with his conversion in 1773 and subsequent exercise of his ·cc call" in his own and nearby churches; it ended with mUltiple thousands of simple black folk raisec;I from the callous indignity of human bondage to freedom and a glorious citizenship in the king­ dom of God, largely as a consequence of this man's Christian witness in life and word. George was born a slave to slave parents, Liele and Nancy, in servitude to the family of Henry Sharpe in Virginia. From his birth, about 1750, to his eventual freedom in 1773, Liele belonged to the Sharpe family, with whom' he was removed to Burke County, Georgia, prior to 1770. Henry Sharpe, his master, was a Loyalist supporter and a deacon in the Buckhead Creek Baptist Church pastored by the Rev. Matthew Moore. Of his own parents and early years Liele reported in a letter of 1791 written from. Kingston, Jamaica: ~'I was born in Virginia, my father's name was Liele, and my mother's name Nancy; I cannot ascertain much of them, as I went to several parts of America when young, and at length resided in New Georgia; but was informed both by white and black people, that my father was the only black person who knew the Lord in a spiritual way in that country.
  • Oberlin Historic Landmarks Booklet

    Oberlin Historic Landmarks Booklet

    Oberlin Oberlin Historic Landmarks Historic Landmarks 6th Edition 2018 A descriptive list of designated landmarks and a street guide to their locations Oberlin Historic Landmarks Oberlin Historic Preservation Commission Acknowledgments: Text: Jane Blodgett and Carol Ganzel Photographs for this edition: Dale Preston Sources: Oberlin Architecture: College and Town by Geoffrey Blodgett City-wide Building Inventory: www.oberlinheritage.org/researchlearn/inventory Published 2018 by the Historic Preservation Commission of the City of Oberlin Sixth edition; originally published 1997 Oberlin Historic Preservation Commission Maren McKee, Chair Michael McFarlin, Vice Chair James Young Donna VanRaaphorst Phyllis Yarber Hogan Kristin Peterson, Council Liaison Carrie Handy, Staff Liaison Saundra Phillips, Secretary to the Commission Introduction Each building and site listed in this booklet is an officially designated City of Oberlin Historic Landmark. The landmark designation means, according to city ordinance, that the building or site has particular historic or cultural sig- nificance, or is associated with people or events important to the history of Oberlin, Ohio, or reflects distinguishing characteristics of an architect, archi- tectural style, or building type. Many Oberlin landmarks meet more than one of these criteria. The landmark list is not all-inclusive: many Oberlin buildings that meet the criteria have not yet been designated landmarks. To consider a property for landmark designation, the Historic Preservation Commission needs an appli- cation from its owner with documentation of its date and proof that it meets at least one of the criteria. Some city landmarks are also listed on the National Register of Historic Plac- es, and three are National Historic Landmarks. These designations are indicat- ed in the text.
  • “Methinks I See Grim Slavery's Gorgon Form”: Abolitionism in Belfast, 1775

    “Methinks I See Grim Slavery's Gorgon Form”: Abolitionism in Belfast, 1775

    “Methinks I see grim Slavery’s Gorgon form”: Abolitionism in Belfast, 1775-1865 By Krysta Beggs-McCormick (BA Hons, MRes) Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences of Ulster University A Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) October 2018 I confirm that the word count of this thesis is less than 100,000 words. Contents Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………… I Illustration I …………………………………………………………………………...…… II Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………. III Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One – “That horrible degradation of human nature”: Abolitionism in late eighteenth-century Belfast ……………………………………………….…………………………………………….. 22 Chapter Two – “Go ruthless Avarice”: Abolitionism in nineteenth century Georgian Belfast ………………………………………………………………………................................... 54 Chapter Three – “The atrocious system should come to an end”: Abolitionism in Early Victorian Belfast, 1837-1857 ……………………………………………………………... 99 Chapter Four - “Whether freedom or slavery should be the grand characteristic of the United States”: Belfast Abolitionism and the American Civil War……………………..………. 175 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………….. 206 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………... 214 Appendix 1: Table ……………………………………………………………………….. 257 Appendix 2: Belfast Newspapers .…………….…………………………………………. 258 I Acknowledgements This thesis would not have been possible without the help and guidance of many people to whom I am greatly indebted. I owe my greatest thanks to my supervisory team: Professor
  • How the Dismal Science Got Its Name How the Dismal Science GOT ITS NAME

    How the Dismal Science Got Its Name How the Dismal Science GOT ITS NAME

    How the Dismal Science Got Its Name How the Dismal Science GOT ITS NAME Classical Economics and the Ur-Text of Racial Politics David M. Levy Ann Arbor Copyright © by the University of Michigan 2001 All rights reserved Published in the United States of America by The University of Michigan Press Manufactured in the United States of America c Printed on acid-free paper 2004 2003 2002 2001 4321 No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans- mitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher. A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Levy, David M. How the dismal science got its name : classical economics and the ur-text of racial politics / David M. Levy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-472-11219-8 (Cloth : alk. paper) 1. Economics. 2. Economics—Sociological aspects. 3. Racism. I. Title. HB71 .L546 2001 330'.09—dc21 2001001402 Ur-Text The hidden original from which all others descend in confused and imperfect fashion. Contents Acknowledgments ix Preface: Answering the Obvious Question xiii Part 1. Two Sciences in Collision: The Dismal and the Gay 1. Poets Come, Bringing Death to Friends of the Dismal Science 3 2. Ecce Homo: Symbols Make the Man 29 3. Beginning with an Exchange or with a Command? 41 4. A Rational Choice Approach to Scholarship 58 Part 2. Market Order or Hierarchy? 5. Debating Racial Quackery 81 6.
  • Black Evangelicals and the Gospel of Freedom, 1790-1890

    Black Evangelicals and the Gospel of Freedom, 1790-1890

    University of Kentucky UKnowledge University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2009 SPIRITED AWAY: BLACK EVANGELICALS AND THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM, 1790-1890 Alicestyne Turley University of Kentucky, [email protected] Right click to open a feedback form in a new tab to let us know how this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Turley, Alicestyne, "SPIRITED AWAY: BLACK EVANGELICALS AND THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM, 1790-1890" (2009). University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations. 79. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/79 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at UKnowledge. It has been accepted for inclusion in University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UKnowledge. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Alicestyne Turley The Graduate School University of Kentucky 2009 SPIRITED AWAY: BLACK EVANGELICALS AND THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM, 1790-1890 _______________________________ ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION _______________________________ A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Kentucky By Alicestyne Turley Lexington, Kentucky Co-Director: Dr. Ron Eller, Professor of History Co-Director, Dr. Joanne Pope Melish, Professor of History Lexington, Kentucky 2009 Copyright © Alicestyne Turley 2009 ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION SPIRITED AWAY: BLACK EVANGELICALS AND THE GOSPEL OF FREEDOM, 1790-1890 The true nineteenth-century story of the Underground Railroad begins in the South and is spread North by free blacks, escaping southern slaves, and displaced, white, anti-slavery Protestant evangelicals. This study examines the role of free blacks, escaping slaves, and white Protestant evangelicals influenced by tenants of Kentucky’s Second Great Awakening who were inspired, directly or indirectly, to aid in African American community building.
  • AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORIC PLACES in SOUTH CAROLINA ////////////////////////////// September 2015

    AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORIC PLACES in SOUTH CAROLINA ////////////////////////////// September 2015

    AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORIC PLACES IN SOUTH CAROLINA ////////////////////////////// September 2015 State Historic Preservation Office South Carolina Department of Archives and History should be encouraged. The National Register program his publication provides information on properties in South Carolina is administered by the State Historic in South Carolina that are listed in the National Preservation Office at the South Carolina Department of Register of Historic Places or have been Archives and History. recognized with South Carolina Historical Markers This publication includes summary information about T as of May 2015 and have important associations National Register properties in South Carolina that are with African American history. More information on these significantly associated with African American history. More and other properties is available at the South Carolina extensive information about many of these properties is Archives and History Center. Many other places in South available in the National Register files at the South Carolina Carolina are important to our African American history and Archives and History Center. Many of the National Register heritage and are eligible for listing in the National Register nominations are also available online, accessible through or recognition with the South Carolina Historical Marker the agency’s website. program. The State Historic Preservation Office at the South Carolina Department of Archives and History welcomes South Carolina Historical Marker Program (HM) questions regarding the listing or marking of other eligible South Carolina Historical Markers recognize and interpret sites. places important to an understanding of South Carolina’s past. The cast-aluminum markers can tell the stories of African Americans have made a vast contribution to buildings and structures that are still standing, or they can the history of South Carolina throughout its over-300-year- commemorate the sites of important historic events or history.
  • A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics

    A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics

    University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 8-2012 Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics Joel P. MacClellan University of Tennessee, Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation MacClellan, Joel P., "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2012. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/1433 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Joel P. MacClellan entitled "Minding Nature: A Defense of a Sentiocentric Approach to Environmental Ethics." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Philosophy. John Nolt, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Jon Garthoff, David Reidy, Dan Simberloff Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) MINDING NATURE: A DEFENSE OF A SENTIOCENTRIC APPROACH TO ENVIRONMENTAL ETHICS A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Joel Patrick MacClellan August 2012 ii The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing.
  • 1 the Spectre of the Slave Ship: Caryl Phillips's Adaptation for the Stage Of

    1 the Spectre of the Slave Ship: Caryl Phillips's Adaptation for the Stage Of

    The Spectre of the Slave Ship: Caryl Phillips’s Adaptation for the Stage of Rough Crossings by Simon Schama. Winsome Pinnock The Problem of Representation Representation of the trans-Atlantic slave trade confronts both the dramatist and the historian with two problems which threaten the authenticity of their endeavours: a) the conventions of narrative structure which may, as historian Berel Lang (2000) asserts, pose the danger of aestheticizing horrific or traumatic events and b) a methodology that relies on archives that contain scant traces of the experiences of the trade’s traumatised victims, or their response to those experiences. Simon Schama’s Rough Crossings recounts the hitherto underrepresented history of the contribution of black enslaved peoples to the American war of Independence while Caryl Phillips’s dramatized adaptation of Schama’s narrative history is both a response to and critique of Schama’s methodology, revealing its limitations and unintentional biases. Both historian and playwright use formal narrative or dramaturgical devices to resolve the restraints of historiographical methodology, employing linguistic strategies which themselves pose various ontological challenges. This paper examines how emplotment, while making the story Schama tells vivid and engaging, also marginalises some of its chief actants, privileging the role of the white abolitionists over the agency of the black protagonists. On the other hand, Phillips uses emplotment and other dramaturgical devices – especially the rejection of authenticity and the deployment of anachronism - to reposition the black protagonists at the centre of the narrative, while constructing a dialogue between past and present, revealing in the process the impact of the ongoing legacy of the trans-Atlantic slave trade on contemporary life.
  • The Diaries and Writings of George a Maston, Black Citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska, 1901-1913

    The Diaries and Writings of George a Maston, Black Citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska, 1901-1913

    Nebraska History posts materials online for your personal use. Please remember that the contents of Nebraska History are copyrighted by the Nebraska State Historical Society (except for materials credited to other institutions). The NSHS retains its copyrights even to materials it posts on the web. For permission to re-use materials or for photo ordering information, please see: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/magazine/permission.htm Nebraska State Historical Society members receive four issues of Nebraska History and four issues of Nebraska History News annually. For membership information, see: http://nebraskahistory.org/admin/members/index.htm Article Title: The Diaries and Writings of George A Maston, Black Citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska, 1901-1913 Full Citation: Lila Gravatt Schrimsher, “The Diaries and Writings of George A Maston, Black Citizen of Lincoln, Nebraska, 1901-1913,” Nebraska History 52 (1971): 133-168 URL of article: http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/history/full-text/NH1971Maston.pdf Date: 7/4/2010 Article Summary: John Maston was born into slavery, February 3, 1849, in West Virginia. Young George escaped to Ohio in 1862 with Union Army Captain Israel B Murdock. He was taught the barber trade at 14 and supported himself through the Civil War in Ohio River towns. He became a Methodist Episcopal preacher and, in 1901, the Rev George A Maston transferred to Newman Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. Among his memorabilia are scrapbooks, photographs, and from his own pen a privately-printed brochure describing his ministry in Lincoln. He also wrote in longhand a 95-page "History of My life," only the last 28 pages of which survive.