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- All Subjects: American History
- Creators: School of Politics and Global Studies
Description
"The Wicked Man's Portion" uses crime writing as a means to measure modernity in early America. Crime writing does things all too familiarly "modern"; it imagines audiences in need of moral instruction, citizens questioning the decisions of those in power, and men and women seeking reassurance that their community was safe, just, and moral. Crime writing pries open the dialectic between the expectations of authority and individuals' experiences. What emerges is the concept of a moral citizen, a self-reliant individual sharing responsibility for a well-ordered community. The first chapter examines typological interpretations of scripture in execution sermons revealing the interrelation between religion and law. Chapters two and three focus on the interaction between criminal law and beliefs in the supernatural; chapter two looks at supernatural crimes and forensic methods, such as those surrounding witch trials, and chapter three examines arguments for capital punishment that hinged upon divine involvement in human affairs. The fourth chapter discusses gallows publications' functions in the public sphere and contributions to inchoate democracy. The final chapter asks how equity defined punishment in economic terms. This chapter pays particular attention variations of punishment determined by race, class, and gender.
ContributorsAldrich, Eric (Author) / Wertheimer, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Tobin, Beth (Committee member) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Time magazine called 1976 "the year of the evangelical" partly in response to the rapid political ascent of the previously little-known Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. A Sunday school teacher and deacon in his local church, Carter emphasized the important role of faith in his life in a way that no presidential candidate had done in recent memory. However, scholarly assessments of Carter's foreign policy have primarily focused on his management style or the bureaucratic politics in his administration. This study adds to the growing literature in American diplomatic history analyzing religion and foreign policy by focusing on how Carter's Christian beliefs and worldview shaped his policymaking and how his religious convictions affected his advisors. To better demonstrate this connection, this dissertation primarily discusses Carter's foreign policy vis-à-vis religious nationalist groups of the three Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). By drawing on archival materials from the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, Carter's own voluminous writings, and memoirs of other administration officials, this dissertation argues that Carter's religious values factored into policymaking decisions, although sometimes in a subtle fashion due to his strong Baptist doctrinal commitment to the separation of church and state. Moreover, Carter's initial success in using his religious beliefs in the Camp David negotiations raised expectations among administration officials and others when crises arose, such as the hostage taking in Iran and the electoral threat of the Christian Right. Despite his success at Camp David, invoking religious values can complicate situations already fraught with sacred symbolism. Ultimately, this dissertation points to the benefits and limits of foreign policy shaped by a president with strong public religious convictions as well as the advantages and pitfalls of scholars examining the impact of religion on presidential decision making.
ContributorsJones, Blake (Author) / Longley, Kyle (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Summitt, April (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
This project explores the histories of the Dutch Republic and the United States during the Age of Revolutions, using as a lens the life of Francis Adrian van der Kemp. Connections between the Netherlands and the United States have been understudied in histories of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Yet the nations' political and religious histories are entwined both thematically and practically. Van der Kemp's life makes it possible to examine republicanism and liberal religion anew, as they developed and changed during the era of Atlantic revolutions. The project draws on numerous archival collections that house van der Kemp's voluminous correspondence, political and religious writings, his autobiography, and the unpublished records of the Reformed Christian Church, now the Unitarian Church of Barneveld. With his activity in both countries, van der Kemp offers a unique perspective into the continued role of the Dutch in the development of the United States. The dissertation argues that the political divisions and incomplete religious freedom that frustrated van der Kemp in the Dutch Republic similarly manifested in America. Politically, the partisanship that became the hallmark of the early American republic echoed the experiences van der Kemp had during the Patriot Revolt. While parties would eventually stabilize radical politics, the collapse of the Dutch Republic in the Atlantic world and the divisiveness of American politics in those early decades, led van der Kemp to blunt his once radically democratic opinions. Heavily influenced by John Adams, he adopted a more conservative politics of balance that guaranteed religious and civil liberty regardless of governmental structure. In the realm of religion, van der Kemp discovered that American religious freedom reflected the same begrudging acceptance that constituted Dutch religious tolerance. Van der Kemp found that even in one of the most pluralistic states, New York, his belief in the unlimited liberty of conscience remained a dissenting opinion. The democracy and individualism celebrated in early American politics were controversial in religion, given the growing authority of denominations and hierarchical church institutions.
ContributorsVan Cleave, Peter (Author) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Wright, Johnson (Committee member) / Schermerhorn, Jack (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
"Blood is Thicker than Water": Anglo-American Rapprochement in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, 1823-1872
Description
ABSTRACT
Historians of Anglo-American diplomacy in the nineteenth century tend to focus on the beginning of the century, when tensions ran high, or the end, when the United States and Britain sowed the seeds that would grow into one of the most fruitful alliances of the twentieth century. This dissertation bridges the gap between the century's bookends. It employs world history methodology, giving close attention to how each nation's domestic politics and global priorities played a vital role in shaping bilateral relations. In this manner, it explains how two nations that repeatedly approached the brink of war actually shared remarkably similar visions of peace, free trade, and neutral rights throughout the world. A careful consideration of the shifting priorities of the British Empire demonstrates that London approached trans-Atlantic relations as merely one part of a worldwide strategy to preserve its prestige and economic ascendancy. Meanwhile, naval inferiority, sectional tensions, and cultural affinity ensured that American belligerence never crossed the threshold from bluster to military action. By examining a handful of diplomatic crises originating far from the centers of power in London and Washington, this study argues that disputes between the United States and Britain arose from disagreements regarding the proper means to achieve common ends. During nearly half a century between the Monroe Doctrine and the Treaty of Washington, the two countries reached a mutual understanding regarding the best ways to communicate, cooperate, and pursue common economic and geopolitical goals. Giving this period its due attention as the link between post-Revolutionary reconciliation and pre-World War I alliance promotes a more comprehensive understanding of Anglo-American rapprochement in the nineteenth century.
Historians of Anglo-American diplomacy in the nineteenth century tend to focus on the beginning of the century, when tensions ran high, or the end, when the United States and Britain sowed the seeds that would grow into one of the most fruitful alliances of the twentieth century. This dissertation bridges the gap between the century's bookends. It employs world history methodology, giving close attention to how each nation's domestic politics and global priorities played a vital role in shaping bilateral relations. In this manner, it explains how two nations that repeatedly approached the brink of war actually shared remarkably similar visions of peace, free trade, and neutral rights throughout the world. A careful consideration of the shifting priorities of the British Empire demonstrates that London approached trans-Atlantic relations as merely one part of a worldwide strategy to preserve its prestige and economic ascendancy. Meanwhile, naval inferiority, sectional tensions, and cultural affinity ensured that American belligerence never crossed the threshold from bluster to military action. By examining a handful of diplomatic crises originating far from the centers of power in London and Washington, this study argues that disputes between the United States and Britain arose from disagreements regarding the proper means to achieve common ends. During nearly half a century between the Monroe Doctrine and the Treaty of Washington, the two countries reached a mutual understanding regarding the best ways to communicate, cooperate, and pursue common economic and geopolitical goals. Giving this period its due attention as the link between post-Revolutionary reconciliation and pre-World War I alliance promotes a more comprehensive understanding of Anglo-American rapprochement in the nineteenth century.
ContributorsFlashnick, Jon M. (Author) / Longley, Kyle (Thesis advisor) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Stoner, K. Lynn (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
Description
This project examines the decision of American policymakers to deny the Amerasians of Vietnam--the offspring of American fathers and Vietnamese mothers born as a result of the Vietnam War--American citizenship in the 1982 Amerasian Immigration Act and the 1987 Amerasian Homecoming Act. It investigates why policymakers deemed a population unfit for the responsibilities of American society, despite the fact that they had American fathers.
The examination draws upon numerous archival collections of the key policymakers, humanitarians and non-governmental organizations involved in each piece of legislation. Additionally, archival and published documents from the U.S. government and military, popular media, and veteran's organizations, are important. Since many of those involved in the legislation are still living, oral history interviews are also a critical piece of the methodology.
The dissertation argues that the exclusion of citizenship was a component of bigger issues: international relationships in a Cold War era, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, and a history in the United States of racialized exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent. It exposes the contradictory approach of policymakers unable to reconcile the Amerasian mixture of race and nation with US law. Consequently, policymakers simultaneously employed an inclusionary discourse that deemed the Amerasians worthy of American attention, guidance and humanitarian aid, and implemented exclusionary policies that designated them unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
The examination draws upon numerous archival collections of the key policymakers, humanitarians and non-governmental organizations involved in each piece of legislation. Additionally, archival and published documents from the U.S. government and military, popular media, and veteran's organizations, are important. Since many of those involved in the legislation are still living, oral history interviews are also a critical piece of the methodology.
The dissertation argues that the exclusion of citizenship was a component of bigger issues: international relationships in a Cold War era, America's defeat in the Vietnam War, and a history in the United States of racialized exclusionary immigration and citizenship policies against people of Asian descent. It exposes the contradictory approach of policymakers unable to reconcile the Amerasian mixture of race and nation with US law. Consequently, policymakers simultaneously employed an inclusionary discourse that deemed the Amerasians worthy of American attention, guidance and humanitarian aid, and implemented exclusionary policies that designated them unfit for the responsibilities of American citizenship.
ContributorsThomas, Sabrina (Author) / Longley, Rodney (Thesis advisor) / Fixico, Donald (Committee member) / Anderson, Carol (Committee member) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This study examines how a populist religious leader, Alexander Campbell, altered the economic value system of religious material production in the early United States and, subsequently, the long-term value structure of religious economic systems generally. As religious publishing societies in the early nineteenth century were pioneering the not-for-profit corporation and as many popular itinerants manufactured religious spectacles around the country, Campbell combined the promotional methods of revivalism and the business practices of religious printers, with a conspicuously pugilistic tone to simultaneously build religious and business empires. He was a religious entrepreneur who capitalized on the opportunities of American revivalism for personal and religious gain. His opponents attacked his theology and his wealth as signs of his obvious error but few were prepared for the vigor of his answer. He invited conflict and challenged prominent opponents to grow his celebrity and extend his brand into new markets. He argued that his labor as a printer was deserving of compensation and that, unlike his “venal” clerical opponents, he offered his services as a preacher for free. As Americans in the early national period increasingly felt obligated to find the “right kind of Christianity,” Campbell packaged and sold a compelling product. In the decades that followed his first debate in 1820, he built a religious following that by 1850 numbered well over 100,000 followers. This dissertation considers the importance of marketing, promotion, investment capital, distribution networks, property law, print culture, and ideology, to the success of a given religious prescription in the nineteenth century American marketplace of religion. Campbell’s success reveals important social, political, and economic structures in the nineteenth century trans-Appalachian west. It also illuminates a form of religious entrepreneurialism that continues to be important to American Christianity.
ContributorsDupey, James (Author) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Critchlow, Donald (Committee member) / Fessenden, Tracy (Committee member) / Schermerhorn, Calvin J (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation focuses on the development of two communities of women religious beginning in the early nineteenth century: the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, founded in 1812, and the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati, who arrived in Ohio in 1829 and became a diocesan community in 1852. Although administratively separate, these two apostolic communities shared a charism of service to the poor in the tradition of St. Vincent de Paul. The history of these two communities demonstrates the overlapping worlds women religious inhabited: their personal faith, their community life, their place in the Catholic Church, and their place in the regions where they lived. These women were often met with admiration as they formed necessary social institutions such as schools, hospitals, and orphanages that provided services to all religious denominations.
Sisters’ active engagement with their local communities defied anti-Catholic stereotypes at the time and created significant public roles for women. The skills needed to create and maintain successful social institutions demonstrate that these women were well-educated, largely self-sufficient, competent fundraisers, and well-liked by the Catholics and Protestants alike that they served. This dissertation argues for the importance of acknowledging and analyzing this tension: as celibate, educated women who used their skills for lifelong public service, the Sisters of Charity were clearly exceptional figures among nineteenth century women, though they did not challenge the gendered hierarchies of their church or American society.
To further understand this tension, this dissertation utilizes several cases studies of conflicts between sisters and their superiors in each community to examine the extent of their influence in deciding their community’s current priorities and planning for the future. These case studies demonstrate that obedience did not have a fixed definition but is better understood instead as dynamic and situational between multiple locations and circumstances. These findings concerning gender, labor, institution and community building, and the growth of American Catholicism highlight the integral role that women and religion played in the antebellum era.
Sisters’ active engagement with their local communities defied anti-Catholic stereotypes at the time and created significant public roles for women. The skills needed to create and maintain successful social institutions demonstrate that these women were well-educated, largely self-sufficient, competent fundraisers, and well-liked by the Catholics and Protestants alike that they served. This dissertation argues for the importance of acknowledging and analyzing this tension: as celibate, educated women who used their skills for lifelong public service, the Sisters of Charity were clearly exceptional figures among nineteenth century women, though they did not challenge the gendered hierarchies of their church or American society.
To further understand this tension, this dissertation utilizes several cases studies of conflicts between sisters and their superiors in each community to examine the extent of their influence in deciding their community’s current priorities and planning for the future. These case studies demonstrate that obedience did not have a fixed definition but is better understood instead as dynamic and situational between multiple locations and circumstances. These findings concerning gender, labor, institution and community building, and the growth of American Catholicism highlight the integral role that women and religion played in the antebellum era.
ContributorsRomero, Jacqueline Elizabeth (Author) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Gray, Susan (Committee member) / Lim, Julian (Committee member) / Fraser Connolly, Mary Beth (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
A growing number of jobs in the US require a college degree or technical education, and the wage difference between jobs requiring a high school diploma and a college education has increased to over $17,000 per year. Enrollment levels in postsecondary education have been rising for at least the past decade, and this paper attempts to tease out how much of the increasing enrollment is due to changes in the demand by companies for workers. A Bartik Instrument, which is a measure of local area labor demand, for each county in the US was constructed from 2007 to 2014, and using multivariate linear regression the effect of changing labor demand on local postsecondary education enrollment rates was examined. A small positive effect was found, but the effect size in relation to the total change in enrollment levels was diminutive. From the start to the end of the recession (2007 to 2010), Bartik Instrument calculated unemployment increased from 5.3% nationally to 8.2%. This level of labor demand contraction would lead to a 0.42% increase in enrollment between 2008 and 2011. The true enrollment increase over this period was 7.6%, so the model calculated 5.5% of the enrollment increase was based on the changes in labor demand.
ContributorsHerder, Daniel Steven (Author) / Dillon, Eleanor (Thesis director) / Schoellman, Todd (Committee member) / Economics Program in CLAS (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This research looks at a group of students from Tumaini Children's Home in Nyeri, Kenya. The purpose of this paper is to explore why this particular group of students is so academically successful. Quantitative research was taken from the average 2013 test scores of Tumaini students who took the Kenyan Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) exam in comparison to the scores of students who are not residing in the orphanage. Qualitative research involves interviews from those students who live in Tumaini and interviews from adults who are closely connected to the orphanage. The purpose is to understand why the students are performing so well academically and what support they have created for themselves that allows them to do so.
ContributorsTooker, Amy Elizabeth (Author) / Puckett, Kathleen (Thesis director) / Cocchiarella, Martha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
We, a team of students and faculty in the life sciences at Arizona State University (ASU), currently teach an Introduction to Biology course in a Level 5, or maximum-security unit with the support of the Arizona Department of Corrections and the Prison Education Program at ASU. This course aims to enhance current programs at the unit by offering inmates an opportunity to practice literacy and math skills, while also providing exposure to a new academic field (science, and specifically biology). Numerous studies, including a 2005 study from the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC), have found that vocational programs, including prison education programs, reduce recidivism rates (ADC 2005, Esperian 2010, Jancic 1988, Steurer et al. 2001, Ubic 2002) and may provide additional benefits such as engagement with a world outside the justice system (Duguid 1992), the opportunity for inmates to revise personal patterns of rejecting education that they may regret, and the ability of inmate parents to deliberately set a good example for their children (Hall and Killacky 2008). Teaching in a maximum security prison unit poses special challenges, which include a prohibition on most outside materials (except paper), severe restrictions on student-teacher and student-student interactions, and the inability to perform any lab exercises except limited computer simulations. Lack of literature discussing theoretical and practical aspects of teaching science in such environment has prompted us to conduct an ongoing study to generate notes and recommendations from this class through the use of surveys, academic evaluation of students' work and ongoing feedback from both teachers and students to inform teaching practices in future science classes in high-security prison units.
ContributorsLarson, Anika Jade (Author) / Mor, Tsafrir (Thesis director) / Brownell, Sara (Committee member) / Lockard, Joe (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor)
Created2015-05