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- All Subjects: American History
- Creators: O'Donnell, Catherine
- Creators: Holbrook, Amy
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
As an organist, church musician, and educator, Clifford Demarest (1874-1946) was a prominent figure in New York during the first half of the twentieth century. However, prior to this thesis, Demarest's place within the history of American music, like that of many of his contemporaries, was all but neglected. This research reveals Clifford Demarest as an influential figure in American musical history from around 1900 to his retirement in 1937. Led by contemporary accounts, I trace Demarest's musical influence through his three musical careers: professional organist, church musician, and educator. As a prominent figure in the fledgling American Guild of Organists, Demarest was dedicated to the unification of its members and the artistic legitimacy of the organist profession. As the organist and choir director of the Church of the Messiah, later the Community Church of New York (1911-1946, inclusive), Demarest played an integral part in the liberal atmosphere fostered by the congregation's minister, John Haynes Holmes (1879-1964). Together Holmes and Demarest directly influenced the nascent National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and supported luminaries of the Harlem Renaissance. Influential figures such as Langston Hughes (1902-1967), Augustus Granville Dill (1881-1956), Egbert Ethelred Brown (1875-1956), and Countee Cullen (1903-1946) were inspired by the liberal environment in the Church of the Messiah; however, prior to this research, their connections to the church were unexplored. As the music supervisor of Tenafly High School and later, for the state of New Jersey, Demarest influenced countless students through his passion for music. His compositions for student orchestras are among the earliest to elevate the artistic standards of school music ensembles during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Archival sources such as church records, letters, and newspaper editorials, are synthesized with current research to characterize Demarest's place in these three professional orbits of the early twentieth century. His story also represents those of countless other working musicians from his era that have been forgotten. Therefore, this research opens an important new research field – a window into the dynamic world of the American organist.
ContributorsHicks, Glen W (Author) / Saucier, Catherine (Thesis advisor) / Norton, Kay (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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
This study is a cultural history of danger, disaster, and steam-powered transportation in nineteenth-century America. The application of steam power to transportation, a globally transformative innovation, had particular influence in the early United States. A vast American continent with difficult terrain and poor infrastructure posed significant challenges, both to individual mobility and to a nation eager to build an integrated economy, a unified culture, and a functional republican government. Steamboats and locomotives offered an apparent solution, their speed and power seemingly shrinking distances between places and expanding mobility and access across space, a process contemporaries and scholars have described as a sort of space-time compression. However, these machines that overcame space also blew up, caught fire, wrecked, collided, derailed, and broke down, killing tens, and often hundreds, of Americans at a time. This dissertation analyzes the ways Americans encountered, interpreted, and adapted to these new dangers, all the while making the technology that created them an ever more essential aspect of their lives. I argue that Americans’ responses to disasters, filtered through the transportation and communication networks created by steam power, constituted a deep, shared reflection about the nature of expanded mobility in a fast-evolving modern America. Though few suffered disaster directly, Americans collectively framed the danger of steam as both a profound national problem and an evocative symbol of modernity. Through public conversations mediated by print, Americans identified susceptibility to danger as inherent to high-speed travel, and, alongside practical safety measures, developed distinctly modern cultural adaptations to understand and manage that danger. By century's end, Americans had cultivated a modern mentality on mobility, technology, and danger: though most Americans never experienced disaster they were intimately aware of it, and though familiar with catastrophe they understood it as unlikely and accepted it as a feature of their modern technological lives.
ContributorsKuenker, Paul (Author) / Gray, Susan (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / O'Donnell, Catherine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
ABSTRACT The Orpheus Male Chorus of Phoenix occupies and maintains an historical place in the musical and civic history of the City of Phoenix and the State of Arizona. Organized in November, 1929, the Orpheus Male Chorus of Phoenix (OMC) is the only performing arts organization in Phoenix that can claim eighty-one years of continuous performance. The chorus gained popularity locally, nationally, and internationally in its first five decades. The breadth of the chorus's recognition began to decline in the latter part of the 20th century, but the chorus still retains a loyal following of audience members. This study focuses on the first fifty years of the OMC, especially the period from 1946 to 1979, the years the chorus was under the direction of Ralph Hess. Through his leadership the group's popularity and recognition reached a peak, thanks largely to his emphasis on civic responsibility, ties to service organizations, and musical ability and showmanship. No scholarly publications exist regarding this organization. Several boxes of memorabilia housed in the Arizona Historical Society Museum in Tempe, Arizona, serve as the primary source of material for this study. Concert programs supply information about concert repertoire, advertising, and chorus history. Newspaper articles from local and international press offer reviews, announcements, and media perceptions of the chorus. Information illustrating the abundant civic engagement of the OMC appears in proclamations and awards from local, state, national, and international personalities. This objective information helps propel the story forward, as do the personal letters and stories contained within the collection. Because many documents from the latter part of the 1970s are missing, the primary source information becomes more anecdotal and subjective. This study illustrates some of the ways in which the OMC went beyond mere survival to occupy a significant place in the musical life of Phoenix. Engagement in civic and social functions and support for non-profit organizations established the chorus as more than just a musical ensemble. Their pursuit under Hess of "Cultural Citizenship" earned them international recognition as civic leaders and ambassadors of goodwill.
ContributorsButler, Robert C (Author) / Schildkret, David (Thesis advisor) / Holbrook, Amy (Committee member) / Doan, Jerry (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2010