Matching Items (7)
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that house van der Kemp's voluminous correspondence, political and religious writings, his autobiography, and the unpublished records of the Reformed Christian Church, now the Unitarian Church of Barneveld.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
Description
This dissertation analyzes the transformation of noncitizen detention policy in the United States over the twentieth century. For much of that time, official policy remained disconnected from the reality of experiences for those subjected to the detention regime. However, once detention policy changed into its current form, disparities between policy and reality virtually disappeared. This work argues that since its inception in the late nineteenth century to its present manifestations, noncitizen detention policy transformed from a form of exclusion to a method of state-sponsored violence. A new periodization based on detention policy refocuses immigration enforcement into three eras: exclusion, humane, and violent. When official policy became state violence, the regime synchronized with noncitizen experiences in detention marked by pain, suffering, isolation, hopelessness, and death. This violent policy followed the era of humane detentions. From 1954 to 1981, during a time of supposedly benevolent national policies premised on a narrative against de facto detentions, Arizona, and the broader Southwest, continued to detain noncitizens while collecting revenue for housing such federal prisoners. Over time increasing detentions contributed to overcrowding. Those incarcerated naturally reacted against such conditions, where federal, state, and local prisoners coalesced to demand their humanity. Yet, when taxpayers ignored these pleas, an eclectic group of sheriffs, state and local politicians, and prison officials negotiated with federal prisoners, commodifying them for federal revenue. Officials then used federal money to revamp existing facilities and build new ones. Receiving money for federal prisoners was so deeply embedded within the Southwest carceral landscape that it allowed for private prison companies to casually take over these relationships previously held by state actors. When official policy changed in 1981, general detentions were used as deterrence to break the will of asylum seekers. With this change, policy and reality melded. No longer needing the pretext of exclusionary rationales nor the fiction of humane policies, the unencumbered state consolidated its official detention policy with a rationale of deterrence. In other words, violence. Analyzing the devolution of noncitizen detention policy provides key insights to understanding its historical antecedents, how this violent detention regime came to be within the modern carceral state, and its implications for the mass incarceration crisis.
ContributorsDingatantrige Perera, Judith Irangika (Author) / Schermerhorn, Jack (Thesis advisor) / Sarat, Leah (Committee member) / Lim, Julian (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
In speeches, declarations, journals, and convention proceedings, mid-nineteenth-century American woman's rights activists exhorted one another to action as equal heirs of the rights and burdens associated with independence and chided men for failing to live up to the founders' ideals and examples. They likened themselves to oppressed colonists and compared legislators to King George, yet also criticized the patriot fathers for excluding women from civic equality. This dissertation analyzes these invocations of collective memories of the nation's founding, described as Revolutionary heritage rhetoric, in publicly circulated texts produced by woman's rights associations from 1848 to 1890. This organization-driven approach de-centers the rhetoric of the early movement as the intellectual products of a few remarkable women, instead exploring movement rhetoric across the first generation through myriad voices: female and male; native- and foreign-born; those who spoke extemporaneously at conventions along with well-known organizers.
Tracing the use of Revolutionary heritage rhetoric over a fifty-year span reveals that activists’ invocations of the founding were inseparably connected to their willingness to work for racial and class equality along with woman's rights. References to the Revolution and such slogans as “no taxation without representation” could be inclusive or exclusionary, depending upon how they were used and who used them. In the opening decades of the organized woman’s rights movement, claims to a shared Revolutionary heritage reflected larger commitments to racial, class, and gender equality. As organizations within the movement fractured around competing ideas about how to best improve women's lives, activists’ rhetoric changed as well. When the commitment to universal equality gave way to ideologies of race, class, and nativity privilege, references to the founding era morphed into justifications for limited, rather than equal rights. Revolutionary heritage rhetoric largely disappeared from suffrage, education, and pay equity arguments by the late 1880s, replaced by arguments grounded in white, Protestant, female moral superiority.
Tracing the use of Revolutionary heritage rhetoric over a fifty-year span reveals that activists’ invocations of the founding were inseparably connected to their willingness to work for racial and class equality along with woman's rights. References to the Revolution and such slogans as “no taxation without representation” could be inclusive or exclusionary, depending upon how they were used and who used them. In the opening decades of the organized woman’s rights movement, claims to a shared Revolutionary heritage reflected larger commitments to racial, class, and gender equality. As organizations within the movement fractured around competing ideas about how to best improve women's lives, activists’ rhetoric changed as well. When the commitment to universal equality gave way to ideologies of race, class, and nativity privilege, references to the founding era morphed into justifications for limited, rather than equal rights. Revolutionary heritage rhetoric largely disappeared from suffrage, education, and pay equity arguments by the late 1880s, replaced by arguments grounded in white, Protestant, female moral superiority.
ContributorsLewis Butterfield, Emily (Author) / Simpson, Brooks (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Victoria (Committee member) / Schermerhorn, Jack (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
Description
Privateers and pirates were instrumental in the development of English and British colonies and territories through military support and economic enrichment. British policy was to use privateers to help break into the New World when it was dominated by Spain, and Britain’s navy was no match for Spain’s navy. The privateers were used to protect the colonies, like Jamaica, from Spanish invasion and to militarily weaken Spain, Portugal, and others by taking or destroying their ships. Plundering brought in substantial wealth to the colonies and the crown while working for British governors. Eventually, Britain’s policy changed when it became more established in the Caribbean and the New World, and because some of its pro-Catholic monarchs made peace with Spain. Sugar production increased and there was less need for privateers. Most privateers moved to new bases in the North American colonies and Madagascar where they continued to be paid to work on behalf of others, in this case mostly for merchants and local politicians. Besides enriching the North American colonies economies through plunder, the privateers also helped protect them from the Native Americans. As pirates from Madagascar, they raided Mughal merchant fleets, bringing loot and exotic goods to the North American colonies in the seventeenth century, which also helped boost trade with Asia because colonists desired Asian goods. The pirates brought massive numbers of slaves from Madagascar to the colonies to sell. Pirates also operated in the Caribbean. There, they were beneficial to the colonies by bringing in money, yet problematic because they would sometimes raid British ships. When Britain became a global power, privateers and pirates became more of a nuisance than a help to the empire and it stopped using them. Still, in the 1800s, a privateer resurgence occurred in the United States and these individuals and their ships served the same function as they had with Britain, helping a new power break into areas across the sea when it lacked a strong navy. Though somewhat problematic to Britain these privateers did benefit the empire by helping Spain’s colonies gain their independence.
ContributorsWhitaker, Trevor John (Author) / Harper, Tobias (Thesis advisor) / Thompson, Victoria (Thesis advisor) / Schermerhorn, Jack (Committee member) / Van Cleave, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2020
Description
This dissertation explores the role transportation infrastructure played in regional and community development in northwestern Arizona from 1882 to 1989. Transportation infrastructure undergirds the economic viability and development of most American regions and communities. In northwestern Arizona, following a process familiar throughout the American West, the initial construction of railroad transportation infrastructure fundamentally transformed the area from sparsely populated space to an industrialized region centered on railroad created townsites. Although critical to regional development and growth, U.S. Route 66 was added well after the initial railroad period. In total, regional transformation occurred in four phases: Railroad, Route 66, I-40, and post-bypass. For regional residents, Route 66 was the most important phase transforming railroad created spaces into functional communities. Yet, despite maturing as communities, each of these towns also struggled with the same racial and class divides as the larger nation. From the early railroad period, through WW2, tourism was present in the region, but an ancillary part of the economy focused on visiting environmental attractions like the Grand Canyon. After WW2, it became more important as regional industrialism faded and traffic levels rose on Route 66. However, as long as Route 66 remained a primary highway, tourism retained its focus on the environment. As much as the construction of transportation infrastructure provided initial access to the region and founded towns, the later regional highway and railroad bypasses cut-off many of these communities from the source of their economic livelihood. Regional towns lucky enough to be integrated into the new interstate highway system like Kingman profited and grew; towns bypassed by the interstate and railroad withered and were forced to reinvent themselves to survive. This post-bypass reinvention took the form of a non-environmental focused mythic tourism connected to an emerging national Route 66 nostalgia movement that envisioned the lost Route 66 as representative of a better, more authentic America. The association with the national Route 66 nostalgia myth successfully attracted tourists but came at the cost of regional communities losing a more realistic understanding of their past and becoming disassociated from their previous community identity.
ContributorsMilowski, Daniel (Author) / Jones, Christopher (Thesis advisor) / Lim, Julian (Committee member) / MacFadyen, Joshua (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
The San Francisco Peaks rise to a height of over 12,000 feet on the Colorado Plateau of Northern Arizona. The remnants of an extinct volcano, the Peaks are sacred to thirteen Southwestern Indigenous nations; they are home to the Kachina spirits of the Hopi, and they mark the eastern boundary of Dinétah, the Navajo homeland. For residents of the city of Flagstaff, which lies just south of the Peaks, the mountains are a source of water, a symbol of the community, and a crucial part of the regional economy. In the summer, tourists from the hot deserts of central and southern Arizona are drawn to the Peaks for a respite from temperatures that routinely reach the triple digits. In the winter, the Arizona Snow Bowl ski area, located on the western slope of the Peaks, provides winter recreation that is crucial to the winter economy of Flagstaff. The intersection of Indigenous religion with Flagstaff’s tourist economy, as well as environmental concerns, has made the Peaks a flashpoint for community conflict numerous times over the last half century. This dissertation explores the Hart Prairie Controversy, a conflict over use of the Peaks that began in 1969 when landowner and developer, Bruce Leadbetter, proposed a ski village to be located at Hart Prairie, just 1,000 feet of elevation below the base of the Arizona Snow Bowl. Leadbetter’s plans for a commercial and residential development to support thousands of tourists and newcomers alarmed neighboring landowners, local environmentalists, and Northern Arizona’s tribal nations, especially members of the Hopi and Navajo tribes. For almost a decade, Indigenous and non-Indigenous actors formed a loose coalition, sometimes working together, sometimes with differing aims, to oppose the Snow Bowl Village proposal through appearances at public hearings, statements in the local media, and when necessary, legal action. This dissertation shows the Hart Prairie Controversy as an example of a time when a confluence of social movements and increased legal and political access, especially among American Indians, coalesced to preserve unique spiritual and ecological ground from development and desecration.
ContributorsHolly, William C (Author) / Lim, Julian (Thesis advisor) / Tebeau, Mark (Committee member) / Miller, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2023