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ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

Freedom Through Captivity: Women's Use of Indian Captivity Narratives as a Gateway to Independence, 1865-1920

Redinger, Jordan M
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1650203285549021

Abstract Details

2022, MA, Kent State University, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History.
Amid the turmoil of the Reconstruction and Progressive Eras, increasing efforts to suppress Native American peoples, and the rapidly growing women’s suffrage movement, the American West became a symbol of Euro-American imperial goals and an ethnocentrically based national identity. Both a locale of cultural confrontation and warfare, many questions have arisen over who participated in this story. Scholars have long questioned female agency in the West, and this work attempts to navigate how female self-published captivity narratives gave white women agency not only over their own lives but over those of the Native peoples they held responsible for their captivity. Chapter one works to re-examine earlier scholarship on women in the American West and how these individuals wanted to be perceived. The next chapter explores these women’s depictions of savagery and reinforcement of popular ideas of how Native peoples should be handled. Finally, the last chapter explores women’s active participation in American efforts at imperial expansion using the Indian Depredations Act. This study hopes to reveal how women leveraged their captivity experiences which condemned their Native American captors to gain some amount of independence and fame within their own lives.
Kevin Adams (Advisor)
Kimberly Gruenwald (Committee Member)
Elaine Frantz (Committee Member)
114 p.
American History; Gender; History; Literature; Military History; Native Americans; Womens Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Redinger, J. M. (2022). Freedom Through Captivity: Women's Use of Indian Captivity Narratives as a Gateway to Independence, 1865-1920 [Master's thesis, Kent State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1650203285549021

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Redinger, Jordan. Freedom Through Captivity: Women's Use of Indian Captivity Narratives as a Gateway to Independence, 1865-1920 . 2022. Kent State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1650203285549021.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Redinger, Jordan. "Freedom Through Captivity: Women's Use of Indian Captivity Narratives as a Gateway to Independence, 1865-1920 ." Master's thesis, Kent State University, 2022. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1650203285549021

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

kent1650203285549021
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© 2022, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Kent State University and OhioLINK.