Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1950, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

BA, Oberlin College, 2012, History

"Little House on the Prairie" has remained popular since the release of the first book in 1932, and has enjoyed particular moments of resonance in the 1930s, 1970s, and late 1990s. This study explores why "Little House" has endured through multiple generations, looking at this phenomenon through the lens of historical memory. Through its placement within one of America's foundational myths, the frontier myth, and its subsequent democratization of that myth in moments of social and political change, "Little House" has celebrated America's ability to become more inclusive yet retain its most essential qualities. This thesis uses changing portrayals of gender and race in various incarnations of "Little House" as case studies to examine this process of democratization.

Committee: Renee Romano PhD (Advisor) Subjects: American History; American Studies; History

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, Theatre and Film

For scholars of Theatre, Performance, and Women's Studies, the problem of discovering and resurrecting voices of those peoples who have been silenced, oppressed, and erased from traditional histories looms large. In particular, the force of a patriarchal culture, which privileges the masculine public and oppresses the feminine private, has proven a difficult negotiation for those who wish to rectify the historical imbalance. In this dissertation, I use Helene Cixous's concept of feminine writing as a method to explore the possibilities and connections between feminine writing and the female body, and to discover to what extent women have agency to construct who they are through writing, using Laura Ingalls Wilder's “Pioneer Girl” as my main primary source. While many scholars have focused attention on Wilder's published “Little House” series, I center my study on her lesser-known, handwritten, unpublished, autobiographical manuscript. In an attempt to re-conceptualize what kinds of writing contain value, I examine how “Pioneer Girl” and a few other articles and personal letters are viewed in tandem with their “finished” counterparts. My three main chapters revolve around Wilder's feminine identity, as connected to the process of writing her life and sense of Self in “Pioneer Girl”: Chapter 2 explores the social context and values of pioneerism and the American First Wave feminist movement as intertwined with the creation of Wilder's subjectivity; Chapter 3 tracks the construction of “Laura” within the body of the text; and Chapter 4 concentrates on the identity of the text itself, viewing the process of its writing and audience as a performance. My work with Laura Ingalls Wilder and “Pioneer Girl” produces the author and text as exemplars of the notion that women who construct themselves outside of the strictures of andocentric culture is both possible and valuable. In placing different permutations of her work on an equal plane, I piece together a new framework (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Jonathan Chambers Phd (Committee Chair); Lesa Lockford Phd (Committee Member); Ronald Shields Phd (Committee Member); Stephannie Gearhart Phd (Committee Member) Subjects: Theater