Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2019, English

Sentimental Sailors recovers a largely neglected genealogy of sentimental fiction that promotes non-national forms of personal and collective identity in the early U.S. The “sentimental sailor”— a term that I take from Thomas Mercer's 1772 poem of the same name — is an antebellum ocean character who works to preserve Christian morals by saving those in physical peril, including individuals who are often considered marginalized or foreign. Appearing in texts across a broad range of genres, this figure develops a humanist, religious identity shaped by ocean adventures. Through acts of rescue, the sentimental sailor encourages citizens on the landed frontier to avoid fixed identities, and to instead develop a mobile fluid mind that could see beyond nationalism and the cultural prejudices of their own communities. While the sentimental sailor is unique to the antebellum era, this figure has gone virtually unnoticed by literary scholars. This oversight, I argue, results from the continued focus of much nineteenth-century American literary scholarship on the relation between literature and conceptions of U.S. national or imperial identity. In particular, scholars have shown that sentimental fiction promotes the idea that a productive and healthy home life will lead to a strong community and nation. For example, Amy Kaplan argues that domestic ideologies unite men and women under a central idea of nationalism, allowing them to stand against outsiders that they considered a threat to the country. Relatedly, Margaret Cohen notes that sea narratives emphasize the ideal of imperialism by showing how labor at sea contributes to the nation's pursuit of a global saltwater empire. However, the figure of the sentimental sailor does not fit into the imperialist agendas and cultural modes of most domestic and ocean fiction, but rather uses the experience-based education of the sea to advocate a form of cultural internationalism that requires scholars to reconsider the history of n (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Andrew Hebard (Committee Chair); Michele Navakas (Committee Member); Katharine Gillespie Moses (Committee Member); Anita Mannur (Committee Member); Kimberly Hamlin (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2016, English

“'I Would Prevent You from Further Violence': Women, Pirates, and the Problem of Violence in the Antebellum American Imagination" analyzes how antebellum American pirate stories used the figure of the pirate to explore the problem of violence and the role women play in opposing violent men. This project joins ongoing conversations about women in the nineteenth century in which scholars, such as Nina Baym, Mary Kelley, and Mary Ryan, have made key contributions by recovering a domestic model of nineteenth-century womanhood. As my work demonstrates, antebellum Americans were similarly invested in a more adventurous, and sometimes violent, model of womanhood that was built upon the figure of the gentleman pirate and placed in opposition to violent men. I argue that it is important to think about the pirate story and the figure of the pirate, not only in the context in which it has come to be known—escapist fantasies written for boys and young men—but as a place where authors reinforced, modified, and established different models of gender roles. Frequently within the mid-nineteenth-century American pirate story, authors answered the question of who is allowed to be violent by demonstrating that women had the capacity for violence and constructing scenarios illustrating that women were often the only ones in a position to forcibly oppose violent men. The pirate story uniquely blends different narrative conventions: adventure stories that are often believed to appeal to male audiences and domestic scenarios that are usually understood to resonate with female readers. Although historical and fictional pirates of other eras and geographical locations have been examined, little scholarship has focused on piracy in the antebellum American imagination, even though the figure of the pirate continued to proliferate, especially in popular fiction, throughout the nineteenth century. My project addresses this gap not only by demonstrating the importance of pirates in nineteenth (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Sara Crosby (Advisor); Andrea Williams (Committee Member); Susan Williams (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; American Literature; American Studies; British and Irish Literature; Gender; Literature; Womens Studies