Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1969, Graduate School

Committee: Not Provided (Other) Subjects:

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2020, English

This dissertation describes an alternative to an especially influential understanding of how literature promotes social justice. According to this dominant paradigm, literature heightens our empathy through vivid depictions of suffering. Where this mode emphasizes stylistic vividness, I turn to works of fiction and autobiography from the years just before the Civil War to identify a wholly different didactic tradition—one that advances by means of what eighteenth-century critics derisively called vacuity or imaginative vacancy. Vacancy, I argue, is a tool for revealing networks of solidarity, distributed in time and space, and inaccessible by means of vivid description. Harriet Jacobs's offers an example of this dynamic in her treatment of violence in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Many other famous ex-slave narrators, such as Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northrup, foreground scenes in which a master beats a slave until his whip drips with blood. Such scenes heighten the reader's empathy through their excruciating level of detail, particularizing the narrated violence until it seems almost present. When Jacobs incorporates the trope, though, she transforms it through generalization, describing how in the aftermath of Nat Turner's Rebellion “everywhere men, women, and children were whipped till the blood stood in puddles at their feet” and “the consternation was universal” (58). This scene is typical of Jacobs's treatment of violence elsewhere in her narrative where punishments are not meted out to particular slaves but to groups. Because her writing frustrates visualization and the free play of empathy, Jacobs is able to prevent identification at the individual level and to depict slavery instead at the level of systems and groups. Like Jacobs, the other writers I examine in this dissertation—Rebecca Harding Davis, Herman Melville, and Nathaniel Hawthorne—use vacancy to create alternative didactic forms capable of imagining and promoting solidarity.

Committee: Michael Clune (Committee Chair); Gary Stonum (Committee Member); Athena Vrettos (Committee Member); Timothy Beal (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Political Science

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2017, History

This dissertation examines the relationship between faith and reason in the nineteenth-century United States by analyzing the lives and educational philosophies of six educators of different religious backgrounds: Frederick Packard, evangelical Protestant; Horace Mann, non-evangelical Protestant; Rebecca Gratz and Isaac Leeser, Jews; and Mother Angela and Orestes Brownson, Catholics. To varying degrees in their writings, each of these educators explored the relationship between faith and reason while expressing their hopes for how children should be taught to think in the context of their faiths. In general, they saw no conflict between faith and reason. Rather than calling for young people to obey authority slavishly, they advocated for them to develop independent reasoning skills. They also promoted the idea that young people should develop internal moral compasses, which would lead them to truthful conclusions and encourage them to act morally, even when no authority directed them. Although all of the educators demonstrated advocacy of independent thought to some degree, the Jewish and Catholic educators showed more restraint. Their position as minorities in American society may account for this reluctance. Given the pressure to convert to Protestantism, they likely feared giving their young people too much license to think for themselves. Yet they still advocated the idea that faith and reason supported each other and that both would vindicate their chosen religions. This dissertation primarily analyzes the writings of these six individuals, including their letters, lectures, newspaper and journal articles, and educational texts for children and adults. The analysis is set in the context of the history of the Enlightenment, especially Scottish common sense philosophy, as well as the histories of childhood, antebellum reform, and education. This dissertation contributes to nineteenth-century American educational history by providing a much-nee (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Brooke Ph.D. (Advisor); Joan Cashin Ph.D. (Committee Member); Harvey Graff Ph.D. (Committee Member); Margaret Sumner Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Education History; History; Religious Education; Religious History