Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, History

How do you know what you know? This dissertation examines the process of knowledge transfer (the interaction of multiple individuals in the process of exchanging and acting upon information which is deemed significant) through a focus on the phenomenon of monstrous births (a contemporary and non-derogatory term used to describe physically deformed humans and animals) in early modern England. In a sense, this study utilizes monsters as the contrast dye in a knowledge-transfer myelogram: monstrous births can highlight the path which knowledge takes between producer and consumer, as well as how the consumer subsequently acts upon that knowledge. A broad variety of media were utilized to this end – including printed, visual, material, oral, and manuscript sources – revealing that the nature of each medium affected the kinds of knowledge exchanged, as well as the process by which the exchange took place. Thus cheap print might privilege news of the prodigious, while gossip focused on the actions of local individuals, and manuscript culture compiled and commented upon specific cases of monstrosity. I argue that balladeers, artists, neighbors, natural philosophers, diarists, and others transferred and consumed knowledge about monsters throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries because they provided news- and gossip-worthy entertainment that could also, under the proper circumstances, reveal the will of God or the internal workings of Nature. Of course, monsters were not at all times all of these things to all people; the precise significance of monstrosity changed depending upon the media in which it was disseminated. However, I have located over 700 descriptions of perhaps 500 individual monstrous births, prodigies, and unusual creatures between 1531 and c. 1800 in a wide variety of media: more than 150 extant pieces of cheap print, 78 advertisements for monster shows, nearly a dozen painted portraits, numerous etchings, a court case and its th (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Noel Geoffrey Parker (Advisor); David Cressy (Committee Member); David Staley (Committee Member); Pamela Lucchesi (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2019, History

This dissertation is a cultural history of the American reaction to the Upper Canadian Rebellion and the Patriot War. This project is based on an analysis of newspaper articles published by William Lyon Mackenzie and his contemporaries, diplomatic cables between Washington D.C. and London, letters, and accounts of celebrations, toasts, and public meetings which occurred between 1837 and 1842. I argue Americans and Upper Canadians in the Great Lakes region made up a culture area. By re-engaging in a battle with the British, Upper Canadians, and their American supporters sought redemption. Reacting to geographic isolation from major metropolitan areas and a looming psychic crisis motivated many of these individuals to act. And, even though the rebellion and Patriot War were ultimately unsuccessful, the threat of a rekindled conflict with Britain crept into North America while thoughts of the revolutionary Spirit of `76 invigorated the masses and served as a litmus test for maintaining peaceful international relations between the U.S. and Britain, a preface to Manifest Destiny, and a testament to the power of the nineteenth-century culture industry.

Committee: Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch PhD (Committee Chair); Kim Nielsen PhD (Committee Member); Roberto Padilla PhD (Committee Member); Rebecca Mancuso PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Canadian History

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2018, English

As consumer culture expanded in eighteenth-century Britain, British literature likewise took a turn toward “realism,” a more lifelike portrayal of characters and settings that regularly included object references or “literary objects.” This dissertation examines the usage of literary objects from the early 1700s to the early 1800s, tracing the ways authors adapted to the growing presence of object ownership in British culture and society through their inclusion of literary objects in their works. Through a combination of close reading and historical context, this thesis argues that authors used the presence of literary objects to convey multivalent information about both fictional and real-world society and culture, enabling authors to indirectly question overarching power structures in ways that would have been difficult to do directly. The first three chapters address how authors primarily used objects as indicators of boundaries (“walls”) and points of access (“doors”), with a third category of literary object that represented social and cultural authority. Building on these arguments, the last chapter investigates how booksellers used paratext involving literary objects, specifically through illustrations, to co-opt a degree of authorial status in reprinting formerly popular novels. The resulting body of evidence suggests a larger pattern of authorial use of literary objects to reflect an increasingly complex relationship between people and goods, as shown across a selection of eighteenth-century British fiction.

Committee: Christopher Flint Ph.D (Advisor); Athena Vrettos Ph.D (Committee Member); William Siebenschuh Ph.D (Committee Member); William Deal Ph.D (Committee Member); Christopher Flint Ph.D (Committee Chair) Subjects: British and Irish Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, History

This dissertation is a cultural and intellectual history of patriarchy in Pennsylvania from the American Revolution through the beginning of the Civil War. The erosion of patriarchal control in the years following the American Revolution only occurred when social obedience to perceived superiors became less important than personal obedience to moral conscience. The process by which some Pennsylvanians' mentalities changed, measured by linguistic shifts in Pennsylvania's print culture, occurred slowly and unevenly over the first seventy years of the state's existence. The language of the American Revolution was distinctly anti-patriarchal: colonists denounced the king's longstanding role as father of his people and encouraged Americans to think about duty and obligation in terms of reciprocity. Love of country and love of family were the highest duties and patriarchal authority was given rhetorical short shrift during this era. By the 1790s, however, consensus unraveled amidst torrid partisan fighting. Debates about familial authority mirrored political debates over tyranny and authority with no clear consensus. Although some painted familial relationships as sentimental and reciprocal, many authors continued to promote hierarchical or antagonistic familial paradigms. In both cases discussions about family intimately attached to broader themes of social control in the new nation. The language of brotherhood provided the most salient conceptualization of how political society was rhetorically linked to the family. While this language helped to dismantle some of the lingering obligations of paternal patriarchy, it retrenched conjugal patriarchy as consenting men in civil society continued to exercise complete control over their female dependents in the private realm. Throughout the nineteenth century, the language of duty tracked the political debates of the era and mapped onto partisan conflicts at both the state and national level. Although the es (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: John Brooke (Advisor); Judy Wu (Committee Member); Joan Cashin (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Gender Studies; History; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2009, English

This dissertation analyzes the convergence of modernism, print culture, feminism, True Womanhood, and the early careers of four female writers. At this crucial moment, Gertrude Stein, Dorothy Parker, Edna Ferber, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson each publicly negotiated with the dominant rhetorical and ideological registers of the emerging magazine market, infusing the available means of representation with new, sometimes transformative meanings. In the 1910s and 1920s, magazines served to spread a conservative ideology of womanhood more widely and rapidly than at any previous historical moment. This study asks how a writer secures a paycheck from an organ whose purpose was to promote the very politics she resists in her own writing. How did female writers construct their identities early in their careers while also challenging popular constructions of female identity from within a rapidly expanding print culture? To understand early twentieth century American literature, we must understand the strategies women used to ensure that a variety of experiences of modernity—female, working woman, Jewish, lesbian, African-American—found expression in print culture.There is no single pattern of negotiation; each woman responds in her own way. Stein retained control, persistently making it difficult for venues with a certain claim to modernism to refuse her critique. Parker developed an aesthetic of ironic wit, using humor to challenge conservative ideologies and to draw readers into a critique of themselves. Dunbar-Nelson conflated the passing narrative with the more popular romance narrative to develop a powerful critique of racism and sexism in magazine culture, while Ferber used business rhetoric to create the nation's most popular and controversial female protagonist. Each author posed important challenges to the ideological positions of their magazines and reading audiences. Each of these writer's responses provides a powerful example of how periodical culture required that fem (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Timothy Melley PhD (Committee Chair); Madelyn Detloff PhD (Committee Member); Martha Schoolman PhD (Committee Member); Marguerite Shaffer PhD (Committee Member); Andrew Hebard PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, English

This project focuses on historical and contemporary print cultures of the Ozarks, highlighting the vernacular dimensions of print and its connection with ideas of place and history. Rather than centering popular publications with broad circulation, I take a folkloristic approach to investigate how people collect and share information, news, traditions, and knowledge through everyday genres of print. The three primary case studies examined here include regional folk magazines from the mid-twentieth century, the newsletters of a lesbian social club at the century's end, and the digitized newspaper of a small Missouri town from a hundred years in the past. Each case study brings together scholarship from folklore and print culture studies, symbolized through the application of a conceptual pair tied to each discipline: region and assemblage; genre and network; and, finally, performance and news. By exploring the conceptual pair within each case study, I demonstrate how an interdisciplinary dialogue can address the connections between print technologies and local traditions. Tracing the ongoing remediation of oral tradition and older media genres and technologies, I uncover cross-temporal layering in the experience of rural regionality. At stake in this investigation of rural print culture is the concept of regionality: how mobile and dispersed place-based networks of access, resources, and communication are actualized and sustained. The study of rural print culture can help us better understand the ways in which people make use of print, both as a technology and as a modality tied to history and tradition, to envision and negotiate regional narratives in creative and unexpected ways.

Committee: Dorothy Noyes (Advisor); Brooks Blevins (Committee Member); Gabriella Modan (Committee Member); Elizabeth Hewitt (Committee Member) Subjects: American Studies; Folklore; Regional Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2021, English

Since the initial proposal of the Affordable Care Act, the number of bills introduced in state and national legislatures relating to women's reproductive health has increased markedly, sparking greater public interest in the legal and sociocultural debates surrounding access to abortion services. Scholarship on these issues in English literature usually begins with the late-nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, when discourse on contraception and birth control emerged as a parallel current with the women's suffrage movement in the United States and Great Britain. However, the way discourse on abortion in particular manifested during the earlier part of the Victorian Era has not been explored in depth, leaving a discursive gap regarding understandings of women's reproductive health in nineteenth-century print culture. Reading Con(tra)ceptions: Women, Abortion, and Reproductive Health in Victorian Literature and Culture, 1840-1880, aims to remedy this gap by exploring abortion more directly, specifically, and contextually in mid-Victorian literature – especially as represented in the novel, contemporary periodicals, and various forms of epistolary works. Focusing on realist texts, I consider Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton with an eye toward the historically classed associations behind herb gardens and how access to different forms of medicine informs depictions of working-class motherhood. I then examine the ways George Eliot's Middlemarch effectively works to counter rather than reinforce Darwinian notions of “male-dominated choice,” instead underscoring how representations of family planning showcase instances of women's reproductive choice. Finally, I explore how examples of Victorian erotica such as My Secret Life also maintain critical rhetorical roots in realism, providing important, explicit glimpses into mid- century discourses about sexuality – including notably clearer, straightforward discussions about abortion and women's reproduc (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Clare Simmons (Advisor); Amanpal Garcha (Committee Member); Robyn Warhol (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Gender Studies; History; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, English

Drawing examples from over 100 English- and Spanish-language popular dailies and weeklies between January 1855 and December 1866, my dissertation, “Poems in the U.S. Popular Press, 1855-1866,” argues that mid-nineteenth-century newspaper poems constitute a vital but still understudied form of public discourse. I define public discourse as political conversations, debates, and representations for reasoning that take place in the public sphere. I make this case in archival detail in four chapters. Chapter 1 focuses on celebrity poets as part of the media culture created by editor Robert Bonner in his blockbuster story paper the New York Ledger. Chapter 2 shifts from the East to the West coast, recovering the hemispheric Spanish-language poems in the first Spanish-language newspaper in California after the Mexican-American War, El Clamor Publico (the Public Outcry). Chapters 3 and 4 excavate the robust but largely unknown archives of newspaper poems circulating across the U.S. concerning the Panic of 1857 and the New York City cholera epidemic of 1866. This project is significant to the field of U.S. literary history, including the growing scholarship on the Latinx nineteenth century, for two primary reasons. First, the archive of periodical poems has not been completely recovered, categorized, or situated with respect to the larger currents of nineteenth-century public and print cultures. Second, scholars of the Latinx nineteenth century, including Rodrigo Lazo, Jesse Aleman, and Kirsten Silva Gruesz, have begun piecing together histories of the cultural productions of Latinx people using valuable but still incomplete archives. My dissertation contributes to the necessary work of reading Spanish- and English-language newspaper poems as related acts of public discourse reflecting a diverse U.S. media culture.

Committee: Elizabeth Renker (Advisor); Elizabeth Hewitt (Committee Member); Jared Gardner (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies; Literature

BFA, Kent State University, 2017, College of the Arts / School of Fashion

In Greek, the word “Aphosiosi” means Loyalty”. It served as inspiration for this eveningwear collection which illustrates the idea of loyalty to one's culture, community, and upbringing. The goal of this collection is to get the viewer to understand and think about how one can obtain a sense of identity through their heritage. “Aphosiosi” explores what these values mean to the individual, their personal experiences and identity. The method to starting this collection began with researching symbolism. Motifs and symbols were collected and collaged together to form shapes for silhouettes and a print design. Continuous sketching while collaging helped to form the silhouettes and shape of the garments. For a deeper understanding of the topic, research about cultural loyalty and the psychology behind it was explored. First and second muslins were sewn and critiqued throughout the semester, which helped to refine the collection and lead to its final stages. Redesigns and improvements were made until the collection developed into a final lineup with final fabrics chosen. This eight-look collection took over seven months to develop and sew. Through the use of symbolism and shape exploration, a successful print design was completed, printed onto fabric, and sewn into garments. Machine embroidery samples made their way onto the final fabric. As a result, “Aphosiosi” symbolizes the passion one has for individual culture and the identity that is kept throughout one's life.

Committee: Linda Ohrn-McDaniel (Advisor); Trista Grieder (Committee Member); Catherine Amoroso-Leslie Dr. (Committee Member); Albert Reischuck (Committee Member) Subjects: Fine Arts

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2016, English

This dissertation examines the library as a memory system. To do this I craft a rhetorical history of both the classical canon of memory as well as the institution of the library. Within the Graeco-Roman Western rhetorical canon of memory was born out of an oral culture. Memorization was a tool primarily used to deliver speeches; however, the mnemonics rhetors used to remember grew into systems of memory. The use of systems is often viewed as a tool for organization, but they are also tools for memorization. If we move beyond the idea of memorization as a relic of the oral culture and view it as system, it becomes apparent that memory is still an active force in print and digital culture. In this project I examine the library as a memory system—as a structure and institution that helps collect, preserve, organize, and distribute knowledge. The library is one of the most influential and widely-used memory systems we have for collecting and disseminating knowledge. Like the canon of memory, it remains undertheorized within rhetorical studies. This project tracks the history of the library in Western culture, as it moved from a collection of inscribed scrolls, to printed materials, to digital artifacts. I also examine a variety of counter systems—alternate forms of memory storage that push against the traditional memory structure of the library. This project contributes to the field of rhetoric/composition by expanding our understanding of the rhetorical canon of memory, pushing it from a tool too closely associated with orality and delivery toward a more-relevant network of knowledge. For compositionists who frequently access these systems for information, this network of memory creates potential for more avenues of invention. Additionally, the view of memory as a system has the potential to recognize the flaws and cultural hegemony that take place in institutional memory. Consequently, the use of systematized memory could alter the ways in which we choose (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: James Porter (Committee Chair); Jason Palmeri (Committee Member); Lihn Dich (Committee Member); Tim Lockridge (Committee Member); Glenn Platt (Other) Subjects: Composition; Library Science; Rhetoric

PHD, Kent State University, 2015, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of English

TANGEDAL, ROSS K., Ph.D., May 2015 ENGLISH A MOST PLEASANT BUSINESS: INTRODUCING AUTHORSHIP IN TWENTIETH CENTURY AMERICAN LITERATURE (357 PP.) Dissertation Advisor: Robert W. Trogdon Authorial introductions, prefaces, and forewords have been part of literature for centuries. However, they are rarely the focus of analysis; scholars and readers find them secondary, auxiliary, or unnecessary in regards to the primary text to which they are attached. Though several scholars brand authorial prefaces as biographical material, very few recognize the space as more than secondary. Prefaces service the needs of the author function fully, with public consumption the major goal. These devices serve as frames to the text proper and strategically alter meaning, intention, and reception prior to the consumption of a literary product. These aspects of publishing assist in the increased sales of books. However, these pieces do not exist solely to promote the sale of books. Authorial prefaces promote and represent a certain type of authorship integral to the growth of American authority in the twentieth century. These pieces help us trace the authorial careers and artistic moves of several writers not only biographically but also textually. Why were certain books given prefaces and others not? Why did authors choose to remove, replace or revise prefaces and prologues in subsequent editions of specific texts? What can be said for an author's legacy in the context of his or her prefaces? How much direction is given in them, and where can that direction help or hinder certain readings of texts? Can the preface in production change the textual makeup of the given text, and can that text be permanently altered because of it? Do unpublished or unfinished/aborted prefaces say as much about an author's professional attributes as his/her published texts? These questions are paramount in understanding the business of literature in the twentieth century (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Robert Trogdon (Advisor); Wesley Raabe (Committee Member); James L.W. West III (Committee Member); Diane Scillia (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2014, Art

This thesis tracks four major shifts in my art making process (glass blowing, sculpture, photography, installation) since 2011. This Embrace, is an installation of sixty photographic self-portraits mounted on cardboard. The installation explores the body and the impact of visual cultural influence. It broke down not only material boundaries, but also the boundaries between my daily life and my studio practice. I will explain how each material has been influential as well as how other artists and writers have affected the installation's development.

Committee: Richard Harned (Advisor); Carmel Buckley (Advisor); George Rush (Advisor) Subjects: Fine Arts; Womens Studies

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, English

This dissertation argues that during the reign of Charles I (1625-42), a powerful and long-lasting nationalist discourse emerged that embodied a conflicted nostalgia and located a primary source of English national identity in the Elizabethan era, rooted in the works of William Shakespeare, Sir Philip Sidney, John Lyly, and Ben Jonson. This Elizabethanism attempted to reconcile increasingly hostile conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, court and country, and elite and commoners. Remarkably, as I show by examining several Caroline texts in which Elizabethan ghosts appear, Caroline authors often resurrect long-dead Elizabethan figures to articulate not only Puritan views but also Arminian and Catholic ones. This tendency to complicate associations between the Elizabethan era and militant Protestantism also appears in Caroline plays by Thomas Heywood, Philip Massinger, and William Sampson that figure Queen Elizabeth as both ideally Protestant and dangerously ambiguous. Furthermore, Caroline Elizabethanism included reprintings and adaptations of Elizabethan literature that reshape the ideological significance of the Elizabethan era. The 1630s quarto editions of Shakespeare's Elizabethan comedies The Merry Wives of Windsor, The Taming of the Shrew, and Love's Labour's Lost represent the Elizabethan era as the source of a native English wit that bridges social divides and negotiates the roles of powerful women (a renewed concern as Queen Henrietta Maria became more conspicuous at court). Similarly, poetic and dramatic adaptations of Sidney's Arcadia by Francis Quarles, Henry Glapthorne, and James Shirley rewrite the romance's politics to engage with contemporary debates about foreign policy. This dissertation ultimately contributes to early modern literary studies in three ways: first, it reclaims and nuances the literary and political sophistication of Caroline literature; second, it contests the narrative that casts the Elizabethan era as perennially opposed to t (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Richard Dutton PhD (Committee Chair); Christopher Highley PhD (Committee Member); Alan B. Farmer PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: British and Irish Literature; Literature

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2010, History

This thesis discusses the history of English colonization and print culture over the course of the seventeenth century, showing how they came together in geographies, a type of non-fiction that was very popular during this period. Geography books were a uniquely English genre that led readers on a country-by-country journey around the world, describing both the landscape and the peoples. Focusing specifically on representations of four English colonies in the Americas, this thesis will show how geography writers helped enlarge English readers' sense of their homeland and how these writers promoted notions of Englishness during a period when that concept was in flux.

Committee: Carla Pestana (Advisor); Andrew Cayton (Committee Member); Steven Norris (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; Cartography; European History; Geography; History