Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1964, Graduate School

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2024, History

Slavery in early medieval Europe was an institution in transition from the Roman form of slavery into an institution that would eventually prohibit the enslavement of Christians. The successor Germanic kingdoms, including the Visigoths and Lombards, perpetuated the slave trade and expand on modes of enslavement. Simultaneously, the Church attempted to both maintain its slave labor force as well as establish itself as a manumitter of all Christian slaves through Church councils and episcopal letters. However, Christian aspirations for the manumission of slaves were prevalent throughout the early medieval literature of the Church. Many hagiographies and other idealistic sources depicted slavery as a violent and brutal institution, with popes and saints often manumitting slaves from monasteries, redeeming war-captives, or outright denouncing the institution as a whole. The aim of this thesis is to analyze the role of the Church in the institution of slavery between 600 and 800 C.E. in a comparative analysis of hagiography, councils, epistles, and legal codes in order to assess this discrepancy of what the Church said and what the Church actually did. Ultimately, ecclesiastical slavery saw little decline in this period, despite the Church's establishment as manumitter of Christian slaves.

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

While the history of slavery in the Middle Ages remains a hotly debated subject, most traditional narratives posit a significant decline in the use of slavery in the Latin West at some point in the early Middle Ages, leaving slaves to be found only in insignificant numbers or in `peripheral' regions to the north. There is substantial reason to revise this narrative, however, particularly in light of the evidence from the German duchy of Bavaria in the years between 975 and 1225 CE. There, a significant and economically important population of slaves can still be found in the twelfth century, along with a diminished but still active local slave trade. The evidence for the continued vitality of slavery in central-medieval Bavaria is contained mostly in the records of donation to monastic and ecclesiastical institutions that were collected in libri traditionum. From a survey of the donation records contained within the surviving libri traditionum of twenty-seven Bavarian monasteries and churches, it is possible to reconstruct the past condition of servile individuals manumitted as tributary freedmen of the Church, and to discover the still substantial population of slaves owned by the Church itself.

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

Titled “lurking about the neighbourhood”: Slave Economy and Petit Marronage in Virginia and North Carolina, 1730-1860,” this dissertation examines petit marronage, reflected in the actions of small groups of enslaved people who hid out for long periods of time in the region's swamps and forests. Founded upon a case study of the Great Dismal Swamp, this project argues that maroons who “lurked about” remained an integral source of much needed labor, a fact that at once tied maroons to the two states' broader slave societies while the swamp functioned as, one historian has noted, a “rival geography” that enslaved people used to resist bondage. Enslaved people were the core labor source for whites who sought to build classic plantations, such as Henry King Burgwyn of Northampton County, North Carolina. But for others, such as Dismal Swamp Land Company agent Samuel Proctor, the contradictions inherent to the fallacy of race were less of a concern. To these men, utilizing enslaved labor to develop its swamplands was of foremost importance. To negotiate the conditions of their labor, as slaves or as quasi-free men, was of utmost consequence to Virginia and North Carolina's maroons. Because slave labor was so central to the aims of plantation owners, land company agents, and commission merchants, enslaved peoples' resistance against outright exploitation exerted significant pressures upon slave societies. The most persistent form of this pressure was petit marronage. Local white commission merchants dispatched and hired enslaved and free blacks to perform the arduous tasks required in the production of swamp products. Some of these bondspersons fled such camps into the deepest regions of the swamp, but retained access to the broader world outside the swamp through contact with slave laborers. As a result, petit marronage provided the quintessential complication to the formations of race, slavery, and early capitalism in the lower Chesapeake and in the Albemarle. (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Wright State University, 2014, History

The abolition of British slavery in the 19th century raises the question of how the British achieved antislavery against colonial opposition. While historical theories have focused on economic, political and religious factors, no account of abolition is complete without a thorough investigation of the history of evolving British legal traditions. This thesis analyzed a number of British homeland court cases and antislavery laws. English legal traditions established principles of freedom long before abolition in Britain, and then upheld them in respect to blacks on British soil in the 18th century. On the other hand, these traditions exposed a void in British homeland law on slavery that failed to provide any positive legal basis for freedom beyond its shores, forcing abolitionists into a long battle to build social and political pressures to create such positive laws. This was facilitated by a gradual expansion of Parliamentary authority to impose such antislavery laws.

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2009, History

Nineteenth-century observers visiting the Danish West Indian islands of St. Thomas, St. John, and St. Croix, consistently describe slavery there, as the mildest in comparison with slavery in the American South or other Caribbean islands. This thesis questions the “mildness” of slavery, arguing that the observers witnessed the end result of a century-long process of independent slave community building outside the confines of the plantation system. First, the Danish colonial system relied on other European immigrants and settlers to populate their islands and used African slave labor to forge sugar-island plantations in the Caribbean. Slaves organized around ethnic and national identities they brought from Africa especially during the slave rebellion in 1733. This rebellion clearly reflected that slavery in the early eighteenth century was anything but mild on the Danish colonies. The introduction of provisioning grounds, shortly thereafter, not only required slaves to provide their own food, and therefore stayed rebellious intent, but provided opportunities to forge cultural and material relationships using Obeah practices, also transported from Africa, as the central organizing component. This continued until the abolition of the slave trade in 1802, which changed the demographic makeup of the islands and fostered the creation of families who utilized similar, yet more complex, relationships derived from the provisioning grounds. Finally, slaves used all the components of family, culture, religion, and provisioning grounds to participate in an annual “saturnalia” during the Christmas season. This turned society upside down as slaves mocked the system that kept them in subordinate social positions. These processes of community development over the previous century reveal a world that operated outside the formal structures of colonial society, and while treated inhumanly, slaves still found ways to mitigate the inherently harsh and demeaning system they lived in.

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2009, African-American and African Studies

The representation of freed and enslaved people of African descent at sites such as Elmina, Ghana, and Williamsburg, Virginia, are subject to much criticism and praise. “Founded” by the Portuguese in 1482 and later controlled by the Dutch, Elmina is distinguished as the first of its kind. Initially established as a trading center between Africans and Europeans, those interactions soon gave birth to Elmina as a dungeon for holding Africans as slaves for sale into slavery. Williamsburg, a living history museum, is identified as the second colonial capital following the Jamestown settlement. On the eve of the American Revolution its citizens were confronted with questions of freedom, independence, and bondage. While many white settlers fought for independence and freedom from England, they simultaneously embodied slavery and unequal treatment towards enslaved and free African Americans.Today, both Elmina and Williamsburg reflect historical spaces as memory of the past. This thesis explores the ways that contemporary historical interpreters depict Elmina and Williamsburg. Some of the goals of this thesis are to study and analyze the sites' contemporary flaws, the sources these flaws, the ways that the histories of these sites are packaged for guests, and to explore how the sites' guests are encouraged to re-interpret and identify with the trans-Atlantic slave trade and slavery. A comparative analysis of the ways that Elmina and Williamsburg are interpreted by visitors, site administrators and the people that live in and around these sites was conducted to understand how these sites are memorialized. Finally, this thesis addresses questions of “musemification,” preservation, tourism, and the role that these sites play in shaping contemporary identities within and outside the African Diaspora

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 1932, History

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1965, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1900, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1976, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1971, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 1947, Graduate School

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

This paper examines the antislavery stance of Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati John Baptist Purcell and his brother, Father Edward Purcell, during the American Civil War. Purcell is an anomaly in that he advocated for the immediate end of slavery when most prominent Catholics did not. This study situates Purcell in state, national, Catholic, political, and social contexts, and shows how Purcell's thoughts on slavery developed in the antebellum and Civil War years. Purcell developed a distinctly Catholic antislavery position that drew from Catholic theology and experience. He received much criticism from other prominent Catholic persons and publications for his stance. This study examines the debates between Purcell and his critics and discusses their impact on the ecclesial unity of the Catholic Church in the United States.

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2023, History

This thesis studies the history of runaway slaves in Louisiana during the antebellum period. It discusses manumission practices and the history of self-liberation through flight from the beginning of slavery in Louisiana to the end of the American Civil War. It explores the repurposing of material objects and skills by runaway slaves based on an analysis of runaway slave advertisements from Louisiana. All of the runaway slave advertisements studied were published between 1825 and 1865, falling between the creation of the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825 and the end of the American Civil War.

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2023, English

This poetry thesis, Liminal Black, explores the American slave trade and its aftereffects through a speculative narrative that centers black female bodies—spectral and human—as sites of remembrance, revolt, and power in the fight for freedom. My main character is a young African priestess sold to American slave dealers. Feeling betrayed by her God and kinsmen, she renounces her power and African memories. For years, she serves as a breeder on a plantation, only resisting after supernatural manifestations cause her to question captivity. She then leads an unsuccessful slave revolt and is gruesomely murdered. For most of this first-person non-linear narrative, she is a ghost without memories. Through flashbacks and time leaps, I build layers of past, present and continuous experiences by facilitating interactions with human and non-human elements. She joins the fight for freedom, existing well into the 21st century while documenting and reflecting on history. Through our ghost we learn how black women, often forgotten, have fought for freedom. Her memory loss highlights how slaves were required to engage in acts of erasure or memory-bending, and this exploration of memory and remembrance helps emphasize reclamation of power as it pertains to roots, remembrance, and bloodlines.

Master of Arts in Rhetoric and Writing​, University of Findlay, 2022, English

Family separation was a brutal practice in the slavery business of America. The "Lost Friends" advertisements published in "The Southwestern Christian Advocate" during the late 1800s and early 1900s by freed slaves looking for lost loved ones provide readers an intimate and uncensored glimpse into the travesty caused by such separations. After reading multiple ads, readers can easily compare the advertisements as condensed versions of life narratives. Through the identification of new literary tropes, the ads function similar to the well-recognized genre of slave narratives, thus confirming their rightful place within the wider African American rhetorical and literary canon. Additionally, the advertisements display the unique traditions of African American rhetoric while also serving as short family histories for thousands of slave families.

BA, Kent State University, 2022, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of Political Science

This paper examines the legal implications of framing human trafficking as modern-day slavery. This thesis begins by introducing the existing literature on the issue of human trafficking, focusing on examining the relationship to both modern-day slavery and the Thirteenth Amendment. I highlight the legal definitions of these concepts to foster a more intuitive understanding of these issues. I then highlight the current policy addressing human trafficking and how human trafficking is measured and reported and their respective inadequacies. I then turn to introducing framing and how it is used in political science research, and more specifically how and why human trafficking is framed as modern-day slavery. In the second chapter of this research, I describe the methodology of my research. I discuss, in-depth, the participant recruitment process, how I drafted the research questions, the interview process, and how the qualitative data were coded and analyzed. The third chapter is dedicated to summarizing my research findings. In this chapter, I describe the groupings of interviewees. I provide context to the interviewees' background and current work within the anti-trafficking movement. I then summarize how the interviewees conceptualize human trafficking, modern-day slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment. I end this chapter by discussing key ideas from the research and discussing how the interviews helped answer my three main research questions. I conclude this thesis by reflecting on the project and what it means to me and addressing the broader implications and limitations of the research.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1950, Communication Studies