Institutional Scholarship :: Browsing by Author "Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-"

Browsing by Author "Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-"

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A Contradictory Subject: Reform, Resistance, and Holy Women in Early Modern Spain
(2022) Scully, Kathleen; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
In 1517, Martin Luther, a German priest, nailed a document to the door of All Saints Church. This document, entitled Ninety-Five Theses, laid out corruption within the Catholic Church, and caused an immediate uproar across Europe. Luther and his fellow reformers suggested massive changes in the structure and practice of the clergy, leading to a schism from the Catholic Church known as the Protestant Reformation. In response, the Church instituted a variety of reforms of its own, referred to as the Counter-Reformation. The impacts of the Counter-Reformation were broad and far-reaching; this thesis deals primarily with their effects on holy women in sixteenth and seventeenth century Spain. In this era, holy women were subject to increasingly harsh regulations: their already limited ability to move throughout Spain was further restricted, and their ability to preach publicly curtailed. Prior to the Counter-Reformation, mystics and beatas, or laywomen who shared their holy visions, were tolerated, but in the late 1500s and early 1600s, these women were persecuted more intensely, and enclosure within a convent became the only respectable option for holy women. Even when safely enclosed, holy women were subject to surveillance by their confessors and fellow nuns. In addition to this external surveillance, they were encouraged to closely monitor their own internal thoughts for signs of sin. If a holy woman gained enough power to influence to threaten the male authority of the Catholic Church, she was reprimanded, and in serious cases, sent to the Inquisition. Holy women not only faced restrictions, but combated them. Their resistance becomes clear in multiple arenas: namely the convent, recogimiento (convent for penitent women), galera (women's prison), and vida (a nun's autobiography). In these arenas, holy women both conformed to patriarchal expectations and subverted them. I argue that while holy women participated in and at times initiated the discipline of women who broke gender norms, they also repeatedly demonstrated their impulse to care for other women. This thesis tracks these contradictory impulses to punish and protect through Inquisition records, artwork, and the correspondence and autobiographies of nuns themselves.
“A Female Band Despising Nature’s Law”: Contesting the Subversive Early Legacy of Mary Wollstonecraft
(2013) Bailinson, Emily; Saler, Bethel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
This thesis aims to recreate the sphere of public discourse surrounding the life of Mary Wollstonecraft and her legacy in order to understand the limitations faced by women in constructing their gendered subjectivity in Britain in the 1790s and how this individual agency could have subversive repercussions. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft counterpoised the dominant construction of womanhood as sentimental domesticity with an unsexed (and simultaneously masculine) form of subjectivity grounded in reasoned virtue. Through both her style and the disembodied nature of writing, Wollstonecraft unsexed herself while admitting the challenges women face in overcoming the dominant sexed model of subjectivity. Upon Wollstonecraft’s early death in 1798, her husband, William Godwin, wrote a memoir of her exemplary life. This memoir defended Wollstonecraft’s legacy against perceived calumny, casting Wollstonecraft in strictly gendered terms. While he admitted she had masculine attributes, he also attempted to silence her critics by depicting her as a properly feminine sentimental mother. Subsequent reviews of Godwin’s Memoirs of the Author of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman constructed their own mini-biographies of Wollstonecraft’s life. Conservative journals attacked Wollstonecraft for her fanciful and licentious Jacobin philosophy and sexual impropriety. They saw Wollstonecraft’s life as a didactic example; critics used the tragedy of Wollstonecraft’s torturous affair with Gilbert Imlay and early death to demonstrate the dangers inherent in overthrowing convention—especially the conventions of sexual propriety. While critics suggested ways of constraining the “wanton philosopher,” supporters attempted to redeem Wollstonecraft as a woman too advanced for her time. By holding Wollstonecraft’s legacy up to the standards of female propriety, her critics sought to contain the subversive implications of her example for other women. Ultimately, Godwin and his reviewers limited Wollstonecraft’s ability to write herself out of her gender. Though Wollstonecraft lost her ability to construct an ungendered image of herself, her prominence gave Wollstonecraft’s legacy the power to deconstruct conventional standards of femininity and foment revolution through her counterexample. Thus, Wollstonecraft’s life became a site for debate about the conventional model of femininity in the 1790s, embodying the threat of revolution.
‘A Little Irish Cailín in an Ould Plaid Shawl’: The “Colleen” Archetype and the Construction of Irishness
(2023) Sweeney, Lillian; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Rosas, Marlen
In 1922, 26 counties of Ireland established the Irish Free State and ended their formal connection to the United Kingdom. They aimed to remake themselves into the true Irish country they had been before English colonization. But in such an Ireland that ostensibly rejected the colonizer, the “colleen” archetype, always a portrait of a young Irish woman, had already embedded colonial gender and class structures into Irishness. In the hands of nineteenth-century tourists, philanthropists, and nationalists, the Irish colleen was unfailingly traditional. Connected to nature and the land, “lithe as a mountain deer,” the colleen exemplified an earthy femininity, grounded by her bare feet, and adorned by her cloak or shawl. This thesis argues that, by deploying the colleen as a symbol of Irish femininity, Irish national culture reappropriated a colonial power structure. It took on the characteristics externally ascribed to it while proclaiming that it had moved past its colonization. This work traces the colleen’s path through travel books, visual and aural media, “Irish villages” at international exhibitions including the 1893 World Colombian Exposition in Chicago, and nationalist organizations like the Cumann na gClocaí. This thesis’ final section explores how actual Irish women’s desire to wear modern clothing changed the colleen in the post-Independence Free State. No longer a clear archetype, she became a vaguer model of chastity and modesty. Her cloak and shawl then disappeared into the archive, to be made into historical icons of the nation.
A Marriage of Convenience: Wedding Happiness and Social Utility in the Divorce Debates of pre-Revolutionary France
(2007) Slaight, Jillian; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Augustyn, Joanna
A Royal Disappointment: The Private Scandals of George IV, 1785–1820
(2007) Kass, Joshua; Kitroeff, Alexander; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
The scandals of George IV demonstrate how events of the private sphere can become politicized and cast doubt on a leader’s moral qualifications. At a time when the political authority of the crown was waning, an expanding print media put pressure on royalty to embody emerging values of filial care and financial constraint. This thesis uses pamphlet literature and caricatures to examine how the exposure of George’s vices created a broader realm of civic participation. It examines his illicit marriage to a lowborn Catholic, the burden of his lavish expenses, his disrespect for his father, George III, and his neglectful relationship with his daughter, Princess Charlotte. Each of these reveal how the expansion of the political nation inspired claims for royal accountability and exposed leaders to popular standards of morality.
"A Theater of Perpetual War": Administrative Anxiety and Knowledge Production in Colonial Suriname, 1749-1762
(2014) Jacobs, Alex; Saler, Bethel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
Fought intermittently between 1749 and 1762, the First Saramaka War was a primal moment in the history of Maroon relations with the Dutch colonial Surinamese state. The war was part of the violent history between Suriname's Maroon communities–-formed by slave refugees in the bush–-and its governmental authorities. During the war, the relationship between colonists, slaves, and Maroons was defined by a condition of fear and contingency. In this thesis, I argue that colonists created and indexed information specific to the condition of the colony as a means of combating both the Maroon threat and its attendant anxieties. For colonists, the impulse to create and disseminate such information intensified over the course of the First Saramaka War and was compounded by a concern that the information they cataloged was either untrue or of unreliable origin. In response, colonists-–both planters and administrators-–deployed literary, diplomatic, and clandestine methods of knowledge production in an attempt to secure their hold on the colony. These methods of knowledge production proved unsuccessful in the conduct of war, though they were also used to reinforce the political and economic foundations of the colonial state. Colonists ultimately suffered defeat in the First Saramaka War and recognized full Saramaka independence in 1762. I argue that their defeat was the result of living in a colony whose conditions proved resistant to European attempts at "knowing": where maps, ordinances, poems, plays, secret codes, and treaties were insufficient means of understanding the threat posed by slaves and Maroons to the stability of colonial Suriname.
Afraid of Commitment: Gamal Abdel Nasser's Ephemeral Political Ideology - a New Definition of Nasserism
(2012) Friddell, Bo; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Kitroeff, Alexander
Gamal Abdel Nasser played an integral role in Middle East politics in the 1950s and 1960s. He led a military coup against the incumbent King, and then successfully converted his political capital into a national revolution. The transition of power occurred without major complications because of the socio-political conditions in Egypt at the time and because of Nasser's particular style of rule. Without a steadying, autocratic leader, Egypt likely would have fallen under the direction of a foreign power. Nasser used decisive action to stabilize Egypt's internal politics and prevent foreign agents from agitating Egypt's domestic stability. From this stability, he projected power at the regional level and remained independent from the major foreign powers that attempted to control Egypt. Egypt's geopolitical importance guaranteed its relevance in international politics. Foreign powers competed for the chance to control Egypt — a nation ideally situated to project power throughout the Middle East and North Africa. However, each contending superpower grew frustrated with Nasser because his rule relied on personal judgment, making Egypt's policies unpredictable and inconsistent. Nasser realized the value of his freedom to act and utilized this ability to retain Egyptian sovereignty. Scholars attempted to define Nasser's political ideology, but his policies were so ephemeral that they needed to create a new ideology — Nasserism — just to describe the man's political tendencies. I argue that Nasser was not ideological in the 20th century sense of the word, but that he harbored specific core concepts that framed his decisions. These concepts allowed him to select the best course of action without being hindered by ideological constraints. His political history — including his actions in times of crisis, his use of charismatic authority, his manipulation of nationalist sentiments, and his construction of a new Egyptian cultural identity — illustrates his flexibility and willingness to change tracks as long as his core concepts remained intact.
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL U.S. Imperial Beauty Politics in Hawaii, from WWII to Statehood
(2020) Meyerhoff, Hayle; Friedman, Andrew, 1974-; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
Using an archive of magazine images, advertisements, film, and oral histories, this thesis argues that constructed ideas of beauty were deployed as disciplinary technologies for the American imperial project in Hawaii. I trace how beauty aided American imperialism in Hawaii through four periods: annexation to the pre-military era (1900-1939), the militarization era (1940-1941), the World War II era (1941-1945), and the lead up to statehood (1946-1959). In the first era, American media presented Hawaii as a white woman's playground. White feminine beauty was used to sell Hawaii, while simultaneously, the depictions of Hawaii were being shifted to accommodate for white women. In 1940, white women disappeared from advertisements, making way for the islands to be represented as a mysterious site of primeval beauty that needed to be carried forward into modernity by a necessary US military occupation. The new constructed vision of Hawaiian beauty borrowed from the white beauty formed in 1930s advertisements, but diverged to be more sexually available for the incoming American military. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii was launched into World War II. In this period, beauty politics were renegotiated to protect white womanhood in the context of war, to justify Hawaii and its women as a defendable part of the United States, and to set up Hawaii as a resource for beauty in the post war years. The U.S. government regulated women's bodies, solidifying a hierarchy of beauty based on weight and race that was used to divide labor. Under this hierarchy, white, ‘beautiful' women were assigned higher class work, and ‘non-beautiful' women of color to lower class work. Even as military work established this racial hierarchy, the war period was also a turning point for American perceptions of Hawaii's mixed-race population. Through images of young mixed-race women, American media melted down Hawaii's mixed-race identity into a white-like composite that would make Hawaii incorporable in the statehood era. At the end of the war, the campaign for Hawaiian statehood gained momentum. American media turned back to imaginations of the Hawaiian paradise to entice American support for statehood and reinforce the submissiveness of Hawaii. Whitened images of Hawaiian women claimed American beauty alongside sexuality and strength, offering Hawaii as a new frontier in which white women might be able to find sexual liberation, and freedom beyond the strict American domestic spheres. Through statehood, the extraction of beauty itself became the new impetus for, and tool of, imperialism in Hawaii. By tracing the history of U.S. imperialism in Hawaii through the lens of beauty, I reveal how beauty was a political field of social power constructed by, and mutually constructing, gender, race, and consumerism.
"An Acquaintance with that Dear Country: "Emma Willard on American History, Womanhood, and Nationalism
(2021) Denegre, Mathilde; Saler, Bethel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
Emma Willard published the first two editions of her bestselling textbook History of the United States in 1828 and 1829. Willard had already gained fame as an educational reformer and advocate for female education. She was the headmistress and founder of Troy Female Seminary, one of the earliest secondary schools for women in the United States. It offered an education similar to that received by men at secondary institutions. History of the United States was one of Willard's first attempts to educate the broader public. History education was popular in the 1820s, as Americans became more interested in a national identity following the War of1812. Education and literacy rates for both genders steadily rose throughout the antebellum period. Advocates for female education in the republican and antebellum period argued that women were the moral guardians of the nation and needed knowledge and mental exercise to fulfill this role. Willard was familiar with these arguments, and she advanced them many times herself as she sought support for her school and other endeavors. Education was also important for all citizens because it could protect from corrupting influences. Willard's position as an educated woman granted her the authority to moral pronouncements about United States history. She intended to be a moral guardian on a national scale and shape the next generation of Americans. Willard wrote History so that her readers would grow to love the United States as she did. She knew her readers could be the future political and military leaders of the country. She hoped they would model themselves off of the virtuous men and women she presented in the text. In order to convince her readers of the lovability of the United States, she had to iron out many complexities. Willard attempted to explain and justify the abhorrent treatment of Native Americans by generations of settlers. She blamed the worst atrocities on European monarchies and claimed Native Americans were congenitally incompatible with Anglo-American civilization. Willard considered it the duty of all citizens, including moral guardians like herself, to try and find peaceful solutions for the nation's problems. She proposed creating a Native American nation in the northwest of the continent, where they could form their own society. Willard's arguments rested on the conviction that the existence of the United States was ordained by Providence. She took the smallpox plague which wiped out so many people as proof that God prepared the continent for the establishment of British, and eventually American, settlement. Therefore, Willard was part of a holy plan. She had an obligation to educate the next generation of American leaders and convince them of the virtue of their nation.
Balancing Virtue and Vice: Dueling Representations of the Proprietress in the London Coffeehouse
(2018) Fortier, Julia; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Saler, Bethel
Regarded as a setting for civilized debates and gentility, the coffeehouse in eighteenth-century London distinguished itself as the epicenter of political dissent, intellectual discourse, and the circulation of news. Contemporary prints and images of the coffeehouse challenge this depiction and present it as a boisterous space of debauchery, altercation, and prostitution. The emergence of the coffeehouse coincided with a demographic and commercial explosion at the turn of the eighteenth century. A rise in crime, a preference for celibacy, and an increase in the visibility of prostitution incited moral concern. To combat this perceived moral crisis, campaigns for moral reform such as the Society for the Reformation of Manners formed to expunge public vice from the streets. As a result, immorality retreated into private venues, such as the coffeehouse. As the symbolic figurehead for the London coffeehouse, the female proprietress was linked to the moral ills that pervaded her business. The anxiety concerning this debauchery converged on the coffeehouse’s female owner, revealing the distrust of single, working women. Thus, the association between the coffeehouse and the self-sufficient, unmarried business-woman crystallized the apprehensions that accompanied London’s transition to a commercial society and the demise of traditional structures of urban life like family, household, and work.
"By the Beard of the Prophet": The Turk in Mozart's Vienna
(2020) Boyce, Seth; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Hayton, Darin
In the eighteenth century, the Turk appeared frequently as a subject in European art and literature. Turquerie—a fashion for Turkish styles and aesthetics—influenced the paintings, costumes, architecture, and music of the era, and travel literature provided detailed descriptions of the Ottoman realms. These depictions, though, were rarely objective. Artists and authors carried certain assumptions about Turkish culture and government, and often used the Turk for rhetorical or allegorical purposes. In Vienna, the capital of the Austrian Hapsburg Empire, the Turk was cast as a subject and perpetuator of despotism. Austrian productions mocked and vilified the Turk, attacking the cultural and political institutions that supposedly supported this despotism. In doing so, writers and artists supported Enlightened Europeans as the contrast to despotic Turks. European ideas of religion, governance, and love were celebrated as less oppressive and therefore superior to their Turkish counterparts. Thus, artists and writers lent cultural aid to the Austrian Emperor Joseph II's attempts at Enlightened political reform. As this cultural project unfolded, the young composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart arrived in Vienna, and composed an opera centered around the Turk. His 1782 Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) incorporated conceptions of the Turk from Viennese literature and other operas, and brought them to the stage of the Burgtheater. In that theater, a newly-developed public audience witnessed Mozart's work. The opera's plot focuses on a European nobleman and his servant attempting to rescue their beloveds from the seraglio of the Turkish Pasha Selim. The conflicts between Europe and Turkey, and Enlightenment and despotism are central to the action and drama of the story, and Mozart incorporated these conflicts into the spoken dialogue and musical language of the opera. At the piece's finale, the Pasha surrenders to Enlightened ideals, transforming from villain to hero and earning the praise of the orchestra, singers, and audience. Through the plot, dialogue, and music of the opera, Mozart continued the narrative of Enlightenment triumphing over despotism, and supported Joseph II's image as an Enlightened monarch.
Collecting, Cultivating, Classifying: Status and Collaboration in Early Modern English Botany
(2018) Arnold-Scerbo, Madison; Hayton, Darin; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
Making claims about the natural world is a social endeavor that is tied up in collaborative networks of people of varying statuses. In early eighteenth-century England, as exotic plants were streaming into Europe from New World colonies, English plant enthusiasts sought ways to comprehend and classify them. At the impetus of new Baconian scientific methods which emphasized empirical, first-hand observations, these naturalists viewed plants directly in order to make claims about botanical specimens in general. Gardens were crucial to this strategy. Those with the social and financial resources to do so amassed impressive collections of exotic plant specimens using complex networks to import them. These plants were then cultivated and experimented with in orangeries. Then, these plants were named and classified by those with the status and authority necessary to be believed when making botanical claims. The role that an individual could play in this botanical knowledge making process, as well as the extent to which their contributions were trusted and acknowledged, depended on their status—in particular, whether or not they were considered a gentleman. Duchess Mary Somerset and Reverend Robert Uvedale were two such figures who were not seen as gentlemen, yet employed markers of status that they did have to contribute to botanical classification. Somerset was a woman who lacked formal education but possessed land and social connections. Uvedale was an educated man, but lacked financial and social capital. Despite these limitations, Somerset and Uvedale collected exotic specimens, cultivated them in gardens and orangeries, and classified them into volumes of dried plants. Their participation and contributions proved that the creation of botanical knowledge in early modern England was a global and collaborative undertaking that was inherently linked to the social status of people involved. To ignore botany’s social history is to misrepresent the way botanical knowledge was formed.
"Confinement as the Instrument of Conversion": Insanity, Criminality, and Solitude in Early Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
(2019) Schoder, Ellen; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
The Friends Asylum and Eastern State Penitentiary are a useful pair of institutions for studying insanity and criminality in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia. The asylum opened in 1817 and the penitentiary opened in 1829, reflecting the historical period in which insanity and criminality were being treated differently. In the eighteenth century, Benjamin Rush, a physician in Philadelphia, studied insanity and criminality in several essays and lectures. He advocated for the creation of asylums and penitentiaries, and considered the effects of solitude on the mind. Rush’s writing reflected conflicting views of solitude, as he depicted it as both a cause and a treatment for mental health conditions. In the nineteenth century, when the Friends Asylum and Eastern State Penitentiary opened, they implemented new ideas about insanity and criminality. Both the asylum and the penitentiary discussed how to change the mind, debating the “curability” and “incurability” of insanity and criminality. Moreover, the asylum and the penitentiary debated the effects of solitude on the “insane mind” and the “criminal mind.” In fact, both institutions employed solitary confinement to treat patients and prisoners. Nevertheless, a conflict emerged: while the asylum used solitary confinement to treat insanity, the penitentiary was concerned that solitary confinement would produce insanity. Thus, solitude carried both benefits and risks. Ultimately, however, the asylum and the penitentiary designed solitary spaces to reap the benefits of solitude for patients’ and prisoners’ minds.
Contagion, Medicine and Disease in the Sixteenth Century: Learned Physicians and the Plague in Vienna
(2009) Storch, Ruth Ariel; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Hayton, Darin
In 1521, Vienna experienced a plague outbreak. University-trained physicians, also known as learned physicians, drew on their knowledge from the ancient medical texts, which served as the foundation for the medical curriculum, to produce plague tractates to show their hometowns how to cope with the disease. This thesis will examine the advice in a plague tractate by Georg Tannstetter, a member of the medical faculty at the University of Vienna and personal physician to Emperor Maximilian I, in order to determine sixteenth century learned physicians' views of contagion, disease, and the human body. By analyzing responses to the plague, this thesis will also demonstrate how physicians and towns handled a public health crisis in the sixteenth century.
Dancers, Dancing Masters, and Spectators: John Weaver's Pantomime and the Codification of Dance
(2014) Nightingale, Caroline L.; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
John Weaver, an early-eighteenth century dancing master, sought to professionalize dance and raise its status by severing its dependence on words. He published scholarly texts on pantomimic dance, a style of dance with no spoken word, and worked to elevated dance to a respected art. Weaver's contributions to dance developed ballet into its own art form in the late eighteenth century in London. Dance was freed from dependence on spoken words, written text and theatrical effects. It became an independent, professional and respectable art form. The dancing master, position of a dancer and spectator was reshaped from a leisurely activity into a professionalized art. The dancing master acquired and applied a knowledge of the human body and its movements to educate his dancers. For the professional dancer, one received training and education from a reputable dancing master. Weaver's pantomimic choreography, alongside these treatises, distinguished the amateur, who performed in court dancing, from the professional dancer, one who was a paid member of a theater company. This separation gave the audience a new role as critics of the performance. In my thesis I use John Weaver's scholarly texts, An Essay Towards An History of Dancing, Anatomical and Mechanical Lectures and The Loves of Mars and Venus; A Dramatick entertainment of Dancing, Attempted in Imitation of the Pantomimes of the Ancient Greeks and Romans, to argue that Weaver sought to professionalize dance in the early eighteenth century in London.
Defining "Deviance": Otherness, Sexuality, and Witchcraft in the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions
(2010) Curry, Catherine; Krippner, James; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
This thesis analyzes the role of witchcraft trials in the Spanish and Mexican Inquisitions. The Inquisition fought to enforce religious orthodoxy and also served as a tool for controlling the impact of "other" cultures considered dangerous by Spanish leaders. The histories of the individuals examined in this thesis complicate the story of the Inquisition. A close reading of trial transcripts, inquisitorial reports, and the subsequent instructional document reveals the cultural history of the Inquisition and the regions in which it took place. These sources reveal the changing role held by the Inquisition, as it became a tool used by disgruntled neighbors, political leaders and inquisitors alike not only to limit the power of "deviant" cultures on Spanish society but also to settle a myriad of local conflicts. In the Basque Country of northern Spain the unique culture of the native inhabitants failed to conform to the dominant Spanish society. Similarly, the indigenous people of Mexico represented a new set of religions and cultures not understood or experienced by the Spanish people. The existence of these distinctive cultural practices threatened the success of the Spanish national project.. Furthermore, unsuccessful attempts at conversions in both populations provided the groundwork for the consistent practice of pre-Christian religions and rituals. The Inquisition offered a means for controlling both the religious and cultural practices of these people and preventing them from influencing Spanish society. The trial transcripts from both northern Spain and Mexico point to individual sexual behaviors and cultural practices among the people tried by the Inquisition that threatened or challenged accepted Spanish norms. In the case of the Indian Don Diego his sexual practices represented not only sins but also customs condemned by the greater Spanish culture. The Spanish women of the Basque Country prayed to and worshipped the devil, and significantly often claimed to have sexual relations with demons and their demonic lord. Neither the Church nor society recognized the Mexican slave girl Juana Maria's lover. In all three cases, and in the case of all of the trials examined by this thesis, the accused stood trial for reasons greater than their religious practices. Each of them confronted the accepted Spanish society in some way. Therefore the Inquisition sought to limit the influence of these perceived abhorrent cultural practices on the Spanish people. In this way the Inquisition became a tool used to control interactions between the cultures of the native peoples of both the Basque Country and Mexico and their Spanish counterparts.
Displaying China: The Impact of Chinoiserie in Shaping British Identity and Culture in the Eighteenth Century
(2021) Burns, Ellie; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
This thesis explores Sino-Western exchanges in eighteenth-century England, from the 1740s-1760s, to investigate the material culture side of Chinese porcelain and ceramic goods within the context of the English fascination with China. I wanted to research thistopic to explain porcelain's cultural significance in the expanding global economy and consumer culture, centering chinoiserie porcelain as an active participant in cross-cultural interaction, not merely a passive commodity of Sino-British exchange.Investigating the material culture of porcelain, the consumption of a specific material good, is not only concerned with social prestige or imitation but presents signs of English commercial success, cultural superiority, and modernity in relation to China. My primary sources focus on paintings, eighteenth-century magazines and papers, travel journals, Chinese porcelain from the 16th and 17th centuries, and 18th C chinoiserie porcelain goods produced by the English Bow Factory. The combination of texts, objects, and images provides a new perspective on cultural conceptions of chinoiserie porcelain in England, allowing me to explore how the display and usage of chinoiserie porcelain transformed a material good into a force in the creation of a British sense of national identity. My four sections trace porcelain from an imported product of the sixteenth century as an exotic luxury for royalty to porcelain's consumption by wealthy consumers in the seventeenth century, ending with the eighteenth-century British capacity to domestically produce porcelain wares. This thesis surveys European perceptions of China throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries to understand how porcelain came to represent a concept of self-identity, such that it no longer had any relation or relevance to the culture that produced them. Through porcelain, I trace the foundations of the British empire through domestic production, exploding consumption, and global conquest.
Fashioning La Française: The Invention of Good Taste in Revolutionary France
(2010) Kelley, Olivia; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Sedley, David Louis, 1968-
The image of the French in the cultural imagination is one of elegance and class, a people possessing a certain je ne sais quoi that sets them apart in their sense of style and sophistication. This idea of the French is so inherent to their image that it seems like it has always been that way. In my thesis I ask the question of how good taste became an integral part of French national identity. I argue that good taste became part of the French identity during the French Revolution, as changing attitudes towards consumer culture and gender that occurred over the later half of the eighteenth century took on specifically nationalist characteristics in light of the Revolution. Over the course of the eighteenth century, French society transformed from a "moral economy," in which dress signified social status, to a consumer economy, in which the middle and lower classes had access to fashion. This sartorial confusion broke down the traditional Ancien Regime visual hierarchy. As fashion ceased to signify social status, it became, instead, an indice of gender. Inspired by Rousseau's model of domestic femininity, the luxury industry promoted fashion as a way for women to please men and fulfill feminine goals such as finding a husband. As fashionable consumption became a "natural" desire for women, it was rejected as equally "unnatural" for men. In order to adapt to the changes in consumption wrought by the burgeoning consumer revolution, luxury industries adopted a new vocabulary of consumption. In the first half of the eighteenth century, luxury lost its sinful connotations and became a source of national prosperity. Moralists awkwardly tried to categorize different kinds of luxury with terms such as "useful" or "harmful" luxury. The concept of "taste" developed as an inclusive, egalitarian criterion for consumption that was well-suited to the rapidly expanding market. Taste acquired positive connotations of commerce, while the vocabulary of luxury was linked to the corruption of the Ancien Regime. In the world of fashion, "good taste" was associated with simplicity and naturalism. Taste and luxury thus acquired moral connotations that became politicized during the Revolution. Good taste was linked to republican virtue, while luxury represented aristocratic corruption. During the Revolution, the moral judgments applied to luxury and taste solidified the boundary between men and women and relegated them to their respective places in the new political order. While the transformation from subject to citizen occurred easily for men, who renounced luxurious dress for republican sobriety, the role of women in the Revolution remained ambiguous. The fashion industry held up the stereotype of the female aristocrat-- luxuriously dressed, sexually voracious, and meddling in politics--as the epitome of bad taste. Its definition of good taste emphasized modesty and feminine self-restriction. Nevertheless, it did not fully subscribe to the domestic ideal of the republican wife and mother. The fashion industry resolved this ambiguity by endowing women with symbolic power. As women found themselves excluded from the political sphere, the fashion industry repositioned them as nationalist symbols whose fashionable good taste projected the glory of the French Republic across Europe. As women had been disassociated from the political sphere, the myth of La Francaise long outlasted the French Revolution. It endures up to the present day in our image of the elegant French woman dressed with impeccable good taste.
Fashioning Taste: Earl Shinn, Art Criticism, and National Identity in Gilded Age America
(2005) Lenehan, Daniel Timothy; Stadler, Gustavus; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
“The pictures which we are beginning to put in our churches, the statues and historical pieces which our Government and our States are beginning to command, and our more elaborate easel-pictures, are still very lacking in Americanism, in solidity and vigor,” Earl Shinn lamented in 1878.1 His criticism, that the country’s art lacked “Americanism,” reflects the identity crisis that American art experienced in the years following the Civil War. By 1870, the epic landscapes of Thomas Cole and other painters of the Hudson River School, which had stirred in the hearts of antebellum Americans a sense of pride in their country and its artistic capabilities, had lost favor among critics. However, a new ‘school,’ a distinctly American style, did not fill the void left by the Hudson River School. Instead, American art entered a phase of uncertainty and anxiety. Compared to the industrial forces unleashed during and after the war, the fine arts in the United States looked stagnant and underdeveloped, trailing behind other aspects of the blossoming national culture. A younger generation of artists and writers, many of whom studied in Europe, began to question the artistic traditions they had inherited from their predecessors. What made art ‘American?’ Was it possible for artists to thrive in a democratic society? If so, what were the conditions for a national art culture to flourish? With greater exposure to the art of Europe through travel and technology, Americans increasingly perceived their nation’s artistic productions in relation to those from across the Atlantic. The efforts to define American art and make it comparable in style and quality to the art of Europe would thus dominate the energies of artists and writers during the postwar.
"Food for Curiosity": The Liberating Forces of Travel and Writing for Aristocratic Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England
(2012) Johnson, Kathryn; Smith, Paul J., 1947-; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
An examination of English travelogues and anti-travel rhetoric from the end of the eighteenth century reveals a historical moment characterized by anxieties about sex, class, and the state of the nation. In response to these concerns, English women were relegated to the household and men claimed exclusive control of the public sphere. As moral virtue and the nuclear family unit became increasingly important elements of English identity, the practice of travel became anathema to a growing national agenda. Women who disengaged from the domestic sphere and elected to travel on the continent were seen as unpatriotic and antithetical to the new national project. Using widely read behavioral manuals geared towards women and the diaries of three aristocratic women traveling abroad during the last two decades of the century, this thesis explores the ways in which the combined acts of travel and writing allowed women to separate from the domestic sphere and establish historical agency in the face of oppressive social forces. The primary sources illustrate that nationalist rivalry, gender anxiety, and threats produced by unstable social categories resulted in a battle for the control of women's bodies, prompting many women to pursue alternative avenues of self-expression and define new modes of subjectivity.

Browsing by Author "Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-"

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