Institutional Scholarship :: Browsing by Author "Hayton, Darin"

Browsing by Author "Hayton, Darin"

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A Fleeting Heimat, Yet an Enduring Impact: A Spatial and Legal Analysis of the Lasting Effects of Germany's KiautschouI Bay Leased Territory
(2023) Voit, Lucas; Duan, Ruodi; Hayton, Darin
This thesis analyzes the lasting structural impacts of the German colonization of Qingdao on both Qingdao’s built environment and the legal structures in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC). The German colonization of Qingdao, which took place from 1898 to 1914, allowed for an exceptional transfer of German urban planning ideals, aesthetics, and legal philosophy to China. This thesis investigates the ways that this colonization influenced the development of Qingdao and the creation of a Chinese civil code. Through an analysis of written historical records from both China and Germany, visual evidence, and legal codes, this thesis explores how this colony came to be, how it functioned to transfer ideas, and how these values continue to be preserved. The thesis concludes that German colonization had a significant impact on the built environment of Qingdao, with lasting effects on the structural foundations of the city's architecture, urban planning, culture, and economy. Furthermore, it concludes that this period of colonization led to concrete impacts on the first Chinese Civil Code and continues to define the mechanics and contents of modern codes within the PRC and the ROC. Moreover, it argues that the German influence on China's civil codes has been underappreciated in the context of the historical scholarship of German colonialism and China’s legal system and warrants further study. This research sheds light on the complex interplay between colonialism, the built environment, and law, and highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of how colonial legacies continue to shape modern China.
“All the Singular Phenomena to which Man is Subject to”: The Wistar Museum, 1818-1905
(2024) Schefer, Theo; Hayton, Darin; Krippner, James
On May 31, 1888, the University of Pennsylvania’s Medical Hall caught fire. Over the course of a single morning, irreparable damage was sustained by the pathological laboratory, Stillé Medical Library, and most devastating of all: the Wistar and Horner Museum. Between 1818 and 1893, the museum’s anatomical teaching collection served as a key component of undergraduate medical education at the University of Pennsylvania. At a time where didactic lectures and classification guided the dissemination of scientific knowledge, the Wistar and Horner Museum illustrated concepts of human anatomy and disease through its eclectic array of skulls, children’s livers, genitals, and more. Over time, the collection grew well beyond the specimens prepared by Caspar Wistar and William Edmonds Horner. With a directive to expand the museum in perpetuity, succeeding Professors of Anatomy sourced specimens from their own personal research alongside physicians across America and Europe. When the collection began to fall into disrepair after decades of use, Isaac Jones Wistar, great nephew of the physician who started the collection, provided a large endowment to preserve the collection in its own dedicated building: the Wistar Institute. His vision dictated that the collection would not just be open to the public, but also serve as the foundation for original anatomical and biological research. By the end of the 19th century, microscopic biology was rising to prominence in America. For a brief period of time, however, classification and laboratory experimentation coexisted as legitimate methods for the production of scientific knowledge. The balance between the facility’s responsibilities as a research institution and public museum offers insight into how old-school anatomists asserted themselves as the foundation for new advances in medicine and biology. Contrary to modern conceptions of the museum as an anonymous encyclopedic building, 19th century collections interpreted and reinterpreted themselves within the context of their local audience, history, and ever-changing views on pedagogy.
"Authority Freed From Violence": Roberts Vaux's Anti-Slavery and the Creation of the Separate System at Eastern State Penitentiary
(2012) Giansante, Daniel; Saler, Bethel; Hayton, Darin
Between 1786 and 1835, Philadelphia played host to a revolutionary transformation in the methods and intentions of criminal punishment. Beginning with a shift away from sanguinary and public corporal punishments, and culminating in the opening of Eastern State Penitentiary, this transformation was spearheaded by the members of the Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons. These wealthy and influential Philadelphians joined together in 1787 to advocate for penitential punishment; to incorporate the goal of reforming offenders into the state's penal code. In the antebellum period, the Society's advocacy coalesced under the leadership of Roberts Vaux, a Quaker philanthropist and archetype of the era's gentlemen reformers. In the 1820s, Vaux articulated the Separate System of prison discipline, in which inmates would remain in constant solitary confinement while laboring in their cells. Crucially, and in opposition to the contemporary Silent System originating in New York, Vaux insisted upon a complete lack of corporal punishment in the Separate System. This thesis analyzes Vaux's development of the Separate System in conjunction with his contemporary anti-slavery theory to shed greater light on the reasoning behind his aversion to corporal punishment. Although he certainly did find corporal punishment barbaric and inhumane, his opposition to its use in the Separate System stemmed more from its position in the economy of power inherent to Southern slavery. In his observations of slavery, Vaux saw how bodily coercion, especially when used to extract labor from unwilling subjects, failed to access man's most productive motivations and engendered feelings of anger and resentment. By examining the effect of Vaux's anti-slavery on the creation of the Separate System, we can better understand both how he hoped it would function and the kind of reformation he hoped it would achieve.
Blood Relations: A Historical Perspective on HIV/AIDS in China
(2011) Kohanek, Annie; Smith, Paul J., 1947-; Hayton, Darin
A thesis on HIV/AIDS is not a thesis about a disease, but about a culture. A thesis on HIV/AIDS is a study on a country's unique cultural and historic lens which shapes policies and opinions about a virus. While different nations react toward the spread of HIV/AIDS differently, all reactions reflect greater historical and cultural forces. This thesis aims to step back and put a historical perspective on a modern phenomenon; to put a historical perspective on both the spread of and reaction to the virus. In China, the discussion on HIV/AIDS reflected larger political and cultural tensions about how China saw itself in relation to the international community. During Mao's era, discussions focused on political differences: on capitalism versus communism, on imperialists versus revolutionaries. With Reform and Opening of the 1980s, by opening its borders, the country feared economic modernization would mean westernization and the dissolution of Chinese identity. Focus on political and economic difference shifted to focus on moral difference. HIV/AIDS became part of that larger historical tension. The issue of HIV/AIDS became an issue of morality, about western versus eastern culture. Thus rather than focus on prevention and education within the country, leaders would point to the strength of Chinese culture and morality as factors fighting against perceived social ills that spread HIV. So when villages of rural farmers in central China began to die of AIDS in the late 1990s due to contracting HIV through blood selling, all of the negative aspects of China economic reforms that had been pushed aside came to a head. Rural poverty, the dismantling of the health care system, political corruption and ethnic tensions came bursting through. This thesis will explore the complicated language of HIV/AIDS, how it affects social policy, and will contextualize China's response to the disease in a broader historical understanding.
"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.
Constructions of Power: Cardinal Richelieu, David Defos, and Anne of Austria's Triumphal Entry into La Rochelle, 1632
(2008) Thompson, Jordan B.; Hayton, Darin
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.
Copper’s Care; Public Welfare, Paternalism, and Worker Expression in a Michigan Company Town
(2023) Lasinsky, Nicholas; Friedman, Andrew, 1974-; Hayton, Darin
This thesis aims to investigate paternalism of the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Mining Corporation (C&H) through the built environment of Calumet, Michigan, by analyzing the town’s school, library, hospital, and theater between 1870 and 1930. It investigates four “branches” of corporate control—social paternalism, economic paternalism, moral paternalism, and spectacular paternalism—and focuses on one branch for each building. Social paternalism can be understood as C&H’s attempt to control the lives of its workers “from cradle to grave.” In this spirit, C&H tracked the ethnicities of the Washington School’s student body, and used spaces of industrial training to craft a cohort of Americanized laborers perfectly suited to company needs. Economic paternalism is the idea that communal gifts ought to be deployed rationally, with scientific precision. This self-interested analysis was exemplified by the Calumet library, where every book was screened to weed out those which might have encouraged dissident politics, or threatened the business’ bottom line. Moral paternalism is broadly defined as the idea that C&H leveraged built space to shape lived moralities in its favor. Through the C&H Miners’ Hospital, for example, the company was able to reframe violence generated by its own extractive industry as a culture of communal care. Finally, spectacular paternalism was a paternalism of edifice and aesthetics; exemplified in the shining copper chandelier and illumination of the Calumet Theater, this branch acted as a visual progress narrative, one which argued that C&H’s industry—and copper more broadly—was an engine of advancement and modernity for Calumet’s citizens. The thesis also traces wider histories of C&H’s rise and fall, including the formation of the company under President Alexander Agassiz, the 1913 copper district strike, and the subsequent decline of the region’s industrialism. Finally, this thesis strives to go beyond the bare metrics of spatial control in Calumet, elevating instead detailed readings of the everyday resistance and reoccupation which chafed against the grain of company purpose, challenging and reoccupying corporate space.
Courses de Testes et Bague and the Cultural Legitimization of Louix XIV's Personal Rule, 1661-1671
(2008) Nelson, Nicholas M.; Hayton, Darin
In the final months of 1670, the Imprimerie Royale of France published a book in folio entitled Courses de Testes et de Bague Faittes Par Le Roy et par Les Princes et Seigneurs de sa Cour En l'Année 1662. Seven hundred copies were printed and bound in red leather, four hundred in French and three hundred in Latin. The book recorded in great detail exactly what its title stated: “Running at the Head and at the Ring, by the King and by the Princes and Seigneurs of his Court in the year 1662.” Rhetorically framed by its dedication as an educational text in kingship for the dauphin, the book was about a tournament: its pageantry, its participants, and their costumes. Nonetheless, the content was actually far more saturated with political and cultural meaning than a record of a tournament might suggest. Courses de Testes et de Bague delivered a clear articulation of appropriate power dynamics within French society at a time when those dynamics were uncertain because of a discontented nobility and weak throne. The book was capable of instructing and disciplining its audiences according the messages embedded within its visual material. The content asserted a coherent model of an ideal absolutist court, one which cherished the values of a god-king: undying loyalty, honor, and courtliness. The book explains how these values were assigned to the three main actors in the continuing centralization of government and power under Louis XIV: the king himself; the aristocracy; and those who were mediating the shift in power, the academicians. Constructed over the course of almost a decade, the book also helps illustrate the role of these academicians in society. Through a study of the book’s content and intended audiences, the manner in which the model of society was propagated by the académies (which were responsible for controlling the cultural production of France) emerges. The history of the book’s inception, construction, and content is one which embodies all the tensions of the time between the monarchy and the old nobility because of centralization, the efforts to legitimize the king, and the means of executing that centralization and legitimization. Courses de Testes et de Bague provides insight into both the ends and the means by which the académies simultaneously supported the young Louis XIV and disciplined a restive nobility.
Framing Mortality: Medical Illustrations of Human Bone Anatomy in William Cheselden's Osteographia
(2014) Farley, Helen; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Hayton, Darin
William Cheselden's Osteographia (1733) opens with a frontispiece image recalling the imagery of Renaissance saint paintings, yet the title page engraving of a camera obscura promotes the empirical technologies of the eighteenth-century. While in Renaissance anatomy man reigned as God's Supreme Being, by the eighteenth century natural laws returned man to his status as a mortal beast in nature. Cheselden's text looks to reconcile the Christian undertones of Renaissance imagery with an enlightened epistemology of the natural world. Cheselden's bone representations battled Enlightenment concern about the human ability to perceive nature. This thesis follows the Osteographia from production to its reception and demonstrates that the book retains a reverence for nature despite its promotion of Enlightenment technology and method. The first section discusses Cheselden's production process and the natural origins of the specimens. Cheselden's text re-imagined the mortal objects into a new order of scientific inquiry, one guided by aesthetic contemplation. In order to combat the limitations of the human senses, Cheselden promoted his use of the camera obscura. The next section discusses the camera obscura as an "artificial eye." In Cheselden's epistemology, technology redeems our limitations and re-creates our divine status. The third section analyzes the bone illustrations as dialectic between reason and spirituality. While the images classify the human form and replace Christian symbols of death with symbols of progress, they are arranged in a narrative of growth and decay, revealing a preoccupation with the teleology in our human frames. The Osteographia was a commercial failure. The disappointing sales caused Cheselden to break down the text to sell as individual prints. The last section examines the reception of the Osteographia through the lens of Cheselden's harshest critic. The print market changed the text from a scientific reference guide to a set of artistic prints. Cheselden's investigation of the limitations of our mortal frames and his attempt to achieve a divine perfection through progress endures as art. The images today remind us that progress is a means to compensate for the mortality in our bones.
Hunting with the Empress: Hunting, Gender and Dynastic Ambition at the Court of Charles VI and Maria Theresa
(2018) Stokes, Thomas; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-; Hayton, Darin
In the first half of the eighteenth century, the Habsburg family faced a dynastic crisis. Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI had no sons to inherit his kingdom. Consequently, he presented his daughter, Maria Theresa, as his heir making her the first female Habsburg regent after centuries of patrilineal descent. Contemporary gender ideals and international and internal attempts to disrupt Habsburg hegemony obstructed Maria Theresa from a smooth dynastic transition. This thesis investigates strategies employed by Maria Theresa and her father that strengthened her claim and identity as a female regent. Some strategies blurred the gender divide embedded in contemporary thoughts on patriarchal society. Others highlighted Maria Theresa’s effeminate virtues. Court hunting provides the most informative example of imperial strategies legitimizing Maria Theresa’s inheritance. The hunting vulture espoused by the Habsburg court expressed the authority of its monarch. More specifically for Maria Theresa, hunting helped characterize her as a powerful female leader by highlighting female participation in hunting and female influence on hunting culture. I start by introducing the political background of Austria and Europe in the eighteenth century and Charles’ issuing of the Pragmatic Sanction. The next section describes Maria Theresa’s state building projects and the gender dynamic in her public identity. The third section transitions into hunting highlighting the social and political implications of the sport at Charles VI’s court. The last section delves into court hunting during Maria Theresa’s reign focusing on the relationship between hunting and gender. Through hunting and a variety of other court platforms, Maria Theresa directly challenged the assumed role of early modern women and created a public identity that embraced aspects of womanhood and combined them with masculine qualities expected of contemporary rulers. By utilizing such strategies, Maria Theresa facilitated her authority and legitimized her position as a female regent in a patriarchal society.
Imprinting the Celestial: Gender and Astrology in Sixteenth-Century France
(2024) Weisiger-Vallas, Callia; Graham, Lisa Jane; Hayton, Darin
In sixteenth-century France, gender permeated society, shaping people’s behavior and defining and codifying difference. Many mechanisms and implicit practices functioned to establish gender categories and expectations. Astrological ephemera were a pervasive and powerful medium by which gender norms were transmitted to audiences in early modern France. Analyzing that ephemera provides access to gender’s operation across distinct but interconnected categories of life, deepening an understanding of gender in the sixteenth century. As a discipline, an intellectual framework, and most importantly a worldview, astrology was at the center of early modern European life, informing the lives and decisions of everyone from reigning monarchs to rural laborers. Ephemera — cheap, common, disposable texts — made astrological information accessible to wide audiences. Such ephemeral texts ranged from short annual almanacs and prognostications to detailed guidebooks for performing detailed astrological analysis. Combining short, structured text, images, and visual markers that facilitated their reading, these texts were accessible to their audiences across literacy registers. These texts also drew on and reinforced astrological literacies that stretched across societal registers. Astrological literacies ranged from basic rules of thumb about the sky’s influence over terrestrial life to specific understandings of particular celestial configurations and timings. Across astrological literacies, astrology offered a particularly persuasive system of knowledge, and it linked social distinctions to unassailable natural categories and phenomena. Grounded in the observable motions of the planets, astrology’s answers derived from careful interpretations of the unassailable natural world. Astrological practice was inherently gendered, and both the production and reception of astrology were likewise gendered. Ephemeral astrological texts projected gender ideals derived from masculine expertise. Conceptions of gender also shaped the astrological audience, informing who consulted astrology, which questions they asked of it, and how they evaluated astrological knowledge. In addition to the ways astrological practice was gendered, astrological doctrine was also gendered. Astrology relied on and projected ideas about gender that were rooted in the naturalness of the sky. Shaping conceptions of medicine and health, astrology characterized the sex of the human body; it also determined the sex a child would be. Deploying systematic gender to inform astrological deliberations, astrology constructed categories of manhood and womanhood rooted in the cosmos. As a feature in astrological ephemera, astrological gender reinforced gendered and sexed behavior and norms, drawing upon gender as a marker of difference vital to making sense of the terrestrial world.
Instruments of Power: State Craft, Reciprocity, and Scientific Instruments at the Court of Queen Elizabeth I
(2015) Flug, Samara; Hayton, Darin; Mulry, Kate
In the first year of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign over England, Sir Robert Dudley, the queen’s favorite courtier, gave Elizabeth a large, ornate astrolabe that he had commissioned from Thomas Gemini, one of the most prominent instrument makers in London. At first glance, Dudley’s choice of a technological instrument as a gift for the queen seems strange. Yet given the context of Elizabeth’s royal aspirations and the growing practice of supporting scientific experts and collecting scientific instruments within European courts, we begin to understand the values and political goals the astrolabe symbolized for the queen and her court. This thesis argues that Dudley and Elizabeth understood the value of control over scientific knowledge and the ways in which owning an instrument contributed to a carefully constructed image of authority and power. Through owning the astrolabe, Elizabeth demonstrated an ability to understand the field of knowledge expressed through the astrolabe as well as control over the best experts in Europe. The astrolabe served the interests of all of the parties involved in its making and exchange while the materiality of the object itself raises questions about the motivations behind sixteenth-century technological production.
It’s Complicated: Relations Between Greek Settlers and Indigenous Sicilians at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi in the 8th and 7th Centuries BCE
(2019) Sterngass, Aaron; Farmer, Matthew C.; Edmonds, Radcliffe G., III, 1970-; Kitroeff, Alexander; Hayton, Darin
Greek interactions with indigenous Sicilians in the Archaic Period have traditionally been examined through the lens of violent colonization by historians from Ancient Greece all the way through the mid-20th century. Recently, postcolonial studies and a new emphasis on material evidence have led scholars to change this narrative, highlighting the possibility of more peaceful and synergetic exchanges between Greeks and natives. This paper examines the relations between Greeks and native Sicilians in the 8th and 7th centuries BCE at Megara Hyblaea, Syracuse, and Leontinoi, three sites at which Thucydides recorded early interactions between Greek settlers and native communities/authorities. To supplement the evidence found at these sites, native communities and other Greek settlements associated with these sites were also analyzed. Through the analysis of ancient sources, material evidence, and modern interpretations which combined both, this paper argues that the earliest Greek settlers at Syracuse, Leontinoi, and Megara Hyblaea had far more complex relations with indigenous Sicilians than is described in the ancient texts and the all-but-recent scholarship. However, it also concludes that while the modern model of more peaceful and cooperative encounters is useful in studying Greco-native relations, it does not fully account for localized differences in these interactions, which often varied widely over short distances and periods of time. The paper advocates for an historical portrayal of indigenous Sicilians as dynamic and innovative whose influences on the Greeks are often overlooked in textbooks, but also encourages the depiction of both Greeks and indigenous peoples as active participants in systems of exchange instead of maintaining static, one-dimensional relationships such as “cordial” or “hostile.”
Le Royaume de Féerie: Women's Writing and Women's Autonomy in the Late Seventeenth-Century France
(2015) Liu, Wei; Hayton, Darin
As a conscious literary product of their historical moment, seventeenth-century French fairy tales written by female writers explore social and political issues of the grand siècle. Seventeenth-century France was characterized by the culture of absolutism and political centralization. Marital laws granted the crown and noble parents authority over elite women's marriages to ensure that marital alliances suited the interests of the state and family. Louis XIV also attempted to monopolize his control over cultural spaces to subjugate nobles to the royal will. The monarch's political and cultural centralization reinforced patriarchy, undermined elite women's independence and prohibited women from expressing ideas that were not in accordance with the royal will. Under such circumstances, the salons emerged as a subversive and exploratory place for literary production. Rooted deeply in the salons, fairy tales developed as a genre for and by women to exert their voices, to condemn the oppression they encountered, to experiment with new ideas, and to gain autonomy. In this thesis, I will situate Madame d'Aulnoy and two of her fairy tales, Princess Little Carp and The Doe in the Woods in the broader historical and cultural contexts of late seventeenth-century France to explore how she used her pen to criticize the politicization of marriage and female submission in absolutist France and to suggest alternative gender relations and gender roles. In the last section, I will also demonstrate how writing and publishing fairy tales empowered the conteuses as autonomous writers.
Marketing the Breech-Loader: Weapons Manufacturers and Vested Social Interest in Civil War Era America
(2012) Banno, Joseph James; Smith, Paul J., 1947-; Hayton, Darin
Mastering Politics Through Games: Alfonso X’s Libro de Los Juegos
(2024) Schiltz, Benjamin; Hayton, Darin; Krippner, James
In the 13th century, the printing press did not exist. Handwritten texts, called manuscripts, were the most advanced method of documenting and transcribing information. One ruler, King Alfonso X, dedicated his reign to producing manuscripts. Called “El Sabio,” or “The Wise,” King Alfonso X ruled the medieval kingdom Castile and León, located in present-day Spain, from 1252 to 1284. He reigned during the Reconquista, a centuries-long war between Christians and Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. Although his predecessors had attacked and conquered their Islamic neighbors, Alfonso adopted an alternative ruling strategy: producing books. Rather than expel non-Christians from his kingdom, he collaborated with Jewish, Islamic, and Christian scholars to assist his intellectual projects. He promoted religious coexistence and, throughout his reign, presided over a religiously and ethnically diverse kingdom. Manuscripts were vital to Alfonso’s political platform. Without a “traditional” Castilian military regime, these manuscripts promoted Alfonso’s ruling accomplishments; they made him appear intelligent and capable of governing his subjects. The production of these texts also encouraged coexistence and collaboration across religions. In my thesis, I argue that Alfonso’s final manuscript on chess and other board games, Libro de los Juegos (1283), promoted his political achievements. Despite the text’s “leisurely” and instructional content, this carefully constructed documentation of games and their strategies was an ideal vessel for Alfonso’s self- promotion. On one level, game strategies were a metaphor for thinking in advance. By showing he knew about combinations of chess pieces, Alfonso displayed his ability to strategize and think ahead. On another level, the games in this text—chess, dice, and backgammon—originated outside Europe. In documenting these games and their rules, Alfonso showed his respect for and mastery of non-European intellectual achievements. Finally, the text includes vivid images of Alfonso and his subjects playing games. Much like a contemporary politician’s social media profile, the images in Libro de los Juegos portrayed the ideal likeness of Alfonso and his court. Through self-fashioning a desirable image, highlighting a knowledge of non-European scholarship, and demonstrating his strategic ability, Alfonso's Libro de los Juegos promoted his governing strengths.
“Matter Useful, Curious, and Entertaining”: the Almanac as Tool of Community-Building and Political Engagement
(2023) Namour, Ella; Hayton, Darin; Graham, Lisa Jane, 1963-
For rural communities in 19th century America, almanacs were an integral part of daily life, yet they have received very little attention from historians. This thesis examines the ways in which almanacs functioned as a critical tool to disseminate news and contemporary political information to a physically isolated–and often socially cloistered–bloc. Every farmer needed an almanac, and for many families they were the only piece of print media in the house besides the Bible. This meant that they had unique reach and an inherent sense of authority and trustworthiness. Churches, political organizations, and advertisers all published almanacs as a tool of publicity and public engagement. I argue that almanacs are one of our most important textual sources, because they created community across multiple registers at a time when the concept of national identity often felt abstract and indistinct to people, especially those in rural enclaves. On the most immediate register, readers found community by sharing information they read in almanacs, subscribing to the same almanacs as others in their towns, and engaging with local printshops and reading clubs. These were collective intellectual spaces where reading, writing, and critical thinking occurred with an accessible presentation. On a middle register, they found community by reading almanacs that were specific to their own interests, that connected them to a non-contiguous web of like-minded readers scattered across the United States. These publications served as community spaces with peers the reader might never meet in person, strengthening their awareness of the invisible ties defining their identities. On the most expansive register, they found community through the state and federal political information that almanacs nearly always featured—times in different cities, election results, information on laws passed, taxation news, and more. Almanacs contextualized rural people within a larger community they could not otherwise see or access, and allowed them to imagine themselves as part of the burgeoning Republic.
Most Excellent of All the Arts: Adelard of Bath & Arabic Astrology
(2017) Truitt, James; Hayton, Darin
My thesis uses Adelard of Bath as a case study to understand the factors that led dozens of scholars in the twelfth- and thirteenth-century Latin West to seek out and translate Arabic works on the science of the stars, including texts on celestial divination and astral magic of a type previously unavailable to Latin Christians. I look to Adelard’s institutional and cultural contexts to explain his endeavor. The sophisticated horoscopic techniques offered by Arabic texts aided Adelard in building a reputation for masterful erudition and deploying it to his social advantage. Horoscopic practices allowed Adelard to create certain knowledge about a wide range of topics and in a manner that implied he possessed masterful erudition. Celestial divination and astral magic therefore constituted an important tool for advancing Adelard’s social standing in the competitive contexts of classroom and court Ade-lard inhabited. As a teacher specializing in the often under-studied quadrivium, the four mathematical liberal arts, Adelard could deploy horoscopic techniques to assert the relevance of his subject and to display his pedagogical prowess in the agonistic environment of twelfth-century education. As a courtier vying for favor, the Bathonian could use celestial divination and astral magic to offer monarchs, nobles, and other political actors a range of useful justifications, prognostications, and interventions that met the criteria for certain knowledge and were grounded in the authority of the learned quadrivium. These applications of the horoscopic techniques Adelard had drawn from Arabic sources aided the Bathonian in securing the patronage that was crucial to his livelihood and social standing. Celestial divination and astral magic thus represented answers to specific questions facing Adelard and his peers, questions that were historically contingent, grounded in the society and culture of the Bathonian’s particular time and place. They show that the translations produced by Adelard and other Latin scholars of the twelfth century resulted not from an indiscriminate desire for knowledge, the mere availability of the texts, or some general epistemological osmosis, but from the specific needs and desires of human beings embedded in specific social structures, and they bespeak the fruitfulness of considering not only the texts but also the contexts of the people who made natural knowledge in the Middle Ages.

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