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Item Competing discourses : early strategies for women's rights(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 1999) Fosdick, April Dawn; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy G. SmithThe American War for Independence established a sovereign American nation based upon the ideas of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Yet, most Americans were excluded from this discourse. Northern, white, middle-class women were among those denied actual economic, legal, and social independence after the Revolution, remaining under the common law of coveture (or legal dependence on their husband or father). Liberty, independence, and freedom became the basis for defining the American nation as well as masculinity. Thus, many women struggled to form a positive identity within a self-proclaimed “free” nation that kept them subordinate. This study examines the “gendered” construction of the American nation. It also demonstrates how two main groups of white, middle-class women identified with the dominant discourse of white, colonial men. Attention is placed upon the changing (male) rhetoric of the Revolution, the domestic ideology of Catharine Beecher, and the linguistic strategies of the early women’s rights reformers. Ultimately, the excluding definitions that emerged from the Revolution shaped the way many women were able to identify with the new nation. As frustrations among many women increased, strategies among influential middle-class women developed. Two dominant groups of women developed distinct approaches in forming a positive identity for female identity. The domestic reformers, such as Beecher, stressed the female superiority of women and argued that women exclusively should shape the values of America. Women’s rights activists, on the other hand, began developing a rights-based argument that called for an equal and legal footing with men. After the Civil War, women’s rights activists realized that their natural-rights language would not work to break down national and masculine definitions and gain them legal rights. It would take a less threatening rhetoric such as Beecher’s; and thus many suffragists began arguing that women could bring a moralizing influence to politics. In effect, the “competing discourses” of middle-class reformers in antebellum America demonstrate the way white women eventually obtained the vote based upon their female moral abilities.Item Communication and community : moving scientific knowledge in Britain and America, 1732-1782(Montana State University - Bozeman, College of Letters & Science, 2012) Sivitz, Paul Andrew; Chairperson, Graduate Committee: Billy Smith.This dissertation explores the dissemination of knowledge, letter-writing, print culture, institutionalization of knowledge, and identity. In this work, the scientific knowledge itself plays a secondary role to how that knowledge was communicated within the scientific community and to the general public. While these exchanges have been well-documented, this work delves deeper into the volume and patterns of letter-writing among the participants, examining extant correspondence, as well as known, but missing, letters that communicated ideas across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of miles without the benefit of modern technology. The scientific content of many letters was transformed into publications, some of which were intended for the scientific community. However, other works transmitted the accumulated knowledge to a broader audience, both in Britain and America. As literacy increased, access to knowledge followed, but the widespread lack of formal education among the reading population forced works to be written in English rather than Latin. This change was part of a growing movement within the scientific community that had begun in the seventeenth century, but was not completed until the nineteenth. The dissertation investigates this shift during the long eighteenth century from the perspective of the practitioners of science and the lingua franca each chose to accept or reject. The process of institutionalizing scientific knowledge in the American colonies met with a mixture of success and failure during the period. Allegiance to established institutions like The Royal Society has explanatory power, but, as I will argue, the epistolary web was an institution itself. It prevented more widespread formal institutional formation at the time, and, in some cases, it was more effective than traditional institutions in producing knowledge. This study also examines the persistent British identity of the scientific community in America during the mid-eighteenth century. Although events leading to the American Revolution marked a shift in political identity for some, many members of the scientific community continued to see themselves as British. Moreover, this study stresses the influence of politics, both situational and institutional, on the practice of science and the ability to communicate the results of those practices.