History / Art History

Although Franklin Roosevelt is described as a great presidential communicator, the precise details of his rhetoric – his use of multiple media outlets, his revision of speechwriters' material to match his own voice, his ability to espouse detailed and literate comments on the spot – usually escape close analysis. Historians cite his great speeches, but rarely consider why the speeches are great, or what effects they had on Roosevelt's audience. This paper takes a critical look at Roosevelt's rhetoric, as represented by five key speeches. Special attention is paid to literary devices and rhetorical effects, developing a portrait of Roosevelt as a talented political actor. Interviews with Americans who actually lived through the Roosevelt era supplement the main argument, grounding the literary analysis in the context of oral history. Brief biographical incidents are also touched upon, particularly FDR's habit from childhood onward of hiding his true feelings and maintaining an eternally positive façade. Indeed, this constant, enigmatic performance defined Roosevelt's political career, as he presented himself as an active yet approachable president, willing to lead and keep the people informed of his actions (the anti-Herbert Hoover). Through constant cultivation and revision of his rhetoric, Roosevelt developed a winning political formula – an aura of positive determination without any hints of condescension. By looking at Roosevelt the communicator and the effects his words had upon ordinary Americans, it becomes clear that the right " few words " can greatly inspire a suffering populace.

Although an obscure text today, Ned Buntline's The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main was a bestselling dime novel in the 1800s. This paper seeks to understand the influence of Black Avenger on pirate fiction and Mark Twain, who repeatedly references Buntline's story in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In the plot of Black Avenger, Buntline depicts piracy as a sort of moral vigilantism: If motivated by a good cause, individuals are within their rights to temporarily step outside normal codes of behavior. However, only white men are entitled to such an escape, for Buntline portrays women and African American in an incredibly disparaging manner. Black Avenger is then compared to Prentiss Ingraham's The Black Pirate, a pirate story of much lesser quality written thirty years later. The extraordinary plot similarities to Black Avenger, negative portrayal of women and African Americans, and concept of moral vigilantism found in The Black Pirate reveal that Ned Buntline's novel became the template for the pirate sub-genre. Finally, the themes and tropes developed by Buntline (and recycled by Ingraham) are found to be present in the Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn novels by Mark Twain. Tom Sawyer's personality is heavily influenced by Buntline's characterization of the Black Avenger, and the plot of Tom Sawyer critiques the clichés of dime novels. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Twain deconstructs the poor treatment of African Americans and women found elsewhere in popular literature, subtly criticizing the darker undercurrents of dime novels. Overall, this paper, through textual and historical analysis, traces an intertextual path from lowbrow fiction to great literature, showing not only how Ned Buntline shaped pirate literature, but also how the sophisticated texts of Mark Twain owe much to the pulp fiction of the 19 th century.

Republican Senator Kenneth Keating had an illustrious career in 20th-century American government, but he has never been the subject of a full-length biography. This paper constitutes a first step toward restoring Keating to his proper place in historiographic literature. Using extensive primary sources, culled from both online databases and the Kenneth Keating Papers housed at the University of Rochester Libraries, this paper reconstructs Keating’s involvement with Cuban-American relations, culminating in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The paper charts Keating’s skepticism regarding the nominally democratic Cuban Revolution, his strongly anti-Communist rhetoric in the late 1950s, and finally his public revelation in August 1962 that the Soviets were installing military equipment in Cuba. In this speech, Keating also accused the Kennedy administration of not being completely honest with the public. The research conducted for this paper proves that Keating was correct. President Kennedy knew of defensive missile installations in Cuba, but lied to the public about the matter, until Keating’s address forced the President to go public with the information. In ensuing weeks, Keating’s claims grew more ominous, for the Senator argued in October that offensive IRBMs were being placed in Cuba. Once again, Keating accused Kennedy of being deceptive, but this time, Kennedy simply had access to less intelligence than Keating did. Finally, on October 16, IRBMs were photographed in Cuba, Keating was vindicated, and Kennedy’s famed “Thirteen Days” began. Overall, this paper has three major themes. First, the relationship between Congress and the White House figured largely in the buildup to the Missile Crisis. Second, Keating’s use of rhetoric is a masterful case of Congressional position- taking and self-advertising. Finally, this paper reminds us that many individuals, not only icons like President Kennedy, affected American foreign relations during the Cold War.

This paper considers the relevance of The Power of Myth to the secular study of religion. First, I identify the scholars from whom Campbell borrows concepts. I organize these scholars into three groups – the qualitative religious scholars, the quantitative religious scholars, and those who draw from both approaches. Next, I identify Joseph Campbell’s key ideas (the monomyth, the hero’s journey, the existence of a higher power or energy, the lack of myth in the modern world, and the notion that religion possesses given qualities). I then analyze the contradictions inherent within Campbell’s argument, for Campbell fails to synthesize three scholarly traditions into one coherent theory of religion. Additionally, I discuss Campbell’s descriptive reductionism, his reactionary views regarding secularization, and the political conservatism found within the book. I conclude that Power is not an authoritative work of secular religious scholarship, but rather one man’s subjective blend of research and personal beliefs.

This paper is an object biography of the dime novel Mormonism Exposed, considering the book in relation to dime novels and American Mormonism. Published in 1896 by the genre fiction publisher J. Regan & Co., Mormonism Exposed embodies common nineteenth-century traditions of dime novel publishing and salacious anti-Mormon rhetoric. By studying this dime novel in detail, it is possible to better understand the economics of dime novel publishing at the turn of the twentieth century, the intended class and age demographics of genre fiction readers, art in popular fiction, and the nuances of anti-Mormon thought in the United States. This paper therefore contributes to the burgeoning historical subfield of material culture studies. Ultimately, I argue that this particular edition of Mormonism Exposed, published right as the market for dime novels began to collapse and Mormons slowly moved toward the cultural mainstream, shows how quickly a book can be rendered obsolete and irrelevant by historical change.

The lines between high and low culture were blurry in nineteenth­century America. Dime novels lacked critical acclaim, yet famous authors like Samuel Clemens readily drew from dime novel conventions. " I can't wait to read this religious nineteenth-century pulp magazine! " said no one ever. Yet as a historian, I have found myself reading such texts repeatedly. I stumbled upon the pulp fiction of yesteryear as an undergraduate. Since then, I've learned that dime novels, story papers, chapbooks, and other literary ephemera of the nineteenth century offer unconventional perspectives on American culture—and especially on American religion. I happened upon dime novels while desperately searching for a paper topic for an undergraduate research seminar. At the urging of my professor, I contacted the librarians at the University of Rochester's Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, & Preservation to consult their collection of dime novels. I vaguely knew that dime novels, with their ludicrous and fanciful stories, anticipated twentieth-century comic books. I also knew that British dime novels, known as penny dreadfuls, introduced iconic characters such as Sherlock Holmes and Sweeney Todd. However, I had never seen an actual nineteenth-century dime novel. Within fifteen minutes at Rare Books, I had more dime novels than I knew what to do with. Manuscript Librarian Phyllis Andrews brought out a stack of texts measuring roughly six inches high. A closer look revealed that dozens of dime novels, each wafer-thin, made up this stack. Most of the novels were not catalogued, so Phyllis encouraged me to just dive in. She also gave me a copy of J. Randolph Cox's reference work, The Dime Novel Companion (2000), which explains that, although story papers and other pulp publications originated in the early 1800s, dime novels in the literal, sold-for-a-dime sense were published after 1860.

Published as part of the Post Family Papers Project website from the University of Rochester libraries. This transcription analysis uses a letter from the Papers to consider the relationship of E.W. Capron, a Spiritualist and media promoter, to the Fox Sisters, the progenitors of modern Spiritualism.

Gunther-Brown, Candy 2017. “Evangelical Yoga: Cultural Appropriation and Translation in American Religions." The Religious Studies Project (Podcast Transcript), 19 June 2017. Interviewed by Daniel Gorman. Response by Philip Deslippe. Transcribed by Helen Bradstock. Version 1.1, 16 June 2017. Available at: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/evangelical-yoga-cultural-appropriation-and- translation-in-american-religions/.

Guillory, Margarita and Dan Gorman. 2018. “African American Spiritual Churches," The Religious Studies Project (Podcast Transcript). 29 January 2018. Transcribed by Helen Bradstock. Version 1.1, 26 January 2018. Available at: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/african-american-spiritual-churches/.

Maffly-Kipp, Laurie. 2017. “Jesuits, Mormons and American Religion in the World”, The Religious Studies Project (Podcast Transcript). 29 May 2017. Interview by Daniel Gorman Jr. Transcribed by Helen Bradstock. Version 1.1, 22 May 2017. Available at: http://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/podcast/jesuits-mormons-and-american-religion-in-the-world/.

Published as a podcast for The Religious Studies Project on September 17, 2018.

Dr. Jennifer Graber’s new book, “The Gods of Indian Country,” grew out of lingering questions from her first book, a study of American Quakers and prisons. Graber learned that Quakers served as missionaries to Native American reservations in the West. She combined this interest in Quaker missions with her research into Native American captivity, so that the resulting narrative contrasts the motives of U.S. officials with Kiowa captives on an Oklahoma reservation. The main claim of Graber’s book is that there were two “gods” of Indian Country — the religious beliefs of the Kiowas (onto which Western explorers superimposed monotheistic terms like “Great Spirit”) versus the Christianity of Protestant and Catholic missionaries. Religion in Graber’s narrative emerges as a site of contestation in the creation of the American West.

Using Kiowa material culture and artwork, which Kiowas used to record their history in non-alphabetic ways, Graber shows how the Kiowas adjusted their religious beliefs through contact with the Comanches and other Great Plains Indian nations, as well as the Americans, during the nineteenth century. Kiowas embraced new religious practices, such as the Sun Dance and the two Ghost Dance movements, to gain spiritual power, “dwdw,” which could be used to repel American invaders. The Red River War of 1874–75 failed to reclaim Indian Country, but Graber cautions her readers not to read inevitable defeat into this narrative. Letters, drawings, and other objects mailed to the reservation reveal how, after the war, Kiowa men in prison and Kiowa children in boarding schools made sense of their dislocation and retained their culture. Kiowa religion to this day remains an effort to rectify the world.

Dr. Graber shows how colonists cloak violence beneath a veneer of gentility and conquered peoples use religion to preserve their sense of community. This book provides a powerful argument against U.S. “nation-building” and the use of state power to break up families — something that the Trump administration is currently doing to Hispanic migrant families along the southern border.