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Events
Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
Jun. 30 | 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Mary C. Turpie Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies Teaching, Advising, and Program Development due
Oct. 1 | Travel Grants for Graduate Students
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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O'Connell, Catharine Elizabeth. "Chastening the Rod: Sentimental Strategies in Three Antebellum Novels by Women," University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, July 1991. Advisor: June Howard (12, 2, 22)
This dissertation explores the sentimental genre in three American novels by Susan Warner, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Wilson. The study suggests a reading of antebellum women’s writings that takes into account both the tradition of the American sentimental novel and the social meaning of gender during this period. The attribute of sentimentality most important to this analysis is its “emotional didacticism”: the transmission of a moral lesson through the medium of emotions. In the novels, the reader is placed in an intimate relationship with the sufferer, thus challenging the cultural values and practices that make possible the suffering the novels depict. This sentimental centrality of suffering allows social criticism to emerge from the attributes and values associated with womanhood in antebellum American culture.
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