Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
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Item “GOD RATHER THAN MEN”: AUSTRIAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY AND THE ORIGINS OF THE CHRISTIAN SOCIAL PARTY, 1848-1893(2024) Messersmith, Thomas Martin; Rozenblit, Marsha L; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the changes in Austrian Catholic theology from 1848 to 1893 and the role these changes played in the foundation of the Christian Social Party. Due to a series of crises after 1848, the theology of the Austrian Catholic Church underwent several shifts, ultimately settling on the belief that, in a modern world, direct political action from the Church was not only permissible, but imperative to defend the Church against those who would destroy it. This shift in political theology, which allowed for informal and unofficial theological participation in the realm of politics, was necessary to allow for the development of the Christian Social Party. This dissertation focuses primarily on the German-speaking areas of the Habsburg Monarchy, drawing on a variety of sources, including letters, diaries, meeting notes, legal records, newspapers, theological treatises, and contemporary academic journals to track the theological and political discussions that took place in this portion of the monarchy. The first chapter defines “political theology” as it is used in this dissertation (i.e., as a broader concept, positioned in opposition to the more limited and problematic definition of Carl Schmitt) as “the study of the divine as it relates to politics,” and provides an overview of the state of political theology in both Austria and the Catholic Church as a whole before 1848. Chapter two focuses on the shifts in political theology that occurred as a result of the Revolutions of 1848, with the paradigm of political theology ultimately coalescing around the leadership of Joseph Othmar Rauscher and the notion of a negotiated legalistic political compromise. Chapter three examines the Habsburg Concordat with Rome of 1855 and its subsequent undoing through the May Laws of 1868, which tested the new paradigm of political theology. Chapter four follows the arrest, trial, and conviction of Bishop Rudigier of Linz for “disturbing the peace,” following his attempted publication of a pastoral letter that called for Catholics to disobey laws that went against the Concordat and Church teachings. This proved to be a pivot point in the development of political theology of the Habsburg Monarchy, leading now-Cardinal Rauscher to reassess the political theological paradigm. Chapter five follows the proceedings of the First Ecumenical Council of the Vatican and the Kulturkampf in Germany, both of which resulted in the development of a more aggressive political theological paradigm in Austria. Finally, chapter six examines the completion of the shift from the Vormärz political theological paradigm to the paradigm of popular public political theology employed by Karl von Vogelsang in the ideological creation of the Christian Social Party. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that while other factors, such as antisemitism and the dissatisfaction of the lower clergy, as argued by John Boyer, helped to create the Christian Social Party in Austria, a shift in political theology in the Austrian Church and in the Catholic Church as a whole was necessary before the various ideologies of the Christian Social Party could coalesce.Item From Liberation Theology to Teología India: The Progressive Catholic Church in Southern Mexico, 1954-1994(2021) Levey, Eben; Rosemblatt, Karin; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This project traces how the Mexican Catholic Church opened itself to tolerating and embracing indigenous catholicisms, how activists built a Catholic multiculturalism from the ground up (1960s-1990s), and how the Vatican recognized their decades of work by accepting Náhuatl as an official liturgical language in 2015. This history is inseparable from the Latin American experiences of Liberation Theology, its theological offshoot of Indigenous Theology, and the progressive Catholics who insisted that the Catholic Church could shed a reputation of serving the rich to instead opt for the poor, the marginalized, and the indigenous. A pair of questions guided this project. What impact did Liberation Theology and its practitioners have on rural, indigenous Mexico? How did the concrete actions and experiences of indigenous peoples shape the pastoral programs and cultural-political orientation of Mexico’s Catholic Church? Beginning in the mid-century, Church hierarchs vied over approaches to the “indigenous question.” Following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the Bishops of the Pacific South Region opened a regional seminary, SERESURE (1969-1990), in Tehuacán, Puebla to train priests to work in the indigenous realities of the region. I argue that the everyday interactions between progressive Catholics from SERESURE and indigenous Nahua villages created a multicultural pastoralism that tried to alleviate the economic crisis of neoliberal structural change and incorporated indigenous culture and religiosity into Mexican Catholicism. My dissertation challenges a historiographical focus on the conservative elements of Mexican Catholicism to reveal ideological struggle within the institution and show how progressives shaped the Church. I redirect the geographical focus of analysis on Mexican Liberation Theology away from Bishop Samuel Ruiz in Chiapas and toward a regional project of progressive Catholics centered in Tehuacán, Puebla. I innovate on studies of religion and social reform in late twentieth century Mexico by foregrounding how indigenous popular religiosity shaped liberationist activism. I also reassess the long term reverberations of Liberation Theology in Latin America and argue that the indigenous cultural activism of progressive Catholics in southern Mexico shaped the multiculturalism that emerged in the transition to neoliberalism at the end of the Cold War.Item In the Habit of Resistance: Radical Peace Activism and the Maryland Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, 1954-Present(2021) Ludewig, Sara; Muncy, Robyn; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Between 1968 and present, members of the Maryland Province of Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur (SNDN) participated in radical peace activity. These sisters cultivated a distinct religious identity and used the all-woman spaces of their order to define, support, and sustain their peace activism. The SNDN illuminate the vital role women religious played in shaping the form and longevity of the Catholic peace movement. Sisters were central to Catholic peace activity, drawing on their religious identity and linking their actions to work sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Between 1954 and 1970, the SNDN responded to changes in the Church and constructed a religious identity based in a Catholic feminist ideology. During the Vietnam War, sisters called upon this religious identity and their order’s support networks to motivate their activism. After the Vietnam War ended, the SNDN continued to cultivate their religious identity and maintained their peace activism within the Church.Item The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century(2019) Sfondiles, Angelo; Zilfi, Madeline C.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study focuses on changes that occurred within the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople in the second half of the seventeenth century in response to the difficulties and challenges the Ottoman Empire faced. The intent of the thesis is that the Patriarchate was an integral part of the Empire and that its institutional vagaries can only be understood as a result of the close relationship between it and the Ottoman Empire. The focus is on the legal, financial, and administrative relations between the Patriarchate and the Ottoman Empire in the second half of the seventeenth century.Item Self, Space, Society, and Saint in the Well-Protected Domains: A History of Ottoman Saints and Sainthood, 1500-1780(2019) Allen, Jonathan Parkes; Karamustafa, Ahmet T; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Through an exploration of the historical trajectory of Islamic saints and sainthood across the early modern Ottoman world by means of a wide selection of case studies this dissertation argues for the importance of sainthood in all its facets as both a subject of Ottoman history and as a lens for illuminating many other aspects of social and cultural history. Beginning with the newly expanded empire under Selīm I (r. 1512-1520) and stretching all the way to the second half of the eighteenth century, this study explores the intersection with saints and sainthood of large-scale political and social transformations that shaped the empire as a whole at various points during this time-span, from the integration of new provinces into the empire to the rise of Islamic puritanism to the elaboration of new sociabilities and expressions of the self. The case studies that structure this study range from examinations of particular important figures and their textual corpora such as ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Shaʿrānī (d. 1565) and ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731) to investigations centered on particular regions or communities, paying particular attention to rural contexts in Syria, the Kurdish lands, and Anatolia. Subjects and sources, in a wide range of genres, from both the Arabophone and Turcophone divisions of the empire are treated, the dissertation examining the empire as an interconnected whole despite linguistic differences. Eschewing a focus on Islamic mysticism or sufi organizations narrowly conceived, I demonstrate the socially distributed nature of sainthood and its interplay with many aspects of wider discourse and practice. Drawing upon theoretical models of script and repertoire, language and dialect, I work to make sense of different yet interrelated practices of Ottoman sainthood across the empire, paying especial attention to the uses and constructions of social space, the performance and making of the self, and the generally socially embedded nature of saints and associated phenomena. Finally, this study unfolds within the context of the wider early modern world, Islamicate and beyond, with the larger goal of situating my arguments and findings within the global patterns and dynamics that marked the early modern world.Item "LOUD-VOICED LOVERS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY:" THE AMERICAN AND FOREIGN CHRISTIAN UNION'S MISSIONS TO ITALY DURING THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR(2017) Moyette, Megan; Villani, Stefano; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis explores the motivations behind the American and Foreign Christian Union’s missions to Italy during the American Civil War. The AFCU was a missionary organization founded in New York City in 1849 with the ambitious goal of ridding the world of Roman Catholicism. It was born during a time of nativist fervor when American Protestants saw Catholic immigrants as a threat to American democracy. The AFCU believed they could solve the problem of Catholic immigrants by converting the Catholic world to Protestantism, starting with Italy. The leaders of the AFCU believed the world was engaged in a struggle between Liberty and Tyranny. The war against the Confederacy and the fight to free Italians from the tyrannical Pope were different fronts of the same war. The AFCU entire unsuccessful as a missionary organization. They converted virtually no one. However, their publications were essential to helping American Protestants shape their identity.Item Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850(2017) Slaughter, Joseph; Sicilia, David; Ridgway, Whitman; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Faith in Markets: Christian Business Enterprise in America, 1800-1850, answers the question of how theologically conservative Protestants approached business in the expanding market economy of the early national period. Recent Supreme Court cases (such as Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.) have cast light on an important and controversial intersection of capitalism and religion in the United States: the Christian Business Enterprise (CBE). Three CBEs of the early nineteenth century form the core of my study: George Rapp & Associates (the Harmony Society of Western Pennsylvania/Southern Indiana), the Pioneer Stage Coach Line (upstate New York), and Harper & Brothers (New York City). These proprietors embraced the most influential strains of Christianity in early America: Pietism, Calvinism, and Arminianism while attempting to create an ethical marketplace. Their efforts produced three distinct visions of a moral economy in the early national period: Christian communal capitalism, Christian reform capitalism, and Christian virtue capitalism. Faith in Markets challenges the prevailing notion in the historiography that concludes CBEs were the product of twentieth century Bible Belt Protestants reacting to the New Deal, World War II, or the Cold War. Instead, Christian Business Enterprise has a deeper history, that dates back to the earliest decades of the American republic. Melding the new history of capitalism with the revived field of American religious history, Faith in Markets demonstrates how individuals’ religiously motivated choices shaped market activity, as well as the market itself. The Methodist Harper brothers, for instance, rose to prominence as the most powerful publishers of the nineteenth century, dramatically shaping American culture with their middle class Victorian literary products, all while serving as a model of trustworthy business in an age of anonymous market exchange. Ultimately, whether reforming the market by successfully limiting the workweek to six days, presenting an alternate vision for republican industry and community, or fostering middle class Victorian values, the key figures in Faith in Markets illustrates how Christian Business Enterprises indelibly shaped antebellum American culture.Item STAGING SACRED SPACE: A Ritual Performance History of the UMD Memorial Chapel(2017) Cyr, Renee; Frederik, Laurie; Theatre; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study addresses the interconnections between belief, ritual, and space. Through an examination of the Memorial Chapel archive, I trace the history of Memorial Chapel from its founding in 1952 through today, focusing on the tension between sacred space and secularism. In this project I examine how religious groups have created and utilized sacred space in a non-denominational chapel as well as in a nontraditional worship spaces on and around campus. This investigates how the chapel itself performs and how participants of religious life perform their faith at a public university. I examine the role of theatricality in shaping religious rituals and giving them potency. In the second part I document my ethnographic research with Lutheran Campus Ministry.Item Faithful Genres: Rhetorics of the Civil Rights Mass Meeting(2016) Miller, Elizabeth Ellis; Enoch, Jessica; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)“Faithful Genres” examines how African Americans adapted the genres of the black church during the civil rights movement. Civil rights mass meetings, as the movement’s so-called “energy machine” and “heartbeat,” serve as the project’s central site of inquiry for these meetings were themselves adaptations of the genre of the black church service. The mass meetings served as the space to draw people into the movement, encourage people toward further activism, and testify to anyone watching that the African American community was working toward desegregation, voting rights, and racial equality. In Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, “Through these meetings we were able to generate the power and depth which finally galvanized the entire Negro community.” In these weekly or sometimes even nightly meetings, participants inhabited the familiar genres of the black church, song, prayer, and testimony. As they did, they remade these genres to respond directly to white supremacy and to enact the changes they sought to create. While scholars have studied the speeches men and women such as King, Ralph Abernathy, and Fannie Lou Hamer delivered at meetings (Wilson; Selby; Holmes; Brooks), scholars have yet to examine how civil rights mass meetings functioned through a range of genres and rhetors. My study addresses this absence and invigorates this discussion to demonstrate how the other meeting genres beyond the speech—song, prayer, and testimony—functioned to create energy, sustenance, and motivation for activists. Examining these collectively enacted genres, I show how rhetors adapted song, prayer, and testimony toward strategic interventions. I also examine how activists took these same genres up outside the meetings to circulate them in broader contexts for new audiences. By recovering and defining the mass meeting as a flexible repertoire of genres and then examining the redeployment of meeting genres outside the meeting, “Faithful Genres” contributes to histories of civil rights and African American rhetorics, genre studies, and histories of religious rhetorics.Item Egyptian Pagans through Christian Eyes(2016) Juliussen-Stevenson, Heather Ann; Holum, Kenneth; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Construction of Christian identity in Egypt proceeded in pace with construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other” between the second and sixth centuries. Apologies, martyrdoms, apocalypses, histories, sermons, hagiographies, and magical texts provide several different vantage points from which to view the Christian construction of the Egyptian pagan “Other”: as the agent of anti-Christian violence, as an intellectual rival, as an object of anti-pagan violence, as an obstacle to salvation, and—perhaps most dangerously—as but another participant in a shared religious experience. The recent work of social scientists on identity, deviance, violence, social/cultural memory, and religiosity provides insight into the strategies by which construction of the “Other” was part of a larger project of fashioning a “proper” Christian religious domain.