A questão da terra no livro de Jó - Um estudo exegético de Jó 15

O sofrimento que aparece no livro de Jó pode ser considerado de diversas formas. Esta dissertação analisa a questão da terra como um eixo em torno do qual Jó e seus interlocutores debatem. Não se trata de um simples debate entre sábios, mas de uma situação de violência social, vitimando principalmente os pobres. Estes, não tendo como pagar os tributos exigidos pelo sistema imperial, vêem suas terras e casas invadidas, as marcas divisórias de suas propriedades mudadas, seus animais roubados e suas vidas reduzidas à escravidão. A terra está sendo violada, a injustiça é visível e o tribunal encontra-se fechado para ouvir o clamor dos injustiçados. Contemplando toda essa realidade, Jó lança seu grito de protesto. Três amigos chegam para o consolar, mas não entram a fundo na questão levantada. Elifaz e seus companheiros têm uma posição diferente da de Jó. A dissertação está organizada em três capítulos. O primeiro apresenta uma visão geral do livro de Jó, com observações necessárias em função do estudo a ser feito, com enfoque no diálogo de Elifaz, na questão da terra na Bíblia e no período persa. O segundo capítulo é dedicado à análise exegética do capítulo 15. A divisão em três partes respeita o argumento de Elifaz: a condenação às palavras de Jó, um ensinamento em relação à terra e a condenação do ímpio. O último capítulo amplia a visão da questão da terra para todo o livro de Jó e procura identificar cada um dos personagens: os estrangeiros, os ímpios, os interlocutores de Jó, os pobres e o próprio Jó. O importante é saber qual o lugar que cada um ocupa na sociedade e o que eles representam na questão da terra. (AU)

LIBERTAÇÃO NAS TRILHAS DA JUSTIÇA: Estudo histórico e hermenêutico de Isaías 42,1-4

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo propor um estudo do cântico do escravo de Javé em Isaías 42,1- 4. Javé apresenta uma nova liderança, com um novo jeito de pensar e de agir para reconstruir um mundo novo baseado no direito e na solidariedade. É uma tarefa desafiadora para mim e ao mesmo tempo uma alegria em poder compartilhar com os meus amigos o conteúdo de um texto do Antigo Testamento. Afinal, o cântico do escravo de Javé é uma fonte inesgotável de sabedoria. Saciou o povo judaíta exilado a de dois mil e quinhentos anos atrás e continua jorrando água viva até em nossos dias matando a sede de todos aqueles e aquelas que lutam pela justiça. Os versos escolhidos são frutos de uma experiência de vida concreta dos exilados desacreditados por todos no cativeiro da Babilônia. No fundo é uma crítica aos falsos deuses criados pelos poderosos para justificar um sistema de opressão. A criatividade do profeta está em retomar os eventos históricos que marcaram a vida do povo exilado e atualizá-los dentro de um novo contexto histórico. Isto demonstra sua agilidade no conhecimento. Cada palavra é pensada dentro de um contexto maior envolvendo a vida e a história. O profeta é um sábio poeta, que fala de Deus como ninguém falou antes. Utiliza símbolos, imagens e metáforas que apontam para um mundo novo que ainda não existe, onde reinará o direito, a justiça e a paz. Essa mudança acontecerá a partir da missão que a liderança eleita desempenhará junto do povo oprimido e injustiçado. O líder será como o fermento na massa para a nova sociedade, baseada na igualdade e na partilha. O espírito de Javé estará agindo sobre ele para que ele não desanime da missão e que ela possa alcançar o seu objetivo. Essa nova liderança eleita por Javé agirá discretamente em silêncio entre os pobres e enfraquecidos. A missão beneficiará primeiramente às nações. Aqueles e aquelas que vivem em terras estrangeiras como migrantes. Depois contemplará de modo especial os pobres que estão correndo risco de vida, cana rachada e pavio vacilante e por fim a missão atingirá todos os povos da terra. Essa perspectiva traduz a vontade de Deus que é a salvação de toda a humanidade.(AU)

EDUCAÇÃO E CONTROLE SOCIAL NA PRIMEIRA DÉCADA REPUBLICANA

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo o estudo da rebeldia negra nos anos antecedentes a escravidão e suas conseqüências, tanto social como educacional. O fato da Província de São Paulo ter se tornado uma grande exportadora de café fez dela um forte centro escravocrata. Não se pode negar a influência de quatro séculos de escravidão, nem tão pouco seus efeitos sobre a nação. Em 13 de maio de 1888 fora decretada a abolição, e esta medida lançou nas ruas uma multidão de negros livres sem qualquer perspectiva de futuro. Não foram preparados para viver em liberdade, a sociedade não estava organizada para recebê-los como trabalhadores livres e pagar por seu trabalho. Ao olhar de muitos eram tidos como preguiçosos, vadios e desordeiros. Nunca foram tratados como iguais, mas sim como uma raça medíocre e inferior, onde a imoralidade e os excessos chegam a um ponto irreversível, caso não sejam controlados. Diante dessa situação, fazia-se necessário traçar planos para conter os excessos e o furor da grande massa de libertos soltos pelas ruas, torna-se de extrema urgência a utilização de meios diversos a fim de manter o controle social, inculcando na mente da população negra os malefícios causados pelas revoltas, o dever de trabalhar, o abandono dos vícios. Para tanto, os intelectuais, políticos e os grandes exportadores (que representavam o poder econômico da época), passam a utilizar-se de diversos meios para propagação dos valores republicanos, jornais, conferências políticas, boletins e também o sistema educacional. Por meios de livros de leitura, artigos em revistas educacionais, adição de novas disciplinas no currículo escolar e até mesmo a ação do professor em sala de aula visavam a docilização dos costumes do povo. Os republicanos que assumiram o poder político do país não estavam apenas preocupados em educar os poucos que tinham acesso à escolarização, mas também, através do exemplo, educar e acalmar os ânimos dos negros vadios e preguiçosos que não podiam freqüentar a escola. Daí resulta tamanha preocupação com o estabelecimento de regras, organização, respeito e punições no ambiente escolar recém reestruturado (AU)

IDEOLOGIA DO TRABALHO NOS LIVROS DIDÁTICOS NA REPÚBLICA VELHA (1910-1930)

A partir de uma abordagem histórica, esta pesquisa apresenta como objetivo específico a análise da presença da ideologia do trabalho na sociedade brasileira e o modo como foi difundida nos livros didáticos no período de 1910 a 1930. O início do século XX foi marcado por grandes mudanças no Brasil. Nesta pesquisa, levaremos em conta apenas mudanças no Estado de São Paulo, que recebeu grande parte dos imigrantes europeus e concentrou muitas das indústrias brasileiras. Após a abolição da escravatura e da proclamação da República, o Brasil sofreu grandes transformações. O desenvolvimento da economia preocupava o Estado e a classe dominante, uma vez que não se encontravam indivíduos para a realização de trabalhos manuais. A sociedade ainda defendia a ideologia de que o trabalho manual era algo vergonhoso e de menos importância hierárquica. Foi então que os imigrantes foram contratados para exercer esse tipo de atividade. As péssimas condições de moradia, trabalho e participação política contribuíram para que os imigrantes reivindicassem seus direitos por meio de greves e manifestações. O governo não poderia permitir que os imigrantes com ideologias anarquistas disseminassem tais conceitos revolucionários e ideológicos no seio da massa operária e, consequentemente, na população. O Estado utilizou a educação para a inculcação de novas ideologias sobre a importância do trabalho, sustentando que o operário deveria cumprir suas obrigações dentro das indústrias sem questionar. Para tanto, era necessário que a escola adotasse algum tipo de material didático que difundisse ideologias a respeito do amor ao trabalho. Desde então, o livro didático foi utilizado como um forte transmissor destas ideologias: ele não foi usado como um simples material de apoio pedagógico, mas, sim, como um difusor de ideologias da classe dominante.

Maria W. Stewart: America's first Black feminist

Maria W. Stewart was the first American-born and the first African-American woman known to address a mixed audience, from 1831 to 1833, and publish her essays and speeches. The purpose of this thesis is to examine Maria W. Stewart's acts of defiance--as the first public representation of Black Feminism: demanding that white America end slavery and grant rights to black men and women, re-appropriating the hegemonic, patriarchal codes which have significant social power by exposing their inconsistencies and deconstructing their ideologies, voicing the truth about the status of African-American women in early nineteenth-century America, and challenging Black women to become entrepreneurs and (as she did) acquire an education, establish schools, and take an active role in their community. ^

Autonomy and authority in the lives of children who work as domestic servants in Ghana

Limited literature exists on Ghana's child domestic servants, and researchers have found it difficult to locate and study these children. The research for this dissertation used qualitative research methodologies and non-probabilistic sampling techniques to make it possible to interview child domestic servants, their parents, employers and recruiters in Ghana. The findings from the qualitative analyses informed the second part of this study, which was quantitative and tested hypotheses using crosstabulations and logistic regression analyses that were based on survey data from the Ghana Statistical Service. Explanatory variables in the quantitative analyses included lineage, level of education and relationships to the household head. ^ This study located findings about the processes of children's recruitment into domestic servitude, their working conditions and methods of remuneration in theories of slavery to answer the question of whether or not child domestic servants are slaves. According to the findings, elite households in Ghana exploit children from rural regions because they have taken advantage of a historical practice that allowed children to live with older members of their extended families to provide domestic services and in return, be given the chance to receive formal education or to learn a trade. The participants in the qualitative part of this research described the treatments that they receive from their employers as slavery. Nevertheless, the processes of their recruitment and the age at which most of them accepted such job offers made it difficult to categorize a majority of them as contemporary slaves. ^

El discurso del poder y la lucha de contrarios en la narrativa de la esclavitud en Cuba y Estados Unidos

This dissertation explores the behavior of prejudiced discourse in the most representative narratives against inhumane slavery written in Cuba and the United States in the nineteenth century: Autobiografía de un esclavo, by Juan Francisco Manzano; Francisco, by Anselmo Suárez y Romero; Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, by Frederick Douglass; and Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriett Beecher Stowe. This study deals with the identification between race and slavery that occurred in the American continent, using racial prejudice to justify the enslavement of human beings. Such concepts were maintained, diffused and perpetuated by the dominant discourse. ^ In the nineteenth century, intellectuals from both Cuba and the United States were highly influenced by the modern philosophical ideas rooted in the European Enlightenment. These ideas contradicted by principle the "peculiar institution" of slavery, which supported a great deal of the economy of both nations. This conflict of principles was soon reflected in literature and led to the founding of Cuban and African-American narrative respectively. The common exposure to slavery brought together two nations otherwise highly dissimilar in historical and cultural circumstances. Based on the theories of discourse by Foucault, Terdiman, and van Dijk, the analysis of the discourse displayed in these literary works helps understand how discourse is utilized to subvert the dominant discourse without being expelled or excluded by it. This subversion was successfully accomplished in the American narratives, while only attempted in the Cuban works, given Cuba's colonial status and the compromised economic loyalties of the Delmontino cenacle which produced these works. ^

Escravo moderno em discurso: figuras de ação e ação em discurso nas representações do agir humano

This work has as object of study a social practice: modern slavery of workers in the sugar cane, and aims to present a reflection on maintenance, eradication or modification of this practice. This reflection bases itself upon the concepts of discourse advocated by Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2001, 2003, 2006 and Chouliaraki; Fairclough, 1999) associated with Sociodiscursive Interactionism (Bronckart, 1999, 2006, 2008), and the concept of action figures, proposed by Bulea (2010). We follow the five steps outlined in Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999): a) emphasis on a social problem, b) introduction and discussion of obstacles to tackle the problem, c) considerations concern the problem in practice d) identifying possible ways to past the obstacles, and e) reflection about the analyst role within the problem. In order to achieve step (b) in its discourse materiality axis, it has been identified the thematic content, discourse types, enunciative mechanisms and action figures of testimonials of sugar cane workers and other subjects involved with the problem in the documentaries Bagaço (2006, and Tabuleiro de Cana, Xadrez de Cativeiro (2006). These documentaries bring to the screen a little of sugar cane workers reality within an overexploitation, human rights disrespects and forced work. The analysis of textual/discursive aspects of testimonials has shown the ways in which the (de)construction of the representation of sugar cane action allows understanding of how the problem emerges and how it is rooted in the organization of social life. The general result of this reflection point to the internalization of social practices deep-rooted in evaluations of the sugar cane worker subjective world and from social world values, opinions and rules. The results also show that, in their discourse, workers assume their slavery sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, but only suggest a reaction against the oppression imposed on them because they have internalized and naturalized their enslavement.

Escravo moderno em discurso: figuras de ação e ação em discurso nas representações do agir humano

This work has as object of study a social practice: modern slavery of workers in the sugar cane, and aims to present a reflection on maintenance, eradication or modification of this practice. This reflection bases itself upon the concepts of discourse advocated by Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2001, 2003, 2006 and Chouliaraki; Fairclough, 1999) associated with Sociodiscursive Interactionism (Bronckart, 1999, 2006, 2008), and the concept of action figures, proposed by Bulea (2010). We follow the five steps outlined in Chouliaraki and Fairclough (1999): a) emphasis on a social problem, b) introduction and discussion of obstacles to tackle the problem, c) considerations concern the problem in practice d) identifying possible ways to past the obstacles, and e) reflection about the analyst role within the problem. In order to achieve step (b) in its discourse materiality axis, it has been identified the thematic content, discourse types, enunciative mechanisms and action figures of testimonials of sugar cane workers and other subjects involved with the problem in the documentaries Bagaço (2006, and Tabuleiro de Cana, Xadrez de Cativeiro (2006). These documentaries bring to the screen a little of sugar cane workers reality within an overexploitation, human rights disrespects and forced work. The analysis of textual/discursive aspects of testimonials has shown the ways in which the (de)construction of the representation of sugar cane action allows understanding of how the problem emerges and how it is rooted in the organization of social life. The general result of this reflection point to the internalization of social practices deep-rooted in evaluations of the sugar cane worker subjective world and from social world values, opinions and rules. The results also show that, in their discourse, workers assume their slavery sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, but only suggest a reaction against the oppression imposed on them because they have internalized and naturalized their enslavement.

Entre as tramas da indústria da moda: argumentos sobre o trabalho escravo contemporâneo na sociedade de consumo

Even after its abolition, the slave labor still exists in the world. In a new socio-historic context, the shackles and slave quarters have been left behind, nowadays the workers are tempted, subjected to degrading conditions and have their rights retrenched. The contemporary slave labor has been emerging as subject of research in the Organizational Studies since the early 2000s, calling attention to many gaps to be filled about the way organizations all around the world use this practice. Contemporary slave labor is found in many and various economic activities, since coal to textile industries or even stores. In this dissertation, we have incorporated the consumption dimension to the field of Organizational Studies, discussing the modern slavery, aiming to understand the consumers’ point of view about this topic, that is, we have researched the consumers’ interpretations concerning the slave labor in the fashion industry. Our objective is to analyze consumer’s argumentative construction in the decision of buying or not products made by industries from the fashion field that were denounced because of slave labor usage. We have adopted fashion industry as research focus because it obscures the reflection of the consumers that feel like in a new world while shopping, a world of beauty and fantasy, seeking their own satisfaction. Furthermore, the Brazilian fashion industry is one of the biggest of the world (ABIT, 2015), with a huge symbolic strength in the country. We have realized a qualitative research using semi-structured interviews with 35 consumers to identify their arguments according to the criteria defined by Liakopoulos (2002): data, propositions, guarantees, supports and refutations. The data are the statements used by the interviewees categorically, that is, those which are clear in the interviews. The propositions are what qualifies and justifies the used data. The guarantees are related to the nature of the data, they are what gives the sense to the data and are introduced implicitly in the interviewee speech. The supports are universal premises introduced in order to legitimate the arguments. The refutations, when present, counter the used arguments. As results, we’ve found consumers who developed arguments pro-consumption and anti-consumption and who have defended ideas about the responsibility of different actors for the existence of this practice and for the fight against it. From these two categories: (1) pro-consumption – consume despite the complaints and (2) anti-consumption – don’t consume, because of the accusations; we have identified the following argumentative lines: skepticism, faultfinding and moral engagement. By the end, we have presented the interviewees’ argumentative construction and the obtained results.

A Fraternidade como categoria política: princípio anunciado na educação brasileira

This dissertation has had the goal of understanding and discussing how the fraternity category is presented in the main Brazilian education laws after the promulgation of the 1988 Federal Constitution. The systematization of a theoretical base about the fraternity category in its relation with de Brazilian education regulatory landmarks has allowed the proposition of elements of this category. The process of building the theoretical references of this research was written from a historical recuperation of the French Revolution, taking into account the triad of its main principles, “liberty, equality, and fraternity”, as civic and political values. Likewise, the Haitian Revolution was considered because of the symbolic role this revolution played on the concretization of the triad through the slave and black people’s struggle whose aims were both participation in the colony’s power positions and in the abolishing of slavery. The modernity and post modernity issues, as well as the concepts of citizenship and human rights, are also took as theoretical references in order to identify characteristics and connections of each one of those themes and concepts with the fraternity as a political category. This analysis has allowed the elaboration and systematization of the fraternity category and its constitutive elements: the universality which is directly connected to the local and regional issues; the mondialization as a counter-argument to the globalization which is seen exclusively in its economic dimension; the participative democracy as alternative way to the representative democracy; the “alteridade” (a kind of altruism) due to its specific way to recognize the other one as someone pretty much like me; and the diversity which consider the multicultural perspective and the necessity of building unity. It was possible to identify that the first two elements of the triad, liberty and equality, were the most import ones over the so called modernity period when the triad was put in the second place or only in its religious dimension. The post modernity, in turn, has brought to light the fraternity due to its constitutive elements. It was also possible to highlight the citizenship as a modernity landmark and the human rights as an idea marked by the fraternity and directly linked with the post modernity. From this theoretical frame it was made an analysis of the legal instruments that organize and regulate the Brazilian education: the 1998 Federal Constitution; the Statute for Children and Adolescents; the National Brazilian Education Law; and the National Education Plan. All these legal instruments were discussed based on their relation with the fraternity as a political category and through the identification of its main constitutive elements. The methodological way was put into practice mainly through the qualitative dimension, especially the Bardin’s content analysis. The dissertation has permitted to emphasize that the fraternity as political category was not a forgotten principle in the Brazilian education legislation, but a principle not formally and textually declared yet.

Black Femininity through the White Speculum: The Implications of Medicosocialism and the Disproportionate Regulation of Black Women’s Reproductive Autonomy

At the crux of health disparities for women of color lies a history of maltreatment based on racial difference from their white counterparts. It is their non-whiteness that limits their access to the ideologies of “woman” and “femininity” within dominant culture. As the result of this difference, the impact of the birth control movement varied among women based on race. This project explores how the ideology attributed to the black female body limited black women’s access to “womanhood” within dominant culture, and analyzes the manners in which their reproductive autonomy was compromised as the result of changes to that ideology through time. This project operates under the hypothesis that black women’s access to certain aspects of femininity such as domesticity and motherhood reflected their roles in slave society, that black women’s reproductive value was based on the value of black children within slave culture, and that both of these factors dictated the manner in which their reproductive autonomy was managed by health professionals. Black people’s worth as a free labor force within dominant culture diminished when the Reconstruction Amendments were added to the constitution and slavery was deemed unconstitutional—resulting in the paradigmatic shift from the promotion of black fertility to its recession. America’s transition to the medicosocial regulation of black fertility through Eugenics, the role of the black elite in the movement, and the negative impact of this agenda on the reproductive autonomy of black women from low socioeconomic backgrounds are enlisted as support. The paper goes on to draw connections between post-slavery ideology of black femininity and modern-day medicosocial occurrences within clinical settings in order to advocate for increased bias training for medical professionals as a means of combating current health disparities. It concludes with the possibility that this improvement in medical training could persuade people of color to seek out medical intervention at earlier stages of illness and obtain regular check-ups by actively countering physicians’ past transgressions against them.

Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon: A 19th Century Confederacy of Creole Fugitive Fables

In my thesis, “Commandeering Aesop’s Bamboo Canon: A 19th Century Confederacy of Creole Fugitive Fables,” I ask and answer the ‘Who? What? Where? When? Why?” of Creole Literature using the 19th century production of Aesopian fables as clues to resolve a set of linguistic, historical, literary, and geographical enigmas pertaining the ‘birth-place(s)’ of Creolophone Literatures in the Caribbean Sea, North and South America, as well as the Indian Ocean. Focusing on the fables in Martinique (1846), Reunion Island (1826), and Mauritius (1822), my thesis should read be as an attempt capture the links between these islands through the creation of a particular archive defined as a cartulary-chronicle, a diplomatic codex, or simply a map in which I chart and trace the flight of the founding documents relating to the lives of the individual authors, editors, and printers in order to illustrate the articulation of a formal and informal confederation that enabled the global and local institutional promotion of Creole Literature. While I integrate various genres and multi-polar networks between the authors of this 19th century canon comprised of sacred and secular texts such as proclamations, catechisms, and proverbs, the principle literary genre charted in my thesis are collections of fables inspired by French 17th century French Classical fabulist, Jean de la Fontaine. Often described as the ‘matrix’ of Creolophone Literature, these blues and fables constitute the base of the canon, and are usually described as either ‘translated,’ ‘adapted,’ and even ‘cross-dressed’ into Creole in all of the French Creolophone spaces. My documentation of their transnational sprouting offers proof of an opaque canonical formation of Creole popular literature. By constituting this archive, I emphasize the fact that despite 200 years of critical reception and major developments and discoveries on behalf of Creole language pedagogues, literary scholars, linguists, historians, librarians, archivist, and museum curators, up until now not only have none have curated this literature as a formal canon. I also offer new empirical evidence in order to try and solve the enigma of “How?” the fables materially circulated between the islands, and seek to come to terms with the anonymous nature of the texts, some of which were published under pseudonyms. I argue that part of the confusion on the part of scholars has been the result of being willfully taken by surprise or defrauded by the authors, or ‘bamboozled’ as I put it. The major paradigmatic shift in my thesis is that while I acknowledge La Fontaine as the base of this literary canon, I ultimately bypass him to trace the ancient literary genealogy of fables to the infamous Aesop the Phrygian, whose biography – the first of a slave in the history of the world – and subsequent use of fables reflects a ‘hidden transcript’ of ‘masked political critique’ between ‘master and slave classes’ in the 4th Century B.C.E. Greece.

This archive draws on, connects and critiques the methodologies of several disciplinary fields. I use post-colonial literary studies to map the literary genealogies Aesop; use a comparative historical approach to the abolitions of slavery in both the 19th century Caribbean and the Indian Ocean; and chart the early appearance of folk music in early colonial societies through Musicology and Performance Studies. Through the use of Sociolinguistics and theories of language revival, ecology, and change, I develop an approach of ‘reflexive Creolistics’ that I ultimately hope will offer new educational opportunities to Creole speakers. While it is my desire that this archive serves linguists, book collectors, and historians for further scientific inquiry into the innate international nature of Creole language, I also hope that this innovative material defense and illustration of Creole Literature will transform the consciousness of Creolophones (native and non-native) who too remain ‘bamboozled’ by the archive. My goal is to erase the ‘unthinkability’ of the existence of this ancient maritime creole literary canon from the collective cultural imaginary of readers around the globe.

Frederick Douglass and Ireland, 1845: The "Vertiginous Twist[s]" of an Irish Encounter

Frederick Douglas was a reader of and writer on the nineteenth-century political and social texts and contexts of oppression, which he experienced at home and witnesed while in Ireland and Britain, 1845-47. This thesis is unique in its identification of several surprising lacunae in the research and critical evaluation of Frederick Douglass’ activities of reading and writing and the texts and contexts that supported these activities. This thesis takes Douglass’ relationship with Ireland and the Irish as its starting point, and offers several moments in the transnational space engendered by Douglass’ readerly and writerly experience of the transatlantic axes of Ireland, Britain and America. This thesis draws upon archival research to recover information regarding Douglass’ trip and subjects his reading and writing on Ireland and the Irish to the critical rigours of narratolgical, cultural and discourse analysis. One lacuna is Douglass’ favourite and neglected school primer, the Columbian Orator, which Douglass signified upon across his autobiographical project. The speech by the Irish patriot and exile, Arthur O’Connor, included in the Orator, is crucial to Douglass’ understanding and expression of justice and equality. Genette’s narratological analysis gives theoretical traction to the ways in which, in his autobiographical representations of his British trip, Douglass recalibrates his autobiographies to reflect his changing perspectives on his life and work. Contrary to popular assumptions, Douglass did, in two letters to Garrison address and comment on Irish poverty. This thesis interrogates the strategic anglophilia of these letters. While the World’s Temperance Convention (WTC) refused to discuss African- American slavery, analysis of Douglass’ speech in Covent Garden and of the paratextual apparatus of the published proceedings of the WTC demonstrates the impossibility of separating these closely interrelated reform causes. When a newly discovered poem from Waterford that admonished the city for its disregard for Douglass’ message is juxtaposed with an uncomfortable moment in Cork, we understand that Douglass became a pawn to bolster sectarian rivalries between nationalist and establishment factions. Though Douglass believed imperial politics was the best vehicle for modernity, he recognised that it had failed Ireland: consequently, in Thoughts and Recollections of a Trip to Ireland (1886), he advocates for Home Rule for Ireland.