Untenanted lives: involuntary childlessness in nineteenth-century America

As the expectation for married women to become mothers took on a new importance in nineteenth-century America, the relationship between mother and child was constantly exalted not only in the abundance of prescriptive literature, but also by the medical profession. The discourses of true womanhood and motherhood expressed by physicians and social commentators dictated much of the culturally condoned behaviour and everyday life of middleclass women. This thesis asks how involuntarily childless women embodied their roles in society as the ideal of true womanhood became so strongly characterised by motherhood. Through an interdisciplinary methodology that combines the analysis of archival sources with readings of fictional texts, memoirs and biographies, embedded within histories of a variety of social phenomena – nineteenth-century gynaecology, invalidism, mourning, adoption, and divorce – this thesis provides a socio-cultural analysis of gender and intimacy in late nineteenth-century America. It also examines the various means by which childless women filled their lives, carving out alternative means of existence in a socially prescribed environment of parenthood. The involuntarily childless women considered in this thesis found ways to tenant their lives in the absence of longed-for children. From theatrical performance to adoption, education to art, and from the strengthening of marital relations to their demise, this thesis explores the actions these women took in their marriages to negotiate their identities as childless individuals in a culture of motherhood

Introduction

Introduction to the annual Casebook Review issue

Category O for Takiff Lie algebras

We study category $\mathcal{O}$ for Takiff Lie algebras $\mathfrak{g} \otimes \mathbb{C}[\epsilon]/(\epsilon^2)$ where $\mathfrak{g}$ is the Lie algebra of a reductive algebraic group over $\mathbb{C}$. We decompose this category as a direct sum of certain subcategories and use an analogue of parabolic induction functors and twisting functors for BGG category $\mathcal{O}$ to prove equivalences between these subcategories. We then use these equivalences to compute the composition multiplicities of the simple modules in the Verma modules in terms of composition multiplicities in the BGG category $\mathcal{O}$ for reductive subalgebras of $\mathfrak{g}$. We conclude that the composition multiplicities are given in terms of the Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials.Comment: 25 pages. Comments welcom

Category for truncated current Lie algebras

In this paper, we study an analogue of the Bernstein–Gelfand–Gelfand category O for truncated current Lie algebras gn attached to a complex semisimple Lie algebra. This category admits Verma modules and simple modules, each parametrized by the dual space of the truncated currents on a choice of Cartan subalgebra in g. Our main result describes an inductive procedure for computing composition multiplicities of simples inside Vermas for gn, in terms of similar composition multiplicities for ln−1 where l is a Levi subalgebra. As a consequence, these numbers are expressed as integral linear combinations of Kazhdan–Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1. This generalizes recent work of the first author, where the case n=1 was treated

Modular Representations of Truncated current Lie algebras

In this paper we consider the structure and representation theory of truncated current algebras $\mathfrak{g}_m = \mathfrak{g}[t]/(t^{m+1})$ associated to the Lie algebra $\mathfrak{g}$ of a standard reductive group over a field of positive characteristic. We classify semisimple and nilpotent elements and describe their associated support varieties. Next, we prove various Morita equivalences for reduced enveloping algebras, including a reduction to nilpotent $p$-characters, analogous to a famous theorem of Friedlander--Parshall. We go on to give precise upper bounds for the dimensions of simple modules for all $p$-characters, and give lower bounds on these dimensions for homogeneous $p$-characters. We then develop the theory of baby Verma modules for homogeneous $p$-characters and, whenever the $p$-character has standard Levi type, we give a full classification of the simple modules. In particular we classify all simple modules with homogeneous $p$-characters for $\mathfrak{g}_m$ when $\mathfrak{g} = \mathfrak{gl}_n$. Finally, we compute the Cartan invariants for the restricted enveloping algebra $U_0(\mathfrak{g}_m)$ and show that they can be described by precise formulae depending on decomposition numbers for $U_0(\mathfrak{g})$.Comment: 25 pages, comments welcom

Category O\mathcal{O} for truncated current Lie algebras

In this paper we study an analogue of the Bernstein--Gelfand--Gelfand category $\mathcal{O}$ for truncated current Lie algebras $\mathfrak{g}_n$ attached to a complex semisimple Lie algebra. This category admits Verma modules and simple modules, each parametrised by the dual space of the truncated currents on a choice of Cartan subalgebra in $\mathfrak{g}$. Our main result describes an inductive procedure for computing composition multiplicities of simples inside Vermas for $\mathfrak{g}_n$, in terms of similar composition multiplicities for $\mathfrak{l}_{n-1}$ where $\mathfrak{l}$ is a Levi subalgebra. As a consequence, these numbers are expressed as integral linear combinations of Kazhdan--Lusztig polynomials evaluated at 1. This generalises recent work of the first author, where the case $n = 1$ was treated.Comment: 19 page

Theatre as a Medium to Discover a Pedagogy of Activism

This study revisits two data sets, narratives from theatre artists exploring sexual identity and interviews with participants from queer theatre festivals, to explore experiences of activism within the participants’ reflections