Joseph A. Conforti's Books

Lizzie Borden on Trial

Murder, Ethnicity, and Gender

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Lizzie Borden on Trial

Murder, Ethnicity, and Gender

By: Joseph A. Conforti

Most people could probably tell you that Lizzie Borden “took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks,” but few could say that, when tried, Lizzie Borden was acquitted, and fewer still, why. In Joseph A. Conforti’s engrossing retelling, the case of Lizzie Borden, sensational in itself, also opens a window on a time and place in American history and culture. Surprising for how much it reveals about a legend so ostensibly familiar, Conforti’s account is also fascinating for what it tells us about the world that Lizzie Borden inhabited. As Conforti—himself a native of Fall River, the site of the infamous murders—introduces us to Lizzie and her father and step-mother, he shows us why who they were matters almost as much to the trial’s outcome as the actual events of August 4, 1892. Lizzie, for instance, was an unmarried woman of some privilege, a prominent religious woman who fit the profile of what some characterized as a “Protestant nun.” She was also part of a class of moneyed women emerging in the late 19th century who had the means but did not marry, choosing instead to pursue good works and at times careers in the helping professions. Many of her contemporaries, we learn, particularly those of her class, found it impossible to believe that a woman of her background could commit such a gruesome murder. As he relates the details, known and presumed, of the murder and the subsequent trial, Conforti also fills in that background. His vividly written account creates a complete picture of the Fall River of the time, as Yankee families like the Bordens, made wealthy by textile factories, began to feel the economic and cultural pressures of the teeming population of native and foreign-born who worked at the spindles and bobbins. Conforti situates Lizzie’s austere household, uneasily balanced between the well-to-do and the poor, within this social and cultural milieu—laying the groundwork for the murder and the trial, as well as the outsize reaction that reverberates to our day. As Peter C. Hoffer remarks in his preface, there are many popular and fictional accounts of this still-controversial case, “but none so readable or so well-balanced as this.”

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Page Count

256

Publisher

University Press of Kansas

Published Date

ISBN 10

0700622330

ISBN 13

9780700622337

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture

By: Joseph A. Conforti

As the charismatic leader of the wave of religious revivals known as the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) is one of the most important figures in American religious history. However, by the end of the eighteenth century, his writings were gener

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Page Count

292

Publisher

UNC Press Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807845353

ISBN 13

9780807845356

Imagining New England

Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Imagining New England

Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid-Twentieth Century

By: Joseph A. Conforti

Say "New England" and you likely conjure up an image in the mind of your listener: the snowy woods or stone wall of a Robert Frost poem, perhaps, or that quintessential icon of the region--the idyllic white village. Such images remind us that, as Joseph Conforti notes, a region is not just a territory on the ground. It is also a place in the imagination. This ambitious work investigates New England as a cultural invention, tracing the region's changing identity across more than three centuries. Incorporating insights from history, literature, art, material culture, and geography, it shows how succeeding generations of New Englanders created and broadcast a powerful collective identity for their region through narratives about its past. Whether these stories were told in the writings of Frost or Harriet Beecher Stowe, enacted in historical pageants or at colonial revival museums, or conveyed in the pages of a geography textbook or Yankee magazine, New Englanders used them to sustain their identity, revising them as needed to respond to the shifting regional landscape.

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Page Count

404

Publisher

Univ of North Carolina Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0807875066

ISBN 13

9780807875063

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Calvinism and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Calvinism and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings

By: Joseph A. Conforti

Samuel Hopkins was the closest friend and disciple of the man generally considered to be the greatest religious thinker America has produced--Jonathan Edwards. Hopkins was also a founder and leading spokesman of the New Divinity Movement, a major religious movement in New England congregationalism from 1740 to 1800. The author here combines biographical detail with a balanced and scholarly assessment of the historical and theological significance of this influential Calvinist thinker.

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Page Count

257

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1556356021

ISBN 13

9781556356025

Saints and Strangers

New England in British North America

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Saints and Strangers

New England in British North America

By: Joseph A. Conforti

A history of colonial New England, this work synthesizes the scholarship to explore how Puritan saints and "strangers" to Puritanism participated in the making of colonial New England. Aimed at general readers and college students as well as historians, it shows that New England was neither as Puritan nor as insular as most familiar stories imply.

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Page Count

252

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801882540

ISBN 13

9780801882548

Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

By: Joseph Conforti

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Hidden Places

Maine Writers on Coastal Villages, Mill Towns, and the North Country

By: Joseph Conforti

Across decades, Maine has produced nationally-recognized novelists of place-based fiction. From the late nineteenth century to the present, writers have explored the experiences of living in far-flung settings: island and coastal villages; northwoods lumbering communities; unincorporated townships; backcountry hamlets; and mill cities and towns. Taken together their body of work composes a remarkable literary map of a diverse and changing Maine. Hidden Places explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they captured at moments in time. Hidden Places traces the work of these writers to provoke readers into seeing and understanding Maine places with new awareness. These Maine writers construe place as both a territory on the ground and a country of the imagination. They help insiders see more clearly what is distinctive about their communities and encourage outsiders to better understand what might seem quaint or odd about the state. Like a well-drawn atlas, Hidden Places seeks to capture a diverse state at the granular level one representation at a time. It explores the identity of Maine through its writers and the people and places they wrote of.

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Page Count

265

Publisher

Down East Books

Published Date

ISBN 10

1608937291

ISBN 13

9781608937295

Another City Upon a Hill

A New England Memoir

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Another City Upon a Hill

A New England Memoir

By: Joseph A. Conforti

A searching portrait of a city battered by the collapse of the textile industry woven into a spirited coming of age story

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Page Count

202

Publisher

Tagus

Published Date

ISBN 10

1933227567

ISBN 13

9781933227566

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Calvinism and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Calvinism and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings

By: Joseph A. Conforti

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Page Count

257

Publisher

Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

1556356021

ISBN 13

9781556356025

Joseph Arch. The Story Of His Life

By: Joseph Arch

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Joseph Arch. The Story Of His Life

By: Joseph Arch

This book has been considered by academicians and scholars of great significance and value to literature. This forms a part of the knowledge base for future generations. So that the book is never forgotten we have represented this book in a print format as the same form as it was originally first published. Hence any marks or annotations seen are left intentionally to preserve its true nature.

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Page Count

438

Publisher

Alpha Edition

Published Date

ISBN 10

9354218555

ISBN 13

9789354218552

Book's by Joseph A. Conforti

Lizzie Borden on Trial

Lizzie Borden on Trial

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture

Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition, and American Culture

Imagining New England

Imagining New England

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Saints and Strangers

Saints and Strangers

Hidden Places

Hidden Places

Another City Upon a Hill

Another City Upon a Hill

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement

Joseph Arch. The Story Of His Life

Joseph Arch. The Story Of His Life

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