My Dissertation

The following paragraph might show up in my dissertation. It's my partial attempt to define and explain the project:

While it does present a biographical narrative, it is not a biography per se. It is, instead, what might be called a series of case studies based on one life, all related to a wide range of topics and sub-fields of history. These include American religion, especially the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement; Native Americans, narrowed to the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, especially the Choctaws and Chickasaws; biblical studies and Christian theology; the history of Indian Territory, Oklahoma Territory, and the State of Oklahoma, especially Grady County and the towns of Silver City, Minco, and Chickasha; women's and gender history; education and educational theory in the United States; North Carolina's Coastal Plain, where Meta Chestnutt was born and raised, and the city of Nashville, Tennessee, where she attended the Peabody Normal College and the University of Nashville, and where she worked among the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches during the late 1880s.