Capper Fellows: Rachel Suffern & Wan-Ning Seah

Rachel Suffern

"Fitzgerald’s Folly: Comedy, Reality, and The Immigration Debate in The Great Gatsby"

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is considered by many to be “The Great American Novel.” It is generally presumed to be a serious and tragic love story illustrating the general excesses of the Roaring Twenties and representing the elusiveness of the American Dream. However, these interpretations largely developed after Fitzgerald’s death and twenty years after the novel’s publication. Fitzgerald’s editor maintained that the book was a comedic satire, a view which has been largely ignored by Fitzgerald scholars. In 1923, while assisting with the preparation for his comedic play, The Vegetable, Fitzgerald set to work on a new project ridiculing the corrupt lives of the New York elite while keeping company with one of the most powerful women in New York, Mary Harriman Rumsey. This thesis argues that Rumsey, a prominent eugenicist whose circle was busy advocating for race-based immigration reform which would result in the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, not Zelda Fitzgerald, is the main inspiration for the character of Daisy Buchanan, and that the themes of eugenics and immigration run throughout the book.

Rachel Suffern is an M.A. student in 19th century European and early 20th century American intellectual history at North Carolina State University under the direction of Dr. K. Steven Vincent. Her research focuses on the historical context surrounding the writing of The Great Gatsby and its later popularization as both an academic subject and pop culture phenomenon. Suffern’s intent is to separate later interpretations of the novel from meanings which more accurately portray its historical context, arguing that the book’s rise in popularity after Fitzgerald’s death left it open to interpretations that were more influenced by the concerns of its interpreters rather than those prevalent during the period of its writing and that the book presents a richer, more specific, and relevant portrait of the political and social landscape of the 1920s than is usually understood, particularly regarding its critique of the Eugenics Movement.

Wan Ning Seah

“Montesquieu’s Religious Particularism: A Regime-Specific Conception of Religious Pluralism” 

Montesquieu’s stance on religion has been interpreted in two ways: he was either viewed as a critic of revealed religion in a manner typical of the Enlightenment, or a proponent of religious toleration. Those who read Montesquieu as a defender of religious toleration emphasize his belief in the social and political utility of religion. In this paper, I argue that Montesquieu’s argument for toleration should be understood in relation to distinct aspects of his political thought presented in The Spirit of the Laws, namely, his political particularism and regime pluralism. Doing so allows us to read Montesquieu as providing an account of religious pluralism and toleration that is sensitive to differences in regime type. Just as the laws and institutions of a state must fit the specific characteristics of a nation and its people, the content and scope of religious pluralism might have to be adapted to the distinctiveness of the regime.

Wan Ning Seah is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science at Duke University, specializing in political theory. Her research interests are in religious pluralism and toleration, democratic theory, ancient and early modern political thought, as well as French political thought. Her dissertation examines the relationship between religious pluralism and regime type, with a focus on how and under what conditions some regimes that do not fit neatly into the category of liberal democracy have managed to sustain religious pluralism. Her other work examines the concept of civil religion in Rousseau’s Social Contract.