"A Lock(e)down on American Scandal: The Term's Peculiar Relation to Property"

This thesis examines how scandals have shaped the American cultural and political scene from its founding moments to the present. The provocation is offered that public scandals derive value from liberal notions of private property, ownership, and personhood, illustrated by way of a far-reaching examination of what the the thesis terms the “founding scandal” of the Jefferson-Hemings affair and miscegenation, as well as the affair's subsequent reiterations in the news, literature, and on television.