Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Understanding The Afghan Diaspora: Exploring The Factors Driving Migration And The Impact Of Migration Policies On Recent Afghan Evacuees Resettling In The United States, Aya H. Mohamed

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Afghanistan has been at war with the West since the late 1900’s, remaining in a state of constant turmoil. During the Cold War (1979), Afghanistan had fought a war with the Soviet Union, known as the Soviet- Afghan War. During this time, Afghanistan was invaded by both the Soviet and US, creating a ground for terrorism and the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan. In order to then eradicate the terrorist regime, the Taliban, the United States went to war with Afghanistan in 2001. The Taliban were suppressed by U.S. forces until August 2021, during which President Biden executed a …

Reflections Across Religions: A Historical Examination Of Common Themes In Zoroastrianism, Judaism, And Christianity, Jason Heckert

Graduate Theses

In the sixth century BCE, the largest empire in the world at the time, the Persian Empire, adopted a monotheistic religion that was based on the teachings of a prophet named Zoroaster. As one of the world’s oldest religions, Zoroastrianism impacted the beliefs and traditions of Judaism and early Christianity. Similarities among these religions include the ideas of hierarchy among good and evil spirits, actions on earth determining one’s place in an afterlife, apocalyptic themes, and dualism. Zoroastrian beliefs found their way into early Christian culture. The remnants of Zoroastrianism in mainstream Christianity underscores the influence of that ancient Persian …

Women And Religion In The Mongol Empire, Karlie Barnett

History Undergraduate Honors Theses

Aspects of the Mongol Empire have been well studied in academia, but these analyses, like much of our recording and analysis of world history overall, have largely excluded women. This thesis seeks to contribute to the effort to restore women to Mongol history, focusing on how the relationship between Mongol women and religion impacted the development of the Mongol Empire and Eurasian religions during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With a focus on elite women due to the nature of the sources, I draw upon historical chronicles, traveler accounts, artwork, and contributions from scholars in this field to assert that …

The People Of Seljuq Baghdad, 1069-1089, Henry Stratakis-Allen

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In recent years, scholars of the Islamic Middle East have fiercely debated the nature and underlying causes of the so-called ‘Sunni Revival’, a period of Sunni political resurgence and theological consolidation centered around the city of Baghdad that lasted throughout the eleventh century. Despite the importance of this period, which witnessed the crystallization of mainstream Islamic thought as it is known to the present, scholars have been unable to synthesize its phenomena into a single convincing narrative. This shortcoming is owed largely to scholars lacking a robust structural understanding of Islamic society during this period, particularly with respect to Baghdad. …

Was Ist (Nicht) Deutsch? Historische Und Aktuelle Versuche "Deutsch" Ex Negativo Zu Definieren, Mark Mckinney Smith

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

In this thesis I explore the question of how a xenophobic ideology could find a receptive audience in 21st Century Germany. Given extensive postwar efforts in Germany to address the Nazi Period, this question is of particular interest. I analyze and compare racist and xenophobic ideologies in four time periods: the Napoleonic Period, the Wilhelmine Period, the National Socialist Period and the contemporary period. Historically, xenophobic ideology is deeply tied to particular social and economic conditions which leads to the following questions: What are the similarities and differences between contemporary xenophobic messaging and that of the three other time periods …

Discovering Dune: Essays On Frank Herbert’S Epic Saga., Edited By Dominic J. Nardi And N. Trevor Brierly, G. Connor Salter

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

G. Connor Salter reviews Discovering Dune: Essays on Frank Herbert’s Epic Saga, edited by Dominic J. Nardi and N. Trevor Brierly, considering its new contributions to studies of Frank Herbert's work. Essays included fit into four categories (Politics and Power, History and Religion, Biology and Ecology, and Philosophy, Choice and Ethics) and range from Herbert's use of ecology in Dune to how game theory may help explain certain characters' apparent ability to see the future. Discovering Dune also includes an appendix which contains the only up-to-date bibliography of Herbert's work (primary and secondary sources).

Out Of Exile: The Evolution Of Moroccan Jewishness, Yana Levy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Morocco once had the largest Jewish population of any Islamic country, but in 1948 the creation of the Israeli state drew Jews out of Morocco in massive numbers. Since then the Jews have a ghostly presence, spoken about but hardly seen. Curiously, the void left by their flight has been filled by a conscious effort on the part of Moroccan historical institutions to retain the presence of Jews in collective memory. Well maintained sites, and spaces such as the Jewish quarter that are linked to Jewish presence continue to contribute to a discourse which presents Moroccan and Jewish histories as …

Tunisia: The Colonized Road To A Democratic Identity, Kara Broene

Graduate Research Conference (GSIS)

The death of one Tunisian man by self-immolation in 2010 created uprisings in 18 other Arab countries in what is known as the 2011 Arab Spring. As a result, Tunisia managed to overthrow its long-standing autocratic government and establish a democracy; it is the only nation who has managed to maintain those changes since 2011. As the first point of protest and the only success story, what makes Tunisia different from the other 18 nations? While there has been research on why Tunisia has succeeded, there is little on how Tunisia’s colonial history under France for 75 years might have …

David Versus Goliath: The Power Of Weakness In Asymmetric Warfare—Lessons From History, Nicholas K. Petaludis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Under what conditions do violent nonstate actors (VNA) succeed against states? Why does David sometimes beat Goliath? Since at least the time of Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars, the realist narrative in international relations measures power primarily in relative, coercive, and deterrent terms. Strong states should accordingly face fewer constraints and enjoy more options while pursuing their national interests. Unconventional warfare, and its subsets of terrorism and insurgency, should—given these circumstances, end in VNA failure. Sometimes, however, VNAs find success. By comparing the literature on historical and current case studies, I propose that a set of preconditions and two mechanisms …

Bagdad On Fire, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Bagdad on Fire (2023), directed by Karrar Al-Azzawi.

Joonam, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Joonam (2023), directed by Sierra Urich.

Engl 157: Great Works Of Global Literature, Scott R. Kapuscinski

Open Educational Resources

Syllabus for a general education course bringing together celebrated texts by Joseph Conrad, Chinua Achebe, Bessie Head, and Marjane Satrapi. Survey of perspectives beginning during the "scramble for Africa" via Conrad, through postcolonial writers Achebe and Head, and finally making a connection via dehumanization to Orientalism and undoing monocultural presumptions in the near East through Satrapi's Persepolis.

Regulating Change In Historic Cairo, Amina Abdel-Halim

Faculty Journal Articles

Renovation and conservation projects in Historic Cairo fall within a complex legal framework, which sometimes does more to hinder development than to promote it.

Away From Home: William Gifford Palgrave's Letters From India, 1847-1848, David E. Latane

English Publications

William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888) became one of the great Victorian travelers, immortalized in a poem by Alfred Tennyson, “To Ulysses,” in 1888. The letters transcribed here are the record of his first voyage outward in 1847 as an Ensign in the 8th Bombay regiment of native infantry, just after his graduating with a First from Oxford. The letters are found in volume 5 of the Palgrave papers (British Library Add. MS 45738). The first letter is to his mother, dated 28 January 1847 from “Off Cape Mondego” in Portugal, and it describes life on board an outbound steamer. The last …

Cultural Perceptions Of Janissaries In The Ottoman Empire And Beyond, Meghana Garcia

Scripps Senior Theses

The Janissaries of the Ottoman Empire were a group of Christian slave soldiers. They had political and social control in the imperial court and were also formidable soldiers who were successful in battle due to their highly organized structure. They were subjects of many travel journals, memoirs, accounts, and works of art that originated both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire. This thesis argues that in accounts originating from both inside and outside the Ottoman Empire, Janissaries are described as ruthless and powerful. Further examinations reveal that these accounts, despite their frequent negative connotations, are rooted in admiration and envy …

Ambush, Reprisal, Riot, Revolt, And Reform: The Transnational Evolution Of British Colonial Policing In Ireland And The Palestine Mandate, 1918-1948, Tyler Kickler Krahe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

This dissertation looks at the changes in British colonial policing between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate from 1918 and 1948. This time period covers the duration of the Anglo-Irish War, as well as Britain’s mandatory control of Palestine. It is the argument of this work that from 1918 to 1936, between Ireland and the Palestine Mandate, British colonial police forces demonstrated a pattern of evolving police training, practice, and organization, spurred on by violent action and followed by attempts at reform. This pattern continued until the Arab Revolt of 1936 when the police forces in the Palestine Mandate abandoned attempts …

Global Issues In A Globalized World: The Unescapable Dialogue Between SharīʿA And The Constitution, Paolo Davide Farah

Book Chapters

In an increasingly globalized world, a world in flux, which is constantly subject to rapid circulation of information, change is a dimension that we all experience in our lives with ever increasing frequency. Change, be it that of customs and fashion or that of laws and systems of government, is something which now seems impossible to escape. Change is an integral part of our unstable contemporaneity.

This is not only a continuous change but also a rapid one. In such a social and political environment, at a global and local level, it is more and more difficult to find a …

Contagion, Causality, And Circumspection In A Late-Mamluk Digest Of Natural Philosophy, Joseph Leonardo Vignone

History Faculty Scholarship

Like many men born to scholarly families at the turn of the fifteenth century, ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Ayyūb al-Qādirī moved from Damascus to Cairo as a young adult to pursue a career in law. Though this legal career soon foundered, Ibn Ayyūb gained a reputation in Cairo for perfectly embodying the pietistic and professional ideals of the Islamic learned elite, or ulama. In this article, I introduce this hitherto unstudied figure of the late Mamluk era with reference to his treatise on a major scholarly debate of his day: the extent to which natures, or the elemental composition of celestial …

Collaborative Constructions: Designing High School History Curriculum With The Lost & Found Game Series, Owen Gottlieb, Shawn Clybor

Articles

This chapter addresses design research and iterative curriculum design for the Lost & Found games series. The Lost & Found card-to-mobile series is set in Fustat (Old Cairo) in the twelfth century and focuses on religious laws of the period. The first two games focus on Moses Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, a key Jewish law code. A new expansion module which was in development at the time of the fieldwork described in this article that introduces Islamic laws of the period, and a mobile prototype of the initial strategy game has been developed with support National Endowment for the Humanities. The …

Bombay Cinema’S Islamicate Histories, Amanda Lanzillo

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Ira Bhaskar and Richard Allen, eds., Bombay Cinema’s Islamicate Histories (Intellect Ltd, 2022).

The Storytelling Cure: Medicine And Narrative From Galen To Shahrazad And Rousseau, Ryan A. Milov-Cordoba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Are stories healing? This dissertation introduces and explores an idea that I call “the storytelling cure.” With this term I capture a set of related notions about the healing power of stories that span literary studies, intellectual history, philosophy, and medical practice. Through a comparative study I make the case for “the storytelling cure” as a cross-cultural, multiconfessional, and multilingual phenomenon of great age, complexity, and power, worthy of the most sustained attention by the contemporary field of Comparative Literature. Concretely, this dissertation presents three extended case studies of “storytelling cures” from three different kinds of texts (case history, frame …

The Battle Of Tours Reconsidered, Paul Aitchison

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

This paper examines the Battle of Tours/Poitiers in 732 between the Merovingian Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, and the Umayyad governor-general of al-Andalus in modern-day Spain, Abdul Rahman Al-Ghafiqi. Since the pivotal works of Sir Edward Gibbons were published in 1776, the battle has been seen as keeping Europe from falling completely to Islam. More recent scholarship highlights the battle as pivotal in Charles's quest to consolidate power in his ultimately successful bid to create a new power in western Europe, the Carolingian dynasty, which would eventually be created in the crowning as the Holy Roman Empire his grandson, …

Coping With Trauma: Evidence That Suggests The Ancient Egyptians Used Transpersonal Psychology To Cope With Birth-Related Trauma, Erika Kelley

History in the Making

Giving birth in the ancient world was very difficult, stressful, and dangerous with many mothers and children sadly not surviving the ordeal. To deal with this often-traumatic event, many ancient Egyptians used rituals, tools, and spells to ensure that their deities would be present during these difficult times and help either physically or mentally. For the ancient Egyptians, interacting with their gods was a way to ensure their survival, but in modernity, relying on religious or spiritual practices during stressful events correlates with psychology. Modern scholars have named this idea transpersonal psychology, and it is a subsection of humanistic psychology …

The Levant: France’S Colonial Crucible, Michael Adelson

French Summer Fellows

In the medieval era of religious and political tumult that culminated with the Crusades, (mostly) Roman Catholic Western European citizens from all walks of life committed themselves to conquer Jerusalem and wrest control of historically Christian lands from the Muslim polities that claimed the region. The historical Kingdom of France was a major contributor to the Crusades, and as such, the feudal realms established in the Levant in the wake of the First Crusade were dominated by former French crusaders and citizenry. The geographic boundaries and demography of these Crusader States are reminiscent of French hegemony in the Middle East …

Waqf In Transition: Tracing Local Institutional Change During The British Mandate In Palestine, Zachary Murray

Theses and Dissertations

The British Mandate’s actions of state-building in Palestine were informed by a Zionist-Western modernist envisioned past of Palestine. This state-building ideology was embedded within much of the bureaucracy of the Mandate’s system and infringed on numerous Palestinian institutions such as Waqf. Waqf was disenfranchised in particular through the implementation of urban development programs, like town planning and archaeological regimes, which sought to support the British-Zionist recasting of Palestine.

This thesis aims to show how the British’s ideology of Palestine informed the Mandate’s internal polices and actions which infringed on the rights of waqf. This was done through two axes of …

An Analysis Of International Soccer Fans’ Knowledge Of Qatar, Perceptions Of Qatar’S Country Image, And Intention To Support The 2022 Fifa World Cup, Taleb Al-Adbah

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

International sporting competitions have become an essential tool for countries to promote a favorable image of themselves around the world. This study focuses on the FIFA 2022 World Cup, which will be hosted by Qatar - the first Arab country ever to host the event. Since 2010, when Qatar was awarded the FIFA 2022 World Cup, several studies have shown that soccer fans are hesitant to attend matches in Qatar. This study investigates the correlations between soccer fans’ level of knowledge, soccer fans’ perception of Qatar using a 4D model of country image, and soccer fans’ behavioral intention to support …

German Imperialism And Applied Orientalism: German Encounters With The Ottoman Empire, 1850-1918, Matthew David Penix

Dissertations

Edward Said’s influential treatise on culture and imperialism, Orientalism, specifically called out German scholars of the Islamic “Orient” as being different. The lack of a formal German empire in Muslim lands seemed to preclude a culture of Orientalism. This dissertation examines the lived experience of Germans who traveled and worked in the Ottoman Empire from 1850-1918. As German interests sought their “place in the sun” during the decades before 1914, the Ottoman Empire became a major field of business investment, military-to-military contact, and missionary endeavor for Germans acting at the behest of both state and private interests. Their experiences formed …

From Patrons To Landlords: The Transformation Of Class Relations In Zanzibar Through Wakf Reform, Isabel Spafford

Honors Theses

This study examines the role of wakf reforms in reshaping class relationships in Zanzibar during the British protectorate. Prior to the establishment of the British protectorate in Zanzibar, wakf dedications maintained patron-client relationships between the landowning class and poor clients that were established during the time of slavery but continued after abolition. I argue that wakf dedications were essential to continuing these relationships, and therefore British wakf reforms were necessary to achieve British colonial goals of dissolving patron-client relationships and establishing a capitalist system based on wage labor and ground rent. I analyze the relationship of the British colonial class, …

To The Shores Of Tripoli: A Barbary Retrospective, Kathleen J. Brett

Senior Honors Projects, 2020-current

The First and Second Barbary Wars were incredibly influential in shaping the diplomatic and military tactics of the early United States. These wars were fought against the Barbary states of Tripoli, Tunis, Morocco, and Algiers, located on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa. The First Barbary War lasted between the years of 1801 to 1805. The First Barbary War began due to the United States’ desire to no longer pay tribute sums to the Barbary states, along with an increase in the number American merchantmen captured and enslaved by the Barbary states. Tripoli served as the primary aggressor in the …

Organized Savagery: Legitimization Of British Occupation In The Post-Ottoman State, Jamie M. Emerson

The Purdue Historian

The Great War of 1914-1918 saw the internment of hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war, captured and maintained by the hand of their enemy. Allegations and accounts of ill-treatment under the enemy’s care abounded during and after the war. Leading up to the Peace Conference of 1919, negotiators chose to account for the suffering of these prisoners in their demands for indemnities and reparations. This paper assesses how the British Parliament and press used stories about the suffering of British and Indian prisoners of war in Ottoman internment camps as a means to delegitimize Ottoman rule and legitimize British …