Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Violence As The Imposition Of Difference: A Case Study Of The 2020 Riots In Minneapolis, Jude Sims-Barber

Honors Theses

Violence has received a great deal of study in many disciplines—as an act of force, or as a theoretical concept. Slovenian political philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek provides in his work Violence: Six Sideways Reflections a unique typology of violence, building and expanding upon decades of existing research in many areas. In so doing, Žižek establishes uniquely insightful links between different forms of violence that open the opportunity to examine outbursts of violence, be they riots, rebellion, or war, in a new way. Cognizant of the inability for us to simultaneously analyze both the person-to-person violence seen in acts …

Odiar Es Proteger: La Respuesta Inevitable Al Origen De Una Pandemia, Haowen Huang

Honors Theses

Esta tesis analiza la causa del odio hacia los asiáticos durante la pandemia de COVID-19, enfocándose específicamente en los casos que tuvieron lugar en España. La prevalencia de discriminación dirigida al origen de una pandemia identificado por la narrativa del brote es cultivada por la persistencia de estereotipos. En el caso de COVID-19, la xenofobia hacia los asiáticos fue el resultado de una construcción histórica que ha estigmatizado su identidad persistentemente, la repetición de la cual es definida en esta tesis como racismo pandémico. La imagen de los asiáticos enfermos fue establecida injustificadamente por la medicina occidental en el siglo …

Sexual Objectification Of Women: What Can Ancient Rome And Modern Psychology Teach Us?, Noa Raskin

Honors Theses

Sexual objectification (SO) is an omnipresent experience for women that decreases their quality of life. Researching why SO occurs and is perpetuated can help us understand how to decrease the interpersonal, mental health, and safety consequences women face from being sexually objectified. This presentation looks at sexual objectification through the lenses of two different disciplines: psychology and classics. The psychology component involved an empirical study aimed at better comprehending women’s perceptions of their own SO and the connection SO has to Greek life. Nineteen men from Union College completed two scales to assess their direct and indirect SO of women, …

A Cold War On The Dark Knight: Batman And American Culture 1939-1975, Angelica Cantrell

Honors Theses

In 1930, Batman fought the prevailing fears of urban America. With the addition of Robin in 1940, the comics changed to appeal to children and continued to follow the cultural trends of America during World War II and into the Cold War. Fear and paranoia during the Cold War influenced American culture and domestic policy. Anticommunism was ingrained in American social structure and initiated efforts at social containment in the 1950s. American culture shifted to emphasize morality and domesticity, and many Americans actively sought to protect traditional Christian values in their society.

Among the rising concerns, Americans became increasingly worried …

"Gone, But Never Forgotten:" Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Girls In The United States, Julianna Kramer

Honors Theses

Native women and girls in the United States are twice as likely to be sexually assaulted compared to white women, and murder rates on certain reservations can be tenfold higher than the national average. This pervasive violence traces back to colonialism. Native women have historically been abused, exploited, and neglected by America’s institutions, and lasting prejudice against Native peoples endures.

The United States government has stripped tribal governments of their ability to seek justice for their women. The Major Crimes Act of 1885, Proclamation 280, and the Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe (1978) decision place responsibility for investigating and prosecuting …

More Than Sectarianism: How Have State And Non-State Institutions Used Violence To Form The Current Iraqi State And What Is The Effect?, Caitlyn Perkins

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the role of violence in Iraq in establishing the current Iraqi state. My chapters provide historical and theoretical context to the subject before getting into the analysis. The goal of this thesis is to show that violence in Iraq is not only caused by sectarian differences, but has been used and influenced by leaders, outside governments, and non-state institutions for personal gain and political goals at the cost of the Iraqi people.

Terrorists Or Freedom Fighters : An Analysis Of The Irish Republican Army In Northern Ireland With Respect To The Idea Of Just War, Allison Jean Fritz

Honors Theses

For more than two decades, Northern Ireland has suffered the high social cost of a violent political conflict. Debates over the nature of this conflict have been wide-ranging, but the dominant view is that the conflict is criminal rather than political in nature. This view holds that the violence is widespread terrorism, with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) seen as the chief protagonist. But while this view is dominant, it is not ubiquitous. It is held neither by those who challenge the foundations of the Northern Irish state nor by those communities which are tolerant if not supportive of those …

The Differences In Talk About Violence And Terrorism: A Case Study Of Northern Ireland And The Basque Country, Mcclellan Davis

Honors Theses

The Northern Irish and Basque conflicts have been studied throughout the years, as both serve as examples of conflicts involving ethnonationalist terrorist groups and successful disarmaments. While there are similarities, there are also distinctions between the two conflicts. The Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) both fought for independence from a larger government, inflicted horrific pain on populations where they considered themselves members, but ultimately both ended without accomplishing their goal of separatism. This thesis seeks to understand the differences within these conflicts and their subsequent peace processes/disarmaments, which I believe contribute to the differences in ‘talk’ …

Music And Communal Division During The French Wars Of Religion, Cameron G. Wade

Honors Theses

This Senior Honors Thesis explores the social and cultural impact of confessional musical composition and performance on the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598). Because Huguenots and Catholics identified with and were widely identifiable by their respective musical styles, cultural divisions between each confession were emphasized by differences in music. This capacity of sacred and confessionally-influenced secular music to highlight and reinforce societal divides is evidenced by the interconfessional violence that accompanied the public performance of sacred music in cities as well as the pressures imposed on composers to create music which clearly aligned with their respective confessions. As the wars …

Three Forms Of Death In David Rabe’S The Basic Training Of Pavlo Hummel And Sticks And Bones, Sloan Garner

Honors Theses

In this thesis, I argue there are three main forms of death that progress chronologically in David Rabe’s The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel and Sticks and Bones. First, the death of civilian identity as the soldier conforms to the military. Secondly, the soldier’s killing—metaphoric or literal—of others, which is part of his attempt to fit with his new military identity. Third, the soldier’s sacrificial suicide as his escape from the military identity. In this paper, I provide evidence and close reading to support my argument that the protagonists in both plays, Pavlo and David, encounter, enact, or experience …

La Economía De La Violencia: La Ciudad Juárez Y El Mercado Libre De La Muerte, Kritika Amanjee

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the utilization of human life to further the parallel economies of manufacture and narco-trafficking in Mexico. It begins by recalling the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on Mexico’s local economies. Shifts in economic dynamics that resulted from NAFTA internally displaced thousands of impoverished Mexicans, ultimately pushing them into the growing economies of manufacture and narco-trafficking. The manufacture industry and its effects on the common people are examined with a specific focus on Ciudad Juárez, a border city in the state of Chihuahua. The growth of maquiladoras attracted thousands of young women to work, …

A Reason To Daydream, Corinne Schipull

Honors Theses

Sexism in American culture comes as no surprise. In 2017, the film industry saw an increasing number of powerful men within its ranks exposed and exiled for allegations of sexually predatory behavior. Many see this purging as a sign of changing times, but this view is optimistic: the tides of change ebb in and out, and this problem far exceeds the movie industry. Well before the onslaught of articles on the likes of Harvey Weinstein, my classmates and I resolved to craft our senior thesis film with a crew made up entirely of women: we simply saw the pool of …

Violence And Edification In 19th Century Fiction: An Analysis Of The Novels Of Charles Dickens And Leo Tolstoy, Caroline Fassett

Honors Theses

This Thesis argues that violence is essential to the structures and plots of Charles Dickens’s Barnaby Rudge and A Tale of Two Cities and of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Anna Karenina, and is particularly essential to the edification, or the moral and intellectual improvement, of principal characters in these four novels. Additionally, this Thesis contends that this edification is both anticipated and reinforced by the novelists’ incorporation of counterparts whose demeanor and/or narrative overtly mirror that of the principal characters.

To support this argument, I bring the theory of Thomas Carlyle into conversation with the novels of Dickens …

Una Perspectiva Multigeneracional En La Representación Teatral De La Familia Mexicana, Abigail Calish

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the representation of the Mexican family in plays from the three major generations of playwrights in contemporary Mexican theater. These generations are the Generation of 1950, the New Dramaturgy, and the New Theater. The family is a central unit in society, and so it is a recurring theme in many plays. Playwrights use their daily lives as inspiration for their works, and family is a constant in daily life; no matter where one lives, the family is an unavoidable part of their life. All audiences can relate to problems and issues that families experience, and so playwrights …

El Mortífero Machismo: La Representación De La Hipermasculinidad En El Teatro Mexicano Contemporáneo, Laura Crowe

Honors Theses

This paper explores two Mexican plays from the 1980s that denounce rigid societal demarcations that force men to exude hyper‐masculine facades, a cultural phenomenon, which both playwrights expose as problematic and dangerous. In their respective plays, La daga (1982) and Dulces compañías (1987), Víctor Hugo Rascón Banda and Oscar Liera employ villainous male characters of the working class who project hyper‐masculine identities in order to hide their own insecurities. In so doing, the playwrights reveal the hypocrisy and danger of a system in which society cares more about preserving heteronormative values than promoting the safety and acceptance of all of …

Les Catholiques Et Les Huguenots Au Seizième Siècle En France: Un Conflit De Religion Ou Une Lutte Pour Le Pouvoir?, Olga M. Borodulina

Honors Theses

Although the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew and the French Wars of Religion are well-known historical events, there remain some mysteries as what led to such violent tensions between fellow French people. Were religious differences to blame, or was the bloodshed caused by the political intrigues of nobles like Catherine de Medici? Perhaps the economic climate of the age added to the discontent of the common people and the Huguenots were a convenient scapegoat? Then again, it might have been all of those factors and more than led to decades if not centuries of tension in France. This thesis explores the …

Reconstructing The Concept Of Terrorism After 9/11: The Case Of Farc-Ep In Colombia, Leland Garivaltis

Honors Theses

Las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia- Ejército del Pueblo (FARC-EP) is a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group that formed in the rural sections of Colombia in 1966. The guerilla group has claimed to fight for the marginalized Colombian. Because this insurgent group disrupts the status quo, more recent hardliner governments of Colombia and the United States have vilified the organization publicly to denounce the legitimacy and goals of the Leftist guerillas as well as labeled them terrorists and narco-terrorists. This thesis provides analysis and research to negate the comparison between the rural guerilla fighters and terrorist organizations, while it also provides evidence …