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Film Review: 1945, Carolyn Sanzenbacher

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Editor's Introduction

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Between Hagiography And Wounded Attachment: Raphaël Lemkin And The Study Of Genocide, Benjamin Meiches, Jeff Benvenuto

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In this article, we outline the significance of the special issue on the scholarship of Raphaël Lemkin. We argue that genocide scholars tend to identify with one of three different types of Lemkin scholarship. Each of the articles for the special issue challenges these genres in an effort to extend the study of genocide in new directions. Moreover, we contend that this work suggests that genocide scholars should endeavor to extend the study of genocide beyond Lemkin's vision and writings.

Legible Testimonies: Raphaël Lemkin, The Victim’S Voice, And The Global History Of Genocide, Charlotte Kiechel

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article offers a new portrait of Raphael Lemkin, as a historian of mass violence. It argues that, in contrast to recent characterizations that focus on Lemkin’s methodological amateurism, Lemkin was in fact highly attentive to the “Historian’s Craft.” Moreover, he was invested in employing a specific approach in writing his global History of Genocide. This approach revolved around his interest in psychology and frequently depended upon his psychologically attentive readings of testimonies. After detailing Lemkin’s psycho-cultural approach, this article compares his use and readings of victim testimony in his writings on mass violence in Western and non-Western societies. …

In Defense Of Peace: Aron Trainin's Contributions To International Jurisprudence, Thomas Earl Porter

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The Soviet Union played a major role in the establishment of the International Military Tribunal (IMT) that tried Nazi Germany’s leaders for their criminal actions at Nuremberg. Only a handful of Western scholars have noted that the Soviets were early proponents of the use of the legal principle of conspiracy and in establishing the principle that a war of aggression in and of itself could be legally construed as a criminal act. And it was the brilliant Soviet jurist Aron Trainin who forcefully “advanced the idea of individual responsibility for international crimes…the realization of which was established during the course …

Raphaël Lemkin’S Derivation Of Genocide From His Analysis Of Nazi-Occupied Europe, Raffael Scheck

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

The breadth and complexity of Lemkin’s definition of “genocide” results from several influences during the time he developed the concept. One of them is a belief that Nazi Germany was engineering a demographic revolution that would leave Germany predominant in Europe regardless of the outcome of the military conflict. This notion facilitated the assumption of a coherent cynical motivation behind disparate policies, laws, and decrees. Second, Lemkin’s daily work for the U.S. Government reinforced his focus on economic and legal matters and helps to explain why they occupy such a prominent place in his book Axis Rule. His job …

Book Review: Concentration Camps: A Short History, Mackenzie Lake

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Book Review of Concentration Camps: A Short History by Dan Stone

Nationalism And The Communists: Re-Evaluating The Communist Guomindang Split Of 1927, Ryan C. Ferro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The 1924-1927 United Front period has long been understood within a civil war context. The major revolutionaries of ethnic Han origins and the myriad of Comintern advisors that played significant roles have subsequently all been evaluated in those terms. My work decenters the civil war narrative in order to dislodge the rigid labels that have historically accompanied the identities of the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party. When re-evaluating the activities of the First United Front as a loosely defined tactical alliance, the White Terror -perpetrated by the GMD onto Communists and their affiliated members – then becomes a moment …

Because My Garmin Told Me To: A New Materialist Study Of Agency And Wearable Technology, Michael Repici

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wearable technologies are being adopted in increasing numbers and the market space appears poised for continued growth in virtually all areas, from medicine, to self-quantification, to sports. While the overwhelming majority of work on wearables has been done on their medical applications and their role in shaping identity, this dissertation examines the roles that wearable technologies play on the decision-making processes in athletic contexts. Using new materialism and Actor Network Theory as lenses, I attempt to break from the Cartesian model that places human subjectivity and intentionality at the center of a rhetorical situation and, rather, allow that non-human actants …

William Of Ockham's Divine Command Theory, Matthew Dee

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

There was a long-standing consensus that Ockham was a Divine Command Theorist - one who holds that all of morality is ultimately grounded in God's commands. But contrary to this long-standing consensus, three arguments have recently surfaced that Ockham is not a divine command theorist. The thesis of this dissertation is that, contrary to these three arguments, Ockham is a divine command theorist. The first half of the dissertation is an analysis of the three necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for virtuous action, whereas the second half is a response to the three contemporary arguments that Ockham isn't a divine …

“Living Creatures Of Every Kind:” An Ecofeminist Reading Of Genesis 1-3, T. G. Barkasy

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This work will examine the Genesis creation narratives through an ecofeminist critical lens to illuminate the ambivalence regarding both the ecological and feminist concerns pertinent to ecofeminist criticism. While ecology and feminism are major issues in today’s social and political climates, ecofeminism and its presence in biblical scholarship is not as prevalent as one might think. When it is discussed, authors come to varying conclusions on the Bible’s stance about either nature or gender, and discussions that consciously espouse ecofeminist methodology are so far insufficient. This work utilizes the documentary hypothesis in order to examine the parallel narratives of creation …

Weaponizing Ordinary Objects: Women, Masculine Performance, And The Anxieties Of Men In Medieval Iceland, Steven T. Dunn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis unravels the deeper meanings attributed to ordinary objects, such as clothing and food, in thirteenth-century Icelandic literature and legal records. I argue that women weaponized these ordinary objects to circumvent their social and legal disadvantages by performing acts that medieval Icelandic society deemed masculine. By comparing various literary sources, however, I show that medieval Icelandic society gradually redefined and questioned the acceptability of that behavior, especially during the thirteenth-century. This is particularly evident in the late thirteenth-century Njal’s Saga, wherein a woman named Hallgerd has been villainized for stealing cheese from a troublesome neighbor. If Hallgerd were a …

The Peruvian Minstrel: An Analysis Of The Representations Of Blackness In The Performance Of El Negro Mama From 1995 To 2016, Ana Lucía Mosquera Rosado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Peruvian mass media has failed in addressing and representing the cultural and ethnic diversity of its country, as the presence and representation of ethnic minorities (indigenous and Afro-Peruvian) are almost exclusively reduced to the reproduction of stereotypes in comedy shows, in which they are often racialized and the target of offenses directly related with their ethnic identities. The analysis will focus on the figure of El Negro Mama, a very popular character in Peruvian television thought to be a portrait of the Afro-Peruvian population. Through the use of textual analysis, the paper will explore of this character in order to …

Complex Tripartite Hydro Politics Of River Ganges, Muttaki Bin Kamal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper studies if the Flagship Namami Gange program of Cleaning the river Ganges in India aligns with the transcendental discourse on the river. Web contents as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter along with Indian English daily newspaper reports are used here as the source of data. The study shows that the program aligns with the transcendental discourse on river Ganges as the Mother Goddess and reaching out to her devotees.

The Systems Of Post And Post Algebras: A Demonstration Of An Obvious Fact, Daviel Leyva

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In 1942, Paul C. Rosenbloom put out a definition of a Post algebra after Emil L. Post published a collection of systems of many–valued logic. Post algebras became easier to handle following George Epstein’s alternative definition. As conceived by Rosenbloom, Post algebras were meant to capture the algebraic properties of Post’s systems; this fact was not verified by Rosenbloom nor Epstein and has been assumed by others in the field. In this thesis, the long–awaited demonstration of this oft–asserted assertion is given.

After an elemental history of many–valued logic and a review of basic Classical Propositional Logic, the systems given …

Anti-Fascist Aesthetics From Weimar To Moma: Siegfried Kracauer & The Promise Of Abstraction For Critical Theory, Maxximilian Seijo

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis re-examines the life's work of German-American critical theorist, Siegfried Kracauer, to recover abstraction from tacit historical associations with modern fascism. Evoked in critical theory more generally, the abstraction-to-fascism-teleology imagines 20th century fascism as the dialectical fulfillment of modern alienation. Rooting such alienation in the flawed Liberal and Marxist conceptions of monetary relations, critical theorists conduct their aesthetic analyses via ambivalent condemnations of abstraction’s assumed primordial alienation. In the thesis, I critique the abstraction-to-fascism-teleology through an affirmation of neochartalist political economy’s conception of money’s essential publicness and abundance. Drawing from this abstract legal mediation, I trace Kracauer’s various condemnations …

Moving Away From The West Or Taking Independent Positions: A Structural Analysis For The New Turkish Foreign Policy, Suleyman Senturk

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This paper focuses on understanding and explaining the change of Turkish foreign policy,particularly in the last decade. Many observers have expressed a suspicion that Turkey is abandoning its Western-centric alignment and gradually shifting its axis. The thesis argues that rather than a shift, Turkey is taking an independent position. It maintains that the end of the Cold War and the change in the international structure from bipolarity to unipolarity has provided incentives for countries with some degree of material capabilities to pursue independence from the U.S. policy preferences. This study analyses structural effects on the behavior of Turkey.

Later it …

“The Most Muscular Woman I Have Ever Seen”: Bev Francisperformance Of Gender In Pumping Iron Ii: The Women, Cera R. Shain

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The question of what constitutes femininity has been widely debated, not only in gender studies, but also in the broader social world. A venue for this debate is the 1985 documentary, Pumping Iron II: The Women, in which gender and femininity in particular become part of the central plot of the film when Bev Francis, a woman bodybuilder more muscular than any other competitor, enters the competition. While feminist scholars have analyzed gender and sport from a variety of interdisciplinary perspectives, little attention has been paid to female bodybuilding in particular. To fill this gap, this thesis will examine the …

Objectification Of Women In Bollywood Item Numbers, Zahabia Z. Slatewala

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Although sexual objectification is commonplace in media culture, music videos provide the most potent examples of it. The current investigation makes an important contribution to the relevant literature regarding the objectification of women in song lyrics while simultaneously broadening the content used to assess objectification. It reflects the ways of objectification of women in India by analyzing Bollywood rap and item songs. Based on objectification theory, one of the primary goals in the present study was to measure differences between visual and behavioral sexual objectification, drawing on theoretically derived indicators of sexual objectification. It also concentrated on measuring the change …

"I Think Of The Future": The Long 1850s And The Origins Of The Americanization Of The World, Joshua Taylor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

While historians often point to the rise of the United States as a major global player and technological leader on the world stage in the 1890s and early 1900s, this study argues it was the 1850s, not the 1890s, that this transition occurred. It utilizes transnational methodologies to analyze European perceptions of the United States, American international businessmen, and new ways Americans thought and talked about their place in the world. During the 1850s, European travelers to the United States began to recognize the young nation was taking the lead in technological innovation, while American businessmen like Samuel Colt began …

A Tall Ship: The Rise Of The International Mercantile Marine, Jeffrey N. Brown

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Between 1890 and the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, nations on both sides of the Atlantic attempted to gain prestige by building the world's greatest steamships for their merchant marines. In 1901, the United States entered this competition with the advent of J.P. Morgan's International Mercantile Marine, which built on the previous work of shipping magnate Clement Griscom. This project will explore why and how Morgan built his monopoly and the implications and repercussions this project had for both Atlantic shipping and U.S. foreign relations. Moving beyond Morgan the man, it also tells the story of the key …

Blaxploitation’S Revolutionary Sexuality: Rethinking Images Of Male Hypersexuality In Sweetback & Shaft, Austin D. Cook

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Where scholarship exists on the subject of black male hypersexuality in Blaxploitation film, consensus suggests these films perpetuate racist imaginings of black sexuality. This project reevaluates the significance of Blaxploitation’s sexual imagery and argues against the traditional understanding of it. I assert that Blaxploitation’s images of hypersexuality should be understood as revolutionary for the way that they re-appropriate racist images and repurpose them to serve antiracist ends. Specifically, I argue the movement’s most prolific films, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971) and Shaft (1971), supply the two main strategies employed through Blaxploitation in defining the movement’s revolutionary sexuality: one links Black …

Ain't I A Woman, Too? Depictions Of Toxic Femininity, Transmisogynoir, And Violence On Star, Sunahtah D. Jones

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

As the rate of the murder of Black trans women at the hands of Black cisgender men rises steadily every year (HRC, 2017), discourses regarding the detrimental impact of toxic masculinity within Black communities continue to increase within different branches of feminist literature. However, the role that Black cisgender women and toxic femininity play in the violent and systematic subjugation of Black trans women is largely ignored in feminist literature. In this thesis, I conduct a cultural analysis of the representations of the Black trans character Cotton Brown (from the Fox show Star) to examine how the show illustrates toxic …

"The Thought That We Hate": Regulating Race-Related Speech On College Campuses, Michael Mcgowan

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this essay I explore efforts at regulating race-related speech on publicly funded colleges and universities. In the first section, I present the scope of the current debate about the topic: what speech is, contexts in which it is found, etc. In the second section, I present the case for unrestricted speech on campuses for the advancement of knowledge and social progress. The third section addresses standard problem cases for free speech like the non-scientific nature of racist epithets, existential threats to the university, and involuntary exposure to racist speech. The fourth section explores arguments for regulating speech coming from …

The Role Of Skepticism In Early Modern Philosophy: A Critique Of Popkin's "Sceptical Crisis" And A Study Of Descartes And Hume, Raman Sachdev

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this dissertation is to provide a critique of the idea that skepticism was the driving force in the development of early modern thought. Historian of philosophy Richard Popkin introduced this thesis in the 1950s and elaborated on it over the next five decades, and recent scholarship shows that it has become an increasingly accepted interpretation. I begin with a study of the relevant historical antecedents—the ancient skeptical traditions of which early modern thinkers were aware—Pyrrhonism and Academicism. Then I discuss the influence of skepticism on three pre-Cartesians: Francisco Sanches, Michel de Montaigne, and Pierre Charron. Basing my …

Language Of Carnival: How Language And The Carnivalesque Challenge Hegemony, Yulia O. Nekrashevich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Does the phenomenon of carnivalesque challenge hegemony and inspire social change? Mikhail Bakhtin coined the term “carnivalesque” to describe the concept of Carnival. During Carnival, social norms were overturned and ignored in favor of a chaotic atmosphere, briefly breaking down the boundaries between class, gender, and other hegemonic perspectives. Modern Carnivals, such as the Rio Carnival, still contain a semblance of the carnivalesque, as well as other holidays that celebrate the grotesque and macabre, like that of the Day of the Dead. The LGBT Pride Parade can also be seen as a modern Carnival, for it focuses heavily on sexual …

¡Che Gallego!: Relaciones Transatlánticas Entre Galicia Y Argentina En El Siglo Xx, Fabio Suárez Garcia

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is focused on demonstrating the strong influence that Galician immigrants exerted on the Argentinian society at the beginning of the 20th century. In this transatlantic literary study, the bonds between the old and the new continent will be established by analysing some of the authors who became affected by immigration and exile conditions: Xosé Neira Vilas, Luis Seoane and Alfonso Rodríguez Castelao. The thesis will also examine the Argentinian literature related to immigration, and how some relevant authors accepted or rejected stereotyping. Both views, the one from exiles and the one from local authors, were …

A Historical Approach To Understanding Explanatory Proofs Based On Mathematical Practices, Erika Oshiro

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation focuses on mathematical explanation found in proofs looked at from a historical point of view, while stressing the importance of mathematical practices. Current philosophical theories on explanatory proofs emphasize the structure and content of proofs without any regard to external factors that influence a proof’s explanatory power. As a result, the major philosophical views have been shown to be inadequate in capturing general aspects of explanation. I argue that, in addition to form and content, a proof’s explanatory power depends on its targeted audience. History is useful here, because from it, we are able to follow the transition …

Persisting In The Negative: The Banishment, Exile, And Execution Of Gerard Udinck, 1657-1665, David Beeler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In January 1663 the former alderman of the Groningen tailors’ guild, Gerard Udinck, was sentenced to death for his role in orchestrating a series of riots in the city. On the day of his execution, however, Udinck received a pardon in the form of a lifelong banishment. Although initially relieved to be alive, Udinck’s experiences in exile would prove taxing in a variety of ways. He spent the next three years in northwestern Germany, first in Steinfurt and then in Neuenhaus, where he recorded his daily life in a diary. Many of these entries describe a life that was shaped …

The Case For The Green Kant: A Defense And Application Of A Kantian Approach To Environmental Ethics, Zachary T. Vereb

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Environmental philosophers have argued that Kant’s philosophy offers little for environmental issues. Furthermore, Kant scholars typically focus on humanity, ignoring the question of duties to the environment. In my dissertation, I turn to a number of underexploited texts in Kant’s work to show how both sides are misguided in neglecting the ecological potential of Kant, making the case for the green Kant at the intersection of Kant scholarship and environmental ethics. I build upon previous literature to argue that the green Kant matters for both sides. Rather than a liability, Kant is indeed a conceptual resource. Though many conceive of …