Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Blue Spring (2001):, George Dibble

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

“Congratulations on your graduation,” broadcasts on the upper secondary school’s PA system—the first sound in the film Blue Spring (2001), directed by Toshiaki Toyoda—yet none of the students we follow for the next 83 minutes have anything to graduate for. Like a chick denied egg-shell breakage, stuck in its hard world, the film-focused boys are told to live. But where, and how? Blue Spring exists between the graffiti laden walls of high school where classes are secondary to student politics and fights are as common as words.

Annoyances lead to murders. Money is extorted. Teachers are harassed. The first image …

An Ideological Target Through The Archaeological Archive: The Islamic State’S Destruction Of Palmyra And Its Impact On Local Syrian Identity, Tristen A. Leone

Pomona Senior Theses

This paper investigates how Palmyra's multicultural archaeological archive incited ISIS's destruction of the site during the Syrian Civil War through an analysis of sepulchral and religious architectural structures and onomastic practices. In contributing the cultural heritage scholarship, this paper places the motives of Islamic extremist groups in conversation with intellectual discourse around the multicultural identities of the Ancient Near East during the Roman Imperial Period. Further, through anthropological methodological frameworks and the photographic archive of excavation efforts at Palmyra, I aim to center modern local communities' experiences of living on and near an archaeological site like Palmyra. In consulting modern …

“Beejagalu Namma Jeevana” (Seeds Are Our Life): Women Farmers’ Relational Practices Of Care, Labor, And Life Within Regenerative Systems In South India, Sara F. Mehkri

Scripps Senior Theses

“Beejagalu Namma Jeevana” (Seeds are Our Life): Women Farmers’ Relational Practices of Care, Labor, and Life within Regenerative Systems in South India, examines the role of women farmers in regenerative agricultural systems in Kanakapura, Karnataka, through ethnographic fieldwork with GREEN Foundation (GF) and its farmer networks. It argues that regenerative agriculture in this context is produced through care-based multispecies assemblages that reconfigure relationships between labor, knowledge, and ecological life, generating resilient socio-agroecological systems and expanding forms of human capability.

Drawing on twenty semi-structured interviews with women farmers, participant observation, and historical analysis of agrarian change in South India, this thesis …

A Digitized History Of Undergraduate Student Government At The University Of Akron, Samuel Stillion

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The digitization process of a representative sample of the physical records of the University of Akron's Undergraduate Student Government held in the University Archives and Special Collections, including notes for future archive projects with the larger records of Undergraduate Student Government

Women's Work And Wealth: Measuring The Impact Of Incremental Liberations, 1850-1870, Hannah Kelly

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Using a two-way fixed effects difference-in-difference model, this project analyzes data from the IPUMS Full Count census for 1850, 1860, and 1870 at a state level for 48 states. Four models assess the impact of property laws on women's real property holdings, labor force participation, household types, and real property values.

By quantifying the impact of various legal reforms on women's economic empowerment, this project fills a gap in the understanding of the intersection between law, society, and women's economic agency during a transformative period in pre-industrial American history. These impacts can implicate the effectiveness of legislative measures in advancing …

Beyond Judicial Intent: The Agency Of The Defense Counsel In Ozawa’S And Thind’S Supreme Court Cases, Bret K. Luchs

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

This thesis seeks to examine how specific legal strategies by the defense counsel in Ozawa v. United States, 260 U.S. 178 (1922), and United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind, 261 U.S. 204 (1923), compelled the Supreme Court of the United States into a reactive and contradictory position. A re-examination of Ozawa and Thind delves deeper into the legal briefs and arguments made by Takao Ozawa and Bhagat Singh Thind, alongside their legal teams. These briefs, opinions of the court, past lower court cases, and personal statements by Ozawa and Thind demonstrate how they did not surrender to the confines of …

Forging Industry: Craft Practice At The Delaware Mine Blacksmith Shop, Lucy A. Gibbs

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis examines the archaeological remains of a nineteenth-century blacksmith shop associated with the Delaware Mine Site in Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. Blacksmiths played an important role in early mining operations, providing the metalworking services and tool maintenance necessary to support mineral extraction. Drawing on evidence from the 2025 Michigan Technological University field school, the study investigates the shop’s operational lifespan, organization, and potential activities as it supported daily mining operations. Artifact analysis, spatial reconstruction, soil testing, and archival sources assist in reconstructing shop functions and history.

Results indicate that the shop was likely constructed during the earliest development of the …

Bloody Sunday: A Comparative Analysis Of Nonviolent Marches In Selma And Derry, Samantha J. Romero

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis examines two different nonviolent civil rights marches: Selma’s march for voting rights in 1965 in the United States and Derry’s march to end internment without trial in 1972 in Northern Ireland. The two marches yielded drastically different outcomes despite employing the shared tactic of nonviolence. This research addresses the vital role that the political opportunity structure, rather than tactical repertoire alone, plays in determining whether state repression leads to reform or further conflict. Through a controlled comparative analysis, the research positions the march itself as a constant across the two cases. Subsequently, governmental allies, institutional openness, and regime …

Eurovision As A Platform For Cultural Diplomacy In Times Of Conflict, Lucy Meza

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines how states utilize the Eurovision Song Contest as a platform for soft power, focusing on the conditions under which cultural performance translates into reputational gains. Drawing on Joseph Nye’s concept of soft power, Biasioli’s theory of songwashing, Zamorano’s typology of cultural diplomacy, Anholt’s competitive identity framework, and Feklyunina’s analysis of identity and narrative, it argues that Eurovision’s effectiveness as a soft power platform is fundamentally contingent on the alignment between a state’s cultural narrative and dominant international perceptions of its legitimacy. Through a qualitative comparative case study approach, the thesis examines two nations whose Eurovision participation during …

Bitcoin And The American Conflict Over Money And Property, Jacob Smagula

CMC Senior Theses

I argue that Bitcoin is the latest expression of the recurring American conflict over who controls the terms of money and property, and that the political coalition formed around Bitcoin shares the same characteristics as earlier coalitions formed around this struggle. I review three historical cases that each produced a coalition opposing the existing monetary order: the Bank War of the 1830s, the Free Silver movement of the 1890s, and the populist backlash against the Federal Reserve during the 1979 Farm Crisis and the 2008 Great Recession. I find that Bitcoin’s architecture, which allows for self-custody, permissionless access, and an …

The Ones Who Watched: Technology, Proxy Warfare, And The Testing Ground Hypothesis, Sean J. Oliver

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Great powers need laboratories for war. This thesis argues that great powers find these laboratories in proxy forces. Proxy warfare is not just a tool for strategic influence. It is a machine for experimentation. This study posits a central testing-ground hypothesis. It contends that great powers deliberately use surrogates to vet emerging technologies, doctrines, and mobilization schemes under the pressure of real combat. The analytical methodology is historical. It traces patterns from the ancient world's proxy forces and the innovations of the Crusades to the Cold War and the digital age. The thesis examines enduring patterns, including the tension between …

Confucian Thought As A Strategic Veil: How Western Strategy Should Correctly Compete With China, Owen Miller

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

The rise of the People's Republic of China as a peer competitor to the United States constitutes the defining geopolitical challenge of the twenty-first century, but even so, Western strategic analysis has consistently failed to engage China on its own terms. The recurrent pattern of Western misinterpretation results from projecting Western assumptions onto a state whose institutional and cultural drivers operate under fundamentally different premises, where key elements of Chinese strategic culture and the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) instrumentalization of Confucianism as a moral veil are instruments of domestic legitimacy and external strategic narrative. The United States must recognize that …

Storm Of Elysium: How The Most Afflicted Minds Of History And Fiction Made Legacies, Pierce Thompson

A with Honors Projects

Honors project involving historical/fictional characters and how they made history/created legacies with their afflictions/mental health conditions. Historical/book context will be provided, and the condition will be covered through psychiatric research for the particular character.

Hot Topic Of The Cold War: Analyzing The Bomb In American Media During The Late Twentieth Century, Ryan Lambert

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores nuclear war–related media (i.e., media involving “the Bomb”) from the late twentieth century, beginning in the early 1950s and ending in the late 1990s, although media from the 2000s and beyond are briefly touched on. Unlike other studies of nuclear war narratives, this analysis intends to explore this media through a rhetorical framework of an “eroding” society, and the “erosion” concepts of the 50s–70s paved the way for cumulative “erosion” storylines in the 80s (the height of the Cold War), and then “restoration” storylines in the 90s (after the end of the Cold War). This framework is …

Book Review: Macarthur As Spirit: A Review Of Spirit Power: Politics And Religion In Korea’S American Century, Jieon Yoo

Asia Pacific Perspectives

No abstract provided.

Missionary Body Politics: Physical Education In West China, 1905-1950, Cory Willmott

Asia Pacific Perspectives

Republican Era China saw a radical transformation in Chinese physical culture as it aimed to compete in the global geopolitics of nation-states. Employing an historical ethnographic approach, this paper outlines how the unique conditions of Sichuanese warlordism and secret societies affected missionary relations with the Guomindang (GMD) as they implemented increasingly militarized physical education programs. Before the 1928 GMD consolidation of power, missionaries and GMD educators aligned with the YM/ WCA in physical education programs. After the GMD moved their headquarters to Chongqing in 1938, relations soured between the GMD and the Sichuan missionaries. Although the latter had been the …

My Autobiography Of Listening: A Worksheet, David Keck

C. Listening for One’s Own Voice

This 1-page worksheet provides a framework for exploring the ways in which a person's experiences shape their listening habits and capacities. It helps users answer the question, "How did I come to listen this way?"

The Response Of Diaspora And Religious Institutions On The Refugee Crisis: Case Study Of The Republic Of Croatia, Galyna Sagan Dr., Tetiana Kostiuk Dr.

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This article is dedicated to the multifaceted support that Ukrainian diaspora and Catholic organizations in the Republic of Croatia have been providing to Ukrainian refugees since the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24, 2022. The study details the systemic response of such key religious institutions as the Diocese of Križevci, Caritas and the Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS). Particular attention is paid to integration initiatives, like educational programs developed by the Catholic University of Croatia (HKS), and the provision of spiritual and pastoral care, which remains the unique prerogative of the Church. The study emphasizes coordination between ecclesiastical and state …

Imperial Islam And Colonial Control: The Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly As A Mediator Of Russian Rule In The Kazakh Frontier, Zharas Akhan

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

Examination of the strategic role of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly (OMSA) as a pivotal instrument of imperial governance in the Kazakh Steppe during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The study investigates how the Russian Tsarist administration instrumentalized Islamic institutions to exercise political control and facilitate the integration of nomadic Kazakh society into the imperial hierarchy. Drawing on extensive archival evidence, the author analyzes the institutional evolution of the Muftiate, its involvement in diplomatic and intelligence operations, and the intermediary agency of Tatar mullahs who bridged the gap between the Kazakh aristocracy and the Russian bureaucracy. The paper identifies …

Interpreting “Vampire” Burials In Medieval Eastern Europe, Arleen Chau

Undergraduate Research Posters

Since the early twentieth century, various atypical or deviant graves have been excavated across Eastern Europe, particularly in Poland. These discoveries have prompted much speculation, as the individuals were interred with items such as sickles placed over their necks or abdomens, along with other mortuary artifacts not considered normative compared to those found in typical community burials. Such practices suggest that these individuals were regarded as deviant or pariahs within their social contexts. Consequently, many have been quick to label these as “vampire burials,” interpreting them as measures intended to keep the dead from rising. However, this definition is problematic, …

Mapping Historical Neighborhoods With Geospatial Viewshed Buffers, James B. Townsend

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

The concept of neighborhood has been long studied with little agreement beyond the notion that neighborhoods are somewhat self-contained areas within a wider urban environment. Despite the lack of a finite definition, there is wide agreement of the importance of studying population dynamics at the neighborhood scale. Many attempts have been made to spatially define, measure, and quantify contemporary neighborhoods, but less attention has been given to methods to spatially define historical neighborhoods. In this paper, we utilize a historical spatial data infrastructure for the city of London, Ontario to develop a viewshed methodology that recognizes that ‘neighborhood’ is unique …

One Family Under Kim:, Jared Johnson

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (D.P.R.K. or the state), as one of the most isolated and controlled states in Asia, has since its founding attempted to shape the culture and ideology surrounding the family construct to support the rule of the socialist regime and its leaders, the Eternal President, Kim Il Sung, and his successors. In Korea, like the rest of East Asia, the traditional family unit has been a central societal structure for centuries. Largely based upon Confucianism, the nuclear family—referring generally to the biological family unit of parents and children—has determined not only the lifestyle and livelihood …

Mystics, Oracles, And Bones: Spiritual Resistance For Justice, Healing, And Resolution, Leah Hollis

Comparative Civilizations Review

This conceptual essay examines the enduring human impulse to seek meaning, justice, and healing through mystical traditions in response to suffering and harm. When traditional solutions through grievance, the law, or mediation fails, some individuals may turn to spiritual practices not as superstition, but as embodied strategies of survival, reclamation, and clarity. Comparing diverse traditions from a variety of cultures, including oracle bone divination in ancient China, the Oracle at Delphi in Greece, West African Ifá, Benin’s Voudou, diasporic Hoodoo, Celtic Druidic law, and Sufi mysticism, this paper explores how mystics have long served as interpreters of suffering and perceived …

Cultivating Seeds Of Virtue:, Sarai Brown

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Human beings have long been concerned with the question of human nature. Countless media—both academic and creative— have devoted much time to the pursuit of whether humans, at their very basic core, have inherently good or evil natures. While many in the Western world are familiar with the debates between the likes of Hobbes and Rousseau, this topic has also been a major theme of Chinese philosophy. Of the two choices between good and evil, which is the natural inclination of humanity and which is a deliberate deviation from our original position? This is the approximate question that Chinese philosophers …

Motherhood In K-Drama:, Rebecca Dewitt

BYU Asian Studies Student Journal

Memory is a funny thing. We look back on the past experiences in our lives and some appear crystal clear to us, others murky. The truth is, every memory is warped by time and shifting perspective, and it is rare that our memories are truly and entirely accurate to the actual events that occurred. The same can be said with history and peoples—–the collective memory of a group works much in the same way as the memory of the individual. Past events and experiences are somewhat warped through current ideas, emotions, and experiences. This is not wrong per se, it …

Front Matter

Comparative Civilizations Review

No abstract provided.

Gendered Resistance: Women’S Strategies Against Military Dictatorships, Argentina And Chile, Maricarmen Canales-Moreno

Publications and Research

This article compares the Madres de Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (AFDD) in Chile to examine how women transformed their identities as mothers, wives, and daughters into strategies of political resistance under military dictatorship. It argues that maternal imagery, public mourning, and the transformation of private grief into collective defiance enabled women-led human rights organizations to challenge authoritarian regimes while strategically drawing on gender roles those regimes sought to enforce. The article traces the emergence of both organizations, their occupation of public space, hunger strikes, legal action, and engagement with international human …

The Origins And Expansion Of The Soviet Union’S Military-Industrial Complex, Noah B. Heminger

All Master's Theses

This thesis explores the way in which the “Soviet Military-Industrial Complex” that dominated the Soviet Union’s economy in the latter half of its existence came into existence and what forces caused its expansion. The first force was the ideological and strategic beliefs and assumptions of the leadership and military planners which held that the USSR would always be in existential danger. The second was Stalin’s “Revolution from Above” which broke down the barriers economically and politically that resisted the militarization of politics, economics, and society. And the final force was the stresses of World War II which caused the Soviet …

Approaching Social Cohesion And Social Progress From A Systems Perspective: A Mixed Methods Analysis Of The Canadian Multiculturalism Act, Melissa Kimmel

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Social cohesion plays an important role in supporting stable, equitable, and resilient societies. Growing social division and polarization have weakened collective trust and challenged progress in many nations. Understanding how social cohesion can be strengthened has become increasingly important as societies face rising inequality, political partisanship, and declining institutional legitimacy. This study examines how social cohesion can function as a systemic driver of social progress through the example of Canada’s Multiculturalism Act. The Act provides a lens for understanding how national policy can serve as a way to strengthen inclusion, equality, and belonging within diverse societies. This study utilizes a …

Against Audiepistemic Injustice: Claiming Deaf Futurity, Pamela R. Conley

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This dissertation proposes a new theoretical framework: Audiepistemic Injustice (AEI). Expanding upon existing theories of epistemic injustice (EI), I identify AEI as the systemic marginalization and dismissal of deaf ways of knowing. AEI is a multidimensional phenomenon rooted in the nineteenth century, when auditory and linguistic biases became codified across education, law, and literature. This interdisciplinary study interrogates three nineteenth-century literary narratives as primary case studies to examine AEI: (1) Ivan Turgenev’s “Mumu,” (2) Guy de Maupassant’s “The Deaf Mute,” and (3) Abigail Bradley Hyde’s “The Deaf and Dumb Child: A True Narrative.” I synthesize these literary works with legal …