Politics and Social Change Commons^™

Organizing To Engage: A Framework For Conflict Strategy, Paul Mason Carpenter

Dissertations

Conflict strategy can be exceedingly complex. While many of the basics are simple, even the simple can be highly complicated to execute. The Schlieffen Plan in World War I appeared straight forward, but execution was a great deal more complex. It failed and the result was years of trench warfare.  In addition, leaders entering conflict may not fully appreciate the full context, its effect, and the need for a long term result--a better state of peace.

Strategy and tactics may be challenging to transform as an engagement evolves. In addition, strategists must often commit to courses of action within very …

Democracy At Work And The Promise Of Dignity: Worker Cooperatives And The Experiences Of Workers Of Color, Isabella "Leila" Thomas

Undergraduate Theses

The United States faces profound wealth inequality which has also disproportionately disadvantaged people of color in terms of economic security. This study investigates how participation in worker cooperatives, which provide higher wages and greater worker benefits on average, impacts worker-members of color. The study draws on qualitative interviews with worker members from largely minority-led cooperatives. It explores how the key cooperative principles of democratic decision-making, autonomy, and community engagement can counteract marginalization. This paper fills significant gaps in research on workplace dynamics by applying Blustein & Allan (2025)'s recently formulated dignity-at-work framework to an alternative, democratized workplace model rather than …

Book Bans In U.S. Prisons: A Legacy Of The Prisoners' Rights Movement, Allison Jansen

Honors Projects

The 1950s-1970s saw an unprecedented spike in organized resistance by American prisoners. This long era of rebellion, along with thousands of judicial appeals, made up the “prisoners’ rights movement”-- a political, legal, and social struggle that challenged the conditions of American incarceration and its penological paradigm. The timeline of the movement is abstract and difficult to measure. Nonetheless, what is certain is that it lost its momentum by the 1980s due to overhauling policy changes that quelled prisoner activism without achieving meaningful progress. This research examines the evolution of prison censorship policies within that paradigm shift and how they sought …

Pacifism And Negligence In Our Modern Era Ignoring Crises For “It Being Political”, Georgi Feigley

Augustana Center for the Study of Ethics Essay Contest

No abstract provided.

Public Opinion Of And Faith In The U.S. Supreme Court, Allee Gay

Honors Theses

The US Supreme Court has been historically trusted as an impartial arbiter of the Constitution. However, in 2022 the level of public trust in the Supreme Court dropped to a historic low, and faith in the institution has not recovered in the following years. Previous research demonstrated that Supreme Court decisions can influence public opinion and suggested that the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Clinic can be blamed for this decline. Further research proved that the President’s role in appointing justices can have an effect on the perception of the Court. This study examines both the reactions to controversial cases …

U.S Sanctions In Venezuela: The Jeopardization Of International Human Security And Economic Stability, Nyleen Benavides

Posters - 2026

Enforced in 2005, the U.S sanctions in Venezuela were the first form of restrictive mechanisms for the perspective outcome of reducing human right abuses, antidemocratic action, and corruption. Since then, the United States has imposed several sanctions on the Venezuela government to which it has enforced the idea of whether it takes corruption to fight corruption. While imposed U.S sanctions on Venezuela were intended to pressure the Maduro government into democratic reform without corruption and human rights violation over the region, these sanctions have done more harm on Venezuelan citizens rather than help them. The initial purpose of sanctions are …

Divided We Stand: Exploring Public Perceptions Of Georgia’S Political System, Luka Lazishvili

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Recent years have witnessed increasing concern about democratic backsliding across different regime types, raising important questions about how citizens perceive the legitimacy of political systems during periods of institutional decline. Since 2019, the Republic of Georgia has been experiencing a sustained period of political unrest, which has deepened political polarization and contributed to a decline in Georgia’s Democracy Index. This study examines how citizens perceived the legitimacy of their political system amid democratic backsliding between 2019-2024.

Drawing on legitimacy theory and social identity theory, this study analyzes three waves of cross-sectional data from the Caucasus Barometer survey (2019, 2021, and …

Rhetorical Violence: The Rhetorics Of Women's Counter Political Violence, Kylie Rowland

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Protest is omnipresent, and yet not much is known about the efficacy and impacts of its different rhetorical strategies—particularly so for marginalized populations, whose available means of protest are already limited by both material realities and assumptions that govern who and what can make waves. This bind is further exacerbated by gendered and racialized civility politics that determine which bodies can be disruptive and which already are considered “violent.” To address this gap, I turn toward the under-researched rhetorical potentials of marginalized people’s—specifically women and queer folks’—use of symbolic protest “violence,” which works to strategically make evident the larger ongoing …

Dirges Of Hope, Manasseh Azure Awuni

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Among the varied themes that African fiction explores, politics and governance remain the most dominant across generations. Writing under oppressive and exploitative colonial administrations, the first generation of African storytellers used fiction to highlight the injustice of colonial rule. With fidelity to the African proverb that says the tales of hunting will always glorify the hunter until the lion learns to tell its own stories, African writers also used fiction to push back against one-sided, toxic narratives about the continent. After independence, when rulers of the new republics continued the colonial legacies of oppression, inflicting untold hardships on their citizens, …

Adultification Of Black Girls, Melanie Thompson

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

No abstract provided.

Rock On! Examining The Relationship Between Armed Conflict And Rock Protest Music, Dylan Conner Dunn

Senior Theses

This thesis explores the relationship between rock protest music and wars, armed conflicts, and other related events. The purpose of this research is to explore how such specific events, or war and conflict in general, influence rock songwriters. This paper examines a series of nine rock songs ranging across five decades, from the Vietnam War to the 2010s. A variety of artists wrote and recorded these songs, ranging from hard rock to classic rock, to folk rock and beyond. Some are more audially intense, lyrically visceral, and featuring explicit language, whereas others are much more stripped-back and “family-friendly.” Each of …

Performing Politics: Contextual Shifts In Identity Expression Amongst Ingroup And Neutral Settings, Elsa Geriane Johnson

Senior Theses

Increased political divisiveness and the rise of social media have contributed to a widening gap between individuals situated on the political left and right. However, prior research has not determined whether individuals express their political identities similarly when among in-group members versus in more neutral spaces.

Individuals were observed in politically charged settings and in politically neutral settings to determine how the expression of political identities differs when among in-group members versus when discussing politics in classrooms. Data was analyzed using a systemic thematic process through the lens of social identity theory. Findings supported the hypothesis that political identities are …

Temporary Protected Status Populations In Massachusetts In 2026, Phillip Granberry, Iván Espinoza-Madrigal

Gastón Institute Publications

Temporary Protected Status (TPS) is one of the best expressions of U.S. humanitarian protection and relief. It recognizes a basic truth: people should not be deported to danger.

May this report help build a stronger Commonwealth for all by advancing more thoughtful policymaking and stronger interventions that recognize the deep connections among immigration, community, and economic life.

Chasing The Enslaved, Not Justice: Rangers Of Oppression, Mackenzie Arendall

Posters - 2026

01. Introduction: Rangers Policed & Profited in Slavery The Underground Railroad did not lead only north. It also led south into Mexico, where slavery had been abolished since 1829. Enslaved Texans risked the perilous journey, hundreds of miles, across unforgiving terrain. Even more dangerous than the harsh elements were the slavecatchers. Enslavers offered generous bounties, advertised in newspapers, for the recapture of their human “property.” Among the slavecatchers profiting from and policing slavery were many members of the infamous Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers have been commemorated for heroism on the western frontier and honored for upholding the law and …

The Living Archive: Photography, Social Media, And The New Frontier Of Activism, Lundyn C. Herring

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis seeks to analyze the discursive field and technology of photography and its multi-faceted role in the oppression of colonized people under Western imperialism. Among the main collection highlights of many established state-run archival institutions are photographic records consisting of surveillance images, mugshots, and other visual media as representations of the political hegemony that is exerted over governed peoples. From the mid-19th century to 2026, much has shifted in the realm of photography with the introduction of smartphones, accessible technology, and social media platforms during the beginning of the twenty-first century. As states and powerholders apply the technology of …

Storytelling, Henry D. Juarez

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Heternormativity, Erandi Hernández Aguilar

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Sin Título, Daisy Camacho

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Journal Entry #1, Erandi Hernández Aguilar

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.

Pain Into Anger!, Davion Holman

CouRaGeouS Cuentos: A Journal of Counternarratives

No abstract provided.