Honors Papers

The governments of Poland and Hungary, under the parties Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) and Fidesz (Alliance of Young Democrats), respectively, have deliberately implemented policies and utilized rhetoric to marginalize the LGBT+ community, a dramatic reversal from years of social progress in the European Union. In investigating this shift, prior scholars have explored social factors and authoritarian, populist politics as causes, yet these cannot explain the extent and viciousness to which both parties attack sexual and gender minorities. In this paper, I demonstrate that both governments have utilized “national trauma” to construct a nationalist space that excludes LGBT+ people, upholstered by a justifying narrative. I argue that these parties have heavily invested in creating a social and cultural infrastructure endorsing their interpretation of past collective trauma. They then use appeals to this trauma to depict LGBT+ people as existential threats to the nation, before exonerating themselves from consequential blame through similar appeals to victimhood. These “politics of trauma” are instrumental in analyzing how states frame and organize intergroup identity aggressively, which is visible through a rise in anti-LGBT+ violence in both countries.

By most metrics, many African states underperform. Some scholars argue that neo-colonial systems established after independence are to blame, as they perpetuate dependence on former overlords. Others contend that continued failures of African leaders and political institutions prevent their countries from succeeding. I analyze two specific cases from French Africa diametrically opposed in their experiences of decolonization. In Guinea, the French left abruptly, taking everything they could carry. In Gabon, they stayed, and continued to direct the country’s politics and economy. What differences does this disparity have on state success after independence? To answer this question, I assess the impacts French actions had on three aspects of the postcolonial societies: rule of law, political participation, and development strategies. Each element is critical for a successful state– institutions must be bound by rules to be trusted by citizens and enterprises, citizens must have a voice (if not necessarily a vote) in government, and people must be able to meet their basic needs. I find that the rule of law failed in both states, though for different reasons. While political participation was limited in both cases by mass arrests, it was almost mandatory in Guinea, and discouraged in Gabon. While French interests ensured Gabon maintained the economic status quo, Guinea’s ambitious planned economy squandered resources on unprofitable investments. All told, the two extremes of French decolonization both resulted in the ruling party dominating, giving them complete authority to make, remake, and break the rules at their leisure.

Sexual violence against male victims during armed conflict still remains largely under-researched. The small amount of research that does exist attributes the occurrence of such violence to the perpetrator’s desire to assert their own masculine power. However, claiming that sexual violence against males is perpetrated only to assert personal masculinity fails to explain the attempt of individual perpetrators to use sexual violence to feminize enemy communities during armed conflict. Instead, this essay argues that it is the state that embodies normative masculinity. The State as an ideational entity demands the defense and expansion of its normative masculinity during armed conflict. This embodiment of ideal masculinity is envisioned and also aspired to by the individuals. Consequently, individuals within that state become subordinate agents tasked with implementing the state’s demand through violent means like sexual violence against other males. Failing to recognize that the occurrence of sexual violence lies in the logic of state’s masculinity leads to insufficient understanding of both the occurrence of sexual violence against males, as well as the reluctance of both national and international community to properly address this atrocity.

In 2014 Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), ratified the "Cape Town Declaration," which recognized the "paramount importance of science, technology and innovation (STI) for human development." This declaration not only represents the growing importance of STI policy just in the BRICS states, but highlights the emergence of STI as a precondition of modem economic growth. This paper examines the significance of state STI policy as an increasingly important facet of strategic economic and state development in today's globalizing world. Additionally, this paper offers a comparative analysis of STI strategies in three BRICS countries. The research supports two major conclusions. First, in today's globalizing world, the capacity of the state, and implementation of effective STI policies, both play fundamental roles in enabling economic growth in developing countries. Second, a comparative analysis ofBRICS STI policies provides empirical examples ofhow specific strategies can effectively, or ineffectively, contribute to economic growth and overall state development. In this comparative analysis, it is clear that despite each country's commitment and intent to build STI capacity, historical and political context are influential in determining the successful implementation of effective STI policy in any given country.

Analyzing spoken, written, visual, or tangible material can offer sophisticated insight into the complexity of social life, understood through analysis of language in its widest sense; it offers ways of investigating meaning, whether in conversation or in culture. The idea of retelling foreign texts may be alien to some cultures, and understanding why, how, and when a particular work was created is essential for understanding the Russian one. In highly censored Russian culture, skepticism is a prerequisite for reading a text in the Soviet era, as it frequently served as an Aesopian hint or an allegory on contemporary issues. “Aesopian language” as a term was first coined by Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin in his Letters to Auntie (1881-1882), in order to designate a “figurative language of slavery”, an “ability to speak between the lines… at a time when literature was in a state of bondage”. The practice of this elusive discourse is investigated in Lev Loseff’s fundamental study, in which he defines Aesopian language as “a special literary system, one whose structure allows interaction between the author and reader at the same time that it conceals inadmissible content from the censor”.1Russian texts written during this time have a tendency to unlock secret meanings, social critique, and political challenges, thus Soviet cultural production can be understood as an act of resistance.

In this study, Polish cultural identity as derived from shared cultural memories is explored. The persistence of a strong Polish cultural identity even throughout a turbulent history is examined during the Soviet era through the analysis of three films, Andrzej Wajda's Ashes and Diamonds, Agnieszka Holland's To Kill a Priest, and Andrzej Wajda's Katyn. Because viewing films can result in the adoption of prosthetic memory which contribute to support of cultural memory, and because the creation of film itself can be considered scriptotherapy, each film is a lens to better understand how reaction to traumas of World War II and adherence to belief in Catholicism have influenced cultural memory and, by extension, Polish cultural identity throughout the period of study.

No copy of this thesis is available.

Approaches to what exactly a fairy tale should accomplish and how it accomplishes it are varied. Nevertheless, however diverse the conclusions of different fairy-tale genre studies may be, they all come to a similar result: a fairy tale is a representation of cultural perspective and understanding that acts as an important socialization tool, whether it teaches its audience how to understand and mitigate basic fears and human functions or reinforces an existing moral and social structure. Maria Tatar, a contemporary folktale and fairy tale scholar, writes that the "staying power" of fairy tales "suggests that they must be addressing issues that have a significant social function" (xi). Tatar also goes on to write that "fairy tales ... develop maps for coping with personal anxieties, family conflicts, social frictions, and the myriad frustrations of everyday life" (xi). In other words, fairy tales at once confront prominent sociocultural issues while simultaneously performing a didactic function for how to contend with the reality of these issues.

The goal of this paper is to analyze Russian migration policy in order to understand why migration policy in post-soviet Russia has become inconsistent and ineffective. The problems of Russian migration are significant because they affect the estimated ten million labor migrants currently working in the Russian Federation who suffer from human rights abuses. Migration policy is also significant because the Russian Federation is the main receiver of labor exported from Central Asian states and without a consistent migration policy Russia risks endangering the social and political stability of Central Asia. By combining an analysis of migration policy with research on the nature of the Russian state and a comparative migration analysis, it becomes clear that Russia is still in a state of transition from the Soviet Union. The problems of a transitioning state, such as a lack of state capacity, institutionalization of informal practices and a lack of trust in state institutions, combine with an overarching lack of national identity to prevent effective policy from being realized.

This paper compares and contrasts two models for conducting science: that of the patent-driven intellectual property rights regime, and that of the popular-interest driven civilian science regime. To frame this comparison in less abstract terms, the paper presents maca (Lepidium meyenii) as a case study of the struggles of different interest groups to patent scientific innovation or keep it in the public domain. I find that for reasons of finance, human resources, and infrastructure, Peru and the other member-states of the Andean Community of Nations are pulled towards a patent-driven intellectual property rights regime. However for reasons of avoiding regional competition, maintaining national sovereignty, and fostering national pride these nations might seek to further develop civilian science programs. Ultimately I conclude that neither model, as practiced in the Global North, is appropriate for the Andean Community of Nations. Rather a hybrid of these two scientific regimes is required to address the specific issues of scientific innovation in a biologically megadiverse developing nation.