2023

My project, ‘A story from a room with a window overlooking a cemetery’, is a creative senior thesis in the Comparative Literature and TDM departments which explores the interrelation of historical narratives and personal stories. Loosely based on the two plays that examine the role of memory in identity formation in Poland and Chile, the performance takes the form of a guided museum tour. Its set is a museum archive, in which material documents, recordings, photos and objects that refer to polarizing events in Chilean and Polish history are combined with items that relate to personal stories of my family. Juxtaposing private experience with public memory, the performance draws parallels between the myth-making practice in two seemingly different cultural contexts, examining how memory is curated and institutionalized into official narratives of the state. 

The period 1946–1986 was a turbulent yet pivotal moment in the history of Sino-Philippine diplomatic relations. The Philippines had just achieved independence, seeking to gain political and economic footing; China was witnessing dramatic economic, political, and ideological shifts under Communist rule. A major territorial dispute between them was brewing on top of other issues surrounding “overstaying” Chinese and China-backed subversive groups in the Philippines, all against the backdrop of a continuing Cold War. Amidst the many challenges of the period, China and the Philippines resolved to uphold their common economic, political, and socio-cultural aspirations, finding ways not only to preserve but also strengthen their centuries-long relations. What was their driving motivation for doing so? How did they overcome their respective and shared challenges? What lessons can they glean from these experiences as they stand at yet another crossroads in their diplomatic relations? These are central questions that this year-long thesis project hopes to answer. 

Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, under which the Serbian and Croatian languages were classified as linguistically the same, the language standard was changed far more extremely and rapidly in Croatia than in Serbia. This thesis explores the impact of the divergent language policies on linguistic identity in those countries. First, a sentiment analysis was performed on tweets about language from Serbia and Croatia to identify how people think about their own language. Then, field research was conducted in both countries to explain how those identity differences were impacted by language policy. The sentiment analysis showed that Croats are more likely to exhibit polarized feelings about their own language; that Croats are more likely to view the Croatian language as separate from Serbian; and that Croats are more likely to view Serbian as a language than Serbs are to view Croatian as a language. The field research revealed that this can be explained by differences in the structure of language institutes, in the construction of national narratives, and in the salience of national identity. This contributes a new perspective to the conversation on Balkan language policy and identity through its unique incorporation of social media analysis and interviews with policymakers. 

This thesis explores the development and experience of citizenship at the social margins of the Confederacy. It devotes particular attention to the experience of foreigners. Historians have seldom noted that the American South had significant foreign-born populations, comprising as much as a third of some major cities. Their presence placed significant pressure on the Confederate nation in two realms: citizenship and diplomacy. As the war progressed and the government expanded its reach (through conscription, for example), the Confederate state came into unprecedented contact with its foreign-born population, in arenas such as military conscription. I argue that, through this process, foreigners emerged as a central group negotiating the rights and obligations of citizenship in the Confederacy. They also became significant players in Confederate diplomacy. Their efforts to evade conscription set off contentious debates with European powers that affected the Confederacy’s efforts to attain international recognition. My thesis thus brings together three overlooked histories of the American Civil War: the history of immigration, international history, and the history of citizenship. 

This thesis explores Haudenosaunee political philosophy, especially conceptions of nationhood, and identifies how the Haudenosaunee have deployed these political traditions as a means of defending their land and sovereignty since before first contact with European powers. It focuses on the establishment of the Six Nations of the Grand River community in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and details Haudenosaunee resistance to European empire and the nascent United States in this time period. As the post-Revolutionary war border bifurcated Haudenosaunee territory and forced many citizens into diaspora, they continued to exercise traditional strategies to maintain and rebuild a grounded national identity in the new territory. Using archival and historical methods, this thesis details the move to the Grand River, interrogates the early roots of the ongoing process of land loss there, and unpacks the importance of political tradition in the community’s founding. It ultimately argues that this tradition has allowed the community to transcend the colonial border and maintain relationships with the entire Confederacy in spite of and in direct resistance to historic displacement and ongoing land dispossession. 

What’s in a name? Mine is a story of migration, political strife, and longing for a home that once was. This project interrogates how memory functions in conjunction with identity through facets like naming, jokes, and music. I examine the ways in which Togolese people navigate their politics and their interpersonal relationships as determined by identifying factors like ethnicity and socioeconomic status, while confronting the fear that comes with living under the control of this abusive, paternalistic state. I center ethnographic work and interviews conducted with members of my family while I spent five weeks in Togo. Family ties allow me to interrogate the nature of kinship bonds across generations and across the diaspora. This will be supplemented by archival work to explore the way Togolese people use naming and idioms to convey a covert political message. The regime of Eyadema, the country’s long-time post-independence ruler, serves as the context for the political situation in the country today. 

Using a combination of nineteen interviews and seven weeks of participant observation, my work aims to understand the emotional, practical, and rhetorical challenges to immigrant integration in Norway. Despite concerted state- and local-based efforts to help immigrants integrate into Norwegian life, I found that immigrants were on average more lonely, less satisfied, and more socially and economically vulnerable than their Norwegian counterparts. In this thesis, I attempt to explain these phenomena. I argue that Norwegian narratives of homogeneity and perceived ‘natural’ differences between ethnic groups result in a high level of racial self-segregation. Many ethnic Norwegians report avoiding interactions with non-white migrants, resulting in very high levels of interpersonal loneliness and social exclusion amongst first and second-generation immigrants. This loneliness persists in a number of different contexts, from family life to everyday interactions with Norwegian culture. In addition to being an inherent cause for concern, these high levels of segregation and loneliness mean that many immigrants are unable to develop the language skills and cultural savvy to navigate the Norwegian welfare state. When considered in combination, these mechanisms paint a clear explanation for the challenges associated with integrating migrants. 

This thesis asks how and why South Korea (ROK) has shifted its foreign policy towards North Korea (DPRK) on human rights under the Sixth Republic (1987–present). Using a framework of human rights established by the United Nations, it differentiates between Civil and Political Rights (CPR) and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR) approaches. The UN clarifies that CPR and ESCR are interconnected, neither more important than the other. I accordingly use the term “human security” to indicate the intersection of the two, or the overall state of liberties and welfare in an environment. However, in closed, totalitarian regimes such as the DPRK, outside actors find that pursuing CPR and ESCR are mutually exclusive efforts. CPR hardline tactics are undermined by ESCR engagement—while ESCR efforts require partnership with the regime, which CPR advocacy threatens. This dilemma plagues both ROK foreign policymakers and non-state actors interested in advancing DPRK human security. The involved conflict as often as they collaborate given wide-ranging disparities in human security focus, audience, and strategy. Thus, these interactions between changing ROK administrations, ROK and international NGOs, and foreign governments critically shape whether the ROK levies CPR or ESCR responses to the DPRK human security crisis.

The Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) serves as the basis of China’s foreign policy strategy in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region since its inception in 2013. This recent geopolitical shift also coincides with Saudi Arabia’s own goals with its initiative Vision 2030, which hopes to diversify the Saudi economy away from fossil fuels and reinvest into new infrastructure and sustainable energy. Using an interpretive framework based on ethnographic interviews and participant observations with members of the Chinese diaspora and Saudi nationals in the kingdom as well as critical discourse analysis of state newspapers, the thesis seeks to contribute to scholarly conversations about the growing relationship with China’s increasing engagements with the MENA region as the United States lessens its influence. By investigating case studies regarding the intersection of the BRI and Vision 2030 in the energy, trade, and religious sectors, one can see that the bilateral partnerships are still very underdeveloped and differ greatly from what the media portrays and the lived experiences of citizens reveal many cultural friction points that complicates this partnership. 

Authoritarian regimes concentrate power in an exclusive elite. Yet what happens to this elite as authoritarian regimes adopt democratic systems open to all? Elite appeasement theory proposes two possibilities. If the incumbent regime is at threat in elections, the state will co-opt their elites to preserve their loyalty. However, others argue that redistribution of benefits, to give others a stake in the survival of the regime, is best to counteract non-elites competing for power. This thesis tests these ideas in Singapore, where authoritarian developmental origins have given way to democratic systems. Utilizing data from 30,000 government contracts across six years, I first find significant agglomeration where contract volume increases but supplier count decreases. This implies certain relationships persist while others do not, and analyzing this reveals how Singapore has approached its elite appeasement strategy when under constraints. I then use community finding algorithms from theoretical computer science to find core shareholders and owners in these supplier networks. Understanding best-fit algorithms has future implications for analyzing real-life elite networks and contributes to novel theory on the persistence of such elite networks. 

This thesis examines the ways in which income segregation shapes community-based associational life in Brazil. Using interviews with the community leaders and public officials in a comparative case study of cities and low-income neighborhoods, I show that (1) in more segregated cities, associations of the poor are more prone to political cooptation; (2) associations’ power in shaping local policy outcomes is stronger in less segregated cities, even in segregated neighborhoods; and (3) all else equal, regardless of location within the city, associations have a higher bridging (across income group) engagement in low-segregated cities and higher bonding (within income group) engagement in highly segregated cities. These findings shed light on the conditions in which associations of low-income residents succeed in acting as autonomous local representatives and in advocating for improvements for their communities in areas of high-income inequality. 

The election of Chile’s President Gabriel Boric was a moment of hope for contemporary Latin American Left political movements striving to transform their economies’ unsustainable and unjust dependence on extractive industries. Despite Chile being among the countries best positioned to implement more sustainable development—due to its relative wealth, strong democratic institutions, and public support of improving industry standards—Boric has failed in his administration’s first two years to realize broad environmental promises. By employing a theoretical framework for understanding the Latin American Left’s recent shift from material to post-material programs, I argue that the Boric administration has struggled to implement reforms for long-term environmental justice because of the short-term economic needs of some party constituents (the poor, workers, etc.) dependent on extraction. To illustrate my theoretical argument, I present two comparative case studies in which the Administration attempted and failed to ‘green’ Chile’s extractive industries, supported by evidence from over forty interviews conducted during field research in Summer 2022. While I primarily focus on the Chilean experience, my argument explains outcomes of Latin American political parties running on green agendas in resource extraction-based economies such as Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, as well as non-resource extractive countries like Costa Rica. 

I’m writing about liberal affect in the US-led Global War on Terror. My sources include jocular conversations between US drone operators in the moments before a strike that killed twenty-three Afghan civilians, friendly phone calls between a former Guantánamo detainee and his old torturers, and a New York Times podcast seeking to understand ISIS whose central story was fictionalized. The project asks how politeness, locker room jokes, HR speak, and intimacy work as part of US empire and what their relationship is to law and violence. What is the connection between the legal infrastructure of such a “humane” war (thresholds for evidence, stress positions, respectful language) and the fictions produced as part of that war (forced false confessions, misidentification of drone strike targets, journalistic reports based on a fabrication)? 

In my thesis, I am examining language learning within civil society in Jerusalem. Scholarship relevant to my thesis includes nationalist theory, political geography, and historical, ethnographic, and legal accounts of Israel-Palestine. My primary research methodology is ethnography. I volunteered this past summer with a grassroots peacebuilding organization that conducted Hebrew and Arabic classes and joined their weekly classes and language exchange events. I conducted group and individual interviews with students, teachers, and program coordinators. I have found that language learning within civil society is a dynamic phenomenon that sheds light onto the subjective experience of living within a divided city, such as how individuals interact with unequal social, political, and economic structures. It also serves to examine language’s transformative potential to alter imagined communities, as well as limitations and contradictions of grassroots approaches towards political change.