This project explores gender and identity during the Siege of Leningrad (September 8 1941 - January 27 1944) as articulated by child diarists Elena Mukhina and Iura Riabinkin. Iura is a disabled young man, who struggles to reestablish a sense of masculinity and purpose after being rejected from the army; he slowly loses his physical strength, a pillar of his male identity, due to extreme starvation and grapples with feelings of worthlessness. Lena is a young woman who grounds her femininity, and thus her self-worth, in her work as a hospital orderly; once she is required to return to school, she attempts to commit herself to the genderless “Soviet student” ideal but finds difficulty in relinquishing her feminine identity. During the German encirclement of the city during WWII, Leningraders suffered tremendously, fighting to survive without ample food, electricity, or water, all while isolated from the rest of the USSR. This deeply traumatic experience redefined Leningrad’s cultural landscape, specifically raising questions about Soviet gender culture. In their diaries, these two 16-year-old students demonstrate the changing norms through their perceptions of traditional gender roles, self-worth, and their own masculinity and femininity. This project focuses on the diarists’ use of gendered language and how it changes over the course of the war, offering historical context to suggest explanations for these changes. In the academic discourse surrounding the Siege, scholars have approached the event as a psychological phenomenon or a primarily female experience, but rarely as a child’s experience. Iura’s diary is the only published and translated diary by a male child, even then only available in excerpts, while Lena is one of very few female child diarists published in full. Through this project, I aim to illuminate this neglected aspect of Siege study and illustrate the nuanced gender discussion explored by these extraordinary children.

Between 1973 and 1990, Chile was ruled by Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator known for his persecution of leftists and political opponents. Although Chile transitioned to democracy, ratified the American Convention on Human Rights and joined the Inter-American System for the protection of human rights (IAHRS) in 1990, Pinochet's legacy of human rights abuse lingers. This is exemplified by the Chilean military justice system's ongoing jurisdiction over cases in which military personnel harmed civilians, which violates the Convention's guarantee of access to competent courts and fair trials. This research fills a gap in the existing literature on this violation by exploring the following question: how do the combined structural weaknesses of the Chilean judiciary and IAHRS limit the Chilean military justice system's compliance with the Convention? To address this question, I qualitatively analyzed the foundational documents of the Chilean judiciary and IAHRS with a focus on how vague or inconsistent language in the articles that are procedurally connected in the interactions between the two institutions overlap and create loopholes that allow for Chile's ongoing Convention violation. This thesis argues that ambiguous and contradictory language in the articles of the Chilean and IAHRS documents involved in the referral of human rights petitions to the Inter-American Court limits compliance by jeopardizing the legitimacy of petitions against Chile for inappropriate military jurisdiction and by creating significant deterrents for those considering petitioning against Chile. As many Latin American countries were ruled by military dictatorships and have since ratified the Convention, this research could illuminate tendencies central to understanding and rooting out dictatorial legacies in the region and inform more effective collaboration between the IAHRS and its member states in addressing impunity for human rights abuse. 

Despite the significance of North Korea’s state ideology of Juche (translated as "self-reliance") on all aspects of life and policy in the country, scholars have generally neglected to cite ideology as a cause for nuclear weapons development. In this research, I explore how Juche affects nuclear weapons development through a text analysis of close to 10,000 pages of primary documents produced by North Korean leaders from 1980 to 2007, utilizing keywords related to Juche and nuclear weapons to identify relevant texts. In this study, I find that the Juche ideology is the primary way in which North Korea justifies its nuclear weapons development up to 2007. In particular, North Korea justifies its nuclear weapons through Juche in four ways through the Juche core pillars of political independence (jaju), economic self-reliance (jarip), loyalty to the leader, and self-reliance in defense (jawi). I also find that the relationship between Juche and nuclear development has evolved over the years (from theoretical foundations in the 1980s to justification of nuclear weaponry in the 2000s). This study has important practical implications as it shows that an important reason North Korea elected to pursue nuclear weapons development is because it feels that doing so is the only way to uphold the core values of the Juche ideology and preserve its independence. It also shows that a central mission of Juche and North Korean nuclear weapons is ensuring that the Kim dynasty continues to rule and to maintain their hereditary succession. This means that the North Korean nuclear logic is significantly different from other countries like China, Israel, Pakistan, and India where the operative factor is primarily the “national interest.” As previous denuclearization negotiations have mostly neglected this aspect, future negotiations may benefit from keeping this unique characteristic of North Korean nuclear weapons development in mind.

The United States immigration system was created upon the ideas of white supremacy. There have been many instances of xenophobia and racism throughout history used as a ploy to justify anti-immigration policies. The US-Mexico border, Latin America, and the Caribbean play a significant role in the conversations around immigration due to the intersection of various racial identities; white supremacy plays a part in justifying discrimination and violence towards people of color. This research asks how racial differences influence US immigration incarceration and deportation. This is conducted by comparing the historical and contemporary contexts of border patrol and immigration policy to analyze the modern-day landscape of immigration and how it has or has not transformed over time. This was achieved through a literature review of historical sources around immigration policy and secondary research on the history of the US immigration system. Desired and achieved recruitment consisted of two academic professors who had extensive research and knowledge on the historical and contemporary framework of the US immigration system as well as two US community organizations focused on advocating for Black and Indigenous immigrant rights. They were identified through their research and activism, centered around the intersections of race and immigration. Drawing upon interviews and secondary research sources, our research group presents an in-depth series of podcast episodes, which feature candid discussions with professors and organizations heavily involved with the immigrant community. These interviews allow the listener to gain a deep understanding of how racial differences impact and shape immigrant incarceration and deportation. Overall, our research group hopes to demonstrate how immigration policy has disproportionate impacts depending on a person's race, leading to varying experiences and statistical differences in incarceration and detention rates. ​​Through this podcast, our research group hopes to inspire conversation around the intersection between race and today's immigration policy.

China’s rapid economic growth and urbanization in the recent two decades marked one of the most incredible speeds since human civilization, but the deeper social and environmental issues keep being exposed as relentless urban sprawl sweeps across the country. In 2012, under the nationwide “land-creation” movement, Yan’an, a major city in central China with a population of 2 million situated on the Loess Plateau, started implementing its 10-year plan to bulldoze mountains and build a “New District” on the hilltops to accommodate the exploding population. Despite mainstream narratives that feature it as a pioneer work of urbanization, I argue that the scarred land and the exploitative system in the “New District” cannot support the Plateau residents culturally and psychologically. This research draws on various theories and studies on anthropology, sociology, and urban planning to analyze the social, cultural, symbolic, and psychological impacts of the Yan’an “New District” project. The novel perspective proposed by this paper reconsiders urbanization as an exploitive and deceptive process and reexamines the future of rural-to-urban migration and urban growth.