Though much of my Global Studies degree has focused on colonial and post-colonial relationships between the western, European states and Middle Eastern and North African states (and certainly, this course considered these relationships extensively), for my term paper for Politics of Oil and Natural Resources, I ultimately decided to look outside my region of interest. This paper analyzed the methods used by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to generate oil revenue to increase loyalty among the population, and how this pattern of utilizing oil to maintain legitimacy continued under Nicolas Maduro’s regime to facilitate power by resource revenue. Considering factors such as “the resource curse” and petroculture, this paper looked at the highly politicized nature of the oil industry and how this industry has thus been tied to the very stability of the country’s economy and political system.

Oil, Populism, and the Decay of Democracy in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela

As the term paper for my American Foreign Policy After World War II course, this paper focused on the 1953 coup of democratically elected Mohammad Mosaddeq. Relating the dominating political sentiment within the Islamic Republic of Iran to the Republic’s attempts to exacerbate the anti-Americanism inherent in this political culture, this paper argued a similar sentiment to the above Colonial and Post-Colonial Development in Egypt, Iran, and Syria written in Spring 2017—ultimately, that former colonial powers and western-states have continued to have extensive powers in shaping regional developments and conflicts, often in unexpected and undesired manners, in the Middle East. By tracing the coup to overthrow Mosaddeq to the prevalent anti-Americanism present in the Islamic Republic that overthrow the western-imposed Shah, the paper demonstrated the unintended effects of interventionism in the shaping of the modern nation. 

American Imposition of Authoritarian Regimes During the Containment Era – A Case Study in Iran

As the first paper written in my Myth, Propaganda, and the State course, this paper began to cement my interest in the themes that would later dominate the formation of research questions in my BPhil thesis. Focused on Imperial Japan, and particularly, Kenneth J. Ruoff’s Imperial Japan at its Zenith, this paper considered the manner by which national identity was indoctrinated into Japanese citizens throughout the first half of the twentieth century in order to establish mythical divinity to the emperor and establish social cohesion and loyalty to the central figure. By tying together nationalism with deep ideological propagation of a state myth, this paper looked to analyze mechanisms of control and cohesion in a state that tied itself to the state religion, Shintoism, in order to integrate myth and divine command of the state into the daily life of citizens. As a case study in the utilization of myth in order to cement control, this paper considered how Imperial Japan was able to create a national community fully loyal to the regime rather than an ideology

State Myth Analysis Paper

The final project for my Myth, Propaganda, and the State course, this paper analyzed visual propaganda from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in order to identify the distinct narratives proposed by the content in each set of propaganda and how these narratives manifest from the conditions of legitimacy, or lack thereof, of each state. Beginning in 1921 for Israeli content, marking the beginning of the British mandate, and as late as 1971 for the Palestinian content, marking the Palestinian solidarity movement, each set of content was analyzed in accordance to a set of specific criteria: (1) appeal to rightful historical ownership of [historic] Palestine, (2) appeal to an enemy narrative, (3) appeal to national solidarity, (4) appeal to sympathy and support, and (5) appeal to recognize the distinct moral goodness or lawfulness of state and nation. By looking at these various categories of content and establishing data in accordance to these, the paper analyzed the methods by which each state utilized narratives in visual propaganda in order to mobilize their respective populations.

Content Analysis Project

An analysis on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color, this paper, written for my Feminist Philosophy course, considered how intersectional analysis is needed for adequate legislative and social responses to issues that occur for those at “intersections of oppression”—notably, race and sex. Focused particularly on African-American women, the methodology of intersectional analysis is vital in the discipline of Global Studies, where issues across the global spectrum manifest differently for people of all races, classes, and genders. That said, this paper considers Crenshaw’s two categories in which the intersection of identities is often problematic, structural intersectionality and political intersectionality, in order to consider both the systemic and political manner is which standardized views of race and feminism need to be modified in accordance to the community considered.

Intersectionality and Identity Politics

Written as the term paper for my Feminist Philosophy course, this paper utilized Berta E. Hernández-Truyol and Jane E. Larson’s Sexual Labor and Human Rights as well as Cynthia Enloe’s Maneuvers: The International Politics of Militarizing Women’s Lives  in order tie together feminist discourse on sex work with the military institutions in developing countries that create social and economic factors that perpetuate sex work as a singular means of living for many women. By juxtaposing the abolitionist and autonomy debates on sex work, this paper utilized the aforementioned sources to argue that labor structures in developing countries have often combined with foreign military institutions in order to create systems of supply and demand that can only be truly combatted by interconnecting labor rights and human rights.

Sexual Labor and Human Rights- Sex Work, the Military, and Community Development

A case study in the effects of globalisation, this paper considered cultural preservation in light of the increasing phenomena of minority cultures and traditions being overshadowed by the dominating effects of globalisation. Looking at the Sentinelese people of North Sentinel Island, one of the only remaining uncontacted peoples in the world, this paper analyzes both the history that discourages contact with these people as well as the philosophical and cultural ramification of potential contact. Arguing that in order to protect the cultural identify of isolated tribes, international principles of cultural projection must be established as entities separate from sovereign claims over the tribes themselves, this paper concludes that international principles must consider cultural heritage as a main factor in an increasingly globalized world that puts minority cultures and traditions at risk of disappearance.

The Sentinelese – Indigenous Tribes. Globalism, and the Preservation of Cultural Heritage

Written in tandem with several sections of my thesis for the course Islam, Law, and Politics, this paper took into account the development of state polices within the debate between modernity and tradition to increase my understanding of regional phenomena in accordance to the nation-specific understanding and analysis in my thesis. By comparing Tunisia and Algeria, two neighboring states who both existed in the French Colonial Empire yet have had very different evolutions in personal status code and the rights of women, this paper argued that the initial colonial experience, wrought with varying levels of cultural penetration and native destruction, created two entirely different landscapes for ideological discourse: one in which the protectorate of Tunisia saw early debate on Islamist modernism and relative stability in the social landscape and another in which the colony of Algeria saw cultural destruction and lashed back in a nationalist movement that directed singular priority to an anti-colonial, anti-western movement.

Personal Status Law, Modernity, and Women in Tunisia and Algeria