Senior Theses

A complete list of Human Rights senior projects can be found here at the library’s Digital Commons.

Projects from 2015

Nationalism, Secularism, Authoritarianism: Dissenting Voices Gain Visibility in Turkey, Yasemin Melisa Akturk

Gated Communities in Gurgaon: Caste and Class on the Urban Frontier, Armaan Mullick Alkazi

The Hands that Build: Collective Mothering and Empowerment in Toni Morrison’s “Recitatif”, Emily Grace Berkowitz

India and Its Northeast Exception: From Frontier to Forefront, Akshita Manjari Bhanjdeo

Dominican Identity: Whitening an African Diaspora, Bernardo Antonio Cáceres

Uptown Predator, Meaghan R. Falvey

A Literary Analysis of the Spectrum of Brownness in America An Interpretation of Identity, Language and Terrorism in the Poetry of Alok Vaid-Menon, Suheir Hammad and Carlos Andrés Gómez, Alyssa Lee Freeman

Neither Here Nor There: Mapping My Iranian-American Identity, Laila Iravani

Decoding the Islamic State: Islamic State Hostage Videos and State Formation, Natalie Kerby

Constructing the Perfect Villain: Osama bin Laden and the American Media and Government, Jane Tapper Kovich

‘Tande Pa di Konprann Pou Sa’:Shortcomings of Medical Intervention in Haiti and Struggles to Define the Right to the Highest Attainable Standard of Health, Avery Ellen Lamb

Quality Education as a Human Right, Abigail Rose Lutsky

I Saw This: Conversations on Visual Media, Representation, and Surveillance, Rene L. Macioce

The Greek Identity, Immigration and the Rise of the Far-Right, Christina Miliou-Theocharaki

Still Locked Up: Prison Stories Told From Outside, Emily Jane Parker

How To Map A Desert, Ariana Perez-Castells

An Anthropological Education? The World Press Photo Competition and Photographic Intelligence, Tatiana Roth

Theses/Dissertations from 2014

Echo, Diego Alvarez-Parra

Searching for Dignity and Rights: Two Approaches to the Liberation of the Manual Scavenger, Louis I. Bonhoure

Seeing “Jack”: Race and the Ethics of Representation, Zora Chandler Radovan Bowman

Design and Development of a Chitin-Based Method for V. Cholerae Filtration., Francesca M. Di Rienzo

A Republic of Insects and Grass, Angels and Demons, Evan Dunn

Climate Change and Human Rights: An Examination of the Synergies in Discourse and Practice, Mai Aurell Foulser

Unmasking the Reality of Trafficking in Persons, Ishita Gupta

Against Tradition: A Critique of the Transformative Adjudication of South Africa’s Constitutional Court, Nina Germaine Kamp

Imaginary Topographies, Erica Ruth Lashof Newton

The Norms We Live By: Weighing the Benefits of a Legalistic Lens in Advancing Norm Implementation and Internalization, Emily M. Pascual

The Effect of Rehabilitative-Oriented Training and Mission Statement on Prison Guard Attitudes and Behavior Towards Inmates With Mental Disorders, Dana Nicole Pitts

The “Reasonableness” of Poverty: Progress and Pitfalls in South Africa’s Socio-economic Jurisprudence, Benajmin Oliver Powers

Understanding Microfinance, Cooper Mackenzie Roberts

Education For Freedom: A Look at Education’s Role in Economic and Human Development, Devon Scarlett

“Human Betterment”: The Fight For and Against 50 Years of Sterilization in North Carolina, Kay Bielak Schaffer

Theses/Dissertations from 2013

“I Don’t Post About Politics” An Analysis of Speech among Palestinian Youth in the West Bank, Lauren Elizabeth Blaxter

Dying For: Martyrdom, Sacrifice, and their Contemporary Forms in Modern America, Clay Robert Coffey

Ritual Surgeries: The Discourse Surrounding Female Genital Cutting and Tostan, Anna Karin Gors

Re-Envisioning Humanism in a Reductionist World, Anna Elizabeth Hadfield

The Gilded Gift: A Study in Celebrity Humanitarianism, Sanchi Illuri

#GonnaKillMyself: An Examination of Suicide Prevention in Social Media, Margaret Elizabeth Kucera

You Say Tomato, I Say Injustice: How Farmworkers Brought Human Rights to the Table, Phyllis Jeanne Kuplast

“(A) boot stamping on a human face–forever:” Gender, Sex, and Human Rights in Science Fiction, Rosemary Karin Limburg

“Transitional Justice: A Long Overdue and Difficult Way Forward for Afghanistan”, Mohammad Mehdi Rahmati

Politics By Other Means: Authenticity As Dissent In Post-1968 Czechoslovakia, Kasra Kurt Sarikhani

Human RIghts as Education: A Comparison of Models of Human Rights Education (HRE) in American Classrooms, Caitlin Marie Simon

Is the Gag Still On? The Lasting Impacts of America’s Rescinded Global Gag Rule on Abortion, Margot Elaine Sirinek

Human Rights and the Russian Avant Garde, Alexandra Marie Smith

Theses/Dissertations from 2012

Narratives of Survival: Ogojas, Igbos, and the Biafran War, Beatrice Ajaero

“Bang Bang Cut” & “O4O, Casey Asprooth-Jackson

‘Amakwerekwere’: an assessment of xenophobic sentiment and violence in South Africa, Travis Bostick

Television News and its Detriments to Conflict as explored in the short film “White Ants”, Ayana Enomoto-Hurst

“A Truthful Accounting of Events”: The Roles of Linguistic Strategy, Narrative, and Performance in United States Asylum Hearings, Celia Feldman

Regimes of Separation and Settlement:The Construction of Israeli Identity, Paulina Gorczyn

Hijabs, Morgan Green

Democracy & the Dangers of Security: Politics of the Nepali Armed Police Force, Dhana Laxmi Hamal

Hidden and Unregistered: The Migrant Domestic Labor Industry in Lebanon, Sadaf Hasan

Cracking Joe’s Six-Pack: A Study of Masculinity and its Discontents, Patricia C. Hochheim

Interrogating the Good: Humanitarian Appeals and the Limits of Our Political Imagination, Irina Kalinka

Brotherhood and (Dis)Unity?: Politics of Memory and the Reconstruction of History in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Marina Lazetic

Rationalizing the Pleasure in Another Group’s Suffering: From Schadenfreude to Dehumanization, Mengyao Li

Si ce n’est pas Genet, je ne sais pas: Theatre, Aliens, and Revolution, Shaun Allen Mahan

The Heart of Light: Rights, Justice, and Representations of History and Conflict in the Congo, Nion T. McEvoy Jr.

The Influence of Key Adult Relationships on the Motivation and Achievement of Urban High School Students: A Qualitative Analysis, Danielle Moses

On Space, Place, and Identity: Armenians in Bourj Hammoud, Nora Palandjian

The Call For Critical Responsibility: Theoretical Suggestions For Practical Human Rights Discourses and Strategies, Melissa Patel

La generación perdida: The Negative Effects of American Immigration Policy on Future Generations of Latin American Youth in the U.S., Diana Pitcher

Transitional Justice: A Long Overdue and Difficult Way Forward for Afghanistan, Mohammad Mehdi Rahmati

“Captivity of the Mind: Education and Incarceration in America,” an investigation of the effects of mass incarceration on the American psyche, as well as links between failure in school and entry into prison, Veronique Pearl Whittaker

Theses/Dissertations from 2011

Learning to Include, Shaveena Z. Anam

Inclusion vs. Unity and the Immigrant as a Potential Political Actor, Isabel Barber

Artifacts of Technoscience: Surrogacy and the Technological, Medically Mediated Reinvention of Nature, Lizzie Logan Baur

Breaking Down Testimony: Remembering, Reliving, and Representing, Sarah E. Bessel

The Atomized Self: Violence in Global Society, Kevin A. Cassem

Between Nation and State: Examining the International Romani Unions, Anna M. Fischer

Compete Narratives: The Search of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo for the Missing Children of Argentina, Johanna Greenberg

Resistance in Appalachia: What the Movement Against Mountaintop Removal Can Tell Us About Combating Corporate Power, Elias Isquith

Discipline and Doctrine: Learning from the Catholic School Model for Public School Success, Claire E. Phelan

“Go now and tell them”: Bulgarian folksongs and political resistance to the Turkish “yoke”, Thea Piltzecker

The Paradox of Language: Alienation and Reconstructed Identity in Exile Narratives, Chloé Ravel

The Narrative of Efficacy: Contemporary US Grassroots Food Movements and Formulations of Resistance to Globalized Food Systems, Emilie Ruscoe

“Conceptualizing Quantitative Language in Human Rights: Morality, Morality, and Iraq,” an examination of the process of calculation civilian death tolls and the significance of quantitative language in human rights, using the death toll in Iraq as a case study, Shaan Suman Sachdev

The Al-Huda movement and the Inculcation of Gender Roles and Identities Among Urban Pakistani Women, Mahwish Tazeem

Development as Freedom? Questioning Foreign Aid Development Assistance and Turning to What We Can Learn From Nicaragua, Chelsea Lea Whealdon