Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2
Filtering by
Description
This thesis and creative project consists of two components. The first is a written analysis of Bosnian identity. It uses primary and secondary sources to get to the question of what it means to be a Bosnian. Readers can expect to learn about the last century and a half of Bosnian history, and how various leaders and experiences have molded the Bosnian people. The work is the combination of six months of research, and four months of writing. I chose this research as I am Bosnian and wanted to learn more about my culture. Through my research, I found that there is a strong Bosnian identity among people. This identity has been present throughout history, even through wars and political turmoil. Ultimately, the writing portion gives readers a background on Bosnian history, and then focuses on the history of identity. The second portion of the project is a two week unit lesson on Yugoslavian history. This lesson includes background on the region, as well as a guide on how an educator may choose to teach this region of the world. The lessons focus primarily on the last one hundred years, but they also include a broader overview of times prior to this. Not only this, but this section includes PowerPoints, lessons, and supplemental readings. The unit can be taught all together, or it can be broken down and lessons can be taken and taught during the time period they apply to. The goal of the two projects is to come together as one. Educators who are unsure about Bosnia can use the writing portion to gain more knowledge, and they can even assign this portion as a reading for more gifted students. The thesis project ultimately explores Yugoslavian and Bosnian history. Although the Unit does not directly align with identity, it does show students that identity plays a major role in this region, especially through the song lesson on day three. The goal of this project was not only to allow myself to gain more knowledge about this region, but to give educators the opportunity to teach a part of the world that is rarely taught in greater detail.
ContributorsMukanovic, Seada (Author) / Toth, Stephen (Thesis director) / Harris, Lauren (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
On October 28, 1922, Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Party marched on Rome. A reactionary political movement with a nebulous ideology, the Fascists gained power the following day when King Victor Emmanuel III appointed Mussolini as Prime Minister. Over the following decade, generic fascist movements would rise all over Europe, most prominently in Germany with the Nazi Party, and in Austria, Romania, Hungary, and Spain. Minor movements would appear in a great number of other European countries, including France, Great Britain, Portugal, and Greece. Most studies of fascism and totalitarianism look at those ideologies as a primarily European phenomenon, thereby overlooking the numerous fascist movements that appeared simultaneously in the United States. American historians similarly tend to downplay the role of fascism in United States history, relegating such groups and their “paranoid style” to the lunatic fringe of the political spectrum.
American fascist groups, while varied in motives, methods, and vision of a future society, recruited hundreds of thousands of members in the interwar years from either specific ethnic and immigrant groups or from among “native” Americans. Though most of these groups evaporated following the American entry into the Second World War and thus never came close to achieving any of their wide-ranging political goals, much of their literature and ideology exists and continues to be diffused among present-day members of the far right.
This study seeks to place American fascist movements within the context of their own time, as having emerged alongside European fascism from the same cultural antecedents. In doing so, this study analyzes three of the largest “native” American fascist groups – the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, and the Christian Front – and applies a theoretical model of fascism for comparison to generic European fascist movements. The thesis argues that in viewing fascism as the end result of a “cultural phenomenon,” as historian Zeev Sternhell has argued regarding European fascism, American fascism can similarly be seen as the culmination of several cultural, social, and intellectual antecedents rather than an obscure political aberration. By measuring the significance of American fascist movements only by their (lack of) political effectiveness, historians have overlooked many of the broader implications of such groups not only having existed but also having gained such a large following of adherents.
American fascist groups, while varied in motives, methods, and vision of a future society, recruited hundreds of thousands of members in the interwar years from either specific ethnic and immigrant groups or from among “native” Americans. Though most of these groups evaporated following the American entry into the Second World War and thus never came close to achieving any of their wide-ranging political goals, much of their literature and ideology exists and continues to be diffused among present-day members of the far right.
This study seeks to place American fascist movements within the context of their own time, as having emerged alongside European fascism from the same cultural antecedents. In doing so, this study analyzes three of the largest “native” American fascist groups – the Black Legion, the Silver Shirts, and the Christian Front – and applies a theoretical model of fascism for comparison to generic European fascist movements. The thesis argues that in viewing fascism as the end result of a “cultural phenomenon,” as historian Zeev Sternhell has argued regarding European fascism, American fascism can similarly be seen as the culmination of several cultural, social, and intellectual antecedents rather than an obscure political aberration. By measuring the significance of American fascist movements only by their (lack of) political effectiveness, historians have overlooked many of the broader implications of such groups not only having existed but also having gained such a large following of adherents.
ContributorsClements, Austin Jacob (Author) / Toth, Stephen (Thesis director) / Gilkeson, John (Committee member) / Flower, John (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05