Religion and gender are two contemporary, heavily influential social identity markers that the media engages with. In India, Bollywood simultaneously interacts with religious and gender identity by producing many movies on Hindu-Muslim inter-religious romantic relationships in the twenty-first century. Bollywood’s Hindu-Muslim romance movies are stories with a central focus on a romantic relationship in which one lover is Hindu and the second is Muslim. The masculinity and femininity of the Hindu and Muslim characters are not accidental; it is meticulously articulated in every movie. This thesis explores two sets of patterns in the movies: themes in love stories and gender identity across the protagonists. It is important to note that representation of religious identity in Bollywood is highly debated with a special emphasis on Muslim identity since they are a religious minority and the political "Other". This thesis acknowledges that the presence of Muslims in Bollywood is complicated and not black and white, but it focuses on the representation of Muslims that is connected romantically with Hindus.

The conflict between the Ethiopian government and Tigray forces has been ongoing for over a year. In this conflict, many atrocities have been committed by the state, including massacres, torture, and mass sexual violence often directed against civilian Tigray. Because of this, many have wondered whether the Ethiopian state is committing genocide. In this study, I apply Gregory Stanton’s ten stages of genocide model to the Ethiopian state’s use of violence against civilian Tigray to argue that the Ethiopian government has and continues to commit genocide. Since the process of genocide is not linear, many reports, testimonies, and actions of the government support the argument that the Tigrayan people are victims of genocide.