Matching Items (1,079)
Filtering by
- Creators: Hindemith, Paul, 1895-1963
Description
Approaches to Holocaust representation often take their cues from both academic and public discourse. General opinion demands serious engagement that depicts the full range of the brutality and inhumanity of the genocide and the victimization of targeted groups perpetrated by the National Socialists. Such a treatment is considered necessary to adequately represent the Holocaust for generations to come. The analysis of four texts will show that humor is not only appropriate but is also an important addition to Holocaust discourse. This study argues that humor plays an important role as a stylistic tool for discussing the Holocaust as well as for its remembrance and representation. Jurek Becker's novel Jakob der Lügner and Ruth Klüger's autobiography Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend are witness-texts by Jewish authors. Humor in these two works helps the authors engage and work their experiences. Klüger's autobiography also utilizes humor to critically engage in the discussion of Holocaust representation. This study also analyzes two non-witness Jewish texts: the stage play Mein Kampf by George Tabori and the feature film Mein Führer, die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler by Dani Levy. These two works utilize overt humor to challenge established Holocaust representations. Drawing on ideas from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben, the core argument of this study demonstrates humor performs two main functions in the Holocaust literature and film chosen for this investigation. First, it restores a potential loss of dignity and helps victims endure the incomprehensible. Second, it challenges the prevailing truth and the established order.
ContributorsMeirich, Hanni (Author) / Gilfillan, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Ghanem, Carla (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Ethno-nationalist politicians and criminals in Mostar espoused a discourse of ethno-exclusionist sociocultural relations as a superstructure for the public in order to establish ethnocratic kleptocracies where they concealed their criminal colonization of residential and commercial property through manipulating the pre-Bosnian War discourse on property relations. This is not to argue that some or most of these politicians and criminals did not believe in their virulent nationalist rhetoric, but instead that the effects of the discourse created well-used pathways to personal, not community, wealth. Elites used the Yugoslav economic crisis and perceived past grievance to enflame growing tensions between ethnicities and social classes. I use Mostar as an object of analysis to examine the creation of Bosnian Croat and Bosniak ethnocratic regimes in this divided city. However, I focus more on the Bosnian Croat regime in the city because it envisioned Mostar as its capital, making the city the site of its political competition among factions. Even though ethno-nationalist politicians and criminals still hold a level of power in Mostar, the IC did succeed in instituting a high level of property restitution, which does not necessarily imply return, because the IC was able to impose rule of law when it acted in an organized manner. Also, the ethnocratic regimes were weakened due to regional economic and political factors that undercut the regimes' hold over the population.
ContributorsPignotti, Arthur (Author) / Batalden, Stephen K. (Thesis advisor) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
One of the great hallmarks of Russian life during the nineteenth century was the proliferation of alternative identities at nearly every level of society. Individuals found, created, or adopted new ways of self-identifying oneself vis-à-vis religion, nationality, and politics. This project examines the life of Daniil Avraamovich Khvol'son (1819-1911) and his understanding of his identity--from poor Lithuanian Jew to German educated scholar, to leading defendant of Jews accused of ritual murder, to renowned university professor. Khvol'son is often mentioned in works of the period but remains understudied and, as a result, poorly understood. This dissertation is the first to examine the man's life and times, his scholarly and public writings, as well as available commentaries about him from former students, opponents, and colleagues. This project is based on the available archival sources housed in the central archives of Russia and draws upon the different literary venues in which Khvol'son published during his lifetime. While it provides a broad biography of the man, more importantly, it takes on the content of his writing, the themes he explored, and the ways in which his contributions were viewed within their own time. This project argues that the aim of Russian imperial policy toward Jews was based on a hopeful, if hesitant, desire to gradually bring Jews into the state's service. Khvol'son was among the most successful of those candidates who received a world-class German education, a position within the state, and an opportunity to participate fully within Russian intellectual circles. However, Khvol'son's legacy is complex because he promoted a radical rethinking of Christian understanding of Jews and Judaism and by doing so, he challenged the Orthodox world to reconsider in a deeply personal way the ongoing persecutions of Jews based on false tales about them and their religion. Khvol'son painstakingly challenged the blood libel and sought to prove that it was not based in any identifiable reality but perpetuated an un-Christian worldview that demonized and vilified Jews. In doing so, Khvol'son formulated a controversial self-understanding for his position in society as situated between two diametrically opposed worlds--one Christian, the other Jewish.
ContributorsReed, Andrew C (Author) / Batalden, Stephen K. (Thesis advisor) / Tirosh-Samuelson, Hava (Committee member) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Clay, Eugene (Committee member) / Horowitz, Brian (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
ContributorsHindemith, Paul, 1895-1963 (Composer)
Description
Political and economic competition, so goes the broad argument, reduce corruption because competition increases the cost of actors to engage in corrupt practices. It increases the risk of exposure, provides non-corrupt alternatives for consumers, and introduces non-corrupt practices into the political and economic domains. Why then, has corruption persisted in the Central Eastern European countries decades after the introduction of political and economic competition in the early 1990s?
This dissertation asks how and why the emergence of competition in the political and economic domains leads to a transformation of the patterns of corruption. I define corruption as an act involving a public official who violates the norms or regulations of their office, receives some compensation in return, and thus harms the public interest.
I argue that under conditions of a communist past and high levels of uncertainty, the simultaneous emergence of political and economic competition transforms the opportunity structures of actors to engage in corruption. The resulting constellation of powerful incentives for and weak constraints against corruption encourages political and economic actors to enter into corrupt state-business relationships. Finally, the resource distribution between the actors in the corrupt state-business relationship determines the type of corruption that emerges—legal corruption, local capture, or covert political financing.
To test the causal mechanism, I employ intensive process-tracing of the micro-causal mechanisms of eleven corruption cases in Poland and Hungary. Using paired comparisons of cases from the same business sector but at different points in time, the dissertation examines how corruption patterns transformed over time in Poland and Hungary.
The dissertation shows that the emergence of political and economic competition changes the opportunity structures of actors in favor of corruption. Moreover, the new constellation of incentives and constraints encourages political and economic actors to establish corrupt state-business relationships. Crucially, I find that the resource distribution within these corrupt relationships determines the type of corruption emerges—local capture where both sides have concentrated resources that balance each other out, legal corruption when a strong economic actor confronts a fragmented political actor, and covert political financing when a weak economic actor faces a strong political actor.
This dissertation asks how and why the emergence of competition in the political and economic domains leads to a transformation of the patterns of corruption. I define corruption as an act involving a public official who violates the norms or regulations of their office, receives some compensation in return, and thus harms the public interest.
I argue that under conditions of a communist past and high levels of uncertainty, the simultaneous emergence of political and economic competition transforms the opportunity structures of actors to engage in corruption. The resulting constellation of powerful incentives for and weak constraints against corruption encourages political and economic actors to enter into corrupt state-business relationships. Finally, the resource distribution between the actors in the corrupt state-business relationship determines the type of corruption that emerges—legal corruption, local capture, or covert political financing.
To test the causal mechanism, I employ intensive process-tracing of the micro-causal mechanisms of eleven corruption cases in Poland and Hungary. Using paired comparisons of cases from the same business sector but at different points in time, the dissertation examines how corruption patterns transformed over time in Poland and Hungary.
The dissertation shows that the emergence of political and economic competition changes the opportunity structures of actors in favor of corruption. Moreover, the new constellation of incentives and constraints encourages political and economic actors to establish corrupt state-business relationships. Crucially, I find that the resource distribution within these corrupt relationships determines the type of corruption emerges—local capture where both sides have concentrated resources that balance each other out, legal corruption when a strong economic actor confronts a fragmented political actor, and covert political financing when a weak economic actor faces a strong political actor.
ContributorsKartner, Jennifer Joan (Author) / Warner, Carolyn (Thesis advisor) / Thies, Cameron (Committee member) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Berliner, Daniel (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
This dissertation explores how rank-and-file political prisoners navigated life after release and how they translated their experiences in the Gulag and after into memoirs, letters, and art. I argue that these autobiographical narratives formed the basis of an alternate history of the Soviet Union. This alternate history informed the cultural memory of the Gulag in the Komi Republic, which coalesced over the course of the late 1980s and 1990s into an infrastructure of memory. This alternate history was mobilized by the formation of the Soviet Union’s first civic organizations, such as the Memorial Society, that emerged in the late 1980s. However, Gulag returnees not only joined post-Soviet civil society, they also formed a nascent civil society after their release in the 1950s. The social networks and informal associations that Gulag returnees relied upon to reintegrate back into Soviet society after release, also played an essential role in the memory project of coming to terms with the Stalinist past after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
As one of the first and most populous epicenters of the Gulag archipelago located in the Far North, from 1929-1958 Komi saw hundreds of thousands of prisoners, in addition to hundreds of thousands more who were exiled to the region from all over the Soviet Union. While some left the region after they were released, many were not able to leave or chose not to when given the choice. Regardless of where they lived when the Soviet Union collapsed, many former prisoners sent their autobiographies to branches of the Memorial Society and local history museums in Komi. For many, this was the very first time they had shared their stories with anyone. While Komi is unique in many ways, it is emblematic of processes that unfolded throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Twentieth Century. This project expands our understanding of how civil societies form under conditions of authoritarian rule and illuminates the ways in which survivors and societies come to terms with difficult pasts.
As one of the first and most populous epicenters of the Gulag archipelago located in the Far North, from 1929-1958 Komi saw hundreds of thousands of prisoners, in addition to hundreds of thousands more who were exiled to the region from all over the Soviet Union. While some left the region after they were released, many were not able to leave or chose not to when given the choice. Regardless of where they lived when the Soviet Union collapsed, many former prisoners sent their autobiographies to branches of the Memorial Society and local history museums in Komi. For many, this was the very first time they had shared their stories with anyone. While Komi is unique in many ways, it is emblematic of processes that unfolded throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe at the end of the Twentieth Century. This project expands our understanding of how civil societies form under conditions of authoritarian rule and illuminates the ways in which survivors and societies come to terms with difficult pasts.
ContributorsKirk, Tyler Colby (Author) / Manchester, Laurie (Thesis advisor) / Von Hagen, Mark (Thesis advisor) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / Barenberg, Alan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019
Description
This thesis explores the intersection of religion, social class, and politics during the late nineteenth century in Imperial Germany. Specifically, the focus of this work is on the Workers' Association of Saint Paul's in Aachen and Burtscheid, a Catholic working-class organization in the 1870s located in the city of Aachen, a rapidly industrializing city in the majority Catholic Prussian Rhineland. This organization was the largest Catholic working-class association in Germany in the 1870s, reaching 5,000 members by the middle of the decade, and also espoused the politics of Christian Socialism. This thesis explores the intersection of the possibly competing social identities of these workers between being Catholics and workers. To start, the scholarly framework of studying society and politics in Imperial Germany is discussed, especially the concept of rigidly constructed social milieus into five groups, two of them being the Catholics and the working-class, and how this work may suggest a challenge to this concept. Next, the background information of how a Catholic working-class came into existence, as it was the product of simultaneous nineteenth century processes of industrialization and a religious revival among German Catholics. The Kulturkampf was the force that politicized Catholicism in Germany, as the persecution of Catholic institutions by Prussia forced Catholics into a social and political "ghetto." Then, the Association of St. Paul's itself is discussed. First, the workers espoused their Catholic identity and religious solidarity during a time of persecution, but also emphasized the Christian basis for their brand of Socialism. This lent into their identity as part of the working-class. While they steadfastly rejected the "godlessness" of Social Democracy, the Christian Socialists also shared many similar social and political goals. This intersection between identities eventually led to political conflict in Aachen throughout the 1870s with the mainstream, bourgeois Catholics of the city. To conclude, the legacy of Christian Socialism on modern Germany is discussed, as well as its contribution to the complex politics of Imperial Germany.
ContributorsHarkness, John Hosea (Author) / Benkert, Volker (Thesis director) / Holian, Anna (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This thesis is based on the responses of Soviet Displaced Persons collected by the Harvard Study on the Soviet Social System (HPSSS), an oral history conducted in Munich and New York from 1950 to 1951 in which former Soviet citizens were interviewed. They were primarily interviewed about daily life within the Soviet Union. A total of 331 displaced persons were interviewed over the course of the study, with most individuals receiving multiple interview sessions. These sessions were divided broadly as A and B sections. The A-section, which the majority of interviewees received and was viewed by the compilers as a broad sociological inquiry, was divided into subsections focusing on Soviet work, government, family, education, communication, philosophy of life, and ideology. The B-sections were used for deeper anthropological inquiries and are potentially more controversial due to the use of Rorschach tests and situational responses. Fewer respondents were continued on to the B interviews which contained a variety of subsections, though most respondents were only asked questions from one or two sections of the greater whole. A portion of the B section interviews do provide valuable insight to my thesis for their focus on the Displaced Person status of the interviewees. The project consisted of 764 separate interviews of the 331 respondents. The interviewers for the HPSSS were primarily graduate students, ranging from history, sociology, psychology and economics departments, with varying degrees of fluency in Russian and Ukrainian. Some of the interviewers went on to become leading experts in Soviet Studies in the years to follow. Others stopped publishing, following the major publication of the HPSSS in the late 1950s, which may indicate a move to the private sector or employment within the federal government rather than academics. While not possible to include within my analysis, the major publications of the study also included the insights garnered from nearly ten thousand written questionnaires of DPs that were tabulated and discarded prior to publication.
ContributorsWilder, Ian (Author) / Manchester, Laurie (Thesis director) / Von Hagen, Mark (Committee member) / Benkert, Volker (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The American entrance into World War I instituted a fundamental change in the nation’s handling of foreign policy. The established precedent of isolationism was rooted in Washingtonian affairs and further emphasized by the policies of the Monroe Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary. President Woodrow Wilson, by choosing to engage in a European war, created a milestone in American history by sending troops across the Atlantic to “repay Lafayette’s debt.” However, while World War I shaped American relations with western Europe, it also played an important role in Russian-American relations with Wilson’s decision to intervene in the Russian Civil War. Like his Fourteen Points at the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson asserted the legitimacy to intervene in Russia through pro-democratic rhetoric. This historic decision not only marked one of the first pro-democratic interventions in American military history, but it became the foundation for containment strategy during the Cold War twenty years later.
Furthermore, this paper will look to highlight and bring forth the stories and testimonies of those who fought in the American Expeditionary Force in North Russia (AEF-NR). Examination of the American leaders in the region as well as the geographical situation will address why the AEF-NR’s intervention was far more violent than that of the American Expeditionary Force of Siberia, telling the story of the ‘Forgotten Fight’ and its significant effect on American-Russian foreign relations.
Furthermore, this paper will look to highlight and bring forth the stories and testimonies of those who fought in the American Expeditionary Force in North Russia (AEF-NR). Examination of the American leaders in the region as well as the geographical situation will address why the AEF-NR’s intervention was far more violent than that of the American Expeditionary Force of Siberia, telling the story of the ‘Forgotten Fight’ and its significant effect on American-Russian foreign relations.
ContributorsBrooks, Jeffery (Author) / Von Hagen, Mark (Thesis director) / Longley, Rodney (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2018-12
Description
South Sudan claims the position of being the newest state in the world, formed by a referendum on separation from Sudan held in 2011. The referendum comes after a half a century of fighting, which led to the displacement of an estimated four million South Sudanese and the death of two million. The massive numbers of displaced people fled to Northern Sudan or surrounding countries, crossing borders and becoming refugees. A comparatively small number were repatriated into countries of second asylum, such as the United States. Arizona, a state with relatively cheap cost of living and a large amount of low-skilled jobs became a favored state for resettling refugees. In 2013, the South Sudanese population in the greater Phoenix area was estimated to be around 4,000. This paper is an exploration of the how South Sudanese refugee youth identify themselves, and find their place in a new country, and in Phoenix, without losing their roots. This paper concludes that South Sudanese refugee youth have a hyphenated identity. They identify as both proud South Sudanese and as American citizens. This identity is formed by strong ties to the South Sudanese community and education by parents on the one hand, and integration in American schools and norms on the other hand. Having a hyphenated identity also affects the work that these South Sudanese do and their relationships with South Sudan. This research also highlights the difficulties with theorizing immigration and identity, by placing discussions of integration and transnationalism in concert with the voices of actual immigrants. The findings in this paper are developed from 12 oral history interviews of South Sudanese in conjunction with existing scholarly literature on refugees, South Sudan, and identity.
ContributorsDooling, Carmel Inez (Author) / Holian, Anna (Thesis director) / Gallab, Abdullahi (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor)
Created2014-05