Whether colonizers encouraged the growth of religion or attempted to stamp it out, they played a pivotal role in formation of religious movements within regions under their control. During the Russian colonial rule of Central Asia, a group of intellectuals began a modernist Islamist movement called Jadidism. This movement formed in response to the founders’ belief that Central Asian society was backward and primitive, as well as, in opposition of Russian colonial rule. Though Central Asia did not have a printing press prior to the Russian colonization, the printing press arrived with the Russians and enabled the Jadids to spread their ideas. Yet the low literacy rates within Central Asia caused the Jadids to push for educational reform. My research focuses on the influence of Russian and then Soviet rule on the Jadidist movement. Furthermore, it discusses the Jadids’ influence on education at the beginning of the twentieth century until today. I conducted my research by reading and analyzing texts on the issue and piecing together the information within a field which has been largely ignored by academia. My project attempts to draw attention to the gaps in the knowledge surrounding the Jadidist movement and its significance for the current education systems in Central Asia.

In 1807, William Sampson is banished from Ireland for his radical cause lawyering and immigrates to America to become its first civil rights lawyer. Some have researched the practice of his critical postcolonial legal theory that culminates to America’s first constitutional victories for religious freedom and labor rights. However, few have investigated this practice in promoting racial equality, particularly in the context of scientific constructions of race. One of Sampson’s most famous trials, Almshouse v. Whistelo involves an unprecedented number of medical expert witnesses attempting to prove and disprove categories of race using physiological understandings of human development. Sampson’s cross-examinations of these expert witnesses serves as an entry point to examining the practice of his critical legal theory in the context of scientific racial categories. First, this project identifies Sampson’s critical postcolonial legal theory from his writings, particularly his Memoirs and Discourse on the Common Law. Then, it examines the practice of Sampson's legal theory in Almshouse v. Whistelo, by focusing on his cross-examination of Dr. Mitchill, a famous scientist. And finally, discusses the various books and scholarly research articles citing Whistelo that support or challenge research on human physiological development. This case is cited almost every decade after it is argued from 1832 to 1902 in many scientific texts, such as a chapter on fetal development in America’s first physiology textbook, Human Physiology by Robley Dunglison—the Father of American Physiology. Legal publications mention the humorous nature of Sampson’s cross-examination of Dr. Mitchill, a famous scientist. This project suggests that Sampson’s entertaining cross-examining plays a key role in both challenging Dr. Mitchill’s scientific constructions of race and altering physiological constructions of race in 19th century America. It adds to research on Sampson’s postcolonial legal theory and illuminates another facet of America’s first civil rights lawyer

Emerging from the political decline of the Islamic “Gunpowder Empires,” the Central Asian Nadir Shah assumed leadership of the former Safavid Empire before winning notable victories over his Ottoman and Mughal counterparts. In this paper, I attempt to grapple with the complex issue of Nadir Shah’s ethnic identity, which has alternately been presented as either Turkic or Persian. As such, I attempt to navigate the trend of nationalist historians to appropriate Nadir Shah into their own nation’s retroactive “national history,” relying not only on the works of such historians, but also those more removed from nationalist perspectives. Using readings spanning from the 18th century until the present day, I note the shifts in Nadir Shah’s ethnic identification across nations and time periods as well as the differing degree to which historians attempted to restrict the king’s identity to a single ethnic group. Highlighting political changes affecting Central Asia during the 18th century and their enablement of Nadir Shah’s navigation of class and race-based hierarchies, I then critique narrow national identifications of Nadir Shah and attempt to highlight nuances within the issue of pre-nation state ethnic identity. In conclusion, I assert that pre-nation-state identity may have been mutable and that Nadir Shah’s identity, rather than sitting on one side of a Turkic-Persian dichotomy, reflects a fluidity of nationality extant in 18th century Central Asia.

During the colonial period in Korea the Japanese tried to squelch Korean identity, enfolding the Korean people within their expanding empire. As Japan’s policies and actions on the peninsula became increasingly oppressive, the Western world naively accepted Japan’s benign explanations. However, not everyone disregarded the warning signs in East Asia. Thomas F. Millard, an American journalist, was struck by the Korean plight and took up the Korean cause for independence in his writings. Millard was not only immersed in the affairs of East Asia, he was passionate about what he wrote. As Japanese historians and politicians worked to distort the Korean voice so that it reflected a supposed need for and acceptance of Japanese assistance, Millard attempted to expose their deception. In response to Japanese domination, Korean nationalism rose. Koreans formed a national identity centered on their shared heritage. Identity needs both internal and external recognition. Though the Korean people never identified as Japanese, during the colonial period the rest of the world saw them as Japanese citizens, not Koreans. In 1948 the United Nations agreed that nationality was a human right. Though the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was far from being conceived in the early 1900s some people already believed in the rights that it would solidify; Millard was one of those people. He saw Japan’s actions as criminal, and he wrote about just that. As the Japanese tried to muffle Korea’s voice, Millard became a conduit for that voice. In a present-day world that still wrestles with the vestiges of imperialism, Millard’s work is a testament to the importance of listening to the multitude of voices that continue to sound around the globe.

In the early seventeenth century, French Catholic missionaries arrived in the region of New France now known as Quebec intending to make Christians out of the Amerindian population. Over the next century and a half, the missionaries proceeded to build schools and hospitals and to establish their orders in the colony. Two of the Catholic orders that sent members were the Jesuits and the Ursulines. Both orders concerned themselves with the education and conversion of the Amerindians, mostly the Huron tribe. Through their missionary activities, they formed a nascent community of individuals with shared beliefs and purposes. A number of factors, including their geographic location, their connections to their founding orders back in France, and the particular social environment surrounding them caused the Jesuits and Ursulines to live and work differently from their counterparts in France. These differences caused the missionary community to develop a distinct identity. Using The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents and the correspondence of Ursuline Mother Superior Marie de l’Incarnation, this research project examines the distinct identity missionary communities in New France developed. These sources record the daily activities of the Jesuits and the Ursulines in New France, while also revealing how individuals of each religious order understood their collective mission, which was characterized by interaction and cooperation between the orders. More universally, this project sheds light on how individuals form new communities and the way identities, even institutional identities, adapt to new environments.

The Holocaust is an example of an Encounter with the ‘Other’ in world history. It is plain to see that the Nazis viewed the Jews as “other”, but the converse is also true, and to see the Nazis as the “other” is still common today. However, is Nazism an aberration, an “other”, an outsider to the historical process? And even more than that, are individual Nazis, including Adolf Eichmann “other”? There are primary sources from the time regarding Eichmann’s personality and actions. These primary sources include trial and interrogation transcripts as well as literature about Eichmann from the time. There are also secondary sources to see what scholars think about Eichmann. My paper is organized by the questions I ask about the Eichmann texts and the understandings I form through those documents. Some of these questions might be formed as: Is Nazism an aberration, an “other”, an outsider to the historical process? And even more than that, are individual Nazis “other”? Specifically, who is Adolf Eichmann and what problem does he pose for humanity? What does Eichmann as an individual perpetrator mean for history? Is Eichmann the Other? Or, what do we have in common with “evil” and its banality? My primary hope for researching this topic was to understand, in some small way, human evil. To know about Adolf Eichmann and his evil is not to understand him or excuse him. His personality and character (or lack thereof) remains befuddling to me. In terms of what this paper accomplishes, I I address “otherness” as a concept which alienates perpetrator from victim as well as victim from perpetrator, and (for this essay) the perpetrator as Other for the rest of society.

“It is useless to consider the house except as a part of a community owing to the interaction of these on each other.” This was the opening sentence to the Doorn Manifesto written by Team 10, a collective of architects in the 1950’s who discussed the future of modern architecture and the modern city. My research begins with delving into Team 10’s theories on urbanism and Aldo van Eyck’s writings on the architect’s role on modernization and the relationship between a house and a city. With those theories as the driving force of my research, I delve into the development of housing projects as architectural responses to political and social impacts and modernization. I begin with the rise of housing projects in Algeria and Morocco as colonialism has made Northern Africa the experimentation grounds of new architectural types that differ from the traditional casbah and impoverished bidonvilles. From there, I move to France and investigate the banlieue as a reaction to post-war migration into the city and how the architecture has fallen to the banlieue’s socio-economic image. Using Team 10’s utopian ideals, I address the successes and failures of the housing projects up to this point and examine how architecture can act as a solution instead of a reaction to urbanization and modernization.