In the 1960s, the International Theatre Institute (ITI), the organization sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) with a mission to represents the world’s theaters, was faced with a crisis of representation. After twenty years of existence, the institution had not succeeded in substantially expanding beyond...
From colonial practices designed to civilize indigenous communities, to counter-terrorism initiatives aimed at de-radicalizing dissidents in the wake of the War on Terror, to controversies over blasphemy and religious harm cases in international law, religious passions have been cast as a specter of unreason, treason, and radicalization. These assumptions sustain...
This dissertation centers gay and lesbian activists, their lawyers, and public interest litigation organizations in a genealogical understanding of the evolution of human rights law in the LGBTIQ+ issue space. I ask why sexual minorities turned to the courts in pursuit of the decriminalization of homosexual sex. Empirically, I examine...
How do ever-changing international systems and rapidly emerging technology shape counter-systemic revolutionary insurgent (CSRI) behavior and outcomes? The purpose of this publication is to identify causes and develop a conceptual typology of CSRI survival and behavior in a Post-9/11 era. I argue three global shocks acted as junctures for new...
After the Second World War, two states claimed to represent the same nation: “China.” This work examines how the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Communist Party of China (CPC) competed to represent China and the international consequences of that competition. The CPC’s victory in the Chinese Civil War (1946-1949) led to...
The relationship between law and war has evolved substantially over two centuries. One aspect of this evolution that merits further examination is legal accountability. Some international relations (IR) scholars maintain international law lacks meaningful influence without enforcement capabilities. But this critique of international law’s capacity to deliver meaningful influence in...
This study is a response to the observation that people articulate meanings of rules in flexible and context-specific ways, but that literature on international legal, norm-based, strategic-logical, and ethical/moral rules typically treats them as pregiven, stable objects. By examining people’s evolving justifications of practices related to firefighting (protecting against and...
Political leaders often engage in open fights for recognition, announcing that some crucial element of their state’s identity, status, or history, has not been properly acknowledged and respected in the conduct of diplomacy. Among international relations scholars, these instances are usually ascribed to the fact that states, like individuals, need...
This dissertation, titled “The Rocket’s Red Glare: Global Power and the Rise of American State Technology, 1940-1960,” makes three distinct but interlocking historical interventions. First, it argues that the rise of technology as a central ideological component of global hegemony represents a historical contingency, rather than a reflexive characteristic of...
The term blowback originated from the American intelligence community to indicate the unexpected consequences of American foreign policy. In my dissertation, I give an account of how blowback results from these security policies. Blowback shows the cases that security policies create more harm than good to the enacting country due...
Abstract This dissertation aims to understand how the domestic high courts in Latin America rely on the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The “relationship between courts” is a phenomenon that happens in domestic and international politics when domestic high courts start to resist or follow international jurisprudence....