This dissertation examines the origins and social impact of New York stop-and-frisk law, which authorizes police to stop, question and frisk people without a warrant or probable cause to believe crime was committed. Several observers associate it with a recent history of racial profiling, or conservative policing practices of 1990s...
Many key crises of international security are tied to the spread of nuclear weapons and technology, but what makes a state nuclear remains subject to controversy. The possession of nuclear technology does not always grant legal and political nuclear status”a phenomenon evident not only in the recent debate over Irans...
Holy Mediocrity: Saintly Matrons and the Dominicans in Late Medieval Italy', 'Julia Lauren Miglets', 'The task of this study is to explain why a cluster of female saints who were noted not for their miracles but for the moderate even boring quality of their sanctity, a paradigm I call holy...
It is pertinent now more than ever that we find sustainable alternatives to produce chemicals. For decades, scientists and engineers have turned to biological systems to help meet societal needs in energy, medicine, materials, and moreespecially when chemical synthesis is untenable. Often, biologically-produced small molecules are insufficient for production at...
In the past decade, scholars, the news media, and the public have turned increased attention to the activity of atheists in the West. Atheism serves as a source of identity and community in todays society, signaling more than a simple lack of belief in god(s). This dissertation is a cultural...
Many democratic theorists suggest that harmonious relationship between groups are critical for democracy; however, far less is known about how everyday experiences promote or impede such intergroup harmony. In this dissertation, I explore a common, but overlooked, form of intergroup contact casual, brief experiences with outgroup strangers. I propose a...
ABSTRACT', 'Reinventing Television and Family Life, 1960-1990', 'Hannah Spaulding', 'In the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the field of television changed. A series of new electronic devices that interfaced directly with TV technology video cameras, home recorders, cable boxes, video calling systemswere introduced to the American public. These devices promised to...
This dissertation analyzes the early excavation, classification, and publication of Cypriot sculpture and its collection and display in European universal museums. The author argues that the events and intellectual climate of the nineteenth century profoundly and lastingly shaped the perception of the ancient Cypriot tradition, determining the island conventional place...
Land and Water: Performing Ecologies of Statelessness in the Aftermath of the Vietnam/American War focuses on land and water as epistemological and ontological grammars to examine cultural productions of Vietnamese refugee narratives. Specifically, I analyze how Vietnamese/American oral history narrators, filmmakers, visual artists, and performance artists narrate refugee subjectivity in...
This dissertation focuses on Chinese contemporary artists conceptualization of spectatorship in the 2000s, the decade when the state started to regulate art production within the parameters of cultural industry. I argue that these artistsCai Guoqiang (b. 1957), Xu Bing (b. 1955), and Yang Shaobin (b. 1962)adopted the visual language and...