Showing 31 - 35 of 35 Items
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Rachel Carson and the rhetoric of revolution
- Rachel Carson's Silent Spring is justly remembered as a landmark in the history of modern environmentalism. It is, however, a more complicated text than cultural memory tends to acknowledge. Blending conservative and traditional elements with more progressive and pioneering ones, Silent Spring is marked by a complexity that extends to its reception and legacy. This article argues that-in a seeming paradox-it was the more conservative elements of Silent Spring that allowed it to be considered a revolutionary book. Carson carefully constructed her argument in ways that facilitated its initial acceptance. But those same decisions made it easier for supporters to de-emphasize its more radical implications, even as they granted it revolutionary status.
2019
Narrative, Identity, and Holocaust Memorialization in the United States
- Narratives at Holocaust memorials and museums in the United States connect the Holocaust to present-day identities and weave the Holocaust into American history. Holocaust narratives––whether at the universal, national, or local level––draw moral lessons from the past. These narratives and their moral lessons redefine what constitutes the Holocaust and are determined by the needs and sentiments of the present. The sites of remembrance in this thesis at once show the significance of the Holocaust in American identities at both national and local levels, as well as encourage an active remembrance of the past that restructures these identities. The type of active remembrance and its purpose differs at each site, but each encourages a reconsideration of the past to find potentially applicable lessons for the present.
2020
Enlightenment as Global History: The Reception of Confucianism in Eighteenth-Century France
- While the Enlightenment was once seen as a unique product of Western intellectual heritage, recent scholars have started to challenge this Eurocentric notion with the concept of a “global Enlightenment” by considering how it was shaped by cross-cultural encounters. To contribute to this body of scholarship, I trace the reception history of Confucianism in eighteenth-century France and examine how Chinese philosophy played a part in shaping and stimulating Enlightenment discourse. My research starts with the Jesuit missionaries who served as the intellectual intermediaries between China and Europe. Through a close reading of Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, a Latin translation of Confucian classics, I demonstrate how the Jesuits produced a Christianized reading of Confucianism that they could leverage for their spiritual and political ambitions. Then, I examine how some of the most notable figures of the French Enlightenment, such as Pierre Bayle, Voltaire, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau appropriated Confucian ideals to criticize religious orthodoxy and debate about subjects such as universalism, religious tolerance, and civilization. While the French thinkers mostly weaponized Confucianism for their own ends, their appropriation allowed this imported philosophy to become relevant in a new context and tangibly shape Enlightenment conversations. This understanding helps us see the Enlightenment as a junction, or even product, of a cross-cultural fertilization of ideas rather than an isolated European phenomenon.
2022
Women’s Bodies Between Market and State: Lineages of the Transnational Indian Surrogacy Industry
2018
The Ethiopian Student Movement and the Dilemma of Eritrean Sovereignty
- From the perspective of Ethiopian royalists, Pan-Africanists, Marxist internationalists, supports of union, and the broader international community, Eritrean nationalism revealed distressing fissures in many different arguments for preserving Ethiopian territorial unity– arguments not necessarily or explicitly problematic, but nevertheless in opposition to Eritrean demands for the right to national self-determination. For the Ethiopian Student Movement (ESM) specifically, Eritrean sovereignty demanded a reconfiguration of Pan-African unity that conflicted with Ethiopian exceptionalist historiography. Through an analysis of student politics at Haile Selassie University, from 1960-1974, this thesis seeks to complicate existing historiography on the ESM by examining the periodically divergent experiences of Eritrean student activists.
2024