Vakıf müessesesi, İslam medeniyeti ve Müslüman toplumlarda geçmişten günümüze en köklü kurumların başında gelmektedir. Hz. Peygamber döneminde “sadaka-i cariye” hadisiyle temelleri atılan ve Müslümanlar arasında hüsnü kabul gören vakıf kültürü zamanla gelişip sistemleşmiş ve İsl…
The Ukrainian diaspora in the U.S. is a growing group whose American partisanship has scarcely been examined outside of diaspora-related media. This study makes use of interviews with Ukrainians in the Seattle metropolitan area to uncover how Ukrainians in the U.S. make and expl…
Former Yugoslavia dissolved in the 1990s in brutal civil wars and ethnic violence. This was not the first instance of ethnic violence in former Yugoslavia. Similar events happened during the Second World War. This research thesis examines how Croats and Serbs in the 1950s, livin…
This dissertation examines literary responses to the Yugoslav Wars of the 1990s and their aftermath by migrant authors from the former Yugoslavia who write in German. In particular, I analyze Marica Bodrožić’s autobiography Sterne erben, Sterne färben: Meine Ankunft in Wörtern (…
This study aims to identify whether entertainment media broadcast in Republic Moldova, which struggles with its identity crisis, contains frames that represent belonging to a particular national identity. Secondly, the study is preoccupied with the cinematic representations that…
This dissertation employs the career of British archaeologist Arthur Evans as the fulcrum to examine the concept of “modern antiquities,” which Evans defined as the study of ancient customs and societies best represented in the Balkans, and which he understood as essential to un…
Architectural destruction is often perceived as inevitable collateral damage during modern conflict, but a major facet of the Kosovo War of 1998-9 and its aftermath was the deliberate targeting and demolition of architectural heritage on a massive scale. Both Serbian and Kosovar…
This thesis seeks to establish how deeply anti-Black racism has become ingrained in Polish culture through the everyday example of murzynek, a chocolate cake that became popular with home cooks in twentieth century Poland. Its name in literal translation is the diminutive form o…
Comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy, popular in Ukraine for playing the president on TV, shocked many commentators when he was elected president in reality. Of particular interest however, is the scope of his victory and style of his campaign. Zelenskyy was touted as being the first pr…
This thesis examines an instance of religious practice in contemporary Hungary, which highlights how religion can be simultaneously spiritual and scientific. My case study is that of the táltos (Hungarian shaman) András Kovács-Magyar and his followers, who unite what they see as…
The Holodomor was a genocide perpetrated by the Soviet Union in the 1930s that took the lives of millions of Ukrainians. Despite the magnitude of the tragedy, the Holodomor is largely unknown in the United States. Moreover, there is a general lack of knowledge about genocide amo…
Nearly 300 years before the rise of a ‘Christianized,’ Eastern Roman Empire, generations of inhabitants in the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East had witnessed a considerable variety and evolution of religious thought. As a result of the expansion of Christian sects throughout …
This thesis explores how homosexuality has been reframed as a political and moral “other” by far-right movements and religious institutions in Poland and Russia. I leverage theories about democratic backsliding, otherization, and religious nationalism to argue that the purpose o…
As a child, I often listened to my father’s stories of his boyhood in 1950s Czechoslovakia; adventures taking place in the narrow cobblestoned streets of his hometown or near the fields and lakes of his grandparents’ village. I never met any of his family. And by the time I was …
Over the past decade, Greece’s position as a center for migration and immigration has been prominent in the spotlight of the international news media. The mainland of Greece and its islands have played an important role in human migration throughout much of human history, with a…
Little to no research has been done on the history, development and current practice of a specific country’s approach to music therapy. This study examines the development of music therapy in Hungary with regards to cultural influences, which the researcher has a unique understa…
Mladen Stilinović’s (1947-2016) text “In Praise of Laziness” (1993) makes seemingly absurd claims about the relationship between art and laziness which are most often interpreted as political commentary in his typically cynical brand of humor. While this humor is indeed a consis…