Herodotus, in his Histories, offers a political science that combines freedom for thought, action and deliberation, with the limits imposed by necessity. Athens, I argue stands at the peak of the political possibilities that Herodotus explores, coming to light as the best regime…
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When and whether immigrants can become citizens, or gain acceptance as members of the societies in which they settle, is a matter of intensifying political controversy in many countries. Yet, our understanding of citizenship and the theoretical stakes of current controversies is…
From the late eighteenth century to 1917, officials and elites in imperial Russia sought to connect the Tsar's subjects to the state, to create “invisible threads” which would weave a culturally and religiously diverse population into a coherent civic order. I analyze these “thr…
The conquest of the Khanate of Kazan' was a pivotal event in the development of Muscovy. Moscow gained possession over a previously independent political entity with a multiethnic and multiconfessional populace. The Muscovite political system adapted to the unique circumstances …
This dissertation examines the Cold War and its termination, the collapse of the Russian empire which was embodied in the Soviet Union, and the evolution of Russian policy towards the Commonwealth of Independent States from 1992 to 1997. These subjects are examined in order to a…
Amid the global superpower conflict and rising race-consciousness of the twentieth-century, “Third World” decolonization redrew the atlas and opened a future promising and dangerous to East and West alike. Much remains to be learned about its course in many parts of the world, i…
This dissertation uses data from recent archaeological surveys in the upper Tigris river region in southeastern Turkey combined with Neo-Assyrian letters and the annals of the Assyrian kings to investigate the implementation and maintenance of imperialism in three geographic reg…
My dissertation, "A l'école du français: Politiques coloniales de la langue 1830-1944," confronts current debates surrounding multilingualism, the language of instruction, and the rewriting of history in former colonial sites. Applying historical, educational and socio-linguisti…
Land, Event, Empire explores the hitherto unexamined relation between the British picturesque and Indian sacred landscape aesthetics as they were altered by the Mutiny of 1857. By examining the picturesque and sacred renditions of the land and Mutiny between 1800-1979 and in sev…
This is a comprehensive study of the military campaigns of the renowned Ming Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming (1472-1529), with the aim of better understanding the relation between, on the one hand, his Neo-Confucian political philosophy and ethics and, on the other, empire, et…
This dissertation examines how the novels of Mary Shelley, Samuel Beckett, and Assia Djebar explore the complicity of Enlightenment humanism and imperialism in different models of modernity. The paradox of Enlightenment humanism was that, in positing a universal, human subject a…
This dissertation examines how the Society of Missionaries of Africa, better known as the White Fathers, sought to evangelize the Islamic peoples of North Africa during the interwar years. In addition, it considers how these Catholic missionaries reconsidered the French "mission…
This dissertation explores what it means to speak of "space" in the age of empire, arguing that geographical practices are key to understanding the political and poetic practices of the Romantic period. Though I treat a number of writers whose relation to Romantic literature is …
The goal of this dissertation is to review historiographical trends and set new directions for late Ottoman history. First, I identify the three grand narratives of late Ottoman history as top-down political transformation, economic incorporation to the world-economy, and imperi…
This dissertation redefines the popularity and legacy of British big game hunting in the fin-de-siècle by analyzing the sport as an imperial institution, which is interpreted to mean one that was defined through its integration with both local and metropolitan cultures. To that …
Italy's modern empire, a modest collection of colonies and concessions on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, lasted roughly from 1896 to 1949. The empire's character reflected problems Italy faced as a young nation, including high emigration, a weak military, and a disadvantageo…
Many critics consider nineteenth century British Romanticism one of the most political movements in literary history. A major reason for this claim is that the 19th century is recorded in European history as a watershed of economic, social, and political constructions whose cons…
This project highlights an alternative method for reading the biblical presentation of Jerusalem temple leadership in the cultural and historical context of Achaemenid Judah. This study provides further nuance to Hebrew Bible studies by stressing close attention to the Persian i…
This dissertation examines three interrelated aspects of Ottoman-Bosnian legal history: the development of the institution of muftiship, the production and re-production of fatwa-texts, and the nature of legal interpretation in Ottoman Bosnia from the mid-sixteenth century to th…