This dissertation examines the development of an Indo-Islamic capital city in the age of colonialism. Between 1750 and 1950, Hyderabad served as the capital of the Asaf Jahs (known more popularly as the Nizams), a dynasty whose sovereignty was constrained by the pressures of Bri…
The assertion that corruption is not favorable for business is not new. In our research we concentrate on the opposite question: can business benefit from corrupt environment? We answer this question using firm-level data from Indonesia and use firm political connection as the p…
Numerous art historians and anthropologists such as Rudolf Wittkower, Michael Baxandal and Alfred Gell have addressed the question of how art reflected the people by and for whom it was produced in the context of different cultures and periods. In my dissertation, I intend to co…
Since Senegal's independence, scholars have critically examined each president on how his policies shaped contemporary Senegalese art and its promotion at home and abroad. The presidential patronage of the arts garners an international authority based on cultural supremacy. This…
This study explores the role of the assassination of President James Abram Garfield and the midterm election of 1882 in compelling the 47 th Congress to pass the Pendleton Civil Service Act in January 1883. Relying on the manuscript collections of major Gilded Age political figu…
South Africa has a ruling dominant party, the African National Congress (ANC), which has been in power since apartheid ended in 1994. In national elections, the ANC has consistently received an overwhelming majority of the vote, even though the majority of South Africa's citizen…
The contemporary Iranian art market has been garnering great interest and gaining momentum since the 1990s, and by the time auction houses started to hold major contemporary Middle Eastern art sales in the mid-2000s, Iranian artwork had begun to blossom into a viable and dynamic…
This thesis will explore the concept of the patrimonial foundation of art in the Ottoman Empire and the relationship between the poet and patron by first examining the historical context to these phenomena. While discussing the notion of patronage, one of the significant questio…
In contrasting the political trajectories of two post-Soviet Central Asian states this study addresses one of the defining questions of political science: what factors shape regime change? Despite their shared seven decades of Soviet rule, Kazakhstan has, since communism's colla…
The goal of this dissertation is to engage in a comprehensive and systematic examination of the writings of Ignatius of Antioch on the subject of episcopal leadership. Working on the premise that the episcopacy is both an historical and a social phenomenon in the early church th…