Global Studies

In its Honors Program the Global Studies program (formerly International Studies) awards Honors, High Honors, or Highest Honors to student research projects. The projects listed below have been defended successfully, and a copy of the thesis deposited in Swem Library.

Key:

• Student, "Thesis" (Honors level)
  Committee Chair + Other Committee Members

Global Studies includes: Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Asian & Pacific Islander American Studies, European Studies, Latin American Studies, and Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies

2023-2024

• Collin James Absher, "Lingua Asia: Decolonizing Heritage Language Education" (Honors) 
  Chinua Thelwell + Deenesh Sohoni, Lin Chunying 
• Izabella Mariah Martinez, "Plotting the Battlefield: Russia's Use of Language and Memory to Legitimize Aggression Against Ukraine"  (Honors) 
  Elena Prokhorova + Alexander Prokhorov, Frederick Corney, Leslie Cochrane

2022-2023

• Zeta Marie Atoigue, "Our Truth: CHamoru Oral History of World War II Events and Its Impact on Guam" (Highest Honors)
  Stephen Sheehi + Roberto Jamora, Joanna Schug, Francis Tanglao-Aguas
• Isabella Xiaoqi DiFulvio, "Talk To Your Elders: Asian American Community Building at W&M, 1984-2021" (Highest Honors)  
  Andrea Wright + Francis Tanglao Aguas, Roberto Jamora, Chinua Thelwell, Stephen Sheehi
• Aliia Woodworth, "Dealing with the Russian Bear: Central Asian Responses to the Russian Use of Military Force in the Post-Soviet Sphere" (Honors) 
  Daniel Maliniak + Amy Oakes, Alexander Prokhorov

2021-2022

• Cora Martin, "Chile as Champion and Relinquisher of the 2018 Escazú Agreement: A Case for Institutionalism and Performative Environmental Foreign Policy" (Highest Honors)
  Daniel Maliniak + S. .P. Harish, Richard Turits
• Sumie Yotsukura, "Performing Asian & White Racialization: Sumié Yotsukura's Your Best (Asian) American Girl: A Cabaret" (High Honors)
  Francis Tanglao Aguas + Michael Iyanaga, R Benedito Ferrao, Laurie Wolf
• Whitney Ledesma, "Portals to Healing: Relational Art Practices as Decolonial Antidotes to Transgenerational Trauma" (High Honors)
  Carlos Rivera Santana + Elizabeth Moran Clayton, Michael Iyanaga, Victoria Castillo, Leah Glenn
  

2020-2021

• Quan Chau, "Performing Generational Trauma: Quan Chau's The Specter" (Highest Honors)
  Francis Tanglao Aguas + Deenesh Sohoni, Joanna Schug
• Jamelah Jacob, "Meeting the Lumpia Filipino: Self-Orientalism in Filipino America" (High Honors)
  Francis Tanglao Aguas + Deenesh Sohoni, Benedito Ferrão
• Charlotte Mines, "The Money War: America's Efforts to Police Terrorist Financing and Its Impact on Hawala Networks" (Highest Honors)
  Andrea Wright + Rani Mullen, Sharan Grewal

2019-2020

• Anna Gleason, "Reviving Refuse: Individual Agency in Meknes, Morocco’s Waste Management Services" (Highest Honors)
  Andrea Wright + Stephen Sheehi, Negar-Sadat Razavi
• Emma Shainwald, "Subgroup Diversity in Higher Education: A Case Study for Asian American Recruitment" (Honors)
  Deenesh Sohoni + Francis Tanglao-Aguas, Elyas Bakhtiari

2018-19

• Molly Charles, "Deconstructing Patriarchal War Narratives: State Mythmaking and Documentary Prose of Svetlana Alexievich" (Highest Honors) 
  Alexander Prokhorov + Elena Prokhorova, Frederick Corney
• Sophia Higgerson, "Reassessing the Neustadt as a Site of Outstanding Cultural Value" (Highest Honors)
  Sibel Zandi-Sayek + Giulia Pacini, Anne Williams, Meaghan Stiman
• Emily Murray, "An Analysis of Whether Victorian England Shares Central Tenets of Modern Rape Culture" (Honors)
  Katherine Levitan + Leisa Meyer, Deborah Morse

2017-18

• Lauren Hammett, "Linguistic Feminism & The Body in 20th-Century French Feminist Texts" (High Honors) 
  Tuska Benes + Leslie Cochrane, Nicolette Gable

2016-17

• No Honors students this year 

2015-16

• Jon Querolo, "Reconstructing a National Silhouette: Avant-Garde Fashion and Perceptions of the Japanese Body" (High Honors) 
  Michael Cronin + Tomoko Hamada Connolly, Jennifer Putzi

2014-15

• Jonathon Hsu, "Performativity of Abject Identity: Jonathon Hsu's "Coming Out Asian American" (Highest Honors)
  Francis Tanglao-Aguas + Lynn Weiss, Bene Ferrao and Marc Lerman
• Elizabeth Laird, "The Modern European: An Analysis of Ethnic Minority Identity in the Twenty-First Century" (High Honors) 
  Bruce Campbell + Rob Leventhal, Robert Mulcahy and Laurie Koloski

2013-14

• Elizabeth Denny, "Songs of Love and Revolution: Performing Gender, Reforming Heterosexuality, and Escaping Domesticity in the Musicals of the Takarazuka Revue" (Highest Honors) 
  Michael Cronin + Nancy Gray, Tomoko Hamada Connolly

2012-13

• Gretchen Nutz, "Think Place: Geographies of National Identity in Oman" (Highest Honors) 
  Sibel Zandi-Sayek + Anne Rasmussen, Salih Aciksoz
• Allyson M. Zacharoff, "Spanish Antisemitism? The Jews in Spain Under Francisco Franco" (Honors) 
  Marc Lee Raphael + Carla Buck, Tuska Benes 

2011-12

• Jacob Evan Lassin, "From the Trenches of Stalingrad to the Digital Front: The Myth and Memory of WWII in the Soviet Union and the New Russia" (Highest Honors) 
  Elena Prokhorova + Bruce Campbell, Frederick Corney, Alexander Prokhorov 
• Emily Marie Matson, "Nationalism and the Nanjing Massacre: Jiang's Patriotic Education Campaign and Its Repercussions on Sino-Japanese Relations" (High Honors)
  Emily Wilcox + Eric Han, Craig Canning, Sophia Hart

2010-11

• No Honors Students This Year

2009-10

• Katelyn Faith Andell, "Ein Volk Verschiedene Schulen?: The Integration of Immigrants in the German Education System (Hightest Honors)
  Bruce Campbell + Tuska Benes, Gail Boseenga, Jennifer Taylor
• Sarah Elizabeth Argodale, "Identity and Memory Construction in the Tatarstan Republic" (Highest Honors)
  Fred Corney + Alexander Prokhorov, Elena Prokhorov
• Jordan Bohn Dickson, "Politics Shifts Right: The Rise of Nationalism in Millennial Japan" (High Honors)
  Rachel DiNitto + Hiroshi Kitamura, Eric Han
• Courtney Brynn Downing, "Mi smo Braca svi: We Are All Brothers: Masculinity and Nationalism in Post-Conflict Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina" (Honors)
  Bruce Campbell + Tuska Benes, Gregor Kranjc, Paula Pickering
• Adam Farrar, "Conceptions of Religion: Exploring the Converging and Diverging Religious Phiosophies of Muhammad Iqbal and Friedrich Nietzsche" (Highest Honors)
  Tamara Sonn + Tuska Benes, Jonathan Glasser
• Alexa Jordan Hoyne, "A Veiled Sense of Security: Strategies toward the Deconstruction of Islamist Violence against Women in Iraq"  (Highest Honors)
  Chrystie Swiney + Debra Shushan, Lawrence Wilkerson
• Tala Salem Karadsheh, "Honor Killings in Jordan: An Examination of Public Discourse" (High Honors)
  Jonathan Glasser + Gul Ozyegin, Abdul-Karim Rafeq

2008-09

• Sara Black, "The Emperor and the Duke: A Comparative Leadership Analysis of the Battle of Waterloo" (High Honors)
  Gail Bossenga + Tuska Benes, Maryse Fauvel
  
• Alexander Mayer, "Spirituality or Savagery? How the term jihad has been manipulated by political actors throughout Islamic history" (Highest Honors)
  Tamara Sonn + A.K. Rafeq, Debra Shulman
  
• Christian Peratsakis
  Robert Vinson + David Backer, Paula Pickering
  
• Vadim Shneyder, "Telling the People's Truth: Soviet Fairy Tale Film and the Construction of a National Bolshevik Film Genre" (Highest Honors)
  Alexander Prokhorov + Elena Prokhorov, Fred Corney, Arthur Knight

2007-08

• Judd William Kennedy, "American Presbyterian Missionaries in Turkey & Northern Syria and the Development of Central Turkey and Aleppo Colleges, 1874-1967" (Highest Honors)
  Abdul-Karim Rafeq + David McCarthy, Tamara Sonn

2006-07

• Erin Rebecca Alpert, "Reinventing Soviet Visual Memory: A Case Study of Marina Goldovskaia's Documentary Solovki Power" (High Honors)
  Alexander Prokhorov + Elena Prokhorova, Sharon Zuber, Fred Corney
• Emily Anne Brown, "Memories of a Dictator: the Presence and Absence of Franco in Spanish Nonfiction Writing, Museum Exhibits, and Documentary Cinema" (High Honors)
  Carla Buck + Tuska Benes, Laurie Koloski
• Kent Spencer Fogg, "Ethnic Out-bidding in Bosnia-Hercegovina" (High Honors)
  Paula Pickering + Clay Clemens, Laurie Koloski

2005-06

• Kathleen Davis, "What Powers Determine Political Policies in Modern Russia?" (Honors)
  Anthony Anemone + Bella Ginzbursky-Blum, Paula Pickering, Ron Rapoport

2004-05

• Pete Luebke
  Rachel DiNitto + Hiroshi Kitamura, Chandos Brown