Thematic, Comparative, and International History
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History Department Honors Program thematic and comparative Baccalaureate Theses.
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Item Jordan's 1970 Civil War: The Limits of U.S. Intervention in the Middle East(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2025-05) Tadross, Veronica; Schwartz, ThomasItem Master Mercenaries: Moroccan Regulares in the Spanish Civil War(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2025-05) Negron, Zacarias; Cohen, JuliaItem Boris Yeltsin's Russia: Constitutional Conflicts, NATO, and the Dawn of Putin(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2025-05) Ledesma, William; Schwartz, ThomasItem How Chinese People Experienced the Sino-Albanian Alliance(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2025-05) He, Philips; Rogaski, RuthItem The Eight-Nation (Non-) Alliance: Emergence, Coordination, and Lasting Mark on the Chinese Imagination(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2023-04-27) Xiaoyu(Joy)ZhangItem Constructing God’s Community: Umayyad Religious Monumentation in Bilad al-Sham, 640-743 CE(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04-20) Lebovits, NissimIn the early 7th Century CE, the Umayyad dynasty formed the first Islamic empire, marking a crucial moment in the emergence of Islam. As in many empires of Late Antiquity, religious monumentation played a central role in the assertion, legitimization, and cultivation of Umayyad power. In the span of a century, the Umayyad caliphs built some dozen imperial mosques in the primary region of their control, Bilad al-Sham. By examining and contextualizing the historical, architectural, and geographical components of these monuments, this thesis analyzes the changes in the Umayyad self-conception over the course of their period of hegemony. Incorporating new source material and new methodological considerations, it emphasizes the subtleties of both continuity and rupture across the monumentation of the Umayyad period, and argues for a more nuanced understanding of the Umayyads themselves.Item When Birds of a Feather Do Not Flock Together: The Failure of Democratic India and Democratic America to Ally During the Cold War(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2020-04-28) Reddy, RamchandraThe global geopolitical history of the late 20th century was defined by the Cold War between the United States and the USSR, which through alliances, involved many countries across the world. Large swaths of the world became proxies for the struggle between superpowers with Asia, Latin America, and Africa being largely studied examples of Cold War geopolitical and military ambition. As academia has sought to understand the conflict, scholarship has neglected the near east and South Asia. Among the various flashpoints in South Asia, the conflict between India and its neighbors has always been especially dangerous, especially in terms of its foundational and existential conflict with Pakistan. This conflict is largely understood as purely regional and sectarian, and the presence of the US and USSR is either absent or diminished in studies of the various Indo-Pak wars. By all known metrics, India’s conflicts with Communist China, Islamic Pakistan, and Maoist Rebels alongside its status as an industrializing liberal-democracy should have made it the perfect host for US partnership, yet it was overlooked by the United States who chose to become a patron of Pakistan. Why did the US’ Executive leadership turn away from India and towards Pakistan? This question also highlights the profound differences in preferences and strategy between the leadership and the ground-level diplomats? Does diplomatic dissent to the President or secretary of State’s decisions represent new waters? How are diplomats breaking new ground by disagreeing with entire wings of US foreign policy? How do the perceptions and attitudes of US leaders undermine the strategic and diplomatic interests that may have resulted in a robust US-Indian relationship? To what extent do these same problems plague Indian leadership? The project deals specifically with the failed relationship between India and the United States in the 1960s and 1970s—in terms of creating an alliance— despite strategic commonalities and military and diplomatic ties to answer these questions. Exploring a failed relationship adds the foresight of all the mistakes that could have been prevented if the relationship worked out, and this is especially important since the relationship that did work was that of the US and Pakistan which has played an inordinate role in the modern middle eastern quagmire and War on Terror. It focuses specifically on the US’s partiality towards Pakistan and the role American leaders’ personal preferences and prejudices played in determining alliance policy. How did racism, sexism, and general prejudice from leaders like Nixon impact the forging of Alliances, subverting even large scale metrics like diplomatic recommendations and geopolitical strategy? There are two major incidents that are key to exploring the relationship: the 1962 Sino-Indian War and the 1971 Indo-Pak War/Bangladeshi Liberation War. These events highlight scenarios in which US-Indian cooperation should have been a given, but were instead examples of the ever-widening rift between the US and India. By exploring the unique diplomatic, military, and external circumstances that not only prevented US-Indian cooperation in these scenarios, but encouraged US-Pakistani relations in the latter, one can begin to understand the intricacies and hypocrisies of the ideological and moral framework of Cold War Alliance Politics in South Asia, where ease and personal preference overruled ideological consistency and strategic sense for US leaders.Item Israel's Expanding Borders: The Transformative Impact of the Six-Day War on the American Jewish Community(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2014-04-11) Bloomstone, Jeremy; Schwartz, Thomas A.Item Marshalling Chaos: The U.S. and the Coalition in the Persian Gulf War(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2014-04-24) Hill, Ariel; Lorge, PeterItem The Heavens were not Free: Towards Airline Deregulations and Multilateral Open Skies in the US, EU, and ASEAN Cases(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2013-11-26) Chua, Jiakai Jeremy; Carlton, David L. (David Lee), 1948-Item Before the Political Marriage: The Initial Encounters Between Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2013-04-12) Redman, Gillian; Schwartz, Thomas A.Item American Education for the Chamorros: Reconciling Benevolence and Military and Civilian Educational Objectives in the U.S. Administration of Guam in the Early Twentieth Century(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2012-04) Simoy, Christian; Kramer, PaulItem The Highest Stakes Poker Game Ever Played : Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the Reykjavik Summit of 1986(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 2010-04-28) Freeman, Stephanie; Schwartz, Thomas A.Item After the Bomb: Science, Value and the Limits of Rationality(Vanderbilt University. Dept. of History, 1992-04-27T20:58:34Z) Mathes, David; Wcislo, Frank