College of Arts & Humanities
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The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item Perpetuating Conflict: Postcolonial Intervention in Afghanistan During the Cold War(2023) Dauphin, Edward George; Chung, Patrick; Woods, Colleen; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)ArgumentThis thesis argues that during the postcolonial era, Cold War hegemons – The United States of America and the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan’s modernization to ensure their methods of modernization – capitalism and communism – remained the only options for developing nations to modernize. While most believe that American and Soviet intervention into Afghanistan was the result of Cold War geopolitics, I argue that questions of statehood and nation-making were the central factors in superpower involvement in the country. Amid a resurgence of traditional Islamic values, Afghanistan sought to modernize outside of the realm of bi-polar developmental paths imposed by American nation-state capitalism and Soviet communism. Largely founded on Orientalist beliefs, the hegemons refused to recognize the legitimacy of a modern Afghan nation built on Islamism. The hegemons believed that without First World influence, Afghan “tribalism” and “Islamism” were too primitive to possess the capability of progressing towards a modern state, one which they defined using western-orthodox models. Statehood, according to American and Soviet concepts of high modernism posited that a developing nations’ path to modernity adhered to a linear model centered on a market-based economy. According to the hegemons, once the developing nation established a market-based economy, the developing nation would adapt to either a communist or capitalist modes. Method This research for this thesis was conducted using recently declassified primary source material from the CIA’s CREST database, the Wilson Center Online for recently declassified KGB documents, and select memoirs from key individuals. Secondary source material was used to frame the historiographical context of my argument – focusing on how many historians degrade the Afghan peoples’ own agency in their modernization. When necessary, secondary source material was also used in order to fill the gaps left by redacted primary source material. Key concepts used for framing both the USG and KGB’s reasons for intervention included postcolonial modernization, High Modernism and Orientalism, and Traditional Islam. Major FindingsMajor Findings included: 1) Though they “officially” supported self-determination, the Soviet Politburo and USG found new methods to control developing nations; 2) Despite their Orientalist beliefs and hesitancy to support the PDPA, the Soviet Politburo seized the initiative in Afghanistan by planting KGB agents in PDPA; 3) The Soviet Politburo legitimized the PDPA’s modernization as high modernism by claiming that Afghanistan's tribalism created a market system, and the civil war was merely the next step in revolution towards socialism. 4) Realizing they could no longer control the PDPA, the Politburo was compelled to commit military forces to support the PDPA and maintain their influence; 5) The USG refused to recognized Afghanistan's modernization according to their own concepts of high modernism; 6) The USG sought to undermine the PDPA, the Soviet Politburo’s support of the PDPA, and Islamism as a means to modernization. De-legitimizing all three would prove American capitalism as the only viable means to modernization; 7) With no intention of establishing a long-term solution, and with no desire to threaten détente, the USG relied on the CIA and clandestine operations to perpetuate the Afghan Civil War; and 8) By perpetuating the Civil War to drive Afghanistan to become a failed state, the USG gained credibility over the Soviet Politburo. ConclusionWestern definitions of statehood and nationmaking were the driving factors behind USG and KGB intervention in Afghanistan. Afghanistan did not merely serve as the next battleground for hegemonic proxy war, instead the Afghan people sought to pursue a third method of modernization, one which conflicted with western views of high modernism. Due to preconceived notions of Orientalism, the USG and Soviet Politburo were compelled to prevent an alternative method of nationmaking to maintain their bipolar control of the world.Item IN SEARCH OF THE CITY: POWER, IDENTITY, AND NARRATIVES OF URBANIZATION FROM STENDHAL TO ZOLA(2018) Wegmann, Hannah; Brami, Joseph; Modern French Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation studies urbanization in nineteenth-century French novels, exploring the ways that this demographic phenomenon structures plot, describes inner transformations, and most importantly becomes a catalyst for confronting and challenging established power structures. Characters who transition from rural to urban states, either geographic and actual, or interior and moral, force confrontations between a whole series of power constructs embodied by the country and city. Their evolution, mapped in conjunction with demographic studies and the writings of urban theorists, allows us to explore questions of authority, reality, language, and gender in nineteenth-century France. An analysis of the concrete urbanization of Julien Sorel in Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir is followed by a study of the abstract urbanization of Emma in Flaubert's Madame Bovary, who refashions her identity and morals in line with urban ideals. Chapter three employs Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames to study the urbanization reshaping the economic power structures of Paris. Chapter four uses Zola's L'Assommoir to question the nineteenth-century idealism behind many urban reforms. Using works by Flaubert, Théophile Gautier, Pierre Loti, George Sand, Claire de Duras, and numerous visual artists, the final chapter explores the relationship between urbanization and Orientalism by transposing the rural-urban binary onto the relationship between Occident and Orient. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that actual rural and urban geographies become cartographies of power wherein the country and city communicate an entire set of forces competing for agency. Each narrative of urbanization exhibits different manifestations of the city and the country and different types of evolution between the two. Yet each narrative reveals a fundamental transformation precipitated by the clashing of rural and urban ideas, powers, and identities. This transformation shapes and defines nineteenth-century France.Item The Black Exotic: Tradition and Ethnography in Nineteenth-Century Orientalist Art(2005-08-29) Childs, Adrienne Louise; Hargrove, June; Art History and Archaeology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study of select works by Orientalist artists Jean-Léon Gérôme and Charles Cordier charts the trajectory of the idea of the black exotic and investigates the symbolism of black figures in Orientalist painting and sculpture. Representations of blacks in Orientalist art served a complex and nuanced function as nineteenth-century European artists fashioned the exotic. At the nexus of traditional tropes of blackness and the new science of ethnography, they were a critical tool used to construct an imagined Orient within the context of Orientalism--the phenomenal passion for the exotic in the nineteenth century. Blacks were multifaceted figures that evoked sexuality, servitude, degradation, and primitive culture while providing decorative beauty and the allure of difference. The trope of the exotic black is rooted in a tradition of representing Africans dating back to the Italian Renaissance. By the nineteenth century ethnographic approaches to race permeated Orientalist ideologies and affected a qualitative shift in how black figures operated in visual culture. Through a critical analysis of the relationship between exoticism and blackness, this study addresses the need for a more specialized interpretation of how attitudes towards race were encoded in nineteenth-century visual arts.