Past Master's Projects

The variety of master's projects produced by our students testifies to the interdisciplinary nature of the Duke GLS program.  Some take the form of a traditional master's thesis, but explore issues from a perspective that requires stepping back from disciplinary boundaries or combining the methods of different disciplines.  Others combine traditional academic analysis with other modes and genres -- whether creative, documentary or practical.   Each of them represents the culminating efforts of a student in achieving the MALS degree.  

From 2014-22, a few projects each year were awarded the designation of "Exemplary Master's Project," and marked as such in these records.  Search for the word "exemplary" to find them.  Exemplary projects were highlighted as particularly good models for students contemplating master's projects of their own.  A video showcase featuring some of our 2019-20 winners may be found here.

Starting in 2022-23, all students completing projects are invited to present their work in a public year-end Master's Project Showcase. Projects whose authors choose to present at this event are designated "Showcase Projects."

How Parents’ Perceptions of Public Schools Influence School Choice
Spring 2020
Author:
Tiffany Farr
Supervisor:

This is a qualitative study regarding a rural fringe school district in North Carolina. Initial interest for this study involved analyzing the State School Report Card ratings and the impact of these ratings on parental perceptions and school choice. For the purpose of this study, interviews were conducted with parents, principals, and teachers from elementary and middle schools. In North Carolina, each school’s grade is calculated using student proficiency and growth data with 80% of the school grade based on student achievement and 20% on school growth as measured by the Education Value-Added Assessment System used by the state. This school grading system has become controversial among education advocates across the state, especially as research has revealed that school grades are highly correlated to family income, with schools with greater poverty scoring more Cs, Ds, and Fs than schools with less poverty. This current study examines to what extent parents use school report cards when making school choice decisions. Findings reveal that parents held very little consideration for school report cards when considering school choice decisions. The results overall showed factors such as: (a) teacher satisfaction, (b) school location, (c) school focus and philosophy, (d) availability of services, and (e) the local political climate were most influential in decisions around school choice. Parents felt these areas were better indicators of the climate within a school, and thus were the drivers of parents’ school choice decisions because of how these factors may affect their child’s education.

The Federal System of Hannah Arendt: A Structure Built Upon Participation
Spring 2020
Author:
Mav Block
Supervisor:

**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2019-2020**

In this thesis, I reconstruct Hannah Arendt’s theory of federalism through a novel interpretation of the relationship between power and authority in her work. Though numerous scholars underscore the import of federalism for Arendt’s politics, theorists have remained silent; some, who champion her council state, acknowledge its federal character – yet none have sought her federal theory. I argue the federal system for Arendt shares a necessary and constitutive relationship to the council state. For Arendt, federal authority is derived from an act of foundation by already constituted powers, while the preservation of this authority depends upon the ongoing capacity of those powers to act individually and collectively. This means, for Arendt, that the federal system demands the specific form of direct public participation in government institutionalized by the council state for its longevity, otherwise it will degenerate. Through exposing Arendt’s federal thought, I show that her reflections on federalism offer valuable insights into the division of powers, the system of checks and balances, the relationship between law and politics, the role of a constitutional court, as well as the danger posed by representative democracy, in what amounts in the last instance to a radical re-conception of the federal republic.

The Lure of the Northwest Passage: From Heroic Explorers to Modern Cruise Tourists
Spring 2020
Author:
Sharon E. Riley
Supervisor:

**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2019-2020**

For centuries, explorers sought a marine shortcut from Europe to Asia, across the top of North America, to expedite trade. This longed-for sea route, known as the Northwest Passage (NWP), became a sort of “holy grail” of ocean navigation, but attempts to traverse it were repeatedly blocked by ice and harsh conditions, resulting in lost lives and ships. Today the Arctic is the fastest warming part of the planet. As longer, warmer summers decrease sea ice and open the passage, cruise tourism has increased significantly. Why are so many drawn to this remote region, and does the experience live up to their expectations? This project examines the lure of the NWP, both historic and current, the evolution and marketing of NWP cruises, the motivations of passengers, and the risks of traversing the passage. It also draws on personal observations from a partial transit cruise I took in September 2019.

Precarity in German Policy: The Vulnerabilities of Refugees and Asylees from Discrimination to Human Trafficking
Summer 2020
Author:
Nadiyah Suleiman
Supervisor:

To create a safer, more inclusive environment for refugees and asylees, it is incumbent upon Germany’s federal government and community-based organizations to build effective, well-informed policy and strengthen Germany’s community response to address the vulnerabilities refugees and asylees face daily. The current policies in place do not adequately address the underlying vulnerabilities that refugees and asylees face within Germany, such as access to formal job markets, safe housing, social acceptance, security, etc. This results in a heightened precarity of refugees and asylees, leaving them vulnerable to discrimination, violence, and human trafficking. Policy that is aimed at the underlying causes of precarity is crucial. Providing information to refugees and asylees about their rights within Germany will increase their ability to self-advocate. Federal actors can expand formal trainings for government officials to include understanding human trafficking in the context of a refugee’s and asylee’s situation, thus, encouraging an inclusive and accurate approach to combat human trafficking from a top down perspective. These federal and state actors can also create more space for a community response to human trafficking of refugees and asylees, by relaxing its control of nonprofits, community-based organizations, and community service organizations. By expanding the influence of community-based organizations through diversifying partnerships and funders, community-based organizations can work outside of the federal sphere, providing a bottom up approach to human trafficking. Implementing and building upon these policy recommendations allows Germany to begin to evaluate its border policies’ role in creating precarity for refugees and asylees and collectively work towards a humanitarian approach to border control.

Multiple Archives, Multiple Futures: Reexamining the Socialism of "The Combahee River Collective Statement"
Spring 2020
Author:
Kayla Bloodgood
Supervisor:

**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2019-2020**

While contemporary scholars celebrate “The Combahee River Collective Statement” as an early articulation of intersectional theory, little scholarship current exists that takes seriously the authors’ self-identification as socialists. In this paper, I place the erasure of the Combahee River Collective’s identity in three major contexts: citational practices in feminist scholarship, socialist feminism’s resistance to late twentieth century reworkings of what constitutes the “material,” the fall of socialist feminism from its status as the “crowning achievement” of feminism. Rather than argue for its inclusion in socialist feminist archives at the expense of its place in intersectionality, I advocate for the Statement’s inclusion in multiple archives of thought, including and beyond intersectionality and socialist feminism.

From Co-Production to Broken Relationship: Agencies, Idols, and Fans in the Making of K-Pop
Spring 2020
Author:
Jiahui Gu
Supervisor:

**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2019-20**

In this thesis, I argue that idols, talent agencies, and fans in K-pop constitute a triangle where idols and agencies, agencies and fans, idols and fans each has a double-directional relationship. I look into the relationship between agencies and fans, and idols and fans. In Chapter 1, I focus on the mutual effect between agencies and fans in the YouTube era and discusses what influence it has on K-pop music. I use the notion of “primary” and “secondary” production to talk about how agencies and fans of K-pop produce content on YouTube and how their productions are mutually constitutive. I also discuss that YouTube provides platform for K-pop and changes the listening experience of K-pop. In Chapter 2, I focus on the mutual relationship between idols and fans and reveal the dark side of K-pop which led to two tragic suicides. I argue that K-pop creates a fantasy to fulfill young women’s desire. It serves as a safe space for female fans to temporarily release their pressure due to the oppression of reality, thus sustain the highly stressful reality in a patriarchal society. In the establishment of fantasy, female idols in the K-pop industry are shaped to represent perfect images of women and function as the mirror for their female fans, thus enabling the fans to obtain a sense of satisfaction. However, the seemingly mutually beneficial relationship can be disrupted when “scandals” appear to destabilize that relationship. Whereas the agencies can borrow and adopt from fan’s secondary production, the idols’ real-world conducts become a site for disdain and disapproval from the fans. The two tragic suicides of K-pop stars point to the idols’ unwillingness to maintain this false sense of mutuality, or the fantasy world. It is more than just a scandal since by killing themselves, they refuse to participate in the fantasy world. The collapse of the fantasy world is a symptom of the larger problem of patriarchy and social hierarchy in South Korean society.

The Glass Ceiling of African American Assistant Football Coaches
Spring 2020
Author:
Eli Keimach
Supervisor:

African American assistant football coaches in college and the National Football League (NFL) alike face a gauntlet of challenges in their quests to become head coaches. Much of the systematic exclusion of qualified African American head coaching candidates stems from archaic and baseless biases. In 2018, 49.2 percent of college football players at the Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) level – the highest classification of college football – were African American. During that same season, only 37.63% of the assistant coaches, 14.72% of the coordinators, and 8.53% of the head coaches were African American. NFL officials have begrudgingly recognized this issue and enacted policies to mandate minority interviews and consideration for open roles. However, these policies have been weakened by teams that “game” the system with sham interviews with no serious consideration given to African American candidates. My original research on 62 National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I FBS College football teams showed an undeniable connection between playing quarterback and becoming a head coach. 30.6% of the head coaches in the study played quarterback – an overwhelming majority. It remains to be seen if the unprecedented success of African American quarterbacks in recent NFL seasons will spark a change in the coaching racial landscape for years to come.

Victims and Victimizers: A Microhistory of Chinese Settlers in Africa
Spring 2020
Author:
Shingho Luk
Supervisor:

When it comes to the current Sino-African relationship, the question often asked is if China is a neo-colonial force in Africa or not. This question elides the complexity of collaboration, negotiation and exploitation. What I try to achieve in this essay is to shift the scale from a macro (nation to continent) model to that of a micro level by analyzing how Chinese laborers (in both state and private sectors) and the narratives they construct, offer a much more complex interactions between microhistory and China’s inroad into Africa. In the first chapter, I borrow Miriam Driessen’s description, tasting bitterness, or in my words, enduring hardships, to demonstrate the struggles Chinese workers face in the construction sector where criticism of China’s land-grabbing and resource-gathering in Ethiopia is most visible.1 Through interviews with managers and workers of RCE,2 a Chinese State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), I observe that the Chinese companies’ exploitive labor practices in Ethiopia often brought lawsuits to the companies and made the Chinese laborers endure hardships in Africa. Building on Chapter One’s theme of enduring hardships, in Chapter Two, I then analyze four individual actors in agriculture who are independent of the Chinese state’s project in Africa. The goal is to examine if they share experiences during their stay in Africa that are similar to Chapter One’s migrant workers in the state sector. I first examine the migration intentions of individual migrants using Edwin Kangyang Lin’s small pond migration theory. I then turn to Driessen’s tasting bitterness again to complement Lin’s analysis of migration intentions and use her concept to shed light on the migrants’ commitment to enduring hardships. Based on the microhistory of Chinese diaspora in Africa, I argue that the current Chinese migration to Africa is an unintended consequence of the rise of China in the world system and that these settlers are both victimizers and victims of this fast-changing circumstance. My project complicates and disrupts the oft-cited West vs. China dichotomy that obfuscates the everyday struggles and survivals of the Chinese diaspora in Africa.

Community Bonding: Rebuilding Duke University and Durham, North Carolina to Promote Sexual Autonomy
Fall 2019
Author:
Sara Stevens
Supervisor:

My central question asks how universities can engage with local communities to work towards increased sexual safety on campuses. Specifically, I first argue that universities can improve sexual safety on campuses by incorporating ideas about consent and sexuality from alternative sexual communities into safety initiatives. I then argue that universities can further improve sexual safety on campuses through engagement with off-campus business that are central to student life. Student activists and university administrators must reach outside the university to engage with local communities and unite against all forms of sexual misconduct. I cast a wide net in Chapter One to look at the various notions of safety, consent, and gender in contemporary BDSM (bondage, discipline (or domination), sadism (or submission), and masochism) communities in hopes of finding new ways to restructure modes of though around sexual assault and harassment prevention. I find that the normative response from Duke University (and their peer institutions) against sexual assault and harassment prevention to add more policy and review boards is not working. Chapter two brings readers back to the relationship between Duke and Durham to evaluate how restructuring sex education and community engagement can form a better response against sexual misconduct and improve sexual justice at its core. My research led me to realize how important sexual autonomy is to community health. As it currently stands in the United States, policies, laws and ideologies around appropriate sexual conduct damage sexual autonomy. Our autonomy forms how we interact with our outside community, not just intimately but socially. Therefore, if Duke University wants to strengthen sexual justice on campus, they need to first invest in sex education to re-build students’ sexual autonomy.

Integrating Temporal Polyphony and Camera Consciousness into Literature: Inspired by the Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni
Spring 2019
Author:
Michelle Butcher
Supervisor:

**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2018-2019**

Theorists and scholars primarily characterize Michelangelo Antonioni as a Modernist artist who uses Abstract Expressionist techniques seen through the geometric composition of framing: diagonals, counter-diagonals, vertical lines, and triangular figures. But what of the auteur’s place in the Cubist tradition? My project consists of an analytical essay and a separate novella evaluating the Cubist aesthetics of fragmentation and time, as captured by the human, inhuman, and superhuman consciousness of camera movements in the Cinema of Antonioni. Further, both works explore and integrate Antonioni’s employment of these techniques based on the film philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, who builds his concepts around the Bergsonian ideas of the movement-image, and the time-image. The unfinished novella (consisting of 5 chapters or movements) demonstrates narrative through both the conventional use of prose, and through unconventional employment of cinematic techniques as seen in Antonioni’s cinema. In particular, the unconventional techniques appear through the subjective (human) or objective (inhuman) use of camera movements as consciousness. I tend to the issue of frame, shot, cut, montage, and the tension between what Bergson refers to as a “crisis of psychology”: movement “as the physical reality of the external” and the images “psychic reality in consciousness.” The analytical essay argues for instances of temporal polyphony in the films of Michelangelo Antonioni. The multiplicity of temporal perspectives within a filmic shot, what Deleuze calls Aeon and Chronos, in tandem with a human or inhuman camera consciousness, all serve the Cubist technique of integrating a type of polyphony into the work. The unfinished novella reflects this argument as well.

Pages