The central question for this paper is: what should we do when the interests of our family members conflict with the interests of strangers? There has been a heated debate within the Chinese philosophy community on this question. The debate is situated in two classic Chinese schools of thoughts: Confucianism and Mohism. This paper begins by analyzing the debate. Recently, some scholars have argued that this so-called Confucian-Mohist debate is the result of misinterpretation. I reject this view and argue that, although Confucians and Mohists have some common grounds, they do have a central difference. Mohists believe that we should treat family members and strangers equally when they conflict, whereas Confucians believe that we should treat family members with some priority. Besides the interpretation issue, I argue that Confucians are right on the normative aspect. We should give family members some priority, and this is one of the important factors to consider when facing the moral conflict between family members and strangers. However, I argue that there are other important factors to consider, including our equal obligation towards strangers. Thus, in order to make a better decision in the conflict, we need to distinguish between doing and allowing harm, and love and care.
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."
The province of Sindh in Pakistan is predominantly an agriculture-based region which has a large proportion of the population living in rural areas. Here, women play a significant role in agricultural activities and are also held responsible for household activities. Given rigid social structures, the influence of power by elites who exercise control through landholdings and additional cultural and religious restrictions, women in rural Sindh are considered to be amongst the most disenfranchised. Through this paper, I attempt to identify the vulnerabilities of women in rural Sindh to climate change effects and evaluate the gender differences in access to resources, services and facilities. From the analysis conducted, the increase in the burden of responsibilities for women of rural Sindh in combination with the social, economic and cultural barriers, ineffective implementation mechanisms and subsequent structural causes result in exclusion of women from sustainable livelihood management practices. The situation is further exacerbated by the effects of climate change.The paper assesses various policy options and provides recommendations to the Provincial government of Sindh to invest in capacity building schemes and improve agricultural practices through investments in social protection programs, technical and vocational skills. Investing in such mechanisms will have considerable positive effects on the social, cultural and economic status of women and help to build resilience against disasters and additional climate change effects within the region.
This thesis discusses the controversial doctor-patient relation problem in contemporary China. The key issue it aims to address is how to improve the doctor-patient relation with efforts from multiple levels. This thesis reviews literature on China’s healthcare service as a way to identify the causes of the doctor-patient tension. It then recommends possible interventions drawing on international experiences. The recommendations follow a three-level—macro-, meso- and micro-level—framework. What this thesis found is that the tension between doctors and patients is not only the fault of the frontline health workers. As a result, interventions for its improvement cannot target exclusively doctor’s behavior. Meanwhile, since the doctor-patient relations problem is not unique to China, we should also learn from the successful lessons in the global society. It is not our goal to resolve the problem in China’s healthcare system. With the discussion in this thesis, we hope to show that there is the potential to alleviate doctor-patient tension in China with joint efforts in the society.
**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2016-17**
In this project I explore how Spanish visual culture (in addition to select works of art from other European nations), especially but not solely Spanish Baroque painting and the works of Francisco Goya, inspired the filmmakers Carlos Saura and Victor Erice in their depiction of late Francoist Spanish society. Additionally, I interpret how these two directors, whose acclaimed work changed Spanish cinema in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically embody Francoist Spain in their characters and settings. In my exploration of artistic influences on Saura and Erice’s embodiment of Francoism, I analyze three films, in order of their theatrical release: The Garden of Delights (1970), directed by Carlos Saura, The Spirit of the Beehive (1972), directed by Victor Erice, and Cria Cuervos (1975), directed by Saura. My method for analyzing each film includes my allusion to specific works of art that I consider as influential to Saura and Erice, whether on a conscious or subconscious level. Each film, in my view, evokes images that play an important role in Spanish visual culture, and the nation’s collective memory. I discuss The Garden of Delights primarily within the context of Hieronymus Bosch’s eponymous painting, as well as Goya’s Duel with Clubs. I analyze The Spirit of the Beehive, the film which I see as most evocative of painting, primarily within the context of Baroque and Romantic painting, and how the two styles’ contrasts are evoked in the film’s indoor and outdoor scenes, respectively. I show how Cria Cuervos, filmed as Franco lay dying, primarily evokes Goya’s Saturn and Velazquez’ portraiture. I conclude that (primarily) Spanish visual culture influenced Saura and Erice’s embodiment of their repressive society and effectively aided the auteurs’ symbolistic subversive filmmaking.
**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2016-17**
Without question, I believe that those who desire to teach and subsequently become educators do so because they look at students and find hope, recognize humanity. As a teacher for these last 13 years, the most foundational questions (What is education? Why do I teach? Who do I teach? How do I teach?) seem lost in wider conversations about education. This is due, in part, to the guiding educational philosophies that determine our society’s motivations for valuing education. In this project, I look at the potential literature affords to engage adolescents in thinking about ethics. In chapter one, I argue why this remains an important task in the public sphere. Next, I discuss the state of current educational rationales and literature standards for middle school Language Arts classrooms. Through this research, I discovered the term “moral imagination,” an idea present in many professional schools but notably absent in Kindergarten through undergraduate educational settings. In the second chapter, I discuss moral imagination using scholarly historical and psychological perspectives. I then argue for the unique opportunity the middle grades classroom provides to encourage this type of imagining. In the third chapter, I explore how teachers might encourage thinking about morality through reading actual books, cover to cover, page by page. Finally, in the fourth chapter, I provide close readings of three widely-used middle school texts: Jacqueline Woodson’s brown girl dreaming, Mildred Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and Lois Lowry’s The Giver. My purpose in this short analysis is to demonstrate motifs that arise when students read books that cultivate imaginative ways to understand complicated stories and characters. I encourage teachers to risk assigning books that help young people stretch their moral muscles, so to speak, and learn to engage questions that cut to the core of what it means to be human.
The joy of finding unspoiled beaches on the island of Ocracoke led to inquiring how these areas escaped the rampant development prevalent in coastal North Carolina. This project’s primary purpose was to investigate a mostly unknown person, named Frank Stick, and to determine his role, if any, in helping to establish the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and second, to investigate present-day threats to the seashore. The primary inquiry led to Roanoke Island, NC, and the Outer Banks History Center to research from primary sources the life of Frank Stick and the formation of the national seashore. I also interviewed residents of the Outer Banks and descendants of landowners that had contributed to the national seashore. To research current threats, I attended forums of the NC Coastal Federation, Duke’s Ocean Policy Working Group, and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and toured the entire seashore. My inquiry reveals that the formation of the Cape Hatteras National Seashore has a very long and complicated history in which Frank Stick played a major role, and which this paper examines through his life and times. I found that oil exploration and global warming are major threats to the seashore, and that coastal residents prefer tourism to an energy economy. This paper reveals who Frank Stick was and what we can learn from his activism, conservationism and methods in order to counteract current environmental threats to America’s first national seashore.
**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2016-2017**
Recognizing paved roads in the U.S. as an intersection between humans and other living things can contribute to new ways of relating to the world around us. While engineering capabilities can accomplish feats that increase the possibilities for human connectivity, human transportation also affects the movement and lives of many other organisms. A multispecies approach to understanding roads considers humans as one of many component parts of the ecosystems we occupy—as animals entangled with and interdependent on other beings, each seeking solutions for survival. Ultimately, I am curious how a multispecies exploration of paved roads in the U.S. could influence change in the way humans design transportation systems and share space with other species. By comparing human movement to the movement of other organisms, humans may learn better ways to move ourselves and remember to see ourselves as animal actors within the ecosystem. There are multiple indications that a close examination of American road infrastructure is a timely endeavor. While the cost of materials and labor makes large scale change to the built environment challenging, three factors that contribute to change are currently coalescing. I argue that deteriorating infrastructure coupled with recent ecological discoveries and new developments in technology present the conditions for a major change in the American landscape.
The Greek letter Ø (Phi), represents one of the most mysterious numbers (1.618…) known to humankind. Historical reverence for Ø led to the monikers “The Golden Number” or “The Devine Proportion”. This simple, yet enigmatic number, is inseparably linked to the recursive mathematical sequence that produces Fibonacci numbers. Fibonacci numbers have fascinated and perplexed scholars, scientists, and the general public since they were first identified by Leonardo Fibonacci in his seminal work Liber Abacci in 1202. These transcendent numbers which are inextricably bound to the Golden Number, seemingly touch every aspect of plant, animal, and human existence. The most puzzling aspect of these numbers resides in their universal nature and our inability to explain their pervasiveness. An understanding of these numbers is often clouded by those who seemingly find Fibonacci or Golden Number associations in everything that exists. Indeed, undeniable relationships do exist; however, some represent aspirant thinking from the observer’s perspective. My work explores a number of cases where these relationships appear to exist and offers scholarly sources that either support or refute the claims. By analyzing research relating to biology, art, architecture, and other contrasting subject areas, I paint a broad picture illustrating the extensive nature of these numbers. In particular, the role of Fibonacci Numbers in the plant and animal kingdoms is analyzed within the context of quantification. Likewise, art, architecture, and aesthetics is examined for Fibonacci and Golden relationships to determine if an innate human preference for these associations exists and to what degree it can be measured. Finally, I draw conclusions supporting the existence of these unique relationships, and offer theories supporting adaptive advantages in living entities.
**Designated as an Exemplary Master's Project for 2016-17**
For twenty-four years at the turn of the twentieth century Duke University‘s East Campus hosted not only Duke‘s progenitor, Trinity College, but also a second educational institution, Trinity Park School. Modeled after some of the leading boarding and preparatory schools in the northeastern United States, Trinity Park School provided college preparatory instruction in the classical tradition to ensure that Trinity College was able to enroll a student body well prepared to handle its increasingly rigorous curriculum. Although its tenure was short, Trinity Park School was the right school in the right place at the right time. Trinity College traced its history to the early part of the nineteenth century and had grown amidst a variety of challenges, but the state of secondary education in North Carolina, particularly in the realm of public education, made it difficult for the college to find prospective students with the appropriate level of preparation for its program of study. Trinity‘s new home city of Durham was more progressive than most North Carolina towns, but the city and state did not fully embrace public education as a civic priority until the first decades of the twentieth century. Trinity Park School provided the solution to the college‘s needs in the interim, from 1898 to 1924. This paper examines Trinity Park School in three contexts: community, including the history of education in Durham, in North Carolina, and in the South; college, with a comprehensive review of Trinity College, the role it played in the development of education in North Carolina, and the origins of Trinity Park School; and contemporaries, focusing on Trinity Park School in both the historical context of boarding schools and in direct comparison to three northeastern schools, Phillips Academy in Massachusetts, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, and the Hill School in Pennsylvania.
The purpose of this study is to present a systematic review of the available evidence-based literature to answer the question: What are the ways in which exposure to social change early in adulthood might enhance the likelihood that several marginalized groups within the Baby Boom cohort will accept medical marijuana as a viable therapeutic option as they age? In this paper, I review the shift in the legal, cultural and therapeutic landscapes regarding medicinal marijuana and the impact this will have on several marginalized groups of an aging US population: those suffering with mental illness, veterans, and substance abusers. The impact on an already over-burdened healthcare system will be significant as the US will be ill-prepared to respond to the needs of the Baby Boom generation. The Baby Boomers came of age during the 1960s and 1970s when disruption and social change were commonplace, and they participated in activities which initiated or encouraged such change. Studies in psychology and sociology have reached consensus that although medicinal marijuana has known therapeutic benefits, there are also considerable risks. However, legal field has less uniformity and displays considerable ambiguity in the laws in states where medical marijuana legalization has occurred. Politically motivated anti-drug campaigns may influence the perception of the dangers and risks, compromising efforts to change the public perception of marijuana as a legitimate therapeutic option. Conversely, that same perception may entice members of marginalized groups to experiment with marijuana without realizing the potential negatives.