David Lang

This essay focuses on the politics of western India, specifically in the state of Maharashtra during the riots of 1992-1993, and explores the complex relationship between the state, police, and political parties of the province. This essay will specifically highlight the party Shiv Sena, and how it evolved from a “non-political” movement focused on “social work and justice” into a driving force of Hindu nationalism in the 1990’s. Bombay was and still is a diverse city, full of migrant workers and refuges from across India and the Arabian Sea. Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Muslims, and Jews all live within the city. To add to the diversity, residing in the city are Urdu-speakers, Marathi, Parsi, Dalit, Tamil and many other ethnic groups. The fact that a party such as Shiv Sena, which originally set out to represent Marathi-speaking Hindus, came into power with the BJP (another Hindutva movement party) in the 1990’s is a development worth further study, for it showcased an instance in which the state, which should act as a vessel of secular, fair representation, came to be dominated by a party blatantly pushing a specific group’s interests. The essay ultimately contends that while Shiv Sena was never able to completely dominate party politics within Maharashtra, the party was able to mold state politics and city-life within Bombay into its own preconceived vision of how everything ‘should be’.

Raymond Clemens’ "The Voynich Manuscript" best serves to introduce the reader to one of the greatest mysteries of the medieval European world by placing the very document in the hands of the reader, allowing them to take on the role of the historian and cryptologist that exists within one’s self whenever curiosity is peaked by an unsolvable puzzle. Despite the disappointing nature of the articles within, which contain recent developments and new approaches countable on one hand, the quality of the facsimile provides more than enough historical value, with its otherworldly images and script that have excited and baffled scholars for centuries. It is the job of the Historian to constantly pursue historical context and fact despite a myriad of seemingly indiscernible information, and indeed the Voynich Manuscript with all its mystery personifies this ultimate pursuit of truth, one in which the solution itself is not always as interesting as the problem itself.

The Cleveland Browns in 1995 were one of the most celebrated teams in the National Football League, known for the support of their passionate fans. Despite their success, owner Art Modell opted to relocate the team to Baltimore Maryland in a move which kick-started a protest movement never before seen in modern American sport. This study examines the factors precipitating Modell’s decision through the theoretical framework of Julian Smith’s Cultural Landscape theory in conjunction with John Bale’s conceptualization of Sports Heritage, with the ultimate diagnosis that the cultural resource which was the Cleveland Browns was exploited by city officials in favor of other projects. This exploitation caused an imbalance in Cleveland’s cultural landscape, the after-effects of which are still present today.

Scholars such as Tomoko Masuzawa, Abigail Green, and Vincent Viaene have argued that the Nineteenth Century saw the rise and consolidation of the power of “world religions”, loosely defined and roughly agreed upon to include the three major forms of Christianity (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox), conventional Islam (Sunni and Shia), as well as Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, along with Confucianism and Chinese “folk religion”.  The Doukhobors, as “Free-Church Christians” who rejected Eastern Orthodoxy and were labeled dissenters by the Russian State therefore did not belong to any of the world religions, and as a result have been marginalized in studies of world religion as they do not fit into a relevant mold or label. For this study, I propose the label of "counter-religion" to describe the Doukhobors, placing them appropriately within discourse on world religions, along with other religious groups that cultivated followers seeking an alternative to the mainstream religious market.

The Doukhobors and Hutterites are Christian pacifists that found refuge in Canada from Tsarist Russia. Despite their many similarities, the Hutterites thrive today, while the Doukhobors do not. Both groups experienced hardship and inner turmoil in the twentieth century, with the Hutterites forced to excommunicate the heretical Bruderhof, and the Doukhobors compelled to denounce the violent Sons of Freedom. The steps taken by the Hutterites ensured their communal longevity, qualified by the works of Christoph Brumann. For the Doukhobors, their inability to effectively expel the Freedomites from their fold led to a gradual decline in the solidarity and population of their community. Roger Gould’s theory of strife out of symmetry, alongside the theories Brumann, best explains why the Doukhobors face irreversible decline today.

This essay seeks to highlight the presence of transnationalism in the United States as a critique of past and present debates suggesting that complete assimilation is the only means by which immigrants can integrate into American society. To support this critique, this essay focuses on the Hungarian immigrant community in Cleveland, Ohio, and how this community formed a cohesive and unique identity engaging in “transnationalism”, by neither completely severing ties to Hungary, nor completely conforming to American culture. Despite their defiance to true assimilation, that is retaining their language, culture, and ties to Hungary, members of this Hungarian community integrated and contributed greatly to the cultural history of Cleveland and the United States. Therefore, this paper examines the transnational nature of the Hungarian migrant community in Cleveland, Ohio, and how their success in the United States can be looked at by scholars today as a critique of the idea of American “assimilationism”, which is still regarded by politicians and policy-makers in the present day as the only way to truly integrate into American society.

As many Americans awoke the morning of December 25, 1991 to celebrate Christmas, events occurring half-way around the world would soon dominate their attention and memory, for this day would mark the resignation of Mikhail Gorbachev of the once seemingly all-powerful Soviet Union, and the transference of his power as the general secretary of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic to President Boris Yeltsin of the newly formed Russian Federation. Just how had the Soviet Union, which had seemingly enjoyed the dominant position in the Cold War just twenty years ago, found itself on a path where it would face dissolution and detrimental nuclear disarmament? In his book From Washington to Moscow: US-Soviet Relations and the Collapse of the USSR, Louis Sell, a retired Foreign Service officer, seeks to answer this very question, focusing on the twenty-one years between the SALT I summit of 1972 and the START II treaty of 1993 with the intent of uncovering and explaining the many causes that facilitated the collapse of the Soviet Union.

At the turn of the twentieth century, as European empires spanned the globe and ever increasingly sought to govern the lives of colonial subjects, feminist activists led by Josephine Butler, with the help of religious groups and other moralist organizations, sought to limit the power of the state over women’s bodies and sexuality. State-sponsored prostitution was generally accepted throughout Europe during this time as the most effective means to control the sex trade, protect the health of soldiers and colonial subjects, and preserve the racial hierarchy. However, in response to controversial laws such as the Contagious Diseases Act in the British Empire, a movement was gaining momentum to control the trafficking of the “white slave trade”, and address potential reform of state-regulated structures of prostitution. This movement, which will henceforth be referred to as the “anti-trafficking movement”, was divided in its approach and met with limited success and a myriad of challenges prior to the Second World War. In her book The Politics of Trafficking: The First International Movement to Combat the Sexual Exploitation of Women, Stephanie A. Limoncelli seeks to draw attention to this imperfect effort to fight for gender inequality through a comparative analysis of the two largest organizations within the movement, and their experiences in mobilizing support in three case studies.

Often overlooked due to the shadow cast by its successor, the League of Nations is hardly considered a successful international organization by the majority of historians and politicians who have studied it. The United Nations, which metaphorically picked up the pieces after the League’s ultimate failure which was the Second World War, is typically credited by many scholars as the first true and successful attempt at an international organization for peace. The League of Nations, for many, was a doomed attempt to maintain the imperial status quo before the Great War, ill-equipped and poorly managed to prevent the rise of Fascism in Europe, and the carnage that soon followed. Susan Pedersen, however, in her recently published book The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire takes a step back from these assumptions, and instead takes a look at the inner-workings of this first international peace-keeping organization, with a focus on the Permanent Mandates Commission.