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Welcome to Hell: Avenues for international criminal responsibility for human rights violations during the first and second Chechen wars from 1994 to 2009
No full textThesis (B.A. in Political Science, Minor in Humanistic Studies)--John Cabot University, Fall 2022.This thesis will focus on the aftermath of the two Russo-Chechen wars. Namely, their implications on the international legal order. Two Russian invasions in Chechnya were fundamentally overlooked by the international community, while one of the greatest human rights crises was happening in the “country in the country”. Tortures, murders, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions, rape, mass shelling, and bombings of civilians – these were all military tactics deployed by the Russian military. Although the conflict was considered “local”, the international community had the right and opportunity to intervene and prevent these crimes from happening or in any way contribute to the justice restoration when the breaches were eventually discovered and documented by the Chechen human rights organizations and activists. While answering what are the implications of the first and second Russo-Chechen wars on international criminal responsibility and international legal order in terms of the protection of human rights, I will also touch upon on bigger challenges that this tiny territory fighting for its national liberational for centuries has posed. Among them are the limitations of the self-determination right’s exercise, the relations between political affairs and international law, and others. Despite the strictly analytical nature of this study, my thesis will not only try to recollect and organize as much data on the subject as possible but recognize and acknowledge the deeply human nature of this conflict. There is no history of the Russo-Chechen wars without Chechen women being raped by Russian soldiers and then committing suicide because their life was practically stolen. And there is no history without mass terrorist attacks organized by Chechen radical guerrilla groups in theatres and schools. This thesis does not aim to give an ethical evaluation of the actions of both sides but rather to explore the mechanisms of objective prevention and the assignment of responsibility neutrally and proportionally after such human rights tragedies
Nurturing Compassion in Schools: A Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effectiveness of a Compassionate Mind Training Program for Teachers
No full textObjectives
Schools are experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis, with teachers reporting high levels of stress and burnout, which has adverse consequences to their mental and physical health. Addressing mental and physical health problems and promoting wellbeing in educational settings is thus a global priority. This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of an 8-week Compassionate Mind Training program for Teachers (CMT-T) on indicators of psychological and physiological wellbeing.
Methods
A pragmatic randomized controlled study with a stepped-wedge design was conducted in a sample of 155 public school teachers, who were randomized to CMT-T (n = 80) or a waitlist control group (WLC; n = 75). Participants completed self-report measures of psychological distress, burnout, overall and professional wellbeing, compassion and self-criticism at baseline, post-intervention, and 3-months follow-up. In a sub-sample (CMT-T, n = 51; WLC n = 36) resting heart-rate variability (HRV) was measured at baseline and post-intervention.
Results
CMT-T was feasible and effective. Compared to the WLC, the CMT-T group showed improvements in self-compassion, compassion to others, positive affect, and HRV as well as reductions in fears of compassion, anxiety and depression. WLC participants who received CMT-T revealed additional improvements in compassion for others and from others, and satisfaction with professional life, along with decreases in burnout and stress. Teachers scoring higher in self-criticism at baseline revealed greater improvements post CMT-T. At 3-month follow-up improvements were retained.
Conclusions
CMT-T shows promise as a compassion-focused intervention for enhancing compassion, wellbeing and reducing psychophysiological distress in teachers, contributing to nurturing compassionate, prosocial and resilient educational environments. Given its favourable and sustainable effects on wellbeing and psychophysiological distress, and low cost to deliver, broader implementation and dissemination of CMT-T is encouraged
The Influences and Roles of Vodou and Marronage in the Haitian Revolution and Early Independent Haiti
No full textThesis (B.A. in History, Minor in Humanistic Studies and Classical Studies)--John Cabot University, Spring 2022.This thesis investigates the influences and roles of Vodou and marronage in the Haitian Revolution and early independent Haiti. The first chapter explores the prevalence of Vodou and marronage in the motivational Bois Caïman ceremony and the 1791 slave insurrection that sparked the beginning of the Haitian Revolution. The second chapter highlights the influence of African military techniques and organization in addition to maroon band tactics and organization on insurgent bands in the 1791 slave insurrection and afterward as the Revolution progressed. It also depicts how Vodou rites and rituals continued to be used by insurgents to motivate them before a battle and intimidate their enemies. The third chapter emphasizes the ongoing importance of Vodou and marronage as means of mass resistance to the new plantation labor regimes established on the island after 1793. Once Hati gained its independence, the maroon-like independent farming lifestyle for self-sustenance merged into the rural egalitarian agricultural society known as the lakou, through which former slaves expressed their maroon and African ancestral ties. The lakou became the way the Haitian peasantry was able to become small-scale independent landowners focused on self-sustenance farming within a communal setting. Over the course of the Haitian Revolution and beyond, Vodou and marronage were used by slaves and then insurgents and laborers, to resist slavery, reoccurring plantation labor systems, and to reconstruct their desired maroon-like and African-influenced lifestyle in the lakou system
Algorithms and Climate: An Ecomedia Literacy Perspective
No full textDrawing on examples of Bitcoin and climate disinformation, this article demonstrates why Big Tech algorithms have a significant environmental impact and how media literacy educators can respond. Big Tech algorithms reinforce the economic models of surveillance and carbon capitalism, which are dependent on two forms of extractivism: data harvesting and resource extraction. To encourage a holistic environmental analysis of algorithms, ecomedia literacy’s four zone approach enables an investigation from the perspectives of ecoculture, political ecology, ecomateriality, and lifeworld. For media literacy educators, the challenge is to develop curricula and methods that address these different standpoints, which can include critical media literacy, design justice, civic media literacies, news and misinformation literacies, and ethical algorithm audits
Curating the Eternal Return: Giorgio de Chirico’s Piazza d’Italia con statua (1937)
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2022.Chronological display is a fundamental feature of the public art museum, creating a distinct pathfor the visitor to follow as they walk through the history of art. Recent scholarship in the field ofmuseum studies has drawn the use of chronology in museum or exhibition display into focus, reevaluatingthe positive and negative aspects of the historical narrative. Given that much ofGiorgio de Chirico’s (1888-1978) Metaphysical Art embodies the reconceptualization of time,the analysis of the exhibition of his work throughout the past century allows for the study of howthe concept of time, and chronology, is addressed curatorially in permanent displays andtemporary exhibitions. An analysis of how de Chirico’s paintings have been inserted into variousnarratives and exhibition chronologies in selected Italian and foreign museums will providecomparative material, particularly from institutions like the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna eContemporanea in Rome and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which have famously (orinfamously) abandoned the use of chronology as an organizational structure for their collectionsand exhibitions. Piazza d’Italia con statua, a painting created in 1970 but inscribed by de Chiricowith the date 1937, acts as a focal point for this analysis of his exhibition history and thereception of his work, from which a close exploration of the agency of the curator and that of anartwork itself can be made
Curating Nature: The Experience of Artifice and Environment in Roman Luxury Villas
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Fall 2022.Between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, the Roman luxury villa gained architectural expression and a new interest in the pleasure garden as a “space.” These spaces were marked by their luxurious elements, including fruiting trees, marble statuary, and bubbling fountains. Traditionally, scholarship has analyzed these components individually, as parts that form an implicitly static setting for the social interaction of the elite. However, the formulation of the luxury villa is also characterized by experimentation; hence, by examining the form of the pleasure garden in elite villas spaces, the intersections between painted and real gardens, as well as the viewer experience in the garden, this thesis will argue that the garden is simultaneously a spatial environment and a work of art. It will thus adopt a holistic ‘total site’ approach to the pleasure garden and its villa context as a way to understand the implications of the garden within the visual landscape of the villa. I suggest the term curation to recognize this fabrication as intentional, and to embed the garden with greater meaning and agency than previously appreciated. The result is an assemblage, composed of multiple layers of entangled object–human networks. These function together to form not only the social role of the garden, but also the garden experience in Roman villa culture. This thesis employs a novel interpretive framework: at the core of this methodology is an analysis of climatic and archaeological data, as well as contemporary theories related to spatial interpellation, semiotics, objecthood, and museum studies. The aim is for a reframing of the agency of the garden space within the entangled visual assemblages and constructed experiences that characterize the early Imperial luxury villa
Becoming Canova: The Clement Papal Monuments
No full textMaster of Arts in Art History -- John Cabot University, Spring 2022.Antonio Canova began his international career by fulfilling commissions for two papal monuments in Rome. These monuments, one located in the Franciscan Basilica of Santi Apostoli, the other in Saint Peter’s Basilica, are seldom the focus of scholarly research yet they provide a rich foundation to investigate Canova’s innovative style. Through careful visual analysis of the two monuments vis-à-vis other papal monuments both within Saint Peter’s and in other churches of Rome, a consideration of the iconographical, semantic and design solutions will focus on the research question: How and why do these monuments present such radically different modes of representation of the Supreme Pontiff, and how do they negotiate affect and power so divergently? To investigate these issues the thesis relies on primary sources in Possagno and Rome, the writings of Canova’s contemporaries and the current, if scant, scholarship in English, Italian, French, and German. Because both monuments were executed early in Canova’s career, and due to the nature of the research question, an analysis of their reception will contribute to their study, as it will to scholarship on the trajectory of Canova’s career. With the papal monuments, Antonio Canova broke with the existing Baroque tradition in favor of an innovative classicizing style, and coupled execution of the monuments with a vigilant eye to their placement within each basilica’s architecture and the experience they staged for the viewer.
How Canova addressed existing conventions, relied on the interplay of allegory, symbol, motif, perspective, execution, narrative and theatricality, and how he negotiated patronage and space, provide avenues to structure this research and, ultimately, aims to contribute to refreshing the art-historical literature on the artist, currently quagmired in an uncritical identification of Canova with sculptural Neoclassicism
