This dissertation aims to provide an understanding of the historical and contemporary dynamics of India’s foreign policy towards Israel within the context of religious identity from 1947 to 2015. A historical analysis of the relationship between India and Israel exhibits the ways that religious identity has served as a primary factor impeding as well as facilitating relations between the two nations. The analysis was done within the context of the historical Hindu-Muslim relationship in India and how the legacy of this relationship, in India’s effort to maintain positive relations with the Arab-Muslim world, worked to inhibit relations with Israel prior to normalization in 1992. However, the five years leading up to normalization, and thereafter, the dynamic is reversed with this legacy playing an increasingly progressive role in India-Israel relations via the social construction of shared meanings and identities between India’s Hindu majority with Israel’s Jewish majority. Social construction of shared meanings and identities are based, in part, within an historical/modern-day context of conflict with a minority, religious Other (Islam), and through bridges of connection based in other historical, cultural, social, and religious areas. Formal interviews, archival primary-source analysis of government documents, and secondary-source review were methods employed in the evaluation of the role of religion in India’s foreign policy towards Israel. In conclusion, this dissertation demonstrates the normative and functional effects that religious identities have played, and continue to play, in determining India’s foreign policy towards Israel given the fundamental role religious identity has historically played in the structuring of social perceptions, interactions and worldviews within Indian society up and through the present-day.

Botswana has recently garnered analytic attention as an anomaly of the “resource curse” phenomenon. Worldwide, countries whose economies are highly skewed towards a dependence on the export of non-renewable natural resources such as oil, diamonds and uranium, have been among the most troubled, authoritarian, poverty-stricken and conflict-prone; a phenomenon widely regarded as the “resource curse". The resource curse explains the varying fortunes of countries based on their resource wealth, with resource-rich countries faring much worse than their resource-poor counterparts. However, Botswana, with diamond exports accounting for 50percent of government revenues and 80percent of total exports, has achieved one of the fastest economic growth rates in the developing world in the last 50 years. Furthermore, the Freedom House ranks it as the safest, most stable, least corrupt and most democratic country on sub-Saharan Africa. In attempting to answer why Botswana apparently escaped the “resource curse”, this research assumes that both formal and informal institutions within the state acted as intermediary variables in determining its fortune. This research thus addresses the deeper question of where Botswana obtained its unique institutional quality that facilitated its apparent escape of the resource curse. It traces Botswana’s history through four lenses: legitimacy and historical continuity, political culture, ethnicity and identity management, and external relations; as having explanatory value in understanding the Botswana exception. The research finds most evidence of Botswana’s institutional quality emanating from the country’s political culture which it found more compatible with the institutions of development and democracy that facilitate both positive economic and political outcomes. It also found evidence of legitimacy and historical continuity facilitating the robustness of both formal and informal institutions in Botswana, and identity management through assimilation as having buffered against the effects of ethnically motivated resource plunder. It however, found the least support for the assertion that external relations contributed to institutional quality.

This paper explores the cross-cultural differences in affect valuation, emotion regulation, and the relationship between affect valuation, emotion regulation and subjective well-being across White Americans, Asians, and Third Culture Kids (TCKs). Emotional experiences shape every facet of our lives, yet understanding the extent to which emotional experiences are universal is still poorly understood. This is particularly the case among individuals with diverse cultural experiences. In the current study, we look at TCK individuals, a group composed of White-identifying individuals who spent a significant time of their childhood in East Asian countries. Through a questionnaire that was distributed via email and word of mouth, participants (N = 239) were asked to complete five surveys that included a subjective well-being scale, the affect valuation index, an emotion regulation questionnaire, an interpersonal emotion regulation questionnaire, and a set of scenarios that tested the individual’s tendency to feel a duty to themselves or to others. This study found that the Asian group significantly valued low arousal emotions more so than European Americans or the TCK individuals. TCKs were most likely to feel a strong sense of duty to help others.

This study works with Rotary Youth Exchange to investigate the role of predeparture intercultural training in preparing students to study abroad so that they 5 positively integrate their experience to become interculturally competent people. The Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES) along with an intercultural background survey were administered to each student during the first one to four months of his or her exchange to measure his or her intercultural competency development and to learn li about the student's intercultural background. Developing explicit evidence for the role of intercultural training through this study proved unsuccessful because of the students' Jack of knowledge about the subject. However, through analysis of students' answers to decipher the quality of training received and comparing that information to the students' IES scores, the vital role of intercultural training in predeparture orientation is implied.

Email communication within a diverse workplace poses intercultural communication challenges (Martin & Nakayama, 2007). This study aims to make a contribution to the literature by examining how these challenges can be addressed through email computer training. For this study, I set out to understand and demonstrate how, within the instructional design process, contextualized curriculum can be created that integrates intercultural competency and email proficiency. This thesis includes a draft of an instructional plan and course outline for an email computer class that focuses on developing intercultural awareness and skills in the context of an email training course. First, I examined email computer curricula, specifically the topics, course goals, and course objectives common to the curricula. As a result of this examination, I discovered that email training is limited to the technical aspects of email communication. Additionally, I surveyed intercultural communication professionals about intercultural topics applicable to email communication. Their survey responses indicated cultural differences account for some, but not all email workplace challenges. For example, they believed it is important to address intercultural elements like low vs. high context when writing an email message, and power distance and levels of formality when writing greetings and closings. Additionally, their feedback indicated that it is important to address direct vs. indirect communication styles when writing the main point and linear vs. circular cognitive styles when organizing text within an email. I incorporated their perspectives in my course outline. Finally, experts from the fields of instructional design, intercultural communication, and computer training reviewed a draft of the plan and outline. Although their feedback indicated that the premise and approach were sound and achievable, they differed in their evaluation of specific elements of the course. In general, their perspectives reflected their professional focus. For example, they either recommended a stronger focus on the technical aspects or a stronger focus on the intercultural aspects of the course design. Detailed comments pertained to the fine-tuning of the objectives, timing of the individual lessons, and other instructional elements needed for any polished professional course outline

In response to the changes brought about by globalization, colleges and universities around the \Vorld are increasingly developing and expanding the 4 internationalization programs on their campuses. One important aspect of these programs that is often highlighted by institutions in their mission statements is the development of global citizenship among graduates. However, despite the rhetorical claims and apparent intemationalization activity aimed at producing global citizens, many recent reports suggest that most institutions in North America and elsewhere have not been successful in this goal. Two common issues in this failure are a Jack of clarity in the definition and purpose of global citizenship education, and Jack of appropriate assessment tools and practices. In light of these problems, this exploratory thesis examines two existing frameworks, cosmopolitanism and intercultural relations, in an effort to establish a strong theoretical foundation for the support and development of a moral, ethical, and social justice perspective of education for global citizenship programs in colleges and universities that reflects the traditions of a liberal education. Analysis of the existing scholarship in these two areas shows a commonality between the frameworks that is mostly unrecognized in the literature. Together, the similarities in these two theoretical frameworks combine to make a compelling argument for the continued development of global citizenship programs that focus on peace and social justice. In addition, these frameworks provide effective solutions for the critical problems faced by education for global citizenship programs.

This study aims to answer two interlinked questions with respect to ethnic conflict in Georgia: Why and how two ethnic groups (Abkhazians and Ossetians) in Georgia sought secession in 1990s rather than accepting unity under a common Georgian roof, and what explains the occurrence of ethnic conflicts between the Abkhazians and Georgians and between the South Ossetians and Georgians? The central argument of this thesis is that Soviet nationality policy was a foremost driving force in shaping consciousness of being ethnic groups in Georgia and set the stage for the inter-ethnic conflicts of the post-Soviet era. A number of factors explain the particular inter-ethnic conflicts in Georgia among ethnic groups, including a long historical relationship between the Georgian people and the Abkhaz and Ossetian minorities, but I argue that the foremost factor was the role of Soviet nationality policy that evolved from Lenin to Gorbachev, a policy that granted ethnic groups some level of privileges and fostered a wave of national self-assertion, Soviet nationality policy and the Soviet federal structure created numerous ethnic- and territorial-based autonomous units during the Soviet era; these units shaped their own political institutions, national intelligentsias, and bureaucratic elites, forming the basis for later nationalistic movements and developing a wish for self-determination and full independence. These institutions and beliefs made ethnic conflict in a post-Soviet Georgia inevitable.

A comparison of the structure and effectiveness of recovery ecosystems for opioid use disorder in Portugal and Appalachia, with a focus on identifying areas for improvement within the Appalachian region.

In many urban areas, there are multiple and overlapping layers of governments, which can be problematic for purposes of emergency operations planning for a multiple jurisdiction disaster response. The purpose of this single case study of the National Capital Region was to understand (a) the emergency operations planning collaboration process and (b) how cross-sector collaboration results in synchronized regional disaster responses. Theories of competitive federalism and cross-sector collaboration served as the basis of this study. Research questions explored how organizations collaborate; their organizational structures, processes, and practices; and how relationships between them affect collaboration. Data were collected through reviews of the National Capital Region Homeland Security Strategic Plan and the Regional Emergency Coordination Plan and interviews with 5 network members. A coding map was created to correlate interview responses to research questions and then cross-checked to provide the basis for a thick description of the evidence. The documents provided a basis for understanding how the network operated. Comparing these 2 data sources with coded transcripts and field notes substantiated the evidence. Results indicated that planning network guidance provided the structure for network participants' collaboration to facilitate planning and disaster responses. This research may contribute to positive social change by expanding emergency management network understanding of a cross-sector collaboration planning model that addresses disaster support requirements, enabling better protection of people, property, and the environment.

In the novel The Stringer, Perla Coughlin has evacuated Pittsburgh following a biological attack. Now, at a Red Cross Shelter in Ohio, she slowly strings a racket as she tells a volunteer about her past, Pittsburgh's past, and what might lay ahead for both. Characters grapple with their ignorance toward environmental warning signs, the hidden costs of technology, and the disquieting ways in which apocalypses reveal "who we really are." The first-person novel relies heavily on the epistolary tradition as well as Oulipean conventions of form and structure. Tennis serves as a unifying force amongst the four main characters, and the 2010 U.S. Census provides the vehicle through which terrorists launch their plot. The novel aims at a return toward Pittsburgh, but returning home is easier said that done. The city and its industries have been fundamentally changed. Personal secrets have been brought to light. Perla's fierce loyalty to her city makes forgiveness as tall as task as clawing her way back to Pittsburgh.