This dissertation describes the life story of Věra Skálová Selnerová, a Czech actress who was born in 1921 in Prague. She grew up in Ústí nad Labem but in 1993, she and her family had to flee back to Prague. There she commenced her career as an actress - she worked with Andula Sedláčková and later on with Vlasta Burian. She also starred in several movies (Advokát chudých, Muži nestárnou, etc.). After the war she suspended her acting career and married General Jaroslav Selner, who fought on the Western and the Eastern Front. After February 1948, she and her husband were persecuted and together they left Prague. She worked as a clerk and a teacher. In the sixties, they returned to Prague and she began to work for Pragokoncert, but she had to leave this job in 1968 because of her political beliefs. Her husband died in 1973. After 1989, they were both rehabilitated. This thesis uses oral-history interviews, archival materials, scholarly literature and memoirs. Keywords: Věra Skálová Selnerová, theater, film, Protectorate, communism, persecution, everyday life. Abstract This dissertation describes the life story of Věra Skálová Selnerová, a Czech actress who was born in 1921 in Prague. She grew up in Ústí nad Labem but in 1993, she and her family had to flee back to Prague. There she commenced her...

In recent years, focus has been on asylum policies in the context of the growing numbers of asylum seekers arriving to Denmark but not much attention has been paid to the individual situations of women seeking asylum in Denmark. This thesis presents a case study on the Danish asylum system that has been analyzed using a comparative legal analysis, examining what international legal norms Denmark has implemented into the asylum system in practice. Using critical frame analysis, dominant frames and underlying narratives were identified in asylum practices, demonstrating the negative consequences female asylum seekers experience as a result. Although, great improvements have been made by Denmark, the analysis proved that there still exists gaps in the protection of women seeking asylum. This includes the recognition of gender-related grounds for asylum, gender-sensitive procedures in application assessment, and the gender responsive reception circumstances. Furthermore, this study concludes that Denmark still has steps to take to fully adopt gender-guidelines into practice, and that (non-) application of gender-guidelines and gender-sensitive approaches has negative consequences for women seeking asylum in Denmark.

This research attempted to gain insight into the perspectives of Orthodox, Jewish women regarding the abuse of women in heterosexual relationships, in their community. Feminist theory and social constructionism were utilised in order to facilitate in greater insight into the roles of women in Judaism and the manner in which Jewish doctrine and ideology influences women who are abused by their husbands. The research focused on specific principles that are intrinsic to Jewish faith and identity. It also explored Jewish persecution and its influence on the formation and perpetuation of many of the Jewish customs and traditions as a means of preserving or upholding Jewish faith. The sample comprised of nine women who fell within an age range of 25-35 years. Jewish women from Orthodox backgrounds were utilised. A qualitative paradigm was applied in order to gain access to information thereby ensuring that the content obtained was of a more personal nature involving the private perceptions of this study’s participants. The following themes were identified from the data and formed the basis upon which the analysis and discussion took place. The themes include: Jewish men treat women according to what men are taught, marriage precipitates acknowledgement of women and the Jewish community is not immune to social ills. The results of the research support the argument that Jewish religious and cultural values appear to influence women’s choices in abusive relationships. Furthermore, the roles that women typically assume in Jewish society seemingly perpetuate existing gender stereotypes in relation to women.

The tiger (Panthera tigris) was once abundant in many of Asia’s forests. The entire species now hovers dangerously close to extinction. Population declines within the last two centuries are blamed largely on loss of habitat, reductions in prey species, poaching, and human-tiger conflict. Modern tiger conservation efforts focus on reintroducing formerly captive tigers to designated protected wild areas. Re-wilding and reintroduction programs teach survival skills to tiger cubs raised in zoo collections. Merging in situ and ex situ research collaborations is the twenty-first century’s interdisciplinary answer to the tiger’s plight in the wild. The zoo is viewed in terms of its role as an institution that represents societal values that shift in concurrence with shifting paradigms. This thesis studies the human-tiger relationship and analyzes three defining periods that occurred between 1800 and the present. The first period occurred during the nineteenth century, the second took place from the early through the late twentieth century and the third picked up where the second left off and is the one we are presently engaged in. The tiger is investigated in two different ways throughout — for its importance in human history and culture conceptually, and in the biological sense in terms of its importance as umbrella species within its own ecosystem. / Master of Science

The government-launched anti-Catholic movements in Chosŏn Korea (1392–1910) have attracted scholarly attention and produced fruitful research. Existing scholarship unpacks the origins of the Korean anti-Catholicism by focusing on the Confucian ritual controversy, power struggle in the Chosŏn court, and Catholic teaching’s potential to destabilize the established social hierarchy. While these studies enriched our understanding of anti-Catholicism in the Korean peninsula, the hitherto academic discussions seem to provincialize this issue to a domestic, over-politicized religion-discriminated movement, with limited consideration from the aspect of legal justification. This dissertation thus aims to reinterrogate the historical significance of the suppression of Catholicism in late Chosŏn Korea through the lens of legal history and Sino-Korean relations. Specifically, it investigates the legal statutes and punishments applying to Catholics during the major government-launched persecutions. By examining the laws and penalties applying to Catholics during the major persecutions from 1791 to 1846 through close readings of various archival records, the present dissertation points out that the Chosŏn state mobilized both legal statutes from The Great Ming Code and kullyu—i.e., the Korean-developed legal practice prohibiting miscellaneous crimes, including the Sino-Korean border-crossing—to justify the execution of Catholics, distinguishing its legal choices from its Qing counterpart’s. As this dissertation further argues, this distinct and mixed legal practice became a suitable and preferred option during the persecutions as the Chosŏn state needed to address both the Chinese and European presence and their associated threats in the peninsula throughout the nineteenth century. In other words, the hybrid legal practice, from which I find Chosŏn legal pluralism, not only illustrated how the Chosŏn state legally addressed “the Catholic crisis,” but also indicated the ways in which the Chosŏn state struggled to deal with the reconfiguration of nineteenth-century East Asian world order, including the maneuvering of Ming-Qing China’s authority. By highlighting and exemplifying Chosŏn legal pluralism in the anti-Catholic campaigns in late Chosŏn Korea, my dissertation articulates how contingencies and premodern inter-states relations shaped Korean historical trajectory.

Why does civil conflict spread from country to country? Existing research relies primarily on explanations of rebel mobilization tied to geographic proximity to explain this phenomenon. However, this approach is unable to explain why civil conflict appears to spread across great geographic distances, and also neglects the government’s role in conflict. To explain this phenomenon, this dissertation formulates an informational theory in which individuals contemplating rebellion against their government, or “proto-rebels,” observe the success and failure of rebels throughout the international system. In doing so, proto-rebels and governments learn whether rebellion will be fruitful, which is then manifested in the timing of rebellion and repression. The core of the dissertation is composed of three essays. The first exhorts scholars of the international spread of civil violence to directly measure proto-rebel mobilization. I show that such mobilization is associated with conflicts across the entire international system, while the escalation to actual armed conflict is associated with regional conflicts. The second chapter theorizes that proto-rebels learn from successful rebellions across the international system. This relationship applies globally, although it is attenuated by cultural and regime-type similarity. Finally, the third chapter theorizes that governments are aware of this process and engage in repression in order to thwart it. I further argue that this repression is, in part, a function of the threat posed by those regimes founded by rebels.