No description available.

No description available.

This thesis offers an important reconsideration of the place of the Second World War within larger narratives of religious change in the twentieth century. While many scholars have subsumed these crucial war years within accounts of inter-war change, or dismissed them as a period of mellow or austere religion, the Second World War provides a significant opportunity for an analysis of religious change that relies on a confluence of vectors. International geopolitics, political consensus, myths of national cohesion, physical constraints, technological developments and currents in ecclesiastical thought each played a role in shaping the religious culture of wartime, one that the author describes as a “spiritual consensus” that prized unity and commonality over difference. This thesis also opens up an important new front for the history of modern Christianity in Britain. The relationship between mass media, religion and national culture has been under-examined by scholars, as has the particular ways that media shapes mental environments. The relationship between the Churches and the Ministry of Information seems to have sat in a penumbra between disciplines, leaving the rich trove of documents at the National Archives about the activities of the Religions Division of the MOI relatively unexamined. This thesis discusses in detail the global and domestic role afforded to an ecumenical Christianity in MOI propaganda. It also adds to existing scholarship that has emphasised the significant place afforded to Christianity in identity construction during the war, and its importance in the articulation of the narratives through which the urgency and necessity of the conflict was understood. / This is a study of the British Broadcasting Corporation’s religious broadcasting practices during the Second World War and its aftermath. Using documentary sources from the BBC Written Archives Centre and the National Archives, this thesis argues that the wartime context allowed the articulation and development of a particular kind of “BBC Religion,” one that celebrated commonality over difference, emphasized the importance of accessibility, and focused on individual rather than communal worship. BBC Religion was an important site of national propaganda and national identity construction, and was central to the celebration of key civil religious festivals, including the National Days of Prayer. BBC Religion provided listeners with daily prayers, devotionals, talks and entertainments to offer psychological and spiritual support during a time of crisis. Religion can be an effective tool of persuasion, particularly when propaganda builds on pre-­existing beliefs and loyalties. The Ministry of Information and BBC used a generic, practical Christianity as an “ecumenical weapon” to foster unity in Britain and between Allies. This thesis argues that the medium of radio and the technological and physical constraints of war shaped the particular articulation of BBC Religion. While the BBC helped foster a “spiritual consensus” during the war, this consensus quickly degraded in the in the aftermath of the conflict. Instead, the BBC articulated principles of tolerance and liberty in a more straightforward way, celebrating the return of regional and religious diversity in radio programming. In 1948, the BBC broke with its former “ban on controversy” to allow Bertrand Russell to openly question the existence of God on the air for the first time. This study offers a revision to “caesura” and “gradual-­declinist” narratives of religious change by suggesting that religious change in the mid-­twentieth century may be more episodic in nature, and that current historiography would benefit from an approach that considers the formation, development and adaptation of multiple discursive Christianities. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This is a study of the place of religion in British public life during the Second World War. The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was tasked with creating popular, upbeat entertainment that could boost the morale of the nation while reminding listeners of the reasons to stay committed to the fight. They created a “BBC Religion” during the war, one that emphasised unity by stressing commonalities between all kinds of Christians, and offered psychological and spiritual comfort to listeners in a time of crisis. The Religious Broadcasting Department created engaging content that prized accessibility and simplicity above all, commissioning beloved programmes, including C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Dorothy L. Sayers’ The Man Born to be King, and Lift Up Your Hearts, a precursor to Radio 4’s Thought for the Day. When the urgency of the conflict passed and victory became assured, this BBC Religion ceased to serve a propagandistic function. Instead, the post-­war BBC celebrated diversity and respected differences in religious belief and interpretation instead of forcing conformity.

During the American Civil War, an approximate 200,000 Irish-born soldiers, and an even greater number of subsequent generation descended soldiers, fought for the Union and Confederate causes. Their experience, opinions, military actions and attitudes of their families were the subject of American Civil War songs, with songwriters penning numerous ballads about them. The conflict witnessed the mass production of wartime ballad culture, with over 11,000 pieces written and composed between 1861 and 1865 alone. An estimated 150 were by and about the Irish American wartime experience specifically. This thesis focuses on these Irish American Civil War songs and analyses the sentiments they expressed. Overall, the main topic written onto songsheet pages and in songbooks was the battlefield actions of Irish-born and descended soldiers. This study explores how military history was reported through song, following traditional oral practice patterns of using balladry to sing war reports. In particular, attention will be drawn to the proliferation of lyrical dedication and focus on specific Irish-dominated units such as the Union Army's Irish Brigade and 69th New York State Militia, and how their actions, along with other Irish soldiering units, came to dominate Irish American Civil War articulations and history. Within this lyrical attention the figures of Irish-born commanding officers, namely Generals Michael Corcoran and Thomas Francis Meagher, come to the fore. This study also analyses how their own wartime experiences and articulations corresponded with song lyrics. Beyond the battlefield focus, this thesis explores the way in which song lyrics sang about Irish loyalty and devotion to the American Union - and in a few examples Confederate nation - and particularly adopted symbols of the American nation, such as the Star Spangled Banner, as embodiments of the causes and ideals fought for by soldiers. Alongside this were lyrics that referred to symbols of Irish cultural heritage, language and a history of foreign military service. Irish identity can be seen on the surface of some songs, including references to Irish nationalism and the desire to gain Irish independence one day. Yet, as this thesis will argue, Irish American Civil War song lyrics reveal complicated support and sympathy for the Irish nationalist cause in the United States during the 1860s. Running through the songs of this study is a pervading sense and sentiment of American identity - that the Irish fighting and living through the war were stressing to society through song that they were committed to the United States as Americans first and foremost. In addition to assessing wartime views of Civil War politics and military actions, this thesis will also explore the way Irish song played a critical part in the formation of American musical culture, with traditional Irish music forming the foundation for American tunes, and blending Irish culture into the American wartime zeitgeist. This thesis will demonstrate the way in which Irish songs were written, published and disseminated through American society and crucially circulated beyond the confines of the Irish diaspora. Traditional and wartime Irish songs became a fundamental part of American culture because they were American cultural outputs. Thus this thesis will demonstrate the important evidential role Irish American Civil War songs play in singing an unexplored areas of mid-nineteenth century Irish American transnational history.

No description available.

Targeted sanctions have become increasingly utilized as conflict management tool to safeguard global peace and security. In recent years, there have been a global push to utilize this tool to specifically address conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Yet, there is a dearth in research on how the imposition of targeted sanctions effect the prevalence of CRSV. This thesis aims to contribute to this alarmingly understudied relationship between targeted sanctions and CRSV by investigating the following research question: what impact do targeted sanctions have on the perpetration of CRSV by rebel groups? Thus, I employ a structured, focused comparison of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda to test a theoretical theory which argues that targeted sanctions may increase the prevalence of CRSV perpetrated by the targeted rebel group. The empirical findings give partial support to both the proposed hypothesis and the theorized ‘selective incentive’ casual mechanism. However, the findings also suggest less effective sanctions may result in the hypothesized increase in wartime sexual violence perpetrated by the targeted actor, while more effective, debilitating sanctions may a decrease alongside other interventions.

No description available.

[pt] A presente dissertação tem como objetivo discutir a relação entre infância, estupro e representação das crianças nascidas de estupro em contextos de guerra no cenário internacional. Mais especificamente, o objetivo central é entender as razões pelas quais saímos da invisibilização da existência de crianças nascidas de estupro na política internacional para a sua construção discursiva como um problema de segurança que merece atenção internacional. Por meio da análise de documentos das organizações que compõem o Sistema ONU, demonstramos que o reconhecimento dessas crianças como vítimas que necessitam da atenção internacional é derivado da evolução do debate do estupro como arma de guerra na política internacional, sobretudo com os genocídios de Bósnia (1992-1995) e Ruanda (1994). Desse modo, como o próprio acrônimo sugere, esse grupo tem seu reconhecimento vinculado ao estupro, e não pelas marginalizações que sofrem enquanto indivíduos vitimados por um conflito. Além disso, o fato do termo crianças nascidas de estupro se aplicar a pessoas em qualquer idade faz com que esses indivíduos tenham sua agência limitada, uma vez que as construções sociais acerca da infância colocam a criança como vulnerável, dependente e com capacidade reduzida de exprimir suas demandas. O arcabouço teórico pós-estruturalista adotado nessa pesquisa nos permite examinar como as representações sociais e culturais desse grupo excluem uma série de outros indivíduos nascidos de estupro fora de contextos de conflito. / [en] The dissertation discusses the relationship between childhood, rape and representation of children born of rape in wartime rape in the international scenario. The main purpose is to understand the reasons why we left the invisibility of the existence of children born of wartime rape in International Politics to its discursive construction as a security problem that deserves international attention. Through the analysis of documents from the organizations that make up the UN System, we demonstrate that the recognition of these children as victims who need international attention is derived from the evolution of the debate on rape as a weapon of war in International Politics, especially with Bosnian (1992-1995) and Rwandan (1994) genocides. In this way, as the acronym itself suggests, this group s recognition is linked to rape, and not to the marginalization they suffer as individuals victimized by a conflict. In addition, the fact that the term children born of wartime rape applies to people of any age means that these individuals have limited agency, since social constructions about childhood place the child as vulnerable, dependent and with a reduced ability to express themselves their demands. The poststructuralist theoretical framework adopted in this research allows us to examine how the social and cultural representations of this group exclude a series of other individuals born of rape outside conflict contexts.

No description available.

No description available.