The acknowledgement of climate change as a contemporary existential threat to humankind has been prompting scholarly debate on how it might influence the future of nation-states, nationalism, and...Show moreThe acknowledgement of climate change as a contemporary existential threat to humankind has been prompting scholarly debate on how it might influence the future of nation-states, nationalism, and their makings. This theoretical discussion has notably included the question of whether appealing to the emotions of nationalism could make national communities willing to make the effort and sacrifice needed to tackle climate change. It remains to be questioned, however, what are the implications of resorting to the affective blueprint provided by nationalism in the era of climate change in both scholarship and policymaking. By performing Qualitative Content Analysis and Emotional Discourse Analysis, this work aims to address this question by empirically mapping the narratives and emotions of the nationalist environmental rhetoric of President Jair Bolsonaro’s administration in Brazil, one that portrays climate change as a threat to the nation-state’s identity and sovereignty and yet explicitly advances climate denialism. The empirical results indicate three core problems with the emotions of nationalism in the era of climate change as they entail five distinct types of exclusions. It is hoped that this research can provide evidence of what the implications of resorting to nationalism may be as far-right nativist populism makes its way into global politics. Importantly, it also seeks to dialogue with attempts at creating typologies of national discourses engaging with climate change and with methodological efforts to systematically incorporate emotions as a promising level of analysis in International Relations research.Show less
Mass Media and Public Opinion constitute crucial fields in most democratic societies. Yet, their relationship remains uncertain in terms of causality. Some researchers argue that mass media have a...Show moreMass Media and Public Opinion constitute crucial fields in most democratic societies. Yet, their relationship remains uncertain in terms of causality. Some researchers argue that mass media have a significant influence on public opinion, while others contend that public opinion is shaped primarily by real-world events and in turn influences their media coverage. The case study of this paper is the American media coverage of the Israeli settlements. The stimulus for this study was the change in American public opinion; in particular, a 2021 survey revealed a slight rise in the support for the Palestinian side and a gradual decrease in the support for the Israeli one, which is a rare phenomenon, given that the American public opinion has remained stable and pro-Israeli for a long time. Therefore, the question that has been generated based on the change in the American polls is whether this decrease in the support of the Israelis is aligning with the framing being used by the media and specifically with the coverage of the Israeli settlements.Show less
This thesis explores the tension between norms and state-interests in EU foreign policy. It focuses on the energy sanctions against Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine and argues that it is...Show moreThis thesis explores the tension between norms and state-interests in EU foreign policy. It focuses on the energy sanctions against Russia in the context of the war in Ukraine and argues that it is a case in which norms prevail over state-interests. It uncovers the different steps from the beginning of the war on the 24th of February 2022 to the adoption of an oil embargo on the 3rd of June by the council. It analyses how despite diverging interests among the member states, a consensus was reached in the European council.Show less
A socio-historical, comparative curriculum study in both time (1945-2010s) and space (France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) concerning the representation of European identity in two types...Show moreA socio-historical, comparative curriculum study in both time (1945-2010s) and space (France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) concerning the representation of European identity in two types of secondary school curricula: the formal curricula of these four Western European countries and the so-called 'ideological curricula' consisting out of international recommendations from the Council of Europe and UNESCO. The starting point of the research is that a majority of citizens in the European Union consider themselves to feel 'European' in one way or another according to Eurobarometer surveys. The thesis further explores the relationship with curriculum reforms and international educational organisations since 1945. The idea of having complementary, international forms of identity and citizenship requires the increase of international understanding among citizens over time. Meanwhile, fostering international understanding has generally been the main purpose of UNESCO. Curriculum construction is a comprehensive, unfathomable process, but the four cases of formal curricula demonstrate the rise of a global scope in history education throughout the decades. The thesis suggests that education can be understood as a gearwheel accelerating the processes of European integration that were already in place.Show less
Anorexia Nervosa is a debilitating illness characterized by the limitation of food intake and a fear of weight gain. While we might at face value take the illness to be irrational, within this...Show moreAnorexia Nervosa is a debilitating illness characterized by the limitation of food intake and a fear of weight gain. While we might at face value take the illness to be irrational, within this project we find that the dangerous condition is fueled by a foundation of justifications based on shared cultural ideas and the values derived from them. I will argue that anorexia occurs when an individual manages to embody attitudes of mind, body, and desire found in the Western philosophical tradition. For the anorexic, rather than being a project of vanity, losing weight can be understood as a spiritual project of transcending the human body and dissolving craving, thus, a quest for liberation. The illness functions in a way in which the anorexic individual sees the world through a filter that seeks out motivation to continue starving, as the self-denial is so extreme that it goes against the individual’s basic human instinct of survival and thus requires constant fuel to persist. What I call the anorexic worldview is a system of values and beliefs that promises the individual who adopts it liberation through transcending one’s ordinary humanity and becoming invulnerable, but at the end of the day, this worldview serves merely the contrary purpose of powering the mental and physical deterioration of the individual. Interestingly, themes inherent to anorexia such as a negative view of the body and the strict denial of craving are also prevalent in early Buddhist philosophy.Show less
Aan de hand van de vroegste leenregisters uit de KB: Nationale Bibliotheek is onderzocht wie er in de vormende jaren van dit instituut (1798-1801) gebruik hebben gemaakt van de collectie. Er is...Show moreAan de hand van de vroegste leenregisters uit de KB: Nationale Bibliotheek is onderzocht wie er in de vormende jaren van dit instituut (1798-1801) gebruik hebben gemaakt van de collectie. Er is kwalitatief en kwantitatief uiteengezet wie de grootste gebruikers waren van de bibliotheek en welke werken er het meest gelezen werden. Aan de hand van deze bevinden is een relatie aangetoond tussen de leescultuur van deze gebruikers en de verlichtingsidealen uit de late achttiende- en vroege negentiende eeuw.Show less
The Korean peninsula knows a long history of book culture, and attention to it has ranged from the earliest known texts to the recently growing interest in modern Korean literature that came with...Show moreThe Korean peninsula knows a long history of book culture, and attention to it has ranged from the earliest known texts to the recently growing interest in modern Korean literature that came with the ‘Korean wave’. Many of the now canonical works find their roots in the colonial era in Korea (1910-1945) and various aspects pertaining to textual production during this era have been researched by scholars. However, an often-overlooked history is that of the printers and printshops in colonial Korea who had a significant influence over book production. With this loss of primary source material directly stemming from these printshops, the only other source indicating the printer of a text is the included colophon. This colophon is often damaged or simply missing in older books, and to this date there is no efficient method to recover this lost information. Thereby preventing any sizeable quantitative study of printshops in colonial Korea. This MA Thesis will examine the possibility of using convolutional neural networks (ConvNet) to identify the printshop of a given text dating to colonial Korea in order to allow large- scale quantitative research into colonial Korean printshops, which has been impossible thus far It will do this through a case study approach that aims to successfully classify books of four colonial Korean printshops, namely, the Hansŏng Tosŏ Chusik Hoesa (漢城圖書株式會社), Taedong inswaeso (大東印刷所), Sinmungwan (新文館), and Chosŏn inswae chusik hoesa (朝鮮印刷株 式會社). The findings here can be applied to a more extensive set of printers, given enough data and time. Therefore, this research is of high importance to the field of Korean history, as it is an essential step in charting the history of colonial Korean printers. Additionally, the benefits gained from this study are also helpful in the field of digital humanities, as this study will not only focus on the production and performance of a model but also include dataset construction and model explainability. The latter is a vital part and often missing in other DH scholarly work related to ConvNets. Hence, this paper is highly relevant to Korean historical research, and its methodology can be used far beyond the context of colonial-era printshops.Show less
Jan Davidsz. De Heem, Maria van Oosterwijck, Willem van Aelst en Rachel Ruysch waren in hun tijd zeer befaamde en succesvolle schilders van bloemstillevens. Over alle vier de schilders werd er door...Show moreJan Davidsz. De Heem, Maria van Oosterwijck, Willem van Aelst en Rachel Ruysch waren in hun tijd zeer befaamde en succesvolle schilders van bloemstillevens. Over alle vier de schilders werd er door de eeuwen heen veelvuldig geschreven. In deze scriptie worden de recepties van deze vier schilders met elkaar vergeleken en bestudeerd met de nadruk op de sekse.Show less
I provide an analysis of modern freedom, introduced by de Dijn. I claim that modern freedom is a vague and ambiguous concept, influenced by many different conceptions throughout history, which all...Show moreI provide an analysis of modern freedom, introduced by de Dijn. I claim that modern freedom is a vague and ambiguous concept, influenced by many different conceptions throughout history, which all have had different ideas about freedom and the value of freedom within a political context, and that they are all still relevant to this day. To defend this claim, this thesis makes two arguments. The first is that the conceptions of freedom that form the basis of modern freedom, show many differences in their conceptions and valuations of freedom. If the conceptions on which modern freedom is based are diverse and different, it would seem that modern freedom is not a homogeneous conception, but instead an assembly of different ideas and values that can change depending on the context of the discussion in which it is named. The second argument is that there are many elements in De Dijn’s conception of modern freedom that can be traced back to her notion of democratic freedom, which would suggest that the ‘decisive breach’ that De Dijn describes is not as decisive as she claims it was. Instead, while new elements were introduced, our modern conception of freedom has been influenced by both ancient and modern ideas on freedom, leading to a broad and vague, context-dependent conception of freedom in modern times.Show less
