In modern America, as well as the world, violence and extremist ideologies are taking an increasingly central role in affairs. Students are struggling to learn and lack basic analytical skills. In the age of social media, the values of examining literature, critical thinking, and contextual understanding are disappearing. Yet these skills nevertheless remain necessary for life. In taking on civic duties as adults, students must be able to understand and engage with the increasingly complex and dangerous world they live in, particularly one where the threat of terror haunts everyday life. It is thus important for young adults to be exposed to violent or otherwise disagreeable material. Extremism is a reality of today’s society, and younger generations must be prepared to process and respond to it. Critical thinking skills, which are often insufficiently developed, are crucial to this. The goals of this project are to provide a mature, appropriate, and thoughtful approach to violent or radical ideologies, allowing students to hone critical analysis skills and understand how to respond to a world where extremism is becoming increasingly prevalent. This thesis provides an introduction to the idea of terror and extremism, its history, and its impact on American culture and curriculum. This sets the stage for a discussion on critical thinking, emphasizing the importance of such a skill and how it can best be taught. In light of this, it is important for controversial or mature materials to be read in class, as they not only help students understand what goes on in the world but also provide opportunities for students to develop strong critical thinking skills in a safe and encouraging environment.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the United States Midwest stood poised to lead the nation economically, politically, and ideologically. Its literary productions of this time open upon a landscape of seemingly endless possibilities and expansive futures. My project studies the ideological constitution of these possibilities, finding that they arise from the condition of unprecedented secularity which marked early twentieth-century U.S. modernity. I employ Charles Taylor’s definition of secularization as the shift to belief as possibility rather than assumption, in which new options for belief or unbelief expand like a spiritual nova. This definition makes visible in Midwest texts the different attempts protagonists make to achieve authenticity in a secular age that offers new options for living meaningfully. Like windows onto a figurative landscape, different texts reveal unique vantages as well as startling parallels. I examine the following text grouping, which underscores the heterogeneity of the Midwest: O. E. Rolvaag’s Giants in the Earth, Oscar Micheaux’s The Homesteader, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street, and Black Elk and John Neihardt’s Black Elk Speaks. As rural texts, they collaboratively depict the rural Midwest as a region that is both heartland and subaltern, at once the center of the nation but also estranged from supposed loci of modernity. I argue that their peculiar searches for authenticity offer insight on modern selfhood in a secular age, which constitutes the meaning of the Midwest then and now.

The United States is attempting to find the most efficient ways of responding to the threat of terrorist recruitment within its borders. ISIS has effectively recruited individuals from around the world on a large scale and specifically targets citizens of Western countries with high-quality, cinematic, English-language recruitment material. In the following analysis, we propose an additional approach to understanding ISIS recruitment appeal by comparing the content of recruitment messaging from a militaristic (but value-oriented) organization that is familiar to the authors of this thesis (the United States Marine Corps) with the militaristic but value-oriented unfamiliar (ISIS). Through this analysis, we seek to understand ISIS recruitment not from a theological basis but from a communications framework: narrative analysis. We identified narratives in each organization's recruitment materials and, by comparing larger themes that appeared across materials, determined the overarching narrative arc for each organization (into which the many smaller individual narratives were tied). We found that the narratives of the organizations are similar and different in many ways, but most significantly, they articulate fundamentally different resolutions: ISIS is driving towards a defined narrative resolution (which results in the end of the modern world) while the USMC recruitment materials depict no concrete resolution, as the organizational arc is depicted as continuing throughout time. Our discussion of narrative trajectory and defined resolutions directly supports existing scholarly literature linking the need for cognitive closure with extremist views: providing certainty and assurance about the future to potential extremist recruits. As demonstrated in our analysis, the narratives produced by ISIS for the purpose of recruitment depict a definite and conclusive resolution to both individual and organizational narratives, removing ambiguity (of actions, of antagonists, and of resolutions) and the anxiety associated with chance from the lives of the potential recruits. We believe ISIS's removal of uncertainty and provided template for how individuals should conduct their lives is an important part of the appeal its recruitment material has for Western recruits. Our suggestions for real-world use of our findings apply the immediacy and defined resolution found in ISIS recruitment narratives to counter ISIS-recruitment strategies.

On September 11, 2012, terrorists attacked the American Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi, Libya. Four men died in the attack, including a U.S. ambassador, and 10 others were injured. As has become customary with terrorist attacks, there was constant coverage of the attack by newsrooms all over the world. And as terrorism has become a more prevalent occurrence, newspapers have been confronted with unique ethical issues. This study examines how four international newspapers – The New York Times in the United States, The International Herald Tribune in France, The Gulf Times in Qatar and The Guardian in Britain— responded to the attack in Benghazi and whether they violated journalism ethical codes in three specific areas. A content analysis of 140 print articles published in a little more than three weeks after the attack revealed that The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune were more likely to frame the attack around politics, whereas The Guardian and The Gulf Times focused on international ramifications of the attack. It also found that all four newspapers changed their stories on what was to blame for the attack as time went on. In this study, a total of 41 violations of ethical codes were displayed. The Guardian presented the highest number with 15. These findings suggest that the newspaper’s geographic separation from the incident and Britain’s lack of personal involvement may have influenced its coverage. Additionally, the findings revealed that journalism ethics codes need to be updated to reflect some of the moral dilemmas that are unique to terrorist attacks.

ABSTRACT

Over 700 Navy Chaplains served with Marine Corps units in Vietnam between 1962 and 1972. With an average age of 37, these chaplains were often twice the age of the young men with whom they served. More than half were veterans of World War II and/or the Korean Conflict. All were volunteers. The pathways these clergymen took to Vietnam varied dramatically not only with the Marines they served, but with one another. Once in Vietnam their experiences depended largely upon when, where, and with whom they served. When the last among them returned home in 1972 the Corps they represented and the American religious landscape of which they were a part had changed.

This study examines the experiences of Navy chaplains in three phases of the American conflict in Vietnam: the assisting and defending phase, 1962-1965; the intense combat phase, 1966-1968; and the post-Tet drawdown phase, 1969-1972. Through glimpses of the experiences of multiple chaplains and in-depth biographical sketches of six in particular the study elucidates their experiences, their understandings of chaplaincy, and the impact of their service in Vietnam on the rest of their lives.

This work argues that the motto the Chaplains School adopted in 1943, “Cooperation without Compromise,” proved relevant for clergy in a time when Protestant-Catholic-Jew were the defining categories of American religious experience. By the early 1970s, however, many Navy chaplains could no longer cooperate with one another without compromising their theological perspective. This reality reflected America’s shifting religious landscape and changes within the Chaplains Corps. Thus, many chaplains who served in Vietnam may well have viewed that time as bringing to a close a golden age of service within the Navy’s Chaplains Corps.