Elizabeth Kostina

Boston University | BU · Department of History of Art and Architecture

The Bolsheviks fundamentally misunderstood the relationship to religion in the Soviet Union. Religion was not an ‘ideology’ like communism but a way of life. The failure to understand this resulted in an ineffective campaign to ‘convert’ the population to communism from religion. Religiosity was viewed as ignorance and thus, was responded to as an...

Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy in La Grammatologie aims to decentralize power, equalize hierarchies, and reject stark binaries through deconstructing language. Similarly, Tschumi’s take on deconstructivism as an architectural philosophy is also rooted in a linguistic framework, focusing on how language rules are expressed originally by the...

Museums are rooted in colonialism. The first museums were essentially cabinets of curiosities, displays of (white) possession, conquest, and accumulation; containing decontextualized and unethically obtained objects legitimizing reductionist narrative structures. Many contemporary and local museums have been practicing anti-colonial museum display,...

On November 16, 2010, 2000 dead fetuses were found in the mortuary of Phai-ngern Chotinaram, a Buddhist temple in Bangkok, Thailand. abortion in Thailand and the desperate lengths many women would go through to access abortions. This points to an intriguing paradox: abortion is regarded as immoral by most Thais on the basis of their religious faith...

This preliminary study introduces an innovative approach to the analysis and organization of cultural heritage materials, focusing on the archive of Charles S. Peirce. Given the diverse range of artifacts, objects, and documents comprising cultural heritage, it is essential to efficiently organize and provide access to these materials for the wider...

What happens when a people decide to govern themselves? They invent their own stories. That’s the underlying theme at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History (NMAH) where ‘history’ is made tangible, comprehensible, and generational through the amalgamation of ‘everyday’ artifacts and ‘iconic’ artifacts. The goal of any national muse...

West End Library: Discretion of the (In)visible State The public library, according to Rubin Richard, has five general characteristics: they are generally supported by government funding, governed by a board, open and accessible to all, and offer resources and services that are fully voluntary to access. 1 At their most basic definition, public lib...

Architecture, Spaces, and Social Order: Applying Sociological Methods Murray Edelman writes on how public spaces create, sustain, and demystify social hierarchies of status and power. The idea that public spaces reconcile social anxieties and at once hold different meanings for different groups is an incredibly persuasive framework to use to reconc...

333 Research Paper for Phillips Exeter Academy about the Lavender Scare.