Boy am I glad that I have finally finished all of my assignments for this semester.  I emailed both my thesis and my final paper for African International Politics last night, so now I’m free and clear until September!

I had been really worried about the thesis for the past year, thinking that I would not be able to pull it off.  But this was an undergraduate thesis, not nearly as involved or as extensive as one for a Masters or PhD.  The two hardest parts were choosing the topic and finding time to go to libraries and search through original documents for information.

But doing the research and writing the paper itself turned out to be a pretty enjoyable experience, and I think the end result turned out pretty good.  It’s certainly not the best paper ever written, but I feel good that I have, in a very modest way, contributed to the world’s knowledge by researching and writing on a topic that had never been covered before.  So, in order to make that modest contribution, I am posting the thesis here.  Have a look.  It’s only 20 pages, and not too boring, I promise.

Post-Riot Redevelopment Efforts in the 14th Street Corridor of Washington, DC

While I’m at it, I’ll also post the two papers I wrote for the African Politics course.  One is about Nigeria’s role in West Africa after 1990, and the other is a book review of Fergal Keane’s Season of Blood: A Rwandan Journey.

Book Review – Season of Blood
Nigeria’s Role in West Africa

We had an exciting day of class a few weeks ago when Kansas Senator Sam Brownback was a surprise guest “lecturer.”  I put that in quotes because his appearance was not for us, but for the television cameras.  He was there to tell the kids watching MTV to go to Africa and become better people.  Despite the fact that I think Brownback is a far right-wing religious nut job, I give him credit for taking an active interest in Africa.  Africa is a place that most politicians, of all stripes, could care less about, unless there is oil there.  So check out mtvU for the “Stand In” show.  You may see me sitting in the front row looking totally engaged and absorbed in the lecture.  Or they may have caught me sleeping, I don’t know.  The show is supposed to be available on the mtvU web site tomorrow morning and will appear on MTV tomorrow at noon, though I don’t know which of the 9000 MTV channels it might be on.