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Semester:
Summer 2026
Description

This summer I sought to explore the way Western society portrays foreign cultures in works of popular media, specifically through Star Wars and its cunning, brilliant villain of Grand Admiral Thrawn. Grand Admiral Thrawn is the only non-human to ever achieve the rank of Grand Admiral in the Galactic Empire, and his origins with his alien culture in addition to his experiences within the Imperial Navy are rich with moments ripe for a close reading using liberal, multiculturalist principles as a guiding theory. Alongside my reading and viewing of Star Wars projects containing or about Thrawn, I engaged with many postcolonial sources including works by Edward Said, Franz Fanon, and more as I learned the rhetoric of "othering" and how oppression of the sort has manifested within our own world. Ultimately, my research culminated in a research paper in which I demonstrate how the evolution of Thrawn's portrayal from his introduction in Star Wars in 1991 to current projects containing the character is indicative of and parallel to a larger movement within Western media that looks to be politically correct in its representations of other cultures. Beyond that, this is a movement that actively celebrates the value of foreign culture, which Thrawn's origins and story certainly achieves. 

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