Video Submissions
Winston Ardoin & Alexa Huether"How Does the Catholic Church Contribute to the Maintenance or Degradation of English-Spanish Bilingualism in Tucson, AZ and Washington, DC?"
According to the Census, 13.5% of U.S. residents speak Spanish at home, yet there is still evidence that Spanish proficiency levels decline with each subsequent generation of Hispanic immigrants because English remains the language associated with social and economic advancement in most of the country. In order to maintain the language and culture of Spanish speakers in the U.S., an important question emerges: how does Catholic life contribute to the maintenance or degradation of bilingualism in Tucson, AZ and Washington, DC? We hypothesized that Catholic churches and religious life can be effective ways to promote bilingualism in the U.S. with education, written language, and spoken language. This study is interesting because it looks at two places with strong Latinx communities with different histories of both the cities themselves and the country of origin of the migration there. First, we examined recent bulletins from each church to see what percentage of the document is in Spanish and what percentage is in English. The second metric we look at is the availability of Mass in Spanish and what percentage of the Masses currently offered are in Spanish. The third thing we look at is whether or not a child can attend Sunday school in Spanish. The fourth thing we look at is the percentage of priests who speak Spanish. The fifth item we looked at is the prevalence of Spanish signs and other iconography that may be important to the Spanish-speaking community. After analyzing the data, we found that Catholic churches and religious life can be effective ways to promote bilingualism (for Spanish-speakers and other languages) in the United States with education, written language, and spoken language. This is the case if the church-going community speaks Spanish (or the other minority language), not if the church is in a predominantly Hispanic area alone.
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Michael Beeli"How Can National Programs and Robust State Capacity Neutralize Infectious Health Risks? Quasi-experimental Evidence from India's National Deworming Day."
Renewed attention has been brought to the challenge of containing and treating infectious diseases. The COVID-19 pandemic in particular, has demonstrated the importance of collective action and universal programs to containing such diseases. While governments expand public health operations to contain the Novel Coronavirus, countless other highly damaging and infectious diseases continue to afflict large swathes of the global population. As many as 1.5 billion individuals globally continue to suffer from Soil-Transmitted Helminths, highly infectious and transmissible parasites that can be easily treated with a single pill. Despite the ease of treatment for STHs however, many experts argue that take-up of the treatment remains extremely low, worsened by imperfect information, collective action problems, and the lack of universal programs. I explore this argument with a quasi-experimental evaluation of the first two rounds of the largest single-day public health program in the world, India’s National Deworming day. Utilizing a difference-in-differences approach, I exploit the targeting of treatment towards public school students in the country with high levels of private school enrollment. I evaluate the differential impacts of National Deworming Day between Indian states with relatively higher levels of state capacity and public health preparedness, and comment on how these differences influenced the success of the treatment. I find that the first two rounds of National Deworming Day have a significant impact on the educational outcomes for a nationally representative sample of rural Indian children aged 11-16, and that the effects of the treatment are highly concentrated in states that the Indian government considered best prepared to administer the treatment.
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Leticia Chacón"Ramifications of la Nueva Colombia: The Limitations and Expansions on NGOs Stemming from the Peace Efforts"
Non-governmental organizations have been fixtures in society and the political sphere for centuries, and their worth and work are often overlooked. Whether they are large international NGOs or small, five-person-staff NGOs, the work of these organizations to fill the protection gaps between a state’s promises and actual practices have been crucial. In the context of the Colombian internal displacement crisis, non-governmental organizations serving internally displaced persons (IDP-serving NGOs) have been integral to the humanitarian aid and protection of IDPs throughout the armed conflict, because of a lack of the state’s capacity to protect this vulnerable population. This research project studies the limitations and expansions of the roles of these NGOs as a result of three recent and historic decisions by the Colombian state in an effort to develop a “new” Colombia: the 2016 Peace Accord, the 2016 Tax Code reform, and the regularization of Venezuelan refugees.
This project contributes to the literature and study of the role of non-governmental organizations in situations of forced displacement. By developing novel definitions for “limitation” and “expansion” in terms of the effects on the roles and operations of non-governmental organizations, this project also provides a new perspective through which to view the actions and decisions of a state. The results of this project further demonstrate that besides the passing of a state’s policies, the government’s capacity to fulfill the proposed changes affects the success of the measures’ objectives. Finally, this project provides a preview for the potential effects that the regularization of Venezuelan refugees through the new temporary protection statute may have on IDP- and refugee- serving non-governmental organizations, which will serve to demonstrate some of the cracks within the Colombian government’s institutions that continue to expand the protection gap of vulnerable populations. |
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Juliet FitzPatrickOn the social-media application, Instagram, there is a prevalent type of photo that assumes good intentions while celebrating the service of volunteer tourism. In this thesis, I will argue that volunteer tourists use Instagram as a medium of public identity formation to establish themselves as moral people with the adverse effect of transforming the people they help into props for this performance. I conducted eight semi-structured interviews and collected a sample of 101 Instagram photos of volunteer tourism. The interviews are a meta-pragmatic approach to understand what volunteers think they contributed while the screenshots reveal the prevalence of voluntourism behaviors online. I focus this study on India in order to understand how neocolonial logics can be produced by visitors that construct their own narratives of help on Instagram. The choice of mainly countries in the Global South for volunteer tourism excursions strengthens the belief that the volunteers are needed to travel internationally even when local volunteering opportunities exist everywhere. Without any context, the Instagram photos continue to reify colonial narratives of a poverty-stricken India needing the help of predominantly white volunteer tourists. The distinct, but complementary methodology approach allows us to see where there may be discrepancies with how people protect themselves from scrutiny versus what they think is important to post online.
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Ethan Goldstein"Crowding-Out in Green Energy: An IV Approach"
The world’s climate is undergoing a massive change due largely in part to human activities; chief among these activities is the production and consumption of energy. In response, policymakers have suggested increasing government investment in alternative energy sources that either are carbon-free or emit less carbon than current sources. However, if the private sector were to respond to this increased investment by decreasing their investment, the total effect could be zero (or even negative). I gathered data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration on green energy generation along with data on public investment in the green energy sector from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Energy Investments Map. Here, “generation” refers to net generation – the electricity available for everyday residential, industrial transportation, and other uses. Since some electrical power is needed to create more electricity, this electricity is excluded from my measure of “generation.” “Production” captures this electricity used in the creation of more electricity as well. My data are for all 50 states over the time period 2002-2019 for “Generation,” and from 2002-2018 for “Production.” Since there is a debate as to the “greenness” of some energy sources, like biofuels and wood power, I used two definitions of green energy. Using an instrumental variable analysis, I conclude that increased government investment in green energy leads to increased generation and production of green energy. Specifically, an increase in public investment by 1% of a state’s GDP is expected to result in an increase in electricity generation via green energy sufficient to power the average American household for around 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. The general trend holds for different definitions of “green” energy, as well as for gross and net electrical production. The results indicate that if there is crowding-out of private investment in green energy due to government investment, the crowding-out effect is less than complete and green energy electrical generation still rises with increased government investment.
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Gene Kim"The Nationalistic Nature of South Korean Opposition to the LGBT"
A closer look at South Korean opposition to the LGBT reveals that, despite manifesting in different ways, the root cause is a sense of nationalism. LGBT issues are not seen as human rights concerns but as Western imports which must be blocked in order to preserve a pure Korean identity. Korean family structure is derived from Confucianism which, due to its long presence in Korean history, is almost synonymous with Korean culture itself; to be Confucian is to be Korean. The Korean military is also a powerful gender-establishing force thanks to the mandatory conscription of all Korean males. With Korea’s 20th century history being so war-torn and tumultuous, the military wields much cultural control in the minds of the Korean people. Lastly, the Christian groups in South Korea explicitly state that the success of LGBT groups in the West (and the subsequent silencing of Christian groups) is the reason for their vigilant protests. From the Christian groups’ point of view, the LGBT is a western movement that is now making its way to Korea. In each of these three aspects, it is clear to see how opposition is arising from a place of nationalistic concern. Patriarchy, heterosexuality, and cisgenderism have become intertwined with Korean identity, making opposition to the LGBT an expression of nationalism.
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Jean-Luc SensenbrennerDisorders of Consciousness (DoC) are a group of highly complex neurological aberrations encompassing coma, vegetative state/unresponsive wakefulness syndrome, and minimally conscious state. The current state of acute and long-term clinical care of patients with DoC fails to match the complexity of the disorders, begetting undesirably high levels of misdiagnosis, poor prognostic sensitivity, and unfavorable functional outcomes. Not only does this represent a shortcoming in clinical care, but also a catastrophic failure to protect the needs and rights of this highly vulnerable patient population. Extant and emerging neurotechnologies used to assess, access, and affect the brains of individuals with DoC carry enormous potential to revolutionize clinical practices and usher in an era of innovation focused directly on improving patient outcomes. Despite fervent calls for their adoption, the promise and potential of such technologies have yet to bear their fruits in standardized clinical practice. Given that many DoC patients lack communicative ability and cannot provide informed consent, clinicians remain wary of implementing novel or otherwise ambitious treatment protocols. This paper argues for a positive reappraisal of the costs and benefits of implementing clinical neurotechnologies and proposes a roadmap for their adoption that balances the needs, obligations, and desires of relevant stakeholders and shareholders. The benefits of this implementation reach beyond the realm of clinical care: leveraging the medical impetus for exploring disorders of consciousness will inevitably advance our understanding of human consciousness more broadly, which will have ripple effects throughout society and help answer longstanding philosophical questions about the very nature of our existence.
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Anya Wahal"An Urban Spatial Observatory: Addressing Socio-Spatial Inequality in India"
Given accelerating urbanization and pronounced patterns of social exclusion, how can cities be made more inclusive and accessible in the 21st century? We address this question by examining urban spatial data produced by state agencies in Delhi, India. Delhi is an ideal context because of its unequal access to government services and patterns of spatial exclusion. In light of COVID-19, inequalities in service provision have been especially prevalent, as citizens in “unplanned” settlements are excluded from basic services and are at higher risk of contracting the disease, than those who lived in “planned” settlements. We identified and located 427 schools functioning as Hunger Relief Centers and night shelters. To produce a dynamic digital observatory of both “planned” and “unplanned” settlements, we combined four key sources of data: spatializing government data on services and land tenure, satellite imaging, fieldwork, and community participation. Ultimately, we were able to map more than 3000 out of an estimated 4500 settlements in Delhi, finding ration shops, health clinics, police stations, and more, that were otherwise unidentified. In doing so, we provide a valuable service to Indian citizens, particularly those living on city peripheries, who are already marginalized. Our maps allow government officials to see which areas lack support and help relief volunteers know where they are needed. In answer to the question of how to make cities more inclusive and accessible, we find that providing a dynamic, digital observatory can further those goals. In fact, our observatory resulted in more than 420,000 views on the Hunger Relief Centers map. The Delhi government also used our preliminary dataset to map relief efforts as a part of their COVID-19 response.
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Ania Zolyniak"Water on the Move: An Analysis of International Bulk Water Trade and Its Implications on the Treatment and Conceptualization of Water"
Mounting concerns regarding water scarcity have prompted claims likening fresh water to oil. Such comparisons, however, fail to recognize that, unlike oil-indeed, unlike nearly every other resource on Earth-potable fresh water is a non-substitutable and necessary precondition for life. Water scarcity concerns have also incited a debate regarding another conceptualization of water: water as an object of trade in the context of international bulk water trade. Such trade, which involves the transboundary obtainment and transfer of water resources that are valued and appraised in some way, has been identified as a means of sustainably balancing both intensifying water scarcity and increasing global water demand. Opponents of bulk water trade, however, argue that it threatens the preservation of water as a human right and limited unique resource. Diverging from this normative debate, this work investigates how parties to bulk water trade relations approach water as the object of such trade. It does so by compiling the first ever collection of successfully executed instances of international bulk water trade and analyzing case studies representative of varying approaches to such trade. It concludes that, although water is discernably treated as an economic good in the context of bulk water trade, this treatment is more nuanced and flexible than is suggested by bulk water trade's detractors. Additionally, this work finds that successful instances of bulk water trade offer insights that could significantly inform the development of an international framework for such trade.
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Powerpoint Submissions
Irene Chun"Ugly Before American Law & Society: The Ugly Laws, Asian Female Body, The Georgia Shootings"
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Maeve Silk"Diverse Perspectives in High School English Curriculum"
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Paper Submissions
Margaret Gleason"Dancing Madly, Madly: An Analysis on the Choreography and Narrative of 'Marian the Librarian'"
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Ania Zolyniak"Water on the Move: An Analysis of International Bulk Water Trade and Its Implications on the Treatment and Conceptualization of Water"
Mounting concerns regarding water scarcity have prompted claims likening fresh water to oil. Such comparisons, however, fail to recognize that, unlike oil-indeed, unlike nearly every other resource on Earth-potable fresh water is a non-substitutable and necessary precondition for life. Water scarcity concerns have also incited a debate regarding another conceptualization of water: water as an object of trade in the context of international bulk water trade. Such trade, which involves the transboundary obtainment and transfer of water resources that are valued and appraised in some way, has been identified as a means of sustainably balancing both intensifying water scarcity and increasing global water demand. Opponents of bulk water trade, however, argue that it threatens the preservation of water as a human right and limited unique resource. Diverging from this normative debate, this work investigates how parties to bulk water trade relations approach water as the object of such trade. It does so by compiling the first ever collection of successfully executed instances of international bulk water trade and analyzing case studies representative of varying approaches to such trade. It concludes that, although water is discernably treated as an economic good in the context of bulk water trade, this treatment is more nuanced and flexible than is suggested by bulk water trade's detractors. Additionally, this work finds that successful instances of bulk water trade offer insights that could significantly inform the development of an international framework for such trade.
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