Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Ambivalence, Legality, And Social Activism: How Daca Survived Donald J. Trump, Pamela V. Jaramillo

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Pachakutik: Tracing The Development Of The Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement As A National Actor, Antonio Pallares

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This text attempts to understand the formation of the indigenous movement in Ecuador. It asks the questions; Who makes part of it? How is it expressed? Why did it become this way? The indigenous movement in Ecuador has been described by many academics as Latin America’s strongest. Although that depends on what metric one is using, the paper explores how the movement has had interactions with a wide variety of society, and what tools has come about it that the indigenous movement has used later on. The CONAIE, the unquestionably biggest organization among indigenous organizations, has overthrown several presidents and …

Plurality, Precarity, Nos/Otras: Searching For A New Guarantee Of Dignity In The Contemporary World, Antonia Salathe

Senior Projects Spring 2023

One cannot comprehend the topography of our contemporary globe without seeing the chain-link lines that fractalize sand, sea, and soil. Contemporary global politics is marked by a refugee crisis of colossal proportion. At its core, the contemporary refugee crisis is perpetuated by the fact that there is no framework to apprehend the personhood of the refugee, let alone an organized and attentive global process for directing the flow of vulnerable persons toward safety.

I argue that in order to ease the burdens placed on vulnerable people we must return to philosophy and look at the refugee crisis for what it …

On Living Fully, Or, How To Not Be Made An Object, Fiona Pearl Miller

Senior Projects Spring 2023

An analysis of autonomy in the modern era through the lens of the Transcendentalists and the Frankfurt School.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Niccolò Machiavelli: How One Florentine Man Continues To Haunt Political Theorists Beyond The Grave, Victoria Jaqueline Amezcua

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay……………………………….3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..25

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..39

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………..45

V. Bibliography………………………………….....24

Ontological Security And Environmental Hegemony In American Suburbs, Finlay Dunn Mackenzie

Senior Projects Fall 2023

This project briefly examines the history of suburbanization in the United States and proposes a theory for its durability as a form of housing its roles as an idealized source of ontological security and its nature as an expression of the hegemony of capital.

Constellations Of Capital: Applying Architecture’S Spatial Language To Global Networks Of Food, Armed Conflict, And Reverberations Of Violence, Oliver J. Mead

Senior Projects Fall 2023

Architecture, as the art and/or practice of designing and constructing buildings, offers an often overlooked array of representational devices that, as tested within this senior project, prove significant in reframing geopolitical perspectives in a manner that circumvents the limitations of metaphorization. The physical products and results of architectural design are the built objects that facilitate and coordinate socio-political spaces, yet it is the spatially descriptive process of architectural design itself in representing built relationships that can be valuable in constructing provocative and experimental investigations of present and future spatial environments.This project focuses on a tripartite of present-day global issues: food …

Hannah Arendt In Conversation With Black Lives Matter: Is Human Plurality In Critical Condition?, Cleveland Lovett

Senior Projects Spring 2022

This project argues that Black Lives Matter's use of social media for political activity challenges the definition Hannah Arendt gives for her socio-political theory on human plurality. Arendt describes human plurality as the necessary condition for the functions of speech and action in political activity. For Arendt, appearance in the physical world is an essential element for human activity to be considered valid. She characterized the modern age of technology as the rise of the social, in which she warned was a danger to political life. Her position was that nation-state power lies in the idea of the public and …

Exclusionary Spillage: A Reckoning Of Belonging And Mass Incarceration, Valentina Flores Mayen

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Spark Of Revolution: Lenin And Luxemburg On Spontaneity And The Revolution Of 1905, Maria Julia Hernandez Saez

Senior Projects Spring 2022

My project explores the debates between Lenin and Luxemburg on how to organize the working masses for revolution. I focus on the way they regard the spontaneity of the masses in this process. I analyze the ways their theory was put into practice, and proven right or wrong, in the Revolution of 1905.

Decentralized Perfectionism: A Critique Of Contractarianism And Bureaucracy Through The Inspiration Of Nietzsche, Felix George Newton Johnson

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The goal of this project is to articulate a critique of contractarianism and it links to the modern system of bureaucracy through a commitment to individual valuation and pluralism. This work illustrates the core of both contractarianism and bureaucracy as security and through this identification demonstrates the inability to consider social, political, and economic alternatives. This critique is based on the contractarianism of Thomas Hobbes and John Rawls, both demonstrating the deep contractarian need for security. This is extended further into a modern critique of bureaucracy as an extension of the contractarian framework, a system dependent on limiting conceptions of …

Prefigurative Politics Of The Black Panther Party, Howard Kraskow

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Cyber-Gezi: How The 2013 Taksim Gezi Park Protests In Istanbul Subverted Historical Neoliberal Domination, Violence, And Revealed President Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan’S Repressive Cyber-Authoritarian Goals, Joseph John Nadler

Senior Projects Spring 2022

My project is organized around the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and the political, cybernetic, and cyberspatial developments that followed them. My argument is that through cybernetic, political, and legal means, President Erdogan of Turkey has failed to present alternatives to the Turkish people which would positively answer their expressed desires for change. My research method is one of comparison and analysis, as well as referring to virtual images by which I hope to provide a visual representation of models used to explain cybernetic expressions of power organization, communication, and expression. My project will hope to explain how internet users in …

Fragments Of An Anarcha-Transfeminist Sociology Of Sex Work, Veronica Andrek

Senior Projects Spring 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore ways in which feminist and sociological theory can be expanded by looking at the experiences of transgender women who are engaged in sex work specifically with an eye for transfeminist and anarchist political theory. Based on qualitative interviews with five transfeminine sex workers, I found that transfeminine sex workers, while facing substantial obstacles such as criminalization, transmisogyny, and poverty, are capable of building communities and forging new meanings in their lives. Within sex work are opportunities by which to reimagine labor and its role in our lives, with the possibility of abolishing …

Comparing Political Implications Of Punitive Paradigms In Digital Surveillance And Data Driven Algorithms Between The Polities Of The United States Of America And The People's Republic Of China, Shedelande Lily Carpenter

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

What Happened To The Republican Party? The Right-Wing Media Ecosystem And The Rise Of Right-Wing Populism, Hannah Eisendrath

Senior Projects Spring 2022

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The European Revolutions Of 1848 And Their Connection To The United States, Roman Peña

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..2

II. Synthesis Essay Bibliography…………………22

III. Primary Documents and Headnotes………....23

IV. Textbook Critique……………………………....34

V. New Textbook Entry…………………………...38

An Implicit Hypothesis: Revisiting The American Tradition Of Covert Regime Change In The Context Of The Democratic Peace, Rex Edward Collins

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

From The Black Panther Party To Black Lives Matter: Lessons From The Arab Spring And The Prospects For Social And Political Change In The Post-Ideological World, Raphael Lewis

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Selfhood In The Age Of Selfies: Considering Social Media As An Extension Of The Arendtian Social, Maeve Mckaig

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Burden Of Whiteness & The Misery Of Antiracism, Or How I Learned To Care About White People, Adrian S. Costa

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Responding to the ever growing conversations surrounding racism, this essay argues for an examination of white people in the interest of further explicating the systemic hesitation surrounding the earnest confrontation of white supremacy. I do so by firstly diagnosing whiteness as an identity that is burdened by the sociopolitical responsibility of confronting the institutional legacy of white supremacy and redressing its material costs and practical harms against people of color. I continue this line of reasoning to argue that, although these infrastructural mechanisms have largely been vacated out of the legal and moral frameworks of society, that white supremacy has …

A Call For The Inclusion Of Nature In Class Struggle, Augusta Valerie Tiziana Spiro Jaeger

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project Submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

The Modern Lawgiver And The Politics Of Refounding: What Political Refoundings Reveal About The Nature Of Democracy, Anastasia Elizabeth Teller

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

I Pledge Allegiance To One Global Nation: Redefining Citizenship Through The Institutionalization Of Cosmopolitan Principles In Response To The U.S. Immigration System, Giselle Lucia Avila

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

The Origins Of Socialism In Cuba: A Question Uncontested, Liam G. Oberholzer

Senior Projects Spring 2020

This paper seeks to trace the origin of the shift towards Socialism in Cuba in 1961. It does so by providing three hypothetical answers to the question, the Cold War Answer, the Castro Answer, and Cuba's national identity as the Answer. These three narratives are put into conversation with each other, the first two ultimately holding some truth and value, but being ultimately defined as both subject to Cuba's historical national identity as the key identifying factor in the ultimate shift to Socialism in 1961.

The Origins Of Modern Anti-Semitism In France: A Study Of Jewish Experience From The Ancien Régime To The Second World War, Hadley Rose Britt

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Revolutionaries In Form: The Russian Futurist Poets In The Cultural Politics Of The Early Soviet Union, 1917-1928, Noah Wurtz

Senior Projects Fall 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College.

Sovereign Violence: Migrants, Borders, And The Brutal Logic Of Nationhood, Lily Ana Chavez

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Beyond Moral Condemnation: Confronting Ideological Populism In Democratic Politics, Maggie Holloway

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Myth Busting: Rethinking Social Contract Theory And Reorienting Sovereignty From John Locke To Georges Bataille, Mandalay Maelee Win

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.