Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Pouring The Tea At Yum Cha: Redefining Chinatown’S Boundaries During Covid-19, Lance Sum

Senior Projects Fall 2021

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

Perimeters And Pods: Crisis, Collective Action, And Small Towns, Ruth F. Kohl

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This project examines the communities of small towns and the ways that these social dynamics between friends, neighbors, and coworkers shift in times of conflict. Through the explorations of a historic labor strike in a small town quarry, a prohibitionist raid on that same town's supply of alcohol, and the social relationships between Bard students in Tivoli amidst COVID, this project investigates how these connections between people operate.

"Useful Wooden Toys": Skateboarding As A Tool For Nyc Youth Advocacy, Simon Len Nichoson

Senior Projects Fall 2021

My senior thesis explores the role of skateboarding in youth development, and its further implications within the realm of youth advocacy and activism. A large part of my project involves ethnographic fieldwork in which I participate in a skate clinic for the Harold Hunter Foundation (HHF), a non-profit organization that primarily serves at-risk youth in New York City through skateboarding-related programming. Founded in memory of professional skateboarder Harold Hunter, the foundation also seeks to provide support and advocacy for the skateboarding community. While practicing self-reflexivity, I draw from the field of halfie anthropology, given that I am an avid skateboarder …

Moving By Al-Meekrobas: Interrogating The Binary Of Informal And Formal Transport, Alejandra Eliana Guzman

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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

Entangled Roots: Knowledge Systems And Conservation In The Tongass National Forest, Lily Geneva Lustig

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Alaska’s Tongass National Forest is the world’s largest remaining temperate rainforest, sequestering up to eight percent of all the carbon stored in the lower forty-eight states’ national forests combined. Home to the Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Haida peoples for over ten-thousand years, the Tongass's protection is central for knowledge production and livelihood. Despite the Tongass's importance for local communities and for mitigating climate change, the policies that restrict extractive industries like logging in the forest are constantly contested by United States politicians, putting the forest and the people who rely on it in jeopardy. With a re-centering of Indigenous scientific knowledge …

Cock: Essays And Illustrations On Attention, Accessibility, And Deep Play, Buck Holbrook Buettner

Senior Projects Spring 2021

Clifford Geertz's theory of "deep play"--most thoroughly explored in his 1973 essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight"--states that acts of recreation and sport carry within them the greater values, traumas, and taboos of the individual cultures which practice them.

An illustrated anthology, Cock: Essays and Illustrations on Attention, Accessibility, and Deep Play elaborates upon Geertz's pre-established definition of deep play by applying its terminology to cultural practices beyond the Balinese cockfight, analyzing brief parentheticals and asides in Geertz's text, and exploring methods of making the greater anthropological field more accessible via multimodal anthropological publication. Also, it is filled …

Opening The Fridge: An Exploration Of Mutual Aid And Community Care In Queens, New York, Caitlin Hamilton

Senior Projects Spring 2021

This project embarks on an exploration of Queens Mutual Aid Network, which was started in March 2020 in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This group has provided food assistance, unemployment support, help procuring prescription medicine, and a digital space for community networking to the people of the extended Queens community. I also analyze the Corona community fridge and its implications for community care networks in the wake of overwhelming need. As part of my research, I spent time conversing with community activists about these efforts, and made food deliveries to the community fridges in my area. I then contextualize these …

Mountains To Main Streets: Negotiating Authenticity In Appalachia’S 21st Century Moonshine Distilleries, Ty Jonathan Holtzman

Senior Projects Spring 2021

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