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Rebellion Under The Palm Trees: Memory, Agrarian Reform And Labor In The Aguán, Honduras, Andres Leon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On December 9, 2009, the Unified Peasant Movement of the Aguán (Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguán; MUCA) occupied over 20,000 hectares of oil palm covered lands in the Aguán region in the Honduran northern coast. This was the latest, and probably most dramatic, chapter in the region's tumultuous recent history. This dissertation explores this history and the process of creation of the Aguán region from the perspective of a set of impoverished peasant families that migrated from different parts of Honduras towards the Aguán from the 1970s onwards, in search of a better present and future.

It asks about the …

Privilege In Haiti: Travails In Color Of The First Bourgeois Nation-State In The Americas, Philippe-Richard Marius

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Who are the elites in the poorest country of the Western Hemisphere? Do Haiti's elites constitute themselves in a Blackness vs. Whiteness/Mulattoness opposition? Through the investigation of these questions, the central thesis of this ethnography emerges as the material unity in privilege of Haiti's colorist fragments. Noirisme, a fundamentalist strain of Haitian black nationalism that reached hegemony in the dictatorship of François Duvalier in the 1960s, is in marked retreat in contemporary Haiti. Its lingering influence nonetheless continues to foster a black qua black sociality among privileged black nationalists. Mulatto nationalism as political project and public discourse lapsed into …

Super Fun Superfund: Polluted Protection Along The Gowanus Canal, Jessica Ty Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This research reflects on the patterns of uneven development occurring in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, social and physical changes taking place there, and how these elements of the canal relate to the changing purpose of urban waterways. Gowanus has mimicked the development of New York City since the 1600's through several phases: city settlement and development, abandonment, and redevelopment. The redevelopment phase in Gowanus couples environmental clean up with gentrification and displacement. Using an urban political ecology framework, this research attempts to answer the following questions: Why, after many years of pollution, is the area being cleaned up? Will …

Civil War Incentives, Identities, And Group Allegiances In Syria's Contested Provinces: A Case Study On Civil War, Hilary Weitze

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project seeks to answer the following questions: Why did the 2011 Syrian Revolution transition into a civil war? What contributed to the popularity of rebel efforts in the countryside? This case study on the Syrian Civil War begins by characterizing key events in the current civil war setting in order to characterize the nature of participation on the insurgent side of the conflict. Further, this project sets out to identify key events and actors in their respective geographic and demographic frameworks in order to identify the nature of participants and their respective characteristics. I will ultimately draw a connecting …

Phylogeography Of Southeast Asian Flying Foxes (Chiroptera: Pteropodidae: Pteropus), Susan Man Shu Tsang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Flying foxes (Pteropus) are a genus of Old World fruit bats that are important seed dispersers and pollinators for plants native to the 200,000+ islands in Southeast Asia, yet they are some of the most poorly known bats in the world. They comprise some of the largest known bat species, and are morphologically relatively conserved on the genus level. Pteropus is the most species-rich genus within Pteropodidae, though the origin for this diversity remains incompletely understood. In Chapter 1, I discuss the importance of Pteropus to the ecosystem and as reservoir hosts. In Chapter 2, a molecular phylogeny is presented …

Bad Apple: Complexities Of New York City Food Aid Programs, Rose Meagan Jimenez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The only universal thing about food is that everyone needs to eat. In the United States, there are more instances of food insecurity than impoverishment. Governmental and local food aid programs are complex but are essentially motivated by socioeconomic issues. Food aid programs, from community gardening to Food Stamps, initially stem from a depression-era need to stimulate the economy. However, as socioeconomic issues change, food aid programs also evolve to meet those needs. By excavating different pieces of literature that discuss issues in food aid, the forms of structural violence that cause hunger come to life. This piece discusses community …

La Souffrance Animale À Distance: Des Vétérinaires Dans L’Action Humanitaire, Frédéric Keck, Miriam Ticktin

Publications and Research

Résumé

Cet article étudie le rôle des vétérinaires dans l’humanitaire à partir de deux types de pratique : la défense des animaux contre la cruauté et la surveillance des animaux touchés par les épidémies. En suivant l’extension de l’action humanitaire aux animaux comme nouvelles figures de victimes innocentes, nous cherchons à dépasser l’approche compassionnelle de l’humanitaire pour étudier les nouvelles formes scientifiques impliquant des non-humains, comme la médecine vétérinaire légale, les neurosciences et l’immunologie. Nous soutenons finalement que ces sciences produisent de nouveaux collectifs d’humains et de non-humains.

Abstract

This article traces the role of veterinarians in humanitarian action, focusing …

Estimating Stormwater Runoff For Community Gardens In New York City, Mara Gittleman

Theses and Dissertations

While much of the literature cites community gardens as providing urban ecosystem services, there is very little research quantifying these benefits. This thesis compares the stormwater runoff rates of urban vacant lots, community gardens, and residential developments in New York City and evaluates community gardens as green infrastructure.

The Embodied Crises Of Neoliberal Globalization: The Lives And Narratives Of Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers, Wen Liu

Graduate Student Publications and Research

This paper theorizes the lives and working conditions of Filipina migrant domestic workers in Taiwan. To do so, I focus on the life stories of two migrant women—their struggles with exploitation and care, and their contradictory relationships with home and nation in transnational labor migration. These narratives detail crises of bodily sickness, racialized surveillance, and gendered violence across individual, social, and transnational scales, demonstrating the architecture of neoliberal globalization as a whole. These “embodied crises”—at once personal troubles and structural disasters—show how an overburdened care enforced through the labor of women of color violently affects their very own bodies, with …

Adolescent Girls, Human Rights And The Expanding Climate Emergency, Holly G. Atkinson, Judith Bruce

Publications and Research

Many adolescent girls—the poorest girls in the poorest communities—already live in an “emergency.” Humanitarian crises only amplify the call on their coping and caring capacities, while exacerbating their vulnerabilities. The frequency and intensity of emergencies, including natural disasters, conflicts, and infectious disease outbreaks such as Ebola, appear to be growing.¹ These emergencies threaten entire communities and whole countries, often with global implications. Many become virtually permanent. The authors urge key actors responding to both the threats and opportunities that climate change poses to understand adolescent girls as exceptionally at risk on the one hand, and as exceptionally resilient and …

Resistance, Acquiescence Or Incorporation? An Introduction To Land Grabbing And Political Reactions ‘From Below’, Marc Edelman, Ruth Hall, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Ian Scoones, Ben White, Wendy Wolford

Publications and Research

Political reactions ‘from below’ to global land grabbing have been vastly more varied and complex than is usually assumed. This essay introduces a collection of ground- breaking studies that discuss responses that range from various types of organized and everyday resistance to demands for incorporation or for better terms of incorporation into land deals. Initiatives ‘from below’ in response to land deals have involved local and transnational alliances and the use of legal and extra-legal methods, and have brought victories and defeats. The relevance of political reactions to land grabbing is discussed in light of theories of social movements and …

Utilizing Remote Sensing Imagery To Monitor Vegetation Change Within World Heritage Sites, Mimi Eve Hatzis

Theses and Dissertations

ABSTRACT

World Heritage sites provide a glimpse into the stories and civilizations of the past. There are currently 1007 unique World Heritage properties with 779 being classified as cultural sites, 197 as natural sites, and 31 falling into the categories of both cultural and natural sites (UNESCO & World Heritage Centre, 1992-2015). However, of these 1007 World Heritage sites, at least 46 are categorized as in danger and this number continues to grow. These unique and irreplaceable sites are exceptional because of their universality. Consequently, since World Heritage sites belong to all the people of the world and provide inspiration …

College Senate Minutes April 23, 2015, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on April 23, 2015.

Precarity And Gentrification: A Feedback Loop, Samuel Stein

Graduate Student Publications and Research

How do rent hikes and labor precarity conspire to reinforce each other against tenants and workers? Samuel Stein explains the mechanisms that link these two trends affecting citizens and calls for a tightening of rent-control laws to stop the spiraling descent of American residents into poverty.

Parity Of Indigenous And Non-Indigenous Women In Brazil: Does The Reported Number Of Children Born Depend Upon Who Answers National Census Questions?, Ricardo Ventura Santos, João Luiz Bastos, Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz, Luciene Aparecida Ferreira De Barros Longo, Nancy May Flowers, Nilza De Oliveira Martins Pereira

Publications and Research

Taking parity as the main analytic variable, the objective of this study is to investigate whether the patterns of response to national census questions in Brazil differ when Indigenous and non-Indigenous women are compared, taking into consideration whether the information was provided by the women directly or by a proxy respondent (another household member or a non-resident). We use data on children ever born to Indigenous and non-Indigenous women from two Brazilian regions, the Northeast and the North. Data on the number of household members, total household rooms, interviewee’s color/race, educational attainment, age, parity, and type of respondent were obtained …

Collaborative Power: Graduate Students Creating And Implementing Faculty Development Workshops On Multilingual Writing, Brooke R. Schreiber, Dorothy Worden, Eunjeong Lee

Publications and Research

A description of how a group of graduate students was able to coordinate institutional resources and connections to put on faculty development sessions for working with multilingual writers (often called ESL students) across the curriculum.

Advocate, Spring 2015, Vol. 26, No. 3, Advocate

The Advocate

TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the Editor’s Desk: More Propaganda, Less Liberalism: Our Ongoing Struggle (p. 3)

Letters to the Editor (p. 5)

CUNY News in Brief:

- One Step Forward, Two Steps Back (p. 6)

- Unions to Mobilize on May Day Against Racist Police Killings. CUNY Internationalist Clubs (p. 7)

Graduate Student Life:

- Digital Humanities Resources: A Personal Journey. Jennifer Tang (p. 9)

- The CUNY Experience Beyond Advocacy: Creating a CUNY-Wide Student Union. Amanda Ocasio (p. 11)

In Conversation:

- Prisoners for Profit: CUNY Prison Divest and the Carceral State. Christina Nadler, Melissa Marturano, and Sean M. …

At Home In The Bronx: Children At The New York Catholic Protectory 1865-1938, Janet Butler Munch

Publications and Research

The N.Y.C.-based New York Catholic Protectory was established in 1865 as the home of destitute or truant children. This article deals with such topics as the protectory's establishment, operation and management, education and industrial training, as well as societal factors leading to its changing mission and closing in the Bronx in 1938-- after serving the needs of over 140,000 boys and girls.

Wsq: Child Editor's Note, Cynthia Chris, Matt Brim

Publications and Research

This Editor's Note introduces the WSQ issue "Child," co-edited by Sarah Chinn and Anna Mae Duane, which takes a kaleidoscopically interdisciplinary approach to childhood studies, focusing on the legibility and autonomy of children.

Effect Of Massachusetts Healthcare Reform On Racial And Ethnic Disparities In Admissions To Hospital For Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions: Retrospective Analysis Of Hospital Episode Statistics, Danny Mccormick, Amresh D. Hanchate, Karen E. Lasser, Meredith G. Manze, Mengyun Lin, Chieh Chu, Nancy R. Kressin

Publications and Research

Objectives To examine the impact of Massachusetts healthcare reform on changes in rates of admission to hospital for ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSCs), which are potentially preventable with good access to outpatient medical care, and racial and ethnic disparities in such rates, using complete inpatient discharge data (hospital episode statistics) from Massachusetts and three control states.

Design Difference in differences analysis to identify the change, overall and according to race/ethnicity, adjusted for secular changes unrelated to reform.

Setting Hospitals in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, United States.

Participants Adults aged 18-64 (those most likely to have been affected …

Interference Archive: A Free Space For Social Movement Culture, Alycia Sellie, Jesse Goldstein, Molly Fair, Jennifer Hoyer

Publications and Research

This paper discusses activist archives within the context of community archives and the practices of archiving activism. Interference Archive (IA), a volunteer-run independent archive in Brooklyn, New York, is presented as one example of an activist archive. We explain the manner in which IA functions as a transmovement and prefigurative “free space” under Francis Poletta’s typology of movement spaces. Through this explanation, we illustrate how the structures of free spaces can help us understand the way activist archives forge connections between communities and the ways that they create new networks of solidarity through the archival process.

“My Brain Database Doesn’T See Skin Color” Color-Blind Racism In The Technology Industry And In Theorizing The Web, Jessie Daniels

Publications and Research

In this article, I examine three interconnected notions about color-blind racism and the Internet. The first is the fantasy that the Internet as a technology is color-blind with regard to race; the second is the reality that color-blind racism operates in the tech industry. The third notion is the way color-blind racism shapes Internet studies of race and racism, in which race is contained as a “variable” or as an “identity” that inhere exclusively in people of color, but that leaves the way race is embedded in structures, industry, and the very idea of the Internet unexamined. To explore these …

College Senate Minutes March 26, 2015, Bronx Community College Senate

BCC Governance Archives

Minutes for the meeting of the College Senate on March 26, 2015.

First We Take Manhattan... Global Cities And Diasporic Networks In The Aftermath Of Syriza's Victory, Despina Lalaki

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

From The Field To The Lab: Best Practices For Field Preservation Of Bat Specimens For Molecular Analyses, Angelique Corthals, Alynn Martin, Omar M. Warsi, Megan Woller-Skar, Winston Lancaster, Amy Russell, Liliana M. Dávalos

Publications and Research

Studies in molecular ecology depend on field-collected samples for genetic information, and the tissue sampled and preservation conditions strongly affect the quality of the DNA obtained. DNA yields from different tissue types have seldom been compared, and the relative performance of storage media has never been directly tested, even though these media may influence DNA degradation under field conditions. We analyzed DNA yield from buccal swabs and wing punches harvested from live bats using nucleic acid quantification as well as quantitative PCR for a single-copy nuclear locus. We also compared DNA yields from wing tissue preserved in three media: ethanol, …

Now You See It, Now You Don’T: Flushing Hosts Prior To Experimentation Can Predict Their Responses To Brood Parasitism, Daniel Hanley, Peter Samas, Josef Heryán, Mark E. Hauber, Tomáš Grim

Publications and Research

Brood parasitic birds lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, leaving hosts to raise their offspring. To understand parasite-host coevolutionary arms races, many studies have examined host responses to experimentally introduced eggs. However, attending parents often need to be flushed from their nests to add experimental eggs. If these birds witness parasitism events, they may recognize and reject foreign eggs more readily than parents who did not. We found that, after being flushed, female blackbirds, Turdus merula, remained close to their nests. Flushed females were more likely to eject foreign eggs and did so more quickly than females that …

Identifying Individual Risk Factors And Documenting The Pattern Of Heat-Related Illness Through Analyses Of Hospitalization And Patterns Of Household Cooling, Michael T. Schmeltz, Grace Sembajwe, Peter J. Marcotullio, Jean A. Grassman, David U. Himmelstein, Stephanie Woolhandler

Publications and Research

Background
As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of extreme heat events researchers and public health officials must work towards understanding the causes and outcomes of heat-related morbidity and mortality. While there have been many studies on both heatrelated illness (HRI), there are fewer on heat-related morbidity than on heatrelated mortality.

Objective
To identify individual and environmental risk factors for hospitalizations and document patterns of household cooling.

Methods
We performed a pooled cross-sectional analysis of secondary U.S. data, the Nationwide Inpatient Sample. Risk ratios were calculated from multivariable models to identify risk factors for hospitalizations. Hierarchical modeling was also …

The Incidence Of Upper And Lower Extremity Surgery For Rheumatoid Arthritis Among Medicare Beneficiaries, Jeniffer Waljee, Lin Zhong, Onur Baser, Huseyin Yuce, David A. Fox, Kevin C. Chung

Publications and Research

Background: For elderly patients with rheumatoid arthritis, aggressive immunosuppression can be difficult to tolerate, and surgery remains an important treatment option for joint pain and deformity. We sought to examine the epidemiology of surgical reconstruction for rheumatoid arthritis among older individuals who were newly diagnosed with the disorder.

Methods: We identified a 5% random sample of Medicare beneficiaries (sixty-six years of age and older) newly diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis from 2000 to 2005, and followed these patients longitudinally for a mean of 4.6 years. We used univariate analysis to compare the time from the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis to the …

The Ticker, March 2, 2015

The Ticker

The Ticker is the student newspaper of Baruch College. It has been published continuously since 1932, when the Baruch College campus was the School of Business and Civic Administration of the City College of New York.

Visions Of Public Space: Reproducing And Resisting Social Hierarchies In A Community Garden, Sofya Aptekar

Publications and Research

Urban public spaces are sites of struggles over gentrification. In increasingly diverse cities, these public spaces also host interactions among people of different class, race, ethnicity, and immigration status. How do people share public spaces in contexts of diversity and gentrification? I analyze the conflicting ways of imagining shared spaces by drawing on an ethnographic study of a community garden in a diverse and gentrifying neighborhood in New York City, conducted between 2011 and 2013. I examine how conflicts among gardeners about the aesthetics of the garden and norms of conduct reproduce larger gentrification struggles over culture and resources. Those …