Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Performing Femininity: Gender In Ancient Greek Myth, Katherine Anne Gabriel

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

The Transformation Of Self In Everyday Life: How Undocumented Latino Youth Perform Citizenship, Caley Emmaline Cross

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The purpose of this extended case study is to determine what institutional, social and cultural factors contribute to undocumented Latino youth identity formation. Based on one month of qualitative interviews and participant observation at Peachtree University, a modern day freedom school for undocumented youth in Georgia, I examine how undocumented Latino youth identity evolves within state and societal pressures, and the formation of a commitment to activism through these youths’ experiences. Taken as a whole, this study traces the transformation undocumented Latino youth make from a position of social and political exclusion to actively claiming rights, recognition, and inclusion in …

The Golden Pandemic, Leo Dylan Stevens-Lubin

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The work in my senior show is a representation on how I feel about conventional focusing specifically on corn. The reason that I have chosen corn is because it is one of the most detrimental crops that we are growing in the US. It is grown specifically for livestock feed and ethanol with a minimal fraction for direct human consumption. Corn itself offers minimal nutritional benefits in comparison to most other vegetable crops and the overproduction of corn crops decreases the benefits all the more.

Artwork:

• Woodblock Print Series: The extent of how much land is actually used for corn …

The Effects Of Affective Arousal On Color Perception And Memory, Nicole Elizabeth Lang

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The link between affective arousal, color perception, and color memory was explored by inducing fear, sadness, or embarrassment in 158 participants who them completed a color perception and memory task. It was predicted that participants experiencing fear or embarrassment would more often correctly identify and remember red and green than a neutral condition whereas experiencing sadness would lead to less correct identification and memory for blue and yellow than neutral. There was only a marginally significant effect of fear on color memory for red. In the low arousal condition, there was an effect of fear on color memory for green …

A Phenomenology Of Homelessness: Hannah Arendt In Conversation With The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Zelda May Seraphine Bas

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Mad Men Or Bad Men? How Gender Stereotypes, Individual Symptoms, And Participant Gender Affect Non-Expert's Evaluations Of People With Borderline Personality Disorder, Quinnehtukqut James Mclamore

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Gender-role stereotypes affect how people with mental disorders are perceived and judged. People with a gender-stereotype congruent mental disorder (i.e., men with alcohol use disorder) are viewed as less mentally ill and more to blame for their disorder than people with a gender stereotype-incongruent disorder (i.e., women with alcohol use disorder, Wirth & Bodenhausen, 2009). Borderline personality disorder (BPD) symptoms and comorbidities often vary between men and women along gendered lines (i.e., explosive anger is more common in men with BPD and compulsive buying is more common in women). These different presentations may cause men and women with BPD to …

Hybrid Algorithm For Matching Profiles And Social Networks, Peter Elliot Garcia

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Abstract: The online dating experience has revolutionized the way how many of us form relationships with one another. It turns out that many people struggle with finding their perfect match because their self interest tends to get in the way. They may find someone of their liking but someone else might spark their interest so this project aims to eliminate this uncertainty by creating a hybrid algorithm to match people within a dating pool. The algorithm acts as a self-enforcer to create the best match possible under the guise of a social network application. The application will act as a …

Inferno: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Salome Gwendolyn Dewell-Amiranashvili

Senior Projects Spring 2016

A reflection on the process of a collaborative senior project in theater and performance and an exploration of self-validation and pain.

Sanctioned Silencing, Symbolic Resistance: Race, Space, And Dispossession In A Marginalized South African Community, Killian Richard Miller

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

My field work and the written portion of my ethnography work through issues of marginality, state apparatuses, illusions of freedom, and making meaning in a context of oppression. All these power dynamics are historically-situated within the cultural context and community of Hangberg, a place forged by the race-based forced removals of Apartheid. British and Dutch colonization, Apartheid's racial regime, and the post-Apartheid oligarchical state, are all historical and contemporary authoritative forces that are impacting the everyday lives of people in Hangberg. Perspectives of power also serve as examples …

A Fire To Keep Me Warm, Hannah Isabel Sparagana

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Artist Statement - A Fire to Keep me Warm

The process of creating this film was in many respects non-linear and highly organic in its evolution. I cannot pinpoint an exact moment when the project was solely decided upon and its structure formed, whether it was to be a dramatic narrative, a visual poem, an experimental essay. Even in its final stages I have discovered this labeling to be non-essential. Rather, I would have the viewer interpret the work, navigating the piece solely through the montage of images, sound and rhythm. In my experience, this is what meaningful and inspired …

Islamic Conversion Confined: A Look At Why Black Men Convert To Islam While Incarcerated And The Effects Conversion Has On Their Processes Of Reentry, Antoinette Marie Kane

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Based on ten in-depth interviews with Black men who converted to Islam while incarcerated, this project serves to better understand why Black men in prison convert to Islam, the effects conversion has on their prison time and on their reentry processes. In this paper, I argue that conversion to Islam among Black men in prison allows them to construct a new conception of self, which further allows them manage their prison time. I also argue that the presence of conversion to Islam in prisons helps to influence inmate culture and leads to the formation of a new masculinity within the …

Indonesia’S Palm Oil Expansion & Further Contribution To Economic Fragility, Kathryn Devon Dixon

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Indonesia's growing dependence on the expansion of palm oil plantations as one of their prime exports has lead to the creation of many externalities both environmental and social, which has furthered their financial fragility. Since the Asian Economic Crisis, Indonesia has seemingly been growing substantially, but recent occurrences show that Indonesia may have more fragility than known.

The Effect Of Empathy On Implicit Bias, Chelsea Beckford

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The current study, investigates the influence of media on implicit biases through the mediating factor of empathy. The hypothesis was that participants that read passages that invoked empathy for either Blacks or police would experience a change in their implicit bias towards both groups (Blacks and police). Bard undergraduates read one of three passages (Black empathy, police empathy or control). The passages were created to manipulate empathy in the participants for Blacks, police or for neither group. Then they completed three Implicit Association Tests that measured their implicit biases towards flowers compared to insects, Black people compared to White people …

"It's Getting Gangsa Up In Here": Balinese Gamelan In The Western Academy, Ruadhan Davis Ward

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

"Fruits Are Ripe, We Are Fresh": The Rapper, The Emcee, The Cypher And The Participatory Spectrum Of Hip-Hop, Peter Heyer Anchel

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

The Reality Of A Caribbean Paradise: A Historical Overview Of Japanese Immigration To The Dominican Republic, Amy Yanet Mariano

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

It Happened At El Mozote: How Two Reporters Broke The Story That Washington Refused To Believe, Naomi Rubel Lachance

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Senior Project submitted to the Division of Languages and Literature and the Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Old Time Quiet In A Breathless Age: Faith, Virtue, And The Strength Of The Social Gospel At Trinity-Pawling School, Donald Evan Kanouse Iii

Senior Projects Spring 2016

“Old Time Quiet in a Breathless Age: Faith, Virtue, and the Strength of the Social Gospel at Trinity-Pawling School” is a Senior Project by Donald Evan Kanouse submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College. This project presents All Saints’ Chapel, located on the Trinity-Pawling School campus in Pawling, New York, as a transhistorical symbol of the School’s religion and of its core ideology. Its chapters demonstrate these claims by using both ethnographic and archival research to delve into conceptions of faith, virtue, and masculinity as they were once defined by the School’s founder, Dr. Frederick Gamage, and …

The Secret Life Of The Queer Muslim: An In Depth Cross Cultural Analysis Of Repression, Tamara Wong

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Radical Recognition In Off-Line Handwritten Chinese Characters Using Non-Negative Matrix Factorization, Xiangying Shuai

Senior Projects Spring 2016

In the past decade, handwritten Chinese character recognition has received renewed interest with the emergence of touch screen devices. Other popular applications include on-line Chinese character dictionary look-up and visual translation in mobile phone applications. Due to the complex structure of Chinese characters, this classification task is not exactly an easy one, as it involves knowledge from mathematics, computer science, and linguistics.

Given a large image database of handwritten character data, the goal of my senior project is to use Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NMF), a recent method for finding a suitable representation (parts-based representation) of image data, to detect specific …

Persistent Asset Mispricing: Variations On A Simultaneous Move Game, Arjun Kavi Brara

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The purpose of this paper will be to demonstrate instances of persistent asset mispricing. By persistent we mean the existence and achievement of a stable equilibrium where market prices deviate from an underlying fundamental value. These equilibria will be demonstrated through three variations on a general model in which agents make investment decisions on an initial public offering (IPO), given imperfect information on a stock’s true, fundamental value. The first variation holds agents’ beliefs fixed, and trades are conducted “blindly” through a market maker who clears the market by adjusting the stock price. The model establishes a case for initial …

The Unintended Consequences Of The International Women's Movement: Medicalizing Rape In The Democratic Republic Of Congo, Faye N. Forman

Senior Projects Spring 2016

The legal advancements made by western feminists from the 1960s continuing today mark a distinct shift for both the women's movement and mainstream radical feminist philosophy. This project examines the unintended consequences of the rise of the international women's movement as American feminists brought the law to bear as the primary instrument for reform to eradicate rape and violence against women. As contemporary political scholars demonstrate, legal remediation further codifies gender inequality and protective tropes that sexualize women's injury. Chapter 2 and 3 examines the intensified feminist efforts to criminalize domestic abuse at an international level, first at the United …

Save The Children: Black Liberation In The Age Of The Modern Oligarchy, Isaiah Louis Rice

Senior Projects Spring 2016

Two principles that are fundamental to the West is self-determination and democracy. Self-determination meaning one's control over the path of their destiny and democracy being, the enforcement of egalitarian ideals. The two would seem to guarantee the livelihood of all their citizens to sustain their well-being beyond the means of having just enough to survive. The recent deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Sandra Bland question the legitimacy of these principles because of the apparent lack of regard for their Black bodies. These injustices have spurred serious debates in the public sphere, but reverberate so loudly because …

Thoreau And Integrity, Daniel Alexander Zlatkin

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

The History And Democratization Of Men's Lacrosse, Samuel Woodward Funnell

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Ngos, Development, And Dependency: A Case Study Of Save The Children In Malawi, Gina Oramae Lewis

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Do You Chill When I Chill? Exploring Strong Emotional Responses To Unfamiliar Musical Traditions, Eleonora Judith Beier

Senior Projects Spring 2016

While research suggests that listeners from diverse cultural backgrounds can infer what mood is expressed in a piece from a different culture, no study to date has assessed whether peak emotional responses can also be induced cross-culturally. The chill response in particular has been defined as a sudden increase in emotional arousal elicited by a passage in music. This study addressed the question of whether listeners could experience chills for traditional Chinese music – with which they were either familiar or unfamiliar – as well as for Western classical music – with which all participants were familiar. Chills were measured …

The Implications Of U.S. Development Aid On Public Health: Understanding The Connection Between India's 1975 Emergency State And The President's Emergency Plan For Aids Relief (Pepfar), Alison A. Brundrett

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Abstract: This essay looks at the public health consequences of U.S. development aid to both India and PEPFAR. A close analysis of the U.S.-India development aid relationship presents an important case study for the purposes of this essay, as it is one of the oldest and longest development aid stories in U.S. history. The evolution of U.S. development aid is traced throughout its history with India. In other words, the varying outcomes that occurred as a result of the presence of paternalism in U.S. development aid are chronologically …

Before The Earth Is Hollow: The Case Of Land And Oil On The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, Kalen Tyler Goodluck

Senior Projects Spring 2016

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

Aloha ʻĀina: The United States Military And Its Controversial Use Of Hawaiian Land, Kai Bernier-Chen

Senior Projects Spring 2016

In this senior project, I examine the United States military’s controversial use of Hawaiian land. Following the islands’ annexation to the United States in 1898, a growing number of political and legal disputes concerning the use of Hawaiian lands for military training purposes have arisen between members of the native Hawaiian community and the United States military. As both the island of Kaho’olawe and the Pōhakuloa Training Area have shown, the military’s management of these lands has left much to be desired as the sites have suffered significant cultural and environmental damages. Through its continued leasing of these sacred lands …