The Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life (CSPL) is hosting thesis presentations by those who have done theses regarding the study of public life. We have 13 student presenters and there will be lunch provided with an accompanying talk by visiting CSPL professor Steve Fuzesi regarding his course titled “All the News That’s Fit to Post: Issues for Content Creators in the New Global News World.” The presentations will run from 10am-2pm and people can come and go as they please.
The complete speakers list can be found after the bump.
Date: Tomorrow, Friday, April 26
Time: 10:00AM – 2:00PM
Place: Allbritton 311
10.0 am -11.0 am Regionalism, Nationalism, Infrastructures and Identity
Katherine James (Government) “Policy and Planning for Large Water Infrastructure Projects in the People’s Republic of China.” a study of three water projects – the South-to-North Water Transfer Project, the Three Gorges Dam, and the Nu River Project- that explores how and why China has persisted with a policy of constructing mega-projects to assuage domestic water scarcity and supply issues, in spite of their high social, political, economic, and environmental costs.
Ivan Stoitsev (Government) “Everything Revolves Around Oil and Natural Gas: Russia’s Economic and Political Centers of Gravity,” a study that investigates the role oil and natural gas play in the Russian economy and political sphere.
Sophia Hussain (History) “The Derailed Power Broker: Rexford Tugwell’s American Crusade for Planning and Professional Authority,” a historical investigation of the agricultural economist’s public writings and his relationship to the New Deal, racial politics, and the building of America’s first Greenbelt Towns in the 1930s.
11 a.m – 12 p.m Policy and Political Processes
Caitlin Aylward (CSS) “Food for People, Not for Profit”: Justice and the Food Movement,” a study of how the predominant food justice, slow food, and food sovereignty movements are each a response to a respective element within a triad of distributional, recognition based, and procedural injustices.
Sarah Cassell (Government/Philosophy) “Enacting International Moral Responsibility: The Normative Dynamics of Humanitarian Intervention,” a study setting out an analysis of the standards that would justify military intervention in other countries and analyzing the range of issues or questions that must be answered in deciding on and implementing such interventions, focusing in particular on the case of Libya.
Jessica Jordan (English) “Bloodlines,” a study of regional identity (the U.S. South, the area around Knoxville especially), family history, and the uses of memory.
Jake Eichengreen (CSS) “Can’t Buy Me Love: Development and Social Destabilization in Uganda,” a critique of the effects of micro-financing on Ugandan traditional culture, and suggestions for alternative economic models.
12 p.m – 12.30 p.m Lunch
Discussion with Visiting CSPL Instructor, Steve Fuzesi, (Instructor for CSPL 350: “All the News That’s Fit to Post: Issues for Content Creators in the New Global News World”)
This course explores some of the issues facing journalists today who operate in an increasingly global and digital media environment, including ethical, legal, and professional judgments impacting content and its distribution platforms nationally and around the world.
12.30 p.m – 2.00 p.m.
Nicolas Cavallo (Government) “The American Response to the Russian ‘Opening’ of the 1990s: oil investment and U.S. aid,” a study that aims to explore and elucidate the policy processes and coordinated networks of the U.S. government by defining the American energy relationship with Russia in the 1990s. Through both interviews and analysis of unclassified government documents, this research delves into the curious interaction between private energy corporations and public officials.
Maria Cory Meara-Bainbridge (Anthro/American Studies) “Explaining Away Inequality: The Normalization of Segregation and Maintenance of White Privilege in New York City High Schools,” which focuses on the city’s unique high school admissions system, using historical and anthropological analysis to trace the shift from neighborhood schools to a citywide choice system, and the discursive shift that accompanied it, from a race-conscious discourse of integration to a colorblind discourse of market-based choice.
Sam Ebb (CSS) “Government of the People: The Case for Compulsory Voting,” a multinational analysis of the effects of compulsory voting in democratic countries.
Bennett Kirschner (Science in Society) “The Ecology of Invasions and the Invasions of Ecology: Reevaluating the Disciplinary Program of the Invasion Sciences,” which asks the questions: What broader ethical and philosophical frameworks does the idea of “species invasions” depend on, and how are these abstract ideas embodied politically?
Kim Ingebristen (American Studies) “Searching for the ‘Public’ in Public Schools: Stories of School-Based Community Organizing in Baltimore,” a study of the theory underlying the community action organization, the Industrial Areas Foundation, that is the successor to Saul Alinsky’s work in community organization, and how it worked out as they began organizing in public schools in Baltimore in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement.
Andrew Zingg (English) Zingg by Zingg: A Grandson’s Seach for the Man Under the Hat. The author writes about his grandfather, David Drew Zingg, was a prominent photographer, writer, and culture-broker in Brazil from the 1960s to the 1990s who played a pivotal role in the introduction of Bassa Nova music to the U.S. and made a signal contribution to the visual record of Brazil’s public and cultural history in the second half of the twentieth century.
Wrap-Up