Goucher College Undergraduate Student Collection

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/11603/2178

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 84

Chinese Blues in the Congolese Earth: America's Green Energy Dilemma
(2024-04-17) Maxwell, Myles; Dr. Amalia Fried Honick; Dr. Julie Chernov; Dr. Margaret Bock; Department of International Relations and Political Science; Bachelor's Degree
The inevitable beat of climate change that the world has begun marching to has forced an American policy change. As Washington begins to seriously undertake the task of converting the source of the enormous American energy demand from fossil fuels to green sources, new geopolitical roadblocks have emerged that the United States must clear in order to ensure its own energy security. The shift towards green sources will shift the raw material demand from sources like oil, gas, and coal towards a wide array of minerals. This paper is looking to accomplish a few things. First and foremost, it is looking to analyze the Congolese cobalt trade as a means of expressing how the emerging demand for minerals as a necessity for American energy puts the United States within the crosshairs of China’s more than decade long mineral monopoly. Secondly, this paper is looking to use this analysis to bring green energy into the study of power within International Relations. The Chinese monopoly of cobalt pokes at a growing wound in the American ego as its relative strength to the United States engenders American fears of losing political economic autonomy and potential dependency on China. This paper will build on the relationship between China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United States to assess how the US is attempting to clear the hurdle of the Chinese cobalt monopoly to secure its green future.
Voter Disenfranchisment Due to a Criminal Record
(2024-05-20) Randles III, James; Duncan, Ann; Williams, Olivia; Grossman, David; American Studies; Bachelor's Degree
The right to vote is a fundamental aspect of democracy, and it is essential that every citizen has equal access to this right. However, in the United States, millions of people are denied the right to vote due to their criminal record. This practice, known as felony disenfranchisement, has been a topic of debate for many years. While some argue that it is necessary to prevent criminals from participating in the democratic process, others believe that doing so is a violation of basic human rights. If a major tenant of a democracy is a citizen’s right to vote and participate in said government, then how can we deny returning citizens their right to vote? Yes, they violated the law and the unspoken social contract of the agreement between individuals to give up certain natural rights to enjoy the benefits of society. However, once they complete the court-imposed sentence, they should then be able to return to their previous status in society as a full citizen.
The Leviathan and its Corpus: An Ontological Biology of Non-Biological Persons
(2024-05) Greifinger, Dylan; Steven DeCaroli; Nina Kasniunas; Ann Duncan; Philosophy; Bachelor's Degree
Incorporation began as an exercise of sovereign power. This is known as the sovereign concession model. The rise of popular sovereignty did not destroy the great sovereign of the body politic, but rather fragmented its institutions. Corporations, I will argue, are the form of a liberal sovereign, for at root, they are a collection of individuals, each possessing a fragment of sovereign power, who come together to exercise it autonomously. Since incorporation is a function of sovereign authority, without a sovereign to cede the right to exist, the corporation must become sovereign by unifying fragmented elements of power. This places the biological person at a fundamental disadvantage to corporations when attempting to pursue his or her interests because the biological person’s interests are intrinsically smaller than the interests of its non-biological counterparts. I will argue that the issue of corporatism is a function of sovereignty: thereby placing the rise of an increasingly incorporated world as, not an economic issue, but rather a civil rights issue, perhaps the greatest one of our age. Ultimately, I will propose a sovereign unification theory of corporateness, where corporations exist simultaneously as arbiter and subject of right, thus subverting state authority and subjugating the rights of individuals.
Teething: Poems and Essays
(2023-05-05) Brazfield, Carolena; Kunz, Edgar; Professional and Creative Writing Department at Goucher College; Bachelor's Degree
Teething, a collection of poems an essays, examines and explores the space between girlhood and womanhood, and the intrinsic violence that exists in that space.
Agents of M.E.R.A.
(2023-05) McCrickard, Liam; Kunz, Edgar; Marchand, Mary; Bell, Madison; Creative and Professional Writing
A tabletop roleplaying game based on the mechanics of John Harper's Forged in the Dark system, about agents of a governmental law enforcement agency known as the Metahuman and Extranormal Response Agency or M.E.R.A., set in a world of superheroics, magic, and high technology. Includes 6 agent playbooks, 6 unit playbooks, and 3 faction lists in addition to the core game rules and other materials.
Fancy Fruits: Exploring Language and Liberation in the June Horner PFLAG Collection
(2022-12) McKay, Oona; Bachelor's Degree
The June Horner PFLAG Collection, which came into Goucher College’s Special Collections in 2022, is composed of books on gay and lesbian identity in the form of memoirs, biography, nonfiction, and fiction texts mostly spanning from the late 1970s through the 2000s. Ms Horner, the donor, is the former librarian and founder of the PFLAG Maryland chapter, which she began in 1985 after her son’s coming out in 1984. A librarian in Howard County, she struggled to find books that could help her understand her son’s experience and decided to create a resource for other parents. The collection’s purpose was clear, and simple: to provide those trying to come to terms with and understand the identities of their loved ones with learning resources. During a time when it was very difficult to find any publications which spoke about LGBT identity, let alone positive and genuinely informative ones, the library likely served as many member’s first or even only point of access to this information. And given the collection’s size and purpose, it could be seen as representative of the state of LGBT publishing at the time. Through examining this collection and looking at the details of the language and terminology that authors used, I hoped to track how both members of and friends of the community were imagining gay identity.
Allyship vs. Accompliceship
(2022-05) Berggren, Linus; Bachelor's Degree
Nous Avons Choisi de Nous Souvenir : œuvres d’Architecture Coloniales Indochinoises au Vietnam comme Vecteurs de Mémoire
(2022-05) Nguyen, Uyen; Ingram, Mark; Sheller, Tina; French Transnational Studies & Visual Material Culture; Bachelor's Degree
Similar to other colonial projects, the Statue of Liberty was one of the many examples of the way the French empire wanted to exercise its power through the modification of the landscape in the colony - Indochinese Vietnam. The spatial edification and the enhancement of the built environment were the attempts of the imperial government to imitate French cities. For these reasons, there still exist numerous buildings in modern Vietnam that reflect different aspects of French aesthetics. They become lieux de mémoire because they carry the history and the collective memory of the inhabitants in the colony and also of the Vietnamese citizens today. This paper will examine the Indochinese colonial architectural works as vectors of memory.
Goucher College Journal of International Relations, Vol 1
(2022-05) Garrett, Hannah; Howard, Jibril; Nguyen, Uyen; Sam, Nadean; Smith, Chad; Suarez, Sal; Singer, Eric; International Relations; Bachelor's Degree
The following collection of op-eds is a production of the Spring 2022 Capstone Class in International Relations. The collection is subdivided into three sections: The Scope International Institutions: Progressive or Problematic?, The Nationalist Problematique, and Great Powers, World Order, and the Future of Liberal Internationalism, which address pressing topics about the future of global conflict and prospects for peace. All essays were written under supervision from Dr. Eric Singer, Professor of Political Science and International Relations. We hope you enjoy our work.
Border to Border, Door to Door: Selected Homeward Poems of Rokhl Korn
(2022-05-12) Reisberg, Joseph; Korn, Rokhl; Dawley, Evan; Contreras, Jazmine; Kunz, Edgar; History/Creative Writing; Bachelor's Degree
"Rokhl Korn was a Polish-Canadian Yiddish writer whose legacy spans decades and continents—from the feminist modernist Yiddish literature of interwar Poland to her wartime years of wandering in the Soviet Union to her immigration and warm welcome in postwar Montreal. This thesis presents translations of selected poems from all eight of her published books of poetry, ranging from 1928 to 1977. Through it all, her themes of diaspora and finding a home in poetry will be emphasized, making a case for Korn to be read by general non-Yiddish-speaking audiences as a canonical poet of exile and wandering. Through the culturally specific lens of a Yiddish poet in exile from her native Galicia region, Korn’s work can be read universally as poems of placelessness and longing, of lamentation while still being in love with the world and its sensory delights. This thesis will trace Rokhl Korn’s journey through all the various homes she had as well as the borders she crossed and obliterated in her poems."
Competing Notions of Women's Liberation: The Legacy of French Revolutionary 'Feminism' and Terror in Revolutionary Russia
(2021-12) Kopp, Elizabeth; Dawley, Evan; Contreras, Jazmine; Ingram, Mark; History; Bachelor's Degree
The French Revolution has long stood within the revolutionary zeitgeist as the mother of all revolutions. This is not simply a catchy phrase, but instead a statement on the ways revolutionary leaders and thinkers tend to look back on the past for reference, and the position of the French Revolution within the history of the world as the first great revolution. While many gender historians and other scholars have devoted a great deal of time to understanding the position of women within various historical revolutionary contexts, including the French Revolution, there has been little published and explored in how concepts of women’s liberation have changed over time through a reference to the historical record of past revolutions. And while the French Revolution and Russian Revolutions of 1917 are often compared and studied in reference to each other, there is still not a lot published comparing the French and Russian Revolutions in regards to women’s liberation including what ‘feminism’ meant to either group of revolutionary women and how the events of the French Revolution shaped women’s liberation during the February and October Revolutions of 1917. As gender historian Joan Wallach Scott argues, feminism cannot be understood under a single definition as it exists within the context of its own time period and is informed by contemporary ideas, and also by the understanding of feminism before said contextual time period. Not only will this thesis seek to define and understand the differences in the constructions of a feminist ideology in each of these revolutionary moments, but also to understand how the legacy of the French Revolution informed the revolutionary Russian definition of women’s liberation for female revolutionaries. It will also seek to compare and analyze texts from intellectuals who influenced not only male revolutionaries, but women revolutionaries who may or may not have tied their revolutionary ethos to what we would contemporarily be considered ‘feminist’ in some way or another. This thesis is organized as follows: Comparative Ideologies, French Revolutionary ‘Feminism’, Russian Revolutionary ‘Feminism’, and the Conclusion where ideologies and actions will be compared between the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Lake Shield
(2021-05) Schwartz, Anya; Bachelor's Degree
A novel that explores family, loss, and truth.
The Father of Singapore: an Analysis of Lee Kuan Yew Through Political Legitimacy Theory
(2021-05) Shimberg, Zoe; Honick, Amalia; Center for People, Politics, & Markets; Bachelor's Degree
Impacts of the Repression of Student Activism on the Transition to Universal Higher Education Through Case Study and Examination of 4-year graduation, 6-year Graduation, and Retention Rates at Three Large Public Research Universities
(2021-05) Anderson, Samuel; Political Science; Bachelor's Degree
Through case studies of three cases of student activism and subsequent university response from 2015, this thesis seeks to understand the connections between the repression of student activism and the failed shift from elite to mass to universal higher education as described by sociologist Martin Trow. Specifically, an examination of the correlation between 4- and 6- year graduation rates and each university’s response to student activism on their campus provides the foundation for further research which could investigate the existence of a causal relationship between the repression of student activism and measures of student success like graduation rates.
Death of the Dream
(2021-05-10) Miller, Joshua; Bess, Jennifer; Robinson, Angelo; Lewis, Leslie; Dator, James; Hopper, Ailish; Center for Humanities; Bachelor's Degree
This thesis seeks to assert that the American educational model is a symptom of overarching systemic racial oppression resembling a Trojan horse in the sense that it is designed to appease Black Americans in the present day and lull them into a false sense of security regarding their social positions in America. The analysis is primarily based on the American civil rights movement and argues that through the over fixation on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the omission of Malcolm X, African Americans are being indoctrinated into White supremacist schools of thought which aim to convince them that their racial struggles are over, and teach them to value the chance to be part of American society over being fully respected as human beings.
Post-Secondary Enrollment Decisions of High School Students: The Effect of Socioeconomic Status
(2021-05-01) Romberger, Madalyn; Shamshak, Gina; Shepard, Asha; Grossman, David; Center for People, Politics & Markets - Economics; Bachelor's Degree
Discrepancies exist in the type of students who attend, and graduate from, post-secondary institutions. This study investigates the impact of socioeconomic status on students' enrollment decisions using the Education Longitudinal Study (ELS:2002). Using an ordinary least square (OLS) model specif cation, attendance is regressed against a combination of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. The findings reveal that the statistical significance of the independent variables changes based on the inclusion of school income or parental income categories. Differences were observed among sex, race, standardized test scores, student work hours, and parental educational attainment variables.
Restorative Action
(2020) Miller, Joshua; Booke and Carol Peirce Fellowship; Bachelor's Degree
Black students at Goucher College organized a Blackout protest in the fall of 2018 in response to a hate crime on campus. The Blackout demanded that Goucher’s administration address this crime with urgency, something the students felt was lacking in response to past hate crimes. This collection of oral histories allows Black students at Goucher who were involved in the protest a space where they can memorialize their thoughts on the Blackout and the hate crime that sparked it.
Transcending the Migration Security Dilemma: A Critical Emancipatory Analysis of Irregular Economic Migration Policy
(2020-05) Daniels, Adi; Singer, Eric; Martin, Flo; Barquiero, Carla; CENTER FOR PEOPLE, POLITICS, & MARKETS; Bachelor's Degree
The phenomena of undocumented migrant labor, or irregular economic migration, has become conentious topic in migration studies and global migration policy. Within International Relations, liberal and realist mainstream approaches to irregular economic migration focus on ways to reduce irregular flow of labor between borders, especially low-skilled labor, on the basis of prioritizing state-security. This research aims to firstly apply the critical concept of emancipation and emancipatory security to the context of irregular economic migration in order to ensure the security of these migrants. Additionally, the research applies constructivist concepts, especially that of ‘discipline,’ to problematize the behavior of state and intergovernmental institutions towards irregular economic migrants. Based on a review of the literature in critical security studies and critical constructivism in regards to migration, this research finds alternatives to state-essentialist approaches to migration that view the emancipation of migrants as mutually beneficial for them and state citizens.
Wading Upstream: The Case for Ecofeminism as a Solution-Oriented, Critical Theory Approach
(2020-05-15) Rapkin-Citrenbaum, Brett; Eric, Singer; International Relations; Bachelor's Degree
This thesis is an analytical piece meant to explore the methods of transnational corporations engaging in aid relating to gendered environmental sustainability efforts. The piece will not be very poetic in nature and—though there are a few case studies—will not be rooted in storytelling. However, stories are a key part to my journey of arriving at this thesis topic. There is one tale that I believe is crucial to share so as to better contextualize my mindset and positionality when researching and writing this thesis.
The Undesigned
(2020-05) Serman, Emunah; Smartt Bell, Madison; Center for Humanities- English; Bachelor's Degree
In the future, it has become the norm for parents to edit their children's DNA in vitro through CRISPR technology. Because of their genetic superiority, the designed, commonly known as "Vitros" have secured their place as the dominant social class. Despite his status as a Utero, Aleksy Przybylski has managed to stay in school and keep up with his classmates. Until he is kicked out with no warning. After securing a lucrative job at the Vitro library and befriending a Vitro by the name of Annie, Aleksy begins to wonder why he was able to keep up -- and what his mother isn't telling him about his past.

Browse

Recent Submissions