The Senior Project

Photo by Scott Barrow

About the Senior Project in Politics

Politics Senior Projects are generally characteristic of the discipline of political science with respect to their overall structure, analytical orientations, and length. This generally means a piece of writing that is concise and driven by a compelling question or puzzle; in other words, work that is analytical rather than descriptive in nature. Students are asked to submit a short Senior Project proposal form during the spring semester of their junior year, which is used to match students with an appropriate Senior Project advisor. The Senior Project handbook outlines the basic structure and length of a Political Studies Senior Project.

Stella Frank '19: Gramsci Prize Winner for Outstanding Senior Project from the Political Studies Program

"In Fear We Trust: Anxious Political Rhetoric & the Politics of Punishment, 1960s-80s"

Stella Frank was awarded the Gramsci Prize in 2019. This award recognizes an outstanding Senior Project written in Bard's Political Studies Program. Stella won for her project "In Fear We Trust: Anxious Political Rhetoric & the Politics of Punishment, 1960s-80s" a study of the politics of fear driving increased incarceration. Stella did original archival work at the Rockefeller Archive Center, examining a range of texts, speeches, policy documents, and private letters. She discovered that the politics of fear can be disaggregated into two forms of “emplotment”: the fear that arises when crime is plotted in a “Western,” cowboy narrative; and the fear that arises when crime is plotted in a “zero-sum” narrative of economic scarcity. Together, Stella argues that these two ways of plotting fear comprise the larger emotional context in which the punitive turn in American politics could unfold. Her project combines political theory, the history of emotions, sociological studies on crime and punishment, and her own archival work.

Read Stella's Senior Project

Senior Project Documents

Digital Commons

Complete versions of Politics Senior Projects available at the library’s Digital Commons linked below.

Go to Digital Commons

Senior Projects 2022

JOSEPH CASEY CARBONE
Yorktown Heights, New York
Political Studies: “The Efficacy of the Independent Counsel Law: Holding Presidents to Account from Nixon to Trump”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

SHEDELANDE LILY CARPENTER
Red Hook, New York
Political Studies: “Comparing Political Implications of Punitive Paradigms in Digital Surveillance and Data-Driven Algorithms between the Polities of the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China”
Project Adviser: Roger Berkowitz

HAZEL CARSON
Overland Park, Kansas
Economics and Political Studies: “French Bilateral Aid to Mali: Examining the Donor-Recipient Relationship’s Effect on Development”
Project Advisers: Sanjib Baruah and Aniruddha Mitra

HANNAH SCHULZE EISENDRATH
Chicago, Illinois
Political Studies: “What Happened to the Republican Party? The Right-Wing Media Ecosystem and the Rise of
Right-Wing Populism”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley
Theater and Performance: “When I Grow Up, Everyone Will Love Me: Gender Performance and Liberation”
Project Adviser: Jack Ferver

MORENIKE EMILY-ANN FABIYI
Chicago, Illinois
Political Studies: “A Look at Sex Work and OnlyFans through Self-Definition and Hegelian Dialectic”
Project Adviser: Pinar Kemerli

VALENTINA FLORES
Bronx, New York
Political Studies: “Exclusionary Spillage: A Reckoning of Belonging and Mass Incarceration”
Project Adviser: Michelle Murray

MARIA JULIA HERNANDEZ SAEZ
San Juan, Puerto Rico
Political Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies: “The Spark of Revolution: Lenin and Luxemburg on Spontaneity and the Revolution of 1905”
Project Adviser: Sean McMeekin

MAX JACOB KLEWENO
Lake Forest Park, Washington
Political Studies: “The American Intelligence Community and the Invasion of Iraq”
Project Adviser: Frederic C. Hof

HOWARD ELIJAH HESS KRASKOW
Ithaca, New York
Political Studies: “Prefigurative Politics of the Black Panther Party”
Project Adviser: Mie Inouye

JOSEPH JOHN NADLER
Tokyo, Japan
Political Studies: “Cyber-Gezi: How the 2013 Taksim Gezi Park Protests in Istanbul Subverted Historical Neoliberal Domination, Violence, and Revealed President Reccep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Repressive Cyber-Authoritarian Goals”
Project Adviser: Sanjib Baruah

ANNA CUDAHY NULER
Tivoli, New York
Photography: “This is how I show I love you”
Project Adviser: Jasmine Clarke ’18
Political Studies: “Local Rule through the Lens of Food Sovereignty”
Project Adviser: Roger Berkowitz

Senior Projects 2021

JACK CAMERON
New York, New York
Political Studies: “Chasing Gold: Analyzing Opium Cultivation in Afghanistan and Its Alternatives”
Project Adviser: Frederic C. Hof

ADRIAN SEBASTIAN COSTA
Bronx, New York
Political Studies: “The Burden of Whiteness and the Misery of Antiracism, or How I Learned to Care about White People”
Project Adviser: Roger Berkowitz
Theater and Performance: “WE’RE JUST SOLDIERS”
Project Adviser: Nilaja Sun

JESSICA RITA FERSON
Annandale, Virginia
Political Studies: “Iñupiat Resistance and Adaptation in the North Slope Borough to United States Colonization”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

LÉA GERVAIS GLAENZER
New York, New York
Political Studies: “Self-Determination in the Western Sahara: Obstacles and Obligations”
Project Adviser: Frederic C. Hof

MIRANDA KERRIGAN
Forest Hills, New York
Literature: : “A Lust for Land: An Exploration of Environmental Creation, Destruction, and Institutional Power in Ovid’s Metamorphoses”
Project Adviser: Lauren Curtis
Political Studies: “The Cross-Dressing Terrorist, the Malaccan Mouse-Deer, and Indonesian Prison”
Project Adviser: Samantha Hill

RAPHAEL THEO LEWIS
San Antonio, Texas
Middle Eastern Studies and Political Studies: “From the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter: Lessons from the Arab Spring and the Prospects for Social and Political Change in the Post-Ideological World”
Project Adviser: Omar Cheta

MAEVE ELIZABETH McKAIG
Shorewood, Wisconsin
Political Studies: “Selfhood in the Age of Selfies: Considering Social Media as an Extension of the Arendtian Social”
Project Adviser: Samantha Hill

ANGELICA ELIZABETH MERINO MONGE
Amherst, Massachusetts
Human Rights and Political Studies: “The Immigration Crisis under the Trump Administration”
Project Adviser: Nicole Caso

JACOB DAVENPORT PHILLIPS
Somers, Connecticut
Political Studies: “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Checkbook: How the Special Relationship between the Healthcare Industry and the United States Government Has Prevented the Passage of Universal Healthcare Legislation”
Project Adviser: Omar G. Encarnación

EHSUN SYED QAMAR
Ocala, Florida
Political Studies: “Muslims in Western Europe: A Look through Manifestos and Kitabs”
Project Adviser: Christopher McIntosh

EMMA ELIZABETH SANDMAN
Versailles, Kentucky
Political Studies: “Beyond Jair Bolsonaro: The Making of Brazil’s Environmental Crisis”
Project Adviser: Omar G. Encarnación

GORDON FRANKLIN STEARNS
Atlanta, Georgia
Political Studies: “Veterans and Disaster Relief: Charity and American Welfare, 1920–1960”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

ANGELA PAIGE WOODACK
Teaneck, New Jersey
Political Studies and Theater and Performance: “From Sword Lesbian to Shield Sapphic: The Quest to Relate the Very Queer Legacy of Joan of Arc to a Modern Incarnation of the Warrior Woman”
Project Advisers: Roger Berkowitz and Jean Wagner

NOAH GREGORY WURTZ
Peterborough, New Hampshire
Political Studies: “Revolutionaries in Form: The Russian Futurist Poets in the Cultural Politics of the Early Soviet Union, 1917–1928”
Project Advisers: Oleg Minin and Gregory B. Moynahan

Senior Projects 2020

CHARLOTTE MIRIAM ALBERT
East Norwich, New York
Political Studies: “Private Lives of Public Figures”
Project Adviser: Samantha Hill

GISELLE LUCIA AVILA
Rosedale, New York
Political Studies: “I Pledge Allegiance to One Global Nation: Redefining Citizenship through the Institutionalization of Cosmopolitan Principles in Response to the U.S. Immigration System”
Project Adviser: Charles Dixon

DAVID NELSON BLACK
New York, New York
Political Studies: “The ‘Baun System’ and the Reconstruction of German Intelligence, November 1944 – December 1949: From the Final Reorganization of the Abwehr to the Petersberg Agreement”
Project Adviser: Walter Russell Mead

SARAH BATSHEVA BONDER
Pacific Palisades, California
Political Studies: “Dysphoric Visibility: Discontents of Queer Visibility in the Media”
Project Adviser: Samantha Hill

HADLEY ROSE BRITT
Cape Elizabeth, Maine
French Studies and Political Studies: “The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism in France: A Study of Jewish Experience from the Ancien Régime to the Second World War”
Project Adviser: Odile S. Chilton

COLIN MICHAEL BRUNDEGE
Duanesburg, New York
Economics and Political Studies: “Economic Sanctions and the Survival of Autocratic Regimes”
Project Adviser: Christopher McIntosh

DERECK CHAVEZ
Brooklyn, New York
Political Studies: “Why Hip-Hop Matters: Political Impact of the MC”
Project Adviser: Charles Dixon

SHIRLEY CHENG
Beijing, China
Political Studies: “Why One Populist Is Elected and the Other Is Not”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley
Written Arts: “‘Tell Me I Did Well’ and Other Things Left Unsaid”
Project Adviser: Dinaw Mengestu

AXEL TIGER CLAVIER
Palo Alto, California
Political Studies: “The Fortress State: How the American System Protects Vested Interests and the Status Quo”
Project Adviser: Walter Russell Mead

JUSTYN C. DÍAZ
New York, New York
Political Studies: “The New ‘Duck-and-Cover’: School Security as Contemporary Civil Defense and Mimetic of the National Security State”
Project Adviser: Christopher McIntosh

TUSCANY EDEN FOUSSARD
New York, New York
Political Studies: “‘Within and Without’: Hiding an Empire and the Filipino Experience in the United States during the Early 20th Century”
Project Adviser: Sanjib Baruah

LOURDES VANESA GARCÍA
Los Angeles, California
Political Studies: “Blackness on the Islands: The Intersections of Race and Nation in the Spanish-Speaking Caribbean”
Project Adviser: Omar G. Encarnación

SARAH PAVLOVNA GOLDBERG
Washington, District of Columbia
Political Studies and Russian and Eurasian Studies: “Porno-Putinism: The Politics of Sex in the Kremlin’s War against Gender Progress”
Project Adviser: Jonathan Becker

SNEHA GOPINATH
East Windsor, New Jersey
Political Studies: “‘I’m a Brown B**** Melanin-Rich Indian Queen’,” a political exploration of South Asian diasporas, cultural adaptation, and the arts
Project Adviser: Sanjib Baruah

VEDIKA GUPTA
Kolkata, India
Political Studies: “The Paradox of Regulation: An Analysis of the Legislation Surrounding the Sex Trade in India”
Project Adviser: Peter Rosenblum

MARGARET HOLLOWAY
Frenchtown, New Jersey
Human Rights and Political Studies: “Beyond Moral Condemnation: Confronting Ideological Populism in Democratic Politics”
Concentration: Latin American and Iberian Studies
Project Adviser: Samantha Hill

SAMUEL FRANCISCO HUGGINS
Los Angeles, California
Political Studies: “Origins of the Government Shutdown: The American Budget’s Greatest Inefficiency”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

TSION GEBRE KIROS
Tallahassee, Florida
Political Studies: “The Intersection of Socioeconomic Segregation, the Black Voter, and Redistricting within Tallahassee, Florida”
Project Adviser: Drew Thompson

GEORGE ELI KUNIN
Monroe, New York
Political Studies: “Freedom of Speech”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

HARRISON MALINOWSKI
Hebron, Connecticut
Political Studies: “Why Can’t We Be Friends: The Significance of Sovereignty and China’s ‘One Country, Two Systems’”
Project Adviser: Robert J. Culp

AVA RUSSELL MAZZYE
Brooklyn, New York
Political Studies: “Oaxakeepsie: Connecting San Agustín Yatareni, Oaxaca, and Poughkeepsie, New York”
Project Adviser: Miles Rodríguez

SIYUAN MIN
Suzhou, China
Economics and Political Studies: “The Bismarckian System and His Balance of Power”
Project Adviser: Walter Russell Mead

LIAM GABRIEL OBERHOLZER
Brookline, Massachusetts
Political Studies: “The Origins of Socialism in Cuba: A Question Uncontested”
Project Adviser: Omar G. Encarnación

MARA O’CONNELL
Brooklyn, New York
Political Studies: “Does Climate Change Invoke Conditions That Create Conflict? Lessons Learned from Syria and Beyond”
Project Adviser: Sanjib Baruah

MELISSA ANNE ROSENTHAL
Clifton Park, New York
Philosophy and Political Studies: “A Skeptic’s Certainty and Their Politics”
Project Adviser: Ruth Zisman

LIAM EDWARD SHAFFER
Swarthmore, Pennsylvania
Political Studies: “The Parallax View: How Conspiracy Theories and Belief in Conspiracy Shape American Politics”
Project Adviser: Simon Gilhooley

AUGUSTA VALERIE TIZIANA SPIRO JAEGER
Zurich, Switzerland
Political Studies: “A Call for the Inclusion of Nature in Class Struggle”
Project Adviser: Kellan Anfinson

HARIS FAIZ TALWAR
Washington, District of Columbia
Political Studies: “China, America, and World Order”
Project Adviser: Walter Russell Mead

ISAAC H. TAYE
Boston, Massachusetts
Political Studies: “Debunking Chinese Investments on Economic Development in Ethiopia”
Project Adviser: Omar G. Encarnación

ANASTASIA ELIZABETH TELLER
Paterson, New Jersey
Global and International Studies and Political Studies: “The Modern Lawgiver and the Politics of Refounding: What Political Refoundings Reveal about the Nature of Democracy”
Project Adviser: Michelle Murray

IAN JOSEPH ULLMANN
South San Francisco, California
Historical Studies and Political Studies: “Warrior Pride: General MacArthur vs. the State”
Project Adviser: Richard Aldous

DAVID LOUIS VOGEL
Brooklyn, New York
Political Studies: “The Decline of Liberal Democracy: The Case of Hungary”
Project Adviser: Sanjib Baruah