Development Studies Seniors Analyze Global Issues
May 27, 2010
Thirty-five students will graduate this year with degrees in development studies.
The development studies program at Brown is designed to provide undergraduates with a comparative perspective on the long-term social, political, and economic changes that have accompanied industrialization and the growth of the modern state in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and in the historical experience of European countries.
Directed by Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi, with Visiting Fellow Cornel Ban as concentration advisor, the program includes a particular concern with understanding how processes of change impact the distribution of wealth and opportunity both within and among nations.
Every student of development studies at Brown is required to write a senior thesis. This year’s prize winners for excellence in thesis writing are:
• Rebecca Kim, for “Misaligning Stories: Activism at Brown University and its Ambiguities”
• Trisha Pande, for “The End of Welfare: Examining the Impacts of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act on Noncitizens”
• Lucia Seyfarth, for “Transitional Justice in Africa: A Comparative Study of Post-Conflict Rwanda and Sierra Leone”
• Natasha Somji, for “An Investigation of Alternative and Mainstream Print Media in India – Tehelka and The Times of India Respectively – in Depicting the 2008 Amarnath Land Transfer Controversy in Kashmir”
• Claire Williams, for “Restoring their Voices: Understanding the Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Former Child Soldiers”
Honors also went to the following students:
• Moctar Aboubacar, for “'The Strangers in Our Forests’: Discursive Constructions of National Identity in Cote d’Ivoire”
• Michelle Baer, for “‘A Big Spoonful of Salt’: Critical Perspectives from Third World Feminisms on UN Discourses on Sexual Violence in Conflict”
• Jeanine Chiu, for “Friend or Foe? Perceptions of China in Newsweek and Time, 1989-1997”
• Alexa Gips, for “Physicians as Advocates: Harm Reduction Advocacy in the United States as a Lens onto Public Engagement by Physicians”
• Masumi Hayashi-Smith, for “From Our New Thoughts, We Can Change the World: Sarvodaya Shanthi Sena as a Case Study of Buddhist Peacework”
• Nokuzola Jenness, for “Neoliberal Urbanism: Urban Regeneration in Inner-City Johannesburg”
• Sukjoo (Leila) Kang, for “Popular Discourse on Global Development”
• Laura Marcus, for “Mental Health Reform in Mexico: How Local Actors Utilize Supranational Legislation to Create Change”
• Patrick Martin-Tuite, for “‘Our Struggle to Overcome AIDS’: Science, Politics and the Boundaries of Citizenship in Post-Apartheid South Africa”
• Ilana Nelson-Greenberg, “Transnational Labor Alliances: An Innovative Response to Corporate Globalization – A Case Study of the United Electric, Radio and Machine Workers of America and the Frente Autentico del Trabajo”
• Benjamin Schanback, for “To Deluxe Apartments in the Sky: Implementing Mumbai’s 'Slum Rehabilitation Scheme' in Theory and in Practice”
• Kaitlyn Scott, for “Formal and Nonformal Education of Formerly Abducted Persons in Northern Uganda”
• Donata Secondo, for “The Power of Complexity: Meshworks, Agency, and the Diffusion of Participatory Budgeting”
• Kona Shen, for “Failing Haiti: How Blame, Disasters and Foreign Aid Have Destroyed the Haitian Environment”
• Julie Siwicki, for “Tontines, Micro-Loans, and the Women Who Use Them: How Financial Tools Impact Expenses in Urban Mali”
• Aaron Wee, for “Alternative Media and the Development of Counter-Ideologies in India and China”
• Yasmine Yu, for “Cooptation and Concession: The Sufi Brotherhoods, the State and Democratic Quality in Senegal”
• Melani Zuch, for “‘A Virus and Nothing Else’: The Effect of Antiretrovirals on HIV-related Stigma”