Center for the Study of Representation
Project Abstracts
Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research
2010-11
Sigourney Jellins
The Tea Party: A New Force in Republican Politics
Hae Jin Kang
Subjects of Statelessness: The Impact of the Humanitarian Response and the U.S. Asylum Process on the Rights of Haitian Refugees
Annie Powers
‘The Bloody Code’: Dueling and the Coming of the Civil War, 1850 – 1856
Andrina Tran
Radicals for Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Youth Movement of the 1960s
Aditya Ullal
How Do Doctors Organize? A Study of ‘Organized Medicine’ from 2006 through 2010
Annie Zanobini
Female Gubernatorial Candidates 2002-2004: Utilizing Campaign Adverstising to Fight Gendered Perceptions of Viability
Sigourney Jellins
The Tea Party: A New Force in Republican Politics
The 2010 midterm elections heralded the emergence of a new force in the political arena--the Tea Party. My thesis examines what issues unite Tea Party candidates in House and Senate 2010 races and how they differ from Republican candidates. Conducting a content analysis of candidate websites, election databases, and newspaper articles, I find that Tea Partiers and Republican candidates have very similar issue positions. Tea Partiers, however, are more conservative than Republican candidates on social issues like abortion and gay marriage, more extreme on tax reform, and prioritize fiscal responsibility. Given my analysis, I predict that the Tea Partiers will push the Republican Party to the right.
Upon completion of my thesis on the relationship between the Tea Party and the Republican Party, funds obtained from the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research will be used to present the work in a professional and refined manner. This funding will generously cover printing and binding, and supplies to make a poster version of my findings.
Hae Jin Kang
Subjects of Statelessness: The Impact of the Humanitarian Response and the U.S. Asylum Process on the Rights of Haitian Refugees
Given the precarious conditions following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, many Haitians have been displaced and are seeking asylum within the U.S. My research examines the humanitarian response to Haitian refugees and the human rights condition within refugee camps and detention centers. While U.S. based NGOs have been serving principally in the provision of basic humanitarian needs and advocacy, there has been a demonstrated lack of state intervention and inadequate protection of vulnerable Haitians affected by the earthquake.
In the context of what is conceptualized as the “shrinking humanitarian space” of crises, I examine the emerging paradigm of governmentality regarding Haitians seeking refugee status or asylum in the U.S. Unlike many studies of the Haitian earthquake, my research is not merely a study of the post-earthquake reconstruction in Haiti, but rather a critical examination of U.S. immigration and welfare planning. By contextualizing refugee protection in the larger context of social protection, I argue that the U.S. policy position is characterized by emerging geographies of marginalization, marked by the politics of exclusion given the shifting question of social and political citizenship for Haitian refugees. Using mixed methods (archival research, institutional research, case studies, and participatory observation through my internship at the UN Refugee Agency), I examine the impact of statelessness on the rights of Haitian refugees, and furthermore the need for reforms to U.S. asylum and refugee resettlement policies.
With the funds from the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research, I plan on accessing the resources available to me in Washington D.C., such as the Georgetown Law Library, the Library of Congress and to attend local conferences related to my topic, in addition to possibly presenting my completed paper at one of them.
Annie Powers
‘The Bloody Code’: Dueling and the Coming of the Civil War, 1850 – 1856
This project examines duels that arose from political conflicts between 1850 and 1856. Over the span of the period, duels – and, in particular, popular perception of them – shifted in nature, becoming a function and manifestation of the sectional tension of the 1850s. Four different disputes that led to duel challenges offer a window into this trend toward sectionalism in dueling culture and opinions about it. In 1850, a conflict arose between Jefferson Davis and William Bissell over a speech the latter made in the House. Senators Rhett and Clemens argued viciously in the Senate in 1852. John C. Breckenridge and Francis B. Cutting nearly engaged in a duel over the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. And finally, in the wake of Preston Brooks’ 1856 assault of Charles Sumner on the Senate floor, Brooks was involved in the overtures to a duel with Senator Wilson and Congressman Burlingame. Each of these examples help to demonstrate the contemporary state of dueling and the shifting state of public awareness of that social phenomenon through the first half of the 1850s.
By examining contemporary newspapers and Congressional records at Berkeley, Stanford, and the Library of Congress – with the aid of the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research – this paper will offer a perspective on the socio-political phenomenon of dueling, the press’ perception of those duels, and the escalating sectional conflict of the 1850s.
Andrina Tran
Radicals for Capitalism: Ayn Rand and the Conservative Youth Movement of the 1960s
During the turbulent 1960s, controversial novelist Ayn Rand became a forceful voice for lost and disaffected youth. Through her seemingly impenetrable philosophy of Objectivism, Rand offered a "round universe" of order, rationality, and certainty for young libertarians who felt that both liberals and conservatives were more interested in pragmatism than principle. This project centers on an undeveloped aspect of Randian scholarship - her therapeutic, almost spiritual, role in the intellectual history of conservative American youth. More specifically, it considers how Rand's followers attempted to propagate Objectivism within an overwhelmingly liberal campus atmosphere, while also creating their own Randian-inflected subcultures outside the walls of academia. Although contemporary social observers have tended to characterize Objectivists as cult-like in their devotion to Rand, this emphasis obscured the ways in which youth managed to reach beyond Rand's ideas by engaging in political causes which she herself did not endorse. Furthermore, the presence of these subcultures, even on campuses considered hotbeds of leftist protest, testifies to the overlooked underside of the 1960s: the mobilization of forces that would eventually power the Right-wing resurgence of the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, Rand's libertarian brand of conservatism adds greater depth to our understanding of that contested term, its somewhat paradoxical fusion of religious traditionalism and capitalism; populism and elitism; "respectable" Old Guard and radical "not-so-respectable" Right. Thus, through the lens of youth history, this project aims to illustrate the longevity of the libertarian sensibility not only within the Right-wing firmament, but also within the American psyche.
Aditya Ullal
How Do Doctors Organize? A Study of ‘Organized Medicine’ from 2006 through 2010
Decades after Paul Starr (1982) wrote his Pulitzer Prize winner The Social Transformation of Medicine, there appear two differing narratives on how doctors politically organize. One story describes a dominant American Medical Association as the leader. The other, more recent, has been a counterplot of specialty societies competing for political access. In response to the limited body of knowledge on the topic, this thesis begins by chronicling decades of writing on organized medicine while the second half presents an update to this writing with an original study. Examining 81 organizations that lobbied over healthcare issues from 2006 to 2010 and fit the bill of “modern organized medicine”, the study relies on information from organizational websites and lobbying expenditure data from the Center for Responsive Politics. With the aid of the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research, I also utilize extensive financial data gained from IRS Form 990s of these 81 organizations. Key findings include that modern physician associations spend proportionally few resources towards lobbying, rely heavily on members for revenue rather than outside sources of funding, and generally tend to lobby as a “by-product” of other professional activities.
Annie Zanobini
Female Gubernatorial Candidates 2002-2004: Utilizing Campaign Adverstising to Fight Gendered Perceptions of Viability’
Most of the research in gender and politics looks at women in Congress, specifically examining why women are underrepresented in government. One barrier female candidates face is gender stereotyping. Therefore, it is important to analyze the role of gender stereotypes and the barriers that female candidates confront in a gubernatorial election. Gender politics scholars disagree over whether female gubernatorial candidates are more advantaged if they focus on male or female issues during their campaign. There is less debate over whether female candidates should focus on male or female traits; scholars believe focusing on masculine traits is a more advantageous strategy. Richard Logan Fox defines female traits and male traits as terms that refer to the stereotypes about personal qualities that are usually associated with women and men. While female and male issues are defined by Fox as classifications that refer to those groups of policy issues for which voters have shown a tendency to favor women’s or men’s leadership. For example women are perceived as more competent in policy areas related to health, education, and the environment, while men are perceived as more competent in policy areas related to the economy, crime, and business. In order to confront gendered perceptions of viability, female gubernatorial candidates attempt to confront their perceived weaknesses by emphasizing male traits. However, they take advantage of their perceived strengths and focus on female issues in their television advertisements.
The Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research enables me to conduct my research by providing funding for the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which provided me with hundreds of political advertisements to code for issues and traits. As more case studies become available, scholars should study how campaign messages change when female gubernatorial candidates run against other female gubernatorial candidates and the effects of gender stereotyping on presidential candidates.
