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Constructing Women Who Do Not Reproduce in Global Neoliberalism: Critical Approach to the Abolition of Legal Ban on Abortion and the Struggle in South Korea
Get PDFThis study historically examines the abolition of the legal ban on abortion and the struggle in South Korea, focusing on the construction of the status of “women who do not reproduce”, and accordingly aims to critically analyze how neoliberal reproductive crisis in South Korea has been reorganized into the new order through the constitutive role of the struggle.
The results of the analysis are as follows: First, by examining Fraser’s theory, I explain that when the “boundary” dividing the realms of production and reproduction is a place of contradiction and struggle, the phenomenon of women not reproducing is centrally located at the place of neoliberal crisis, and thus, that constructing it as the status of “women who do not reproduce” can serve as a medium for structuring the new order. I also argue that this political process can be accounted for, in the conditions of global neoliberalism, through the paradox of recognition by deleting laws.
Second, I explore the historical structure of the neoliberal reproductive crisis in South Korea and analyze the process in which status was placed on the boundary. In the process of institutionalizing two earner households by publicly recognizing women through women-friendly laws and policies, women and labor were separated in the struggle, and in this structure, the reproductive crisis resulting from neoliberal adjustments ended up being focused on as a phenomenon in which “women” do not reproduce.
Third, through the context in which the struggle to abolish the legal ban on abortion in South Korea was formed, I analyze the process in which it ultimately constituted the agreed reproductive order of women and capital as a form of “boundary struggle.” As the neoliberal reproductive crisis was focused on the issue of abortion by the state, women’s claims to abolish legal ban on abortion were structured as a struggle to legally recognize the status of “women who do not reproduce”. As a result, I argue that new reproductive norms and relationship have been observed in South Korean society as the law was deleted
Recruiting for the Cause(s): Extremist Propaganda and Radicalization Discourse
No full textIn the “age of the internet,” characterized by the widespread use of social media platforms and user-generated content, extremist propaganda flourishes. Extremist propaganda deploys language to unite and recruit people to an ideological cause rooted in violence; however, existing research about this remains hyper-focused on Islamic extremism, leaving many other groups and ideologies underexplored. Therefore, I ask to what extent does propaganda from non-Islamist extremist groups follow similar discursive patterns and convey similar ideologies to that in Islamist extremist propaganda? And what explains the differences between the discursive patterns, if any? Drawing from broader theories of interpretivism, radicalization, and sociolinguistics, and employing multiple methods of qualitative data collection across digital spaces, I analyzed 14,988 pages of extremist content from the following groups: al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, The Islamic State, and al-Shabaab (Islamist); Atomwaffen Division, Order of Nine Angles, and The Black Order of Pan Europa (White supremacist); and two single-issue groups—Army of God (anti-abortion) and Animal Liberation Front (animal rights). I find that Islamist propaganda appeals to eligible in-groups, defines out-groups, and offers solutions to deal with the out-groups’ supposed threats. While we may expect that the other groups would display similar discursive patterns, given what existing research suggests, there is considerable variation. White supremacists, animal rights, and anti-abortion groups’ propaganda justifies violence in nearly identical ways to Islamists, but it differs in how it constructs in-group identities to recruit potential adherents. These differences are a function of the groups’ ideologies and specific recruitment goals, which are instrumental in shaping how these extremists communicate with their (potential) adherents. By showing that not all propaganda mimics Islamist propaganda, my research advances our thinking about how propaganda is constructed to radicalize its consumers, and it may be used to improve content detection and moderation algorithms, hash-sharing databases, and extremist counter-narratives
Unpacking the Orders
Get PDFAt the end of the first week of his presidency this year in 2025, Donald Trump signed a total of thirty-six executive orders. After only one month, that number had gone up to seventy-six. He is currently on track to sign the highest number of executive orders in his first year in office of any president in the last 50 years, and potentially even the last 100 years if he keeps moving at this rate. In the first 90 days of his term, Donald Trump has signed 159 executive orders, more than any other president in the history of the United States of America. These executive orders have covered a wide variety of topics concerning civil rights, immigration, federal funding, and more. One way that this can be seen is through their treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly of transgender people, within the orders. This project aims to investigate the executive orders issued by Donald Trump in the first 90 days of his second term, along with an analysis on how they impact the LGBTQIA+ community. This will be done by collecting data on each order, understanding the policies that they are trying to instill, and pinpointing where they are in the legislative process and how much impact they’ve currently made
Nurturing the Student Voice and Its Creative Power in Mathematics Teaching and Learning: Research With Students on Emotion, Imagination, and Understanding.
No full textThis research in mathematics education explores the teaching and learning of mathematics at the high school and community college levels, integrating diverse research methods to examine how educators can cultivate a dynamic, collaborative, and responsive classroom climate. Framed by K. Tobin and K. Alexakos’s authentic inquiry education research framework (2020), the methodology actively engages students as co-researchers, valuing their insights and experiences as integral to the learning process. This approach fosters a meaningful dialogue on managing emotional and cognitive challenges faced by students of mathematics while identifying strategies to support and enhance students’ innate imaginative and creative capacities.
Grounded in the practice of hermeneutic phenomenology, the research aims to better understand the reality experienced by students in the classroom and to empower both students and instructors to actively shape a space and climate most conducive to learning. The manuscript-style dissertation is organized into related but independent chapters. Among the methods and associated heuristics employed in different chapters are arts-based self-reflection methods, both textual and visual; narrative inquiry methods; and both group and class dialogues and discussions addressing the practical challenges and philosophical questions that arise. The research reaffirms the importance of the social construction of knowledge in mathematics, enabling students to construct an endogenous understanding of content that emanates from their instincts, lived experiences, and intrinsic motivations.
The findings underscore the significance of addressing emotional and psychological barriers that can impede student creativity and the importance of instructor receptivity and awareness to the prodigious and perennially active student imagination. Students instinctively seek to co-create an environment that is conducive to their learning needs and which promotes the creation of knowledge and understanding organically and authentically from within themselves, and with each other. This work contributes to the growing body of scholarship advocating for holistic, participatory, and innovative approaches to math education
Essays on Educational Policies
No full textThis dissertation consists of two chapters that investigate the impact of two different educational policies. The first chapter is solely authored by me, whereas the second chapter was collaboratively written with my Ph.D. supervisor Núria Rodríguez-Planas. An earlier draft of Chapter 2 is distributed to public in IZA Discussion Paper Series (No.15887).
Chapter 1 In this paper, I investigate the causal effects of New York City\u27s Universal Pre-kindergarten (Pre-K) Program on public-private childcare enrollments for 4 -year-olds, their mothers\u27 employment, and the well-being of both mothers and children. The program was introduced in 2014 and targeted 4 -year-old children. Before the program, there was no free full-time Pre-K for 4 -year-olds in public childcare centers or at Community-Based Early Childhood Centers (CBOs). Due to this, many parents in need of childcare enrolled their children in half-day programs and had to pay a certain fee if they wanted to retain childcare for the rest of the day. This placed a burden on parents-especially for mothers-who worked, or wanted to work, for full-time. By using the American Community Survey (ACS) for the years 2005-2019 and the Child Community Health Survey (2009), Child Health, Emotional Wellness and Development Survey (2015), and NYC Kids Survey (2017) from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, I employ a differences-in-differences (DD) approach. I find that, after the policy, 4 -year-olds are more likely to enroll in public childcare programs and less likely to enroll in private childcare programs compared to 3 -year-olds. 4-year-olds below 200% of the poverty threshold are more likely to enroll in public childcare than children above this threshold. I do not observe any differential impact of the policy based on other socio-demographic characteristics on public childcare. Furthermore, I do not observe improvements in children\u27s cognitive skills. The policy increased working hours for poor and single mothers, albeit these results are only significant at a 10% significance level.
Chapter 2 Using an unbalanced panel of 23,007 academic records spanning from Spring 2019 to Spring 2022 representing one fourth of Queens College student population; and estimating event study analyses with individual fixed effects to control for time-invariant unobserved heterogeneity, we find unintended effects of the flexible grading policy (FGP), which allowed students to exercise the pass/fail option during the first academic year of the pandemic. Once the policy was no longer available, students who had used it underperformed relative to their own pre-pandemic performance relative to the change in performance of students who had never used the policy. FGP users earned 5.3% lower GPA in Spring 2021 and 4.7% lower GPA in Fall 2021 relative to Fall 2019 relative to the change observed among FGP non-users. This pattern is robust to sensitivity analysis and placebo tests. It also holds across tiers of the 2019 cumulative GPA distribution, as well as across various sociodemographic groups. Furthermore, these detrimental effects increased with the intensity of the policy use. Students\u27 response to a survey rules out that these findings may be driven by pandemic-related health shocks, childcare disruptions, or challenges with online learning, financial aid, or job loss. We estimate that using the FGP is associated with an 11% lower likelihood of graduating and a 19% lower likelihood of graduating on-time by Spring 2022. No such negative effect is found using an earlier placebo period
Wielding the Border: A Genealogy of U.S.-Mexico Bordering Practices and the Purposes They Serve
No full textSince its formation, the U.S.-Mexico border has been a vital mechanism in the development of U.S. racial capitalism, the security state, and modalities of social control. There is a conceptual gap between this historical development and contemporary case studies of the U.S.-Mexico border. This dissertation intends to fill that gap by addressing the following questions: Which theoretical lenses can be used to locate the practices and purposes that the contemporary U.S.-Mexico border serves for the U.S. state and its projects of late capitalist development, institutionalized social control, and racialization? What does the evolutionary nature of these practices and purposes reveal about the utility of the U.S.-Mexico border to U.S. statecraft? What connections can be made between contemporary border enforcement practices and their historical development through archival research, critical historical methods, critical ethnographic methods, and participant observations?
This project will employ archival research strategies, institutional ethnographic interpretations of historical and contemporary texts from archives and digitized libraries, and critical, embodied ethnographic methods such as participant observations in the field and interviews with border humanitarian workers
Writing Architecture: Space and Structure in Edith Wharton
No full textFor Edith Wharton, art and architecture do not exist as isolated entities: instead, they serve as dynamic fields wherein individual and cultural experiences, past traditions, and evolving ideas converge, creating meaning that transcends materiality. A correlation between Wharton’s treatises and her literary corpus navigates and challenges architectural theory and spatial analysis. Critically unfolding Wharton’s call for “observation detached from tradition,” where architecture “must be deconventionalized” and “considered in relation to… life” (Italian Backgrounds, 1905), opens the door to new disciplinary foundations. Wharton’s investigation of intimacy—an enduring theme throughout her work—invites exploration of the interplay between the constructed environment and the inner self. Tracing the treatment of private space in Wharton’s work reveals inherently political dimensions of social life emerging from the domestic sphere, where intimacy becomes a contingent element of space shaped by lived experience, memory, and context. The dissertation demonstrates Wharton’s literary insight into transitional space and movement between private and public as it affects her characters, thus establishing a conception of civic space in relation to individuals. It mobilizes literary theory to analyze affective and situational space, framing the dialectic between self and environment as fundamental to the architectural question. This transdisciplinary lens offers a humanistic framework, placing Wharton’s concept of space as “an event in the history of a soul” (The Writing of Fiction, 1925) at its center.
A renewed spatial poetics contributes to both Wharton scholarship and architectural discourse. Thus, the study engages in spatial readings of literary texts where space itself is both a narrative element and a reflection of its structure. Conceptual grounds for interpreting how structure and environment frame human experience are first established in Wharton’s Ethan Frome (1911). The investigation then delves into Wharton’s architectural triad—structures, gardens, and landscapes—demonstrating her anticipation of later theories of site-specificity and environmental contextualism. A constellation of architectural concepts forms a complex spatial syntax that deepens the interpretation of her fiction, detailing Wharton’s critical approach to the adaptation and translation of spatial forms and their subjective experience. Summer (1917) in particular uses concrete physical spaces for more than just symbolic meanings, manifesting in them abstract psychological and social conditions. This analysis defines displaced intimacy, the role of civic territories, and the emergence of transitional spaces—both physical and psychological—where Wharton’s authorial voice opens a literary path into architectural phenomenology
Silver-Alloyed CIGS Thin-Film Solar Cells on Flexible Stainless-Steel Substrate
Get PDFOur dissertation demonstrates the optimization of ACIGS (Ag-Cu-In-Ga-Se) thin-film solar cells, achieving an efficiency of 20.4% through the combined effects of silver incorporation and alkali metal post-deposition treatment (PDT). The incorporation of 2.8% Ag into the CIGS lattice enhanced crystal quality, reduced disorder, and widened the bandgap by 0.103 eV, as evidenced by a significant reduction in Urbach energy. These improvements resulted in stronger light absorption, increased carrier generation, and enhanced photovoltaic parameters, including a short-circuit current density Jsc of 35.31 mA/cm², an open-circuit voltage Voc of 0.74 V, and a fill factor (FF) of 75.8%. PDT using rubidium fluoride (RbF) and potassium fluoride (KF) further passivated defects at grain boundaries and interfaces, minimized recombination losses, and improved carrier collection, contributing to the observed high efficiency.
Comprehensive characterization techniques in our dissertation provided critical insights into material and device performance. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) and glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy (GDOES) revealed uniform depth profiles for Ag and optimized Ga gradients essential for effective charge transport. Spectroscopy external quantum efficiency(EQE) measurements confirmed sharper band edges and reduced sub-bandgap absorption due to Ag doping, while PDT refined interface quality. These findings underscore the importance of combining silver alloying and PDT to improve the optoelectronic properties of ACIGS, enabling its application in flexible and high-performance photovoltaic technologies
Nursing Students’ Perceptions and Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence in Nursing Education
Get PDFBackground/Objectives: Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming nursing, with generative AI (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT offering opportunities to enhance education through personalized learning pathways. This study aimed to explore nursing students’ use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and their perceptions of its use in nursing education, including its advantages, disadvantages, and perceived support needs.
Methods: This study employed an online survey. The participants were 99 undergraduate nursing students in New York City. Data was collected online through self-report measures using semi-structured, open-ended questions. The data was analyzed using content analysis.
Results: Most participants (92%) used GenAI tools to access accurate information, clarify nursing concepts, and support clinical tasks such as diagnoses and health assessments, as well as schoolwork, grammar checks, and health promotion. They valued GenAI as a quick, accessible resource that simplified complex information and supported learning through definitions, practice questions, and writing improvements. However, the participants noted drawbacks, such as subscription costs, over-reliance, information overload, and accuracy issues, leading to trust concerns. The participants suggested financial support, early guidance, and instructional modules to better integrate AI into nursing education.
Conclusions: The results indicate that GenAI positively impacts nursing education and highlight the need for guidelines on critical evaluation. To integrate GenAI effectively, educators should consider introductory sessions, support programs, and a GenAI-friendly environment, promoting responsible AI use and preparing students for its application in nursing education
Peacekeeping in Sierra Leone and Mali
Get PDFThis thesis examines the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions in promoting democracy, protecting human rights, and implementing Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs in post-conflict Sierra Leone and Mali. By analyzing the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), this research explores the impact of these missions on Mali still in conflict and long-term peacebuilding. The study focuses on three critical areas: supporting democratic governance, ensuring human rights protections, and successfully reintegrating former combatants into society. Through a comparative approach, this research analyzes why some peacekeeping missions succeed and then fail. Identifies the successes and challenges of peacekeeping efforts in both countries, emphasizing the role of local political dynamics, security conditions, and international support. The thesis argues that while peacekeeping contributed positively to the democratization process, human rights protections and DDR implementation in Sierra Leone were successful, and in Mali, persistent challenges related to political instability, security threats, and economic difficulties have hindered the full realization of these goals. Lessons from both missions provide insights into improving future peacekeeping operations in fragile states