Student News: Spring 2019

Student News: Spring 2019

Featured Student News from our 2019 department newsletter, Homo Politicus. Access the newsletter archive here.
Ariel Mekler (level I) is presenting “Queer (in)security in the age of LGBTIQ Inclusion,” at the Junior Scholar Symposium & Queering the Global South panel at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association. She is also presenting “Mapping LGBTIQ Inclusion and Mainstreaming in International Institutions,” at the Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference at City College of New York on March 12-15, 2019.
Ankita Aggarwal (level I) co-edited The Right to Food Debates: Social Protection for Food Security in India (Orient BlackSwan 2018).
Sumru Atuk (level III) won a 2018 Research Grant from the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa for her project, “‘It is in Your Fitrat to Die:’ Neoliberal Conservatism, Strengthening the Traditional Family and Women’s Right to Life in Turkey.”
Andrés Besserer Rayas (level I) is presenting “Pax Mafiosa or Peacebuilding, Are Gang Truces Successful Ways to Deal with Criminal Violence in Latin America? An Exploration of the Salvadoran 2012-2014 Gang Truce,” at the Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference at City College of New York on March 12-15, 2019.
Harry Blain (level I) published three article in Foreign Policy in Focus: “It’s Never ‘Just the Immigrants’” , “The New Congress Can End Wars and Constrain the ‘Deep State.’ Will It?”,  and “Can the New Congress Keep Intelligence Agencies in Check?”  He also published “Metaphors of Dis-Ease, Collaborating with Artist Mariam Ghani” on the Graduate Center’s The Center for Humanities Blog. He also attended a conference on the future of US grand strategy in East Asia in Los Angeles from January 18-19.
Emily Crandall (level III) is presenting a co-written paper with alums Rachel H. Brown (2016) and John McMahon (2016) entitled “Toward an Anti-Work Democratic Ethos” on the Work, Labor, Community panel in the Political Theory: Critical and Normative section at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association.
Toby Irving (level I) published “The NYC Women’s March Careens Into a Debate About Zionism” in Jewish Currents.
Philip Johnson (level III) published “López Obrador’s Public Enemy Number One” in the North American Congress on Latin America. He is presenting “Counterinsurgency Without Insurgency: Insights on Criminal Violence from Mexican Narco-Messages” at the Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference at City College of New York on March 12-15, 2019. He is also presenting a draft chapter of his dissertation on “Reading Mexican Narco-Messages as Speech Acts” at the annual meetings of the Latin American Studies Association, the International Studies Association, and the Western Political Science Association.
Giovanna Kuele (level I) co-authored “The Global South and UN Peace Operations” in E-International Relations with Professor Thomas Weiss.
Pierre Losson (level III) is chairing a panel at the annual meeting of the Latin American Studies Association that he organized on “Heritage discourses: from nation-building to nation-branding?” It will feature Christopher Parisano, a GC anthropology student, as well as researchers from The University of Pennsylvania, Leiden University, and the Institute of Peruvian Studies. In addition, he will present “Recuperando lo Nuestro: Why Have Latin American States Sought the Return of Cultural Heritage Objects Since the late 20th Century?”
Nicholas R. Micinski (level III) presented an invited lecture on “Everyday Humanitarianism & New Technologies” at Amherst College in October 2018. Nick will also be presenting at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association on “The Politics of EU Migration-Development Aid and Transit States,” “Political Cartoons and the EU ‘Refugee Crisis’ 2015-2017,” and a roundtable on “Theorising Coercion and Migration in World Politics.”
Christopher Putney (MA) published “Donald Trump’s rhetoric isn’t the end of the presidency as we know it, but a symptom of what it has become” in the LSE US Centre’s daily blog on American politics and policy.
Heidi Andrea Rhodes (level III) presented at the 2018 American Studies Association in Atlanta in November. The panel was called: “(Re) Emergent Bones: Settler Colonial Spaces and the Accumulation of Human Remains” and her paper was titled “Accumulation, Bodies, Surplus, Loss: An American Arithmetic of Death and Disappearance.” In addition, she published a poetry collection The Inheritance of Haunting (Notre Dame Press 2019).
Jenna Russo (level I) is presenting “R2P in Syria and Myanmar: Norm Violation and Advancement” at the Critical Perspectives on Human Rights Conference at City College of New York on March 12-15, 2019. She will also be presenting her work at the New England Political Science Association Conference in Portland, ME, in April. 
Sally Sharif (level III) published two papers: “Predicting the End of the Syrian Conflict: From Theory to the Reality of a Civil War” in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism and “A Critical Review of Evidence from Ex-Combatant Re-Integration Programs” for the Social Science Research Council project on Politics of Return. She received the Provost’s Digital Innovation Grant for participating in the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) summer program.   
B Stone (level III) presented “Pathologies of Power: An Ordinary Language Analysis of ‘Addiction’” at the annual meeting of the Western Political Science Association.