On December 10, 2016, the phrase “fake news” was first tweeted by @realDonaldTrump:

“Reports by @CNN that I will be working on The Apprentice during my Presidency, even part time, are ridiculous & untrue – FAKE NEWS!”

While emblematic of the recent presidential election and the present political climate at large, Trump’s decrial of the fake news media is hardly a new phenomenon. Rumors, mistruths, and propaganda have persisted since long before Twitter was invented. “Fake news” has functioned historically as a powerful mechanism of oppression and resistance alike, adopting different meanings and consequences for each group that participates in its circulation.

Taking its starting point at the present political moment and working backward, our project culminated in the collection of 100 historical case studies, each detailing the story of a rumor and its aftermath. For example, one case study examined the role of rumors in the Velvet Revolution:

The Czechoslovakian revolution—dubbed the Velvet Revolution—began with a rumor. A mass of thousands of Czechs marching culminated in violence after a lie was spread that claimed that Martin Smid, a 19-year-old college student, had been beaten to death by the police. The revolution ended in the Czechoslovakian regime’s collapse, but the rumor itself had been spread by a journalist and dissident named Jan Urban, who called it a “professional blunder.”

Further case studies attended to medical rumors, such as urban legends surrounding the AIDS crisis, while others examined the rumors that multiply exponentially following moments of political upheaval. The very first case study we recorded this summer, circa 411 AD, focused on a story of a Greek barber who was too easily fooled by a local rumor, which then was recanted as a moral lesson by the philosopher Plutarch.

The formatting of the 100 historical case studies was modeled largely after Tamotsu Shibutani’s seminal work, Improvised News, a fundamental text on rumor studies which examines a number of historical rumors through sociological theory. Our case studies were further supplemented with psychological studies in order to more deeply understand the role of rumor in the human psyche. One, for instance, examined rumor transmission in preschoolers, while another discovered that young girls undergoing early puberty are disproportionately exposed to rumors of higher frequency and intensity than their peers. Allport & Postman, likewise, established the Basic Law of Rumor, a formula by which rumor transmission can be modeled (for the curious: Rumor spread = Importance x Ambiguity).

Of critical importance to our project were recurring visits to libraries in New York City to conduct archival research. At the hallowed New York Public Library, Rebecca Federman, a Vassar alum and Research Coordinator, assisted us in the fundamentals of historical research. During a later visit to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, we accessed the library archives and pored over the George Marshall papers, which included newspaper reports on rumors that culminated in violence and lynchings in America from 1933-1955.

By tracking the lifespan of 100 historical rumors, we became more acutely aware over the course of our two-month project of the myriad ways that lies, rumors, and more specifically, fake news, become accepted as fact. Professor Kumar intends to release the results of the project in a forthcoming book, and I hope to pursue our research in a senior thesis in English—I was particularly struck by a case study on the literature of pseudoscience. This project was my first real step into conducting independent, long-term academic research, and I was relieved to discover that this is work I thoroughly enjoy and could spend a lifetime doing.

Working at the New York Public Library.

Citations

Bilefsky, Dan. “A rumor that set off the Velvet Revolution.” International Herald Tribune, 18 Nov. 2009. Infotrac

Bordia, Prashant and DiFonzo, Nicholas. “When social psychology became less social: Prasad and the history of rumor research.” Asian Journal of Social Psychology (2002) 5: 49–61

Principe, Gabrielle F. et al. “How Rumors Can Engender False Memories in Preschoolers.” Psychological Silence, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Mar., 2006), pp. 243-248.

Shibutani, T. Improvised News: a Sociological Study of Rumor. 1966. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, IN.

This summer I worked with Professor Sarah Pearlman studying the effect of media exposure on women’s likelihood to study or work in computer science. The work completed this summer will be used in a future paper by Professor Pearlman in collaboration with Professors Emily Conover of Hamilton College and Melanie Khamis of Wesleyan College. Our research was inspired by a Planet Money podcast titled “When Women Stop Coding,” which documents and attempts to explain why women are drastically underrepresented in both computer science majors and occupations. In the podcast, the hosts discuss the following graph, which we recreated:

As the graph shows, the trend of female participation in computer science differs from other STEM and high-paying fields—falling drastically after 1984—while female participation rates in all other fields continue to increase. Inspired by Planet Money’s motivating graph, we set out to explain why women are underrepresented in computer science, and in particular, why the trend shifts in 1984.

The first two weeks of the project were spent conducting a literature review of the existing research on the gender wage gap, female occupational choices, the effect of media exposure on individuals, and the cable TV industry. Many sociology and history papers suggest that depictions of computer science in the media may dissuade women from entering the field. Interestingly, 1984 is the year in which the cable TV industry was deregulated by the Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984, causing a large market expansion for cable providers. At the same time, computer science (and more specifically, the nerdy, male computer scientist trope) was gaining traction in American media, as evidenced by movies such as WarGames, Revenge of the Nerds, and Weird Science. In conjunction, the trend in media and cable deregulation and the concurrent industry surge may have caused girls in the 1980s to witness extremely sexist depictions of computer science at a much higher rate than before. This could potentially have led to a drop in female interest in computer science, which would be followed by a drop in female participation in computer-related academia. Due to how cable was developed and how it physically functioned, our hope is to exploit the pattern of cable expansion over time to find natural experiments in which some communities received cable TV access before others by pure chance.

Though we had our plan of analysis mapped out, obtaining the exact data set with which to conduct the analysis was a more complicated matter. It took several weeks to locate the data, but that gave us time to clean other data sets and generate summary statistics, motivating regressions, and graphs to contextualize our research. After reaching out to government agencies, private companies, and libraries, a research librarian at the New York Public Library finally pointed us in the direction of the “Broadcasting/Cablecasting Yearbook, 1989.” We took a day trip to the Science, Industry, and Business branch of the New York Public Library and photocopied over 300 pages of data, which we then manually entered into a spreadsheet for over a week.

1 of 300 pages of raw data

Corresponding data entry

Once completed, we were able to run preliminary regressions in Stata and began learning how to use GIS (a map-based analysis software). After only a few days of working with GIS, we were able to create a map which shows cable expansion over time.

This project has provided me with an invaluable glimpse into the day to day process of economic research and has provided me with a multitude of important research skills beyond what ordinary classwork requires.

This Summer, I worked with Nic Gedigk ‘19 and Associate Professor of Anthropology Candice Lowe Swift on a project using R.E.A.L. Skills as a case study on the impact and sustainability of community based non-profit organizations. Ultimately, we sought to expand our understanding of the role that these may play in creating personal and social change in low-income communities, and how such organizations might be sustained.

Photo Credit: ©Vassar College/ Karl Rabe

So, what is R.E.A.L. Skills? To me, it first began as an acronym. Then, it was an acronym that had meaning – Relationship. Empowerment. Affirmation. Leadership (R.E.A.L.). By the end, it was an acronym whose meaning exemplified a lived philosophy – the lived philosophy of a youth empowerment organization that draws its strength from its community (Poughkeepsie, NY), and channels that strength into a force for growth and change.

As a collaborative, feminist, and publicly engaged anthropological project, our main research methodologies were participant observation and ethnography. Accordingly, Nic and I went into R.E.A.L Skills daily, and deeply immersed ourselves within the workings of the operation. Essentially, we each played two roles – full time staff members and researchers. As staff members (college fellows), we did everything from administrative support (constructing the Summer Learning Academy’s schedule, preparing requirements for grant applications, and

Nic and Daniela leading a restructured Mentor STEM Training

assisting with the transition from the academic year to the Summer session), to preparing and facilitating mentor trainings, creating and teaching a lesson plan on a topic of our interest, and finally, to becoming mentors ourselves. The majority of our time was spent working with the high school mentors and adult staff to provide children from 1st through 5th grade with the best Summer experience possible.

As researchers, Nic and I tried to develop a conceptual map of the actors, services, and policies and that directly influence  R.E.A.L. Skills’ operation. Our first task was understanding what R.E.A.L. Skills is, and what it does. From its mission statement, we know that the program’s initiatives are designed to teach at risk youth (youth with promise) how to navigate the paths of traditional social, educational, and judicial systems, and to understand and obtain mainstream skill competency levels and social values that would empower them to become more successful individuals. Thus, participant observation allowed us see what parts of the program were narrowly tailored to meet said objectives, who were the main beneficiaries, and what unintended but positive consequences arose from them.

This Summer we witnessed and were part of two initiatives – the Summer Learning Academy for elementary school students and the Peer Mentors program designed for high school students. The Summer Learning Academy began the day with breakfast, followed by a community meeting in which values like honesty, integrity, and self-reflection were emphasized, then a word of the day activity ensued, and academics concluded the morning. This Summer, the academics portion was dedicated to making STEM feel fun and accessible to the children.

Photo Credit: ©Vassar College/ Karl Rabe

We used home supplies to design projects like rockets, parachutes, and race cars, and did journal writing to make sure that the kids understood the connection between the hands on activity and STEM.  After lunch, recreational activities like gym, cultural dance, arts and crafts, and circus time ensued. Educational trips to the Museum of Natural History, Marist College, and Wilcox State Park were also scheduled into the programming.

The Peer Mentors program consists of a series of trainings by which high school students become certified in skills like meditation and conflict resolution, alternatives to violence, and peer leadership education and training. Once trained and certified, students are hired to work as mentors for the elementary school children. Many of the mentors grew up coming to R.E.A.L Skills as children, so the Peer Mentor program serves as the next step for them to continue to grow and develop the skills necessary to succeed in life. Every aspect of R.E.A.L Skills is centered on growth, hence their title, “Growth Gang.”

On the surface, R.E.A.L Skills’ main beneficiaries are Poughkeepsie’s youth. However, their impact extends way beyond this demographic. When I asked a teacher what R.E.A.L Skills’ purpose is, she answered, “Better. We want better – better days, better education, better parenting, better role models, a better community – just better all around.” Thus, the organization’s efforts towards a better tomorrow may focus on the youth, but its impact is felt through the whole community. Their scheduling and programing allows working parents to have better days knowing that their kids have a safe and nurturing place to go when they’re not in school. The “R.E.A.L” values students learn and practice (Relationship. Empowerment. Affirmation. Leadership) create individuals better able to navigate traditional spaces, while remaining proud of who they are and where they come from. The truth is, when you invest in a

Trip to Marist College

child, you invest in a better future. For example, several alumni who went on to college returned to contribute their knowledge and individual skills to the community program that helped them get there. After graduating, many hope to work on improving their community. Thus, as a proactive youth empowerment program, R.E.A.L Skills is changing Poughkeepsie’s future.

This project designed towards the intersection of scholarship and activism built upon prior research conducted by Professor Lowe Swift, and is only the most recent example of Vassar’s engagement with R.E.A.L Skills. Over the course of ten years, R.E.A.L Skills has had over 1,000 Vassar interns – 1,000 students who have touched and been touched by R.E.A.L Skills specifically, and Poughkeepsie’s community more generally. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship – we offer our energy, hearts, and minds to the R.E.A.L Skills family, they return them nurtured by the touch of a real and vibrant community.

Currently, Professor Lowe Swift, Nic, and I are working on providing Theodore “Tree” Arrington, the director, with a report of our observations with the aim of sustainability in mind. As we move into the academic year, we will continue our research on the impact and sustainability of community based non-profit organizations through the form of an independent study.  

Amazona versicolor at St. Lucia’s forestry department.

This summer, I worked with Professor Lizabeth Paravisini on determining the reasons for the endangered status of several species of Caribbean parrots and documenting the efforts that are being made to conserve them.  The research we conducted will serve as the foundation of Professor Paravisini’s newest book, an environmental biography that will inform readers of the history of Caribbean parrots and macaws. We began the project focusing on the parrots of Cuba, Dominica and St. Lucia before shifting our focus to attempting to piece together the history of the Caribbean macaws, which are now all extinct.

We spent most of the month of June traveling between Cuba, Dominica and St. Lucia, conducting interviews with prominent figures in parrot conservation. Since we had entered this phase of the project with several concrete theories about the factors that led the Caribbean parrots to become endangered, our focus was on the efforts to conserve the parrots species.

One of 85 artificial nests in Hanabanilla, Cuba. These nests are made out of mud and cement.

Arriving in Cuba, we quickly realized that the laws protecting their parrot population are loosely enforced, doing little to reduce the local parrot trade. Consequently, upon showing interest in the parrot population, Professor Paravisini and I were repeatedly asked if we wanted to purchase a parrot. This is particularly disheartening considering that the parrot population in Cuba is slowly decreasing. Through conversations with forestry officials, we were informed that one of their active conservation projects involves using artificial nests to promote breeding among the parrots since they nest in pre-existing tree cavities. This was a strategy we also noticed in St. Lucia and Dominica, with varying degrees of success.

In comparison, over the course of our time in St. Lucia and Dominica, it was easy to see the booming numbers of their parrot species. We were aware of an educational campaign that began in the 1970’s and 80’s, when the parrot species on both islands was at a dangerous low. Through our research, we found out that in Dominica, the forestry department began the parrot conservation efforts earlier than that, when one of their parrot species became a national symbol upon Dominica’s independence. We heard from several people that parrots had been spotted flying over the ocean in Dominica and were starting to become a pest for farmers in both countries, testaments to the increase in the population of parrots.

Amazona aurausiaca, Dominica’s red-necked parrot, spotted through a telescope in the Syndicate National Park.

In July, I was tasked with collecting all the information that was available through the Internet on the Caribbean macaws. This was a daunting task because all of them have been extinct for centuries, and most of them are categorized as “hypothetical” species. They are categorized in this way because there aren’t any fossils or skins of the macaws to scientifically support their existence, only brief descriptions written during the colonial period. Although most of the literature on the “hypothetical” macaws refutes their existence by comparing their descriptions to those of birds from other nearby islands, I was able to find the original descriptions as well as several depictions of macaws in paintings of European courts that match the descriptions of the “hypothetical” macaws. This finding was exciting because it supports Professor Paravisini’s theory that Christopher Columbus took several species of Caribbean macaws to European courts and to be traded, beginning the demise of the species.

Participating in this project was an incredible experience. It was inspiring to hear so many success stories and to have been a part of the first attempt to piece together the history of these birds.

This summer, Elise Shea, Professor Hoehn, and I conducted research into Germany’s ability to handle the arrival of over 1.5 million refugees since the beginning of 2015. With its large bureaucracy and numerous social programs, many refugees view Germany as their best option for restarting their lives.  We took the summer as an opportunity to better understand the actions Germany are taking on the Federal, State, and local level to determine what has been successful and where the state is failing the people.  Through this research we built connections and found pathways for Vassar Refugee Solidarity, the Mid-Hudson Refugee Solidarity Alliance, and the Consortium on Forced Migration, Displacement and Education to provide various services and initiatives that could pick up some of the slack of the German government.  This summer project also provided the opportunity for us to return to the grass-root level.  We had the opportunity, through various conferences and personal connections, to meet many people with forcibly displaced backgrounds, and to gain knowledge and understanding from them about what we as individuals, and as the organizations and universities we represent, can do to help.

Throughout the summer we attended various conferences and workshops.  We started our time in Berlin with a workshop at Bard College Berlin where we talked with other Members of the Consortium, as well as other small liberal arts colleges and exchanged ideas and projects to find points of collaboration and receive feedback.  It was at this workshop that we learned about BCB’s Arabic 101 program that looks to provide a space for community members and refugees to come together and discuss their daily trials and tribulations.  The same week, we attended the 10-day Conference called Germany, Europe, and the Refugee Crisis: The Challenge to Integrate.  This conference gave us a great introduction into the world of the German bureaucracy where we met with the DAAD, the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, and a member of the German Foreign Office. Although on one hand, the bureaucracy provides various critical services, it also can be very limiting in what services organizations could provide, as they have to stay within a very tight box in order to maintain their funding from the German government.  This conference introduced us to various professors and academics from universities around the United States and proved to be a great intellectual opportunity for us.  

From these two conferences and from the various other workshops we attended, we were eventually introduced to an amazing NGO in Berlin called the ReDI School for Digital Integration.  Due to their prime location, wifi, and numerous computers, the ReDI school seems to be our best opportunity for continued collaboration through our various digital initiatives.  While the entire summer experience has been very informative and helpful, finding and meeting this amazing NGO has really been the icing on the cake of this summer experience! I am looking forward to returning to Vassar to continue pursuing our new connections.

Right: The refugee home in Messe Nord at the ICC.  Most of the people live in this large room together.  The “homes” are 10×10 squares partitioned off by plywood and have no roof.  The lights are on from 6am – midnight.  Each person gets one small locker for their belongings. Left:  The House of World Cultures where the Face It! Konferenz took place. This conference focused on the topics of power-sharing, the production of knowledge, and the questions of what is political and who can be political.  

This summer Professor Höhn, Jessica Schwed, and I traveled to Berlin, Germany in an effort to better understand the refugee situation there, while also exploring avenues for project collaboration between various German institutions and Vassar College.

Between 2015 and 2016, around 1,210,000 people arrived in Germany, the majority of whom came from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. By the end of 2015, 79,000 people had arrived in Berlin alone. 54,000 of these arrivals were granted permission to stay, which was 11 times the projected federal distribution quota.

Of particular significance to our project is the terminology used to refer to the “refugee crisis.” The term “refugee” refers to the legal status of an individual who has applied for and received asylum, therefore granting them refugee status. Through our work here, we have found that terms such as newcomers, forcibly displaced individuals, and people with a migration background are considered more politically correct. Though many of the individuals we met detest the term “refugee,” others feel they have earned the title and Additionally, what is coined the “refugee crisis” actually reflects and should be described as an administrative or political crisis. For the sake of clarity, I use the term “refugee” below.

To get us started, we attended three major workshops/conferences. Our first, at Bard College Berlin, allowed our team to learn about and discuss the various initiatives at Bard College Berlin, Sarah Lawrence College, Colgate University, Hamilton College, Hobart and Williams Smith Colleges, and Vassar College in an effort to identify points of collaboration regarding the refugee situation and receive feedback. The following 11-day intensive workshop organized for faculty in the U.S., “Germany, Europe, and the Refugee Crisis: The Challenge to Integrate,” provided us with a comprehensive overview of the refugee situation in Germany. During this time, we attended lectures by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (associated with the Social Democratic Party), the Heinrich Böll Foundation (associated with the Green Party), the Migrant Welcome Center at Potsdamer Strasse, the Malteser Refugee Center ICC (a refugee shelter), the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Federation of German Unions, Die KAUSA Servicestelle Berlin (which provides technical training for “newcomers”), the Arab-German Young Academy of Sciences and Humanities, The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the European Commission’s Representation in Germany, the Paritätischer Wohlfahrtsverband Hamburg (women’s center), and Humboldt University, among others. Not only did this workshop provide us with an immense amount of research material, we were also able to make key connections with many of these organizations and the U.S. professors that attended the conference. Our final workshop, Face It! Konferenz, put us in contact with more than 60 established non-governmental organizations working with refugees in Germany.

Group work at the Face It! Konferenz.

Undaunted by the intricate nature of Germany’s  bureaucracy and geared up with excellent contacts, we hit the ground running. For the remainder of our time in Berlin we focused on identifying partnerships and planning feasible projects together. Of particular interest is our collaboration with Malteser Hilfsdienst and Malters Werk, one of Germany’s largest social service NGOs with offices across the globe. They run numerous emergency shelters for newly arriving refugees and homes for settled refugees in Germany.  During our conferences we learned that many refugee women have a difficult time attending German language classes because of childcare responsibilities, so we began a partnership with Malteser in which we will coordinate with their existing refugee-German tandem project: German language professors and students in the United States will join in this buddy system and offer private, online tutoring sessions for women free of charge. The idea is that this makes German language learning more accessible to refugee women and provides an opportunity for cross-cultural relationships to form.

Our collaboration with the ReDI-School of Digital Integration might prove to be our most exciting yet. The ReDI-School is a non-profit digital school for tech-interested newcomers applying for asylum in Germany. Their programs offer students high-quality training and the chance to collaborate with the start-up and digital industry. Currently we have plans to offer Vassar courses to students enrolled at the ReDI-School as part of Vassar Refugee Solidarity’s Transnational Classroom project. This collaboration would enable Vassar students to learn alongside students in Berlin, fostering a more robust learning environment on both sides of the Atlantic. We also found incredible interest in our Arabic tutoring program called Conversations Unbound. Starting as a program within Vassar Refugee Solidarity, Conversations Unbound pairs students studying Arabic with tutors with a forcibly displaced background. The students have homework to practice their conversational Arabic online with their assigned tutor and the tutor receives payment for each session. From only two presentations at the ReDI School, we received over twenty tutor applications. By establishing this program at the ReDI School, we’re able to better institutionalize Conversations Unbound at Vassar College and expand to many more colleges and universities.

Adel, a student at the ReDI-School, presenting his project at Demo Day.

Finally, this research and on-the-ground exploration has equipped us with the knowledge to help craft and organize a course curriculum on forced migration and displacement for Vassar College and the institutions participating in the Consortium of Forced Migration, Displacement and Education.

Roosevelt Springwood Mansion–Photo by author

This summer, I was part of an archaeology team that worked on an excavation project of dump sites at the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Park in Hyde Park, NY. The project was led by Professor April Beisaw and my fellow team members included other Vassar students– Jonathan Alperstein, Kelly Bernatzky, Ray Cagnetta, Pedro Millard, and David Sparks. Our job was to excavate the site and analyze the artifacts and data to determine the origin and time period of the dump. Preliminary dating of the sites was roughly in the middle of the twentieth century and many of the artifacts collected were vessel glass, metal fragments, ceramics, windowpane fragments, and an array of other things.

This project is three years long and I joined on the second year after one site was already excavated and we were beginning to excavate the second site. As someone who has never done archaeology before, this project was very beneficial because I got to jump into the uncompleted lab work for the first site, Riverside site, but I also got hands-on experience at a dig site with the second site, the Woods site. On top of my history focused work, I gained valuable practice and exposure about delineating a site, excavating, and surveying the land while at the National Park. Back at the lab, I learned how to wash, prepare, and rebag artifacts, inventory, catalog, research, and draft report pieces.

As a history major, my specific specialization on the project was determining the dating and history of the artifacts and sites. I spent a lot of time identifying and researching artifacts using maker’s marks, internet searches, china patterns, books, and collector’s websites. Some artifacts were very diagnostic, like Milk of Magnesia bottles, while other items were more frustrating, like ferrous nails or tiny paper fragments. The project is ongoing, so I cannot yet write conclusively about a more specific date for the site, but many of the date intersections of the artifacts from the Woods site are in the mid-to-late 1930s.

Milk of Magnesia Bottle from Woods Site–Photo by author

Burned Paper Fragments from Riverside Site–Photo by author

In addition to field and lab work, the team got to attend a tour of the Roosevelt Springwood Mansion for context. Even on a tourist endeavor, we found valuable information regarding our project, a china piece in the parlor matched one of our artifacts, allowing us to figure out the pattern and history. David and I also had the opportunity to conduct extra research at the FDR Presidential Library and Archives in regards to the history of the land. Even though our artifacts and research so far do not point directly to FDR or his immediate family, the archives allow us more access to information about his tenants, servants, workers, extended family members, and neighbors who also used the land.

This summer experience has allowed me to explore research in a very interdisciplinary manner; I applied many of my history skills while at the same time learning about archaeology and anthropology. I am grateful to have the opportunity to get hands-on experience and skills that I will carry on to other research opportunities and I look forward to continuing this project in the fall.

This summer I worked with Professor Andrew Tallon on his project to document architecture  with the possibilities offered by droning and new 360-video technology for an enhanced interactive experience.

Flying a drone with a GoPro camera mount in front of the Vassar library. (From left to right: Professor Andrew Tallon, Karly Andreassen, Amy Laughlin)

Over the course of this project I became familiar with the controls for flying drones in both indoor and outdoor settings. I learned how to shoot 360-video and gained an understanding of the mechanics behind the production of spherical photo and video.  It was also necessary to learn software specifically for synchronizing, editing, and stitching 360-video. With little documentation and many issues to troubleshoot, becoming familiar with this technology was an uphill battle.

Our tests with both 360-video collection and droning then became the foundation for the methods that were used on Professor Tallon’s trip to France where he shot a video sequence on the roof of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame showcasing some of the damage the cathedral has sustained over the centuries.

An example of what can go wrong when sticthing spherical video – due to the current limitations of these cameras parallax errors occur where videos overlap leading to these distorted images which must be manually edited out of the final product.

As the result of the building’s acquisition by the French state in 1905 and the defunding of maintenance to the cathedral after budget cuts, many structural and decorative aspects of the building have become susceptible to The foundation co-founded by Professor Tallon, the Friends of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, seeks to raise funds for the ongoing restoration of the cathedral. Besides editing the video tour, I took on the challenge of redesigning much of the FNDP website to be more user friendly over the course of the summer.

The footage collected this summer has now been published on the website for the Friends of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame in the hopes that it will increase public awareness for the current state of the historic structure. By allowing the viewer to interact with the building in real time, this experimental footage allows for the cathedral to come alive for people who previously did not have access to such a space.

If you would like to learn more about the cathedral and the ongoing restoration effort please visit the FNDP site at http://notredamedeparis.fr/friends/

This June, I aided in the production of season two of the hit philosophy podcast, Hi-Phi Nation, produced by professor Barry Lam. Tatiana Esposito-Von Mueffling was also an assistant, not through the Ford program. We transcribed tape, as per Barry’s guidelines, adding timestamps, labeling speakers, and generally cleaning up the auto-transcribed jumble of words for clarity. Much of the tape we worked on was pre-recorded by Barry at the National High School Ethics Bowl, which provided many opportunities to listen to students from all around the country and from many different socioeconomic/ethnic backgrounds; students from a conservative all-girls private school from Texas and students from an inner-city Detroit high school appeared on the same tape, for instance.

Then, we took a day trip to Boston on June 15th to interview MIT professor and philosopher Kieren Setiya about his upcoming book about/his own midlife crisis.

Photo of the team at MIT, during an interview-trip to Boston.

We used Hindenburg audio editing software, Google Docs, and Google Hangouts this summer to do work.
Another project I worked on was research for future episodes; I chose to find contacts for and information about drug addiction, legal language, and revenge. I also helped Barry with an interview for an upcoming episode about covers in music; we interviewed a music expert and philosopher from upstate New York about what a cover is and the different implications of covers. I especially enjoyed doing this work, as I am an avid musician. The three (two interviewees and Barry) talked for a while and referenced many songs I knew (“Iron Man,” “Respect,” to name a couple), while I sat in the home studio of Barry’s and listened intently. This single recording session was also the most densely-educational hour of the whole month for me: Barry showed me his recording equipment and how it all worked, how the microphones were set up, and how he positioned each one differently depending on the type of microphone being used, etc.
This philosophy podcast was fun and educational to work on, and I am very grateful and glad to have completed this 2017 Ford Scholars project.

What happened to rural communities when they lost access to railroads in the 20th century?

Nearly 40% of all railroads have been abandoned, but a digitized map of abandonments had not yet been constructed for research. This summer, Professor Dustin Frye and I constructed a digital map of railroad abandonments during different period in the 20th century.

Constructing the map required digitizing existing maps of abandonments and matching them to existing digital maps of historical railways. This was done “by hand” in GIS software, and required many hours of additional line-construction and archival research.

Using this exclusive data resource in conjunction with U.S. census data, we are now exploring the impact of railroad abandonment over time.

Railroad abandonments over time; Above: United States; Below: New York State

Our initial findings suggest that the regulatory regime has been a significant factor in whether railroad abandonments have had a strong impact on short- and long-term development. Prior to 1980, railroads were heavily regulated by the federal government and strictly controlled the abandonment process. Preceding a tidal wave of deregulation under Ronald Reagan, President Jimmy Carter deregulated American railroads through the Staggers Act of 1980.

President Carter signs the Staggers Act of 1980

Deregulation allowed railroad companies to abandon unprofitable lines without regard to the impact on rural communities. Consequently, our early findings suggest that communities that underwent abandonments after deregulation were more severely impacted. The data suggest that deregulated abandonments caused lower wages and a selective out-migration of poorer residents.

Moving forward, we will further solidify the evidence and explore agricultural shifts over the same period due to railroad abandonment. We will also examine satellite data to examine regional growth patterns around abandoned lines and their respective stations. 

We hypothesize that agricultural areas shifted their mix of products in response to railroad loss, as certain products such as wheat are only feasibly transported via rail systems. We also expect that urban growth (as measured by satellite data) will slow or reverse in rural towns dependent on railroads and their associated industries.

This project was and continues to be exciting and fulfilling for us, and we’re immensely grateful to the Ford Scholars Program for their support this summer.