Research Grants (May 2009)
Brooke Barbier
“Women’s Friendships in the Early Republic: The Route to Confidence and Character”
Brooke Barbier is a Ph.D. Candidate in the history department at Boston College, and a Stonehill Fellow at Stonehill College. Her research examines the nature of women’s friendships in nineteenth century Boston, and explores the vital support they provided. In the early republic, friendship amongst women was particularly important, as – despite a new government that touted broad-ranging democratic ideals – it was commonly the only egalitarian relationships gracing these women’s lives. Female friendships allowed women to feel more confident in themselves and develop stronger, more assured characters, of the sort that nourished and sustained them in both their personal and civic lives.
Aniruddha Bose
“The Dockworkers of Calcutta: Workers at a Node in the Network of Global Commerce”
Aniruddha Bose is a Ph.D. candidate at the history department at Boston College. His research explores the lives of the laborers that worked at the port of Calcutta during the high noon of British colonialism in India (1860-1910). It will demonstrate the complexities of social interactions, work, and politics that defined life for workers in colonial Calcutta, and the critical importance of the colonial state in shaping Indian society. Bose’s analysis promises to shed light on the emergence of democracy in India by highlighting its origins in subaltern politics.
Kathryn Black
“A Woman Without a Country: Citizenship, Identity, and the Trial of Tokyo Rose”
Kathryn Black is a Ph.D. Candidate and teaching fellow in the history department at Boston College. She is researching the post-World War II treason trial and citizenship status of Iva Toguri d'Aquino, a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose," in order to expose the problems of national membership that plague women and minorities in wartime. Using the trial as a case study of the problems of documentation and non-citizenship, Black’s work will demonstrate how considerations of race, gender, and national security can deprive an individual of her citizenship and, as a consequence, of her identity.
Joseph Cioni
“An Analysis of the Subprime Mortgage Crisis Using the Thought of Bernard Lonergan”
Joseph Cioni is a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy at Boston College. Cioni will employ a number of theoretical tools provided by the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan – including bias, the structure of the human good, positions and counterpositions, schemes of recurrence, and emergent probability – in an effort to understand why and how the current subprime mortgage crisis emerged. His focus will be on the ways in which Lonergan’s thought illuminates our understanding of the roles assigned to and tasks performed by the various private and governmental parties and institutions implicated in the crisis.
David Deese and Kerem Oge
“The Dilemma of Political Reform and Development in Islamic States with ‘The Resource Curse’”
David Deese is a professor of political science at Boston College. Kerem Oge is a Ph.D. student in political science, who will be assisting him with his research. Deese’s research maps out fundamental barriers and possible solutions to the gradual development of constitutional democracy in states heavily dependent on the production and export natural resources. It integrates insights from comparative political economy, regional and comparative politics, the international political economy of development, and institutional economics in order to help isolate the most appropriate and feasible paths to political reforms, which will in turn accelerate social and economic development. Research supported by the grant will enable Deese and Oge to develop case studies of major energy exporting states in the Middle East and Africa. The study will evaluate “best practices” among such states with regard to leadership and management of the resource sector and to constitutional developments such as the establishment of elected parliaments and consultative councils.
Daniel Geary
“An Inquiry into the Political Thought of Orestes Brownson”
Daniel Geary is a Ph.D. student in the political science department at Boston College. The grant will enable him to conduct research on the thought of the American intellectual and political activist Orestes Brownson (1803-1876). Geary’s research will focus on how Brownson understood the character of the American regime, the nation’s underlying principles, prominent Founders and statesmen, church-state relations, and the role of the Catholic Church in the United States. He intends to examine Brownson’s writings from throughout his varied career, from his years as a Transcendentalist through his conversion to the Catholic faith. Geary plans additionally to consult the secondary literature on Brownson’s life and the progress of the Catholic Church in nineteenth-century America.
Hidetaka Hirota
“Nativism, Citizenship, and the Deportation of Paupers in Massachusetts, 1848-1877”
Hidetaka Hirota is Ph.D. Candidate in the history department at Boston College. His research will examine the nineteenth century Massachusetts nativist scheme to deport Irish paupers – including American-born children of immigrant parents – to Ireland and Britain. In doing so, Hirota’s project will explore the meanings and limitations of nineteenth-century American citizenship and civil liberties. Hirota’s work promises to unearth the existence of state-level institutionalized immigration control before the age of federal immigration restriction, thus demonstrating a long-standing nativist tradition in the history of the United States.
Katherine Hubler
“Male Allies of the German Women’s Movement, 1865-1919”
Katherine Hubler is a Ph.D. Candidate in the history department at Boston College. Her research explores the role of men in the German women’s movement and their contributions to gender ideology and “feminist” activity over the course of the Imperial Period, the Great War, and the founding of the Weimar Republic. Her work additionally examines the ways in which masculinity was shaped and contested in response to the demands for women’s increased inclusion in German society and politics. A gendered reading of the public sphere in Imperial Germany, she argues, will enrich our historical understanding of the practical politics, the cross-gender relationships, and the somewhat problematic democratic legacy of social movements in Imperial Germany.
Ken Kersch and Matthew Karambelas
“Forging Constitutional Conservatism: 1954-1980”
Ken Kersch is an associate professor of political science, history, and law, and the director of the Clough Center. Matthew Karambelas is a member of BC’s Class of 2010. Karambelas will assist Kersch in researching a book on the varieties and development of conservative constitutional thought between the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education school desegregation decision and the election of President Ronald Reagan.
Jeffrey Malanson
“Addressing America: Washington’s Farewell and the Making of National Culture, Politics, and Diplomacy, 1796-1852”
Jeffrey Malanson is Ph.D. candidate in the history department at Boston College. His research examines the popular and political uses and understandings of George Washington’s Farewell Address, and the principles of foreign policy it outlined, in the 50 years after Washington’s death. He argues that the Address is an extraordinary lens through which to investigate early American conceptions of foreign policy and the place of the United States in the larger world. Malanson’s work will specifically address the ways in which the principles Washington discussed in his Address evolved in the American consciousness, and assess the role the Address and these principles played in shaping political culture and diplomacy in the early republic.
Michael O’Brien
“Cosmopolitanism and Constitutional Democracy”
Michael O’Brien is a M.A. student in philosophy at Boston College. His research will focus on Jürgen Habermas’ and David Held’s recent writings on cosmopolitanist, constitutional democracy – particularly as a possible remedy to problems of global justice. While Habermas’ democratic cosmopolitanism is moderate, and Held’s is more radical, both agree that the solidification of international law via constitutional/democratic means is crucial for the establishment of a just international order. O’Brien argues that the compelling and urgent claims of these two thinkers – along with many others working in the same area – are crucial to the future of our nation-state and to the achievement of an increasingly just world order.
Alan Rogers and Anna Kolchinsky
“Children’s Health Care: The First Amendment and Bodily Autonomy”
Alan Rogers is Professor of History at Boston College and Anna Kolchinsky is a Ph.D. Candidate in BC’s History Department. Rogers is writing a book about opposition to compulsory vaccination for childhood diseases in the United States from the mid-18th century to the present. Vaccination opponents have rationalized resistance on the basis of religious faith, the First Amendment’s “free exercise” clause, the right to privacy, and, most recently, problematic scientific evidence. Rogers will argue that a parent’s right to deny vaccination to a minor child is not absolute and should not be constitutionally or legally accommodated.
Franziska Seraphim and Rie Taniguchi
"Transitional Justice and Constitutional Democracy in 1950s Japan"
Franziska Seraphim, associate professor of history at Boston College, and Rie Taniguchi, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at BC, will conduct research on “Transitional Justice and Constitutional Democracy in 1950s Japan.” Demilitarization and democratization were the twin goals of the U.S.-led occupation of Japan after 1945 until the deepening Cold War shifted occupation priorities towards the end of the decade. Politically and administratively, this meant dismantling Japan’s far-flung wartime empire and military machine, and introducing a wide range of reforms, from the electoral system to education. The most prominent legal tools in this dual approach to “regime change” were an extensive war crimes trial program and the purge of tens of thousands of public sector workers on the one hand, and the writing of a new constitution on the other. The Tokyo war crimes trial and the making of the “peace constitution” have received much scholarly attention as separate issues in Japan’s postwar democratization, yet they were both part of a broader process of “transitional justice.” Seraphim’s project examines the social consequences of Allied and especially American practices of transitional justice in post-occupation Japan. Postwar social reconstruction in Japan in the 1950s meant nothing less than redrawing the boundaries of society after war and occupation within the framework of the new “peace constitution”: rehabilitating those who had been criminalized, denied aid, or otherwise disadvantaged by occupation policies, marginalizing those of ambiguous social status, such as Koreans and Chinese who chose not to repatriate, and other overt or concealed processes of social realignment. This study argues in effect that important social norms about citizenship evolved not from lessons learned from the occupiers but from processes of rehabilitation, compensation, and the recasting of ethnic and racial distinction in response to foreign occupation in the broader contexts of Cold-War politics and economic recovery.
Hillary Thompson
“Whose Justice, Which Law? Making Sense of Horizontal Federalism”
Hillary Thompson is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at Boston College. Her research examines the workings of horizontal federalism in America. Horizontal federalism deals with the relationships between the 50 co-equal states that scholars of (vertical) federalism treat as a single unit; it addresses the areas of conflicting concurrent state authority. As practiced today, horizontal federalism is seemingly an assortment of ad hoc measures that aim at balancing practical and ideological needs for consistency between states with desires for state differentiation. Thompson’s research seeks common themes in the apparently ad hoc practice of horizontal federalism.