Source Project

A First-year Research Experience in the Humanities and Social Sciences

The exploration of ideas and perspectives are fundamental to finding new ways to understand — and support — the human experience. Undertaking research in the humanities and social sciences as a first-year student provides a skillset that students can utilize throughout their college career and carry into professional endeavors. 

The Source Project is a sequence of two, four-credit courses called research streams that take place in the fall and spring semesters of a student's first year at Binghamton University. Students have the opportunity to discover sources and interpret their significance. They ask questions and seek answers, guided by experienced faculty who engage in these practices as their profession. Students produce original projects, express their findings, and learn how to communicate and disseminate the relevance of their work. 

To see the projects that Source Project students have created, visit the Research Days Poster Session website!

The Source Project is an excellent opportunity to connect with other first-year peers who share similar interests. This experience provides a dynamic and engaging small class environment that encourages the building of meaningful connections with both fellow students and professors. We aim to match the rigor and engagement of a small liberal arts college experience with the resources of a large research university.

Throughout their year in the Source Project, students not only gain impactful knowledge, they become the sources of knowledge themselves. 

"My experience was incredible and I often tell people about my experiences. Even now… I feel like I have an amazing and constantly-growing network of intelligent and like-minded people… I truly believe that this program helped me find my passion and now, I can't imagine myself pursuing anything else career-wise."

Program Highlights 

2025 - 2026 Research Streams

• Arts and Innovation: Do It Wrong on Purpose

  Arts and Innovation: Do It Wrong on Purpose

  ARTS Christopher Robbins

  Students learn sculpture, movement, improvisation, and community-engaged art techniques as ways to analyze dominant processes in other fields and industries, and translate this creative inquiry into structured projects. The course is built on lessons from diverse cultures including Brazil (Augusto Boal), Costa Rica (Rogelio López), Taiwan (Tehching Hsieh), and Cuba (Guillermo Calzadilla), among others. By focusing on the process of movement and their interactions with the structures they build, students gain analytical and perceptual skills that can be utilized in any field, material, or media. This includes project-based strategies, dynamic group-interaction, self-discovery, reflection, analysis, observation and merging artistic practices into problem-solving processes.

  The Fall course lays a crucial foundation for students to engage in their own research projects in the Spring by developing a toolkit of artistic and analytical strategies applicable across multiple disciplines. Through hands-on experiences with sculpture, movement, improvisation, and community-engaged art techniques, students learn to approach research with creativity and a deep understanding of structural interactions. The course draws from global artistic traditions, including the work of Augusto Boal from Brazil, Rogelio López from Costa Rica, Tehching Hsieh from Taiwan, and Guillermo Calzadilla from Cuba, offering a rich and diverse framework for understanding how art can inform and inspire research.

  By examining dominant processes in various fields through the lens of the arts, students gain valuable skills in observation, analysis, and critical thinking. They explore how to deconstruct complex systems and apply problem-solving methods derived from artistic practices. This interdisciplinary approach encourages students to think beyond conventional boundaries and equips them to design and execute their own projects – which may be in the arts or any field – that are both rigorous and imaginative.

  The focus on dynamic group interaction, self-discovery, and reflective practice fosters a collaborative and introspective environment, preparing students to engage meaningfully with their own research questions. The project-based strategies introduced in the fall semester provide a solid framework for developing research proposals, strategic planning, and translating creative inquiry into structured projects in the Spring. Students are not only ready to launch into their research but are also equipped to contribute fresh perspectives and methodologies to their chosen fields.

  The sequence will likely fulfill O - Oral Communication, Aesthetics - A, and Physical Activity - Y.

  Christopher Robbins is the Founding Director of the School of the Arts at Binghamton University, which brings together Art & Design, Art History, Cinema, Creative Writing, Music, Theatre, and Dance within an acclaimed Research 1 University. He is an artist, organizer, and educator, known for his collaborative and socially engaged art projects. Robbins co-founded the international collective "Ghana ThinkTank," a group that develops creative solutions to problems in the so-called First World by drawing on perspectives from "developing" nations. His work blends art, activism, and public engagement, creating participatory installations and performances that advance the role of art in fostering social change. His work with Ghana ThinkTank has been featured in major international exhibitions including the Venice Biennial of Architecture, National Museum of Wales, Hong Kong/Shenzhen Biennale, and ZKM Museum of Contemporary Art in Karlsruhe, Germany. He has been awarded residencies from Skowhegan, MacDowell Colony, Haystack, Penland and Anderson Ranch, and spoke at the Creative Time summit, the United Nations, and the White House. His work at the School of the Arts here at Binghamton University is pushing the boundaries of what the arts can achieve by expanding thinking within as well as outside the arts, including engineering, ecology, conflict-resolution, and much more.

• Climate Justice

  Climate Justice

  PHIL 180D/ENVI 181A and PHIL 280D/ENVI 280J
  Matthew Cole 

  For decades now, we have understood that climate change is caused by human carbon emissions and that it poses a threat to the lives, livelihoods, and basic human rights of every person on earth, with the most severe and rapidly escalating consequences for the inhabitants of the world’s poorest nations. Experts agree that a total elimination of carbon emissions by 2050 is necessary to prevent devastating and irreparable damage to the planet and the human communities that depend on it. The pathway to a secure and livable future is narrowing, and realizing it poses considerable challenges: for scientific and technological research, economic and industrial policy, democratic politics and international cooperation.

  It also raises numerous problems of justice. The ongoing effects of climate change exacerbate existing problems of poverty and inequality and compound legacies of colonial exploitation as well as long-standing disparities of race, gender, and class. Even as it multiplies real injustices, climate change raises novel challenges to our ideas about justice and to related ideas about responsibility, rights, and government. It forces us to grapple with obligations that extend around the globe, forward in time, and across a multitude of human and non-human beings – obligations that neither our conventional wisdom nor our extant institutions are well-equipped to fulfill.

  In this course, we explore the fraught politics of the climate crisis with an emphasis on issues of justice. We examine the political and ideological forces that have entrenched climate injustice, campaigns of resistance from vulnerable frontline communities, and possibilities for a just transition advanced by activists and policymakers around the world. Our course materials weave together the past, present, and future of life on earth, highlighting the connections between climate justice and the regeneration of democratic institutions, the repair of historical injustices, the rebuilding of international solidarity, and the reimagination of global governance. Though our course will be grounded in political theory and related social science disciplines, we also converse with scientists, journalists, policymakers, activists, and artists who have engaged the public to imagine the stakes of the crisis and the possible alternatives.

  The fall semester introduces students to a range of key concepts, theories, and research questions reflecting a range of disciplinary perspectives. Students engage closely with both foundational and cutting-edge work in the social sciences and humanities, discussing and responding to works addressing the social psychology of climate change denial, policy designs for a just transition, the historical connections between colonialism and the climate crisis, the philosophical case for climate reparations, and more. 

  In the spring semester, students develop and pursue a unique research agenda extending from their work. After learning the fundamentals of database research, they take an important first step from reader to researcher by assembling an annotated bibliography and critical literature review on the topic of their choice. From there, they have the opportunity to try out a variety of qualitative and interpretive research methods, and to learn key scholarly maneuvers such as testing a theory, constructing a case study, and intervening in a debate. In addition to generating an original piece of scholarship, students get to explore methods for sharing research with broad audiences in engaging multimedia formats: curating a digital exhibit, creating a podcast or explainer video, or exploring other creative applications of their research.

  The sequence will likely fulfill G - Global Interdependencies, I - Information Literacy, T - Critical Thinking, N - Social Science general education attributes in the fall semester and C - Composition, O - Oral Communication, T - Critical Thinking, I - Information Literacy, and N - Social Science in the spring semester. 

  Matthew Cole is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his PhD in Political Science from Duke University and his BA in Political Science from Carleton College. Before joining Binghamton, he taught at Harvard University, Emerson College, and Duke University, where his classes covered topics in political science, history, ethics, interdisciplinary studies, and expository writing. His research and writing in political theory address the question: how do visions of the future shape the terrain of political thought and action? This question informs his forthcoming book, Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century, as well as his work on topics such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, climate fiction, technocracy, “smart democracy,” and the Green New Deal.

• Debating Basic Income

  PHIL 180A/ENG 180N/ECON 181A and PHIL 280A/ENG 280N/ECON 181B
  Will Glovinsky

  In the past decade, the idea that governments should give people regular, unconditional cash payments has become an unexpectedly mainstream policy proposal. From Switzerland to Stockton to Kenya, pilot programs and campaigns for universal basic income have made headlines at a time of mounting uncertainty about the future of work in an age of automation and artificial intelligence. What is less well known is that the idea of basic income has been robustly debated for 250 years. In this research stream, students will approach the concept of “income for all” from philosophical, economic, literary, historical, and public policy perspectives. Our premise will be that we cannot rigorously evaluate the potential effects of this compelling yet controversial idea without understanding where it comes from, how it has been argued for, and why it has repeatedly captured imaginations over centuries.    

  In the fall, students will explore primary sources related to the origins and development of basic income. We will begin by immersing ourselves in the circle of late-eighteenth-century English ultra radicals led by Thomas Spence, who first proposed an economic system in which individuals will rent land from parish governments rather than private landlords, with the rental income then distributed equally to all residents, male and female, as a regular cash dividend. Students will examine Spence’s philosophical milieu as well as the strikingly literary quality of his writings, which include a sequel to Robinson Crusoe where the islanders implement a basic income and ballads sung in taverns to spread his views among the London working class. Since these radical ideas were inspired by colonial accounts of Indigenous resource sharing, students will then turn to Lahontan’s 1703 Dialogue with a Savage (adapted from conversations with the Wyandot diplomat Kandiaronk) to trace the transatlantic intellectual exchanges that contributed to Enlightenment egalitarianism. Later units will focus on documents relating to the Jamaican abolitionist Robert Wedderburn, Henry George’s “single tax” movement, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s writings on guaranteed income, Juliet Rhys-Williams and Milton Friedman’s “negative income tax”, and the Canadian “Mincome'' experiment run during the 1970s. Over the semester, students will gain skills in using close textual analysis to ask questions about historical documents while also locating individual works within broader intellectual genealogies. Our guiding questions will examine how the divergent philosophical premises—ranging from socialism to neoliberalism—underlying basic income proposals have shaped their structures, justifications, and popular receptions. Is basic income a political entitlement or something owed to people as a natural right? How would it be funded, and who would be eligible? What would be its effects on labor, family, and the environment?    

  In the spring, students will select a subset of disciplinary methods and formulate a research project that explores one chapter in the history of basic income. A series of workshops will introduce students to both archival resources and digital databases, and they will present their works-in-progress throughout the semester. As part of their final projects, students will publish from their findings by curating an entry in a multimedia digital timeline providing accessible histories and analyses of basic income’s sources. 

  The sequence will likely fulfill H - Humanities, I - Information Literacy, T - Critical Thinking, and W - Harpur College Writing general education requirements in the fall semester and O - Oral Communication and W - Harpur College Writing in the spring.  

  Will Glovinsky is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities. Before arriving at Binghamton, he was a lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. A specialist in 19th-century British literature, he is revising his first book on the regulation of feeling in realist novels and imperial culture. His next project explores how the idea of universal basic income—or giving cash regularly to everyone—emerged in 18th- and 19th-century tavern ballads, dialogues, essays, and novels. In between, his essays and courses have explored topics such as narrators who regret their treatment of villains, the role of liberation in the novel, and the history of close reading.

• Futures Past

   Futures Past
  Will Glovinsky

  Writers, theorists, filmmakers, and planners have long speculated about the shape of things to come and asked how future developments might affect us. These predictions have sometimes been uncannily accurate: space travel, climate change, television, and even credit cards all appeared first in the pages of fiction. Other aspirations and fears have not (yet) been realized but continue to guide political, social, and ecological movements. In the fall semester of this stream, we will survey this fascinating history of expectation, dread, and yearning for possible futures, focusing on British and US cultural production since 1800. Our primary texts will include both canonical and little-known works of speculative fiction, literary utopias and dystopias, and science fiction novels and films; we will also consider political treatises and manifestos, upstate New York’s prolific intentional communities, and modernist architecture and urban planning. A selection of influential critical and theoretical works will provide new vocabularies and methods to guide our discussions. As we investigate these strange and prescient visions, we will ask how speculation about previous eras of change can illuminate contemporary advances and challenges, from AI to genetic engineering to the climate crisis.
  
  In the spring, students will develop and complete independent research projects focused on specific texts, social questions, technologies, or political movements of special interest to them. Joining close textual analysis with original research into the reception, adaptation, and afterlives of their chosen works, students will learn to use digital databases and other archival resources to tell compelling, critically informed stories about the futures of yesteryear––and what they mean for us today.

  The sequence will likely fulfill general education requirements in the fall semester and in the spring semester.  

  Will Glovinsky is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities. Before arriving at Binghamton, he was a lecturer in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where he received his Ph.D. A specialist in 19th-century British literature, he is revising his first book on the regulation of feeling in realist novels and imperial culture. His next project explores how the idea of universal basic income—or giving cash regularly to everyone—emerged in 18th- and 19th-century tavern ballads, dialogues, essays, and novels. In between, his essays and courses have explored topics such as narrators who regret their treatment of villains, the role of liberation in the novel, and the history of close reading.

• Learning Law and Legal Studies

  Learning Law and Legal Studies
  PLSC
  Wendy Martinek

  Law as an academic field is often thought of as the study of legal doctrine and precedent, guided by legal theory and the application of logical reasoning. While that is one approach to the study of law, a multidisciplinary approach recognizes that law cannot be fully understood in isolation from its larger societal context. It draws on the methods and insights from a diverse array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, economics, history, literature, political science, psychology, and sociology. For example, anthropological frameworks can be used to parse the relationship between law and culture. Economic concepts can be used to evaluate which legal rules are most efficient. Historical analysis can be used to reveal the evolution of law and legal norms over time. The tools of literary analysis can be used to understand the meaning of legal texts. Political science theories can be used to explain how the law affects the political and policymaking processes. Psychological models of decision making can be used to inform our understanding of the decision making of legal actors. Sociological perspectives can be used to show how social structures shape (and are shaped by) legal norms.

  The fall semester will introduce students to the theoretical frameworks and methodological toolkits these disciplines leverage to analyze and understand the law. We will engage with representative texts from each of the selected disciplines guided by the following sets of questions: How is law conceptualized in each discipline? What are the distinctive characteristics of each discipline’s conception of law? What are the kinds of questions about law that are posed in each discipline? To what extent do the questions posed in each discipline differ from or overlap with those posed in the other disciplines? What are the methodologies used to address the questions posed in each discipline? How can methodological tools from different disciplines be used to study the same legal phenomena?

  Over the course of the fall semester students will develop the skills necessary to identify literature relevant to their interests from different disciplines, critically analyze that literature on the basis of relevant disciplinary standards, and understand the epistemological foundations on which disciplinary knowledge rests. These skills will be developed with a portfolio of both oral and written work that allows students to practice the various research methods, both individually and in teams.

  The spring semester will afford students the opportunity to formulate a research question related to their substantive interests in the law. They will then select a set of disciplinary methods (drawing from two or more disciplines) to explore the answer to their research question. For example, a student who is interested in free speech might apply literary analysis techniques to U.S. Supreme Court decisions interpreting the Free Speech Clause and then apply a political science model of judicial decision making to the votes of the justices in those cases. As another example, a student interested in tort reform might engage in a historical analysis of changes in tort law over time and then rely on tools from economics to evaluate how various tort law schemes compare on different economic dimensions. Though students will each pursue their own individual research project, they will also work with their classmates (and me) to workshop ideas, engage in project planning, conduct peer review of work in progress, and prepare for presentations of their work in a poster session.

  The sequence will likely fulfill T - Critical Thinking, I - Information Literacy, N - Social Science, and W - Harpur College Writing general education attributes in the fall semester and N - Social Science, O - Oral Communication, and W - Harpur College Writing in the spring semester. 

  Wendy Martinek is Professor of Political Science. She earned a B.A. in political science and philosophy from Lawrence University, an M.A. in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a Ph.D. in political science from Michigan State University. A former program officer for the Law and Social Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation, she is particularly interested in multidisciplinary approaches to the study of law. Her current research projects include an investigation of off-the-bench appearances by U.S. Supreme Court justices to understand what motivates the justices to engage in that behavior and what the effects of that behavior are on the legitimacy of the Court. She is also engaged in one stream of research on the institutional design of courts (with a focus on the Irish judicial system) and another stream of research on interest group participation in state courts.

• Migrations and Diasporas in Upstate New York

   Migrations and Diasporas in Upstate New York

  ANTH 180B/HIST 180C and ANTH 280D and HIST 287A

  This course devotes two successive semesters to understanding migration in/from the Middle East and North Africa through a historical and anthropological lens in collaboration with the American Civic Association. The course will engage with a range of theoretical debates, issues and concepts surrounding the phenomenon of migration; provide the historical background and context for the waves of displacements and dispossessions, which made the Middle East a producer of forced migrants in the 20th century and onwards. It will focus on refugee resettlement processes and immigration into the US from the Middle East. In doing so, the course is designed to study and assist in the work of the American Civic Association (ACA). The ACA is a local non-profit community organization that has assisted individuals and families with immigration services and refugee resettlement in New York’s Southern Tier since 1939. The first semester introduces students to the work of the ACA, including local, national, and global immigration and refugee issues and needs. A particular focus will be on developing interdisciplinary knowledge base, critical thinking and research skills related to immigration and refugees within New York and the United States more generally. Additionally, students will work under the direction of the course instructor to help process, preserve, and organize the ACA’s extensive archive of case files, material culture, documents, programming, and photographs related to local immigrant and refugee communities. During the 2nd semester and under the continued guidance of the course instructor, students will continue working with the ACA and develop research projects based upon the archival materials and ethnographic knowledge about immigrant and refugee communities in Upstate New York. The end goal is to complete their projects and present their findings to the broader Binghamton and university communities.

  The sequence will likely fulfill N- Social Sciences, CEL - Community Engaged Learning, and J - Joint Composition and Oral Communication general education attributes.

• New Authoritarianism

  New Authoritarianism
  PLSC 180C and 289C 
  Matthew Cole

  When an upset victory in the 2016 Election brought Donald Trump to the White House, many observers sounded the alarm that America was lurching toward authoritarianism. Four turbulent years later, Trump refused to concede defeat in the 2020 Election and his supporters laid siege to the US Capitol in hopes of overturning the results, a moment of crisis for American democracy unlike anything since the Civil War. But Americans were hardly facing this crisis alone: in the last decade, many of the world’s democracies have seen demagogues and would-be dictators ascend to power. It’s not just that Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping wield nearly unchallenged power in their respective nations, or that they increasingly exert that power on the world stage. In nations with long histories of democracy, emergent leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro, India’s Narendra Modi, Italy’s Georgia Meloni, and Argentina’s Javier Milei have brought authoritarian politics crashing into the mainstream. Like Trump, many of these leaders have stoked resentment toward minorities, especially immigrants, while undermining or ignoring checks on power, threatening their opposition, mainstreaming conspiracy theories, and establishing cults of personality. 

  In this course, we seek to understand the movements and leaders behind the authoritarian turn, and we’ll do so by drawing on perspectives from political science and political philosophy, psychology and sociology, history and journalism, art and literature. How do today’s authoritarians rise to power? What tactics do they use to solidify control and suppress opposition? What leads ordinary people to support authoritarian movements? What strategies can be used to resist authoritarianism and defend democracy? What are the implications of authoritarianism for global issues such as immigration and the climate crisis? Can the history of dictatorships and totalitarian regimes provide us with any insight into the workings of authoritarianism today? Our wide-ranging course materials will range from the classics of the twentieth century to the cutting edge of contemporary research, as we reckon with the rise of authoritarianism in America and the world.  

  The fall semester introduces students to a range of key concepts, theories, and research questions reflecting a range of disciplinary perspectives. Students engage closely with both foundational and cutting-edge work in the social sciences and humanities, discussing and responding to works addressing the historical parallels between twentieth century totalitarianism and modern authoritarianism, the social psychology of authoritarian movements, the political science and strategy of civil resistance, and the policy implications of authoritarianism for human rights, among other topics.

  In the spring semester, students develop and pursue a unique research agenda extending from their work. After learning the fundamentals of database research, they take an important first step from reader to researcher by assembling an annotated bibliography and critical literature review on the topic of their choice. From there, they have the opportunity to try out a variety of qualitative and interpretive research methods, and to learn key scholarly maneuvers such as testing a theory, constructing a case study, and intervening in a debate. In addition to generating an original piece of scholarship, students get to explore methods for sharing research with broad audiences in engaging multimedia formats: curating a digital exhibit, creating a podcast or explainer video, or exploring other creative applications of their research.

  The sequence will likely fulfill I - Information Literacy, T - Critical Thinking, N - Social Science general education attributes in the fall semester and C - Composition, O - Oral Communication, T - Critical Thinking, I - Information Literacy, and N - Social Science in the spring semester. 

  Matthew Cole is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences. He received his PhD in Political Science from Duke University and his BA in Political Science from Carleton College. Before joining Binghamton, he taught at Harvard University, Emerson College, and Duke University, where his classes covered topics in political science, history, ethics, interdisciplinary studies, and expository writing. His research and writing in political theory address the question: how do visions of the future shape the terrain of political thought and action? This question informs his forthcoming book, Fear the Future: Dystopia and Political Imagination in the Twentieth Century, as well as his work on topics such as George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, climate fiction, technocracy, “smart democracy,” and the Green New Deal.

• People, Politics, and the Environment

   People, Politics, and the Environment PLSC 180A and PLSC 180B

  Societies emerge and develop to take advantage of the natural and engineered environments that define their landscapes. This can be a local process but is also inescapably tied to global dynamics in which social, ecological, economic, and environmental interact to create new understandings of what it means to be a person living in a place at a time. We will develop an approach to studying the place you are as a new college student—Binghamton—as an example of the broader processes at work in local social-ecological systems. You will practice a variety of research methods from the social sciences and environmental science to demonstrate the need to integrate perspectives and approaches when studying the relationship among people, places, and the environment.

  The sequence will likely fulfill Social Sciences (N) and Critical Thinking and Reasoning (T)  in the fall and Community Engaged Learning (CEL) and Joint Composition and Oral Communication (J) in the spring.

• Roots and Routes in Sephardic Studies

  Roots and Routes in Sephardic Studies JUST
  Dina Danon and Bryan Kirschen 

  This interdisciplinary course foregrounds the language and history of Sephardi Jews, or Jews who were expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in 1492 and were later dispersed across the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds. From the perspective of language, Professor Kirschen will guide students in learning Judeo-Spanish, commonly known as Ladino, the vernacular used by Sephardi Jews in the lands of their dispersion until the present day. Professor Danon will introduce students to the historical experiences of Sephardi Jews, covering key topics spanning from the medieval “Golden Age,” the Expulsion, the reconstitution of Sephardi communities in Ottoman lands, the rise of new nation states, and the Holocaust. Through this stream, students will gain not only proficiency in an endangered language that spans the Jewish and Hispanophone worlds, but also wide-ranging exposure to a rich and often-overlooked civilization that thrived for hundreds of years. 

  During the fall semester, students will interrogate primary and secondary sources in exploring the history and culture of Judeo-Spanish-speaking Sephardi Jews from 1492 to the present, while simultaneously acquiring the tools needed to decipher the Judeo-Spanish language preserved and developed by Sephardim over that same historical period. Most crucial among these linguistic skills is the ability to read various scripts and develop basic communication skills that will help navigate oral and written sources and the dialectology of the Judeo-Spanish-speaking world. 

  On the basis of this strong foundation in both historical knowledge and linguistic training developed in the first semester, students will be well-positioned to pursue original and independent research projects within the dynamic field of Sephardi studies. If pursuing historical research, students will be able to draw on their new paleographic skills to consult primary sources in the original Judeo-Spanish. Among them is the expansive range of periodicals published in the language from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Crucially, some of the most renowned and enduring of these periodicals have been digitized and are easily accessible to undergraduate students through the “Historical Jewish Press” online repository, housed on the site of the National Library of Israel. Additionally, students might choose to consult primary source materials in our own collections at Binghamton University. If pursuing linguistic research on the ways in which Judeo-Spanish has evolved, students may utilize online corpora of oral and written content in the language or choose to work with native and heritage speakers to examine sociolinguistic features of Judeo-Spanish, patterns of intergenerational transmission, as well as topics related to language endangerment and revitalization. Further, students will explore initiatives, especially digital ones, in regard to the documentation of the language. While some students may develop papers on areas of historical significance on the populations in question, others may develop projects within the Digital Humanities to further document and analyze the language; such projects may result in a series of interviews with speakers of the language today or examination of works that have not been previously transliterated on translated. 

  Bryan Kirschen is chair of the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, where he is associate professor of Spanish and Linguistics and holds a joint title with the Linguistics program; he is also affiliated faculty of the Translation Research and Instruction Program and the Department of Judaic Studies. Kirschen is a sociolinguist specializing in the Spanish language and has published on Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) and the use of Spanish, particularly in the United States. Additionally, he has served as co-director (along with Dina Danon) of Binghamton University's Ladino Collaboratory and as co-director of the American Ladino League, a nonprofit organization supporting educational initiatives related to Judeo-Spanish.

• Stereotypes and Stuttering  

  Stereotypes and Stuttering SLP 180 and SLP 280  
  Rodney Gabel

  Before Super Bowl LIII began, famous quarterback Peyton Manning was featured in a short video-skit pitching an idea for an extremely costly and extravagant cinematic opening to the game. In the video, the committee was very concerned with the cost and plan, and questioned the importance and feasibility of such a production. In his angry response to his committee, Manning became condescending to the board and said sarcastically, “was I stuttering earlier?” This derogatory comment about stuttering represents how much of society views stuttering, in a manner that demeans and belittles the presence of such a difficult condition. There was little to no public outcry about this demeaning comment and these types of comments are all too common about the condition of stuttering. Stereotypes are representations that individuals hold toward a group of people or a concept. In some cases, stereotypes can be positive and lead to benefits for the target group of people or concepts. For many groups who are marginalized, stereotypes or the threat of being stereotyped can lead to limitations in social, educational, economic, and vocational opportunities. This is especially true of people with disabilities. Stuttering is a disability that is often not understood by members of society and this misunderstanding often leads to significant negative beliefs about stuttering and stereotypes. For more than 50 years, research on stereotypes of people who stutter has explored the complexity of stereotypes related to people who stutter. Research on this topic is necessary to develop programs that can lead to better understanding, treatment, and advocacy for people who stutter. SLP 180 and 280 explores the importance of understanding societal stereotypes and the negative impact on all aspects of the lives of individuals with disabilities. Stereotypes of stuttering offers an important opportunity in this line of research. Through readings of texts and primary research articles, students will develop the background understanding for considering stuttering and disability related stereotypes. Additionally, students will review critical thinking, as well as the use of survey and qualitative designs. Each student will complete an independent research project that addresses stereotypes of people who stutter.

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