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.
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
Develop Crucial Academic Skills
The Source Project enables students to gain academic skills that will be the foundation
of their undergraduate education. By moving through the research process, students
read critically, improve their writing through revision, practice speaking about their
ideas both formally and informally, and engage in civil discourse, which guides them
towards higher-order cognitive skills.
"The Source Project definitely shaped my academic career here at Binghamton because
it taught me in a safe environment many skills that I would need for the future. Before
entering college, I had only done research in biological science, which differs from
social science research. As a liberal arts major, The Source Project provided me the
time to learn skills I have used often since. For example, last semester in my graduate
level class I had to write a literature review and I knew exactly how to tackle it
because of my time in this program."
Find Academic and Professional Success
The Source Project Research Program prepares students to excel throughout the rest
of their college career and guides them to exceptional opportunities.
"I interned at the Broome County Public Defender's Office through the Human Rights
Source Project class, and it has solidified my decision to go into criminal law. Having
that great connection with the BCPDO is also super beneficial, and will allow me to
have more opportunities in the legal field."
Earn Credit toward Degree Requirements
Each research stream is four credits and carries general education attributes. Some
of these courses are cross-listed across several departments, with the potential for
credit to be applicable to majors and/or minors. By participating in the Source Project,
students stay on track for degree completion.
MDVL 180A/ENG180M and MDVL 280C/ENG 280N Bridget Whearty
Bridget Whearty
One of the things that unites us as humans is how we tell stories and make records,
preserving who we are and what we love. Books carry these stories–which we can learn
by reading the words on their pages and also by studying them as artifacts, looking
for evidence of the people who made them (and how, and why), who read and cared for
them in all the years that separate us from their creators, and who preserve and share
them today. This course introduces students to the unique stories that books have
to tell and the field of study known as “the history of the book,” as we explore texts
from the earliest forms of writing to the newest digital media. Students in this course
will work closely with librarians and archivists, learning how to do original research
on under-studied rare books and medieval manuscripts using Binghamton University Libraries’
Special Collections as our course “lab.”
In the fall, students will undertake an experiential learning module, building their
own book. You will begin by making your own “DIY-medieval manuscript,” using the techniques
we study, and then copy it into print, and finally remake it in a new digital form.
This hands-on learning will help you study “from the inside out” different technologies
and tools that people have used to make books throughout history. Students will also
get to work, hands-ons, with two special “case study” rare books:
a real medieval manuscript made in the midst of the first wave of the Black Plague,
and our copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a gorgeous and giant book created in the
first decades after the invention of movable type print in western Europe.
Working together, we will uncover these books’ secrets and tell their stories. Then,
in the spring semester, you will get to choose a rare book as the center of your own
study, applying what you learned in your deep dive into book history to uncover and
tell its unique history.
Students in this course sequence will gain knowledge of research methods in the humanities,
including specialized training in how to do hands-on research in special collections,
museums, and archives. You will also learn tools for digital and information literacy;
as well as ways to communicate your findings–writing, revision, and public speaking
for different audiences. This course will be of particular interest to students considering
majors across the humanities, fine arts, and social sciences, including Art History,
Digital & Data Sciences, English, History, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Romance
Languages, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as any students considering
careers in education and/or libraries. Special Collections Librarian Jeremy Dibbell
will be contributing to the course activities and bringing students into the world
of curation of rare books in the library setting.
The sequence will likely fulfill Oral Communication (O) general education requirements
in the fall and Composition (C) and Information Literacy (I) in the spring.
Bridget Whearty (she/her) is an Associate Professor at Binghamton University in the
English Department and the Medieval Studies Program who works at the intersection
of literary, medieval, manuscript, and information studies. She was previously a Mellon-funded
Council on Libraries and Information Resources (CLIR) Postdoctoral Fellow in Data
Curation for Medieval Studies, at Stanford University Libraries. She holds a PhD from
Stanford University and a BA from the University of Montana. She researches and teaches
courses about medieval literatures and cultures, as well as text technologies from
medieval manuscripts to digitization and the rise of the internet.
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.
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.
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.
PHIL 180A/ENG 180N/ECON 181A and PHIL 280A/ENG 280N/ECON 181B Will Glovinsky
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 Humanities (H), Information Literacy (I), Critical
Thinking and Reasoning (T), and Harpur College Writing (W) general education requirements
in the fall and Oral Communication (O) and Harpur College Writing (W) in the spring.
PHIL 180B/ENG 180O and PHIL 280B/ENG 280O Will Glovinsky
From #empath TikTok to social justice movements, claims about the powers and perils
of empathy are ubiquitous in contemporary life. The ability to share someone else’s
feelings and see the world from their perspective can, according to various authorities,
make us better partners, friends, doctors, managers, and citizens. Yet the valorization
of empathy has also been blamed for licensing cultures of voyeurism in war reporting
and social media, flattering the egos of privileged spectators, and inflaming social
tensions with misguided conceptions of other peoples’ cultures. Empathy is hailed
as a defining human trait, yet bonobos may match us at it. This Source Project research
stream will invite students to pull back the curtain on an everyday concept and consider
empathy's colorful history, its philosophical underpinnings, and its centrality to
literature, art, politics, psychology, and medicine. We will ask what empathy really
is (a matter of considerable debate), what role it plays in social change, and what
it can—and can’t—do for us.
The fall semester will introduce students to how empathy (and its related forerunner,
sympathy) has been understood in a variety of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology,
literary theory, primatology, and the history of science. We will then delve into
a series of case studies to scrutinize empathy's real-world effects. After reading
Enlightenment theories of fellow-feeling and an early slave narrative, we'll consider
their relationship to the growth of abolitionism and the first boycotts on slave-produced
goods. Later units will examine how novelists sought to spotlight the suffering of
workers during the Industrial Revolution, how activists passed the first animal welfare
laws, and how conflict mediators and healthcare workers leverage perspective-taking
in their work today. Throughout, our goal will be to define empathy's uses and limitations,
and to describe the ways in which narratives may mobilize or mislead us ethically.
By the end of the fall semester, students will draw on the methodologies we have discussed
to identify a research agenda culminating in a capstone project. We will work in small
groups to narrow down topics and revise research questions and then meet over the
course of the spring to workshop ideas, set goals, and revise written work. Students
will present their projects in campus-wide poster sessions and other multimedia forums.
The sequence will likely fulfill Humanities (H), Information Literacy (I), Critical
Thinking and Reasoning (T), and Harpur College Writing (W) general education requirements
in the fall and Oral Communication (O) and Harpur College Writing (W) 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.
Alexandra Moore
These courses take a two-fold approach to human rights research. First, we will discuss
the histories and concepts that constitute human rights. Are they best described as
legal instruments, social norms, cultural practices, discourses, political ideologies,
or institutions? What are some of the historical roots of the so-called “human rights
regime”? Is it a fatally flawed set of norms that should be abandoned in our contemporary
moment; or, do the recent attacks on those norms by the forces of xenophobia, racism,
and other forms of fear and hate demand that we re-double our efforts to promote human
rights? To help explore those questions with rigor and insight, we will consider how
different academic and professional disciplines approach human rights work and research.
We will read texts from History, Philosophy, Political Science, English/Literary Studies,
Law, International Relations, Visual Media Studies, and Anthropology, and we will
work with Binghamton professors who represent many of those departments. In considering
human rights from different perspectives, we will continually ask how different methodologies
and research questions shape one another. Because human rights is an inherently interdisciplinary
area of study, we will also consider the challenges and rewards that human rights
research demands. In the second semester, students will choose to join a current research
group in the Human Rights Institute to investigate topics such as incarceration, fascism,
indigenous rights, terrorism, women’s rights and more.
The sequence will likely fulfill the Global Interdependencies (G), Humanities (H),
Social Sciences (N), and/or Harpur Writing (W) general education requirements.
Alexandra Moore, professor of English and director of the Human Rights Institute,
publishes widely on representations of torture, enforced disappearance, incarceration,
gendered rights violations, child soldiers, humanitarian interventionism and related
topics in contemporary literature and film. She also works with torture survivors
and those fleeing political persecution.
YIDD 180A/JUST 180C/HIST 180B and YIDD 280A/JUST 284A Gina Glasman
Gina Glasman
This class will be dedicated to a single question: how can we use the artifacts of
everyday life to better understand the history of a community? To explore this question,
we will focus on a particular cultural vehicle, museums—institutions rooted in the
notion that “objects” can speak! In the Spring semester, students will create their
own digital exhibit, using the themes, approaches and concepts we have explored together
in class. Students can choose to focus their research on any community.
To help us with this task, we will divide our study into several parts. We will begin
with the earliest efforts by historians—often Marxist inflected - to chart the lives
of “everyday people.” This approach was sometimes twinned with a new interest in the
material world. From there, we will take a look at recent histories of the immigrant
city, with a focus on Jewish, or Yiddish immigrant New York in the early twentieth
century. Here too, we will find a focus on ordinary things, as part of the investigation
of the urban landscape—from a discarded candy wrapper in the street, to the latest
cut in city fashion. Recorded memory - or oral history - is also key to this kind
of analysis, as a way to access the culture of everyday life. Finally, students will
research, design and mount a digital exhibit of their own creation, based on the questions
addressed in class. In preparation for this project, we will also consider the uses
of material culture in the work of social history museums, as well as comparable initiatives
in the fields of anthropology and public archaeology.
The sequence will likely fulfill Joint Composition and Oral Communication (J) and
Social Sciences (N) general education requirements in the fall and Joint Composition
and Oral Communication (J) in the spring.
Gina Glasman is a London born American immigrant, now resident in Binghamton, New
York. She has had a life-long interest in the study of Yiddish society and its urban
culture, that has roots in her own biography, as the grandchild of Yiddish speaking
immigrants to London. Her current work, both in the classroom and beyond, often seeks
to bind together forms of personal engagement with scholarly research and encourages
students to do the same—whether they are learning Yiddish language, or immersing themselves
in the long, rich and sometimes tragic story of this distinctive diasporic minority.
Racial and religious prejudice are expressed through both private actions and public
policies, and the targets of prejudice change across space and time. In the late 19th
and early 20th centuries, Jim Crow segregation spread across the South; the federal
government imposed a sweeping immigration ban targeting Chinese; and prominent intellectuals
in many parts of the country embraced a pseudo-scientific hierarchy of races that
placed "Nordics" above "Mediterraneans," and both above people of African and Asian
descent. In the 1920s, a revived Ku Klux Klan spread from the Atlantic to the Pacific
Coast, denouncing Catholics and Jews, as much as people of color. As housing tracts
multiplied over the next few decades, many homebuilders used "restrictive covenants"
to prevent the sale of homes to non-whites, "aliens," and occasionally groups like
Italians and Jews. Many European immigrants eventually made their way into the white
middle-class, and a burgeoning civil rights movement discredited the more virulent
forms of racism. At the same time, however, federal "redlining" policies, urban renewal
projects, and other public and private policies further entrenched structural racism.
How do the parameters of prejudice change over time? How do both private actions and
public policy embed discrimination in the landscape around us? Whose history gets
recognized in public space, and whose stories become the foundations of community
histories? Finally, how do both structural racism and what we know of the past continue
to shape lives, even as overt expressions of intolerance fade?
This course sequence explores such questions by focusing on Broome County, New York,
the home of Binghamton University, the birthplace of IBM, and an area long known as
the Valley of Opportunity. In the antebellum period, Binghamton and surrounding areas
were a major hub on the Underground Railroad. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries,
Southern and Eastern European immigrants flocked to the area's cigar and shoe factories,
and local corporations pioneered an approach known as "welfare capitalism." During
the Cold War, the area's concentration of electronics firms and defense manufacturers
drew high-tech workers. Yet such oft-retold stories of freedom and opportunity obscure
a more troubled past that is too easily forgotten. At the turn of the 21st century,
Broome County was 91% white, in part a reflection of this history. The last two decades
have seen an influx of immigrants and refugees from across the globe, and Americans
of all races have come to the area for a more affordable life. Still, the historic
politics of prejudice remain inscribed in various ways on the urban landscape.
How might public-facing history begin to redress both individual prejudice and structural
racism by sparking civic dialogue? In the fall, students will explore these issues
through a combination of reading, historical research, and community engagement. We
will peruse newspapers and pamphlets produced by the KKK in the early 1920s, when
Binghamton was the Klan's New York State headquarters. We will work with deeds, locating
and mapping racial covenants in Broome County. Finally, we will examine federal "redlining"
maps and photographs and documents charting the path of urban renewal. Students will
also learn digital and other techniques for disseminating their findings to a broader
public. In the spring, students will conduct research projects of their design and
disseminate their findings during campus Research Days and through other appropriate
outlets.
The sequence will likely fulfill Community Engaged Learning (CEL), Information Literacy
(I), Social Sciences (N), Critical Thinking and Reasoning (T), and Harpur College
Writing (W) general education requirements in the fall and Information Literacy (I),
Social Sciences (N), Critical Thinking and Reasoning (T), and Harpur College Writing
(W) in the spring.
Wendy Wall is a historian of U.S. political culture and director of the Institute
for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. Her prize-winning book Inventing the "American Way": The Politics of Consensus from the New Deal to the Civil
Rights Movement and numerous essays explore the intertwined issues of race, ethnicity, religion,
citizenship and politics in the 20th century. A former journalist whose work has
been cited in publications ranging from the New York Times to The American Prospect,
she is committed to fostering conversation between those within and beyond university
walls. She hopes that a deeper public understanding of history will inform and shape
future policy debates.
Şule Can
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 Social Sciences (N), Community Engaged Learning (CEL),
and Joint Composition and Oral Communication (J).
Şule Can is a socio-cultural anthropologist who currently works as an Outreach Coordinator
and a Lecturer at the Center for Middle East and North Africa at Binghamton University.
Before startıng at Binghamton in Fall 2023, Şule worked as an Assistant Professor
of Urban Studies at Adana Science and Technology University, Turkey. She completed
her post-doctoral research on politics of solidarity among the Syrian women in Turkey
at the department of Anthropology, University of Waterloo, Canada in 2019. She obtained
her PhD in 2018 from the Department of Anthropology at Binghamton University with
a Fulbright scholarship, and her MA from Istanbul Bilgi University, Cultural Studies.
Şule’s research interests are anthropology of migration, cultural memory, displacement,
borders, ethno-religious boundaries, gender politics, anthropology of the Middle East.
She is the author of Refugee Encounters at the Turkish-Syrian Border: Antakya at the Crossroads, published in 2019 by Routledge.
Robert A. Holahan
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.
Robert Holahan is an associate professor of environmental studies and political science
and director of the Dickinson Research Team (DiRT). DiRT is a residential community-based
research program that is the first of its kind in the United States. DiRT is open
to students who are interested in research, regardless of major and prior research
experience. His current research projects include developing a property-rights framework
for the study of unconventional oil and gas production, an investigation into the
public goods (or public bads) nature of global environmental threats, and the political-economy
of urban sustainability.
Aiden Gajewski
Aidan Gajewski, a double major in economics and environmental studies, completed the
People, Politics, and the Environment research stream in Spring 2021. His research
focused on the impact of food insecurity in Broome County on adolescent academic performance,
using data from standardized testing scores and interviews with local counselors and
teachers. His work was published in the Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal.
Following the Source Project, Aidan was invited to serve as a research assistant where
he collaborated with Binghamton University professors to study food councils in the
eastern U.S. He presented his research at a conference in Santa Fe, NM. Aidan says
the Source Project taught him to craft insightful interview questions, distill large
data sets into key conclusions, and present the bigger picture effectively. Additionally,
being in a small classroom environment as a first year student helped him navigate
social life at Binghamton and find people in his stream that he is still friends with
to this day. He values the mentorship he received from his professor in terms of both
research opportunities and career advice.
Kate Langsdorf
Kate Langsdorf
Kate Langsdorf, a double major in Asian studies and philosophy, politics, and law,
completed the Thinking Through Painting research stream in 2022. Her analysis of a
painting created by a Japanese American Immigrant, which explores the recognition
of immigrants amid U.S. Nationalism themes in art, is now part of Binghamton University’s
permanent art collection.
Kate says the Source Project gave her the confidence, skills, and knowledge to participate
in higher level research. After completing a seminar in Asian Studies, she was chosen
to speak about her research on the transmission of Buddhism’s effect on women in South
Korea at a SUNY Oneonta philosophy conference. She is currently participating in a
Capstone Project after studying abroad, where she is further anticipating to use the
research and writing skills she learned through the Source Project.
Kate is a recipient of the US Department of State Critical Language Scholarship (CLS
Spark Award for Chinese).
Robert Rose
Robert Rose, a philosophy, politics, and law major, completed the Human Rights research
stream in Spring 2023. His topic of research was the systemic limitations of public
defense and the protection of human rights in law. Robert interned at the Public Defender’s
office in Binghamton to gain direct insight into the roles of public defenders and
social workers as well as obtain courtroom experience. His research paper, centered
on improving the quality of service provided by public defenders to their clients,
earned him an award for research in Human Rights. His favorite part of the research
experience was visiting the Broome County Jail and witnessing firsthand the interactions
between prisoners and their attorneys. He and his partner also had the opportunity
to share their research at both the Source Project and the Community and Civic Engagement
Research Days.
The Source Project honed Robert’s ability to craft a workable question and navigate
the Binghamton library resources. Over the summer, he delved into legal research on
changing abortion laws while working at a Public Defense office. Robert’s involvement
in an appeal under the Domestic Violence Survivors Justice Act resulted in a successful
outcome, showcasing his dedication to justice reform. Addressing a domestic issue
where the victim committed a crime against her abuser, they successfully won the appeal,
leading to a reduced sentence.
