INQUIRY

New York University • College of Arts and Science
demonstrates how community-based frameworks function
in a real-life setting. An analysis of the complications and
benefits shows how essential community-based research is in
decolonizing archaeology, while simultaneously connecting
it to contemporary issues. Community-based archaeology is
the most ethically appropriate way to conduct archaeological
and anthropological research. This study shows that while
it is not a simple or easy approach, the results it can yield
are valuable to the discipline.
Black Twitter: The Maintenance of Racial Boundaries
through Lexicon
Mia Matthias, Anthropology and Linguistics
Sponsor: Professor Renée Blake, Linguistics
According to Pew studies, one in four African-Americans
who use the Internet has a Twitter account, twice the
number of Hispanic and White users. While contested, the
term “Black Twitter” has come to index a cultural space for
African-American/Black expression. This paper tracks three
lexical items that come into use within Black communities
on Twitter from 2008 to 2015 using an Application Programming
Interface (API). This study shows how lexical items are
both invented and popularized by factions of Black Twitter
and what happens from qualitative and quantitative perspectives
when these items are appropriated in other online or
media spaces. This work expands on scholarship about African
American English (AAE) by using quantitative methods
to track the path of appropriation and subsequent influence
on patterns of usage. This data is then contextualized through
ethnography and analysis of how racial and cultural capital
are understood, both convert and overt.
A Gendered Dutch Disease: The Effect of Natural
Resource Wealth on Women’s Rights
Raj Mathur, History, International Relations
Sponsor: Professor Leonid Peisakhin, Politics
Over the past decades, scholars have proposed
numerous explanations for why certain countries respect
women’s rights less than others. In a 2008 paper, Michael
Ross hypothesized that petroleum in fact accounts for this
variation. The export of oil appreciates a nation’s currency,
making its tradable goods sector less competitive and thus
eliminating the low skill jobs in which women in many
developing countries first enter the workforce. As women
stay at home more, respect for their rights diminishes. While
compelling, scholars have heavily criticized Ross’ theory.
Through several OLS regressions, the robustness of his
results is tested in two ways. First, because the mechanism
by which Ross believes petroleum hinders women’s rights
should also apply to any resource, this study expanded
the analysis to include minerals and coal. Second, gender
equality was measured more holistically by considering
women’s political, social and economic rights. This study
finds that although oil has a significant negative effect on
the aforementioned rights, mineral and coal do not. It is
posited that these latter resources are simply not exported in
significant enough quantities to have an impact on women’s
rights. This study concludes that policymakers wanting to
assuage gender inequality should work towards reducing
global dependency on petroleum.
Working, not Walking, for Water: How Empowering
Women Improves Access to Clean Water in Developing
Nations
Natalie McCauley, Environmental Studies, International
Relations
Sponsor: Professor Alastair Smith, Politics
The developing world is dying of thirst: 748 million
people lack access to clean water. Women shoulder much
of the burden when their communities do not have clean
water, often walking for miles each day to collect enough
water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. This study of 122
developing nations from 1990–2012 finds a link between
women and water that goes beyond women as household
water managers. Statistical evidence suggests that when
women are empowered by participating in parliament,
attending school and working for wages, developing nations
have more access to clean water. Substantively, increasing
female representation in the national parliament to 50% in
an average nation would result in 5.2% of the population
gaining access to clean water—a significant improvement.
As the 2015 deadline for the United Nations-set Millennium
Development Goals looms, this project aims to inspire
shifts in international development strategies to focus on
empowering women as a necessary step to achieving universal
access to water. If women in the developing world are
actively empowered, they can work, not walk, for sustainable
water access.
“Cherry-Picking” the Material Record of Border
Crossings: Examining Artifact Selection and Narrative
Construction among Non-Migrants
Leah Byck Mlyn, Social and Cultural Analysis
Sponsor: Professor Cristina Beltrán, Social and Cultural
Analysis
Since 2000, over 4 million people have been apprehended
trying to cross without authorization into the U.S.
from Mexico via the Arizona desert. During this process
millions of pounds of artifacts associated with migration
have been left behind. Subsequently, humanitarian groups,
artists, local U.S. citizens and anthropologists have collected
and used these artifacts in a multitude of ways. Through
interviews and participant observation data, this project
examines collection practices and narrative construction
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