A Blog on McConnell Center Life

Christian Bush Class of 2018 This semester, I have the great privilege of doing an independent study under Asian studies and political science professor Dr. Hua. My hope is to explore some of the underlying factors surrounding Sino-American diplomacy through a cultural lens. Here I would like to briefly discuss some of the assumptions, questions, and aims of such an endeavor. My first issue is the idea of political socialization. In the simplest of terms, political socialization describes how an individual has been shaped politically by a variety of outside factors. Some, like family, play a large role in political socialization, while others, such as one’s profession, might play a smaller role. In my research so far, family, education, peer groups, the media, religion, and political parties are among the most noted factors. However, my goal is to assess the role that culture, specifically foreign culture, plays in shaping an individual’s political ideology. While I will not ...

Robert Gassman Class of 2018 This summer I had the privilege of working at the Library of Congress through the Junior Fellows Program which allows undergraduate and graduate students from across the country to intern with divisions which relate to their academic interests and passions. I had the unique opportunity of working for the Educational Outreach Division, a division dedicated to making the immense collections of the Library of Congress available to students and educators alike.  My project was the research and production of a primary source set about American entry and involvement in World War I. It was incredibly rewarding to view the digitized collections of the Library, searching and investigating thousands of items posters and political cartoons, to videos of the time and popular music. Not only did I have the opportunity to view and learn from the primary sources themselves, but I also had the unique opportunity to observe and take part in the Library...

Phillip Lentsch Class of 2018 If the world were a puzzle and each place was a piece, what would happen if we pressed the shuffle button and mixed them all up?  What if Turkey was next to Texas, Sudan next to South Carolina… What would the world look like? To put it more bluntly, what would it mean for that place to exist, given that other places attain their identities relative to what’s around them? I woke up one day next to another side of the world.  I live on South 3 rd Street, just a block away from campus.  About two weeks ago, a family of Ugandan refugees moved into the house next to mine, filling the walls with the sounds of a language that I had never encountered.  Whenever I sit on my front porch, I can usually count on seeing some of the kids outside, either kicking a soccer ball or throwing a Frisbee around.  The extent of my interaction with this family goes no further than a friendly wave and smile; they don’t speak English, nor have I eve...

Hannah Wilson Class of 2017 The “land of the free and the home of the brave” has become the land of the silenced, oppressed, and disenfranchised, and the home of the racist, sexist, homophobic, and outright bigoted.  This is not to say that Americans are no longer free or brave, but rather that our definitions of those terms have come to further divide us along party and ideological lines.  Who are the free? Who are the brave?  Certainly, “free” has never referred to each and every citizen of the United States (see: US Constitution), and brave can no longer apply only to those in uniform. In the wake of a tumultuous presidential race, hard line conservatives have adopted potent definitions of free and brave and American, clothing racism in patriotism and claiming that the broad-based injustices faced by minority communities are, if they are acknowledged at all, issues less serious than one’s constitutional right to remaining seated during the playing of t...