Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics

5th Annual Graduate Student Conference

Thursday, March 26th

Program of Events

Location: Department Board Room 226 New Cabell

8:45 Breakfast (from Bodo's and Spudnuts, complimentary for all participants and attendees)

9:00 - 10:30: State-Building, State-Failure, Regime Durability, and Prospects for Change
- Jonathan Forney, "Failed Cities and Failed States: Lawlessness, Self-Help and Informal Order in Africa and the West" . Discussant: Prof. Robert Fatton.
- Anne Mariel Peters, "The “Aid State:” Parallel Institutions, State-Building, and Economic Reform in Egypt and Jordan". Discussant: Prof. Herman Schwartz.
- Ana Alves, "Rural Incorporation and Regime Durability in Brazil". Discussant: Prof. Daniel Gingerich.

10:45 - 12:15: Political Ontology, Contingency, and Recognition
- Evan Farr, "With Friends Like These: Carl Schmitt, Political Ontology, and National Socialism”. Discussant: Prof. Daniel Doneson (Post-Doc, Program on Constitutionalism and Democracy).
- Evan Pivonka, "Late-Modern Contingency: An Exploration into the Role of Contingency in the Theory of William E. Connolly". Discussant Prof. Jennifer Rubenstein.
- Regev Ben Jacob, "A Critique of Axel Honneth’s Theory of Recognition and Reification". Discussant: Prof. Melvin Rogers.

12:15 - 1:00 Lunch (from Take It Away, complimentary for all participants and attendees)

1:00 - 2:00: American Political Development: Experience from the Inside and Observations from the Outside
- Emily Charnock, "Mirror to a Nation: Foreign Observers on the American Scene". Discussant: Prof. Sidney Milkis.
- Laura Blessing, "Race Cards Trump Labor Cards: How Slavery Prevented the Growth of Socialism in America". Discussant: Prof. James Savage.

2:15 - 3:45: Identity and Politics: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Religion
- Molly Scudder, "The Decolonization of Algeria: Defining French Identity as Difference". Discussant: Prof. Stephen White.
- Elizabeth Kaknes, "The Malleability of Ethnic Identity: The Case of Bolivia". Discussant: Prof. Lynn Sanders.
- Davis Brown, "Christian Peace Theory 2.0: Controlling for Democracy". Discussant: Prof. Paul Freedman.

4:00 - 5:30: Wartime Alliances, Costly Signals, and Institutional Proliferation
- Louis-Blaise Dumais-Lévesque, "No Permanent Friend: Wartime Alliance Dynamics in the Twentieth Century". Discussant: Prof. Len Schoppa.    
- Brandon Yoder and Kyle Lascurettes, "Are Signaling Arguments Costing Us Too Much? Assessing the Utility of Costly Signaling for IR Theory". Discussant: Prof. Todd Sechser.
- Daniel McDowell, "Spinning a New Financial Web: Power, Institutional Proliferation & an Asian Monetary Fund". Discussant: Prof. David Leblang.

(6 - 7: Drinks on the Corner to Celebrate and Unwind! Location TBA.)