Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This project seeks to highlight reality television’s most popular rearticulation of the Jezebel and the Sapphire while assessing its implications for African American women. Nearly eight decades after their inception in mass mediated culture, the Jezebel and Sapphire stereotypes have been reborn in the form of Tiffany Pollard, better known as “New York”, and her mother “Sister Patterson” (respectively). Television acts as a powerful socialization agent, and thus plays a significant role in how audiences shape their racially stratified and gendered world. Researchers will employ discourse analysis to provide the rich contextual data necessary to capture the effects of I Love New York; additionally, researchers will illustrate notions of patriarchy and hegemony. Further, the authors seek to provide readers with the motivation and materials to self identify, and more importantly, self-correct.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study will consist of a comparison of capital cases in New York from 1890-1963 that were commuted as opposed to executed. The study will consist of a quantitative analysis of the cases to identify significant factors that may predict whether a case was likely to result in a commutation rather than an execution. Some of the predictors to be tested include characteristics of the defendant, the victim(s), the offense and the governor. The results of this study will have serious and important implications for the death penalty in New York.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The new vision for school counseling preparation incorporates the attitudes, knowledge and skills necessary to practice leadership and social advocacy in schools and to deliver effective programs that ensure that all students have equal access to quality academic programs, and the support and skills needed in academic, career and personal/social development. Session participants will become aware of what is involved to move from a traditional model of counselor preparation to a transformed model.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: When the sun shines down on Union Square, the park in its center teems with women in suits, boys on skateboards, protestors holding signs, tourists snapping photos, transients at rest, and shoppers in between stores. Whether they ascend from the subway or approach from the shadows of buildings in New York’s canyon-like streets, they pause, however briefly, to bask in the sun. Union Square, located between Broadway and Fourth Avenue above 14th Street, is a bustling, crowded, commercial and transportation hub, where global forces and neighborhood concerns, notions of private and public, and belief systems collide. This has been the case since the 1830s, when the Common Council purchased private property to create an open space in an increasingly dense city. Over the past 175 years, competing constituents have negotiated their agendas to produce Union Square’s dynamic and complicated landscape.
My poster, illustrating some of my dissertation research, will represent four transitional moments in the history of Union Square: its original construction in the 1830s and three subsequent renovations in the 1870s, 1930s, and 1980s. For each construction, I will show a diagram of the park, photographs and/or illustrations, and some explanatory text. This will provide the foundation for discussions about how debates over the space and decisions that found physical expression were inextricably linked to larger social dynamics within the neighborhood, city, nation, and world.
An example from each period illustrates my intention. In the 1830s, the Common Council began building small parks in the upper districts of the city to improve health and increase property values. Union Square was one of these fenced-in parks, designed more for beauty than recreation. By the 1870s, as a diverse array of classes and ethnicities were intermingling in and around the park, some of the city’s leaders viewed this as an opportunity to educate the lower classes on proper behavior in American society. Frederick Law Olmsted’s design removed the fence to accommodate large gatherings and made the paths more accessible. In the early- to mid-twentieth century, this intermingling became more contentious as Union Square became a major American battlefield in the global war between capitalists and anti-capitalists. During the 1930s renovation, business owners lobbied the city to limit the amount of space that could be used for gatherings. In response, the city planted trees, straightened the paths, and installed parking meters around the park. By the 1950s and 1960s, as suburbanization increased and people continued to identify it with political radicalism, business owners vacated their stores and the park became less hospitable. By the 1980s renovation, the park was in disarray and considered a dangerous place. Inspired by such intellectuals as Jane Jacobs, city planners created a mixed-use space with open lawns, playgrounds, dog runs, and a greenmarket.
To consider Union Square’s transformations is to understand the role of public space in America and to look toward the future. Please let me know if you need any additional information and thank you for your consideration.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While national railroad corporations had privatized major transportation iniatives by the close of the nineteenth century, public roads remained the responsibility of the most local of officials: tens of thousands of pathmasters cared for New York State's public ways, overseeing local residents in an effort to keep their rough roads open for travel. Over the next forty years, public road building authority evolved dramatically, and the vanguard of transportation development returned to the public sector. An uneasy alliance of progressive farmers, urban bosses, reform politicians, and wealthy bicyclists reformed the state's highway policy by augmenting the local system of road administration with increased state authority. And by 1916, the federal government supported state highway construction through grants in aid. By the 1920s, New York and the nation at large had taken vast steps toward the creation of a modern highway infrastructure. Through a close analysis of New York's transportation policy, this paper reveals how a series of policy choices designed to conserve local power resulted in the emergence of a complex federalism in the early twentieth century.