Arts and Humanities
7 May 2025
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Arts and Humanities
7 May 2025
Atoms for Agency: How Argentina’s Pursuit of Nuclear Power Plants Represents International Legitimacy and Autonomy, 1951-1978.
Since 1949 Argentina has developed nuclear power plants (NPPs), overcoming political instability and financial barriers, to eventually succeed in the activation of Latin America’s first nuclear power plant, Atucha-1, in 1974. However, given the ample means of electrical production though fossil fuels and hydroelectric power, NPPs in Argentina present a paradoxical means of electrical production. This paper analyzes the history of Argentina’s nuclear power program, from 1951-1978, in order to offer a more holistic understanding of why NPPs were developed. I argue that nuclear power in Argentina was motivated not by a desire for electrical generation or to manufacture nuclear weapons, but rather as a means to attain international legitimacy and autonomy. This approach, referred to as “atoms for agency” serves as a central theme in this paper. First, this research looks to 1951, when Argentine President Juan Perón and Dr. Ronald Richter claimed they had achieved nuclear fusion. Although this announcement was ultimately disproven, it reveals that the core components of “atoms for agency,” international legitimacy and autonomy, existed even in the earliest days of Argentina’s nuclear power program. Subsequently, the progression of nuclear power plants during the 1960s reinforces the claim of Argentina’s desire for “atoms for agency”. Bidding efforts for the construction of Atucha-1 granted Argentina international recognition, while simultaneously serving as a strategic method to obtain more a favorable financial deal. The ultimate decision to work with Siemens AG, a German company, and the terms of this deal speak to Argentina’s utilization of nuclear power as a means to secure autonomy. However, the reactor design of Atucha-1 and the overall path of Argentina’s nuclear power program brought with them an increased level of scrutiny by the United States in the 1970s. Under the Carter Administration, the United States (US) engaged in a variety of diplomatic measures to influence Argentine ratification the Treaty of Tlatelolco, a nuclear non-proliferation treaty. The ultimate failure of the US to achieve this goal, and Argentine resistance towards ratification, further reinforce the claim that nuclear power served to offer Argentina international legitimacy and autonomy, otherwise known as “atoms for agency.”Current Articles
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Social and Behavioral Sciences
11 April 2019
‘I Hate Myself’: A Look Into Internalized Racism Among Black College Students
The purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of internalized racism. This concept has a plethora of effects on the Black community and other communities of color. Despite this, internalized racism is misunderstood and understudied due to difficulty in understanding the subject matter. As a college student, the author discusses the influence of internalized racism on Black college students’ mental health and academic achievements. As a result, the author details the extensive psychological and emotional effects of internalized racism on Black students at the college level. Also, potential solutions like the implementation of SAFE-CO is provided as means to oppose internalized racism.Social and Behavioral Sciences
7 October 2022
Empty Apologies: Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Crisis
The Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) crisis is a human rights crisis that demands swift and concrete action from the Canadian government. Indigenous women and girls in the United States and Canada are disproportionately affected by violence due to racist, white supremacist, colonialist values ingrained in society and the federal government. This paper looks into the findings of Canada’s 2016 National Inquiry into the MMIWG crisis and determines the progress that the Canadian government has made toward ending the crisis. The paper concludes that the Canadian government has used the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse for delayed action and their programs will take years, even decades to be implemented considering the pace of the National Inquiry. If the Inquiry’s Calls to Action are met with inadequate solutions implemented for optics, Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people will continue to be taken from their families and communities. The next few years will reveal whether the National Inquiry was a political ploy to temporarily appease the public, or a genuine effort to end this severe human rights crisis.Social and Behavioral Sciences
11 April 2019
Enforcing the Gender Binary and Its Implications on Nonbinary Identities: An Exploration of the Linguistic and Social Erasure of Nonbinary Individuals in the United States
In American society’s history, there has been a strong agreement on the existence of only two genders - male and female. However, there are people outside this binary called “nonbinary” individuals. The gender binary, whose enforcement begins with language and the spreading of binary ideology, prevents nonbinary people from partaking in daily life without being misgendered. Much of gender perception is based upon the “gender schema”, which organizes traits into categories of “male” and “female” when judging others. The ramifications include, and are not limited to, social, medical, and legal discrimination. The option for a legal third sex with the choice to change gender markers later on, a standard third-person singular gender neutral pronoun, and increased advocacy for ending the conflation of sex and gender can hopefully lead to the increased normalization and acceptance of nonbinary people.Interdisciplinary
18 April 2018
Qualitative Analysis of Alcohol’s Acute Effect on Vocal Range
Alcoholic beverages are the most popular human-produced drinks in history. Whether it is wine, beer, or hard liquor, alcoholic beverages are included in all aspects of society. Presidents, town drunks, and the greatest musical sensations are seen drinking alcoholic beverages both at work and at home. In terms of its effects on individuals, alcohol is deemed to be a poison to the body, and drinking too much can destroy your liver and your body as a whole. This puts public speakers, political leaders, and specifically singers in an odd position when it comes to balancing casual alcohol consumption and retaining their vocal health. Scientific study of this subject is necessary, as well as close consideration of the effects of alcohol on singer’s lives and careers. There is already extensive research pertaining to the chronic effects of alcohol on the body. In terms of acute alcohol ingestion, research does not exist to the same level of detail or quality. The effect of alcohol on vocal range, both chronic and acute, has not been studied thoroughly. Alcohol has many negative effects on the voice. In this study, we suggest that acute alcohol ingestion may decrease the vocal range of individuals.Arts and Humanities
18 April 2018
Love in the Flesh, Toni Morrison and Hortense Spillers 30 years after Beloved and Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe
The publications of Hortense Spillers’ Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Grammar Book and Toni Morrison’s Beloved marks 1987 as an important year in the history of black textual production. Without planning, Morrison teaches us how to read Spillers and Spillers to read Morrison, despite differences in form. Spillers articulates a “praxis of ungendered flesh,” to theorize the relegation of the slave’s body to commodity that sutures slavery to blackness (Spillers 1987). Morrison takes up this same task through the experiences of life, time, and memory for Sethe, an escaped slave who kills her daughter when at risk of being returned to slavery. Through powerful literary fiction, Morrison transforms Spillers’ sophisticated parlance into hauntingly beautiful prose, demonstrating a common strand of thinking about slavery and its afterlife. Through an analysis of critical themes in Beloved, this paper seeks to articulate a reading of ‘Beloved in the flesh,’ engaging with an ongoing academic conversation about black subjectivity and the replication of slavery as such; taking to heart the implications of the distinct literary forms to demonstrate and enact through writing the impossibility of limiting the discourse of blackness (and anti-blackness as the structural phenomenon that’s positioned by and positions blackness) to one discipline or mode of thought.Journal Article
23 May 2016