Undergraduate Journal

Volume 11 of the Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal is now live! Browse our Human Rights Special Edition under the "Source Project Special Issues" tab, and explore our regular edition as new articles continue to be published.

Current Issue

Volume 11, Issue 2 (2026)View issue

Featured Content

  • Social and Behavioral Sciences
    10 June 2026

    The Welfare System to Prison Pipeline in America: How Media, Policy, and Surveillance Extend the Reach of Mass Incarceration through Child Welfare Practices

    DeLaney Painter
    Scholarship across youth social policy, child welfare, media studies, and criminology has documented media driven moral panic, racial disproportionality in child welfare involvement, and foster-care-to-prison pathways as related but individual, distinct phenomena. Similarly, critical frameworks by Alexander and Ritchie trace how mass incarceration unfolds across marginalized communities, yet often begin analysis at points of formal criminal legal contact.  This paper builds on an integrated framework that identifies child welfare as a distinct and underrecognized branch of mass incarceration operating at an earlier stage of the life course. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, this analysis demonstrates how fear based media narratives shape child welfare policy, how policy expands racialized system contact through surveillance and family regulation, and how cumulative child welfare involvement contributes directly to criminalization and incarceration down the line. Rather than functioning as a neutral system of protection, child welfare is shown to operate as a mechanism of racialized surveillance and punishment that begins in childhood.  The originality of this work lies in taking these dynamics as a single, interconnected carceral process rather than parallel systems. By reframing child welfare as a structural pathway into mass incarceration, this paper extends existing carceral theory and advances new directions for youth-centered policy analysis and reform.
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  • Arts and Humanities
    10 June 2026

    Forced Dependency: The Subjugation of Women Through Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome

    Evelyn Polovich
    In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique the treatment of Greek and Roman women. This paper serves as a bridge between those ancient ideas and the connections that can be seen from a modern perspective. This study of ancient society and medicine indicates that the masculine takeover of women’s medicine served as a turning point that allowed men to validate previously established cultural ideas to advance the patriarchy. The treatment of women when it came to birth specifically, as well as the societal expectations placed on them regarding this, proves to be a large contributing factor to the idea that women are worth less than men. The points presented here, beyond exhibiting ancient stances, can also point people towards facets of modern society that reflect the strategies employed by ancient physicians.
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Current Articles

    • Arts and Humanities10 June 2026

      Forced Dependency: The Subjugation of Women Through Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome

      Evelyn Polovich
      In the ancient Mediterranean men were in charge of every facet of life, including women’s medicine. They forced women out of the oversight of gynecology and reformed it into a method of control that they could assert in order to force women into a position of submission. This paper aims to bring the ways in which ancient medicine was influenced by cultural ideas and worked to subjugate women and allow men to gain further control over their autonomy. This research was inspired by the works of ancient physicians like Hippocrates, Soranus, and Galen, as well as contemporary sources that critique the treatment of Greek and Roman women. This paper serves as a bridge between those ancient ideas and the connections that can be seen from a modern perspective. This study of ancient society and medicine indicates that the masculine takeover of women’s medicine served as a turning point that allowed men to validate previously established cultural ideas to advance the patriarchy. The treatment of women when it came to birth specifically, as well as the societal expectations placed on them regarding this, proves to be a large contributing factor to the idea that women are worth less than men. The points presented here, beyond exhibiting ancient stances, can also point people towards facets of modern society that reflect the strategies employed by ancient physicians.
    • Arts and Humanities8 June 2026

      From Peril To Perseverance: Dr. Arthur C. Parker and the Seneca Arts Project

      Brennan Ciccolone
      Like many Native people, the Haudenosaunee were subjected to culturcide and assimilation using residential schools like the Thomas Indian School in the late 19th and early 20th century. During this time, in 1925, the Seneca archaeologist Dr. Arthur C. Parker was hired as the director of the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Parker used his museum position to uplift and preserve Haudenosaunee arts and culture. This paper focuses on his Seneca Arts Project (1935-1941), which gathered art and artifacts from both ancient and contemporary Haudenosaunee members. This project explores how Parker’s work was used to help revitalize and honor Native American identity in New York State. Consulting biographical pieces, historical research, newspaper articles, and state archives, this paper argues that Parker’s work was key in revitalizing Haudenosaunee culture and helped lay the groundwork for the Red Power movement.
    • Arts and Humanities6 June 2026

      Rape Pregnancies and Consequent PTSD Resulting From the Overturn of Roe v. Wade

      Emma Lindenfelser, Yulia Garaeva, Nenette Nti-Agyemang, Ellen Davis, Anna Kabwa, Alexandra M Calaman
      Prior to the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, access to safe legal abortions was limited and often restricted along racial, economic, and geographic lines. Nearly fifty years later, women’s health policy evolved again following the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning Roe v. Wade. This court ruling decimated federal protections of abortion. This paper presents the research that the 2022 Dobbs judicial decision may contribute to and exacerbate rape-related PTSD on 1 out of 20 American who are unable to access a safe abortion after a rape-related pregnancy. Pregnant women living in conservative states that have outlawed abortions or placed extreme restrictions (i.e. in the case of rape or incest) now face the traumatic reality of being forced to carry a fetus to term. After finding the range of woman that may have a rape-related pregnancy in the United States, we analyzed statistics using PTSD criteria to calculate how many women may develop PTSD symptoms as a result of being compelled to give birth to a rape-related pregnancy following restricted access to abortion care (Dworkin et al., 2021; Kozaric-Kovacic et al., 1995; Lončar et al., 2006; Lundell et al.; Tinglöf et al.; Lissman et al., 2023). Using sources from 1996 - 2023, the estimated number of U.S. women that will have a rape-related pregnancy in their lifetime was calculated to be an average of 4.9% (D’Angelo et al., 2024; Lanthrop et al.; Basile et al., 2018). 
    • Arts and Humanities1 May 2026

      The Bonds of Family: A Case Study on Interconnectedness in the Prison-Industrial Complex

      Cameron Stone
      Beginning in the 1960s, a rightward shift in politics and “War on Drugs” policies propelled the United States toward mass incarceration. The result was a prison population of around 2 million people, in which minority groups have been disproportionately imprisoned. While historians and legal scholars have examined the policies and legal structures behind mass incarceration, oral historians working in the tradition of social history emphasize the importance of narratives of those most impacted yet traditionally neglected. This paper specifically examines the relatively unstudied Columbia University's 2019 Mass Incarceration oral history collection, which explores the interconnected perspectives of one family’s experience within the prison-industrial complex. This archive uncovers a perplexing paradox: the carceral system can provide a community with economic stability via employment, but this economic security relies on the incarceration of their community, even relatives. Furthermore, previous discussions have focused on black and white males, but this research engages with black women, AIDS patients, and prisoner activists

Most Popular Articles

  • Social and Behavioral Sciences
    11 April 2019

    ‘I Hate Myself’: A Look Into Internalized Racism Among Black College Students

    Laquan Garvey
    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.
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  • Social and Behavioral Sciences
    7 October 2022

    Empty Apologies: Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Crisis

    Clementine Sherman
    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.
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  • 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

    Jack Shearer
    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.
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  • Interdisciplinary
    18 April 2018

    Qualitative Analysis of Alcohol’s Acute Effect on Vocal Range

    Scott Landman
    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.
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  • A Note From Editors
    23 May 2016

    Do Natural Disasters Induce More Crime?

    Michael Lentini, Plamen Nikolov, Matthew Schwartz
    The Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004 resulted in grave consequences for South East Asia. Indonesia, in particular, had the highest death toll, losing over 150,000 people. Indonesia’s coastal region Aceh was the hardest hit by this disaster. Exploiting exogenous spatial variation at the district level, we use difference-in-difference analysis to estimate the causal effect of the 2004 disaster on subsequent crime rates. We find that after the tsunami, total annual crime rate went down, on average, by 244 crimes per annum.
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  • 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

    Roberto Montero
    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.
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