The EU, the WTO and indirect land use change

Efforts to meet the European Union’s (EU) alternative energy targets have resulted in increased production of biofuels. This production has resulted in deforestation-related emissions through displacement of agricultural production, a problem known as indirect land-use change. The European Commission (EC) has proposed regulatory options to respond to this problem, but all risk not being in conformity with World Trade Organization (WTO) law.Trade law challenges result from the underlying methodological uncertainty, and the attempt to address a systemic problem on the level of individual producers.Yet, this does not necessarily indicate that the intent of these regulations is to protect EU markets.Thus, this is an instructive case study to examine the relationship between WTO law and complex, emerging environmental problems

SHINY OBJECTS, HIDING PLACES: EXAMINING COMMUNITY-ENGAGED DATA PRACTICES IN LEXINGTON, KY

As local governments increasingly turn to data-driven solutions to help address some of their most acute challenges, from entrenched poverty to affordable housing, they often call on community-engaged researchers as collaborators, analysts and experts. While critical scholarship has highlighted the problematic logics underpinning this turn to data and digital technologies as the solution for urban issues, university-community partnerships offer a unique opportunity to further explore not only how these discourses materialize, but also how they are being actively negotiated and re-imagined in spaces of local government. In this thesis, I explore one such university-community partnership and its efforts to critically apply data-driven narratives to discussions of gentrification and affordable housing in Lexington, KY. Examining the positioning of academic contributions, the centrality of politics within urban planning processes, and the need to interrogate the securitization of whiteness within data-driven narratives, I ultimately argue that embracing data as inextricably saturated with power and politics creates possibilities to enliven a more progressive praxis that resists the certainty of a stratified, unequal and gentrified city. Importantly, this requires data practices that move beyond simply acknowledging the presence of power and politics, to actively, and indeed critically, embracing their very imbrication with data

The Poppy: Contextualising a Seemingly Timeless Symbol in History, Materials and Practice

the poppy, a blood red flower, is the British nation’s symbol of remembrance. For over one hundred years, the poppy has been worn on the lapels of numerous generations as an act of respect for the military men and women that lost their lives serving the nation during times of war. The tradition ultimately began with World War I and since that time the poppy, its meaning and its use, is often viewed in a timeless manner; it transcends time to unite the past and the present. However, the poppy is not an unchanging, static and bounded symbol. This research therefore represents an attempt to historicise the poppy. In other words, it is an attempt to contextualise the materials, the meaning and the use of the poppy in and through time. Analysing the material properties of the poppy, its relationship to the bodies of soldiers, to embodied practice, to industrialisation, and to nationalism, I will argue that the poppy has undergone a series of transitions. Beginning first as a form of therapy, the construction of the silk poppy shared an intimate association and gained legitimacy through the touch of veterans. In 1978, industrial technologies transformed the poppy’s colouring to purify the symbol’s association with pain, warfare and the bodies of soldiers. With the advent of the centenary anniversary of the start of the war, the poppy once again changed. Using ceramic, the anniversary celebrations broke the poppy into pieces and used the biographies of the dead to resonate with the living. Through historicising the poppy, it becomes evident that history, material objects and meaning are not stable. Instead, they are process entangled in webs of relationships between objects, bodies, and time

Sustainable development in the WTO: from mutual supportiveness to balancing

The WTO Secretariat describes sustainable development as a central WTO principle. Relevant international law treaties have declared sustainable development’s mutual supportiveness with trade liberalization, and also emphasized the need to balance its ‘pillars’: economic development, often equated with trade liberalization, with environmental conservation and social welfare. While ‘mutual supportiveness’ suggests that sustainable development’s environmental and social goals are a side effect of trade liberalization, ‘balancing’ involves weighing these different goals, and prompts the difficult question of which are most important, and who is empowered to decide. This paper traces these two broad theoretical conceptions through WTO legal texts, negotiations and dispute settlement, arguing that they have important pragmatic implications. In particular, to create mutual supportiveness WTO Director-General, Pascal Lamy, has stated the need for adequate domestic policies, suggesting that the WTO should support these. Yet, if they have negative trade impacts, pure ‘sustainable development’ policies may be difficult to balance against the WTO obligation to liberalize trade

The Romeo and Juliet Project: Teaching Shakespeare to English Language Learners

The No Child Left Behind Act says that schools must assess students at all grade levels and change their standards, and help those who may be at a lower level because every student is entitled to an education. By creating a unit plan teaching Shakespeare\u27s Romeo and Juliet, specifically making modifications for English Language Learners, Native English speakers will also learn and be challenged. Using theatre games and reading scripts to build vocabulary of the ELLs, mainstream students will also learn about the culture of ELLs to better integrate them into the school system. Theatre not only helps the students to elevate their vocabulary but also helped them to be more comfortable around the students in their classes because they all had to be included together all the time. This unit plan can be used in English classes which will further merge students because not all students take theatre classes but English class is usually required

Consumer preferences and the National Treatment Principle: emerging environmental regulations prompt a new look at an old problem

Should consumers’ preference for ‘green’ products help justify,from a WTO perspective, emerging regulations such as restrictions on trade in non-sustainable biofuels? Despite the role consumer preferences have played in WTO disputes, in association with the ‘ like ’ products concept, there has not been enough focused examination of their specific influence, particularly in disputes on ethical public policy issues, such as environmental or health regulations. To this end, this paper examines key GATT Article III disputes, pointing out that they included attempts both to measure, and also to interpret, consumer preferences. The latter approach becomes more tempting when consumer preferences are difficult to measure; import bans or restrictions associated with ethical public policy regulations can bring about such a situation. A hypothetical dispute about EC biofuels sustainability criteria demonstrates this problem. Options to make the concept of consumer preferences more coherent include limitations on how they can be invoked, and an increased commitment to capturing them through measurement

Non-degree Recital: Emily Bateman, mezzo-soprano

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Music Minor. Ms. Bateman studies voice with Valerie Walters-Gold.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1951/thumbnail.jp

Junior Recital: Emily Crisp, soprano

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Ms. Crisp studies voice with Valerie Walters.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1188/thumbnail.jp