Julian Clement Chase Prize

Chase Kleber

"Sundays in the Park”

Chase Kleber’s capstone essay Sundays in the Park is an analysis of the drum circles in DC’s Malcolm X/ Meridian Hill Park with a particular focus on sound.  Kleber explains his project this way:

“I seek to study space, specifically being Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park – this designated, bordered, and monitored land – and I wish to encounter the various ways of being in it with a careful approach to sound. I highlight the importance of care, as I require methods beyond an objectifying imperial gaze.”

2021 Award Ceremony

Beatrice Mount

"Imagining One D.C.: Using Feminist and Queer Theory as a Basis to Combat Gentrification"

 Gentrification is a growing, urban phenomenon with specific implications for feminist and Queer theorists. Yet despite the overwhelming amount of women and queer communities driving anti-gentrification activism, the intersections of gentrification, feminism, and Queer theories remain understudied. In an effort to understand how feminist and Queer theories may inform or interact with anti-gentrification activism, I conducted a five-month-long, participatory research-based case-study of one organization in the District of Columbia: Organizing Neighborhood Equity (ONE) DC. Using materials and notes drawn from ONE DC’s online sources and meetings ONE DC, I argue that ONE DC roots itself within feminist and queer theories to develop successful strategies to fight against gentrification. By focusing on intersectional identities, avoiding hierarchies, and imagining a future outside of current power structures and ideals, ONE DC develops a concrete understanding of and concrete resistance strategies to gentrification, exemplifying potential resistance strategies against nebulous, interlocking oppressions.

2020 Award Ceremony

Adam Graubart
“Pursuing Tzedek: DC Synagogues Building Movements for Social Justice”

Graubart researched involvement in social justice work among Jewish congregations in D.C. His project — his senior thesis — used interviews and quantitative research to examine how these congregations seek to align actions with values.

2019 Award Ceremony

Lydia Francis
“The Irony of Capital Development: A Critical History of the Origins of Meridian Hill Park from the Perspective of Washington Residents”

Francis’s paper is a layered historical analysis of the development of Meridian Hill Park. She reframes the common narrative about urban park development by providing evidence that the community that was demolished was likely a thriving, established and diverse working class area.

Xavier Adomatis
“Re-Segregate D.C. Schools: An analysis of Gentrification’s Peculiar Consequences on Francis-Stevens” 

Adomatis offers a provocative analysis of one of Georgetown's public elementary schools, School Without Walls, Francis-Stevens. When the school recruited more neighborhood students, parents sent their children to preschool and then transferred them to private schools after kindergarten. As a result, the school lost its Title IX funding without benefiting from parents' ongoing participation with the school.

2018 Award Ceremony

Victoria Rowe
“Seek First to Understand: Exploring the Implementation of Culturally Relevant Education in the District of Columbia”

After demonstrating the educational disparity among D.C.'s black and white students, and reporting the dissatisfaction that black students have expressed about local school climate, Rowe reviews education scholarship and finds that culturally relevant education could have a positive effect. She then interviews a pool of DCPS teachers to discover whether they use culturally relevant teaching strategies and whether the DCPS professional development programs have helped them do so. She concludes with policy recommendations.

2017 Award Ceremony

Kaeleigh Christie
“An Evaluation of the Implementation and Enforcement of Washington D.C.’s Truancy Policy”

Christie critiques D.C.'s public school truancy policy in practice. Using DCPS datasets, Christie highlights remarkable inconsistencies in the ways D.C. public schools practice early intervention for truancy, suggesting that more resources might allow schools to offer more potentially beneficial support to at-risk students.

Emily Niekrasz
“Washington, D.C.’s 1973 Acquisition of Home Rule After One Hundred Years: Confronting the Issues of Race and Representation in the Nation’s Capital”

Niekrasz advances an argument that is as timely as it is historically grounded: that the national civil rights movement is tied up with the status of the nation's capital — and vice versa. She combines research in archives and special collections with D.C.-related sources tracked down as far afield as South Carolina to demonstrate how the most rigorous historical methodology can examine Washington's recent past to address issues of the broadest importance.

2016 Award Ceremony