2024-2025 Senior Fellows

Project title: The impact of casinos on Native American health in the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma

Project description: This project will examine the impact of Choctaw owned casinos and adjacent, casino funded resources on Native American health within the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma reservation. Through the use of surveys, interviews, and additional quantitative health data, this project will explore how one's proximity to casinos and access to additional casino adjacent resources play a role in health outcomes.  The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988 legalized Class III gaming in all federally recognized tribes in the United States, including the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. These casinos now serve as an important source of revenue for the tribe, but it is unclear the exact impact of these casinos on Choctaw health. This study hypothesizes that close proximity to Choctaw casinos will have a negative impact on Choctaw health but predicts that the casino adjacent resources will have a moderating effect that will result in an overall net positive impact. The primary goal of this study is to gather additional information on how tribal casinos may affect Native American health in a way that the Choctaw Nation, and potentially other tribal nations, can utilize to inform future policies and programs.

Project title: Queer Idyll

Project description: Queer Idyll envisages a marriage between sonic and visual worlds to produce a short film documenting the Humble Hands Harvest farm's goal of acknowledging, networking, and supporting queer, rural communities. To intimately understand queer farming, I will visit various farms run by queer people and work as a farmhand during my stays. Evoking the essence of living queer in rural America by weaving together interviews and sound recordings in their physical locations, this revelatory project exposes the complicated nature of queer existence and the banality of everyday life. Juxtaposing joyful tranquility against intrapersonal distress, the film inquires into the affective expressions of idyllic isolation, social deprivation, and the processes of communal renewal to the captured lived realities behind rural queer life. 

Project title: The grand restructuring: A historical analysis of private equity's relationship with Japan's corporate renaissance

Project description: In the past twenty years, the synergistic relationship between Japanese private equity (PE) investors and corporate restructurings has evolved rapidly. In 2024, more than half of public Japanese firms are considering divestments from non-core business operations, and annual PE investment activity in Japan has increased twenty-fold as investors purchase divested assets. However, existing literature focuses on pre-21st century market conditions, does not address the dramatic developments of the past decade, and does not fully address the industrial, cultural, and corporate history behind these structural shifts. We argue that this two-part corporate renaissance is best understood as a product of broader, momentous shifts in Japanese capitalism away from the "planned economy" model illustrated by Chalmers Johnson. To argue this, we examine the history of the relationship between PE and corporate restructurings via three complementary steps: 1) extensive qualitative "landmark" transaction documentation and study, 2) quantitative regressions of investor activity based on predictors such as investment strategy and focus, and 3) thematic analysis of technology, industrial and corporate history. We hope to provide more cohesive coverage of Japanese PE activity, link the underlying drivers of corporate restructurings to Johnson's model, and evaluate the future of these emerging, critical components of Japan's transition.