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Browsing by Author "Ipsen, Annabel, committee member"

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    COVID-19, policymaking, and the production of harm in the meatpacking sector
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Luxton, India M., author; Malin, Stephanie, advisor; Opsal, Tara, committee member; Cross, Jennifer E., committee member; Sbicca, Joshua, committee member; Ipsen, Annabel, committee member; Hausermann, Heidi, committee member
    In March 2020, the United States was forced to respond to the impending threat of COVID-19. Businesses, schools, and many of society's institutions shuttered in hopes of preventing mass transmission. And yet, meatpacking plants remained open. By September 2021, over 59,000 meatpacking workers tested positive for COVID-19 and close to 300 workers had died from the virus (Douglas 2021). In this dissertation, I document the socio-political, structural, and institutional roots of high rates of COVID-19 transmission among meatpacking workers—and the impacts of firm decisions and federal, state, and local governance structures on workers. I utilize literature pertaining to industrialized animal agriculture, political economy, green criminology, and racial capitalism to analyze the intersections among policymaking and production of harm within the meatpacking sector. Drawing on 39 in-depth interviews, critical policy ethnography, and content analysis, I explore the impacts of labor and food policies on the safety and wellbeing of meatpacking workers prior to and during COVID-19. Through an extended multiscalar case study of the JBS plant in Greeley, Colorado, I trace the involvement of agribusiness actors in federal, state, and local level policymaking during COVID-19. I examine how legacies of racialized labor exploitation have enabled firms to uphold the treadmill of meat production and perpetrate hazardous working conditions—conditions further upheld through corporate self-regulation, rather than federal intervention. I document how regulatory power of the federal agencies tasked with protecting worker and public health, including the CDC and OSHA, has been greatly diminished in recent years due to declined funding, staff capacity, and a neoliberal political structure that favors corporate self-responsibility over state enforcement. I argue that a system of harm has been codified into the regulatory system; harm that emerges directly from policymaking and the outcomes of a neoliberal capitalist political-economic system. Throughout this dissertation, I analyze how meatpacking workers' vulnerabilities during COVID-19 were amplified by issues of procedural injustice and historical legacies of racial inequality and exploitation. I conclude with a discussion of theoretical and policy implications and offer suggestions for future research
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    How to clean a heart
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) Brousard Norcross, Elena, author; Levy, EJ, advisor; Ausubel, Ramona, advisor; Ipsen, Annabel, committee member
    In this short story collection, How to Clean a Heart I have included eight stories that represent the work I've achieved during my MFA, but also evidence for how I've expanded as a writer. My stories have gone from either collisions of the fantastical and the real, to stories that consider the world and wider contexts. But, my writing will forever be personal and a way to exorcise trauma and grief where I cannot other places. In Mikayla's Ghost, a girl who lives in her dead parent's house takes in a not-so stranger and waits for love's return. In The Foal, Jess must confront how grief has separated her and her dad after a drifter murders her pet foal. How to Clean a Heart concerns Ira and Sage, two young people who love and care for each other but because of their traumas are unable to fully connect. Laurie considers metaphysical, religious and feminist questions of being, the story loosely based on a missing persons case in the Fox Valley. In Ampere, a man made of wood feels love for the first time and it makes him question his purpose in life and his "othering" in society. Little Ghost follows Nenana who returns to her hometown where she first learned her place in the world, something she has been trying to forget ever since. Archaeology for Beginners takes place in the near future, where the last survivors of an economic and environmental apocalypse track what they believe to be the boot prints of Cowboy, 25 as they name him. What follows raises questions of why they are truly making up stories about tracks in the dirt, and how we make meaning at the end of the world. Phases continues looking towards the future where the earth is spinning faster, causing a multitude of changes and chaos in the world. In Kenosha, Wisconsin, Magnolia finds a way to accept that the world and all she knows, is ending.