On December 7, 2022, I attended a presentation about students majoring in Gender and Sexuality Studies. Each student spoke about their working thesis and research question of the year.

Grant Hearne is a student at Davidson College who is double majoring in Gender and Sexuality Studies and Economics. His presentation was about analyzing monopsony exploitation and necropolitical expropriation in prison labor. His research questions were the following: “To what degree are incarcerated workers economically exploited, and how does the exploitation of incarcerated workers operate to serve a bio/capitalist agenda?” Grant explained how the United States has the highest number of incarcerated people, specifically black men. There are 5 times more black men than white men in prison. In addition, the purpose of the 13th Amendment was to free all African American slaves throughout the US. However, 16 states present-day use forced labor as a form of criminal punishment. This has become a form of modern-day slavery. The worst part is that the United States is aware of this action but allows these 16 states to break the law. So much for “nobody is above the law.” Moreover, Grant defined the term monopsony. Monopsony is a firm in a noncompetitive labor market in which this company holds all the power. This firm has the capability of setting their wages as low as zero dollars if they wish. The concept of monopsony lead to new questions that embarked on Grant’s mind. One was “Why are companies hiring people that are not helping make revenue.”

In my opinion, I thought Grant’s presentation was very interesting. I wish him the best of luck with his thesis project. I could tell how happy he was with his research project through the way he illustrated his work. He did a great job keeping everyone’s eyes glued to the screen.