Joseph Arena is a PhD student at the Ohio State University. In 2005, he graduated with distinction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a B.A. in History (Honors) and Political Science. He earned his MA in History from the Ohio State University in 2009 where he completed a thesis entitled “The Little Car that Did Nothing Right: the 1972 Lordstown Assembly Strike, the Chevrolet Vega, and the Unraveling of Growth Economics.” In May 2010 he passed his general exams. His dissertation, “A Vision for the City: New York 1974-1988,” explores the relationship between the city's financial crisis and contemporary American politics and economics. His essay, “Confronting Agrarian Crisis: Historical Food Insecurity, the Indian State, and the Green Revolution” was published in Archive: A Journal of Undergraduate History (2005).