Mark Johnson

Throughout the 1900s Berkeley Anthropologists documented the ethnographic information of many Native Californian tribes for fear that their lifeways and languages were soon to become extinct in the wake of the burgeoning United States. The Bancroft Library is now steward of these ethnographic collections. While the public institution is responsible to make the collections available to all without bias, one Native Californian community has protested that open access to these collections leaves their community vulnerable to multiple dangers such as misrepresentation in academic articles and potential looting of the sacred […]

Adrián García Hernández

Rural areas compose 86% of Mexicos territory and account for 36% of the population while rural GDP per capita ranges between 27% and 43% of the national average. To address this urban/rural developmental divide, the Secretariat of Tourism created the Programa Pueblos Mgicos (PPM). Its goal was to raise local levels of wellbeing by promoting economic development through tourism. By carrying out a sense of community survey, collecting socioeconomic data, and interviewing residents and town officials, Adrin will explore whether the PPM has resulted in the abatement or aggravation of […]

Nicholas Eskow

In 1873, more than 100 Buffalo Soldiers at Fort Stockton, Texas signed a petition requesting formal censure of the post surgeon for his racist refusal to treat a sick and dying man. The officers responded by putting the soldiers on trial for mutiny. Nicks research will look at how these soldiers, most of whom were born into enslavement, came to understand and express their rights as United States citizens. This research will combine primary documentary sources, housed at the National Archives and Fort Stockton, with secondary literature on African American […]

Sara Ellis

All too often, patients in psychiatric hospitals are involved in violent incidents with other patients and hospital staff. These incidents incur significant economic, social and human costs. Although most research has focused on identifying patient characteristics that contribute to violence (e.g., young age, past violence), there is growing recognition that rates of violence can vary tremendously based on the environment. Sara will be using an instrument, PRISM (Promoting Risk Intervention by Situational Management), to examine how environmental factors contribute to variation in rates of institutional violence across units at Napa […]

Matthew Willett

American popular music went through a bohemian renaissance in the early 1990s. Major record labels were signing musicians who played unconventional music, and there was an American audience hungry for these new sounds. Matt will be analyzing the 1991 album Sailing the Seas of Cheese by the Bay Area band Primus in order to understand how the Bay Area art and counterculture communities influenced this acceptance of the weird during this time period. This album was a unique and innovative piece of art that merged groove and in your face […]

Maritza Cárdenas

Dengue virus (DENV) is a mosquito-borne virus with four distinct serotypes. Primary infection by any of the four serotypes may result in dengue fever or, in severe cases, progress to dengue hemorrhagic fever/dengue shock syndrome. Recent studies have challenged dogma in the dengue field by finding that serotype-cross-reactive neutralizing antibody titers in serum of children in a cohort study in Nicaragua increased marginally in the time between primary and secondary DENV infection rather than decreasing over time, implying re-exposure to DENV. Maritza will use a novel method the Quad-color Fluorospotto […]

Gabriella Wellons

In the Moche culture of ancient Peru (ca. 250850 CE), graffiti markings have been discovered on the mural walls of the Huaca de la Luna archaeological site, a former Moche religious center in the Moche Valley of Peru. On spontaneous occasions of ancient graffiti, incised figural forms often emulate pre-existing imageries on painted murals and sculpted reliefs. Gabriella is using reconstructive software for rendering high fidelity photographs of individual graffito into 3D photogrammetric models. This procedure is advantageous for graffiti incisions, which are difficult to visualize in their standard 2D […]

Adonis Brooks

Most evaluations of Beat Generation authors tend to overlook the significance of race and sexuality in the formation of the quintessential identity of the 1960s culture of dissent. Adonis thesis will explore the Beat oeuvres of Bob Kaufman and Amiri Baraka primarily through queer theory and Fanonian Critical Race Theory. He will examine the nexus of marginalized experiences between these poets, which centers on homophobia and racism, and produces cultural isolation, alienation/imprisonment, and a devastating psychic loneliness. He will also consider the subject of their poetry, who is extremely alien […]

Jeremy Teman

Activities like driving demand the ability to respond quickly and accurately to changes in ones environment. A fundamental scientific question concerns what neural processes determine response time (RT). A widely held assumption is that RT represents the aggregate time required to generate an accurate movement. However, recent research suggests that humans can be forced to accurately produce movements more rapidly than their fastest voluntary RTs. Inhibition of the motor system is known to be involved in motor planning processes during the performance of voluntary RT tasks, which raises the question: […]

Rieson Blumer

In 1542, a short religious text from about the year 1400 was made into a single surviving edition by a relatively unknown publisher, Richard Lant. Though his particular attempt at revitalization was modest, the religious turmoil of his period caused others like him to reproduce an array of religious texts from the Middle Ages, revising their language into new editions for Early Modern English. What do these changes in language mean for a new religious context and system of interpretation? Working to catch hold of some of the threads of […]