Soo Yeon Han
In todays culture, the east is often defined as archival and conservative, the west being its modern progressive counterpart. Nevertheless, the patriarchal dominance had significant influence in both hemispheres. Of the same nationality yet of contrasting environment, Korean and Korean American poets maintain similar yet different perspectives. How do contemporary Korean women poets express themselves differently from their mothers who suffered oppressions? Furthermore, how would the Americanized daughters of the Korean mothers develop similar thematic approaches as part of their poetics? As my senior thesis, I intend to analyze the […]
Andrew King
The 1957 obscenity trial of Allen Ginsbergs Howlthat cornerstone epic of the Beat generationis understood as a major episode not only in the history of American and West Coast poetics but in the history of American culture. Missing from prevailing accounts of the trial, however, is an assessment of the role of Gil Orlovitzs text, The Statement of Erika Keith and Other Stories, Poems and a Play. When undercover officers Russell Woods and Thomas Pagee purchased a copy of Howl in order to arrest City Lights Books clerk Shigeyoshi Murao […]
Hai Hoang
What will happen if Myspace use can increase your narcissism? What will happen if Facebook use can increase your self-esteem and decrease your self-control? What will happen when only ten minutes of using Facebook may make you more willing to purchase online products? Those are some of the questions I want to answer in my study considering it is impossible to deny the great influence of online social network on our daily lives. More specifically, I want to examine if peoples personality and self-control may change after using Facebook, and […]
Hussin Kordi
There are 50 million individuals suffering from hunger in the United States an absurdity when one considers the amount of food produced and wasted. Without accessible alternatives, North America and Europe waste nearly half of their excess consumable food. Despite an abundance of charity and emergency food services, the traditional hand-out model cannot seem to remedy the hunger epidemic. My research will examine nonprofit organizations in food security; I will examine how these organizations may contribute to more structurally transformative, long-term solutions in the communities they serve while simultaneously providing […]
Nada Hosking
Research related to prehistoric image-making is constructed around a patriarchal scientific tradition of discourse. In 2007, archaeologists once more imposed vulva symbolism on an abstract engraving on a rock at Abri Castanet, perpetuating the assumption that Upper Palaeolithic societies perceived the world through a similar cultural screen to our own. Using the so-called vulva engravings as an example, my project asks: How can contemporary patriarchal values that have been dominating the interpretation of pre-historic imagery be re-evaluated? My project culminates in a senior honors thesis that aims at re-examining the […]
Tiffany Ku
If as many theorists of the genre argue, authenticity is essential to autobiography, what place, if any, does the literary occupy in it? By literary I mean all of the subjective qualities that interpretation introduces to any verbal description of reality. On the one hand, it seems impossible to depict a complete life without recourse to interpretation; on the other, the various effects of interpretation might be said to amount to distortions of the life depicted, rendering it inauthentic. At the core of Nietzsches philosophy is the “”famous insistence that […]
Suzanne Ubick
Something happened to Homo sapiens, our species, between 75,000 and 60,000 years ago, that resulted in a very different suite of behaviors and the first population boom. I argue that modern humans underwent a biological change that, coupled with environmental changes driving dietary change, allowed humans, especially human females, to lay down large stores of body fat under normal nutritional conditions. I will draw from the archaeological record in the form of ancient artworks, the ethnographic record in the documented changes in stature of the Andaman Islanders over time, and […]
Julia Villarruel
This study examines the 2006 and 2011 social movements in Chile, two years with distinctly different levels of social media penetration. By analyzing whether of not social media is changing the experience of participants, the relationship between leaders and individuals and media coverage of protests I seek to answer questions such as: Can social media networks bring down barriers for collective action? Are social networks a formidable means of bypassing mass media? How are these tools revolutionizing modern chilean political activism?
Bhavi Vohra
I will use Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases (TALEN) -mediated mutagenesis to determine the function of the RNA-binding protein tra2b and its role in alternative splicing during Xenopus tropicalis development. TALENs or Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases, are artificial restriction enzymes that create double stranded breaks, inducing mutations in targeted loci. They can be engineered to target any DNA sequence and cause permanent changes in the genome. Alternative splicing and pre-mRNA processing is an important target for regulation of eukaryotic gene expression, which is what I am interested in studying.
Huyen Vo
A burn accident can dramatically change a persons quality of life; survivors have not only permanent physical scars, but also mental and emotional scars. For my research, I will examine how the severity of young adult female burn survivors injuries impacts their comfort in engaging in intimate and sexual relationships. I will approach this by first studying the survivors views on their body image. Secondly, I will look at their intimate relations and sexual life. Finally, I will synthesize these two findings and look at the correlation between the populations […]