Patricia Hernandez
The percentage of Latinas in higher education has increased over the last 20 years. Yet, this population is often viewed as a homogenous group, obscuring the diversity of experiences Latinas face. In particular, experiences like those of young Latina mothers are often ignored or absent. By erasing their experiences, we miss an opportunity to learn about the unique ways that they challenge cultural gendered norms on motherhood and the ways that they navigate normative spaces within the university. My research project examines the central question: how do Latina mothers navigate […]
Celine Vezina
Skaldic poetry, a genre of medieval Icelandic vernacular poetry characterized by its ornate poetics and highly inflexible meter, typically taking the form of royal encomia, was the preeminent poetic form in much of Scandinavia during its period of composition (mid-9th-mid-14th centuries). My research will focus on the latter end of this tradition, the rarely studied Marian skaldic poems (typically) composed in the 14th century. The Marian poems demonstrate a deep self-consciousness about the function of poetry within their changing culture, effectively using skaldic traditions as affective technologies to create emotional […]
Jacob Bjorseth
The French New Wave, a cinematic movement which shifted the paradigm of narrative storytelling, was based on an engagement with radical social upheavals. By rejecting the literary, political, and societal standards and expectations of their era, New Wave directors were responsible for groundbreaking representations of modern social issues. In my research project, I am examining the ways in which two particular New Wave directors (Jean-Luc Godard and Agns Varda) interact with and comment on gender roles in their films. Both Godard and Varda employ subversive representations of gender which give […]
Peyton Provenzano
The prevalence of mental health crises among individuals in the United States is steadily increasing, but state-funded resources are declining. The police are the only 24/hr emergency responders in most areas, which means that police are obligated to respond to mental health crisis situations. The US Department of Justice estimates that people with mental health disabilities are four times as likely to be killed in interactions with law enforcement compared to the general population. Seeking to minimize negative interactions with the carceral state, community-based organizations have begun to implement alternative […]
Jaewon (Jenny) Yoon
Some thymocytes, or T cell precursors, have the ability to respond to self-antigens. If these thymocytes were to leave the thymus, they would develop into conventional T cells with the potential to drive autoimmune diseases. To prevent self-reactivity, these cells are often deleted from the repertoire through a process known as negative selection. Some, however, undergo agonist selection, which results in the development of lineages with protective and regulatory roles. One agonist selected lineage is CD8 intraepithelial lymphocytes (IELs). There is little known about what promotes the development of CD8 […]
Quinn Spencer
Entomopthera muscae is a fungus that infects flies that can induce behavioral changes and subsequently cause morbidity Drosophila melanogaster. However, the mechanism behind this drastic modification is still largely unknown. My research aims to find a way to modify and flourescently tag a gene in the fungus using CRISPR/Cas9, which may allow us to better understand mechanisms of infection and subsequent behavioral modifications in the host organisms. By doing so, we will be able to track how the fungus can travel through and modify the function of the nervous system […]
Claudia Tischler
Motor preparation can be probed using both electroencephalography (EEG) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), a noninvasive brain stimulation technique which evokes a response called the motor-evoked potential (MEP) from the targeted muscle. However, recording MEPs is problematicthe MEP is highly variable from trial to trial, and the sources of fluctuations in MEP amplitude are debated. Some of this variability, as well as the temporal dynamics of the MEP, may be explained by neural oscillations, endogenous fluctuations in brain activity. During the preparatory period, both the MEP amplitude and beta power […]
James Zheng
Melanoma is among the most common and lethal forms of cancer and its incidence has greatly increased in the last 30 years. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNA) are a class of epigenetic regulatory molecules important to cancer development and progression, and can serve as tumor markers or even targets for therapy. My research is focused on two novel lncRNA important for the survival of NRAS mutant malignant melanoma. I aim to verify the effects of these lncRNA, as well as demonstrate that we can inhibit melanoma cell growth both in vitro […]
Ross Mattheis
Rising inequality and falling economic mobility may be the defining economic and social challenge of present-day developed economiesand the US in particular. Recently, many have observed that inequality is associated with social discontent, slowed growth, and the spread of far-right populism. But economic mobility in the US has not always been dismal; in the late nineteenth century, mobility in the US was truly exceptional, higher than the US and the UK in the late twentieth century. My work investigates the effect of the western frontier on American economic development in […]
Claudia Valdivia
Nearly one quarter of children in the United States now hear a language other than English at home (National Center for Education Statistics, 2011). This means that millions of children, upon entering school, start acquiring English as their second language. At the same time as they experience a shift in language input in their new school environments, they also come in contact with significantly more children in their day-to-day life. Knowing that both child and adult input is important to the overall acquisition of language, it is interesting to ask […]