Le Sun

How do political parties influence online posting behavior? Previous research attributed an individual’s utility from posting online to two major channels: contribution to public knowledge and identity boosting. In this project, I will develop a model of demonization that analyzes how a political party, using posts on social media as signals, interacts with its supporters via these two channels. Using a set of state-sponsored posts and comments about the 2022 Ukraine-Russia Crisis from Weibo, one of China’s largest social media platforms, I will test how topic distributions of the comment […]

Tiger Schenkman

What can be said of love created under duress and continued into freedom? This question will guide my research into interracial couples who began seeing each other under slavery and continued through Abolition in Louisiana. My research will straddle the two periods immediately preceding and following Abolition, in order to pinpoint couples who weathered unsteady sociocultural and legal realities out of a commitment to their love. This project will therefore fill a lacuna of ambiguity in the study of interracial love during slavery; rather than focusing on legal history, I […]

Jordan Serrano-Guedea

First-generation college students (FGCS) experience many unique familial, cultural, social, and academic challenges as the first in the family to pursue a four-year degree. Previous research has found that these extra stressors may place FGCS at higher risk for mental health problems, lower retention rates, and lower graduation rates (House and Kolb, 2020). Yet, findings in the literature on the impacts of first-generation status on FGCS mental health are mixed, and no systematic review exists on this topic to reconcile the varied findings. This summer, I will expand upon this […]

Diana Ramirez

The livelihood of the Poblano community’s oral histories and traditions, “desde nuestros pueblos a los estados unidos” (from our pueblos to the U.S.), is telling of my community’s ancestral resistance. The survival of our heritage allows our families to build community and identity, a home in a country that rejects and displaces both our Mexican immigrant communities and ancestral knowledge and identities. My research project is a transborder study in which I will trace my Indigenous roots in Puebla, Mexico and construct a memoir of the oral histories of my […]

Jasper Talwani

In my research project, I will create a partial grammatical description of Highland Chontal, a highly endangered indigenous language of Oaxaca, Mexico, through collaboration with elder master speakers. I will use this information to produce pedagogical materials for use in classrooms where the language is being taught. I will also conduct a workshop to train Chontal language activists and speakers in linguistics in order for them to understand and be able to use these materials, in addition to other skills such as literacy in the language, language documentation methods, and […]

Luna Ramos

Instead of focusing on the interpersonal instances of transphobia, this project is curious about what circumstances allow for cultural shifts than transform the school experiences of transgender youth of color. By conducting interviews with transgender youth of color from the San Francisco Bay Area, this project is centered on a group that is often excluded and made invisible in academic work. Transgender youth and their allies are continually antagonized, even aside from quotidian bullying, increased risk for homelessness, and suicide. Legal protections do not translate to material safety for Trans […]

Davis Kedrosky

For two hundred years, the Hudson’s Bay Company exercised de facto colonial rule over most of central and western Canada. While many concessionary regions monopolizing extractive production have experienced negative developmental outcomes, Canada is one of the world’s most prosperous countries, and has a less negative record of native persecution. I seek to analyze whether this paradoxical result can be in part explained by the HBC’s competition with the French and several independent British firms during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, which may have created “outside options” that increased […]

Silas Kirsch

Since their inception, the role and cultural significance of highways have aligned with contemporary issues of inequity and have been vectors of harm. I will analyze the history of the Bay Area’s highways and examine the inequity that shaped and was built into the public understanding of the highways, as well as the structures themselves. Three main eras I will focus on are: 1910–1940, when highways were novel and their place in culture was being constructed; 1941–1980, when they were used as a tool to reshape communities and the dynamics […]

Deborah Qu

I am interested in studying strategies to increase the efficacy of cognitive reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy in which one alters thoughts about an event to modify one’s emotional response to that event. Cognitive reappraisal can be effective in down-regulating negative emotions in stressful, emotional situations. However, because cognitive reappraisal has been shown to deplete cognitive resources, implementing cognitive reappraisal can be difficult in emotional situations that are cognitively demanding. The project aims to study whether implementation intentions, a strategy known for its ability to automatize desired behaviors in goal […]

Tessa Mouw

In early January 2022, I arrived in Italy for the start of my semester abroad at the University of Bologna. While exploring Bologna, I discovered that I was living in what was the city’s Jewish ghetto in the Middle Ages. I was immediately intrigued and, upon conducting further research, was convinced that this important history should be the subject of a research project. This project will carefully construct and analyze a cohesive and holistic history of the Jewish community of Bologna during the Middle Ages. By using a variety of […]