Katherine Hijar
Current Bio: Katherine received her Ph.D. in History from The Johns Hopkins University in 2009. After 11 years as a history professor at California State San Marcos, she is now a curator at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut. Her scholarly experitise is in U.S. social and cultural history, with emphasis on women, race, gender, urban history, and visual, print, and material culture. Haas Scholars Project: Katherine will travel to New York this summer to conduct archival research on visual and textual representations of women in the mid-nineteenth century. By […]
Timothy Poore
Tim’s study, which will become his senior honors thesis in Psychology, will test the hypothesis that being in a state of positive glow as a result of unconditional self-construal will lead to a decrease in vigilance, hindering performance, and in turn, causing a person to be more susceptible to negative feelings following a subsequent failure. Much research has focused on positive aspects of experiencing positive glow, which is a state in which a persons happiness, confidence, and internal positivity are maximized. One psychological mechanism that contributes to this positive glow […]
David Jiménez
This past November, California passed Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, which allocates 3 billion dollars over the next ten years to human embryonic stem (hES) cell research. How did the majority of Californians decide to vote for this initiative? Before the election, groups for and against the measure tried to sway Californians opinions through advertising and influencing media coverage of this initiative. In his research David will investigate why and how these groups framed their positions in the way they did to present this initiative […]
Jessica Merizan
Through archaeological analysis of a dump in Northern California used by the wealthy, Anglo-American ranch family of Joe Coney and related households in the 1940s-60s, Jessica will investigate how patterns of consumerism, as shown by artifacts, negotiate with class, gender, and race, along with regional consumer styles. She plans to spend her summer researching curated documentary records, archival data, and museum collections, as well as working with a site informant who lived on the ranch and is now, interestingly, an archaeologist. Jessica believes that through an analysis of the Coney’s […]
Morgan Greene
Morgan’s project will seek to address the timely question of whether the current body of antitrust law is adequate to ensure consumer welfare in the new technology-driven economy. Through extensive historical research, he will study how courts have interpreted the original antitrust statute through the decades focusing on representative cases. He will explore continuities and trends in the areas of judicial interpretation, economic theory and technological change that may help illuminate the current historical moment. He will then undertake a case study of the Microsoft antitrust trial, through intensive study […]
Gregory Hughes
The aim of Greg’s project, which will constitute his senior honors thesis in sociology, is to create a greater understanding of how gay identities and communities are formed in rural areas. Urban areas have formed not only the backing but also the major theoretical causal concept in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) theory. Rural gay culture and communities have remained unexamined and under theorized. Greg will be doing fieldwork in an area of the Northwest, where a rural community of gays and lesbians has developed. The area he will […]
Mary Gardner
Tourism, as Jamaicas largest and fastest growing industry, is vital to the countrys growth and development. Montego Bay, the second largest city in Jamaica, is the tourist capital of the island. The juxtaposition of a large local and tourist population in Montego Bay has created a unique form of physical and material segregation. Mary’s research project will explore how this space and, along with it, the tourist experience, is produced through the forces of marketing by the tourist industry, the physical segregation from the rest of the city and the […]
Jay Martin
Cognitive science aims to understand how people represent the structure of the world around them. Faces are thought to be windows to some of these representations, namely emotions, which are related to facial expressions biologically and culturally. Labeling expressions is a seemingly effortless task for people, but explaining the subtleties is much more complicated. Jay’s study will help develop a method to systematically explore the scope of different categories of affect, and to explore the correlation between subtle facial movements and the perception of emotion. With sophisticated facial animation software […]
Paul Aparicio
Recent research has proposed that schizophrenia can best be understood as a problem in the way the brain synchronizes information and has located this deficit in abnormal cerebellar functioning. In order to increase our understanding of the unique relationship between cerebellar dysfunction and schizophrenia, Paul intends to test the hypothesis that the cerebellum is essential for the coordination of attention and temporal representation. Paul will conduct an experiment with neurological patients who exhibit focal lesions restricted to the cerebellum, in order to ascertain the extent to which the cerebellum contributes […]
Malcolm Harvey
The vast majority of research associated with combat-related trauma and PTSD is conducted employing psychoanalytical and psychosocial models utilizing quantitative methodology that focuses primarily on the individual. Comparatively, little is known about the social impact of an illness that afflicts a great number of combat veterans and affects the lives of many others. Malcolm hopes to address this deficiency by: exploring it from a sociological perspective which will expand the scope of inquiry beyond the individual to society at-large; applying qualitative methodology which will uncover nuances that are missed by […]