Rosario Torres
Rosario’s research will be speaking to the debate that abounds in California among archaeologists, ecologists, Native American scholars, and state and Federal agencies regarding the role that Native peoples played in shaping their environments. While some posit Native Californians were the ultimate eco-engineers, actively managing animal and plant communities, other scholars are more skeptical about the degree to which Native Californians managed ecosystems. In addressing some of these questions, Rosario’s research will feature ethnobotanical remains that may be the product of anthropogenic land management practices employed by Native peoples along […]
Naphtalie Jeanty
The goal of Napthalie’s project is to see if male-identified homosociality or male-to-male sexual relations within black communities is something that can be traced among men in their gendered spheres of work during the 19th century through archaeology. She will participate in an excavation in Fort Davis, Texas, where Buffalo Soldiers were stationed from 1867 to 1891. She will be looking at primary documents and artifacts to see if any material evidence of bonds/relationships or sexual relationships among the African American soldiers can be found. Ultimately, evidence of these sorts […]
Saida Cornejo
Saida’s research explores how some undocumented migrants generate their income through entrepreneurship. Undocumented entrepreneurs are part of high barrier and low barrier industries, but their undocumented status leaves them vulnerable to policing and wage theft. Their vulnerability as migrants places them outside the traditional image of who an American entrepreneur represents which presents a set of challenges that otherwise goes unnoticed. Through qualitative interviews, Saida aims to reveal these challenges by examining how being viewed as illegal by law and society denies certain rights, privileges, and access to resources that […]
Raúl Varela
In 1993 a wave of disappearances and murders of women living in the border city of Ciudad Jurez, Chihuahua, Mxico made news around the world. Twenty-five years later, thousands of these cases of innocent victims have not been resolved. Ral proposes to create an ethnographic documentary film as part of his Anthropology honors thesis and explore why its important for the mothers of the disappeared women to keep the memory and identity of their daughters alive. He will film in Ciudad Jurez in-depth interviews with activists, scholars, journalists, and most […]
Susan Kim
As the historic prison boom of the past thirty years comes to a halt in California, a nascent jailr boom has snuck onto the scene. Forty out of fifty-eight counties in California are in various stages of building or renovating jails, the most pronounced characteristic among these new jail projects being their emphasis on mental health treatment. Susan will conduct secondary and archival research, interviews with various stakeholders, and observation of political events concerning jail expansion and mental health to investigate the political, economic, and social forces facilitating the newest […]
Jesús Vásquez-Cipriano
Impoverished communities of color (ICC) continue to lack economic self-sufficiency. This diminishes their self-governance and self-determination. However, Latino communities and other racially marginalized peoples continue to develop grassroots, community-led projects that address their need for communal self-sufficiency and political empowerment. Jess investigates: What types of organizational models are emerging within Latino projects? Are these projects using established models or are they creating distinct, uncommon models? If so, what is influencing their innovation and adaptation? Jess will work alongside a few Latino community-led projects in California, conducting qualitative research involving interviews […]
Janie Chen
During the prison boom of the 1990s, the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) prison population in the U.S. exploded by 250%. AAPIs were found to be one of the fastest-growing groups of incarcerated peoples nationwide, despite occupying a relatively small portion of the total prison population. The growing bodies of literature on reentry and Asian American studies have however failed to capture the complex experiences of the racial “Other” entangled in the carceral system. Therefore, Janie’s research asks, how do formerly incarcerated AAPIs experience reentry into their families and […]
Andrea Ramirez
Previous scholarship on the topic of ethnic studies programs implementation in K-12 institutions has shown that theres been educational benefits for students who participate in the courses.In San Francisco, the implementation of ethnic studies courses in the high schools resulted in documented grade improvement, and higher education retention rates. For my research project, I will focus on George Washington High in San Francisco to better understand the processes that allowed for students to obtain higher grades, and how the curriculum influences the students relationship to academics. By 2019, all CA […]
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 […]
Miriam Sergent-Leventhal
Studies of educational outcomes have focused on what prevents disadvantaged students from succeeding, leaving reproduction of educational elites in a black box. Miriams research will focus on how students from elite private schools fare in a large public university, particularly the University of Michigan and Cal Berkeley. Relying on Bourdieus concept of habitus, Miriam will interview graduates of elite high schools who now attend large, public universities. In doing so, she hopes to gain insight into how the elite maintain (or possibly do not maintain) their position of power, providing […]