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 […]
Joanna Cardenas
South Central Los Angeles has a long history of male-dominant gang affiliations, categorizing the city of Los Angeles as the gang capital of the nation. This led to excessive surveillance and sky-rocketing rates of male incarceration since the 1980s, making L.A. men jails the face of mass incarceration. Research is lacking, however, around the social and cultural understandings of Black and Brown women in South Centrals carceral landscape. Joanna, therefore, will analyze the way these social and cultural understandings ultimately affect the way South Central women navigate structures of state […]
Lulu Matute
Hundreds of environmental activists have been killed for defending land and natural resources in Honduras. Although Berta Cceres was one of many slain activists, she is the most renowned globally. This is largely due to her transnational coalition-building efforts and Goldman Environmental Prize recognition. Berta was an outspoken Indigenous Lenca leader and a feminist who advocated for indigenous land tenure. She spoke out against government corruption, the 2009 military coup d’tat, and U.S. interests in the country. Lulu will conduct ethnographic interviews with Honduran women living in the Bay Area […]
Adrián García Hernández
Rural areas compose 86% of Mexicos territory and account for 36% of the population while rural GDP per capita ranges between 27% and 43% of the national average. To address this urban/rural developmental divide, the Secretariat of Tourism created the Programa Pueblos Mgicos (PPM). Its goal was to raise local levels of wellbeing by promoting economic development through tourism. By carrying out a sense of community survey, collecting socioeconomic data, and interviewing residents and town officials, Adrin will explore whether the PPM has resulted in the abatement or aggravation of […]
Nalya Arabelle Fenella Rodriguez
Looking at the factors that led to the Salvadoran civil war, such as the social inequalities of the time, Nalya has found it important to further understand the implications of this political violence in the creation of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS) street gang. Using Durkheims theory of religion, she has developed a theory on the religion of violence. This “religion” has created a system of perpetual violence in El Salvador, which was ironically exacerbated by US domestic and foreign policy on gangs and immigration. By interviewing people in Los Angeles […]