Emma Yataco

Though the term religion is frequently used, it remains difficult to define. As a result, defining religious conversion or developing a unified theory of conversion has not yet been achieved. Emma’s research will explore religion and conversion from the perspective of the religious organizations themselves. She will examine the doctrine and organizational structure of both The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Identifying similarities and differences will help establish a foundation for understanding how religious participation/disaffiliation is affected by the religious environment and teachings as […]

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 […]

Duncan Wanless

Today, the town of Yanga, Veracruz, Mexico identifies itself as the First Free Town in the Americas because of its origins in the first successful slave revolt in the Americas. Yanga is an anomaly in Mexican culture because it has actively embraced and even mythologized the role of Africans in Mexico’s past. Duncan’s history honors thesis will combine archival research with oral histories to analyze the development of the cultural institutions through which residents of Yanga came to commemorate this history during the 20th century. By putting a local history […]

Daniel Basurto

Today, California educates 2.1 million students enrolled at 115 community collegesmaking the California community college system the most extensive system of higher education in the United States. For Daniel Joseph Basurtos history honors thesis, he will fill in the gaps of history that led to the first two junior colleges and ultimately sparked the California junior college movement. His research will focus on the educational, political, and financial influences that led to creating Fresno City College and Santa Barbara City College. He will analyze primary sources at different archives throughout […]

Candace Wang

As of April 3rd, 2020, there are over a million coronavirus cases worldwide, with more people testing positive every day. With SARS-nCoV-2 being able to transmit from person to person without showing any symptoms, there is a high potential of the virus rapidly transmitting throughout a population undetected. A lack of personal protective equipment (PPE), rapid diagnostic tests, and proper ventilation equipment for those infected have contributed to the global public health crisis we see today. Candace Wang will test and optimize isothermal DNA amplification technologies followed by fluorescence detection […]

Kara Anderson

While extensive research explores inequalities in the criminal justice system, little sociological literature analyzes inequalities in the civil justice system. Whereas a constitutional right to counsel exists for criminal cases, litigants in civil cases must either pay enormous attorney fees or represent themselves in navigating complex issues such as divorce, restraining orders, evictions, and more. The difference between the supply and demand for civil legal assistance is known as the justice gap. Kara’s research examines how Superior Court Self-Help Centers, one of California’s most extensive strategies for narrowing the justice […]

Jacqueline Vela

Jacqueline Vela’s research project will focus on the writings of contemporary poets of the 2010s that have emerged and performed their pieces via the Internet. Closely following this new genre of e-literature, Vela will observe both the bodies of work and digital platforms of poets such as Yesika Salgado, Danez Smith, Olivia Gatwood, and Ocean Vuong among others so to explore how the rapid explosion of technology and the phenomenons of online culture have influenced the form, style, and themes of these so-called insta-poets. With special attention to diverse narratives […]

Dane Anderson

In preparation for his senior honors thesis, Dane is studying the relationship between literatures of the Scottish Enlightenment and Romantic periods. Specifically, he is exploring how Adam Fergusons theory of history, described in the Essay on the History of Civil Society, colors major texts of Scottish Romanticism. The scholarship surrounding Fergusons work has focused on its political and sociological implications, but there has not yet been any major study of Fergusons relationship to Scottish Romanticism. Through close reading and archival research in Edinburgh, Scotland, Dane will fill this gap by […]

Arina Stadnyk

Arina’s project will examine how Margaret Atwoods short fiction collection, Dancing Girls, uses the elements of landscape and the shadow self as sites of ideological conflict between traditional Gothic tropes and ecofeminist ideology. While scholarly literature has addressed, separately, ecofeminism and the Gothic convention in Atwood’s fiction, there has yet to be discourse on the dialogic that is formed through their interaction. Due to the stories lack of closure, the thematic effect of this dialogic is still unclear, as the tension between these vying ideologies remains unresolved in each story. […]

Gabriel Perko-Engel

Largely unchanged for centuries, origami in the last hundred years has exploded with innovation! Beginning with the works of Akira Yoshizawa and his introduction of the first technical system for notating folds, paperfolding has transformed from a simple craft to a highly developed field of mathematics, engineering, and artistry. Yet, even as groundbreaking work has been done to determine what objects can be folded and how, fundamental questions remain about the dynamics of even the simplest moving models such as the traditional flapping bird. Building on the existing idealized work […]