Ariella Aronstam-Powers

The interplay of art and politics historically holds a distinct role in the City of Oakland, California. Since the 1960s, social activism has shaped and informed political art practices. Further, aesthetics and intertextuality continue to engage the issues of race, police brutality and economic marginalization as motifs and discourses for Oakland artists. Through primary and secondary archival sources, interviews, and participant observation, my project investigates how political art practices in Oakland operate as a context and product for social justice and community empowerment. I am looking at the work of […]

Andrew Levine-Murray

The Castro District in San Francisco, California is frequently referred to as the Gay Mecca, a home for those of us who have been pushed to the margins because of our sexual orientation. However, demographics of and race relations within the Castro tell quite a different story, as people of color are largely absent or excluded from the community. Thus, my research question asks how queer people of color who congregate in the Castro neighborhood perceive their membership within the community. To answer this, I will conduct participant observation within […]

Kelsey Westphal

In the banlieues or suburbs of major French cities, unemployment, crime and societal exclusion are daily realities for the largely immigrant communities. In the 1980’s, these conditions spurred an explosion in vocabulary and popularity in the syllable-switching slang practice verlan, alongside the nascent French rap scene. My research project and French Honors thesis will explore the poetic and social functions of verlan in rap and pop culture amid France’s conservative language policies. I will trace the genealogy and ethos of verlan in the French rap movement, identify how this ethos […]

Emily Booker

Ancient Cyprus has generally been shadowed by its neighbors Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia, yet the small island, is an ideal entrpot. In the Late Bronze Age (1550-1050 BCE), the influence of internationalism can be seen in the appearance of cylinder seals on Cyprus. This summer I am researching the interesting mix of locally and internationally produced cylinder seals and what they can tell scholars about Cypriot society. This study investigates the seals’ use on Cyprus, like what new roles they played and which Cypriot needs they fulfilled. I will study […]

Tabitha Mancini

It is estimated that approximately 15% of the U.S. population has some type of learning disability (LD) (LDA, 2012). Though there is a growing body of research about people with LDs, this population is still dramatically misunderstood and underserved. Due to the amount of people in the U.S. who are now discovered to have LDs and the magnitude of the correlations to the social issues that exist, there continues to be a growing interest in identifying the barriers to success that this population faces. This research focuses on the effect […]

Abbey White

For my research this summer I am participating in an archaeological excavation at the Classic Maya site of Chinikiha, Mexico. I am investigating gendered labor in the production and use of stone tools (lithics) in the Maya household by analyzing material remains There is a pervasive, but untested assumption that men were the producers and users of lithics, and as such, this is an area that has been underinvestigated in archeology. Looking critically at gendered labor will allow me to explore the effect that gender had on the Classic Maya […]

Neha Chandra

The innate immune response is the cells first line of defense against viral infection. One of its functions is the production of cytokines, such as interferons (IFN), which are needed to recruit immune cells to the site of infection. In order to create an efficient immune response, IFN production is controlled by highly regulated signal transduction pathways. The E3 ubiqutin ligase protein, TRIM21, has been shown to down-regulate IFN production pathways by targeting the IFN regulatory factor, IRF7, for degradation. However, the factors and mechanism leading to the affinity of […]

Eli Wirtschafter

In 1849, two competing performances of Shakespeare’s Macbeth sparked a deadly riot in New York City. What began as a rivalry between two actorsan American star with a working-class fan base and a British tragedian with an aristocratic followingbecame a conflict over class divisions, British cultural influence, and permitted conduct in the theater. Previous scholarship tends to focus on the two actors, at the expense of understanding what led audiences at the time to invest so heavily in performances of Shakespeare. Using a mix of archival documents and secondary sources, […]

Anjelica Colliard

France is home to a sophisticated comic book culture that considers the genre as valuable literature. Its integration into French society is indicative of its influence in contemporary popular culture. My research project explores the role that the printed image plays in narrating French autobiographical comic books, and how the overall visual aspect of graphic narrative interacts with more conventional types of literary self-representation. I will look at which elements of graphic narrative make the medium particularly suited to telling stories of the self by examining the various codes at […]

Hoiyi Ng

Although Random Matrix Theory has been developed for almost a century, its application in finance is underutilized. A random matrix is a Hermitian matrix with its entries drawn from a normal distribution with mean zero and variance one. Most of its interesting properties lie in the distribution of its eigenvalues. Not until recently has RMT been employed to estimate the profits and risks of financial portfolios. My project focuses on exploring new ways to manipulate current methods frequently adopted to maximize the profit of a financial portfolio given a certain […]