Sally Littlefield
My summer research seeks to understand how American culture conceives of adolescent female sexuality through analyzing popular film. Looking at American teen films from the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, I will explore when, how, and by whom it is considered acceptable or problematic for teenaged women to engage with their sexuality. Once I’ve conducted a thorough film analysis, I’ll be able to explore what effects these cultural beliefs have on teenaged girls through collecting oral histories of young women in the fall. My finished project will tie these two pieces […]
Joseph Oh
The purpose of my research is to investigate the neurobiological basis of sleep disturbances in humans using neurodegenerative conditions associated with signature patterns of sleep changes as a model. Alzheimers Disease (AD), Corticobasal Degeneration (CBD) and Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) are the most frequent tauopathies, neurodegenerative conditions associated with accumulation of misfolded tau protein in selective brain areas. Despite coursing with neuronal loss and accumulation of misfolded tau inclusions, these conditions involve different brain areas and cause distinctive clinicopathological features. In all these diseases, patient experience disturbances in sleep/wake pattern […]
Sulynn Miao
My research project is a continuation of research already being done by the Berkeley Early Learning Lab that has sought to understand children with autism spectrum disorder’s (ASD) abilities to make statistical inferences. This ability is important because it allows typically developing children to make generalizations about the world and learn, and if hindered in children with ASD, could have cascading consequences in learning and development. ASD is a disorder that the world still does not know much about, therefore research is of the utmost importance to help develop better […]
Julie Lee
According to the author herself, Oh Jung-hees 1981 short story collection (“The Yard of Childhood”) took the form of a novel sequence when she rearranged eight of her previously published stories by protagonist age. The sequence, however unplanned, elegiacally traces the compressed post-war development of South Korea in the 1950s-70sall through the anonymous coming-of-age story of an impoverished girl who becomes an alienated housewife haunted by her past. My research, then, engages in a close reading of Oh through the lens of literary trauma theory, examining how the psychological process […]
Yuchen Yang
This study asks, do class and childrens gender shapes parents child-rearing patterns in contemporary China? Furthermore, how does different parenting styles affect the childrens psyche, such as confidence and sense of control? By statistically analyzing quantitative data from Chinese Family Panel Studies, I believe this research can contribute to the current sociological and China studies scholarships as it revisits Lareaus classic theory of concerted cultivation and accomplishments of natural growth and brings it beyond the US-centric sociology to China, where social inequality and class antagonism are becoming more and more […]
Justin Germain
As San Francisco transformed into a hub of social activism in the post-World War II era, the longest protest against freeway construction of the 1960s exposed deep social tensions between the local government and its citizenry. While men notoriously controlled City Hall and local industry, housewives launched housing associations and sparked popular sentiment to fight freeway construction. My research asks how womens involvement in the 1951-1966 Freeway Revolts reflected or altered gender roles in urban San Francisco neighborhoods. How, and for what reasons, did women become involved in the Freeway […]
Jacob Liming
My work addresses various moments throughout the history of the Lusophone empire in which Portugal attempted to interpolate imperial subjects into larger universalizing political projects. In other words I investigate how difference was contended with and inflected in teleological narratives of prominent Portuguese figures, emphasizing the latencies, erasures, contradictions, and legacies of violence immanent within these political discourses. First, this iteration of the project hopes to focus on Jesuit incursions across Brazil in the late 17th and early 18th century, which sought to convert indigenous populations and cristaos novos to […]
Kathy Zhang
The visual systems astounding ability to create a stable view of the world around us is critical to our everyday experiences, helping us process what would otherwise be a visually chaotic world. One proposed mechanism for such remarkable perceptual stability is a phenomenon known as serial dependence in visual perception, which is thought to facilitate a systematic perceptual bias to make objects nearby in space and time appear more alike than they actually are. Through this misperception, the visual system seems to be sacrificing accuracy for stability. For example, movie […]
Sayaka Ri
The Syrian civil war is approaching its fifth year of conflict and has been labelled the worst humanitarian disaster of recent times. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Al-Assad regime has systematically targeted health-care facilities and personnel as a weapon of war. In international criminal law, these attacks are a war crime and documentation is important to preserve evidence for purposes of accountability. Despite the increasing number of attacks on health-care systems in the twenty-first century, data on attacks are lacking and there is no standardized method for reporting […]