Faith Gardner
This research explores three pulp novels by 20th century American writer James M. Cain and their subsequent film adaptations of the 1940&Mac226;s: The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce and Double Indemnity. These three movies are a few famous examples of film noir, an American cinematic style that reached its heyday in the 1940&Mac226;s. My research explores the text of these novels in comparison with their film translations, along with theoretical, historical and other secondary resources. I hope to better understand how instruments such as syntax, narrative structure and point […]
Jordan Kevin Jeffery
T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound, the three pillars of Modernism are bound in their use of allusions, an attempt to tie their works to those of the past. One particular element that finds itself repeatedly invoked in the works of these Modernists is the figure of the Theban soothsayer Tiresias. I hope to identify the importance Tiresias plays as character and formative reference in each of the texts. My research will focus on a close reading of these three texts, the classical texts they draw on, and literary […]
Angela Li
My research project focuses on depression to determine how it impacts interpersonal relationships and depressed individuals’ emotional responses. I am studying depression through a couple’s study involving 80 romantic couples. During the study, couples engage in a series of conversations about a sacrifice they made for each other, a time that they felt great love for their partner, and a time of suffering they experienced on their own. By analyzing the participant’s physiological, behavioral, and emotional responses during and after these conversations, I aim to find answers to the following […]
Francesca Hopkins
Tatyana Andrey Singh
Margaret Ellen Ward
Hawaii may seem like a racial paradise: rates of intermarriage are extraordinarily high, residential integration is the norm, and it lacks a history of significant racist legislation or violence. However, from the point Hawaii became U.S. territory in 1900 until the present, race has served as primary form of social vision and division. Using 1900-2000 U.S. census data, my project will analyze how race influences the distribution of economic resources in Hawaii, and why this relationship has changed over time. In doing so, I will answer whether Hawaiis racial hierarchies […]
Christopher Cochran
A great deal of research has recently emerged regarding the concepts of agency, intentionality, and Free Will. In The Illusion of Conscious Will (2002), Dan Wegner asserts that people believe they cause their own actions in a way that is concurrent with the theory of Free Will (Wegner, 2002). I believe that a lay theory of agency varies by culture. I describe Americans understanding of agency as purposeful and Asians understanding as adaptive. My hypothesis is based on cross cultural research that shows that Asians and Americans have different understandings […]
Samuel Francis Moore
The ability to detect, evaluate and immediately respond to unexpected changes in one’s environment is an important, adaptive characteristic of mammalian behavior. This process begins with an initial orienting response and continues with subsequent evaluative processes aimed at determining the significance of deviant events. These stages of novelty processing can be measured by averaging electroencephalogram (EEG) signals that are time-locked to event-related potentials (ERPs). My study will investigate the effects of aging on one of these ERPs (termed the Late Frontal Negativity, or LFN), thought to correspond with the mental […]
Jude Paul Dizon
The majority of studies on Khmer refugees in the United States focus on their status as victims of war and displacement. I am undertaking a research project highlighting the transnational political movement of Khmer refugee communities in opposing and removing the Vietnamese occupation in Cambodia (1979-1993). Through examining the Hann So Collection on Cambodia Archives at the UC Berkeley Southeast Asian Studies Library, I hope to show how Khmer refugees were active agents in mitigating the pains of displacement by acting in very concrete measures to recuperate and rebuild Cambodia […]