Shang Xu
The project investigates how quickly people detect and respond to emotional changes – “emotional sensitivity.” To do this, we use the Inferential Emotion Tracking task: participants watch video clips and continuously rate the characters’ feelings on scales of valence (positive–negative) and arousal (calm–excited). We calculate the time lag and peak alignment using cross-correlation analysis. Some individuals consistently anticipate shifts in emotion faster, while others lag behind, and these differences may relate to measures like Autism Quotient and Emotional Quotient. Understanding these individual patterns could shed light on why some people […]
Owen Blum
In the late 18th century, England was experiencing massive urbanization as well as what historians call the ‘consumer revolution.’ I seek to ask how these massive changes in the composition and economy of the English city were processed by urban female workers, specifically through the figure of the female street vendor. I particularly seek to achieve a novel synthesis of spatial and economic analyses to ask how this unique category of proletarian women engaged with the communal and informal economy of the early modern street to achieve subsistence. By honing […]
Abigail Villa
Executive function (EF) is highly investigated in cognitive science and education due to its correlation with academic performance. Current research has shown that differences in EF with children from different racial/ethnic backgrounds are often due to the quality of the environment and family resources. Thus eliciting a narrative of an ethnic/racial “achievement gap” as early as school entry for children. However, assumptions that have not been proven are interwoven into the assessment(s) which may have important implications for results. A belief exists that all children respond similarly to assessment contexts, […]
Zhuoya Wang
Awe arises — when we are standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon or listening to the soaring melodies of Beethoevn’s Symphony No. 5. In these moments, we may feel small, part of a greater human collective. Awe is a self-transcendent emotion that makes us feel integrated into broader social entities. In a broad entity, the original boundaries between “they” and “we” fade away. This raises a question: Can awe blur the distinction between outgroup (“”they””) and ingroup (“”we””) members, in other words, blur social categorization? I will study […]
Xavier Beck
How are people thinking about nature at the turn of the 20th century? And what transpacific connections influenced these ideas? Scholars, missionaries, and commercialists traveled across the Pacific and carried with them ideas about trees. I examined the writings of a Berkeley resident and dual US-China citizen, Joseph Bailie. My findings suggest that the University of California and Jinling College in Nanjing both operated within their respective locales as sites for producing modern ideas about nature and that the knowledge flowed both ways across the Pacific. Jinling College had its […]
Wenjun Fu
The knowledge of the human body has changed throughout history. Since the late Qing period (1901–1911), biologists and Western doctors introduced anatomical concepts of the human body to China. This project uses blood as an example to explore a historical narrative of the body in both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western medicine during Republican China (1911–1949). The body is so relevant to us — so why do we understand it so differently and variably? How did the knowledge of blood differ between TCM and Western medicine in early twentieth-century […]
Nyssa Combs
Although Basque communities across the U.S. have displayed typical patterns of language maintenance over the past 150 years, they seem to have maintained their association with a Basque identity. Scholars have discussed this phenomenon in the context of Boise, Reno, and Elko–all areas of Basque-American concentration. Does this trend in language maintenance and identity also extend to the Basque community in Bakersfield?
Michael Brand
Behind the internet there are large systems of physical infrastructures, with increasingly large environmental costs. As global digital infrastructure industries expand, the energy required to support an ever-growing cloud continues to attract public and scholarly attention. As some new hyperscale data centers are demanding over a gigawatt of power, much of the data center industry believes that nuclear power is the only sustainable solution. At major industry conferences, executives are excited about new Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) — which they believe will offer a safer, more affordable, more resilient power […]
Maya Hilmi
My research investigates how Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem resist Israel’s economic suffocation through grassroots strategies that reclaim autonomy amid systemic violence. Israeli policies, like mass work permit revocations, movement restrictions, and fiscal controls, enforce dependency through what I term “necropolitical extractivism”, referring to the exploitation of resources while governing life or death under occupation. In the midst of ongoing Israeli settlement, surveillance, and arbitrary raiding, Palestinian communities subvert these tactics by reviving traditional olive harvest networks, barter economies, and leveraging diaspora support. In practice, they […]
Matthew Martinez
Major retail corporations promote flexible scheduling, mental health resources, and work-life balance initiatives as central to their corporate identity. Companies like Target, Macy’s, and Nordstrom highlight these programs in recruitment efforts, suggesting that retail employees have meaningful access to support. However, research shows a disconnect between corporate rhetoric and workers’ lived experiences, especially for low-wage workers of color, who often face unstable schedules, job insecurity, and limited access to resources. This project interrogates that gap, asking: How do structural labor conditions in major retail corporations shape workers’ access to work-life […]