Graduate Profiles

In light of the growing support for local food movements, led by proponents such as Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, Wendy Bravo utilizes the existence of a unique West Oakland food organization–known collectively as Mandela Marketplace–to explore the historical connection between racial discrimination and the current food injustices seen in many African American neighborhoods. In “Growing Justice, Cultivating Change,” Wendy discusses the role of race and privilege in explaining how institutional policies have decimated the food sovereignty of low-income Americans and also examines various cases of food activism in African American communities throughout the country.

Yi-Ning Chiu’s thesis outlines the experiences of evangelical Christians of color living in the United States between 1950 and the present, and situates their experiences within the broader narrative of evangelical Christianity in America. Using interviews with ethnic evangelical students at UC Berkeley, writings on spirituality produced by ethnic evangelical communities, and a study of historically significant interactions between ethnic and white evangelicals in America, it paints a portrait of evangelical Americans of the past half-century. With this portrait, it challenges the pervasive notion that evangelicalism equals whiteness and conservatism, and then traces the ways in which ethnic believers have occupied and shaped America’s religious landscape alongside their white counterparts.

David Swatt’s senior thesis presents a cultural history of one of the world’s most famed cities. Among central questions examined concerns how land values between Santa Monica Boulevard and Benedict Canyon gained seemingly instantaneous value. David suggests that a spike in land values can be attributed to the development of the Beverly Hills Hotel and Pickfair. Also addressed is whether the City’s premier amenities followed the wealth or existed prior to the infiltration of society’s elite. David argues that such amenities followed the wealth, and that their purposes was to reinforce the dominant narrative and valuable myth of Beverly Hills as a sanctuary to reside, vacation, and shop. In comparing past and present-day Beverly Hills David counters the historian Walter Wagner’s suggestion that Beverly Hills is a shadow of its former self, contending that its glamorous celebrity residences and exorbitant home prices demonstrate its improvement. The epilogue uses Lake Forest, Illinois and Great Neck, New York as a comparative lens by which to argue that the trend of premium developments existed throughout America and also to suggest how these communities contributed to a unique narrative of residential elitism.