Graduate Profiles

Congolese dancer and choreographer Faustin Linyekula remarked during an interview with playwright Peter Sellars that, “dance helps [him] to remember [his] name.” Robyn Taylor’s creative honors thesis asks: how does dance help me to remember my name? And, by remembering my name, how can I better recognize, witness, be with, share with, and dance within a community? Exploring the intersections of language, movement, and self-identity, Robyn looks at her self-identity within a larger cultural context, pulling from specific American literary texts, which evidence a paradox in the American dominant culture’s ethos. As the creative component to her research questions, Robyn choreographed a dance piece that explores a very personal way of recognizing who she is, what she is a product of, and how her movement patterns have evolved from the rejection of previous power structures within the dance world.

The Astor Place Riot, in New York in 1849, was set off by a rivalry between actors: the eminent English tragedian William Macready, and the first American stage star, Edwin Forrest. When ten thousand rioters and spectators gathered outside the Astor Place Opera House, some booing and throwing stones, the state militia was summoned. They fired into the crowd, killing at least twenty.
In his honors thesis, Eli Wirtschafter looks at the Astor Place Riot in context with other forms of public behavior, arguing that the clash between rioters and the elite militia paralleled the contest between rowdiness and refinement taking place daily inside the theaters and on the streets. As working class theatergoers fought a losing battle to maintain the principle of “audience sovereignty,” they also struggled to defend the legitimacy of traditional forms of public assembly. At a time when audience participation was a way of performing identity, a riot was another way to assert ownership of public space.

Often cited as one of, if not the greatest television show of all time, I Love Lucy has captured the attention of critics, audiences, and fans alike for decades. While much has been written of the show and the antics of zany “fifties” housewife Lucy Ricardo’s failed attempts to make it in show business, almost nothing exists about Lucy’s sidekick and affable partner-in-crime, Ethel Mertz. Theresa Berger’s honors thesis focuses on filling in this incredible gap in the canon of Lucy studies by exploring the theme and character of female friendship in the show. By combining magazine and newspaper articles, cast and crew interviews, and individual episode analyses with cultural history, feminist theory, and current sociological understandings of female friendship, the lens of “friendship studies” develops as a way to understand what I Love Lucy represented to female audiences both in the 1950s as well as today. From the simultaneous challenge and reassertion of gender norms to the growing emphases on upward mobility and consumer spending that define our cultural understanding of the decade (and still mean something in the present), Theresa argues that the friends in I Love Lucy reflect an oscillating and thus more historically accurate representation of the place and stance of white, suburban women in the fifties than the show’s red-headed female lead could ever embody. In the process, it becomes clear that it was not just Lucy, but a number of talented and interconnected women in the show that all “[had] some ‘splainin’ to do.”

American society is sympathetic to sex-trafficked women and children from Asian and European countries; however, Black female prostitutes from urban locations such as East Oakland are often forgotten. By actively engaging in cognitive dissonance around race, gender, and class, Americans fail to recognize the humanity of Black women and girls involved in street prostitution. Feelings of indifference toward Black female prostitutes convey that the Black female body, even today, is valued less than any other body. Inadvertently, this same dissonance benefits exploiters and consumers of the sex trade, rendering Black women and girls in prostitution disposable, culpable, and invisible. However, depressingly so, this construction of the Black female body as immoral and more blameworthy is hardly new, rather it harkens back to old practices of chattel slavery and Victorian-era politics. Patricia Boone’s honors thesis argues that in order for Americans to see the humanity in Black female prostitutes, the idea that the Black body is incapable of victimization must be discarded, so that Black women and girls are given the same priority, concern, and protection as any other victim of commercial sexual exploitation.

Robert Cancio’s thesis centers on migration as a cultural work, and examines a case study of 20th century Los Angeles through which he argued that cultural identities of migrants in 20th century Los Angeles create specific impressions or cultural landscapes. Through the use of quantitative methods, Robert demonstrated that not only is Los Angeles a pluralist society rather than a melting pot, but also that there is one similarity within all migrational groups, specifically those that migrate(d) to Los Angeles, which is possessing and practicing a culture of upward mobility through public education.

Jen Kim’s honors thesis analyzes the housing and development policies under Jerry Brown’s mayoral administration during the late 1990s in order to better understand the current development patterns that are radically transforming the city of Oakland. Jen argues that Brown’s 10k housing initiative and the community’s response to the program mark an important “affordable housing moment” that has influenced the trajectory of neoliberal local development and oppositional organizing strategies. Using a Right to the City framework, Jen explores the themes of power, politics, and planning that shape urban development not only in Oakland but also in every major city across the U.S.

As local, sustainable food becomes evermore ubiquitous and eating conscious becomes the new “it” way to live, the phrase “you are what you eat” seems to be appearing more frequently. Dani uses the origins of the phrase as a starting point to explore the difference between the organic food movement and western medicine. The organic food movement relies on a rhetoric of health and wellness while western medicine chooses to disregard, for the most part, food and what people choose to put in their bodies. Her honors thesis ultimately argues that the obesity epidemic will be the turning point in the antithetical relationship between food and medicine that has developed as a symptom of historical development. Additionally, she argues that the obesity epidemic, as well as the rise in other diet related diseases, might galvanize a true working relationship between the food system and the medical sphere, resulting not only in a more holistic and culture oriented approach to medicine, but also a way to work to prevent diseases in patients instead of merely treating their symptoms.

Jennifer Schaefer’s honors thesis includes an autoethnographic written work and a choreographed dance piece exploring and positioning her educational and associated emotional experiences within the sphere of education in America as the eldest of three children–and the only daughter–of an ethnically Chinese Vietnamese immigrant. Fervently believing the American Dream of social mobility attainable exclusively through education, Jennifer was required to maintain straight A’s in school in order to one day become a doctor or lawyer. The focus on grades and end goals, rather than the process, ultimately left her feeling as if she existed merely as a piece of raw material to be shaped into a profitable product. By reflection upon events, conversations, and interactions that have occurred throughout her life, Jennifer aims to discover and reveal the workings of Asian American family culture, social mobility in education, society’s varying modes of conformity, and creative expression through the medium of dance in what was meant to be her early training for success. Intersections of such contributing agents in her education then extends to the conversation regarding what it means that her experience took place.