Graduate Profiles

Through interviews with school administrators and teachers, demographic data, and the language of federal education grants, MG’s honors thesis presents a case study that centers on two dual immersion elementary-level public schools, highlighting the treatment of the non-English language, and the accompanying conceptual framework. Offering additional, differentiated resources for greater educational equity is a challenge for communities shaped by imbalances of power. The presence of students and families from often polarized linguistic, ethnic/racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds creates competing needs, leading to situations that can compromise the needs of students who speak the non-dominant language. Given the shortage of bilingual teachers in California, dual immersion schools, faced with choices between international teachers and U.S.-based teachers, make decisions reflecting distinct values and perceptions of language and culture. In the Napa Valley, a rural community with an economy heavily based on the wine industry, there are a significant number of students of Spanish-speaking homes and heritage. As part of an ongoing demographic shift, these students, with the capacity to develop biliteracy and bilingualism, have specific pedagogical, linguistic, and cultural needs. To achieve equity in a Spanish/English dual immersion school, it is not enough to add Spanish to the school curriculum and hire teachers who speak Spanish. The Spanish language is not neutral and generic. Engagement between the school, the students, and the parents depends on communication in the language of the home. Equity depends on teachers and administrators being willing and committed to providing the cultural and linguistic space for students to develop their identities. The students’ abilities to connect with themselves, their families, and their cultural worlds are at stake.

Sha Quashas senior thesis explores the significant and misunderstood relationship between power, health and race. Focusing on the complex constructions of Black masculinity and its interactions with history, language, and media representation, she unpacks how particular social identities must navigate society and health care, specifically whether or now and how to pursue mental health care. Sha Quasha demonstrates how discursive practices are used to create and perpetuate racialized mental health disparities, and argues that Black mens reluctance to seek mental health care is not simply a matter of individual choice, but their decisions are largely shaped by external forces.

Exploring how Muse Mcanique, a penny-arcade museum in San Francisco, embodies aspects of Coney Island at the turn of the 20th century, Kelly Nazes senior honors thesis unpacks the cultural fascination with machines, the mystery of objects that re-imagine turn-of-the-century pleasure parks, and the deleterious effects of contemporary consumerism on such mechanical memories.

Vanessa Padillas senior thesis borrows themes from Charles Dickenss timeless novel, A Tale of Two Cities, to understand the disproportionate environmental burdens carries by communities of color in Richmond, California and Flint, Michigan. Focusing on the water crisis in Flint and the toxic air pollution in Richmond, Vanessas comparative interdisciplinary thesis unpacks the history of each crisis against a backdrop of scientific data, media representation, political rhetoric, and private corruption.

Hollywood movies are like blueprints that show the construction of the American character. In his thesis, Daniel uses an interdisciplinary approach to motion pictures and traces the evolution of cinematic American tough, from the Cold War era (1945-1991) of exclusion, to the present day (2016) of growing inclusion. He continues the scholarly argument that some movies can be, and have been, used to build togetherness, equity, empathy, altruism, and inclusion of American tough amongst the ever expanding globalized Communitas. However, as Daniels research into Hollywoods cinematic American tough images, meanings and representations progressed, he discovered that more popular and mass produced films, especially during the Cold War era, were used to (1) create, promulgate and reinforce socially constructed ideologies of patriarchy, misogyny, racism, ageism, homophobia, xenophobia, and bigotry, (2) define, regulate and make American masculinity exclusive to white heterosexual males, and (3) manufacture generations of primed Americans nostalgic for a whiter America.

With $3.5 billion to divide between roughly 1,200 baseball players each year, the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) is described by members and scholars as the most powerful union in the country. When the then-ineffective MLBPA was founded in 1953, private sector unionization was at its zenith. Today, the MLBPA is at the height of its power at a time when private sector unionization has hit a nadir, with a mere 6.6% of Americans unionized, down from a peak of 35% in the 1950s. In this context it can be tempting to regard the MLBPA as a formidable outlier that has successfully bucked the trend of deunionization, but the reality is far less uplifting. To achieve success, the MLBPA has actually repressed low-level workers within the same industry, thereby creating a microcosm of our current era the New Gilded Age, defined by a growing divide between rich and poor in professional baseball. This repression has come in the form of restricting minor league player rights and is exemplified by the unions actions during the 1994-1995 player strike, the rollback of baseballs antitrust exemption, and changes to the format of the amateur draft. At the same time, a shift from policies that benefit the largest number of players to ones that favor superstars has resulted in rampant individualism within the baseball world and has perhaps been to the detriment of the well-being of the union. Alec Kassin’s senior honors thesis illustrates how a large concentration of labor power shared only by a few select workers within an industry can be just as problematic for lower level worker rights as a large concentration of corporate power.