Graduate Profiles

By deconstructing socially formative discourses related to the local food movement from 1976-1986 in Yolo County, Kash’s honors thesis argues that the famed Davis Farmers’ Market came into being as a social institution that maintains white supremacist social order through frameworks of environmentalism and community-togetherness. They dissect documents which pertain to local food in order to articulate how progressive liberal ideologies of local food covertly formulate regressive constructions of race and class typically thought of as belonging to white conservatives. Each chapter contains a series of close readings, either of tomatoes as a source of local identity and political/racial tension, the cultural appropriation of food and construction of all-white community at the Market, or the racialized, class-constitutive rhetoric of freshness. Kash finishes by elaborating how discursive ideas about local food in the decade of study continue to implicate the Davis Farmers’ Market in an enactment of white supremacist social structuring despite a perceived notion of equality, using the political intentionality of West Oakland Farmers’ Market as a foil to exemplify an alternative configuration of a market that fights white supremacist hierarchal structures.

Esports is a rapidly developing industry and fledgling sport on college campuses in the United States. Kevin’s senior thesis, focused on the rapidly developing industry of esports and its fledgling status as sport on U.S. college campuses, explores how the grassroots gaming movement is translating into the next great American sport. Through an examination of the history of competitive gaming, Kevin’s thesis reveals how several influencers shaped the evolution and founding of the nation’s first Division 1 collegiate Esports program, Cal Esports. The project uses an interdisciplinary approach to understand this complex ecosystem. The economic and business development of video game companies and peripheral organizations are examined, as well as technological changes over the past fifteen years that have led to the expansion and maturation of gaming culture into mainstream American culture. Kevin’s thesis explores how the Cal Esports program and the role of institutions like the University of California, Berkeley play key roles in shaping the future of gaming and its larger impact on American sports culture as a whole by challenging the masculinization of sports in general.

Roya’s honors thesis explores how environmental design contributes to gendered differences in the experience and perception of public space. In particular, it analyzes perceptions of safety on and around the urban university campus. Feminist geographers, planners, and historians have frequently described how women’s experiences in the public realm have been restricted as a result of longstanding sociocultural values. Additionally, anxieties about crime have consistently shaped the cultural imagination, and in turn, the built form of urban environments. By collecting and mapping University of California, Berkeley students’ geographies of fear, this study shows that certain types of places are more conducive to fear than others. Furthermore, traditional ideas about what makes spaces feel safe are not always effective for women. Through further analysis of an urban space (Telegraph Avenue) and the campus’s outdoor green spaces, this thesis will demonstrate how unequal geographies of fear are shaped by the intersection of culture and design. It concludes that design that is more conscious of emotional connections to the environment can promote more equitable experiences in the public realm.

In her honors thesis, Shelby used ethnographic methodologies to explore how the first Black female enrichment program, African American Female Excellence Program (AAFE) within Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), offers solutions for healing Black girls’ experiences with dehumanizing school practices (e.g., zero tolerance policies).