Past Senior Theses and Projects

"Upholding the Disney Utopia Through American Tragedy: A Study of The Walt Disney Company's Responses to Pearl Harbor and 9/11"
Since its founding in October 1923, The Walt Disney Company has endured as an influential preserver of fantasy, traditional American values, and folklore. As a company created to entertain the masses, its films often provide a sense of escapism as well as feelings of nostalgia. The company preserves these sentiments by "Disneyfying" danger in its media to shield viewers from harsh realities. Disney cation is also utilized in the company's responses to cultural shocks and tragedies as it must carefully navigate maintaining its family-friendly reputation, utopian ideals, and financial interests. This paper addresses The Walt Disney Company's responses to two attacks on US soil: the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the attacks on September 11, 200l and examines the similarities and differences between the two. By utilizing interviews from Disney employees, animated film shorts, historical accounts, insignia, government documents, and newspaper articles, this paper analyzes the continuity of Disney's methods of dealing with tragedy by controlling the narrative through Disney cation, employing patriotic rhetoric, and reiterating the original values that form Disney's utopian image. Disney's responsiveness to changing social and political climates and use of varying mediums in its reactions to harsh realities contributes to the company's enduring reputation and presence in American culture.

"At the Heart of Splash Mountain"
The paper's topic is how the Walt Disney Company Disney strives to occupy the middle ground of the racial debate. The project will analyze the evolution of Disney’s relationship with race through the two films, the Song of the South and The Princess and the Frog, and Splash Mountain, which binds the two movies. The paper examines existing secondary literature that engages in the discourse surrounding both the films and the ride and how they engage in racial imagery and subjects. It utilizes the two films to understand how the Walt Disney Company portrayed African American characters in the past and more recently. Splash Mountain, as an entity, is examined to understand how it fits into Disney’s handling of their history. The project also analyzes press releases to understand how Disney framed their works to the public. The paper uses newspaper articles to understand the context for which the films were released and to grasp how the public viewed them. Disney works to present uncontroversial depictions of race that fit within the context of the time of their release. The film the Song of the South failed to remain uncontroversial, which is the reason for the decades of effort by Disney to erase the racist elements of the film. The Princess and the Frog continues the pattern of cultural conformity and Disney’s efforts to erase Song of the South. These efforts to conform to cultural attitudes regarding race by the Walt Disney Company demonstrate their intention not to displease conservatives and liberals maximize their profits.

"Know More, Feel Better: Health Promotion as an Exercise of Control over the Neoliberal Subject"
Health promotion is an educational tool frequently used by prominent medical institutions to encourage behavioral changes in individuals that are believed to promote health and prevent disease. With increasing frequency, these institutions are utilizing mass media campaigns to disseminate this information and expand the reach of their influence through wider exposure. These campaigns, which often champion one’s personal autonomy, can also be seen to contain overt neoliberal themes, calling on individuals to engage in their own governance through endless self-regulating and self-managing behaviors. Thus, this paper seeks to examine how medical experts are able to use their power to both create, and exert control over, neoliberal subjects. Through a discourse and imagery analysis of health promotion campaigns uploaded to YouTube by The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), I argue that medical experts use their authority over knowledge to compel viewers to assume a heightened level of responsibility for their health and engage in specific hyper-vigilant behaviors.

"Demanding Places to Pee: Reconstituting Restroom Access for Trans Communities at UC Davis"
This proposal is focused on the impact of access to public restrooms on transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming students, staff, faculty, and community members at UC Davis. The research used to inform the proposal includes perspectives of various scholars and reports on transgender issues, restrooms, and legal matters. To better understand the needs and experiences of trans and non-binary communities at UC Davis, I conducted a survey on gender-neutral restrooms, particularly focusing on the experiences of these communities with them. The results of this research indicate a clear need for institutional change at UC Davis, which must be led and informed by trans and non-binary people and our needs. The institutional transformation needed to make UC Davis and other universities is not covered in its entirety by this project, and is not meant to. This research is primarily dedicated to improvements of restrooms and similar facilities on our campus that will create a safer and more accessible space for trans people. The proposal closes with specific actions for expanding said restroom access within the boundaries and context of UC Davis.

"Remembering the Carceral System: An Analysis of Public Memory"
Memorials are installed to commemorate specific events in history, usually events that have local or national value. Museums are created as a point of historical remembrance, as they become the collectors of artifacts and history. Museums become important since they are viewed as the unbiased projectors of history, we count on museums to give us fair representation of history. However, even museums contain biases, memory itself is a biased concept. Memory is created by humans who have different experiences and interpretations of a single event, and a single event can be remembered in a multitude of ways.

"Incomplete Archive: The Performance and Possibility of Queer Archives"
The Incomplete Archive is part curatorial, art project and performative intervention into the problem spaces queer archives create. I sourced objects, journal entries, photographs, social media posts, poems, iPhone notes, and other miscellaneous objects from my environments over multiple collection sessions. Many of the objects came from already assembled “archives,” such as boxes of mementos, junk drawers, or photo albums. I photographed all objects (individually or assembled in collections), catalogued them into a spreadsheet, captioned each image, and created digital locations which allow the audience to review the Incomplete Archive’s contents and print the visual collection. A printed edition of the Incomplete Archive is shelved in the Joy Fergoda Library’s zine collection at the UC Davis, Women’s Resources and Research Center. The ephemeral, disorderly, and non-linear nature of queerness juxtaposes the neat logic of the archive. The Incomplete Archive is a creative attempt to test the obvious im/possibility of queering the archive.

"Look, Football and School Do Go Together. That’s Just It. College Athletics in the Age of Neoliberalism"
The modern student-athlete appears to be in crisis. Consider stories that have occurred just within the past year. In the wake of an announced FBI investigation into recruiting practices of basketball programs at three universities, popular sports magazine Sports Illustrated ran a cover for their recent October issue headlined, “The NCAA is Broken – Here’s How to Fix It,” referring to the National Collegiate Athletics Association, a member-led organization that regulates athletics departments across 1,129 colleges and universities (“What is the NCAA?”). In the featured story, “Shoestorm,” Andy Staples describes a scandalous account of monetary bonuses and sponsorship offers allegedly passed among high school recruits, college administrators, sportswear companies, and player management agents before calling for the NCAA to allow agent representation in college sports (Staples). Meanwhile, in an interview with Bleacher Report conducted two months prior to the Sports Illustrated issue, Josh Rosen, former quarterback for the University of California (UC), Los Angeles who recently declared for the National Football League after the end of the 2017-2018 college season, criticized untenable expectations put on student-athletes, stating, “Look, football and school just don’t go together. They just don’t. Trying to do both is like trying to do two full-time jobs” (Hayes). According to Rosen, balancing competitive collegiate sports and academic success is near impossible through sheer lack of time, and universities inappropriately prioritize student-athletes’ athletic performances over educational experiences.

"Blepharoplasty as Domestication of the Asian: Constructing Korean Identities by White Hands"
Angela's thesis is an investigation of the racist origins of blepharoplasty (double eyelid surgery), the most popular cosmetic surgery procedure in Korea’s thriving multi-billion industry. Historically, motives have morphed from its nascence as a means to attract white soldiers in the Korean War and gain access to America, to a belligerent presence in Korean and Korean-American social institutions and media that reinforce the notion of the double eyelid as universally beautiful. She argues that in contemporary Korean and K-pop culture, the impulse towards embodying a transnational, cosmopolitan whiteness to gain social capital has taken hold, and further this inquiry into the implications of understanding militarism and racism as intertwined, for blepharoplasty will always be racially charged.

"Bay Area Brewed"
Bay Area Brewed examines the rise of the craft brewing industry, specifically in San Francisco Bay Area. The work explores how class and knowledge are intertwined in gaining access to the culture. Looking at similar movements such as Farm to Fork and the shift towards artisanal goods provides a framework for deconstructing the craft brewing movement.

"Feminist Punk Rockers and New Media Fan Communities: How Patti Smith and Carrie Brownstein’s Music and Memoirs Kindle a Generation of Music Rebels"
In the past three decades, women in punk rock music propose a critique of rock’s tradition and masculinity. How do iconic women punk rockers use punk as a platform for gender identity formation and how do they shape a new generation of activist fans? I argue that the relationships between Patti Smith and Carrie Brownstein and their fans resist the division between artist and audience, and instead construct a collaborative effort in search of gender equality in the industry

"Sponge"
Sponge is a radio play developed by Lily in order to explore the way that humans in the 21st century interact with each other in a crowd. For a more detailed description and to listen to the piece, please visit Bandcamp. Click here to listen to Sponge - https://lilytannerforthoseofyouwhodontknowme.bandcamp.com/album/sponge

"Reimagining the San Francisco Waterfront: Industrial cargo hub, empty plot or thriving community? The Nature of Land Use Development"
Andrea did a case study of San Francisco's Mission Bay analyzing how sports and stadium building has shaped San Francisco's urban landscape. She examined two developments in particular, the Mission Rock Project and Chase center, using the urban growth machine framework to reveal the mechanisms that cities use to grow.