Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Barrett, The Honors College at Arizona State University proudly showcases the work of undergraduate honors students by sharing this collection exclusively with the ASU community.
Barrett accepts high performing, academically engaged undergraduate students and works with them in collaboration with all of the other academic units at Arizona State University. All Barrett students complete a thesis or creative project which is an opportunity to explore an intellectual interest and produce an original piece of scholarly research. The thesis or creative project is supervised and defended in front of a faculty committee. Students are able to engage with professors who are nationally recognized in their fields and committed to working with honors students. Completing a Barrett thesis or creative project is an opportunity for undergraduate honors students to contribute to the ASU academic community in a meaningful way.
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- All Subjects: community
- Creators: School of Sustainability
- Creators: Britt, Melissa
Description
"Black in Bleu" is a reflection on my life as a young, Black woman in America told through poetry, and music in conjunction with feminist activists' work as well as results from a survey amongst other young, black students. This paper is a window into Blackness reflecting my experiences as well as many others in a way to find love in that reflection. There is a playlist that goes along with the paper meant to be listened to simultaneously with the reading.
ContributorsDowning, Ciarra (Author) / Acierto, Alejandro (Thesis director) / Reyes, Ernesto (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2023-05
Description
Personal experiences with body image dysmorphia and an eating disorder necessitated that I do a thorough investigation into why they happened and why I felt this way about my body. For this project, not only was I motivated by my own struggles, but I noticed that these experiences were shared among my family, my friends, and my fellow peers in the dance community. We had been struggling since childhood. I began to realize that these behaviors and thought patterns were manifestations of apology, an apology that women have been learning, living, and spreading since our beginnings. Why do women apologize? How does this apology affect how we view, treat, and navigate our bodies in space? In what ways can dance be the mechanism by which we remove apology and individually and collectively find joy, freedom, and liberation? Not only was I interested in understanding the ‘why’, but I was deeply interested in finding a solution. Research for this thesis came from written materials, stories that the dancers and I shared, and choreographic research in the body. The final goal was to create a community-based performance of dance, spoken word, and storytelling that demonstrated the findings from each of those questions and catalyzed a conversation about how we can liberate ourselves. We used rehearsals to explore our own experiences within apology and shame, while also exploring how the ways in which we practice being unapologetic in the dance space can translate to how we move through the world on a daily basis.
Through a deep analysis and application of Sonya Renee Taylor’s book The Body Is Not An Apology, I discovered that apology is learned. We learn how to apologize through body shame, the media, family/generational trauma, and government/law/policy. This apology is embodied through gestures, movement patterns, and postures, such as bowing the head, hunching the shoulders, and walking around others. Apology causes us to view our bodies as things to be manipulated, discarded, and embarrassed by. After recognizing why we apologize and how it affects our bodies, we can then begin to think of how to remove it. Because the body the site of the problem, it is also the site of the solution. Dance gives us an opportunity to deeply learn our bodies, to cultivate their power, and to heal from their traumas. By being together in community as women, we are able to feel seen and supported as we work through uncharted territory of being free from apology in these bodies. By dancing in ways that allow us to take up space, to be free, to be unapologetic, we use dance as a practice for life. Through transforming ourselves, we begin to transform the world and rewrite the narrative of how we exist in and move through our bodies as women.
Through a deep analysis and application of Sonya Renee Taylor’s book The Body Is Not An Apology, I discovered that apology is learned. We learn how to apologize through body shame, the media, family/generational trauma, and government/law/policy. This apology is embodied through gestures, movement patterns, and postures, such as bowing the head, hunching the shoulders, and walking around others. Apology causes us to view our bodies as things to be manipulated, discarded, and embarrassed by. After recognizing why we apologize and how it affects our bodies, we can then begin to think of how to remove it. Because the body the site of the problem, it is also the site of the solution. Dance gives us an opportunity to deeply learn our bodies, to cultivate their power, and to heal from their traumas. By being together in community as women, we are able to feel seen and supported as we work through uncharted territory of being free from apology in these bodies. By dancing in ways that allow us to take up space, to be free, to be unapologetic, we use dance as a practice for life. Through transforming ourselves, we begin to transform the world and rewrite the narrative of how we exist in and move through our bodies as women.
ContributorsWaller, Marguerite Lilith (Author) / Fitzgerald, Mary (Thesis director) / Britt, Melissa (Committee member) / Lerman, Liz (Committee member) / Dean, Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts (Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Food waste is a significant problem in many developed nations, especially the United States. Each year millions of pounds of uneaten or partially eaten food scraps are thrown into landfill, where it degrades anaerobically, producing methane gas emissions, contributing to foul odors, and contributing to an unsustainable food system. This thesis project set out to conduct a small-scale composting system that diverted would-be food waste from a local food bank to a community garden, where food scraps would decompose into compost to then be turned into a valuable, nutrient-rich amendment in that local garden. Engaging with this food bank and community garden allowed us to leverage the existing relationship between the two, and experiment and develop a framework that would demonstrate the feasibility of a long-term composting system in this community. By conducting this project throughout 2021, we saw where strategies worked well, what challenges remained, and where future opportunities could be expanded on. In the end, we diverted over 2000 lbs of uneaten food away from the food bank and into our composting system. We concluded our project report by providing a set of actionable recommendations and future framework guidelines that could be used by the local community garden in the future or be referenced to by other interested parties.
ContributorsBardon, Lee (Author) / Marshall, Meghan (Co-author) / Nelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Winburn, Morgan (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-12
Description
Food waste is a significant problem in many developed nations, especially the United States. Each year millions of pounds of uneaten or partially eaten food scraps are thrown into landfill, where it degrades anaerobically, producing methane gas emissions, contributing to foul odors, and contributing to an unsustainable food system. This thesis project set out to conduct a small-scale composting system that diverted would-be food waste from a local food bank to a community garden, where food scraps would decompose into compost to then be turned into a valuable, nutrient-rich amendment in that local garden. Engaging with this food bank and community garden allowed us to leverage the existing relationship between the two, and experiment and develop a framework that would demonstrate the feasibility of a long-term composting system in this community. By conducting this project throughout 2021, we saw where strategies worked well, what challenges remained, and where future opportunities could be expanded on. In the end, we diverted over 2000 lbs of uneaten food away from the food bank and into our composting system. We concluded our project report by providing a set of actionable recommendations and future framework guidelines that could be used by the local community garden in the future or be referenced to by other interested parties.
ContributorsMarshall, Meghan (Author) / Bardon, Lee (Co-author) / Nelson, Melissa (Thesis director) / Winburn, Morgan (Committee member) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-12