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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Description
There has been a recent push for queer fiction, especially in the young adult genre, whose focus is gay and lesbian relationships. This growth is much needed in terms of visibility and the furthering of acceptance, but there are still subjects within the LGBTQ+ community that need to be addressed, including bisexual, asexual, and non-binary erasure. There are many people who claim that these identities do not exist, are labels used as a stepping stone on one's journey to discovering that they are homosexual, or are invented excuses for overtly promiscuous or prudish behavior. The existence of negative stereotypes, particularly those of non-binary individuals, is largely due to a lack of visibility and respectful representation within media and popular culture. However, there is still a dearth of non-binary content in popular literature outside of young adult fiction. Can You See Me? aims to fill the gap in bisexual, asexual, and non-binary representation in adult literature. Each of the four stories that make up this collection deals with an aspect of gender and/or sexuality that has been erased, ignored, or denied visibility in American popular culture. The first story, "We'll Grow Lemon Trees," examines bisexual erasure through the lens of sociolinguistics. A bisexual Romanian woman emigrates to Los Angeles in 1989 and must navigate a new culture, learn new languages, and try to move on from her past life under a dictatorship where speaking up could mean imprisonment or death. The second story "Up, Down, All Around," is about a young genderqueer child and their parents dealing with microaggressions, examining gender norms, and exploring personal identity through imaginary scenarios, each involving an encounter with an unknown entity and a colander. The third story, "Aces High," follows two asexual characters from the day they're born to when they are 28 years old, as they find themselves in pop culture. The two endure identity crises, gender discrimination, erasure, individual obsessions, and prejudice as they learn to accept themselves and embrace who they are. In the fourth and final story, "Mile Marker 72," a gay Mexican man must hide in plain sight as he deals with the death of his partner and coming out to his best friend, whose brother is his partner's murderer.
ContributorsOchser, Jordyn M. (Author) / Bell, Matt (Thesis director) / Free, Melissa (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
In an effort to combat the lack of diversity in Children's Literature, this project displays a piece of literature titled Stories & Stages: A Tale of Two Sisters, in the form of a children's chapter book for a middle grade audience. Focusing on characters of a Hispanic background without relying on stereotypes or false characterizations, the novel works to inspire young minds and reflect a true representation of the world children are living in. This is done using research on different aspects of Children's Literature, including: the definition of children's literature, diversity, girlhood, and sibling relationships. This research provides the basis for the project, as does personal experience and background. Following the novel is a recording of the background research involved and a documentations of the creative process. Keywords: Children's Literature, Diversity
ContributorsFlores, Abriana Lorraine (Author) / Elliott, Lisa (Thesis director) / Haddy, Lana (Committee member) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The Way Home is a full-length young adult novel. The story is split between the perspectives of Theo and Ella, best friends from high school who are starting their freshman year in college. Neither is extremely excited about the start of the new phase of their lives; Theo struggles with severe anxiety and is just hoping to survive the four years; and dark memories in Ella's past don't seem to want to let her start over. A series of murders happening in town don't help their nerves at all, making it hard to focus on the "college experience." They were supposed to be there for each other... But then Ella goes missing, and Theo is left without a clue of where she went. While he searches for her desperately, she wakes up miles away from home, surrounded by strangers. In their efforts to find one another again, they instead find themselves presented with opportunities to study the impossible: magic. Things become stranger and stranger as murders, magic, police investigations, and ever-looming final exams begin to challenge Theo and Ella in ways they never expected. In writing this novel, I hoped to depict the transition from high school to college and the worries and wonders that come with it. The story is almost split directly in half, beginning with normal school life and shifting into the world of magic. The conflicts presented to the characters during the first half, such as grades, majors, and socializing, persist throughout the second half, but are also metaphorized once the characters begin studying magic. I chose to include a protagonist with an anxiety disorder because I believe mental disabilities are not represented enough in YA literature, though it is something that many high school and college students deal with. I wanted to create a character that could inform others and that students with similar mental disorders could relate to. Additional themes I deal with include newfound independence, individuality, growth, and friendship.
ContributorsWoner, Catherine Flynn (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis director) / Irish, Jennifer (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytic theory proposes that the personality has three components, the id, superego, and ego. The id is concerned with pleasure and gain, the reason it is often identified as a human's animalistic side. Additionally, the id does not consider social rules as closely and is the uncensored portion of the personality. The superego is the id's opposite; the superego considers social expectations and pressures immensely, is more self-critical and moralizing. The ego mediates the id and superego, and is understood as the realistic expression of personality which considers both the "animal" and human. A Fractured Whole: A Collection of Short Stories, explores Freud's construction of human personality in both form and content. Within the collection are three sections, each with a different pair of characters. Within each section, the same scene is written in the three "modes" of the id, superego, and ego, as three separate stories. The fifteen stories comprising this collection address the substance of daily life: sexuality, body image, competition, among other topics, to consider how a single person can balance the desires for personal pleasure and to satisfy social expectations. Writing the same scene in three "modes" allows for the observation of how the characters attitudes and actions alter under the influence of different parts of their personalities.
ContributorsOtte, Aneka (Author) / Sturges, Robert (Thesis director) / Bryant, Jason (Committee member) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Transient Receptor Potential (TRP) ion channels are a diverse family of nonselective, polymodal sensors in uni- and multicellular eukaryotes that are implicated in an assortment of biological contexts and human disease. The cold-activated TRP Melastatin-8 (TRPM8) channel, also recognized as the human body's primary cold sensor, is among the few TRP channels responsible for thermosensing. Despite sustained interest in the channel, the mechanisms underlying TRPM8 activation, modulation, and gating have proved challenging to study and remain poorly understood. In this thesis, I offer data collected on various expression, extraction, and purification conditions tested in E. Coli expression systems with the aim to optimize the generation of a structurally stable and functional human TRPM8 pore domain (S5 and S6) construct for application in structural biology studies. These studies, including the biophysical technique nuclear magnetic spectroscopy (NMR), among others, will be essential for elucidating the role of the TRPM8 pore domain in in regulating ligand binding, channel gating, ion selectively, and thermal sensitivity. Moreover, in the second half of this thesis, I discuss the ligation-independent megaprimer PCR of whole-plasmids (MEGAWHOP PCR) cloning technique, and how it was used to generate chimeras between TRPM8 and its nearest analog TRPM2. I review steps taken to optimize the efficiency of MEGAWHOP PCR and the implications and unique applications of this novel methodology for advancing recombinant DNA technology. I lastly present preliminary electrophysiological data on the chimeras, employed to isolate and study the functional contributions of each individual transmembrane helix (S1-S6) to TRPM8 menthol activation. These studies show the utility of the TRPM8\u2014TRPM2 chimeras for dissecting function of TRP channels. The average current traces analyzed thus far indicate that the S2 and S3 helices appear to play an important role in TRPM8 menthol modulation because the TRPM8[M2S2] and TRPM8[M2S3] chimeras significantly reduce channel conductance in the presence of menthol. The TRPM8[M2S4] chimera, oppositely, increases channel conductance, implying that the S4 helix in native TRPM8 may suppress menthol modulation. Overall, these findings show that there is promise in the techniques chosen to identify specific regions of TRPM8 crucial to menthol activation, though the methods chosen to study the TRPM8 pore independent from the whole channel may need to be reevaluated. Further experiments will be necessary to refine TRPM8 pore solubilization and purification before structural studies can proceed, and the electrophysiology traces observed for the chimeras will need to be further verified and evaluated for consistency and physiological significance.
ContributorsWaris, Maryam Siddika (Author) / Van Horn, Wade (Thesis director) / Redding, Kevin (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Each part of the book is written from a different relative, literarily-inclined perspective. The portion of this submission that captures what my experience as a Barrett student has lended to my approved manuscript (by Dorrance Publishing Co.) lies with the excerpted material from Part IV. Below is the table of contents for the novel work itself, as well as the styles of writing assumed per part.
ContributorsDampare, Patrick Nelu (Author) / Blasingame, James (Thesis director) / Glenn, Bruce (Committee member) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05
Description
Prince Shendi is a novella set in the semi-fictional continent of Great Africa, specifically in a proud and prosperous region called Serengeti. Our story follows the thrilling adventure of Serengeti's king-to-be, the young and naive Shendi. When Kovalu, the mighty king of Serengeti and Shendi's father, passes away due to old age, Shendi is thrust into the gauntlet of responsibility in an early and unprepared state. After a short foray as the amateur king heavily assisted by the tenured members of Serengeti's Plain Council, Shendi encounters disaster that results in the death of an important council representative and the young king's temporary exile from Serengeti. The journey produced by his one hundred day exile takes Shendi through an arid wasteland, a teeming jungles, a mystic desert, and every terrain in between before his return. Along the way, Shendi unravels the details of a prophecy that means the end of the peaceful and prosperous life his lion kin and other Serengeti dwellers had known for centuries. This prophecy held him at the center of it as the catalyst and ultimately it would be up to Shendi and his actions to stop the ancient evil at work from killing all the lions of his pride and plunging all of Serengeti into a desolate and dismal state. Will Shendi overcome the primal evil looking to dominate the land of Great Africa forevermore? And if so, what will become of him afterwards? Prince Shendi was written over the course of 2015 and early 2016 by Lucas Revelle, a student at Arizona State University studying Exercise and Wellness as well as a student of Barrett, the Honors College. The story was directed, advised, and edited by Honors Fellow Dr. Aviva Dove-Viebahn along with help from the project's 2nd reader, Rebecca Viles.
ContributorsRevelle, Lucas Benjamin (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Viles, Rebecca (Committee member) / School of Nutrition and Health Promotion (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This project focuses on techniques contemporary American poets use in their work. Ten different poetry collections are analyzed for dominant writing styles and techniques, which I then apply to my own poems, concentrating on modeling that particular poet. I then reflect on those poems through an evaluation of my writing process, how those techniques were implemented, and how they affected the poem. In addition to these reviews and reflections, I also wrote three articles about the literary community and what I've learned from my interactions in that community. All these materials are organized into a website, which shows the connections between the different writings via links and menus. Creating this website brings all the materials together to demonstrate my growth as a poet, writer, and designer. This heavy focus on poetry and analysis has helped sharpen my critical thinking skills and has better prepared me for a career in design and journalism.
ContributorsHansen, Elizabeth Sarah (Author) / Murphy, Patricia (Thesis director) / Savard, Jeannine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Hugh Downs School of Human Communication (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
The Culture of Study Abroad is a pre-departure resource for prospective American study abroad students. This resource exists in the form of a multimedia website containing expert advice, helpful resources, and true stories of American students and faculty directors who have studied abroad. Through creative non-fiction storytelling, interviews, research, and photographs, readers are encouraged to take full advantage of studying abroad as a way to expand their global knowledge and understanding. This website offers advice on the topics of cultural observation, homestays, traveling while abroad, safety, and foreign language, in an attempt to better prepare students for the unique cultural experiences awaiting them abroad. Visit the website: www.thecultureofstudyabroad.wordpress.com
ContributorsPado, Madeline Grace (Author) / Scott Lynch, Jacquelyn (Thesis director) / Rausch, Kyle (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2015-05
Description
A series of mitochondria targeting probes was synthesized for the purpose of exploring the feasibility of a mitochondria targeting fluorescent sensor. Of the probes, the probe with a two carbon spacer showed the best co-localization from staining with the established MitoTracker Red® FM, indicating a potential development of the probe into mitochondria targeting sensor. However, cytotoxicity was observed for the probe with a six carbon spacer. Three additional mitochondria targeting fluorescent probes of longer spacer groups were synthesized, but the cytotoxicity was not observed to be as high as that of the probe with a two carbon spacer. The cytotoxicity was characterized to be that of caspase dependent cell death. To screen for a possible effect on apoptosis due to the mitochondrial probe, three fluorescent fusion proteins binding the anti-apoptotic proteins were designed and expressed. Each purified fusion protein was then incubated with the cytotoxic mitochondrial probe, and the mixture was isolated by running an affinity column. The fluorescence analysis of eluted fractions showed preliminary data of possible interaction between the protein and the mitochondrial probe.
ContributorsLee, Fred (Author) / Meldrum, Deirdre R. (Thesis director) / Tian, Yanqing (Committee member) / Zhang, Liqiang (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry (Contributor)
Created2014-12