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.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 12
Description
This study explores the topic of the birth control use of college women, and the factors that influence their decision of whether or not to use contraception consistently. A literature review was performed on Academic Search Premier, SocIndex, Women's Studies International, Pubmed, CINAHL, and ICRW. Interviews were conducted with 7 participants recruited through convenience sampling. The results suggest that low perception of risk, lack of access, and alcohol use are all major influences on women's decisions regarding birth control. A review of current policy was also completed, and potential policy changes are suggested in order to improve college women's consistent contraceptive use.
ContributorsMorehouse, Brittany Anne (Author) / Weitz, Rose (Thesis director) / Durfee, Alesha (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
Social media is an increasingly pertinent facet of popular culture. Research has found that a rape culture, a culture that tolerates and condones sexual assault, is evident in many forms of pop culture. This study looks at the way sexual assault is discussed in social media through an examination of Internet memes, trends and images that go viral online. The study found that there is evidence to belief a rape culture exists online. It offers solutions for decreasing incidences of gender-based attacks online.
ContributorsOrtiz, Analise Tomai (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / McGibbney-Vlahoulis, Michelle (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication (Contributor)
Created2014-12
Description
Unfortunately, rape has always been a part of war, but recently, media attention has focused on how rape has become a weapon of war on a massive scale. Though wartime rape and sexual assault has come to the forefront of our attention, the theories explaining wartime rape are still not adequate enough to explicate its presence in both the Rwandan and Bosnian Wars. These conflicts were chosen for two reasons. Firstly, they are two of the major conflicts in which rape ahs played a significant part. Secondly, these conflicts played an important role in the transistion in international law from focusing on murders and death to rape and sexual violence. For example, the Jean-Paul Akayesu trial was the first time in which rape was considered a crime against humanity. However, if the ultimate goal is to prevent wartime rape, it is not enough to simply prosecute those who commit it; rather, we must understand the reasons that it occurs. All of the existing theories are partially valid, but none presents a truly holistic explanation for wartime rape. In this paper, I will seek to composite a holistic approach, with the hope that such an approach will prevent the institution of policies that may be either ineffective or counter-productive for the safety of women.
ContributorsBarchilon, Michael (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / Peskin, Victor (Committee member) / Borg, Stephan (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2009-05
Description
From physical assault to intimidation, domestic/intimate partner violence (DV/IPV) is a phenomenon that plagues partners around the world. With serious ramifications like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and homicide, among others, DV/IPV poses a threat to the health and well-being of individuals engaged in abusive relationships. It is for this reason that second wave feminists made it a part of their agenda fight for legislation that would protect battered women. Encouraged by the second wave feminists, researchers began studying DV/IPV and the most effective ways to address and combat violent relationships. With the help of research, activism, and landmark court cases, many states have decided upon mandatory arrest laws as the preferred method for handling situations of DV/IPV. While there is a great deal of research that has been conducted on DV/IPV and on mandatory arrest laws, this research seldom extends to DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community. Even more concerning, research on how mandatory arrest laws affect LGBT+ individuals locked in abusive relationships is practically non-existent. Using 25 different sources, I have conducted a literature review that examines the existing literature surrounding mandatory arrest laws, DV/IPV, and DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community. I furthermore utilized the theory of intersectionality, to lay out how DV/IPV in the LGBT+ community differs from DV/IPV among heterosexual couples. This literature review details the history of DV/IPV legislation, identifies the social and structural barriers facing LGBT+ individuals experiencing DV/IPV, and lays out ways that researchers, law enforcement, advocates, and political actors can better equip themselves to help LGBT+ victims of DV/IPV.
ContributorsLittrell, Emma (Author) / Vega, Sujey (Thesis director) / Durfee, Alesha (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
The major fulcrum of this research is to determine why the Zimbabwean law enforcement and judiciary system have struggled to overcome domestic violence (DV) in spite of numerous legal intervention structures and a fairly strong legal capacity compared to neighboring countries, as well as immense efforts from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to eradicate this form of violence. The research employs a novel approach by including an examination of the extent, influence and role of customary law (also known as traditional law) in the continued prevalence of DV among women in Zimbabwe. The study utilized qualitative methodologies in the form of structured interviews and quantitative methodologies through questionnaires. Fifteen women victims of domestic violence were identified using the snowball sampling technique. The research concluded that customary law is not the sole contributor of the high prevalence of domestic violence in Zimbabwe. Instead, I established that individual and community ways of thinking as well as attitudes acquired from customary law are the ones that condition men to perpetrate DV, influence women to remain silent about the abuse they face as well as accustom society to condone this form of violence.
ContributorsMarekera, Shantel (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / Kittilson, Miki (Committee member) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Mothers have a unique experience of domestic violence and help-seeking because of their dual identity as mothers and survivors. Based on a qualitative analysis of 7 interviews I conducted with mothers in shelter, I explore how survivors understand themselves as mothers, their partners as fathers, and the role of substance abuse in their relationships. My research suggests improved policies for service providers, including allowing mothers to maintain custody of their kids while in rehab.
ContributorsJenkins, Shannon Erica (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / Vega, Sujey (Committee member) / Messing, Jill Theresa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Sustainability (Contributor) / College of Public Programs (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
This thesis explores how motherhood as a status and social identity influences the help-seeking decisions made by women who experience Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) and enter a domestic violence shelter in Arizona. Specifically, this report examines the types, severity, and frequency of violence experienced by women with children and the methods of help-seeking among women without children and women with children. Special attention is paid to women who cite their children as a primary reason for seeking legal intervention and those who cite their children as a primary reason for not seeking legal intervention in their relationships. For the purposes of this study, a survey investigating the types and severity of violence experienced, the help-seeking practices of, and the safety-planning measures taken by IPV survivors was distributed to over 600 women in emergency domestic violence shelters in the Phoenix, Arizona area. Data from both closed- and open-ended questions asked on the survey is analyzed in the context of a review of existing literature on the subject and of current Arizona state-level policies and legislation. Conclusions focus on how the surveyed women's status as mothers related to the specific variables of their victimization and the help-seeking methods they used to achieve safety, and how state-level legislation reacts and acts as a barrier to certain types of help-seeking behaviors.
ContributorsHutchinson, Kimberley Robyn (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / Messing, Jill Theresa (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor)
Created2014-05
Description
Abstract Knit Together: Craft, Community, and Victims of Domestic Violence Allison Miller Domestic violence shelters play a major role in victim's pathway to survivorship. Through an account of what constitutes domestic violence, who experiences domestic violence, data accumulated on domestic violence, and overview of domestic violence shelters and programs, and a snapshot view of a local domestic violence shelter in Phoenix, Arizona, this paper seeks to define and address the gaps in research involving victim's roads to survivorship, specifically as they involve community building, empowerment, and avenues for stress release. Finally, the project records the researcher's experiences and observations of a knitting and crochet group established in the local shelter.
ContributorsMiller, Allison (Author) / Durfee, Alesha (Thesis director) / Weitz, Rose (Committee member) / Noble, Virginia (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2012-05
Description
Suspect classification is a judicial process by which classes of people are determined as either suspect, quasi-suspect, or not suspect at all due to a combination of five factors: 1) minority status, 2) discrimination history, 3) political powerlessness, 4) an immutable trait, and 5) trait relevance as it relates to a discriminatory law in question. Laws that discriminate against a suspect class become immediately subject to strict scrutiny while most discriminatory laws only need to pass a rational basis test. Craig v. Boren (1976) established a precedent for the class of sex, which thereafter became subject to an intermediate level of scrutiny as a quasi-suspect class. With a more visible distinction between sex and gender today, this study seeks to determine whether gender rather than sex may become protected through heightened scrutiny by applying factors for suspect classification. In a call for heightened scrutiny for both gender and sex, this thesis argues that the suspect classification of both classes should include combinations of subclasses between gender, sex, and any other protected class. The central thesis employs a content analysis of case law, statutory law, and administrative law as it discriminates against classes of people with varying protection under the court system in the United States. In the question of whether courts should protect gender with suspect classification, the main argument calls for such action but if and only if an intersectional approach to protecting gender along with sex at a heightened level of judicial scrutiny is applied by individual judges on higher courts of review.
ContributorsTorres, Cristian Jesus (Author) / Hoekstra, Valerie (Thesis director) / Durfee, Alesha (Committee member) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This thesis is the culmination of the Barrett Honors Intercontinental Study Award. For this scholarship, I created a comparative legal study of the approaches to juvenile justice in Norway, Germany, Malawi, and Japan, focusing on their compliance with international norms of restorative justice practices advanced by the United Nations (UN) in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Before commencing my comparative study, I traveled to Switzerland and Belgium to speak with restorative justice theorists at the UN and the International Juvenile Justice Observatory about the enduring relevancy of the CRC and international juvenile justice efforts. In the process, I examined how these international norms of restorative justice come to be incorporated in domestic legal systems. From this, I gained an understanding of the reasons some countries successfully adapt international norms while others struggle to uphold even the most basic human rights. My goal throughout this process has been to cull best practices for international norm creation and domestic norm implementation from this research, and further study how best to promote restorative juvenile justice in countries that do not meet international standards, beginning with the United States. For the purpose of this thesis, I will focus my analysis on Norway and Malawi.
ContributorsNicoletti, Brigitte (Author) / Herbert, Anne (Thesis director) / Durfee, Alesha (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-05