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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The purpose of this research is to explore Latina/o students' involvement at Arizona State University West and how it affects their sense of belonging, and thereby, their retention. I operationalize a "sense of belonging" as being able to express and feel comfortable with one's ethnic identity in the context of a higher education institution (Hurtado, 1997). I operationalize student involvement by the extent to which an individual student is devoted to their academic experience, invests time studying on campus, participates in student organizations, and interacts with faculty and their peers (Astin, 1984). I draw from Astin's theory of student involvement and Hurtado's sense of belonging as a base for this inquiry because they are critical components to understanding retention among the Latino/a community at Arizona State University West.
ContributorsGuerra, Luis D. (Author) / Cuadraz, Gloria (Thesis director) / Aska, Cassandra (Committee member) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
DescriptionThis project is designed to generate enthusiasm for science among refugee students in hopes of inspiring them to continue learning science as well as to help them with their current understanding of their school science subject matter.
ContributorsSipes, Shannon Paige (Author) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Thesis director) / Gregg, George (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Division of Teacher Preparation (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The lack of diversity for minorities and especially women of color is astounding in the film industry. Film is supposed to imitate life, but that can't happen successfully unless more stories are told about different kinds of people. The following thesis focuses on the diversity struggle, specifically for black women by analyzing Hollywood films and critiquing the structure of the film industry. I chose to focus on films made in Hollywood because they are extremely ubiquitous, meaning they can reach many different people from around the world. Hollywood films set the tone and build impressions in other countries about what certain types of people look and act like and the stereotypes associated with these films reach millions of minorities as well. Essentially, solving the diversity problem will make a larger impact not only in America, but around the world. The four chapters of this thesis focus on the history of blacks in film, representation of black women, black women behind the screen, and improvement for the future of the industry.
ContributorsCook, Sydni Nicole (Author) / Gruber, Diane (Thesis director) / St. Clair, Charles (Committee member) / Gray, Kishonna (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / School of Social and Behavioral Sciences (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Zoraida Ladrón de Guevarra was born in 1936 in Coyula, Mexico, a small village in the state of Oaxaca. Her father’s passing required Zoraida to find a job at age fourteen to support her family. Her story, a 200-page memoir entitled “After Papa Died,” follows Zoraida’s time as a servant and eventual nanny in Veracruz. Flashing back to memories of her hometown and the people living in it, the story ends before she enters America first as a visitor in 1954, and later on a working Visa in 1957—the first woman in her village to leave to the United States. Hers is a story relevant today, evident with the paradoxes explored between poverty and riches, patriarchy and matriarchy, freedom and captivity. Assimilation impacts the reading of this memoir, as Zoraida began writing the memoir in her 80s (around fifty years after gaining American citizenship). This detailed family history is about the nature of memory, community, and in particular, the experience of being an immigrant. This thesis project centers on this text and includes three components: an edited memoir, informational interviews, and an introduction. Beginning as a diary steeped in the tradition of oral history, the memoir required a “translation” into a written form; chapters and chronological continuity helped with organization. Topics of interest from the story, such as identity, domestic violence, and religion, are further explored in a series of interviews with Zoraida. The inclusion of an introduction to the text contextualizes the stories documented in the memoir with supplemental information. The contents of the project are housed on a website: alongwaybabyproject.net.
ContributorsVan Slyke, Shea Elizabeth (Author) / Meloy, Elizabeth (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / Department of Supply Chain Management (Contributor) / Department of English (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
This thesis is an experiment in confessional academic writing, an attempt to read two surrealist texts closely and critically while simultaneously employing creative, lyrical prose and narration. The thesis, in both style and content, has bridged the realms of academic and creative writing in order to fully embody the concepts explored within: abstractions of the self, how abstracted selves interact with space, and how such abstractions lead to an ever-evolving and contactable conceptualization of personhood. Further, the thesis explores and reaches for a submergence of selves into space and other abstracted selves while grappling with and resisting against the occasional failure of language and spatial experience, which leads to a detrimental distance between the self and its experience in the world. Surrealism's advocacy for blind submission, for indulging the dream and embracing dream-like modes of appearance, and for locating an unconscious and automatic medium for expression (as seen in André Breton's first Surrealist Manifesto in 1924 and his 1928 novel Nadja) licenses an understanding of being that allows for multidimensional embodiment through one's presence and absence and through indistinctions between the self and space. The thesis recognizes and works through potentially problematic power dynamics within such notions of possession and dispossession while articulating a full faithfulness in the imagination's ability to uncover expansive personhood and the ways this kind of personhood is more wholly enabled to authentically and productively connect the disparity between persons, space, language, and reality. While analytical and textually supported, and accompanied by a photo essay that explores the aforementioned concepts visually, this thesis indulges in poetic impulses and offers a critical and personal investigation on being which allows us to consider ourselves as things that are endlessly becoming.
ContributorsDenson, Tabitha (Author) / McGregor, Francine (Thesis director) / Hanlon, Christopher (Committee member) / Mann, Annika (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
As threats to Earth's biodiversity continue to evolve, an effective methodology to predict such threats is crucial to ensure the survival of living species. Organizations like the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) monitor the Earth's environmental networks to preserve the sanctity of terrestrial and marine life. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species informs the conservation activities of governments as a world standard of species' risks of extinction. However, the IUCN's current methodology is, in some ways, inefficient given the immense volume of Earth's species and the laboriousness of its species' risk classification process. IUCN assessors can take years to classify a species' extinction risk, even as that species continues to decline. Therefore, to supplement the IUCN's classification process and thus bolster conservationist efforts for threatened species, a Random Forest model was constructed, trained on a group of fish species previously classified by the IUCN Red List. This Random Forest model both validates the IUCN Red List's classification method and offers a highly efficient, supplemental classification method for species' extinction risk. In addition, this Random Forest model is applicable to species with deficient data, which the IUCN Red List is otherwise unable to classify, thus engendering conservationist efforts for previously obscure species. Although this Random Forest model is built specifically for the trained fish species (Sparidae), the methodology can and should be extended to additional species.
ContributorsWoodyard, Megan (Author) / Broatch, Jennifer (Thesis director) / Polidoro, Beth (Committee member) / Mancenido, Michelle (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / College of Integrative Sciences and Arts (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
Universal healthcare has become a regular feature of most developed nations around the world. This characteristic, however, does not extend to the United States, where some 28.2 million Americans remain uninsured or underinsured. In the past few years, the US has been on the precipice of major healthcare overhaul which has brought the debate on government-sponsored coverage to the forefront of political discourse. This thesis explores what it may mean to establish affordable access to healthcare as a right for all Americans. In doing so, it utilizes rule-utilitarian principles to define and assess the moral obligation of the United States' federal and state governments to provide sufficient coverage to all qualifying individuals within the country. This paper focuses on evaluating the current healthcare system in the United States while concentrating particularly on how its fragmented approach limits its success and longevity. It then offers a cross-comparison with the universal healthcare systems of Canada, France, and Japan, nations that outperform the United States in most healthcare measures such as life expectancy, infant and under-5 mortality, medical costs per capita, and disease prevalence. The free-market criticisms of government-provided coverage and its alternative private-insurance-based approach to healthcare in the US are also deliberated. In light of these considerations, this thesis concludes with a commentary on what healthcare reform could look like for the nation as well as examines how a utilitarian appeal to rights likely makes the best case for adopting universal government-sponsored healthcare coverage in the United States.
ContributorsKhan, Sameera (Author) / Manninen, Bertha (Thesis director) / Marshall, Pamela (Committee member) / School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences (Contributor) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
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
State constitutions across the nation grant specific rights to their citizens, and in Arizona, the right to referenda reigns as a key cornerstone of Arizona democracy. However, in the 21st century, no referendum effort has succeeded in acquiring the required signatures to halt a bill, and put it before the voters. In the summer of 2017, a volunteer led group called Save Our Schools, set a powerful precedent by successfully collecting over 111,540 signatures to halt Senate Bill 1431, the Empowerment Scholarship Account Expansion. While collecting 36,000 more signatures than what was required, they established the possibility for future volunteer led signature efforts. Despite having little financial or political backing, the group struck an important win for direct democracy. They have set the framework for how future groups can successfully petition government without high dollar fundraising. This study will evaluate the tactics, and strategies they used, so that future efforts have a framework.
ContributorsArwood, James William (Author) / Bentley, Margaretha (Thesis director) / O'Flaherty, Katherine (Committee member) / School of Public Affairs (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05
Description
African American females must endure the distinct intersection of anti-black racism and misogyny, or misogynoir, which persists through the perpetuation of stereotypical images. The endurance of these controlling images adversely impacts young black girls in unique ways that often go unnoticed. Black and Pink: The Intersection of Blackness and Girlhood in America examines the historical origins of misogynoir in America and its continued impact on modern black girls using the lens of bell hooks' literature. This includes how black females are masculinized, sexualized, and impacted by Eurocentric beauty standards in America. and These themes are further explored through a series of watercolor paintings, inspired by hooks' memoir, Bone Black.
ContributorsHayman, Adanna Michelle (Author) / Kim, Linda (Thesis director) / Meders, Jacob (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2018-05