Partisan politics has created an increasingly polarized political climate in the United States. Despite the divisive political climate, women’s representation in politics has also increased drastically over the years. I began this project to see if there is a partisan rivalry between women in politics or a sense of shared “womanhood.” This thesis explores the role political parties play for women in office by examining how they vote on bills, what type of bills they propose, and whether or not they work collaboratively with their female counterparts at the Arizona State Legislature. My main goals for this project are to see how strong or weak political parties are in shaping political behavior at the Arizona State Legislature and to determine if there is a sense of “womanhood” despite different political affiliations. I also explore the role party affiliation plays within women legislators at the Arizona State Legislature.

Within the last decade, it has become increasingly apparent that the effects of climate change are getting harder and harder to ignore. This fact has led to increased interest in sustainability and an increased pressure from consumers to have these ideals implemented into a variety of global industries. The fashion industry, in particular, has been facing this pressure toward the desire for sustainable products is the fashion industry. Over the last five years, sustainability has become a main focus within the fashion industry. Countless brands now include sustainability within their marketing tactics and a variety of fashion organizations release reports on the unsustainable practices that currently dominate fashion production. These misleading marketing tactics and enigmatic intensive reports lead to confusion on what sustainable fashion actually looks like for both consumers and suppliers alike.<br/> This report attempts to help tackle this problem by using sustainable fashion certifications as a tactic to prove sustainability within business procedures. To compare eight of the most common fashion certifications, this paper assumes a systems thinking approach to creating an assessment framework, which is then applied to said certifications. To back up the importance of the topic, this paper presents key points of the current issues related to this case, which then contribute to the integration of basic sustainability assessment criteria and case-specific factors into overarching core criteria. The application of this framework is utilized to determine which certifications cover certain aspects of the curated core criteria. This is then used to present consumers and manufacturers with a more accurate understanding of each of these certifications. This information is then followed up with a recommendation of certifications that align most within researched-based consumer and supplier desires.

The aim of this creative project was to explore the ideas of impermanence and transience through the lens of different, largely non-western cultural backgrounds, and to incorporate what I learned into my own work as a painter. As part of this, I focused on the materials, techniques, visual strategies, and philosophies that guided the creation of these works. The project consisted of a discrete research phase, during which time I gathered information and materials related to my topic, and a creation phase, when I focused largely on the production of oil paintings and ink paintings whose technique and/or subject matter pertained to impermanence. Research for the most part was conducted by utilizing online and physical collections of work to analyze the formal elements of the work along with the cultural context in which it was created. Ultimately the creative project resulted in a product of three oil paintings and five ink paintings.

The Constitution is a document that was made over 200 years ago by a population that could have never imagined the type of technology or social advances made in the 21st century. This creates a natural rift between governing ideals between then and now, that needs to be addressed. Rather than holding the values of the nation to a time when people were not considered citizens because of the color of their skin, there need to be updates made to the Constitution itself. The need for change and the mechanisms were both established by the Framers while creating and advancing the Constitution. The ideal process to go about these changes is split between the formal Article V amendment process and judicial activism. The amendment process has infinite scope for changes that can be done, but due to the challenge involved in trying to pass any form of the amendment through both State and Federal Congresses, that process should be reserved for only fundamental or structural changes. Judicial activism, by way of Supreme Court decisions, is a method best applied to the protection of people’s rights.

In recent years, immigration, especially concerning those individuals immigrating from Central America and Mexico, has become increasingly controversial. Within the last five presidents, policies concerning immigration have shifted. Under President Bill Clinton in 1997, the Flores Settlement, an agreement between immigration activist organizations and the government that created standards for detaining accompanied and unaccompanied minors was made. Following 9/11, in 2005, President George W. Bush increased the amount of money spent on immigration enforcement in an effort to deport more immigrants. President Barack Obama increased the number of deportations from President Bush during his first term. However, in 2014, an already imperfect immigration system was disrupted by an influx of child immigrants. As a result, detention centers were at capacity and unable to accommodate the increasing numbers of immigrants. Child migrants were placed in caged-areas, immigration lawyers and courts quickly became overwhelmed with cases, and children were alone and could barely communicate. This thesis explores the various relationships between accompanied and unaccompanied minors from Central America, the American legal system, and the media and broadcast news outlets’ rhetoric concerning child migrants. Focusing on the ways in which immigrant minors are objectified by the legal system and the framing of immigrants in the media, it is evident that their complex interaction allows for the oppression of the child migrants. Since the American legal system and the media influence and respond to each other, the responsibility of the child migrants’ dehumanization is on both the legal system and the rhetoric of the media and broadcast news outlets.

Sex, Love, & Dating During the COVID-19 Pandemic is a creative thesis project that addresses two main issues: 1) the overall lack of resources and information available to the public about how to proceed with respect to sex, love, and dating during a global pandemic; and 2) my inability as director of Devils in the Bedroom (an on-campus sexual health club at ASU) to get condoms and other sexual health materials into the hands of students while in quarantine. A resource was developed, an informational pamphlet on the three main topics (sex, love, and dating), as well as a program to distribute the materials by mail, the sexual health care packages.

This project is a critical analysis of the works of 6 American war veterans and how they demonstrate trauma in their narratives. The texts covered here are Philip Red Eagle’s Red Earth (2007), John A. Williams’ Captain Blackman (1972), Roy Scranton’s War Porn (2016), Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried (1990), Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), and Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 (1961).

Claiming Impossible Bodies is a collection of poetry and collage exploring gender and sexuality through the lens of the vampire. For this project, I researched various representations of the vampires through folklore, classical and modern literature, film, and pop culture. The liminality of the vampire allows such figures to take different forms and identities, ranging from dark and grotesque creatures, such as the succubus or incubus from mythology, to modern sex-icons, like Edward Cullen from the Twilight Saga. Considering this wide range of performances by vampiric figures throughout history, the poems in this manuscript seek to deconstruct the binaries that vampires live between and expose the liminality in social norms that attempt to define our identities and shape our performances.

Managing a work-home balance is a daunting task for any parent. It is often difficult to take leave from work to care for one’s family due to financial barriers, which simultaneously poses a threat to family development. Although many countries have parental leave policies in place to account for this, effectiveness of these policies vary by country. This study aims to find to what extent parental leave has an impact on the quality of life. In this study, quality of life was investigated by the rank of the country on the Happiness Index and through the lens of achieving sustainable family development, which was subsequently described to be reflected by a country’s governmental resources provided during parental leave, as well as the country’s Gender Inequality Index. Through a cross-cultural review of literature, it was found that there seems to be an indirect, complex correlation of parental leave to the quality of life, and external factors such as sociocultural ideals, gender inequality, and varying workplace practices have greater significance on quality of life.

Research has shown that being a female athlete in a male-dominated sports world is an oppressive burden, yet the experiences of being a black female athlete have been largely ignored. To combat this lack of attention, this paper invokes communication and feminist theorist Bell Hook's concept of moving black women from margin to center to reveal the intersectional oppression of gender and racial narratives that they face in sports. By outlining the difference between white and black femininity and studying media portrayals of popular black female athletes such as Venus and Serena Williams and others, it becomes obvious how black women are typecast into certain social and athletic roles. This research also includes an auto-ethnographic component of my own experience as a black female lacrosse player at the NCAA Division I level. This component functions as a point of comparison and contrast of the ideas and concepts I discuss. Lastly, I offer recommendations and suggestions as to how to empower young black female athletes and retain them in a variety of sports. The goal of my thesis is to place special attention onto black women in an area which there is an extreme lack of representation. My own empirical research has led me to the conclusion that not only is such a discussion important, but it is absolutely necessary. If we are to fight back against hegemonic social structures such as racism and gender roles in the sports world, we must first understand what we are up against. My thesis gives us a glimpse into our imposing opponents, and I hope that future research continues this trend so that black female athletes like myself may one day be considered an athlete in the same sense that our white peers are.