Aleph, UCLA Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Aleph: Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Aleph: Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

The following paper dives into the implications of the growing presence of the Internet and other technologies in our daily lives, especially in relation to handling healthcare data and privacy. In each section, the paper explores the associations of technologies to knowledge, power, and control in the field of healthcare. Ultimately, it warns against the increasingly exploitative nature of today’s technology products which oftentimes trade personal information for usage and convenience. In addition, it discusses the benefits and potential consequences of current healthcare privacy laws. To transition into practical applications and world systems, examples such as the Mexican healthcare system are presented as case studies of how technology companies and producers can adapt their policies and products to best cater to the needs and wants of marginalized communities and populations.

The most notorious queer uprising against police, referred to as the Stonewall Riots, has cemented its position at the forefront of queer collective memory in the form of an annual commemoration known as Gay Pride. Though it’s widely accepted that the first Pride was a riot, the radical nature of Gay Pride has seemed to dissipate with the encroachment of heavy corporate involvement, high ticketed admission costs, physical borders, and welcomed police presences. In this paper, I utilize a spatial analysis to explore the multitudes of ways queer identity is policed in and through Gay Pride spaces, with specific reference to Los Angeles Pride’s exclusive location in West Hollywood, the implications of its relocation, and the impacts of the conceptual relocation of Pride to an “All Black Lives Matter” march in June 2020. I also reference the relocation of Dyke Day LA in exemplification of a successful relocation model for a queer event, one that highlights the nuances of claiming queer public space with consideration to the needs of both queer and local communities.

The YouTuber ContraPoints, also known as Natalie Wynn, is a fascinating and complicated artist who is taking the video essay genre to new heights with videos on politics, philosophy, and culture. This paper analyzes her videos Incels (2018) and Canceling (2020) within the context of the essay film and video essay genres, while also exploring what ContraPoints is and why the project’s message is prominent in 2022. However, some of the tools she uses to explore video topics, such as empathy and compassion, are seen as faults by some. While Wynn’s videos started out by examining contemporary issues, her fame has grown — bringing more meta or self-referential elements to the forefront of her artistry. While she may have started her YouTube career by making videos about politics and philosophy, she has had to to use her talents for defending herself online, particularly in relation to her controversies around non-binary identity. Ultimately, this paper argues that Wynn, through the use of performance, mise-en-scène, personality, postmodernist qualities, and dialogue, has been successful not only in raising and exploring questions of today’s cultural and political debates, but also showcasing Wynn as an artist and person.

Historia de la Música Boliviana (History of Bolivian Music) was published by composer, violinist, and musicologist Atiliano Auza León in 1985, detailing the music and musicians of the country in what was considered the first Bolivian musical history of its kind. In this paper, I bring Auza León’s Historia de la Música Boliviana to an English-speaking audience for the first time, critically engaging with his portrayal of Indigenous music in the context of 20th century mestizaje and Indigenismo among Bolivian composers and institutions. By interrogating his position in the creation of musical authority and cultural development in Bolivia at the time, I engage with Auza León’s stature as a national composer. I explore the state’s sponsorship of his music and scholarship while situating his productions within Bolivia’s political and musical consciousness of mestizaje, or racial mixing. Then, I analyze a key chapter from his Historia de la Música Boliviana, placing his text within this trajectory. Auza León’s epistemolization as a musical authority occurs as a result of the mestizo perspectives taken in his compositions and writing, constructing an identity around Bolivian music predicated on mestizaje.

This article examines how unpaid internships, whether enforced by universities or by a student’s need to guard against job insecurity, are a symptom of neoliberalism brought to attention by the COVID-19 pandemic. Neoliberalism, under the guise of an impartial and objective free market, facilitates a brutal economic reality brought on by the pandemic. This article seeks to trace the deep inequalities encoded in the United States’ neoliberal structure, and how unpaid interns have been affected both materially and psychologically.

This paper explores historical evidence of restrictive eating, as well as binging and purging in the ancient world from 3100 BC to around 476 AD in order to draw comparisons with contemporary restrictive and binge eating disorders — namely, anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa. It aims to analyze the causes of disordered eating over time with regard to societal norms and attitudes, examining the ways in which these disorders diverge between the ancient and modern worlds. Principally, this paper asserts that differences in the significance of body image on a societal level account for distinctions in the motivations of disordered eating within the ancient and modern worlds. There are, however, key parallels to behaviors that women exhibit with regard to disordered eating that can be attributed to the continuity of patriarchal structures between these two time periods.

The complexity of the American tax code disproportionately affects low-income college students who rely heavily on information from their tax returns for important financial resources (e.g. financial aid) but are unable to afford assistance from costly tax-filing services. As a result, low-income college students benefit from return-free filing services. This paper assesses the potential of using return-free tax filing as a resource to support low-income college students with identifying their eligibility and applying for financial resources such as financial aid and SNAP benefits. Using survey data from low-income students attending UCLA, we describe the difficulties faced in filing taxes and applying for financial resources. We find that students are interested in receiving assistance from return-free filing services for both processes. Then, we determine how interest varies by gender, racial identity, parental education, past filing experience, and primary language spoken at home.

FemTech, a term coined in the past decade, encompasses technological products and diagnostic tools that cater to women’s health. While its creation was inspired by the neglect of women’s health needs, the FemTech philosophy represents a break from previous feminine products by empowering women to take ownership of their health. We illustrate the neglect of women’s health through the necessitated creation of a FemTech industry, in contrast with the absence of a superfluous ManTech industry. This paper analyzes the FemTech movement through a case study of Future Flora, a microbial sanitary pad, in comparison to other microbial projects both taboo and not. We demonstrate that FemTech’s success is determined by society’s reception of its feminist message. Nevertheless, the movement’s feminist message is necessary for the desensitatization and ultimate destigmatization of feminine health, the importance of which has been historically minimized. Sociologically, the movement hopes to achieve equitable representation of males and females in science and the market, and ultimately disestablishment of FemTech.

With the aid of Chinese primary sources and supplementary secondary sources, this essay seeks to analyze the 1782 Taiwan “subethnic feud” between the Quanzhou and Zhangzhou communities of Zhanghua County, which began with a personal dispute but soon escalated into a lethal rural conflict. The term “subethnic feud (分类械斗),” widely referring to early modern conflicts between different Chinese communities, emphasizes the dominant role of local identity conflicts. However, I argue that such outbursts of violence were complicated phenomena. Instead of the maturation of supposed “ethnic rivalries,” the escalation of the conflict from a personal dispute to a full-scale “rural war” is more likely the joint consequence of three contributing factors: the strong patterns of Taiwanese social organization along subethnic lines, mercenary and thug activities, and the inactivity of the local government.

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) all over the world who seek to improve the lives of many through their various aid and development projects are all similarly interested in ensuring project longevity and sustainability. There has been rich literature on the obstacles to success and the potential remedies to them. This essay is inspired by the success of a Los Angeles-based nonprofit, The Samburu Project, whose model of partnerships with local grassroots organizations (GROs) has allowed the organization’s projects to enjoy great success. Drawing upon the experiences of The Samburu Project as well as existing literature, this essay argues that INGOs and GROs possess unique complementary characteristics that make them critical partners for project success. These characteristics include the GROs’ closeness to a given community, whose local legitimacy is a means for INGOs to bypass weak and corrupt state institutions. On the other hand, INGOs possess the necessary resources, knowledge, and global legitimacy to empower GROs and can harness the power of the international community for altruism and political pressure. Finally, the essay acknowledges the important role of the state that can either impede or facilitate an INGO-GRO partnership for program success.

Aleph: Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences

Aleph: Undergraduate Research Journal for the Humanities and Social Sciences