Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

The presence of female reproductive autonomy, or the ability for a woman to make a well-informed decision, independently or with limited input from partners, about the number, spacing and timing of her children is a key determinant of female empowerment and independence. Understanding the intensity of a woman's reproductive role, and the entrenched social, physical and mental implications that underlie it, is key to bringing about gender equity. This study utilizes Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) collected between 2005-2006 and 2011-2012 to draw attention to the factors associated with reproductive autonomy as they relate specifically to women in Honduras. Results from the longitudinal analysis, using logistic regression tests, reveal the predicted association between reproductive resources such as sexual education and contraceptives as well as social autonomy. Ultimately, higher rates of formal education are likely associated with key reproductive autonomy indicators such as desire for last birth, knowledge of the fertility period and independent decision-making around contraceptive use. Sexual health programs can coincide with increasing formal education resources. Implementing such programs in the later years of primary schools can facilitate an increase in sexual autonomy and health knowledge outcomes such as fertility knowledge.

Through the interview of four East-Asian American women artists of diverse backgrounds, alongside semiotic analysis of their selected works, I investigate their oppositional digital art practice as well as their general online experiences. The digital sphere replicates the same forms of racially and sexually based oppression that occurs in the non-digital world in rapidly diverging forms. The main findings demonstrate that digital technologies offer novel ways for East-Asian American artists to resist oppression, visibilize their struggles, and explore their identities. Oppositional techniques can be sorted into three broad categories describing the archival, discursive, and voyeuristic capabilities of digital space. These categories describe a broad range of practices including generating alternative autobiographical histories, forging larger communities of resistance, and subverting the white male gaze. East-Asian American women artists actively challenge structural power through innovative multimedia methodologies that challenge mainstream representations in which they are regarded as subhuman, and resist essentialized roles and fixed markers of East-Asian culture and identity. Their diverse experiences converge upon the common goal of resisting hegemonic order and fostering a supportive space in which the voices of their community can be heard. Drawing on movements like postcolonial feminist scholarship from Anne Anlin Cheng, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, and Saidiya Hartman, as well as Third Cinema, I argue that social media sites and other internet communities expand and enable the development of a digital postcolonial aesthetic and art practice for East-Asian American women artists, allowing them to exercise agency over their artistic and historical narratives.

The memories carried by the Palestinian people can be understood in two forms. First, there are the memories as a result of direct trauma recieved through displacement and death throughout the history of the Zionist colonial project. The Palestinian Nakba, as but one example, highlights the extent of such memories through the traumatizing military massacres and forced expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians at the hands of Zionist militant groups. These direct memories are carried from generation to generation and transform into a looming sense of collective melancholy experienced by the later generations both in historical Palestine as well as those living in diaspora. There is a clear disconnect in historical academia as people try to understand the suffering of the Palestinians through questionable historical frameworks rather than a lens that accurately represents the memories and trauma of the Palestinians as they had and continue to experience. As a result, Palestinians today find their memories of trauma challenged and in some cases outright denied via these historical frameworks and atmospheres produced by the Israeli government. The question is then how could we be able to understand trauma and memory as it relates to the Paletsinians? Throughout this thesis we will explore several different forms of translating and transmitting Paletsinian memory.

This paper examines the work of Japanese-American artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi as he expressively naviates his dual identity. Working within Modernist and Folk styles, his work blends Japanese idioms with American folk art influences as well as that of European modernism, engaging with global art practices. This conglomeration of influences, in addition to his public fame as an artist, came under scrutiny during World War II as Kuniyoshi’s position as an American was threatened. This artist’s work in propaganda against Japan further complicated his modes of expression through his art as he was challenged to refine his representational codes in order to protect himself. Kuniyoshi’s oeuvre nuances the role of the artist in relation to nationalism, challenges conceptions of Modernist appropriative styles, and questions what it means to be an American.

In the wake of uprisings in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in the summer of 2020, individuals and communities have turned to racial justice-centered nonprofit organizations to guide conversations and advocacy combating institutionalized racism. Simultaneously, historically white organizations and corporations, including some racial justice nonprofits, have been challenged to reevaluate the way they meet– or fail to meet– the needs of their Black, Indigenous, & Person of Color (BIPOC) staff and communities. The institutionalization of racial justice work into the familiar 501(c)(3) status in the last fifty years in particular, in what scholars have named the Nonprofit Industrial Complex (NPIC), can limit actual change-making into coping with symptoms, rather than addressing root causes, of racism in the United States. The cooptation of racial justice work into a nonprofit framework is marked by competition for limited external funding sources and often results in the exclusion of BIPOC in decision-making in favor of short-term solutions to perceived inequities. This study builds upon existing research exploring the structures that determine how organizational decisions are made.  I present a case study of three Bay Area-based, racial justice-oriented nonprofit organizations, in which I find that organizations that practice intentionality about centering impacted identities can overcome these traditional limitations of nonprofits and excel as effective advocates of structural change. Additionally, highly effective organizations understand ‘success’ in terms of narrative shift and building power, rather than numerically centered definitions that appeal to funders without affecting change.