Berkeley Undergraduate Journal

Articles

• Disappearing News, Disappearing Democracy: Examining the Impact of Local News Decline on Political Engagement in Rural America

  • Adibi, Kimia

  This paper examines the relationship between local newspaper presence and democratic participation, focusing particularly on how news deserts affect political accountability and civic engagement in rural America. Currently, 3.5 million Americans live in counties without any local news coverage. The impact is especially severe in the South, where every state has at least one county without a newspaper. While existing research demonstrates that newspaper closures reduce civic engagement in urban areas, I argue that these effects are significantly more severe in rural regions where geographic isolation and limited digital infrastructure compound the impact. Using comparative quantitative analysis of electoral competition in rural versus urban counties across North Carolina and Arizona from 2020 to 2024, Cooperative Election Study political knowledge data (2020–2022), and a Montana case study, this paper investigates the mechanisms through which declining local news coverage impacts democratic institutions. My findings reveal three key mechanisms through which news deserts reshape local democracy: degraded information access about government activities, reduced electoral competition as evidenced by declining candidate recruitment, and weakened accountability, as shown through case studies of undetected official misconduct. This paper contributes to our understanding of how the erosion of local journalism threatens democratic governance in rural America and suggests the potential emergence of a two-tiered system of democratic participation divided along geographic lines.

• California Housing Development: The Role of Local Commissions on Completion Time

  • Aini, Matthew J

  California has been suffering from a “housing crisis” for the past several years, an issue which many have regarded as a symptom of a housing supply shortage. Many researchers, policymakers, journalists, and voters alike have pointed to the relatively (at least compared to other states) slow pace of entitling proposed housing projects as a major culprit for why California’s housing shortage persists. These “entitlements” generally include zoning-related permits (e.g. site development permit) and environmental review determinations (e.g. California Environmental Quality Act, CEQA). Importantly, despite the reforms at the state level, local governments have almost exclusive control on the number of local commissions and committees (“land use approval bodies”) that a housing project needs to seek approval from on a project. This paper provides evidence of a positive correlation between the length of time that California housing projects take to acquire land-use entitlements with the number of local land-use approval bodies (such as planning commissions and design review commissions) that have jurisdiction over said entitlements. Using data points on over forty local jurisdictions of varying sizes and geographies (e.g. Central Coast, Los Angeles Area, Bay Area, Central Valley), this paper confirmed the hypothesis with statistical significance in six different development contexts. In the other two regressions, which concerned affordable housing and mixed-income housing project approval timelines, respectively, there was a negative relationship between this approval time and the number of approval bodies. An additional two development contexts, single family and multifamily projects requiring a full scale environmental impact report (EIR) did not reach statistical significance in the regression tests.

• Magical Realism and Truth-Telling in Ernesto Sabato's The Angel of Darkness

  • Barragan, Crystal Chavez

  This project examines Argentine novelist Ernesto Sábato’s “The Angel of Darkness” (1974) through the lens of literary magical realism. It seeks to expand the current definition of magical realism by building upon the specific parameters defined by prominent critics of the mode—namely, Louis Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris’s “Five Characteristics.” In reconsidering the nature of “magic” within these texts, “magical” instances can encompass a broader variety of phenomena. This research focuses on the normalization of violence, the omniscience and invisibility of the police state, and the metafiction present and abundant within “The Angel of Darkness” to establish Sábato within the magical realist mode.

• Time Blind or Time Proof?: ADHD & Alternative Temporalities

  • Clair, Chloe Violette Theodora

  Time blindness is a common symptom ascribed to individuals experiencing ADHD or the spectrum of ADHD symptoms. However, it is most often characterized as a deficit to functioning properly, whether this is in the workplace, schools, or relationships. Like much of the information surrounding neurodiversity, “time blindness” is a gross oversimplification of people with ADHD’s felt experience of time. For individuals with ADHD, measuring changes in attention and shifts in chronoception (the perception of time) can be achieved through an analysis of art practice. This paper looks critically at the role that time plays in the lives of neurodiverse and neurotypical people alike.

• From Pain to Promise: Black Musical Cultures as an Emotional & Emancipatory Pedagogy & the Foundation of American Music

  • Duque, Lanah H

  This research thesis examines how Black musical cultures serve as an emotional and emancipatory pedagogy, creating the foundation of American music through shared restorative power in times of distress. Acknowledging the importance of music in meaning-making and educating, this thesis utilizes Sara Ahmed’s (2014) “sociality of emotions” and Eduardo Bonilla-Silva’s (2019) “racialized emotions” to contextualize how emotion in the music industry can significantly influence Americans’ values. Further, I apply these methodologies to understand marginalized communities’ use of music as a tool of resistance and expression to challenge the violence of White supremacy. Through textual analysis and interviews, this research intends to answer, how have Black musical producers utilized the emotionality of music to encode the notion of freedom, moving people from suffering racial discrimination to counting on a promising future? Research findings include insights from participants from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds. I connect the emotionality of Black musical cultures to the multicultural realities of the American experience, defining the concept of American music as Black and multicultural.

• An Emboldened Executive: The Second Trump Administration and the Rule of Law

  • Leal-Schuman, Elijah V

  This paper investigates how the rule of law has been reconstituted, rather than dismantled, during the first nine months of Donald Trump’s second presidency. Drawing on an aggregate quantitative analysis of federal court rulings, it finds that while district and, to a lesser extent, appellate courts have frequently rebuked the administration, the Supreme Court has repeatedly intervened through its emergency—or “shadow”— docket to legitimize expansive assertions of executive authority. These interventions have not only consolidated presidential power but also altered judicial procedure and intensified divisions within the judiciary itself. Rather than signaling the collapse of legality, the Court’s jurisprudence amounts to a broad redefinition of lawful executive power, with the Supreme Court emerging as a willing architect of the president’s agenda. The paper concludes that this convergence portends a critical reordering of the American constitutional system—an illiberal turn that, paradoxically but in keeping with historical precedent, may provoke a renewed reckoning with executive power.

• The Long Game: Constraints and Exceptions in US Foreign Policy toward Israel–Palestine and Iran, 1980–2024

  • Macallair, Ella

  United States foreign policy is governed by the American system of checks and balances which fosters a tug-of-war dynamic between the legislative and executive branches. This institutional friction, observed by those involved in policy development, implementation, and analysis, has produced a pattern of unpredictable and politicized decision-making, driven by legislative constraints and ad hoc exceptions. This volatility is particularly evident in US diplomacy in the Middle East, as demonstrated by its attempts over the last five decades to facilitate a two-state solution to the Israel–Palestine conflict and to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran. In these cases, key US diplomatic tools including economic assistance, diplomatic recognition, terrorist designations, foreign aid restrictions, and sanctions have been applied through a series of executive orders and congressional legislation. These policies, sometimes seemingly narrow in scope or aimed at isolated issues, have played a long game of constraint that ultimately impairs executive flexibility and diminishes US diplomatic credibility, impeding long-lasting resolutions. This long game is revealed through case studies of failed diplomatic efforts in Israel–Palestine and Iran, analyzed through legislative history—a perspective that has yet to be fully explored in existing scholarship.

• Queer Utopia, Gay Dystopia: Power, Sex, and Pornography in the Films of William E. Jones

  • Tragarz, Izzy M

  In this essay, I analyze the short films of director William E. Jones and how these films depict the shift from the gay community’s egalitarian origins to the modern neoliberal and discriminatory gay community. I begin my work by analyzing Jones’ Tearoom, which presents the “queer utopia” defined by egalitarianism shown in the titular “tearoom” (or area for homosexual public sex), where men have sex freely without regard to identity. Then, I discuss how Jones’ film More British Sounds uses sound to highlight the emerging identity-based hierarchy common in Bondage, Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadomasochism (BDSM) gay pornography in the 1980s. Next, I show how Jones’ The Fall of Communism as Seen Through Gay Pornography showcases the degeneration of gay sexuality from egalitarian to a sexuality defined by predatory and class-based roles. Finally, I highlight how Bruce Labruce’s film Raspberry Reich shows that modern gay sexuality is able to be redeemed into its original egalitarian form, as Bruce proves with his use of leftist imagery in the film.