This project tells the story of Imperial Valley farm workers working in the fields during the 1960s and 1970s during the emergence of the UFW. The Imperial Valley is a county of agrarian small cities near the border of Mexicali, whose biggest industry is agriculture. This research is told in the perspective of the Silva Family, a family of 17, that immigrated from Mexicali to the Imperial Valley in order to work in the fields in the mid-1960s. Research was conducted by interviewing 4 of my family members: Isabel Silva (100 years old), Javier Silva Jr. (82 years old), Gustavo Silva (66 years old) and Maria Silva (66 years old). They talk about their hardships of working in the fields, their activism in the UFW and the effects of the UFW on their community and lives. I would like to tell this story as it is one that often overlooks individual farm workers that were involved in the UFW and it allows my family's story to be heard.This activism is something that deserves to be heard and not forgotten, as my family is still proud of the sacrifices they made to fight for their rights.
My research, Vision Through Films: Women’s Internalization of a Surveyor Male under Men’s Promise of Power, examines the internalization of the “surveyor male,” a concept stemming from the pervasive “male gaze” that influences women to evaluate themselves through a lens shaped by male expectations. The project blends psychoanalysis, film theory, and feminist theory to explore the complexities of women's representation in visual culture, particularly in the context of contemporary media. The research comprises three parts: psychoanalysis fundamentals, a Knightlab timeline, and a short video collection. The first section introduces Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema by offering a quote from the original essay, along with explanations of key terms and overall meanings. The timeline traces the evolution of male gaze, anti-male gaze, and female gaze, and psychoanalysis in film from the 1960s to the present, showcasing how social awareness has altered and subverted former gender hierarchies. The final section emphasizes how these dynamics manifest in contemporary short videos, where women influencers often conform to societal beauty standards to gain popularity, reflecting the enduring influence of the male gaze on women's self-perception and worth. Through the integration of traditional cinema and new media, this project investigates how women continue to self-objectify and prioritize external perceptions over their intrinsic sense of self, as social media and short video platforms like TikTok and Reels continue to perpetuate the internalization of a surveyor male image, even amid the rise of feminism in a seeming sexually liberated era.
TikTok has become a popular source for trend, news, and controversy, pushing out constant videos catering to a new age of digital information. From TikTok came the Chinese food debate, a war between American Chinese cuisine and British Chinese cuisine on which is “better”. Americans, disgusted by British Chinese cuisine’s excessive use of curry sauce and seemingly inauthentic Chinese dishes of prawn crackers and other fried staples, encouraged British diners to expand their palates beyond their seemingly bland and saucy dishes. Even large creators such as Soogia, a Korean American TikToker prominent in Asian American spaces, commented on the debate. Brits, on the other hand, defend their unique cuisine claiming that while it may not be “authentic”, its history born from Chinese diaspora in Britain makes it not as different from American Chinese cuisine as it may seem.
Fifty-five years ago, the Santa Barbara area experienced the largest oil spill in the United States at its time of occurrence. In the afternoon of January 28, 1969, offshore of the Santa Barbara, a blowout of Union Oil's Company Platform A caused the release of more than 4.5 million gallons of crude oil to seep into the ocean floor, resulting in crude foam to rest across 150 to 200 miles across the coast of Santa Barbara, washing up dead and dying bodies of seabirds, fish, and other marine life (LeMenager 21). In the days following the oil spill's aftermath onto the Santa Barbara Channel, the spill sparked public outrage from Santa Barbara residents and others across the nation. As residents of the Santa Barbara area and other Americans across the nation witnessed the violence of cheap energy, many trying to cope with the devastation transformed people into activists working to protect the environment. Media and print coverage of clean-up and rescue efforts of marine life in the Santa Barbara channel galvanized the influential environmental activist group "Get Out Oil!" to form just days after the spill. This website aims to demonstrate how visual/print media and galvanized activist groups such as (GOO)sparked an environmental consciousness that led to legislative action, ecological laws, and an explosion of consciousness that shifted an internal remaking of the desired golden standard of living in the 1960s that petroleum culture enabled.
Built on Hope: The Feminist Star Wars Project is an online database that takes the larger Star Wars transmedia franchise and uses a critical feminist film theory lens in its analysis and interpretation of the various canon and non-canon (including Star Wars Legends) mediums (books, comics, video games, films, animated TV shows, and live action TV shows) and their characters. This project combines film, feminist, and transmedia theories in its analysis of the franchise to determine if viewers can read this science fiction-fantasy franchise as feminist. The project contains a series of viewing guides, reading guides, and interactive guides to the franchise to help readers identify and use a feminist lens in their interpretations and interactions with the Star Wars transmedia universe. By critically analyzing Star Wars media, Built on Hope will meet a new fan and academic need for updated and inclusive scholarship in the realm of Disney’s Star Wars. The Star Wars franchise is at its transmedial height at the moment, with several live-action TV shows, animated shows, the High Republic multimedia series, movie projects, and video games released or forthcoming in 2024 alone. This poster provides an overview of the project, complete with graphics demonstrating the transmedial nature of the franchise and the percentage of female character screen time in Star Wars movies between 1977 and 2017, while also looking at the digital humanities methods used to complete the project and the future of Built on Hope: The Feminist Star Wars Project.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Filipino American activists were wrestling with martial law and human rights violations in the Philippines, as well as the history and continuation of racial discrimination in the United States. One of the ways in which activists responded to these challenges was through art-making, producing works that included paintings, plays, and poetry, among other mediums. The “Developing ‘Transnational Perspectives: Filipino American Political Art, 1972-1986’ Digital Humanities Project” poster outlines the purpose, format, and digital humanities tools used in my “Transnational Perspectives: Filipino American Political Art, 1972-1986” website prototype, which seeks to map, on a digital timeline, Filipino American political art alongside the historical events related to its production. In addition to discussing the content and tools used in the website creation process, the poster describes what an ideal version of the project could look like with more time and resources.
While theaters primarily provide entertainment for their patrons, they doubly serve as a place of comfort. No place was this more true than the Yost Theater in Santa Ana, California. Amidst brutal segregation and racial violence, the theater did more than let Latino Americans sit in the front row, it played their films. This project aims to recover the history of the Yost and give voice to the community and family who transformed it.
