Parichehr Kazemi, Political Science, “Visual Protest Movements: How Social Media Images Challenge Authoritarian State Power in Iran’s ‘My Stealthy Freedom’ Movement.”

Abstract: “Since 2014, women have challenged Iran’s strict modesty mandates by unveiling in public spaces to document and share their acts of defiance across social media,” Kazemi says in her project abstract. “In response, the Iranian government has arrested several activists and imposed mandatory ‘Re-education’ classes for violators, showing that the content represents enough of a challenge to the regime to inspire severe repression...

Jon Jaramillo, PhD candidate in romance languages, “Viral Bodies: AIDS and Other Contagions in Latin American Narrative.”

Abstract:The HIV/AIDS crisis in Latin America was overshadowed by the late phase of the Cold War, while authoritarian governments promoted discourses reflecting moral and ethical exceptionalism. People with AIDS (PWAs) experienced multiple crises—moral excision by the state, marginalization, and the certainty of death. Existing societal infrastructures of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality, which already urged marginalized lives into even more precarious ways of being, complicated and intensified how PWAs experienced isolation, internal exile, neglect, condemnation, discrimination, and death...

Cristina Faiver-Serna, Department of Geography, “Geographies of Environmental Racism and the M(other)work of Promotoras de Salud.”

Abstract: Promotoras de salud (community health workers) are central to a public health model of care that addresses asthma in Southern California’s Latinx communities. Toxic effects of pollution are countered through state-based programs that use promotoras to teach families home environmental management and proper medication technique. A cornerstone of many promotoras’ care-work is the experience of learning to manage their own children’s asthma, and becoming empowered to help others...

Celeste Reeb, Department of English, “Closed Captioning: Reading Between the Lines.”

Abstract: Closed Captioning (CC) is a series of rhetorical choices that are influenced by concepts of normalcy. Examining CC exposes the way language attempts to contain, mark, and categorize bodies based on gender, disability, sexuality, and race. Sound scholars have begun unpacking the ways that sound constructs views of these categories, therefore this project adds onto this work by examining how CC enforces these patterns in new ways since CC makes visible in text what is implied by sound...

Laura Strait, Media Studies, School of Journalism and Communication, “Occupying a Third Place: Pro-Life Feminism, Legible Politics, and the Edge of Women’s Liberation.” Strait’s research investigates pro-life feminism, looking “to read an alternative history of the feminist movement from the perspective of pro-life feminists in order to pinpoint incommensurabilities that in turn define the state of feminism(s) today. To this end, [the] project details the history of pro-life feminism as it runs parallel to mainstream histories of the feminist movement – focusing on departures in feminist philosophy from the logic and tenets of pro-life feminism.”