What is the Ethnic Studies Thesis Library?
A collection of senior theses at Harvard College studying race and ethnicity meant to inform and celebrate the phenomenal work of past students and inspire future students as the fight for true ethnic studies at the College continues. Compiled by the Task force for Asian American Progressive Advocacy and Studies (TAPAS).A collection of senior theses at Harvard College studying race and ethnicity meant to inform and celebrate the phenomenal work of past students and inspire future students as the fight for true ethnic studies at the College continues. Compiled by the Task force for Asian American Progressive Advocacy and Studies (TAPAS).
Stephanie Wu - The Role of Linguistic Capital in the Health Perceptions of Formerly Detained and Deported Hispanic Immigrant Men
Thousands of immigrants, primarily Hispanic men, are currently detained in detention centers and correctional facilities throughout the U.S. However, little is known about how language affects the way in which individuals understand the role of detention in their physical and mental health outcomes. Through conducting interviews with 29 formerly detained and deported Hispanic adult men, I found that individuals with high linguistic capital, or who were fluent in English, generally had positive interactions with correctional officers…
Sunah Chang - “Just Do It Zen”: The Kwan Um School of Zen, Orientalism, and Commodification in American Cultural Discourses
After over a decade of living in the U.S., working as a laundryman, and gaining a steady following of students, Korean-born Zen Master Seung Sahn founded the Kwan Um School of Zen in 1983. Now an international organization with over 100 physical centers dispersed across the world, the Kwan Um School has succeeded in garnering recognition and popularity, predominantly among a Western audience. This thesis explores the rise of the Kwan Um School, focusing on the ways in which Seung Sahn and his organization have become interpolated by various discourses of racialization and commodification in the U.S. Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork collected from the Cambridge Zen Center (a branch of the Kwan Um School) along with media archival sources covering the organization’s rise to prominence, I situate the Kwan Um School’s public positioning within broader configurations of Zen Buddhism, meditation, and mindfulness in the U.S. Informed by postcolonial scholarship, I analyze the ways in which…
Atheena Keanani Arasoo - (Un)pacific Relations: Imperial Divisions between Native Hawaiians and Micronesians in Hawaiʻi
This thesis argues that despite longstanding cultural and historical connections between Native Hawaiians and Micronesians, a history of imperialism in Hawaiʻi – the research considers cultural, economic, and political aspects of U.S. empire in Hawaiʻi and the Pacific – has shaped ongoing racial and xenophobic tensions directed from Native Hawaiians to Micronesians…
Liren Ma - "Too Much Bubble Tea": The Promise and Pearls of Minority Gentrification
In mainstream media accounts, gentrification is usually portrayed as a monolithic process of wealthy, college-educated whites moving into historically underinvested neighborhoods and displacing longtime, low-income minority residents. However, in the past couple of decades, there has been a growing number of low-income minority neighborhoods experiencing dramatic influxes in gentrifiers of the same race. The literature on minority gentrification has focused on whether this phenomenon leads to different outcomes for vulnerable neighborhoods than white gentrification does…
Emily Zhu - Carceral Spaces, Polluted Places: Prisons and the Distribution and Cleanup of Superfund Sites
For decades, incarcerated individuals and antiprison organizers have worked to draw attention to the intersections between mass incarceration and environmental injustice. Only recently has academic scholarship begun to follow suit to examine prisons as a site of environmental risk. In this project, I examine how the presence of prisons is related to the distribution of toxic waste sites in the EPA’s Superfund program and their remediation. Despite limited scholarship, prisons are a particularly critical site to examine questions of environmental justice, given the historical and…
Alice Cheng - The Socioeconomic Effects of Displacement from Racial Violence: Evidence from the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre
The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the most devastating yet overlooked acts of racial violence in American history. During the Massacre, a White mob attacked the predominantly Black Greenwood District in Tulsa and burned Greenwood’s buildings, displacing about 1,000 African Americans and killing an estimated 300. With census data from 1910 to 1930, I examine the socioeconomic and household composition effects of the Massacre on African American residents of Tulsa. Using both a pooled cross-section and panel data analysis, I consistently determine a…
Zainab Kahloon - Religion or Re-Election: How Muslim Americans Running for Office Reconcile Their Islamic Values with Their Political Decisions
At the moment, Muslims running for office are in a unique position to shape the Muslim-American political vision. Whether or not they consider representing their faith to be a priority is their personal decision. Yet their actions will create a ripple effect insofar as the example they set will serve as blueprints for future Muslim-Americans running for office. Because Muslim-Americans running for office are some of the most visible figures in the Muslim-American community, some questions their actions raise include: How do Muslim Americans running for office reconcile their Islamic values…
Laura Veira-Ramirez - "Almost Perfect": The Cleansing and Erasure of Undocumented and Queer Identities Through Performance of Model Families and Citizenship
This thesis focuses on the way undocumented and queer people have to present their identities in a very clean way in their fight for security by looking at differing timelines of gay liberation and immigrant rights as well as binational same-sex couple advocacy and the case of Shirley Tan.
Queer people appeal to rights by positioning themselves as U.S. citizens who should have access to them…
Julie Chung - Redefining “Inclusive” Science: Hawai‘i’s Multicultural Settler Colonial Context
In response to stark indigenous health disparities, researchers at the University of Hawai‘i Department of Native Hawaiian Health (DNHH) have incorporated Native Hawaiian culture, knowledge, and community voices into their community-engaged research projects. However, these scientists regularly grapple with the legacies of extractive academic research practices in Hawai‘i’s settler-colonial history and present. How do scientists navigate their positionality as researchers and individuals accountable to Native Hawaiian communities? How has navigating this role affected the epistemology…
Eleonore Evans - Medicine That Comes With The Grieving: The Reconstruction and Revitalization of New Orleans Music Culture After Hurricane Katrina
This thesis discusses the ways in which Hurricane Katrina impacted New Orleans music culture. Challenging the notion of a singular definition of "authentic" New Orleans music, this thesis uses three lenses - jazz music, bounce music, and brass band music - to highlight the ways in which these diverse genres evolved after the storm. Using primary sources ranging from journalism to public policy to musical examples, this project examines the notion of post-Katrina musical authenticity in a variety of different contexts. Ultimately, this is a thesis about music, history, culture, and community…
Sally Chen - “Take Root”: Community Formation at the San Francisco Chinatown Branch Public Library 1970s-1990s
The Chinatown Branch serves as a case study for the Chinese American community in San Francisco as they formed and contested new narratives of what it meant to be Chinese American from the 1970s-1990s. Through examining the Chinatown Branch as the culmination of the unrecognized labor of the Chinatown Branch librarians, this thesis shows the forms of work that undergirded processes of community formation in the context of changing U.S. immigration policy, growing and diversifying populations, and San Francisco, California, and national politics of the time.