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…
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.