Oral Session V: 9:00-10:00AM
Oral Session V- Rooms A-C
Abstract Volume and Quick Reference Guide
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ROOM A
Art
9:00-9:20AM
How to Navigate Womanhood Within the Patriarchy
Presenter(s): Hannah Scott
Advisor(s): Micol Hebron
In medical journals and articles, a woman is not considered a woman until she has started menstruating, and she is no longer a woman when she reaches menopause (Hill, 2020). In this work, the ideas of life development as a woman from the perspective of the patriarchy are analyzed. "How to Navigate Womanhood Within the Patriarchy" is a quilt made from women's underwear. Each section of underwear represents a different aspect of a woman's life as stated by medical journalist, Yuko Takeda. Each stage is marked by something damaging or useful, such as mental health issues, sexual assault, child-rearing, etc., emphasizing that the experience of being a woman is fraught with suffering and that women are only valuable if they are of use. With the Scholarly and Creative Grant that I was awarded by Chapman University, I was able to expand on existing work to make a life-sized quilt. Taking inspiration from the quilts of the Underground Railroad, I have created a map of what to expect on the journey through womanhood within the patriarchy. The materials used in this piece include twelve pairs of women's underwear, fabric pieces from the underwear, light-pink cotton fabric, thread, period blood, fabric glue, lotion, and a condom. The underwear has been placed in a roughly 6” x 6” pattern onto a large sheet of pink fabric. In darkly kitsch design, women are meant to serve their purpose as child-bearers and suffer the consequences of being born into their own sex. "How to Navigate Womanhood Within the Patriarchy" emphasizes how the outline and pressures of a patriarchal society do not allow room for women to follow their own path through life. Women's lives are mapped out for them by men.
9:20-9:40AM
Seeing Mirror
Presenter(s): Curren Taber
Advisor(s): Micol Hebron
Seeing Mirror (2021) is an interactive art installation that explores the modern definition of self, as seen through everyday digital devices. It raises the question of how our devices “view” us and serves as a physical representation of face recognition features found on social media. A user standing in front of the mirror will see a digital overlay framing their face and tracking along with their movement. As a third-year computer science student with a minor in studio art, I took on this project to develop my programming skills while still utilizing my creative expression. My research forced me to demonstrate problem-solving skills and introduced me to the field of machine learning through facial recognition. I used this grant as an opportunity to apply my artistic talent, learn new skills, and create meaningful dialogue around digital identities. The mirror build consists of an LED monitor sitting behind a two-way mirror, blurring the line between natural reflections and a digital interface. It uses an onboard camera, paired with Google’s AIY Vision Kit, to track the digital border with viewers’ faces. Since the monitor sits behind a two-way mirror, only its brightest areas appear on the reflective side. Google’s API allowed me to program the display to remain black in all regions except the white border. This project is ultimately a visual experience that creates a dialogue around privacy, machine learning, and online presence. Working on this project helped me gain technical knowledge by working with emerging facial recognition technology.
Political Science
9:40-10:00AM
Media Matters: Media's Effect on Negative Partisanship in the 2016 Election
Presenter(s): McKenna Etheridge
Advisor(s): Dr. John Compton
According to the Pew Research Center (2016), negative feelings of the opposite party, based on the American Republican-Democrat two-party system, have significantly increased since 1994. The literature, as of now, focuses more on the fact that there is a disparity between the feelings towards the parties; it does not, however, thoroughly explain why this disparity exists. My argument for this study is that the media plays an important role in the feelings of animosity between the two major parties in the United States, and I focus specifically on the respondent’s news media choices: traditional sources, including television and newspaper; talk radio and radio news; and Internet sites and social media. To test this, I utilize the American National Election Survey (ANES) for the 2016 Election, focusing on the variables of party identification, time spent taking in news media, and media choices as my independent variables; and the feeling thermometers for the Republican and Democrat parties as my dependent variables. I expect to find that traditional media sources will have an impact on both parties, while social media will have a more extreme impact on Democrats’ feelings of animosity towards Republicans, and radio news media will do the same for Republicans towards Democrats.
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ROOM B
Political Science
9:00-9:20AM
Anti-intellectualism and American Fears: An Analysis of Social and Political Factors that Influence Distrust in Scientific Authority
Presenter(s): Naomi Hill
Advisor(s): Dr. David Shafie
This study will look at public opinion on a variety of anti-intellectual views. The main question this research is attempting to answer is what are the political and social correlates of anti-intellectualism? The data I will be using to test this question is the 2021 Chapman University National Survey on American Fears. I will be looking specifically at questions within the survey that address public stances on climate change, vaccinations, and mask-wearing (during the COVID-19 pandemic) along with the demographic characteristics of each response group. I plan on running a variety of tests on the data provided within the survey to check for any correlations between the level of fear expressed and demographics for each question. After completing this work, I hope to find support for which social and political categories are more likely to subscribe to anti-intellectual beliefs like climate change denial, anti-vax, and anti-mask. Through this analysis, I can paint a better picture of which political and social groups within the United States maintain these anti-intellectual views and distrust scientific authority. Furthermore, understanding the conditions which influence public perceptions of scientific issues and authority can allow us to more successfully implement scientifically-backed policies in the future.
9:20-9:40AM
Explaining the History and Rise of the Republican Latino Vote
Presenter(s): Alberto Cruz
Advisor(s): Dr. John Compton
Latinos have, in the past, voted overwhelmingly Democrat; however, recently, more Latinos than ever before have been voting Republican, likely signaling integration into a previously opposing party. There have been many examples of the integration of immigrants in the history of the United States, historically, most of them coming from European countries. In recent times, however, Latinos have been growing rapidly as a population and as a minority in the United States. The Latino population has had a history of voting towards Democrat politicians all over the US, and this seems to be a trend towards integrating into American culture by consistently voting in the elections. This premise, however, has begged the question of whether or not Latinos have been integrating into American culture, and if so, is there a generational effect, with second and third generation immigrants becoming more politically conservative? Currently, the evidence to explain these voting patterns have not taken into the account the 2016 or the 2020 elections, which have a lot of information about the changing patterns. I argue that these patterns will demonstrate an expansive distribution between certain ethnicities and nationalities as they vote either mostly Republican or Democrat depending on their personal identity. Using data from the American National Election Study from the years 2016 and 2020, we evaluate the voting patterns of Latinos and what compels them to vote that way.
9:40-10:00AM
Religion: The Perpetually Forgotten, and Underestimated Group Influencer in 21st Century Politics
Presenter(s): Madison Mercer
Advisor(s): Dr. John Compton
Within the realm of politics and religion, research tends to fall victim to the same undeveloped understanding of world religion in general. This fear and misunderstanding of religion as a group identity is detrimental to research of the relationship between religion and politics. Not to mention detrimental to the understanding of how classifications, such as religion, affect social movements, policy decisions, and voting habits. Within the realm of modern religion, it can be difficult to nail down accurate numbers, with religion becoming more malleable and less structured overtime, distinct and specific measuring becomes critical. I will research and analyze self-described religion and church attendance for my theory. I will be using various data sources, including studies from the 2007 World Survey of Religion and the State. Additionally, I will be using data from the 2020 American National Election Studies, to understand religion identification in reference to views on several contemporary political matters such as abortion policy, position on gay marriage, and position on protestor actions. I hypothesize that religiosity, as measured by the frequency of church attendance and self proclaimed religion, is positively correlated with more traditional views on the above policies. Additionally, I hypothesize this research will show religiosity has become progressively important to modern voters, and even more important than other very strong group identifiers.
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ROOM C
Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
9:00-9:20AM
Characterization of the Chia WRKY Family
Presenter(s): Megan Shieh, Harshitha Pandian, Cailyn Sakurai
Advisor(s): Dr. Hagop Atamian
Salvia hispanica (chia) is an herbaceous plant from the mint family widely for its highly nutritious seeds. Similar to other agricultural plants, chia plants are subjected to various environmental stresses. The chia plant has been reported to have low salt tolerance, poor cold tolerance, and susceptibility to insect infection. A potential strategy for limiting the effects of various stress factors on plants is to optimize the plants’ defenses. This can be done by breeding plants with more defense-related proteins, such as the WRKY transcription factor family. This research project's main objectives are to identify and categorize WRKY genes in the chia genome and analyze differential gene expression of WRKY genes in stressful environments. Ninety-one putative WRKY genes were found in the chia genome. A maximum-likelihood phylogenetic tree was constructed to sort these genes into three well-established groups (I, II, III). Motifs were found in the amino acid sequence using the Multiple Em for Motif Elicitation (MEME) online tool. Using qRT-PCR, differential gene expression in chia leaves was measured for selected WRKY genes after application of the following treatments: salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), abscisic acid (ABA), and cold. Overall, these results represents the first time that the chia WRKY family has been characterized.
Communication Studies
9:20-9:40AM
Personality Predictors of Public Support for Racial and Sexual Diversity in the Media
Presenter(s): Caitlin Neuville, Sixtine Foucaut, Sara Morgan, Andrea Torres, Angela Poerschke
Advisor(s): Riva Tukachinsky
The study examines the relationship between various personality traits (openness and empathy) and feelings towards racial and sexual diversity to establish a sense of public support to interact with diverse media. A total of 272 participants were recruited from an online survey crowdsourcing market place, MTurk. All the participants were U.S. American and from various racial and sexual backgrounds. A survey was used to measure all variables through several questions presented on a Likert scale and results were then coded in such that higher scores indicate a higher ranking on a given variable. Both openness and empathy were predictive of (1) participants support for media diversity policies within the world of film and television and (2) participant’s intention to consume media content that includes a range of diverse characters. The effects were largely mediated by the motivation to expand the boundaries of one’s self-concept by gaining an understanding of outgroup members’ realities and assuming identity of others, rather than by the social justice views they hold. These findings inform how implementing diverse roles and diversity regulations in media can be utilized to gain wider public support. In addition to finding support for implementing diversity the study also analyzes the notion of self-expansion and the relative relationship with media enjoyment, providing, insight into the relationship between motivations of self-expansion and the media an individual chooses to consume. Moreover, the results suggest that diversity in the media is not likely to alienate majority group audiences, even if they do not personally value media diversity.
