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Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott Aug 2021

Xenophobia In The ‘Rainbow Nation’: An Analysis Of Intergroup Conflict In Contemporary South Africa, Rachel Calcott

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Since the inception of democracy in South Africa, the nation has been touted as an example of racial reconciliation and harmonious diversity. However, the xenophobic violence that has plagued the state since 2008 and resulted in hundreds of fatalities reveals deep and ongoing intergroup divides. Dehumanizing rhetoric around immigration is propagated by both elected officials and the media, and non-natives are frequently characterized as ‘parasitic’ and ‘criminal.’ In this paper I suggest that the xenophobic violence observed in contemporary South Africa may be explained via a three-pronged analysis: the construction of an ‘exceptional’ South African social identity during the early …

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Recognising The Pitfalls Of The Past: Community Health Workers In The Time Of Covid-19, Sam Brakarsh Aug 2021

Recognising The Pitfalls Of The Past: Community Health Workers In The Time Of Covid-19, Sam Brakarsh

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Since their formal inception in the 1960s, Community Health Worker (CHW) programs have been revered as a panacea by some and critiqued as a delusion by others (R. N. Labonte et al., 2017; R. Labonte & Saunders, 2015). CHW programs can yield up to a 10:1 return on investment, mobilising communities to take preventative actions to tackle some of the most overwhelming diseases of our time (Earth Institute at Columbia University, 2013; WHO, 2015). However, when carried out without appropriate support or integration into broader health systems, CHW programs cease to be comprehensive tools for resilient preventative health and, instead, …

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Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps Aug 2021

Returning To The Gender Gap In College Major: How Much Can Pre- College Skills Explain?, Nathalie Beauchamps

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The gender wage gap in the United States is a well-known phenomenon and researchers across many disciplines have tried to pinpoint its cause. One popular explanation is the gender gap in college major choice; however, it is still unknown why women tend to major in so-called soft sciences and men in hard sciences. This paper builds upon Speer (2017)’s work studying the gender gap in major choice as explained by test scores. Rather than utilizing OLS regressions, I employ a Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, which also shows how unspecified discrimination works for or against women (or men) in how much their …

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The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia Aug 2021

The Run On Repo And Bank Stock Returns, Madison Battaglia

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The run on the sale and repurchase market (“run on repo”) was at the nexus of the Financial Crisis of 2007- 2009. Up until now, the economics literature has not studied the effect of sale and repurchase agreement (“repo”) haircuts on bank stock returns using an empirical economic approach. I utilize private repo haircut data from 2007Q1-2009Q1 supplemented with bank stock returns, total reserve balances, and market rate of returns and risk-free rate of returns data to trace the path of crisis from repurchase agreements into a market that had no connection to housing. In linear model regressions, I find …

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Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal Aug 2021

Optimal Information Design In Two-Sided Trade, Pradhi Aggarwal

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In a two-sided market with a broker, the broker can influence the buyer’s and seller’s optimal trading behaviour through strategic information design. We study the impact of information about waiting times on riders and drivers in a rideshare market. We consider three information regimes: the first in which no information about time is revealed, the second in which true waiting times are communicated, and finally an intermediate regime in which agents are only told whether their waiting time falls within a high or low category. We evaluate the optimality of each information regime by maximizing welfare and revenue for each …

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Costuming Characters In Early Medieval Irish Literature, Lydia Lee Aug 2021

Costuming Characters In Early Medieval Irish Literature, Lydia Lee

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Clothing in early medieval Irish literature can often serve as a representation of a character’s wealth and status. However, this paper asserts that the storytellers of these texts costume characters in order to reflect more nuanced layers of their identity. By examining the ways in which clothing is desccribed in Irish tales from the Mythological Cycle and the Ulster Cycle, as well as the legal text “Cáin Íarraith,” this paper argues that storytellers use garments to indicate a character’s geographical roots and occupation, reinforce customs and strengthen social bonds, comment on gender roles of aristocratic women, and serve as a …

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The War On Fire: Construction Of Enemies And The U.S. Forest Service, Isabel Kirsch Aug 2021

The War On Fire: Construction Of Enemies And The U.S. Forest Service, Isabel Kirsch

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

I analyze the parallel constructions of the institution of the United States Forest Service and the idea of fire as a public enemy in the first half of the twentieth century. From where did this fire-as-enemy construction emerge, and what purpose did it serve? I draw extensively from Yale collections for my research, including glass slides of early-1900s forest fire prevention posters, a pamphlet of eerie children’s songs from 1928 with violent language about punishing those who start forest fires, and a Yale School of Forestry student’s 1934 thesis. I argue that equating forest fire with a public enemy has …

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Spectacular Interiority In Post-Apartheid South African Literature, Jaehyun Kim Aug 2021

Spectacular Interiority In Post-Apartheid South African Literature, Jaehyun Kim

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Near the fall of apartheid, South Africa underwent a literary transformation. No longer bound by racialized dichotomies, South African authors rejected extreme narratives (called spectacular exteriority) in favor of nuanced, analytical, and personal ones. This paper argues that the extreme, spectacular representations remain an essential part of two works of post-apartheid literature, Thirteen Cents by K. Sello Duiker and The Folly by Ivan Vladislavić—however, with a twist. Instead of crafting extreme descriptions and events of society, the authors are more concerned with crafting extreme descriptions and thoughts of the characters’ minds. Within these novels, characters experience graphic, subjective, and hallucinatory …

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Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman Aug 2021

Tabula Rasa: Mechanism, Intelligence, And The Blank Slate In Computing And Urbanism, Claire Gorman

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

No abstract provided.

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Exhibiting Text As A Spatial Object In The Beijing Lu Xun Museum, Formosa Deppman Aug 2021

Exhibiting Text As A Spatial Object In The Beijing Lu Xun Museum, Formosa Deppman

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Lu Xun preserves a certain complexity and reflectivity in his writings that avoid overly simplistic interpretations. But what happens when a text is taken out of its literary context and exhibited as visual art? By examining the two cases of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum and the Former Residence of Lu Xun, we observe different inversion of meanings that allow for new forms of heterogeneity to be played out in a spatial realm. The text-focused curative style of the Beijing Lu Xun Museum decontextualizes Lu Xun’s quotes to create more generalizable meanings for viewers. The Former Residence of Lu Xun …

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Performance And Fantasy In Edwardian Childhood: Representations Of Class, Gender, And Education, Amy Delabruere Aug 2021

Performance And Fantasy In Edwardian Childhood: Representations Of Class, Gender, And Education, Amy Delabruere

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This essay explores, by way of visual and textual examples, the role of performance and fantasy in Edwardian childhood. The traditional imagery of childhood in the Victorian and into the Edwardian eras incorporates a connection to innocence and naivety through nature. In contrast, John Singer Sargent’s painting, Marionettes, revitalizes the viewer’s understanding of adolescence in the Edwardian era by reframing a puppet show to focus on the young puppeteer boys rather than the marionettes themselves. Further considerations, by way of Marionettes and related paintings, literature, film, and poetry, reflect on the concepts of representation, theatricality, and social performativity. Sargent’s painting …

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A Case For African American Reparations: The Inheritance Of Racist Hierarchies And Moral Harm, Ko Cheang Aug 2021

A Case For African American Reparations: The Inheritance Of Racist Hierarchies And Moral Harm, Ko Cheang

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In this paper, I will argue that living white Americans with no individual ethical responsibility in original wrongdoings such as slavery, segregation and mass incarceration against African Americans in the United States have an obligation to repair the ongoing, present-day reproductions of past injuries. Using the Lockean inheritance argument for Black reparations laid out by Bernard R. Boxill as a starting point, I will show how a narrow conception of inheritance as property-based and merely legal is insufficient to justify reparations for non-property-based harms such as dignity loss or bodily violations. Drawing upon James Baldwin’s notion of history to explain …

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Investigating Factors That Affect Hiv-1 Capsid Stability, Max Mao, Joshua Temple Aug 2021

Investigating Factors That Affect Hiv-1 Capsid Stability, Max Mao, Joshua Temple

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

TKH HIV caSVLd, a SURWHLQ VKHOO cRPSRVHd RI PRQRPHULc XQLWV RI CA, IRUPV a IXOOHUHQH cRQH WKaW SURWHcWV HIV¶V YLUaO JHQRPH aQd enzymes during infection. I am interested in elucidating the factors that influence stability of the capsid shell and capturing the structural interactions between HIV capsid, host restriction factors, and small molecules using biochemical and structural biology techniques. HIV capsid shell was broken down and purified into hexamer and pentamer units for in vitro study. Structural assays were performed using X-ray crystallography and biochemical analysis was performed using pelleting assays. By understanding capsid structure with factors that confer stability, …

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Caught Not By Surprise: Captatio In Roman Satire And Law, Alisia Pan Aug 2021

Caught Not By Surprise: Captatio In Roman Satire And Law, Alisia Pan

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

What constitutes the legacies left behind by the Roman Empire and who has been empowered to evaluate their value and legitimacy? The Romans left wills, expressions of the most solemn and honest emotions prompted by a sense of duty and declarations which insured one’s remembrance in life and death. The authors left evaluations, through which the frequent appearance of certain topoi characterized vivid aspects of daily life and expected societal practices. Scholars are left conflicted. To reconstruct the social world of family, friends, enemies, and community members, it is necessary to interact with both literary and legal texts to understand …

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Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang Aug 2021

Examining Variations In Community Benefit Generation Across Namibian Conservancies, Amanda Zhang

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Centered around Namibia’s Community Based Natural Resource Management (CBNRM) program, this analysis explores varying levels of community benefit generation across 51 of Namibia’s conservancies by comparing benefits across four conservancy subsets and using multiple linear regressions (MLRs) to examine relationships between selected conservancy characteristics and benefit generation. The statistically significant models predict that the presence of one additional major species is linked to an additional $N 1.458 in meat value per capita, $N 0.543 in conservancy wage per employee, and 0.661 in community game guard employment. While there appears to be a positive correlation between the number of species and …

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Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell Aug 2021

Environmental Determinism And Spurious Correlation: Just-So Stories In Phonology, Jeremiah Jewell

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The sounds and sound structures of languages often pattern in geographic clusters. Most accounts of this phenomenon rely on language contact and common descent as the principal causes of areal features. Modern linguistics rejects the notion that the nature of the location in which a language is spoken affects its phonological system. Nonetheless, some have argued that climate, topography, and other aspects of the ambient environment causally affect phonologies. The aim of this paper is to assess recent attempts in linguistics literature to broaden the view of what motivates geographically correlated phonological structures. I focus on the realms of phonology …

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Environmental Racism In Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s, Brian Reyes Aug 2021

Environmental Racism In Historical Context: The Robbins Incinerator Debate, 1980s-1990s, Brian Reyes

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Conventional narratives of environmental racism paint a “perpetrator-victim” scenario, in which an environmental hazard is forced upon a powerless nonwhite community. This is not always the case. In 1988, a deal was struck to locate an incinerator in an all-Black suburb of Chicago called Robbins. The debate over the Robbins incinerator, which lasted nearly a decade, emerged as a particularly notable incident of environmental racism because of the willingness of Robbins’ Black leadership and residents to accept the plan. Their support was the result of a longstanding history of racialized underdevelopment and political neglect which had left the town destitute …

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Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin Aug 2021

Social Movements In The Information Communication Technology Age: The Case Of Hong Kong, Justin Jin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper develops current understandings of social movements by incorporating research on state formation and counterinsurgency, expanding political process theory by introducing the concepts of legibility and capacity. It then considers the changes caused by widespread use of Internet communications technologies (ICTs). The paper conceptualizes state-movement contention as a competition for access to civil society and its resources. Movements and states attempt to maximize their access, otherwise known as capacity, and minimize that of their rival. The legibility of society to either side impacts their success. Success, or lack thereof, determines future capacity. Increased usage of ICTs and digital surveillance …

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The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor Aug 2021

The Dark Side Of Variety: An Economic Model Of Choice Overload, Teeger Li Blasheck, Jawwad Noor

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Choice Overload is a phenomenon well studied in psychology. It goes against the classical ³more is better´ dogma and describes the behavior of an agent when presented with too many options, in which instance an agent may either experience a decrease in satisfaction or end up deferring the choice all together. The standard Utility Maximization model of economics, however, largely follows the classical dogma and is unable to accommodate the behaviors of Choice Overload. This paper seeks to offer two possible economic models for Choice Overload based on the two mechanisms put forward by the psychological literature: search cost and …

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A Silent Injustice: Air Pollution As A Contributing Factor Of Covid-19 Health Disparities, Spencer Johnson Aug 2021

A Silent Injustice: Air Pollution As A Contributing Factor Of Covid-19 Health Disparities, Spencer Johnson

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 has had a disproportionate impact on Black communities throughout the United States. This paper suggests that air pollution may be a factor for why Black individuals experience markedly poorer health outcomes after contracting COVID-19. It establishes that not only are Black Americans exposed to disproportionate amounts of air pollution, but also that many air pollution-related ailments are the exact ones that have been clinically proven to make COVID-19 more fatal. AV Whe UniWed SWaWeV diVcXVVeV ZhaW a ³neZ noUmal´ entails for healthcare practice and public health policy, this paper makes the case for why …

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Altering Sensory Learning By Chronic Inactivation Of Vip Interneurons, Christopher Alba, Hannah Selwyn, Katie Ferguson, Jessica Cardin Aug 2021

Altering Sensory Learning By Chronic Inactivation Of Vip Interneurons, Christopher Alba, Hannah Selwyn, Katie Ferguson, Jessica Cardin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Vasoactive intestinal polypeptide-expressing interneurons (VIP-INs) play a key role in the regulation of cortical circuits and are implicated in perceptual function and psychiatric disease. However, their role in perceptual augmentation and learning remains understudied. We performed chronic, localized ablation of VIP-INs in the primary visual cortex of adult mice using caspase-induced apoptosis to better understand how VIP-INs contribute to visual perception and the ability to learn a visual detection task. We find that chronic VIP-IN ablation does not affect naïve performance on a full-screen visual contrast detection task. However, mice with suppressed levels of VIP-INs achieved their final expert state …

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In Search Of Play, Margaret Saunders Aug 2021

In Search Of Play, Margaret Saunders

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This thesis addresses the existence, inclusion, and access to play spaces in the built environment. It proposes that play is fundamental to the wellbeing of people of all ages, not only children, and analyzes how play spaces are or are not inclusive to people of all ages, then further addresses this in regard to gender, race, and socioeconomic class. This project presents the perspectives of social theorists such as Johan Huizinga, Guy Debord/ SI International, and Henri Lefebvre to analyze the role of space and social production of play. Additionally, it looks at historical case studies like New Babylon, Modellen …

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Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom Aug 2021

Children's Reasoning About In-Group And Out-Group Obligations, Karli Cecil, Julia Marshall, Paul Bloom

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

We examined whether children (ages 4-9 years) show in-group bias in expectations to help others as well as obligations to help others. We showed participants vignettes featuring two novel groups and a variety of scenarios where one character is in need and another is a bystander who notices this. Younger children did not show in-group bias in terms of expectations to help others, but an in-group bias was present in older children. For obligations, however, we did not find an interaction between age and group: children think you have to help in-group members more than out-group members, regardless of age. …

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The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers Aug 2021

The Keiretsu Advantage: How Japanese Automakers Thwarted American Competition, Jasper Boers

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Today, Japan’s auto industry is renowned for its dominance of foreign markets. Japanese cars are cheap and fuel-efficient, undercutting larger, more expensive automobiles from Europe and America. Scholarship on recent Japanese industrial development tends to prioritize a ‘developmental state’ and robust industrial policy in shielding Japanese manufacturers from trade liberalization. This paper will argue that, while the industrial policy steered by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) played a significant role in advancing the interests of the Japanese auto industry, it was ultimately the unique trust-based keiretsu conglomerate structure that gave Japanese auto producers a comparative advantage vis-à-vis …

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Racial, Gender, And Sexual Imagery And The Black Queer Man: An Excerpt From “I Cannot Go Home As I Am: Exploring Identity In Black Queer Men At Yale In The Context Of The Hiv/Aids Epidemic”, Maxwell Richardson Aug 2021

Racial, Gender, And Sexual Imagery And The Black Queer Man: An Excerpt From “I Cannot Go Home As I Am: Exploring Identity In Black Queer Men At Yale In The Context Of The Hiv/Aids Epidemic”, Maxwell Richardson

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Situated in the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s, Black queer men were and continue to be one of the most affected groups by the epidemic. Looking back as to why, it is very apparent that intersecting themes of racism, homophobia, and masculinity norms, among various other forces contribute to the difficulty many Black queer men had in accessing agency in the epidemic. Through oral histories, as well as analysis of primary source material from the 1980s, I examine the topic of racial, gender, and sexual imagery as it informs and impacts the Black queer male identity throughout this time.

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“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization Of The Cultural Revolution In The 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Yat Fung Aug 2021

“Hong-Kong Style Cultural Revolution” — Weaponization Of The Cultural Revolution In The 2019 Hong Kong Protests, Yat Fung

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong started in June 2019 received international attention as clashes prolonged. A peculiar phenomenon has been observed in the textual space of both the pro-democracy camp and the pro-government camp, which is a shared set of terms surrounding the Chinese Cultural Revolution amid the camps’ antagonism. This essay thus investigates the comparisons between either the pro-democracy protests or the pro-government movement, with the Cultural Revolution, made by Hong Kong writers who position differently in the political spectrum. This essay aims to analyze the use of the Cultural Revolution as an idiomatic weapon to attack the …

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Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin Aug 2021

Resisting Gentrification: Everyday Politics & Collective Action From Oakland To Madrid, Caitlyn Clark, Stephanie Redden, Sakena Abedin

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

!is paper utilizes case studies in resistance to housing insecurity and neoliberalism to demonstrate the successful combinations of everyday resistance with collective action. Presenting the case studies as illustrations of two modes of analysis (Feminist Everyday International Political Economy and Marxism) previously thought of as somewhat contradictory, this paper argues that these models can strengthen one another. Using the examples of the Moms 4 Housing movement to resist gentrification and affordability crisis in Oakland, CA, and the Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH) that followed the Spanish housing and eviction crises, this paper addresses the possibility to combine the …

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Russian Peasants In Tolstoy’S War And Peace - Idealized And Instrumentalized, Antonia Seyfarth Aug 2021

Russian Peasants In Tolstoy’S War And Peace - Idealized And Instrumentalized, Antonia Seyfarth

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

In War and Peace, Tolstoy challenges Western European notions of Russian backwardness and ‘barbarity’ through his depiction of the virtuousness, spiritual wisdom, and rich cultural traditions of the common Russian people. This idealized portrayal of Russian peasants and soldiers is essential to Tolstoy’s construction of a Russian national myth that unites members of all social classes behind a shared set of values. However, in turning the Russian peasantry into idealized, oversimplified caricatures that lack individuality, complexity, agency, and the ability for critical thought, Tolstoy reduces these characters to mere instruments that provide morally edifying lessons to Russia’s elites. This imposition …

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Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak Aug 2021

Co-Opted By U.S. Capital: A Diachronic Study Of Korean Americans’ Relation To The Model Minority Myth, Hannah Kwak

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

This paper examines the historical conditions within which Korean Americans became a “model minority,” linking transnational Korean history to the diasporic formations around the model minority stereotypes. It advances that Korean Americans’ conceptualization of their economic success borrows heavily from the narrative of Korea’s postwar economic development, which itself resulted from the nation’s desire to overcome the past of Japanese colonialism. For instance, the Korean American small business owners interviewed in Sai-I-Gu, a documentary about the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, emphasize the values of hard work, thrift, and sacrifice when telling their immigrant stories, echoing media representations of Korea’s postwar …

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Specularizing Myth: (De)Constructing Feminine Identity In “The Bloody Chamber” And “Wolf-Alice” By Angela Carter, Ishana Aggarwal Aug 2021

Specularizing Myth: (De)Constructing Feminine Identity In “The Bloody Chamber” And “Wolf-Alice” By Angela Carter, Ishana Aggarwal

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

Angela Carter’s “The Bloody Chamber” conflates sexuality and death in a feminist reworking of the Bluebeard story. This essay explores the conflation of feminine heterosexual desire and mortal danger through a Freudian lens to reveal how Carter undermines the Freudian gender binaries in order to construct an independent feminine identity that exists outside the binary. While the original Bluebeard story by Charles Perrault was fashioned as a cautionary tale to warn women against the dangers of their inherent curiosity, Carter subverts this meaning to create a protagonist with a complicated sense of morality and a nuanced understanding of her place …

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