Defund, Reform, Abolish: An analysis of the media coverage of the police and prison abolition movement in the United States
Read the full dissertation here. This was my final thesis for my masters program in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference, for a course on Cultural Studies and Popular Media and received a 90/100 score. In addition, it was published for public dissemination in the Repositori Electrònic de la Recerca de Catalunya (RecerCat).
Critiques of the systems of incarceration in the United States are not new, but are experiencing unprecedented momentum due to two recent factors. Firstly, the COVID-19 pandemic alerted the public to horrific conditions in prisons that facilitated the spread of the virus, as well as caused many low-level offenders to be released (Bagaric, Hunter, and Svilar 2021, 353). Secondly, the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on May 25, 2020 brought the Black Lives Matter movement, and serious discussions around police reform, once again to the spotlight. In the aftermath of this increased discourse around prisons, police, and punishment, it is worth analyzing how this movement has been represented in the media as these representations greatly inform public opinion.
Stop Book Bans: 18 Ways To Help & Advocate
Read the full article here. This piece was written for Good Good Good as part of my work with Fandom Forward, specifically in promotion of our Book Defenders campaign. Book Defenders was all about supporting universal access to books by getting stories into the hands of everyone who needs them.
We know that diverse stories are essential: they validate the experiences of those who can see themselves in those stories and they encourage empathy and understanding in those who don’t. Reading is a powerful act of resistance and so many are scared of that power.
So, when it feels like our reality has crumbled into a dystopian nightmare, what do we do? We use the power of books, form our own team of heroes, and fight against censorship and for stories that matter!
A Little bit of everything, all of the time: A Case Study of Bo Burnham’s Inside & Discourses of the Internet in Popular Media
Read the full essay here. This essay was written for my masters in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference, for a course on Cultural Studies and Popular Media and received a 98/100 score.
By Burnham’s own admission, his work always ends up being about performing because he believes that all of us are performing constantly on the internet (Make Happy 2016, 46:00-46:39). If this is true, it is worth deeply exploring how we – across many facets of the media – talk about the internet. Do popular imaginaries involving the internet represent this inherent performance? Across TV, film, etc. is the internet discussed as if it is the force connecting our world? Or is it the force driving us apart? Is it somehow both at the same time? The purpose of this paper is to understand the discourses surrounding the internet in popular media and then to discuss Bo Burnham’s Inside as a case study to further explore these discourses. Ultimately this paper aims to answer the following research question: How does Bo Burnham’s Inside reinforce or subvert the popular discourses related to the internet?
Education for change: children, youth & The media
See the resources here, here, and here, These resources were created during my masters in International Studies in Media, Power, and Difference, for a course on Children, Youth, and the Media and received a perfect score.
Each media resource represents a different mode of oppression ubiquitous in society: racism, sexism, and speciesism. The resources are targeted for children, teens and young adults to spark debate and reflect on the content of each given example.
Ladies to the Lab: Why We Need More Women in STEM
Read the full article here. This piece is a part of Fandom Forward’s (formerly called the Harry Potter Alliance) series for A World Without Hermione, a campaign exploring gender inequity by imagining what the wizarding world would look like without Hermione Granger.
The wizarding world is undeniably a better place because Hermione, Luna, Ginny, Parvati, Angelina, and many other witches had the opportunity to attend Hogwarts. Although it may seem bleak at the moment, the future for women in STEM in our world can be positive if we work together to support women, change the stereotype, and implement policies that afford women the same opportunities as men in the STEM field. Women are intelligent, capable, and many of them desperately want to be involved in STEM. If we allow them that, our world will undoubtedly be a better place as well.
When it comes to disability, our voting process is leaving people out
Read the full article here. This piece is a part of Fandom Forward’s (formerly known as The Harry Potter Alliance) Wizard Rock the Vote series, exploring some of the issues on the ballot in the 2018 midterm elections and the systemic problems that keep people from going to the polls.
Our country was founded on the ideals of democracy, as applied to people like our founders: land-owning white males. While we’ve made great strides towards a real democracy, there are still so many different communities of people whose right to vote is disenfranchised. If we want to truly be a democracy that represents all the varied types of people that live in the United States, then we must work to remove the numerous barriers that keep people who live with disabilities and mental illness from having a say in our country’s political decisions.
When Wizard Activists say “Accio Books!”, This is Where the Books Land
Read the full article here. How the Fandom Forward’s (formerly known as The Harry Potter Alliance) Accio Books campaign impacted the lives of hundreds of children in San Diego through a partnership with Words Alive!
Many studies have shown that access to books is essential to helping children be successful in school and become life-long readers. However, studies have also shown that in middle-income neighborhoods there are approximately 13 age-appropriate books per child, while in low-income neighborhoods that ratio drops dramatically to one book for every 300 children. This event helped to directly combat the lack of book ownership in low-income communities in San Diego by allowing every student at Golden Hill School to go home with a whopping ten new books each.