Intersectional Issues
TLC: Race, Conflict, and Peaceful Communication
For my first semester at IUPUI as a Liberal Arts Student, I joined the Themed Learning Community (TLC) Race, Conflict, and Peaceful Communication. In this TLC we explored issues of culture, race, and communication through the disciplines of sociology and public speaking.
First Year Success Course
For my First-Year Seminar class, we were asked to do a group representation on a topic that related to our TLC. For my group project, we decided to talk about racism in the beauty industry.
This project allowed me to explore themes of race in America and how it applies to our daily lives. As someone assigned female at birth, these are issues I see on a daily basis and being able to explore them more in depth illuminated some of the consequences. I also had the opportunity to work in a group which allowed me to continue developing teamwork skills.
Communications
For my Communications class, I was asked to write a speech and give a presentation that related to race and peaceful resolutions in some way. As someone who wants to become a librarian, I though the best topic for me to pick was to do something related to book bans. To relate it to race, I choose to specifically talk about Critical Race Theory in literature.
This project allowed me to connect something I love, library sciences, with a topic that is important not only to the class but to society in general. Before this class I had not taken a speech class before, and this class allowed me to expand my public speaking skills. I had the opportunity to enter this speech into a contest and I was fortunate enough to make it to the semi-finals.
Intro to Sociology
For my Sociology class, I was asked to make a How-To Guide teaching people about how to talk about some issue related to race. For this activity I chose to do a series of infographics on the intersectionality of disability and race.
I really enjoyed this project. It pushed me out of my box creatively to create a series of infographics that were aesthetically appealing, as well as address an issue that is kind of vague. There is an interaction between disability and race, but there isn't a whole lot of research on it. I wanted to challenge myself to address an issue that is already difficult to explain, no less to teach others how to speak about. I had a lot of fun with this project and learned a lot in the process.
Other Course Projects
Social Informatics
Despite being in the age of technology there are many people who still do not have access to the resources and tools needed to take advantage of these tools. In this paper and presentation, I look at the technological gap and how it prevents telemedicine from being used on a larger scale as an accessible way to recieve healthcare.
Applications of Data Mining
For this project, we looked into the relationship between injury severity from car accidents between men and women. Utilizing R and Python to analyze and visualize the data, this research paper takes a look at the gender disparity in car safety.
Surveillance Studies
Surveillance has become a hot topic in the last decade with more and more systems every day that are used to gather and track our information. In these two papers I look at surveillance in schools from an intersectional lens and how minority communities are disproportionately affected by school surveillance, and I explore how surveillance through period tracking apps can be weaponized to oppress menstruators.
Reconsidering LCSH
For this final paper, I chose to look at the origins of the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) and some of the primary complaints with the current system, and what kind of alternatives are out there besides LCSH. Because of a word and citation limit, I was not able to go as into detail and I would have liked to, but this does give a good overview of the key points of the issue.