Existing work argues that intergenerationality and interraciality in LGBTQ communities is in need. In one report, “many of the issues facing both younger and older LGBT people are related to weak intergenerational ties, particularly with LGBT people of a different generation.” Additionally, the Group of the Advancement of Psychiatry argues, “often, ‘the gay community’ being studied consists of gay, white men. One reason for a paucity of literature on gay people of color, for example, is researchers' lack of recognition of diversity within the gay community.” As a young queer person of color, I see and feel the imperativeness of intergenerationality and interraciality in the LGBTQ community. Many young LGBTQ people don’t have many intergenerational relationships with other LGBTQ people, resulting in a lack of much needed mentorship. Likewise, many spaces that I and other LGBTQ people of color exist in are not representative of racial diversity or our own races. Following the work of the “Dragon Fruit Project,” a LGBTQ intergenerational storytelling organization within the Asian Pacific Islander community, I conducted interviews with people, diverse in age and race, in San Francisco, Seattle, and New York about their experiences in interracial or intergenerational communities. I used academic sources regarding LGBTQ intergenerationality and interraciality, and connected the key academic findings to the themes brought out of the interviews to create a prototype of an intergenerational and interracial LGBTQ community. As a result, I connected LGBTQ people in the Seattle community of all races and ages. With the LGBT elders of color population “projected to increase by 217 by 2030” and the rise of LGBT people being out in the future, the need to redesign and incorporate interraciality and intergenerationality in the LGBTQ community is imminent to accommodate the future of what the LGBTQ community will be.

The scope of this project is to invite an expert to make a speech focused on water mismanagement and global climate change and to conduct pre-speech and post-speech surveys to explore the effects of the speech on knowledge and attitude change regarding these two issues. One common assumption among those combating climate change is that providing the public with expert knowledge on the subject will change their opinions and behaviors. This project tests whether that assumption is correct by measuring the impact of a single speech on the knowledge and attitudes of college-aged students. For the application of my research, I planned and organized the event inviting 300 students to listen to a 1-hour speech delivered live by a Senior member of the United Nations on climate change and global water issues, and conduct pre-speech and post-speech surveys that were administered to determine what effect, if any, the speech had on the students’ knowledge and attitudes about the topics. 197 pre-surveys were completed while 130 attendees were present at the event and 60 attendees completed the post-survey. The post-survey results are in the process of cross comparison with the initial pre-survey. I hypothesized that the results speech measured by the pre-surveys and post-surveys will show significant positive change in both knowledge and attitude change. The implications of my research results will be used to suggest broader implications for scientific and policy communication to a lay audience in order to continuously educate and successfully convey knowledge and information while advocating for positive change in attitude to further advance our efforts in solving the global threat of climate change and water management.

For many people in the public sector, science fiction serves as their first exposure to scientific innovation, making it an important medium for science communication and exploration. In my project, I take advantage of this by writing my own science fiction novel, which frames neurotechnology development as a movement in scientific research worthy of both excitement and critical debate. My novel explores memory and identity among a group of characters unknowingly participating in a research trial for memory prosthetics. My goal as a writer is to encourage my readers to question their own positions on what it means to be human and to be alive, as well as the ethics of manipulating these seemingly simple ideas through technology. My literary work is built upon research I have undertaken around current day development of memory-specific technologies, the ways in which they work, and the philosophical underpinnings of manipulating memory through technology.

Though the post-colonial mainstream American diet has changed over time, what seems to remain constant is the emphasis of a protein source (typically meat) at every meal. New trends have emerged which advocate for deviances from this dominant paradigm, such as veganism, a diet that exludes meat, eggs, dairy, and any product or by-product of non-human animals. Some scholars such as ecofeminist and animal rights author/advocate Carol J. Adams have set out to demonstrate how societal expectations of gender roles have shaped the dominant discourse surrounding our diets and those who choose to opt out of these dominant food ways. But no one has yet addressed how the alignment of masculinity with meat is addressed in male-dominated sports, and how the current infiltration of the vegan diet into these realms may be changing the way we look at meat vs. plant-based diets. I seek to investigate what happens when the epitome of muscle and masculinity, male bodybuilders, adopt what is sometimes referred to as a “feminine” vegan diet. I also seek to explore whether marketing or demonstrations of one’s ability to build muscle on a vegan diet help to change people’s perspective of vegans as “weak” or “feminine”, or if these carnophallogocentric ideals rather promote and prolong the ideology of necessity of meat in the diet. Through analysis of mainstream media representation of veganism, online resopnses to well-known bodybuiders "gone vegan", and critical readings of current pro-vegan advocacy works, I seek to discover if it is truly possible to adopt a vegan diet while separating oneself ftom a dominant post-colonial dietary paradigm. I expect to find that gender and diet are intricately linked, and that until our society addresses the underlying ideology which places femininity on a hierarchy below masculinity, veganism will continue to be viewed as feminine, and therefore inferior. 

Contentious debates among Natives and non-Natives concerning the fate of wild horses on Yakama tribal lands in Washington State have waxed and waned for more than a century. Beginning at the turn of the twentieth century, the Yakima Indian Agency welcomed non-Indian sheep and cattle ranchers onto Yakama tribal lands against Native wishes, taxing rangelands, and resulting in widespread overgrazing. By the 1920s, agency concerns for the economic stability of non-Indian ranchers facilitated a need to gain access to communal tribal grazing lands that served to sustain Yakama horses. Because of this, agency officials orchestrated systematic assaults on Yakama horse herds, citing horses as the primary culprits of overgrazing and land degradation. However, Yakamas showed little interest in removing their horses at the behest of non-Native officials, and instead vehemently opposed settler encroachment on communal grazing lands. Through an interrogation of archival sources, conducting interviews, and reviewing scholarly sources across disciplines, I argue that Yakamas and non-Natives used wild horses as a terrain of struggle, whereby asserting competing claims to Indigenous lands and resources. Thus, examining wild horses as a tool of Indigenous resistance during the early twentieth century provides a useful lens for understanding the many forms of Native opposition to colonial hegemony, while simultaneously calling attention to the multiplicity of problematic and archaic tropes employed by non-Natives in an effort to provide justification for divesting Native communities of meaningful lands and resources.