Senior Honors Thesis 2013

Pictures Say A Thousand Words: Visual Representations of Black Female Athletes During the 2012 Olympics

Shauday Klaz is a Political Science and African American Studies double major graduating May 2013. She is analyzing Sports Illustrated’s coverage of the 2012 London Olympics to discover the ways in which black female athletes are represented  throughout the magazine. The media, popular discourse, and general scholarship suggests that black women are reflected incommensurately in media representations. This research seeks to investigate whether there are distinctions in the images depicted of black female athletes by focusing on visual representations presented in Sports Illustrated during its coverage of the 2012 Olympics.

Forced Failure: Discipline within the Los Angeles Unified School District

Scott O’Gara will be graduating in the fall with a major in American Studies and Ethnicities and a focus on education, art, and popular culture. Scott is exploring the connections between discipline and drop-out in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Research suggests that exclusionary discipline (e.g., suspensions and expulsions) leads to an increase in public school drop-out, and that minority youth, especially African Americans, are affected at a higher rate. Using a quantitative approach, this study looks at suspension and drop-out data from LAUSD over an eight year period in order to discover whether the district’s discipline plan is addressing these historically disproportionate rates of suspensions for minorities, and whether recent changes to the tough-on-crime policy are raising the graduation rate.

The Jewel of Los Angeles: An Exploration of African American Enterprise Building on Central Avenue from 1900 to 1950

Charnan Williams is an African American Studies and History double major, graduating in May 2013. She will be pursuing a Ph.D. in History at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Charnan Williams research explores the ways in which African Americans developed economic and cultural power within historic black communities. Using the historic Central Avenue district, located in South Los Angeles, as a case study, this research examines the role that the Dunbar Hotel, and to a lesser extent, the Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company and the California Eagle Newspaper, had in anchoring the black Los Angeles community.