WUC-program

SESSION 1
9-10:15 a.m.
MEDIA AND MODERN TIMES
OLIN 138
Celia Langford, moderator
Erick Franklund, coach
9 a.m. NINA SHARP, Trends in Women’s Labor Force
Participation in the United States, 1979-2016
While the 1980s and 1990s saw increased participation,
to varying degrees, of women in the American workforce,
women’s participation in the labor force has declined
since the turn of the century. There is no agreed-upon
explanation for this trend, and questions invariably arise.
How have various economic factors such as the median
weekly wage, national unemployment rate, and proportion
of Americans living in urban areas impacted the labor force
participation rate of women in the United States over time?
In examining these trends, I estimated a linear regression
model, with U.S. women’s labor force participation as
my dependent variable and various national economic
statistics as my independent variables, from 1979 to 2016.
My presentation distills an empirical research project that I
completed as part of “Introduction to Econometrics.”
Faculty Sponsor: Pete Parcells
9:15 a.m. JACKIE GREISEN, Mediation of Media: Parental
Discourse with Their Children Surrounding Political Issues
As media pervades modern culture and everyday lives,
children have more access to sources of information that
is less and less mediated by parents and guardians. At
home, with friends, or at school, kids access information
beyond parental mediation. This trend led me to research
children’s access to potent political topics as well as
parental discourse about these issues. Specifically through
the lens of the #MeToo movement, I examine how parents
navigate and mediate their children’s consumption
of media, how they reconsider their own childhood
consumption, and how popular media sources for children
portray rape culture.
Faculty Sponsor: Michelle Janning
9:30 a.m. GABBIE WEBBEKING, Sigils, Spells and SpongeBob
Memes: An Examination of the Tumblr Witch in the Late Modern Era
The witches on the social media website, Tumblr, are
connected by their unbridled passion for sigils, spells and
self-deprecating humor. Unfazed by a lengthy history of
persecution, these witches thrive in their connections with
nature, acts of inner strength and self-care. At the same
time, the identity formation of the Tumblr Witch is fraught
with contradictions of authenticity, urbanization and
capitalism. My presentation explores the ways in which the
Tumblr Witch renegotiates and reclaims her identity on social
media platforms, such as Tumblr and Etsy, by conducting a
virtual ethnography. In doing so, I hope to fill a gap in the
sociological research on online witch communities.
Faculty Sponsor: Matthew Gougherty
9:45 a.m. CELIA LANGFORD, Yaoi and the Bishōnen:
Depictions of “Beautiful Boys” in Gay Japanese Manga
Yaoi, a genre of Japanese comic books (or “manga”), is
dedicated to the depiction of homosexual love between
male characters. My research focuses on a specific
character type that appears within Yaoi manga, namely the
bishōnen, or “beautiful boy.” The term bishōnen applies to
a character who is sexed and nominally gendered as male,
while all the while sending visual and behavioral signals
to the reader that complicate his gender image. A bishōnen
bears physical characteristics, behaviors and mannerisms
that invite a sense of femininity, while at the same time
bearing other features and behaviors that invite a sense of
masculinity. My presentation visually analyzes the ways in
which bishōnen are presented in contemporary Yaoi works,
asking whether or how bishōnen might shift the reader’s
notions of what is and is not gender-intelligible.
Faculty Sponsor: Yuki Shigeto
COMPUTER SCIENCE I
OLIN 129
Melissa Kohl, moderator
Matthew Schetina, coach
9 a.m. PAUL MILLOY, JULES CHOQUART, PABLO
FERNANDEZ, BEN LIMPICH, RAJESH NARAYAN, On
Glitchy Rice and Buggy Frozen Potatoes: Redevelopment of Blue
Mountain Action Council Food Bank’s Inventory Management Software
Blue Mountain Action Council Food Bank supplies
donations of food from the USDA and other contributors
to food pantries in the Walla Walla area, supporting
food security and the reduction of food waste. Our
team was tasked with updating BMAC’s database and
inventory management system from a PHP and MySQL
web application to an application built from the modern
frameworks of Firebase and React. To do so, our team has
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