Category: 2020

How does legislation of foot traffic in Machu Picchu affect the economic livelihood of indigenous groups in Peru?

Presenter(s): Emma Ziari—International Studies, Political Science

Co-Presenter(s): Edwin Guerrero, Eloise Navarro

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthias Vogel

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

How does the legislation of foot traffic in Machu Picchu affect the economic livelihood of indigenous groups in Peru? In January of 2020, Peru deported five tourists accused of damaging a temple in Machu Picchu, the famous ancient Incan ruins in the Andes . Our presentation discusses how tourism in Machu Picchu has disaffected indigenous culture, indigenous people, and the environment in the Peruvian Andes . We examine societal and economic pressures and argue that each has been magnified by tourism as our analyses of policy changes, environmental degradation in Machu Picchu, and indigenous narratives show . We contend that while tourism in Machu Picchu seems to have clear economic benefits, the societal and environmental costs have been steadily increasing . Culturally, tourism has led to the desecration of indigenous burial sites . Environmentally, because the number of tourists has been increasing, the erosion of the site has continued to increase . Our research of this issue wants to contribute to a better understanding of the effects of global tourism . This information will be useful in identifying key global issues in tourism and contribute to informed decision-making processes for the implementation of a more environmentally and culturally-conscious tourism industry .

Yakuza in Japan: Why are they still there?

Presenter(s): Caitlyn Yost—International Studies

Co-Presenter(s): Calvin Parker-Durost

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthias Vogel

Session: Prerecorded Poster Presentation

For generations, Japan has been trying to control and contain their mafia organizations known as the yakuza . The yakuza groups have, since the Tokugawa era in the early 1800s, been an issue and to this day they continue to defy the Japanese government which has never been able to fully rid the country of these organizations . In our research, we examine why the Japanese government has such a hard time trying to deal with yakuza and why the yakuza have a big impact on Japanese society . For our research, we will be using sources such as historical documents, police reports, articles/newspapers, and first-hand accounts on dealing with yakuza . Taking a look at such sources has led us to finding out that the Japanese government is starting to crack down on yakuza more since 2011 with the support of the United States government though the yakuza still continue to hold roots in Japanese businesses and citizens still go to yakuza to deal with issues rather than deal with the Japanese legal process . We hope to bring awareness to this topic and teach people how the yakuza organizations have changed and adapted over the years, how they are currently being handled in Japan, and how they could be dealt with in the future .

Observations of Mobile Health Clinics in Honduras: A Case Study on El Centro De Salud Integral Zoé

Presenter(s): Mitchell Yep—International Studies, General Science

Faculty Mentor(s): Lesley Weaver, Melissa Graboyes

Session 1: Time for Your Check-Up—Decolonizing Global Health

Visual impairment and blindness are debilitating conditions with increasing rates around the globe . The World Health Organization estimates at least 2 .2 billion people have a vision impairment or blindness, of whom at least 1 billion are preventable or remain unaddressed (Bourne et al ., 2017; World Health Organization, 2019) . El Centro de Salud Integral Zoé uses an innovative Mobile Health Clinic model to deliver cataract screenings and visual acuity exams to populations marginalized from the Honduran health care system . Zoé ́s outreach model actively removes systemic barriers that prevent individuals from seeking care such as cost, distance, logistics, and lack of knowledge . The colonial legacy and proposed neoliberal development policies have resulted in the underdevelopment of health infrastructure and widespread exclusion from these services . The expansion of accessible health care is a pressing national issue as the State›s Ministry of Health estimates 18% of the population (over 1 .5 million Hondurans) do not have access to health services (Secretary of Health, 2015) . Implementing the Right to Health under the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and achieving the 2015 United Nations Millennium Development Goals requires the foundation of accessible health care . Mobile Health Clinics present an alternative development strategy to ease disparities of access to health care by bringing medical services to communities that would not receive them .

Preserving the Authenticity of Chinese New Year in Process of Modernization Through Generational Perspectives

Presenter(s): Evelyn Woo—Psychology, International Studies

Co-Presenter(s): Tina Chan

Faculty Mentor(s): Matthias Vogel

Session 5: It’s a Small World After All

This project explores generational gaps in celebrating Chinese New Year, which is arguably the most important holiday in China . Also known as the Spring Festival, traditional rituals include the family reunion dinner on New Year’s Eve, putting up lucky red decorations, handing out red envelopes to children, and setting off firecrackers . In the last decade, many new forms of commemorating Chinese New Year have developed among young people, such as sending virtual red envelopes for online money transfers via WeChat, a popular messaging app, and watching the extravagant Chinese New Year Gala on screens rather than participating in small festivities with family . These technology-driven changes are of particular concern to some elders who think that the younger generation is turning away from traditional family values and customs . The purpose of this project is to examine attitudes toward the Spring Festival and question whether it is losing its authenticity . We debate in how far this transition is indicative of a larger restructuring of Chinese society and contrast different generational perspectives by analyzing Western and Chinese news outlets, social media blog posts, and websites . We expect to find that with China’s rapid urbanization, cultural traditions are not lost but simply changed, which some may see as growth, while others interpret it as a disappearing act . Our project has strong social significance, as it points out schisms in Chinese society and issues China faces in its process of modernization .

Ensembles link RNA thermodynamics and molecular evolution

Presenter(s): Daria Wonderlick—Biochemistry

Faculty Mentor(s): Mike Harms

Session 5: The Bonds that Make Us

Designing better biomolecules is a long-standing goal for biochemists . Doing so requires a rigorous understanding of how the sequence of a biomolecule determines its properties . Sequence changes, known as mutations, alter these properties and drive the natural evolutionary process . If we can accurately predict how mutations impact biomolecular properties, we can engineer novel biomolecules for applications in medicine, energy, and technology . Predicting a mutational effect is challenging, however, because the effect often depends on the presence of other mutations . Previous work in the Harms lab suggests that some of these mutational interactions emerge from a thermodynamic property of biomolecules—the ensemble . A biomolecule’s ensemble is the collection of interchanging structures it can adopt . A mutation may impact any structure in the ensemble, and its effect arises from perturbations to the relative populations of these structures . Mutations will have different effects depending on the degree to which other mutations have redistributed the ensemble . To mechanistically understand how the ensemble mediates mutational interactions, I am characterizing the effects of five mutations alone and in combination on a magnesium- and adenine-binding RNA molecule with a simple four-structure ensemble . By measuring the amount of a fluorescent adenine analog bound in the presence of varying magnesium concentrations, I can detect the effect of mutations on each of the four structures in this ensemble . The simplicity of this system will provide detailed mechanistic insight into the relationship between ensembles and mutations that can be used to improve the mutational predictions required for successful biomolecule design .

The Cinema 7 History

Presenter(s): Katherine Wilson—English

Faculty Mentor(s): Peter Alilunas, Stephen Rust

Session 1: Flicks and Pics

Cinema 7 was a unique “art house” movie theater in Eugene, Oregon, 1974–87 . It was part of Oregon’s emerging film culture in the early 70s; showcasing the films of Poetic Cinema Filmmakers Ron Finne, Sharon Genasci and Don Cato, among others; and was partially funded and staffed by Oregon Film’s Pioneer Film Crew member Katherine Wilson, a professional Location Scout and Casting Director . The cinema boasted attendance by such notables as cast and crew from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Animal House, and Stand By Me; as well as local icon Ken Kesey .

Curious about what the venue looked like, U of O Cinema Studies Professor Alilunas discovered in 2020 that one of the students in his class, filmmaker Katherine Wilson, had worked there; and an opportunity arose to learn more about the theater’s special place in history .

Only a single photograph from the Eugene Register Guard Newspaper (of the hidden projector room) and one polaroid image of a corner of the lobby existed, so Katherine made the decision to make a diorama from the blueprints Dr . Alilunas had found at Eugene’s City Planning Department .

The interior design itself was inspired by the great former movie and opera houses of Eugene (the ornate theater seats were reused and recycled from the demolished Heilig Theater in 1973) as it mimicked The Egyptian Theater and The Bagdad Theater in the Art Deco/ Egyptian Revival style popular in the 1920s .

Therefore, it became more important than ever to somehow preserve the theater’s history for students who were studying how and why Art Houses were so important beginning in the early 70s; as these “underground” artistic filmmakers helped create Cinema as we know it today .

Additional photos were later found and printed from negatives by the Cinema’s Interior Designer and Graphic Artist Lynn Peterson, who also designed all the Cinema 7 posters starting 46 years ago . Lynn had donated many of them along with Katherine’s to the Katherine Wilson Special Collection at the Knight Library in 2016 . Video link: https://vimeo .com/401805694/0167ee0cc3

History of the Animal House: (1977–20)

Presenter(s): Katherine Wilson—English

Faculty Mentor(s): Philip Krysl

Session 1: Flicks and Pics

This research project asks what is left of an old fraternity house made famous in 1977 during the filming of National Lampoon’s Animal House, and is answered in a short motion picture: https://vimeo . com/401735276/4367deb178

In the mid-60s and early 70s the Animal House was a half-way house for parolees going to college . In 1977 it’s exterior starred in the movie Animal House, but the interior was off limits . So the set decorators bought two identical doors, and mounted one of them as the front door on the “Exterior” of the Animal House, while the other they mounted on the Sigma Nu House, which also had sidelights, and would help continuity-wise to not only mimic the living room and basement of the other house, but would double as the Interior door .

In 1986, an old friend of Katherine Wilson’s contacted her about trying to save the house from being demolished . She was on-location in Washington state and was unable to help, and it was demolished . However, pieces of the house were saved, and ended up in her possession in 2012 . In 2017, she was asked to create a movie set from the various pieces for The Oregon Film Museum’s fundraiser, and she recreated the front porch . In 2018, the Cottage Grove Hysterical Society, planning for the 40th Anniversary Celebration of Animal House, used it as a backdrop at Bohemian Park for the concert starring Otis Day and The Kingsmen . Watch for it again in 2021 .

The University of Oregon’s EMU: Cultural Epicenter and Incubator for Oregon’s Film Industry (1967–77)

Presenter(s): Katherine Wilson—English

Faculty Mentor(s): Stephen Rust

Session 1: Flicks and Pics

This research project answers the questions relating to how the University of Oregon’s EMU helped create Oregon’s First Film Crew in the 70’s; how that in turn resulted in National Lampoon’s Animal House being filmed at the UO in 1977; and why significant events were held and filmed specifically in The EMU: A) How Animal House Came to the UO: https://vimeo .com/401518226/f72da257a4
B) The Casting Call: https://vimeo .com/400122172/8de7c92b45
C) The Food Fight: https://vimeo .com/399570228/6eab0a62f7

The EMU was considered one of the Nation’s cultural epicenters because of its programs supporting and housing new social, intellectual, political, artistic, journalistic, filmic and musical paradigms of the 60’s . Because of this, a group of Poetic Cinema filmmakers emerged from this cultural center in 1969 and became Oregon’s first film crew; not only helping create Oregon’s film industry, but stepping in to help save Animal House from being scrapped by a Hollywood studio . These filmmakers all met on July 8th, 1969 on the Free Speech Platform of the EMU while watching a Communist debate the ASUO Student Body President . From there they formed FWAPS to help Kesey edit his 1964 footage, participated in Jack Nicholson’s film Drive He Said (1970), Elliott Gould’s Getting Free (1971), the Grateful Dead’s Sunshine Daydream (1972), as well as supporting Paul Newman’s Sometimes A Great Notion and Michael Douglas’ One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), before becoming key personnel on Animal House in 1977 .

“Desde Abajo, Como Semilla:” Narratives of Puerto Rican Food Sovereignty as Embodied Decolonial Resistance

Presenter(s): Momo Wilms-Crowe—Political Science

Faculty Mentor(s): Dan Tichenor, Michael Fakhri

Session 1: Oh, the Humanities!

This thesis explores the power, possibility, and agency embedded in food in the contemporary Puerto Rican context . Building from participatory ethnographic fieldwork with activists, chefs, and farmers engaged in food sovereignty work on the island, I examine the concepts of agency and subjectivity as they relate to embodied experiences of politics . This approach is made possible with the understanding that the food we consume directly connects our individual lived experiences to broader structures of power in intimate and material ways . Through food, I offer a grounded critique of US colonial violence, inherently linked to ecological destruction, cisheteropatriarchy, and disaster capitalism . I also document dynamics of radical prefigurative politics as visible in people’s generative reimagining of relationships with their bodies, each other, and the land . This analysis is supported theoretically by key indigenous, anarchist, and queer/feminist perspectives which similarly connect the personal to the political and offer examples of political action that extend beyond state-centric formal politics . Ultimately, I argue that food is a powerful site of resistance, source of resilience, and mechanism of resurgence; as Puerto Ricans reclaim autonomy via food, they are resisting deeply rooted patterns of colonial extraction and dispossession and directly cultivating a more ecologically, socially, and politically just future .