The Contestable Hot Dog: Rejecting the model minority framework among second-generation Asian American youths

By Julie Han

Introduction

The sentiment is simple; to be in between is to be incomplete. So, as the reality of being young and Asian American places me completely in between so many worlds, the general sentiment of being an Asian American youth is being incomplete. I am not emotional or rational enough. I am not White or Asian enough. Within this sentiment of in between and incomplete, I am just never enough. Whether or not the intersecting conditions of my age and race act as a greater or lesser lens of my experiences, those intersecting conditions forever shape and colour them. Furthermore, those intersecting conditions forever shape and colour others’ experiences of me. Unconsciously yet purposefully, as I developed an awareness of my age and race, I developed measures to remedy these conditions also. How do I cure myself of being a little Asian girl?

Engaging Reality in Theatre: Young Performers, Empathy, and Injustice

By Ronit Mandelkern

I texted my best friend, Claire, “I honestly think theatre is too close for me to talk about.” I suppose a background story is needed. Theatre was my sanctuary from when I was six until the end of high school. I felt safe on stage. Nothing could hurt me. Outside, however, I dealt with the pain of losing my mother, of dealing with moving to a new school, of having a step-mother, of change. Everything hurt—but I was the performer—I was in my own reality. As I became each character or improvised in theatre class, I could scream or cry or even yell and no one knew that it was coming from a place of desperate pain. I was six when my mom died of Breast Cancer. Too young to process death, too expressive to internalize it, I needed something like a sanctuary. And there it is. The stage became my sacred space: a place both engaged and disengaged from reality, separate but linked to my identity. It was a universe in which reality paused, and life was lived as I performed it. Reality was oftentimes too confusing to understand and too difficult to live in. I needed theatre, and to be honest, I still need it today.

Sugar Never Tasted So Good: Gender, Sexuality, and Sex Work in the Age of “Sugar Babies”

By Naomi Liss

In the time of sexting, tinder and “hook up culture,” what it means to have a romantic or sexual relationship has changed. While many use online dating sites to simply find a romantic or sexual partner for personal gain, more and more young people, particularly young women and femmes (people identifying with femininity without necessarily identifying as women), have opted to become involved in romantic and/or sexual relationships for financial benefits. Though the practice has been around for some time, “sugaring” has become increasingly popular with the rise of dating websites, such as “Seeking Arrangement,” founded in 2006, designed specifically for young people to find “sugar daddies” or “sugar mamas.” Those who become involved in romantic and/or sexual relationships in exchange for allowances, gifts or help paying bills are known as “sugar babies.” While anyone can be a sugar baby, young women or those presenting as women, who seek male partners are the most common sugar babies. For my research I intended to learn more about the phenomenon of sugaring. Why do young women and femmes get involved? How does the practice of sugaring differ from other forms of sex work? As I am part of many communities made up of mainly queer women and gender nonbinary people, I was interested to learn more about how the practice of sugaring may affect young women and femmes’ sense of identity, especially those with gender or sexuality identities outside of the norm.

On the Circuit: Grindr and Emotion

By Jeffrey Bigman

Towards the beginning of the 1976 film Logan’s Run, the titular character, who is preparing for a party, walks over to a hollow metal cylinder in his room and summons a date holographically. The first person that appears is a man, muscular and shirtless, and Logan shakes his head disapprovingly. He grabs a remote and tunes the holograms the way one would tune a radio until a slim woman in a tunic appears. Then Logan welcomes her into his apartment and tries to have sex with her. After she repeatedly tells him no, he asks her if she prefers women. “No,” she responds, “nothing, I—I felt sad. I put myself on the circuit. It was a mistake.”

This prescient scene predicts the age of app-based sexual encounters that would not come for another thirty years. Now, through apps like Grindr, people do summon others to their apartments in order have sex with them. Through these encounters the Internet transforms suddenly, as it does in Logan’s Run, from a theoretical space where one exists only in photos and language into an inescapably concrete encounter with another person’s body.

Creative Entrepreneurship: Learning to Value Uncertainty in Uncertain Times

By Julia Jung

Exploring Start-Up Culture

In Silicon Valley, California, I grew up surrounded by startup culture—surrounded by people who encouraged innovative ways to create economic value. Although Silicon Valley is well known for their tech boom, this mindset was not limited to those in IT or traditional workplaces. The capitalistic urge to commodify everything is prominent in most industrial countries. We are told to be efficient and make the most of our talent, which is often used synonymously with making money. Numerous classmates in high school begin selling what they had initially began making as a hobby or way to express themselves such as customized shoes, jewelry, and handmade cards. Entrepreneurship is a path that many youthful individuals choose to take, not only as an alternative to the traditional academic path but often as an additional way to follow a passion that they feel they could not devote their entire career to.

Yoga: From Tradition to Trend and Back Again

By Abigail Dennis

Yoga is…

Breath – The stilling of the fluctuations of the mind – A sport – Transformative – Transforming – About finding liberation – Detachment – About the mysteries of the universe – Rehabilitative

“Yoga is about life. It’s not about flexibility or gymnastic prowess. It’s about life. It’s what we’re doing here, sitting still in front of the highway, it’s about your life with your friends and your family, it’s about your life in the restaurant, it’s how you are on a bicycle, it’s how you are at your work every day with your colleagues. It’s not just what happens in that studio for an hour and a half every day; it’s off the mat. Yoga is all off the mat.” – Steward Gilchrest (Who Owns Yoga?)

The word “yoga” has represented so much throughout time and across space. From an ancient Indian tradition to a modern western trend, it has made its way across the world and become a significant part of millions of people’s lives in the process. Researchers estimate that today over sixteen million people practice yoga in the United States alone (White 2012). But it is not only the scale of yoga that I find interesting – it is the practice itself. I started this project because I was curious about how young people experience yoga within the modern western world today and how that relates to yoga’s origins. I am interested in how yoga has existed as a religious phenomenon, whether that use of yoga persists today, and how this compares to how modern youth in the west experience it now. As a striking case of east to west globalization, I wanted to know what it is about yoga that draws so many practitioners and how, or whether, yoga has maintained its authenticity through this movement. I have found that although in some ways yoga has changed significantly over time, in others it has remained close to its roots and today allows young people living in the modern western world greater agency over their lives both on and off the yoga mat.

Fuck It, This Is Class! Youth Smoking Habits and Attitudes

By Amy Sokolow

Smoking kills. We all know that. Presumably that is a given among modern-day youths after decades of research has drawn direct relationships between smoking and lung cancer. This does not even consider the other consequences such as yellowed teeth, damaged gums, and brittle skin, among others. In my American education, these facts were drilled into us like algebra equations. Smoking has become demonized in American society, and No Smoking zones litter our streets, campuses, and public spaces. Almost no one in my immediate social circle smokes even occasionally at home. Therefore, the times I left the U.S.— and the insular bubbles of my hometown and my small liberal arts college— I was shocked to see youths smoking everywhere. Otherwise healthy-looking people smoked on the Tel Aviv beaches, outside of Dublin pubs, or while sipping café con leches on a Madrid terrace.

Academia’s (Ab)Normal: Reconciling the Minority’s Double Consciousness in the Institution

(Cover: http://www.amsterdamunited.org/project/itooamuva/)

By Nina Mesfin

“The training of the schools we need today more than ever,–the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts.” – W.E.B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” (2007: 5)

Before I arrived at university, I did not know that you could make a career out of academia. I expected to waltz in, study hard for four years, then waltz out again. I was completely unprepared for the world I would soon find. Despite my immersion in a hyper academic environment, pursuing a career in academia seemed intangible for me: a woman of color. This stemmed from the fact that professors who looked like me were few and far in between. Although many treat university as the great equalizer, a space where all of one’s past struggles and experiences cease to matter the moment one steps foot onto campus, academic institutions exacerbate differences in lived experiences. For the first time, I became acutely aware of my intersectional identity and acquired the tools necessary to articulate what I had only ever been able to describe as fleeting feelings.

Guerilla Kitchen: Respite in Consumption

By Charles Bardey

As my first introduction to volunteering at Guerilla Kitchen, I was given two main instructions: (1) hang any pots and pans on hooks to preserve the limited space; (2) don’t break the food processor, because it’s “really, really important.” This instruction was part of no official orientation, but was instead dashed off quickly by Elise, a longtime volunteer and organizer at Guerilla, as she showed me the locations of items as we came upon them in the kitchen and dining room: salt, beans, cutting boards, beer. She was remarkably friendly, considering that I could have been literally anyone: I had entered a roomful of twenty-somethings busily chopping vegetables, and had meekly offered myself as a volunteer to a young man behind a bar, who directed me to Elise. The tour was brief, as Elise had to return to preparing in the kitchen—it was already 4:16, and the kitchen would be open in just under two hours. “See who you can help,” she offered, leaving me standing awkwardly in the middle of the dining room. Mercifully, that didn’t last long: a twenty-four year old Dutch art student named Emily invited me to chop a box-full of apples with her in preparation for dessert. This, at least, was a task I knew how to do.

“It’s Going to Work Out”: Negotiating Anxiety and Passion in Studying Humanities and Social Sciences

By Scarlett Stemler

“And what do you want to do with that?” This is the question humanities and social sciences students are continuously asked when they state their degree. As a student studying an Arts degree, majoring in sociology and anthropology, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), I have experienced this question many times. I started out my university education in a Bachelor of Psychology, a hard degree to get into and one that holds a lot of prestige. But I found psychology to be cold, rigid and impersonal and I felt there was no space for my own voice. In contrast, I took elective subjects in sociology and anthropology and absolutely loved these from the start. Subjects such as ‘Rethinking the Social’ and ‘Understanding Cultural Experience’ totally captured my whole heart and mind. In each lecture, time would stop and I would be happily swept into this exciting, new world full of questions and open doors. After two years I went from semi-soft to soft, from psychology to arts.

“Just because it looks cool”? An exploration of young people’s reasons for shopping second hand clothing

By Caroline Sprangers

I moved to Amsterdam this summer, August 2016. When coming to a new place to live there is always a lot to take in and a lot that is different. One of the things I noticed my first days when biking around the city was the amount of second hand stores. Having a personal interest for second hand clothing I was naturally happy about the discovery. I couldn’t believe how many stores there were! And not only stores, but also markets and special events dedicated to second hand clothing. As a sociology student it also got me thinking – the flourishing market of second-hand clothing is made possible because there is a customer demand, so what reasons do people have for shopping for second hand clothing? Why is it attractive? How come it’s popular? These thoughts motivated me to look deeper into the second hand shopping scene.

The Privileged Mutt

By Maria Mankin

I was raised in a relatively small suburb ten minutes outside of Chicago. While the city itself is home to people from all different walks of life, River Forest was not necessarily a breeding ground for diversity. All of my friends were white, and their parents came from the Midwest or somewhere nearby. They ate bland chicken for dinner, watched football at night, and took trips to their local country club on the weekends. My family, on the other hand, strayed quite a bit from this suburbian norm. Both my parents were immigrants, three different languages were bounced around in my home, and we never went to a single football game nor had memberships to the local country club. I wasn’t aware that this was different until I was exposed to the standard that all my friends prescribed to. When I would go to their houses after school, I realized that my living situation was abnormal. Being a young, impressionable child, all I wanted was to fit in. I began to question why my family couldn’t just be like everyone else’s. This yearning to conform bred a strong resentment towards my biracial identity. I grew embarrassed of my mom’s Mexican accent, and detested the abundance of Russian food that filled our refrigerator. However, as time passed and I became more assured, I started embracing my ethnicities. These various moments of self-realization ultimately led to an overwhelming sense of pride and respect for my heritage, subsequently resulting in a deeper understanding of what it means to be biracial.

The Meaning Behind “He Hawaiʻi Au”: An Exploration of Native Hawaiian Youth Identity Formation and Activist Involvement

By Kelly Lehua

I’m sitting in one of the plastic chairs in our Thursday Youth Cultures work group. I had decided to shake it up a little bit today by sitting on the other side of the room today. I was feeling dangerous, young, and alive.

We were discussing the state of youths in today’s society. Listening to other people’s comments, I got that itching in my finger and up it went. Taking a deep breath in preparation to drop some major knowledge, I chimed in with a Hawaiʻi-related comment. I spoke with confidence because I knew what I was talking about. After I had finished talking, I remember the room being silent for a second. It was just enough time for me to start feeling a little uncomfortable when Yatun, my Youth Cultures instructor, looked me dead in the eye and said in her ever-calm voice, “You’re an activist.”

In that moment, you could have told me that I was the next Miss USA and I would have believed it more. I was absolutely floored.

Mockery or Reverence: The Responsibilities of Drag

By Kenneth Jarvis

Drag has been creeping into mainstream consciousness since the release of Paris is Burning in 1991, the seminal documentary following the ball culture of the late 1980s. This familiarity has reached a new level with the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, introducing a new generation to contemporary drag culture and its current top stars, including Alaska Thunderfuck, Willam Belli, Sharon Needles, Latrice Royale, as well as reintroducing RuPaul into American popular culture. While the show has mainly been shown in the United States, it has a worldwide fan base and has proven an influence on LGBT communities everywhere, representing a global drag culture.

While the growing influence of drag culture has received mostly positive reception, there is the question of what it means for men to dress as women for entertainment. For many drag queens, their performance is reverent to womanhood as well as challenging social gender constructions, but for some women drag is offensive mockery. There is also the question of whether drag queens as performers of womanhood should help advance the state of feminism, and the question where to put the boundaries between offensive and comedy. It is possible that because under the drag many of these queens are biologically men they are manipulating their male privilege in being able to use womanhood to comedic effect, but then cross back into their privileged position as men.

Tinder Hearts: Navigating the Youth Dating Scene in Precarious Times

By Taylor Casteen

“So what do you think about Tinder? I’m interested, why are you doing this?” This is a question one of my respondents asked me at the end of our interview, and it’s a question I’ve had to ask myself several times over the course of my research. Why am I so interested in Tinder, a dating platform that, from most of my respondents’ standpoint and from my own, is only used for fun and as a cure for the tediousness of everyday life? But the real question in the end was not why I cared about Tinder, but why I cared about our generation’s relationship with dating as a whole.

In the beginning my motivation was rather simple: I was bitter.  Reeling from my most recent failed relationship, I had decided to throw my hands up in defeat and accept the fact that love was a lost cause in today’s world and that the whole idea of being in a relationship as a 20-something today was a complete waste of everyone’s time. And like so many others, both in my own generation and in older ones, I blamed the popularity of hook-up based “dating” apps like Tinder for this. For years now I have been fed up with my generation’s seemingly universal idea that serious connections and commitment were things to be feared, replaced by temporary intimate fixes, moving from one to the other at the rate of how internet memes gain and lose popularity daily. So, fueled by bitterness, and a need for a research topic, I decided to make what I assumed was the guilty party of this mentality the subject of my project. 

Accidential Utopia: The Cultural Freehaven of Ruigoord vs. the 1960s Hippies of Haight Ashbury

By Anikka van Eyl

Nobody likes a hippie, right? Hippies are lazy, dirty drug addicts that live off the system and contribute nothing to society. This is the common perception that mainstream society holds of hippies; they are a nuisance, promoting radical thinking and won’t conform to that of the traditional life. But is this what truly defines the core of a “hippie”? When understanding the concept of hippie, we often think of these definitions due to moral panic, negative media coverage and the fall of the hippie subculture in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco during the Summer of Love in 1967. Haight Ashbury, the center of the 1960s hippie movement in the United States, quickly became overpopulated with an influx of young radicals, bringing disease, drugs, and violence to the forefront of the originally peaceful movement. But the traditional values that defined a hippie before 1967 were overrun in the process: the values of community, love, peace, and nonconformity. Hippies were anti-capitalists, looking to replace the traditional American lifestyle with a radical, free spirited community of acceptance and freedom. Although we still think of these values, they are often the afterthought, negligible when we think of the chaos unleashed by the hippies. Is it possible to maintain these values over a longer period of time, to truly create a Utopian society that nourishes creativity, acceptance and autonomy? In the outskirts of Amsterdam, I believe I have found an artistic haven that encapsulates these traditional hippie values throughout daily life: Ruigoord.