The thesis represented here was for my Honors undergraduate thesis project, which explored the social stigma of disability and its representational differences between congenital and acquired disability within the user comments in an online forum of discussion. Existing literature on Critical Disability Studies and Rehabilitative Psychology has noted the nature of disability stigma and lack of accurate representation in social settings as well as the ramifications that follow. (Mis)representations of disability can result in bias, inaccessibility, and other social ramifications such as microaggressions because of the long history of oppression and stigmatization that disabled individuals have experienced (Keller & Galgay, 2010). Data was collected from two online forums addressing disability stigma and analyzed using both deductive coding and inductive emergent analysis of recurrent themes, experiences, or ideas that were expressed in user comments. Analysis of user comments helped address the goal of this research which aimed to explore stigma, identity, and disability within a representational context. This thesis, then, wanted to better understand disability stigma by analyzing the representational differences (if any) of congenital and acquired disabled user’s comments.

In the United States, the majority of the population suffers from some form of trauma. There are many ways that an individual can cope and accept their trauma, but two practices stand out as an inexpensive, flexible option for many. Bibliotherapy is the use of reading literature as a way to learn more about and understand one’s trauma through the perspective of others. Expressive writing is the practice of writing and reflecting about one’s own traumatic experiences, as well as the emotions that are tethered to it. In this paper, I explore the fields of bibliotherapy and expressive writing as forms of therapy by reviewing the history, use, goals, and effects of each in the context of mental and emotional well-being. Intertwined with the scholarship is my own self-guided bibliotherapy of reading memoirs and poetry collections related to my trauma and self-guided expressive writing in which I wrote a short collection of personal essays and poetry, finding that both fields, separately and used together, are effective avenues for trauma healing.

Throughout every liberation movement in America’s history, poetry has been an undeniably powerful act of resistance. Even today, protest poetry is instrumental to countless resistance movements because it captures attention, evokes emotion, and demands social progress. My project is divided into two parts. The first part is made up of five journals. These journals are informal written responses that conversate with different texts and analyze specific images within specific passages. My exploration of protest poetry focuses on five prominent poets of the last century: Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gloria Anzaldúa, Camille T. Dungy, and Claudia Rankine. The second part of this project is my contribution to protest poetry. For my collection, I crafted ten poems in which I resist a range of issues that have to do with class, gender, and ethnicity. My protest poetry is also an examination of what it means to be human, particularly in modern day America.

Over the past several decades, cyberbullying has increasingly become one of the most dangerous threats to an adolescent’s mental health. Heather Springer, writing for the American Psychological Association, projects that roughly 33% of American teenagers are affected by cyberbullying while on social media (Springer). This startling percentage, compounded by an escalating need to combat cyberbullying’s negative impact on mental health, has catalyzed a wave of psychological research to explore the ways in which social media impacts teens. Over the years, researchers have produced a plethora of publications on the subject, inspiring families to pursue cyberbullying prevention for their loved ones. However, despite this surge in anti-cyberbullying interest, few researchers have attempted to coalesce these psychological findings with computer applications, and fewer still have sought to prevent cyberbullying through the strengthening of parent-teen relationships (Silva et al., 2019). Because of this, the BullyBlocker team, led by Dr. Yasin Silva and Dr. Deborah Hall, has spent the past couple years developing a mobile application called ActionPoint. Our team hopes that through this app, the risk of cyberbullying is drastically decreased and even prevented.

This undergraduate honors thesis explores the process and motivating factors associated with immigrants from Mexico who are in the process of becoming U.S. citizens. This project is based on 20 interviews with Legal Permanent Residents (LPR) of Mexican origin who have had lawful permanent status for 20 years or more. While immigrants are eligible to apply for citizenship after five years of being LPRs, most, like my respondents, take longer. Why do LPRs experience a delay of 20 years or more in applying for citizenship? Findings from this study reveal that motivating factors associated with becoming a U.S. citizen are 1) a desire to be socially accepted and integrated by and into American society; 2) to overcome the fear of failing their citizenship interview; and 3) to change the growing anti-immigrant rhetoric by becoming citizens and increasing the presence of naturalized citizens in American society. Respondents also revealed that their bilingual-speaking children were the biggest motivators that helped with accessing information in regard to citizenship and voting.