Video games are packed full of endless potential. They are the telling of impossible narratives with something for every type of person. So then why has the industry historically been one of the worst for representations of race and gender? In this thesis, I define "good" media representation and engage in the analysis of both Overwatch (2016) and Detroit Become Human (2018) to observe the ways these two video games, which so outwardly market their diversity, have failed marginalized groups. Accompanying the research paper is a video game poster representing a woman of color designed by the author which is meant to learn from the mistakes of its predecessors.

My thesis focuses on the use of American Sign Language in popular movies. My paper analyzes the intersection between popular media and language, a subject I find personally interesting. My project addresses how and when ASL is used in movies, including technical components such as lighting, framing, visibility, and subtitling. It also looks at the function of ASL, as well as Deafness and how it is portrayed. It focuses on three popular films: Children of a Lesser God (1986), The Shape of Water (2017), and A Quiet Place (2018). It also studies a fourth film, No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie (2013), which provides a Deaf perspective when it comes to filmmaking. These films are studies from technical and representational perspectives.

This Creative Project involves developing Acceptance--an original, feature-length screenplay--from prior outlining material using methods from David Snyder's "Save The Cat!". Upon realizing the strikingly iterative nature of screenplay development, parallels began to arise concerning software development. Said parallels led to a synopsis of how screenplay development can offer insight into ways the software development process can improve iteration.

This research investigates what aspects of certain college students' quarantine experience were contributing to specific changes in gender identity. For this project, a general survey was distributed, and multiple interviews were conducted with willing survey participants to gauge more in-depth information about this phenomenon. Through the survey portion of the research, I found that many Barrett students felt that their identity had changed over the course of the pandemic, and a unique subset of these students experienced a change in their gender identity. Interviews with these folks highlighted several mechanisms that fostered this phenomenon: first, that quarantine allowed them a time to introspect, second, that they were not being policed or scrutinized in public for their gender performance, and third, that this was taking place in a supportive physical and/or virtual environment. This new research provides insight into the specific experiences of nonbinary college students whose identity shifted over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring factors that can influence identity development. While this is a unique and niche situation, it illustrates changing trends in how younger generations view themselves and their gender identity.