Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: This poster presents the preliminary outcomes of the novel use of Bayes coefficients in assessing the predictive values of the Static 99 prediction scores for sexual recidivism. The analysis utilizes a previously published data set for 1,086 sexual offenders with known recidivism rates for a 15 year history. Bayes coefficients are produced for the likelihood of criminal re-offense over 5, 10, and 15 year intervals and likelihood ratios are also derived from the Bayes coefficients. Based on this analysis Bayes coefficients function well to capture the relatively outcomes of re-offending behaviors and assessment scores.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract: In this paper, I present an empirical analysis of the cultural activities of a particular group of upper-middle class immigrants of color. I apply the notion of boundary work to immigrants in the multi-faceted context of the San Francisco bay area where they might give salience to differing and contradictory criteria for status depending on the multiple cultural repertoires available to draw from. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews, I find that Bengali immigrants, in the face of racialization and internal differentiation, construct immigrant cultural capital by fusing “tolerant” multi-cultural (Bryson, 1999) and “exclusive” ethnic cultural capital (Carter, 2003). I argue that segmented assimilation, currently, the most influential theory on immigrant identity, fails to elucidate how racial formation in the U.S. impacts upon highly skilled, non-white immigrants who identify ethnically but are not based in an ethnic enclave. My findings display that scholars of immigrant identity need to acknowledge the role of multidimensional cultural capital in adaptation and identification processes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The presence of the South Asian diasporic population in the U.S. is impossible to ignore, especially in California, which boasts the highest number of South Asian diasporic residents nationwide and infuse the community with a unique syncretic cultural influence. In terms of the arts, the Bay Area boasts a number of theatre groups run by South Asians of Indian descent, such as Naatak, Enad, and Bay Bahurupi, that have presented productions for a community audience since the mid to late nineties. In fall 2005, however, two India-centered plays made appearances on local university and professional stages presenting stories with similar themes but remarkably different critical orientations towards their materials. The University of California at Berkeley presented the first two Indian plays on its campus in 91 years, including "Harvest," a contemporary Indo-Anglian play by Manjula Padmanabhan and directed by Sudipto Chatterjee while Tanya Schaffer’s "Baby Taj," penned by a white female from the U.S., graced the stage of Theatre Works in Palo Alto, CA.

"Baby Taj" and "Harvest" deal with the traffic of intercultural exchanges as mediated through women’s bodies, in the U.S. and India. Childbearing is the obsession in "Baby Taj" while the same topic emerges at the climax of "Harvest." Cultural beliefs clash as Western materialism and sexual/cultural morals are conflated with the politics of the Indian family home in each piece. As female bodies and the traffic of sexuality (heterosexual and queer) serve as the literal sites of exchange for imagined communications between nations, what India becomes legible for its audience? Unlike the plays presented by local amateur theatre troupes, these plays were intended for a larger and presumably non-Indian audience. This positioning arguably set up India as an exotic locale to visit in the space of the theatre, rather than as a setting that implied community or mutual understanding. “Indianness” is positioned as an exotic and familiar category differently by various characters of U.S. and Indian descent in both plays and their identification with this “essence” permits them to cross borders or lament their confinement. This variety of perspectives speaks to the possibility of transnational mobilization that enables cross-cultural exchanges but this locomotion is not always innocuous in nature and seems consistently unbalanced in its power relations.

Through analyzing the text and staging of both plays, I interrogate ideas of self-actualization as expressed through female bodies and desires, activate queerness as a site of inquiry in both pieces, and consider how discourses of globalization and postcoloniality are expressed through the stated and implicit interests of each production as they are presented for professional and university theatre audiences. How does the emphasis on female desire and queerness in these plays trouble the India each play is trying to depict through its narrative? By tracing the exotic trip back home to the U.S. through the path of women’s bodies, I illuminate the way these plays reveal the extent to which India still functions as a commodity in the U.S. imagination yet cannot avoid being troubled by the presence of a local South Asian diasporic population that stretches the logic of its popular representation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In 1923, Delilah Beasley became a regular columnist for the Oakland Tribune and the first African American woman to write for a mainstream (White) daily. “Activities Among Negroes” showcased the inner workings of the East Bay region’s black middle class, and as result promoted interracial understanding between Blacks and Whites, as Beasley transferred the Black press’ journalistic style of advocacy to a mainstream paper. Beasley’s work often drew the attention of prominent whites to African American issues in the San Francisco Bay area and, in some cases, in the nation. This paper examines the larger community’s response to her work and the bridges it helped create between Oakland’s segregated worlds. This examination adds to present day discussions about the role of diversity in mainstream media and its effects in developing understanding between ethnic and racial communities and people of different cultural backgrounds.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper focuses on a newly available body of firsthand knowledge of the practices of US counter-terrorism today to outline a sympathetic critique of efforts within international political sociology and the broader subfield of critical international rel