My Passions

Doing What I Love and Loving What I Do

Journalism

I am currently focusing on online media with my journalism major, but I also have some experience in photojournalism as well. I enjoy fact-finding and editorial writing, and I hope to use my skills in the future of online media.

I have been published in Quill and Scroll Magazine, the Sun-Sentinel and the alternative campus newspaper The Fine Print. Some of my pictures have also been published in a book as part of a collection of the 2009 UF Photojournalism in Berlin study abroad trip.

Women's Studies

I have always been interested in women's issues and the way they are affected by and interact with cultural and social ideologies, therefore Women's Studies is a natural field of study for me. By the time I finished my first women's studies class, I realized just how important and interwoven the field of women's studies is with almost all of our daily experiences.

Some of my favorite women's studies classes include: Transnational Feminism, Desperate Domesticity, Women and Poverty and Eco-Feminism.

Activism on Campus

Campus CodePink for Peace

This is my second year as president of the student organization Campus CodePink for Peace. We are the campus chapter of a national grassroots social organization that believes in ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and re-allocating those funds to health care, education and green jobs. Our UF chapter has been around for two years, and has been involved with local and national issue rallies, a traveling social change parade, and a counter-recruitment kiss-in.

We are currently raising money to help build a girls' art school in Kabul, Afghanistan. We hope to help the often unseen victims of war, and provide young girls a way to develop themselves and their community despite the horrors of military occupation.

If you'd like to learn more about the UF chapter, check out the Campus CodePink for Peace web site. You can also check out the national CodePink web site as well.

Research on the 2008 Presidential Elections

University Scholars Program

During the 2009-2010 academic year, I am participating in the University Scholars Program, where I conduct my own research under a topic of my choice while under the guidance of a faculty advisor.

I am conducting my research under the guidance of Dr. Cory Armstrong in the College of Journalism and Communications. My research project for theUniversity Scholars Program aims to examine the photographic news media portrayals of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin during the 2008 Presidential elections to determine how these women as political figures were portrayed to the public, and why this may have occurred.

Using qualitative analysis of photographic images, I will focus on images in Time magazine, due to its popularity and wide circulation. With the use of semiotics, which is the study of signs, I will determine the main themes appearing in the images, such as angle, lighting, facial touch-ups, and male positions within the pictures, and if they differ between the two candidates.

How the photographic media in a widely circulating magazine portrayed Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin during the elections may reveal the impact of visual media during major political campaigns, especially when female candidates are the focus.

For more information about the University Scholars Program, go here. The 2010 Undergraduate Research Symposium will be held on March 1, where the University Scholars will present their findings.