What is the purpose of making dishes that take a long time to make? With such easy access to food nowadays, is there any reason to put in the effort to make things from scratch? By testing and learning about recipes that require a long time to make, I try to answer the reason behind all the effort. In doing so, three main reasons were found. First was the tradition behind the recipe. The second was the useful nature of preservation. The third is the tastes that are developed in the process.

This thesis is an exploration of my imaginary world through a short narrative with a focus on placemaking in fiction. The narrative follows Dengar, a civil servant estranged from the central government, as he investigates disappearances occurring in the edges of the empire, uncovering secrets related to the empire’s past and the past of the conquered people of Thron. He must navigate a bitter, cold landscape and a dangerous resistance group as he learns more about the real reason behind why he was sent there. Schemes are uncovered and foiled as he makes his way into the core base of the resistance, a towering mountain called Diran. Following the narrative, I explain my inspirations and analyze my narrative from the perspective of placemaking, referring to placemaking scholars such as Basso and Whitridge.

The goal of this project is to document and format a cookbook of my grandmother’s Palestinian recipes while learning about her life and the history of Palestine. This process included research of Palestinian history from many different sources: books, Palestinian cookbooks, and online articles to form a foundation for the food and culture behind the recipes from Palestine. It also included intensive cooking lessons with different women in our family to measure, practice, and taste different dishes included in this project. The focus of this cookbook was our grandmother’s recipes, but soon after starting, we realized that cooking in a Palestinian household is a group effort and rarely done by one person. Due to this realization, we decided that everyone in the family would be recognized in constructing this cookbook. After completing this project, we documented stories and experiences of my grandmother’s move to America at a young age, raising five children with no family around her, and her ability to find substitutes for ingredients that were not available in America that we did not know of before. Our relationship with our family and culture has strengthened during this experience, and we are now more confident in who we are and what we can offer to our future generations.

The goal of this project is to document and format a cookbook of my grandmother’s Palestinian recipes while learning about her life and the history of Palestine. This process included research of Palestinian history from many different sources: books, Palestinian cookbooks, and online articles to form a foundation for the food and culture behind the recipes from Palestine. It also included intensive cooking lessons with different women in our family to measure, practice, and taste different dishes included in this project. The focus of this cookbook was our grandmother’s recipes, but soon after starting, we realized that cooking in a Palestinian household is a group effort and rarely done by one person. Due to this realization, we decided that everyone in the family would be recognized in constructing this cookbook. After completing this project, we documented stories and experiences of my grandmother’s move to America at a young age, raising five children with no family around her, and her ability to find substitutes for ingredients that were not available in America that we did not know of before. Our relationship with our family and culture has strengthened during this experience, and we are now more confident in who we are and what we can offer to our future generations.

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.