UCLA Gender Studies presents a series of public-facing conversations with social justice activists and filmmakers invited to a UCLA undergraduate course (Gender Studies 131, Feminist Politics in Korea and the Korean Diaspora) taught by Prof. Ju Hui Judy Han. With topics ranging from queer and transgender politics to reproductive justice, from transnational adoption and anti-violence activism to prison abolition and migrant justice, the conversations emphasize intersectional feminist praxis and the transformative power of solidarity.

Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Gender Studies, UCLA Center for Korean Studies, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and GYOPO.

The series is free and open to the public. Registration is required at https://www.otherwise.net/feminist/.

Sessions are in English except when noted otherwise.

For more information, see the flyer below and/or contact feministpoliticskorea@ gmail.com

Dr. Ju Hui Judy Han is a cultural geographer and Assistant Professor in Gender Studies at UCLA, where she teaches classes on gender and sexuality, Korean studies, (im)mobilities, and comics. Her research and publications concern conservative religious formations, queer activism, and protest cultures. Judy grew up in Seoul and has lived and worked in Los Angeles, Berkeley/Oakland, Vancouver, and Toronto.

As summer 2021 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Science at UCLA.

UCLA Summer Courses are open to BOTH UCLA Students and NON-UCLA Students. All Summer 2021 courses will be offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer and you do NOT have to be enrolled in an academic institution in order to participate in UCLA Summer Sessions. For more information, click HERE.

The Asian American Studies Department has an amazing course this summer on web development and GIS for social change. Check out the course listed below. For more information, please reach out to Albert Kochaphum at albertkun@idre.ucla.edu. Register HERE or enroll HERE today!

As summer 2021 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA summer courses are open to BOTH UCLA students and non-UCLA Students. All summer 2021 courses will be offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer, and you do NOT have to be enrolled in a academic institution in order to participate in UCLA Summer Sessions. For more information, click HERE.

Check out Professor Brian Hurwitz’s UCLA ONLINE summer course, “Sex and the Cinema.” Since the Lumière brothers first screened their short films to an astonished Parisian audience in 1895, movies have continued to leave an indelible imprint on media studies and communication rhetoric. They influence the way we walk, talk, dress and dine. Simultaneously, the medium has profoundly affected our perception of beauty, romance, intimacy and love. Yet much like fashion, such perceptions have been routinely altered owing to evolutions and revolutions in social, political and institutional conditions.

This course examines the contextual forms and factors that have directly led to film shaping the way we communicate about sex and sexuality. Starting at the dawn of the twentieth century, we will engage in a decade-by-decade analysis of cultural norms, the movies that were made in accordance with them and the ones that were produced in opposition to them. This examination will further explore how the cinema has informed our attitudes towards gender identity, cultural taboos and social movements. By evaluating the manner in which erotic imagery is presented and how sexual symbolism is represented, students will gain an understanding of how past, present and future views on sex and sexuality are impacted by the cinema.

For more information about this course, see the preview video below, and register HERE or enroll HERE today!!

In the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, we are dedicated to advancing research with real-world impact. As the #1 public university located in one of the most diverse cities in the world, we are ideally positioned to address critical issues facing our communities. Through the work of our world-class faculty – and our students who will become the leaders of tomorrow – we strive to be a leading agent for change across the nation and around the world.

Here in the Social Sciences at UCLA, we are very interested in the impact of technology on society. There are countless applications of big data that help us solve many of the problems that define life today in American society. LA Social Science is pleased to share this video highlighting two researchers, Dr. Till von Wachter and Dr. Safiya Noble, and the important, big data research they are leading in the social sciences.

As a public institution, our work is ultimately in service of you, our community. By engaging LA, we are changing the world.

UCLA Big Data and Politics Seminar Series

The Prevalence and Sharing Patterns of “Fake News” in the US in 2016 and 2020

David Lazer
University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences

Co-Director of NULab for Texts, Maps, and Networks

Northeastern University

Friday, May 14, 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM PT

Zoom link: https://ucla.zoom.us/j/97899586814

Abstract: This presentation discusses the prevalence and sharing patterns of “fake news” in the United States in 2016 (regarding the election) and 2020 (regarding COVID-19). Substantively, the questions asked are: How common is fake news, as a specific genre of misinformation, been on Twitter? How concentrated are exposure and sharing patterns? And how does fake news fit into the broader information ecosystem on Twitter? Methodologically, the focus will in part be on the development of panels of accounts that are linked to administrative data as a method to measure aggregate behaviors on social media.

LA Social Science is proud to present four research papers written by UCLA students in their Winter 2021 Sociology course, “Immigration and the Media,” taught by Dr. Cecilia Menjivar. Dr. Menjivar’s introduction, excerpts of the students’ excellent papers, corresponding download links, and short bios of the twelve amazing UCLA students are included below.

Introduction by Professor Cecilia Menjivar:

I have been teaching this class, “Immigration and the Media” in the Department of Sociology at UCLA for the past three years, with the goal of sharpening my students’ critical skills by immersing them in the systematic examination of the role of media in immigration debates. Through a deep reading of research produced by sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, communication studies scholars, and historians, we examine how immigration has come to be a ‘hot button’ issue; whether this has been the case historically; what role does the social context play; how migration crises are constructed; the link between media depictions of immigrants and policy decisions; how opinions about immigrant groups and immigration are formed; and what consequences all this has for immigrants, for the public, and US society in general. The class follows a seminar format and active participation is required. In addition, students have a series of essays, class presentations of research, and other assignments to complete.

I had always taught this 3-hour per week class in person, but with our switch to remote teaching due to the pandemic, I taught this class through Zoom in the Winter 2021 quarter. This seminar has always been dynamic; students usually engage in lively, respectful discussions. I was a bit concerned that I would lose this critical component of the class in a virtual format. I needed to find a way to create a sense of connection for the students when everyone was in a different physical location, not anchored in place. So I decided to have them work in small groups for a final project where they could put to use the material they were learning in class. This was the first time in teaching this class when I would have group work for the final project. It was a resounding success. I have been blown away by the students’ collaborative spirit, dedication to produce the best research projects under difficult circumstances, and the novel ideas they came up with for their research projects. The papers showcased here are the students’ final projects. Under my direction, each team produced original research; designed their studies; used analytical frameworks learned in class in their work; drew from the relevant literature in the field to inform the questions they asked and to illuminate their findings; collected and analyzed original data from print and broadcast media; and contributed new knowledge to our understandings of the connections among media depictions, policy climate, politics, and immigration debates.

My Sociology 191 class on “Immigration and the Media” deserve a huge congratulations for their effort, diligence, and for the research they produced. I am extremely proud and applaud each one of them for their perseverance and dedication, especially in the face of many pandemic-related challenges.

I would like to extend a big thanks to Dean Darnell Hunt, Drs. Ana-Christina Ramón and Celia Lacayo for the wonderful opportunity to publish my students’ papers on the LA Social Science website.

EXCERPTS AND LINKS TO FULL RESEARCH PAPERS:

The Myth Of The Criminal Alien: Newspaper Media

by Pedro Henrique Borges, Julaina Juarez and Andres Torres

The media’s framing of Latin/Central American immigration through forced removal centers a criminalized lens that perpetuates historically patterned processes of criminalization that violently impact the lived experiences of immigrants in the U.S. As highlighted in the patterns of media framing demonstrated throughout the six passages analyzed in this piece followed by two randomized passages from each The Hill, CNN, and FOX News, traditional mass media commonly frames immigration through crime while diversifying its strategies in each of the newspapers analyzed in this piece.

To read this research paper, click HERE.

A Comparison of Spanish and English Broadcast News: The Portrayal of Immigration During the 2020 Presidential Election Cycle 

By Tiffany Nguyen, Stephanie Pitassi, Veronica De Santos Quezada and Vanessa Valdez Cruz

In the analysis of ABC News, terms such as ”illegal,” ”alien,” or “criminal” did not reoccur in the negative articles as they did in most of the Univision articles. Even the 6 negative portrayals that we found were not framed as strongly as some of the Univision media pieces, or even other outlets such as Fox News, where the “protection and prevention,” “economic strain,” and/or “Latino threat” frame/narrative are repeatedly utilized. Unlike ABC news portrayal of immigrants as victims of violent hate-crimes and mistreatment by ICE through a human interest frame, Univision News portrayed ICE — through a number of quotes and tweets — as a safety force to end “illegal” immigration and eliminate sanctuary cities nearing the November 2020 election. Though they did provide tips and information on what to do if encountering ICE, the quotes and tweets were never conceptualized.

To read this research paper, click HERE.

Immigration in Late Night Talk Shows: A Qualitative Analysis 

By Federico Trudu, Elena Usui, Swan Ye Htut

Our findings demonstrate that across more “political” (“The Daily Show” and “The Late Show”) and less “political” (“The Tonight Show”) late night talk shows, there is a common thread of negative associations with immigrants and issues of immigration, particularly reinforcing crime and threat narratives on specific groups of immigrants, such as unauthorized ones. However, it is important to note that the quantity of material that covered immigration was higher in the more “political” shows, thus giving us insight about the role played by political comedy in setting the agenda for immigration.

To read this research paper, click HERE.

The Rise of the Myths of Immigration Due to Increased Coverage of Negative Depictions of Immigrants in the Media During Trump’s Presidency

By Camille Lent and Katelyn King

Former President Trump’s potent, non-factual, negative statements about immigration fueled a wave of anti-immigration framing that spread even to more neutral and liberal news sources over the years of his presidency. The results of our research show that even non-conservative media sources use language that is consistent with anti-immigration sentiments. However, in general there are more subtle terms used in both neutral and liberal sources compared to blatantly negative terms.

To read this research paper, click HERE.

AUTHOR BIOS (in alphabetical order):

Pedro Henrique Borges:

Pedro Henrique Borges is a first-generation immigrant from São Paulo, Brazil. He completed a BA in Sociology with full honors through the McNair Scholars initiative followed by the Sociology Honors program. Pedro is currently completing his MA in Latin American Studies as a Departmental Scholar. In the future, Pedro plans to briefly transition away from academia into market-based research, with hopes of pursuing a PhD in Sociology.

 

Veronica De Santos Quezada

Veronica De Santos Quezada is a current undergraduate student of Sociology with a Spanish minor at the University of California Los Angeles. Her research interests rest under the lens of Critical Race Theory with a focus on gender rights.

Twitter: @dsantosveronica

 

 

Julaina Juarez

Julaina Juarez is a San Bernardino native, finishing her fourth year at UCLA with a major in Sociology and a double minor in Chicanx and Central American Studies and Education. She plans to become a high school counselor, supporting communities of color through a social justice and abolitionist centered approach, and hopes to one day pursue her doctoral degree.

Katelyn King

My major is Pre-International Development, and I am a third-year junior student at UCLA. I am fascinated by the global world, economy, and politics. So, I am excited to see where that will take me in the future.

Camille Lent

My name is Camille Lent, and I am a second-year Sociology major studying at the University of California, Los Angeles. After graduation, I plan on continuing my education by applying to law school, with an emphasis in social justice law and human rights.

 

 

 

Tiffany Nguyen

Tiffany Nguyen is a third-year transfer student at UCLA studying Sociology and Public Affairs. As a student in a family of refugees, she hopes to pursue a career in immigration research.

 

 

Stephanie Pitassi

As a fourth-year Global Studies student, I’m about to graduate in the next two months! I plan to take a year off and do some volunteer work, hopefully internationally, and spend some time doing things I love that I haven’t been able to do much of the past 4 years. After my gap year, I plan to go to law school or pursue a masters degree abroad in international relations. I have a year to decide, and to let the pandemic quiet down, and I’m eager to see what the future holds.

 

 

Andres Torres

My name is Andres Torres, and I am a 3rd-year Sociology major on a pre-med track. I hope to serve in an underserved community like my own in the future.

 

 

Federico Trudu

My name is Federico Trudu. I am a fourth year international student from Italy. I am majoring in Political Science with a minor in International Migration Studies. I seek to continue my studies on migration in graduate school.

 

 

 

 

Elena Usui

Elena Usui is a graduating fourth-year student at UCLA, studying Global Studies and Gender Studies. She hopes to work in international human rights law or policy in order to expand sex education and resource accessibility to BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities.

 

 

 

 

Vanessa Valdez Cruz

Vanessa Valdez Cruz is a second-year transfer student from East Los Angeles College. She will be graduating from UCLA in summer 2021 with a major in sociology and double minor in Chicana/o  and Central American Studies and Education Studies. Vanessa is currently conducting research that critiques and analyzes education policy and social factors that shape the experiences of students of color. She will be applying to graduate school to become a policy maker and continue advocating for and centering communities of color.

Twitter: @__vannne

Swan Ye Htut

My name is Swan Ye Htut, and I am a 4th-year Global Studies and Sociology double-major. Currently, I am working on a Global Studies senior thesis on how the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests affected the local, national, and global identities of youth. I hope to pursue a PhD in Sociology and become a university professor.

 

 

 

As Summer 2021 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA Summer Courses are open to BOTH UCLA Students and NON-UCLA Students. All Summer 2021 courses will be offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer and you do NOT have to be enrolled in an academic institution in order to participate in UCLA Summer Sessions. For more information, click HERE.

The UCLA Communication Department is offering “Integrated Marketing Communications” (Comm 148) course with Professor Celia Feramisco. The course will be offered during Summer Session C on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 3:15pm to 5:20pm. Register HERE or enroll HERE today!

The course will examine key concepts and methods in marketing communications in both traditional and digital media. Development and execution of communications strategies, with primary emphasis on consumer insight, branding, market segmentation and positioning, message strategy, promotion, and execution of marketing communications through appropriate media technologies.

As Summer 2021 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA Summer Courses are open to BOTH UCLA Students and NON-UCLA Students. All Summer 2021 courses will be offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer and you do NOT have to be enrolled in an academic institution in order to participate in UCLA Summer Sessions. For more information, click HERE.

The UCLA Communication Department is offering “Inside Hollywood” (Comm 166) course with Professor Steven Peterson. The course will be offered during Summer Session A on Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:45am to 12:50pm. Register HERE or enroll HERE today!

Inside Hollywood is for those interested in learning about or pursuing a career in the Entertainment Industry in Los Angeles. Through both practical and academic readings, lectures, as well as visiting guests, students will investigate the past, present, and future of screen entertainment and the social psychological foundations of successful storytelling. Weekly visiting lectures from industry professionals provide compelling insights and first hand advice about creativity, business, and the rapidly changing industry.

Assignments involve a short literature review exercise and the careful analysis of motivations behind production using specific film, TV, and streaming examples. For the final project, students assume the role of production executives for their own creative visions by leveraging their new understanding of the industry to develop marketable film, TV, and streaming ideas for today’s entertainment landscape, and pitch their ideas to the class.

As summer 2021 approaches, LA Social Science will be highlighting some of the summer courses being offered within the Division of Social Sciences at UCLA.

UCLA Summer Courses are open to BOTH UCLA Students and NON-UCLA Students. All Summer 2021 courses will be offered online due to the COVID-19 pandemic. You can enroll as long as you are 15 years of age or older by the first day of summer and you do NOT have to be enrolled in an academic institution in order to participate in UCLA Summer Sessions. For more information, click HERE.

The Department of Geography has amazing courses this summer. Check out the courses listed below. For more information, please email Jenée Misraje (SAO) at jenee@geog.ucla.edu. Register/enroll HERE Today!

UCLA History faculty have been doing amazing work. The following are some recent honors they have received.

Professor Brenda Stevenson has been appointed the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women’s History at St John’s College, Oxford University. Dr. Stevenson’s work explores the intersections of gender, race and politics, putting women – and particularly women of color – at the center of accounts of political and social developments. She will serve from November 2021 to June 2023.

When asked about this appointment, Dr. Maggie Snowling, President of St. John’s College, said,

I am delighted to welcome Brenda Stevenson to St. John’s as the inaugural Hillary Rodham Clinton Chair in Women’s History. This appointment is a wonderful culmination to our year-long celebration of ’40 Years of Women’, which has marked the 40th year since the first admission of female students in 1979. Marking the contribution of women to the life of the College, past and present, is key to the understanding of our own history and ethos, and is integral to our continued commitment to broadening equality, diversity and inclusivity. Professor Stevenson will be joining an intellectually stimulating and egalitarian community, with a very strong tradition in history and a powerful commitment to its future.

To learn more about this inaugural appointment and about Dr. Stevenson, click HERE.

Professor Stephen Aron will become President and CEO of the Autry Museum of the American West on July 1, 2021, upon his retirement from UCLA. Dr. Aron has been a member of the history department faculty since 1996, and for many of those years served concurrently as Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of the American West and then Chair of Western History at the Autry Museum. Dr. Aron said: “I’ve spent more than three decades researching and writing about the confluences and confrontations of peoples and cultures that shaped the history of North American frontiers and borderlands, but it was my time at the Autry that truly transformed how I think and teach about the American West. At the Autry, I learned the power of arts and objects, the joy of collaborations, and the imperative of public history. I’m so honored now to rejoin the Autry family, and I’m excited to embrace the challenge of making our museum matter more to more people.”

 

Professor Kelly Lytle Hernandez was named to the Pulitzer Prize Board. She is also one of eight UCLA faculty recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies. Dr. Lytle Hernandez was awarded a 2020 MacArthur Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which said her research on “the intersecting histories of race, mass incarceration, immigration, and cross-border politics is deepening our understanding of how imprisonment has been used as a mechanism for social control in the United States.”

 

 

 

Professor Muriel McClendon won the Distinguished Teaching Award for Senate Faculty and received the added honor of the “Eby Award for the Art of Teaching,” in light of her contribution to learning at UCLA and in a number of domains.

 

 

 

Assistant Professor Hollian Wint was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) faculty fellowship, to further her work on Mobile Households: The Intimate Economies of Obligation Across the Indian Ocean, c. 1860-1960. ACLS invites research proposals from scholars in all disciplines of the humanities and related social sciences. The fellowship helps academics devote their full time to their major piece of scholarly work, which can take the form of a monograph, articles, digital publication(s), critical edition, or other scholarly resources. To learn more about this fellowship, click HERE.

 

Associate Professor Katherine Marino has been awarded a Mellon Foundation New Directions Fellowship. This major fellowship, bestowed by the Trustees of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is described as follows: “Serious interdisciplinary research often requires established scholar-teachers to pursue formal substantive and methodological training in addition to the PhD. New Directions Fellowships assist faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences who seek to acquire systematic training outside their own areas of special interest. The program is intended to enable scholars in the humanities to work on problems that interest them most, at an appropriately advanced level of sophistication. In addition to facilitating the work of individual faculty members, these awards should benefit scholarship in the humanities more generally by encouraging the highest standards in cross-disciplinary research.” Dr. Marino will take the fellowship in 2022-23 and will pursue advanced training through UCLA law school toward her new project.