Student Profiles

John is a junior-transfer in the philosophy department at UCLA. He is interested in moral and political philosophy, Kant, and feminist philosophy. His current research project aims to incorporate stateless persons into the prevailing theories of global justice. John hopes to use his philosophy to further the goals of human liberation and solidarity.

Alonzo Ackerman’s research project looks at the changes in government discourse towards normalistas, low-income teachers college students from rural Mexico. In more broader terms, his academic interests are social movements and Latin America. Alonzo is a third-year Sociology major at the University of California Los Angeles and transferred from Southwestern College (Chula Vista, CA) in 2016. In the last three years Alonzo has volunteered at shelters for migrants and collaborated with non-profit organizations related to migrants’ rights in the US and Mexico. His interest in this kind of work stems from his own experiences growing up in the Tijuana-San Diego border region.

Alejandro is an immigrant, transfer and first-generation student majoring in Comparative Literature and planning to pursue a PhD in the same academic field. He is researching the immigrant identity and immigrant experience through a literary perspective that focuses on literature from the 20th century to the present. Among the authors he will study are contemporary Mexican writer Yuri Herrera, the American writer Upton Sinclair, and the Pakistani author Mohsin Hamid, as well as theory from Hannah Arendt and Edward Said. The intent of his research is to add a literary perspective that expands the immigrant discussion.

Austin Alvarez is a History major at UCLA and his research project is titled “Saint or Sinner: Religious Evaluations of Pancho Villa”. He is researching what the diverse demographics of Northern Mexico said about Villa in their religious rhetoric. Was Villa perceived as a heretic or savior?

Lilly is a junior transferring from Santa Ana College studying American Literature & Culture. Her work focuses on the effect incarceration places on relationships. She will be looking at literature including both fictional novels and memoirs while incorporating theoretical frameworks such as reparative reading and affective connection. In addition to this, Lilly will be creating an archive of letters from the formerly incarcerated and their loved ones. Under the Mellon Mays Research Fellowship, she seeks to further understand the vicarious imprisonment within these relationships and contribute to removal of courtesy stigma often associated with families of incarcerated folk. Lilly hopes to expand her work within this area and pursue a PhD in Literature upon graduation from UCLA.

Autumn Armstrong is a third-year transfer at UCLA majoring in Anthropology with a special interest in Sociocultural Anthropology. She plans to attend graduate and post-graduate school to obtain a Ph.D. in Anthropology and become a professor of Anthropology. In the past few years, Autumn has given various talks at UC Riverside and UC Merced on the topic of colorism in Black and Latinx communities. The research project she is working on seeks to understand the negative effect and impact imperialist Western tourism has on Indigenous Hawaiian heritage and culture and their respective heritage sites. Additionally, it explores a hypothesis she created in her second year of college, where Westerners seek out the sacred rituals of an oppressed group and begin to cheapen, exploit, and tour that ritual with the intent to commodify and appropriate it for themselves. Autumn hopes her research can be a step toward helping Indigenous Hawaiians regain control over their islands and heritage sites.

Christine Beck transferred to UCLA as a junior from MiraCosta College in San Diego, CA with a major in Art History. She was born and raised in San Diego and has long had an interest in both art and architecture. One of Christine’s favorite books as a child was book cataloging Vincent Van Gogh’s work. Van Gogh remains one of Christine’s favorite artists, though her research focuses on something quite different. Christine’s research analyzes the Mudéjar motif as it traveled from Islamic Iberia to Colonial Lima; she has interests in the possible implications of this inter-societal transference, as well as interests in how the global exchange of the Mudéjar motif alters out perceptions of colonialism. She is currently working with Professor Charlene Villaseñor-Black on creating a historiographic review of the motif and initiating commentary on what this means for Art History.

Alexis Canelo is a transfer student from Los Angeles Pierce College majoring in History at UCLA. She was born and raised in the San Fernando Valley. She is interested in how California’s often unacknowledged past continues to influence its present politics and culture. At the forefront of her research is the 1892 lynching of Francisco Torres in Santa Ana, California. She is expanding on the scholarship of Southern California, Latinx identity, labor, class, and racial violence through analyzing archived newspaper articles surrounding the Torres case.

Amalia Castañeda is a senior Political Science (Concentration: Theory) and Women’s Studies (Concentration: Politics, Race and Gender) double major, graduating cum laude Spring 2011 with College Honors and Departmental Honors in Women’s Studies. She owes much of her undergraduate success to the AAP Research Rookies program and to the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship. Her Mellon and Women’s Studies Honors Thesis focuses on the identity formation of Latina youth in south Los Angeles, critically assessing the concepts of citizenship and civic identity. In an opportunity to further expand her thesis research, along with 14 other undergrads, she was granted the opportunity to facilitate/teach a course she initiated and developed titled “Rethinking Citizenship: Immigrant Youth, Gender and Civic Identity.” Spring 2011 she facilitated her course with the support of her advisor Dr. Sharon Bays. Inspiration for her Thesis and her USIE course came from the C.A.M.B.I.O. program; C.A.M.B.I.O. is a grassroots, mentoring program developed in 2008 by two of her UCLA peers Nicole Lozano and Julie Alarcon. She is currently part of the C.A.M.B.I.O. mentoring staff, run by the chapter of Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority, an academic sorority for which she was a founding member and President in the 2009-2010 year. Aside from her work with Lambda Theta Alpha, C.A.M.B.I.O., undergraduate research and Facilitating/Tutoring UCLA Political Science courses, she was also actively involved with “Grupo Folklorico de UCLA,” a Mexican Folklore cultural dance group. Outside UCLA, she supported several community projects, including an internship with M.A.L.D.E.F. and volunteer work conducting workshops at the Lynwood High School Alumni College Conference (her alma mater). Overall her research experience and community outreach molded her graduate school goals. She hopes to pursue a PhD in Education with a concentration in Political Science and/or Women’s Studies, wherein she hopes to continue focusing her research on issues related to Latina/o immigrant communities.

Herman Luis Chavez (he/him/his) is double majoring in Ethnomusicology and Comparative Literature. His research considers the use of music as a tool for constructing ideology, focusing especially on race, ethnicity, and power in Latin America and the United States. His current thesis project looks at echoes of colonialism in the musical ideologies and institutions of late 20th century Bolivia. He looks at composer and musicologist Atiliano Auza León, understanding his works through postcolonial theory and placing them in the sociopolitical context of Bolivian arts at the time. More broadly, his research interests include popular music, critical race studies, folkloric and Indigenous music, diaspora and migration, poetics and queerness, decolonial and postcolonial theory, queer of color critique, U.S. Latinx studies, and Latin American, Bolivian, and Andean cultural studies.

Jessikah Diaz was born and raised in Santa Paula, California. She joins the 10th cohort as a 3rd-year transfer student and plans to pursue a PhD in English. Jessikah is an English major interested in studying 18th and 19th century British literature. More specifically, she is interested in the relationship between authorship identity and recurring gender representations, and is currently studying the relationship between British author William Blake and his representation of female sexuality. Going forward, she would like to study other authors, like Blake, who have used literature to politicize topics and resist convention. However, her work is not concerned with these authors because they were radicals, rather it uses historical and biographical criticism to view the identity behind the radical. Her results will consider how certain freedoms are represented, who represents them, and for what purpose.

Kayne is a second year transfer from Hartnell College in Salinas, CA. He is currently pursuing a major in History and a minor in Asian American Studies at UCLA. His research interests center around the histories of Asian American social movements, Asian American intellectuals, the Asian American Diaspora, and Marxism among other things. He has had work published in Quaestio, the UCLA Undergraduate History Journal. As a Mellon Mays undergraduate fellow, Kayne’s current research focuses on the radical tradition of Asian American activism, using the case study of the emergence of Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV) in the wake of the murder of Vincent Chin. Additionally, he is working on a project with the Asian Pacific Coalition (APC), a student organization here at UCLA that works on issues related to the Asian American Pacific Islander community and seeks to dismantle systems of oppression in society. Outside of his studies, Kayne serves as the Historic Preservation Coordinator for Asian Pacific Coalition (APC). He also enjoys playing jazz fusion and classic R&B on the guitar, and swimming. He is also a huge Motown fan.

Olivia is a junior-transfer from Fullerton College majoring in American Literature and Cultures at UCLA. She is interested in diaspora studies and theory, postcolonial literature, critical race studies, and studies in the novel. As a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Research Fellow, Olivia is focused on examining transgenerational trauma in novels wrestling with diaspora and how folklore and landscapes of the motherland act as transmitters of trauma in these communities.  Through a departure from traditional Anglocentric trauma theory, Olivia seeks to understand how culturally specific experiences of trauma cross borders of both space and time. She hopes her research will increase awareness of the cultural roles and legacies of trauma being experienced by diasporic peoples and those affected by forced migration in the modern day.

Kierra is a junior-transfer majoring in English from Los Angeles Mission College planning to pursue a Ph.D. in English. She is passionate about African American literature, African diaspora studies, postcolonial literature and theory, and the novel genre. As a Mellon Mays Fellow, she is examining the historical treatment of black women’s reproduction through contemporary Black American fiction. Her work is centered on the evolution of the biopolitics of slavery through forced sterilization, welfare reforms, and surrogacy, asking how authors like Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, and Colson Whitehead have responded to these injustices through the careful melding of the neo-slave narrative and speculative fiction. Kierra hopes this research will contribute to the expansion of rigid notions of reproductive liberty in the contemporary moment by placing the distinct experiences of black women in the forefront.