Dominic Thomas, UCLA’s Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies | UCLA
Jonathan Riggs | January 23, 2023
Last November, Dominic Thomas, Madeleine L. Letessier Professor of French and Francophone Studies in the UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, won the Gutenberg Research Chair. As part of his prize, he will serve as lead investigator on a project, “Ecology and Propaganda.”
“This honor is a testament to the remarkable timeliness, power and scope of Dominic Thomas’ work,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, dean of the UCLA Division of Humanities. “We are proud to have him representing our division, university and field on a global scale as he innovates new approaches to critically studying pressing environmental and ecological questions.”
Awarded to exceptional internationally renowned researchers, Gutenberg Chairs serve to spark scientific studies in the Alsace region of France. They are funded by the Greater East Region of France and Eurometropolis of Strasbourg at the recommendation of the Gutenberg Circle, which includes all of the Circle’s active members: the Institut de France, Collège de France, Institut Universitaire de France and an international, multidisciplinary jury of researchers.
“The Chairs were inaugurated in 2007 and have been awarded primarily to scientists, including some 28 Nobel laureates,” said Thomas. “It is an honor to have been selected, but the fact that the selection committee has chosen to support a humanities project is therefore especially satisfying and, I believe, also indicative of the visionary qualities of the selection committee.”
With his interest in propaganda dating back to graduate school — not to mention it being the subject of both his first as well as his most recent books — Thomas will explore the paradox of how new technologies have simultaneously enhanced and undermined democratization. A transdisciplinary research project that investigates the legacies of colonialism on the environment, “Ecology and Propaganda” will be organized around five pillars (historical, intercultural, ethical, aesthetic and media/linguistic perspectives) and will correspond directly to priorities outlined by Sylvie Retailleau, the French minister for higher education.
“The transdisciplinary, transcultural scope of the project is indicative of a paradigm shift happening in the humanities,” said Todd Presner, chair of the department of European languages and transcultural studies. “UCLA is an engine of innovation for new, experimental humanities fields such as the environmental humanities.”
On the UCLA faculty since 2000, Thomas also created the UCLA Summer Paris Global Studies program, which he directed for 11 years, and will draw inspiration for his project from across UCLA’s global research leadership on ecology and the environment — and from an unwavering commitment to his field.
“The humanities have, arguably, perhaps never been so crucially important; they are relevant to all contemporary cultural, economic, political and social debates. In the face of assaults on democratic principles, the humanities help us improve intercultural understanding and encourage inclusivity,” said Thomas. “Ultimately, humanities provide the space in which to study the past, but also to delineate the contours of the future.”
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Dominic-Thomas-15r-363.jpg237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2023-02-03 15:27:172023-02-03 15:29:42Dominic Thomas wins international Gutenberg Research Chair honor
UCLA undergraduate student Arushi Avachat on writing and publishing her first novel
Arushi Avachat, a third-year English and political science student at UCLA, will see her debut novel hit bookstore shelves in fall 2023. | Photo by Haven Hunt
Lucy Berbeo | December 16, 2022
Now in her third year as an English and political science student at UCLA, Arushi Avachat is celebrating an extraordinary milestone: the forthcoming publication of her debut novel, which is set for release in fall 2023. “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” a work of young adult fiction inspired by Bollywood dramas from decades past, was picked up by Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Publishing Group at Macmillan.
Avachat, a Bay Area native who finished drafting the novel during her first year at UCLA, also works in political communications and as an organizer for progressive social causes. She spoke with the UCLA College about writing through the pandemic, navigating the publishing world — and why storytelling is a powerful means to create social change.
What was it like writing a novel while navigating life as an undergraduate student?
I finished the first draft of “Arya” during the winter quarter of my first year at UCLA. As a COVID freshman, writing my novel was often a meaningful escape from the stress and uncertainties of that time. Virtual school also meant I had a lot more time to devote to writing. I was able to write for several hours each day in addition to coursework, which would definitely not be possible anymore!
What does it mean to you to see your first book slated for publication? What were some of your inspirations and challenges on this journey?
It feels so exciting and still so unbelievable! I have wanted this for as long as I can remember. The biggest challenge for me was definitely finishing my first draft. I have been a writer for most of my life, and from middle school onward, I was never not working on a novel-in-progress — “in progress” being the operative phrase, as I inevitably abandoned each manuscript in pursuit of a new, shinier idea. It was one of my proudest moments to finally complete my novel. I found a lot of inspiration from prominent South Asian writers such as Sanjena Sathian, Roshani Chokshi and Sabaa Tahir, whose careers I deeply admire and who were all so generous with advice during my publishing journey.
How has your experience at UCLA influenced your journey as a writer?
My time at UCLA has completely reinforced my desire to pursue a career as a writer. I am a third-year English student, and I am hoping to concentrate in creative writing. The fiction workshops I’ve taken so far have been really rewarding — it’s so exciting to belong to a community of writers, and I’ve loved learning from professors who have built long-lasting careers for themselves as authors. Workshop has also forced me to write much more than I typically do. By nature, I am a very slow writer, and having to produce a new short story every week (while challenging!) has helped me get into the habit of writing daily — and being comfortable with bad first drafts.
What inspired “Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment,” and what do you hope readers will take away from your novel?
When I was fourteen, I wrote a short story about two sisters and their mother that I was very attached to. I felt like I had a lot more to say about those characters, and slowly, a novel idea started to emerge. I had the thought that I wanted this book to read like my favorite Bollywood dramas from the ‘90s and 2000s, and the wedding backdrop and cinematic structure evolved from there. My protagonist Arya’s older sister is home for the first time in three years to plan her wedding, and shaadi season is filled with family conflict, gossipy aunties and a rivals-to-lovers romance in the school setting.
Sisterhood is at the heart of this novel. While drafting, I spent a lot of time thinking about the moment when an elder sibling leaves home, and the younger sibling becomes a de facto only child. There can be a lot of resentment and messy feelings attached to this shift, especially if one’s home life is far from perfect. I wanted to explore this dynamic deeply. I also just had a lot of fun drafting this dramatic, hopeful, joyful book. I hope “Arya” will bring readers the same comfort that writing it brought me.
“In addition to creative writing, I have also worked extensively in political communications. Both fields have helped me realize how storytelling works to generate empathy, shape public opinion, and help people feel seen. I hope to contribute to this cause through my novels, which will always center the voices of Indian women, who remain largely underrepresented in literature.”
You’ve said that you see storytelling as an important means to achieve social change. Can you share more about this?
In addition to creative writing, I have also worked extensively in political communications. Both fields have helped me realize how storytelling works to generate empathy, shape public opinion, and help people feel seen. I hope to contribute to this cause through my novels, which will always center the voices of Indian women, who remain largely underrepresented in literature.
I was eighteen the first time I read a YA novel by an Indian author (“When Dimple Met Rishi” by Sandhya Menon), and I still remember the wonder and excitement I felt reading a story about a girl that looked like me. During my childhood, the books I had access to were overwhelmingly white, as was the publishing industry at large. Only recently has that begun to shift, and the young adult category in particular has led the charge in creating space for diverse stories.
I feel really proud to belong to that change. It’s so important for young people specifically to see themselves positively represented in media and to know they deserve to have their voices centered, not relegated to the sidelines as has historically been the case. I have much respect and admiration for the South Asian authors who came before me and made my career a possibility, and I’m hopeful that the book industry will continue to grow truly representative of its readers in the years to come.
What advice would you give to other young writers navigating the publishing world?
Really internalize the message that your publishing goals are a matter of when, not if. In an industry where nothing is guaranteed but rejection, and lots of it, it’s so important to have a strong sense of self-confidence in your work. I received over 40 nos from agents before receiving my first offer of representation. It was easy to get anxious during this time, but I kept reminding myself that I would always be a writer, and if not this book, then the next, or the next, would get me published. Having this mentality helped take some of the stress away from the process and kept my love for writing untainted by insecurity.
What’s next on your horizon?
It’s surreal to remember that this is just the beginning of my career — in so many ways, publishing “Arya” feels like a culmination of something; this is the end goal I have worked toward for so long. But I have so many more books left in me, and I feel so exhilarated by the variety of projects I have planned for the future. After “Arya,” I have a second young adult contemporary novel slated to release with Wednesday Books. Beyond that, I have ideas for a YA high fantasy, a YA historical fiction, an adult rom-com, and a middle grade contemporary. At some point in my life, I would love to write a murder mystery, too.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Arushi-Avachat-2-363.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-12-16 08:08:402023-01-17 12:23:50Making a difference through the power of storytelling
Lamia Balafrej, an associate professor in the UCLA Department of Art History, has been selected as a Getty Research Institute scholar for the 2022-23 cycle. Balafrej, who specializes in arts of the Islamic world, will be conducting research on this year’s themes — Art and Migration, and the Levant and the Classical World.
Annually since 1985, the Getty Scholars Program at the Villa has selected cultural figures, researchers and artists to pursue an area of their own research that falls under the theme selected for that year. The scholars work in residence at the Getty Villa and have access to collections.
Balafrej’s research focuses on topics ranging from medieval studies and the history of global slavery to historical intersections of labor and technology. Her work has been supported by institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of New York and the Smithsonian Institute.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Lamia_Balafrej-363.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-11-01 14:16:092023-01-07 15:35:31Lamia Balafrej named Getty Research Institute scholar
UCLA researchers create video playlist for YouTube Kids’ anti-bullying programming
Ivan Samkov/Pexels
Holly Ober | September 29, 2022
Key takeaways: • UCLA researchers created a video playlist that aims to get kids to spread kindness. • The videos are based on Bedari Kindness Institute research that shows kindness is contagious.
Some UCLA researchers think a simple, two-word message can help kids knock bullying off its feet: Be kind. The Center for Scholars & Storytellers, the Bedari Kindness Institute and the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television are partnering with YouTube Kids on a series of videos that promote kind, caring behavior in everyday situations. The series is part of YouTube Kids anti-bullying programming scheduled for October, which is National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month.
“We think kindness is the best antidote to bullying, and we believe that kindness is contagious,” said Daniel Fessler, director of the Bedari Kindness Institute and associate professor of anthropology. “The collection, which is hosted by actress Tabitha Brown, is anchored by two short animated films showing people doing good things, such as helping a stranger. These are followed by selfie videos from kids who describe witnessing someone engaging in an act of kindness, or acting kindly themselves. We hope to motivate viewers to also behave kindly.”
The videos are based on Bedari Kindness Institute research that shows people often feel motivated to help others after watching a video of someone else behaving altruistically. The uplifting feeling people experience when witnessing the morally praiseworthy actions of others, which scientists call “elevation,” is known to increase an inclination toward performing positive actions. The researchers have shown in experiments that elevation can be reliably induced through exposure to prosocial behaviors.
The collection takes a different tack than many other campaigns promoting kindness, which typically prescribe behaviors thought to promote kindness.
“Many efforts to promote kindness tell kids they should be nice, or remind them how bad it feels when someone does something unkind, but we’re skeptical those efforts have an immediate impact on behavior,” Fessler said. “In my lab, we’ve worked on contagious kindness and have found that when adults witness someone engaging in prosocial behavior, many of them are inspired to be prosocial themselves. We think this applies to children, too.”
The Center for Scholars & Storytellers
The videos follow up on a 2020 collaboration between the Center for Scholars & Storytellers and YouTube Kids, in collaboration with the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, Allies for Every Child and the Pritzker Center for Strengthening Families, that curated a playlist of selfie videos from former foster youth talking about their various identities. That playlist currently has around 40 million views.
Psychologist Yalda Uhls, who founded and directs the Center for Scholars & Storytellers, led the previous effort and identified the opportunity for another collaboration.
“When YouTube told us that in October they usually program content around bullying for younger children, we knew the Bedari Kindness Institute would be the perfect partner to create the messaging for this project,” said Uhls, who is an assistant adjunct professor of psychology.
Screenwriter and director George Huang, a professor of film, theater and television, helped produce the videos.
“Professor Fessler and the Bedari Kindness Institute’s work is phenomenal, and it’s a privilege to be creating content with the Center for Scholars and Storytellers that shares their work with a young audience,” Huang said. “With the help of Stacey Freeman and psychology doctoral student Ellyn Pueschel, we’ve created a playlist that will inspire, entertain and spread the word about kindness.”
In one of the animated shorts, strangers who are the recipients of kind acts “pay it forward” to other strangers. In the other animated short, an altruistic individual is eventually rewarded with kindness by two children who watched as she selflessly helped others.
Giving parents the tools
To accompany the videos, Stacey Freeman, executive director of the Bedari Kindness Institute, is developing a parent resource guide. She also recruited kids ages 6-12 to create selfie-style videos as a relatable way for kids to see other kids talking about the importance of kindness. Both the parent resource guide and the selfie videos help to amplify the kindness messages in the playlist while also helping parents guide their children toward kindness in their everyday interactions.
“At the Bedari Kindness Institute, we’re a scholarly organization that seeks to translate research and knowledge into real world applications,” Freeman said. “So we were excited when Yalda approached us with this opportunity because we think that research on kindness can inform the use of video content to help kids become a positive force in the world.”
Fessler and Uhls said the playlist is intended to be a safe place to which parents can direct their kids and watch with them. Parents will also have access to a resource guide to help them guide their children toward kindness in everyday interactions with others.
“The content will be inspiring and uplifting so parents don’t have to worry what kids are consuming,” Uhls said. “We’re trying to be a positive force.”
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Womanandboyonfloorwithlaptop-363.jpg237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-09-30 14:45:352023-01-07 15:37:34Kindness is contagious and these videos can help kids catch the altruism bug
Less than 5% want to see aspirational content in TV or movies
Teens’ preferences for what they’d like to see in TV shows and movies have changed.
Holly Ober | September 20, 2022
Key takeaways: • Changing aspirations. Few Gen Zers want to watch shows about glamorized lifestyles. • Real-world issues matter. Teens prefer content that deals with family dynamics or social justice. • Positive storytelling, please. They want to see more hopeful, uplifting stories about people.
Not that long ago, teens binged on aspirational content, where the kinds of lives portrayed in “Gossip Girl” were what they wanted on their screens. But according to a recent study conducted by UCLA’s Center for Scholars and Storytellers, teens today resoundingly reject those kinds of stories. Only 4.4% in a survey of 662 diverse teens said they wanted to see this kind of content, which the researchers labeled “aspirational.” Generation Z, born from about 1997 to 2012, wants to watch content that grapples with real-world issues (21%), such as family dynamics or social justice. When asked to cast their own characters, a majority of teens lean toward wanting a black male hero (23.6%) and a white male villain (34.9%). But they also want fun, escapist content (37.8%), and one of the most popular topics they would like to see is hopeful, uplifting stories.
“Hollywood has built its young adult content on the belief that teens want to see glamorous lifestyles and rich and famous characters, but our research suggests the opposite is true,” said psychologist Yalda Uhls, director of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers. “The majority of respondents in our study feel isolated and upset when media lack accurate identity representations. This is an important change that Hollywood needs to take note of.”
“American adolescents value media that reflects what they know about the real world, even while they prefer to see people that are different from themselves,” Yalda said. “Teens want their media to show a world characterized by genuine diversity and heartwarming experiences.”
What kinds of storylines does Gen Z want?
Hopeful, uplifting stories about people beating the odds and stories about people with lives unlike their own topped the list of topics they’d like to see portrayed in the TV shows and movies they watch, according to the study.
Other findings include:
• Friends and social groups, superheroes and parents all made the top five topic list.
• Mental health continues to register for teens, ranking No. 4 on the list. For LGBTQIA+ teens, this was one of the top two preferred topics.
• Both older and younger teens want to see more stories about family life, including relationships with parents.
• Partying and/or drugs and drinking came in second to last.
• Content about climate change came in last.
The study concludes that teens want to see authentic, inclusive and positive storytelling, and emphasizes a need for the entertainment industry to shift away from aspirational content that does not prioritize diversity. Teens’ rejection of traditionally aspirational content that valorizes higher social status and material gains may also signal a substantial shift in contemporary teens’ evolving definition of success that is different from previous generations. It also suggests that hopeful messaging could be used to engage teens with various subjects in the future, such as climate change.
“While we do not know why teens rejected climate change storylines, we believe that the portrayal of this issue is often negative and may feel overwhelming,” said Stephanie Rivas-Lara, research coordinator at the Center for Scholars and Storytellers.
The survey also asked respondents which media space does the best job at making them feel “seen.” Perhaps not surprisingly, the majority (55%) said social media was the space where they felt most authentic, with TikTok being the most popular social media platform.
“These findings raise the question about what factors from social media have successfully catered to teens’ need for authenticity, and how the definition of authenticity for social media versus TV shows and movies may have changed over time,” Rivas-Lara said.
The teens came from different social backgrounds and reflected a diverse mix of ethnicities, genders and sexualities. Respondents were almost evenly split between male and female, and about 6% identified as a different or no gender. Gender identity made a significant difference in who was cast as the hero with 83% of male teens choosing a male and 50% of female teens choosing a female. Teens who identified as white males were the only demographic to choose to cast white males as the hero.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/pexels-photo-9807588-363.jpeg237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-09-28 15:51:512023-01-07 15:37:38UCLA survey finds most teens reject glamorized lifestyles in entertainment media
UCLA professor Susan Perry and her team of researchers reveal their findings on capuchin monkeys and social integration
A female white-faced capuchin inserts a finger into another female’s mouth, one of several socially learned rituals. | Courtesy of Susan Perry
Elizabeth Kivowitz |
Key takeaways: • Strength of female-female relationships. Female capuchin monkeys who are better integrated into social networks with other adult females tend to survive longer. • Social interactions are helpful. These include giving and receiving grooming, foraging nearby and helping each other in conflicts by fighting or making aggressive sounds and facial expressions. • Monkeys test their friendships. Researchers observed capuchins engaging in interactions that involve risky or uncomfortable elements — such as poking a finger into a friend’s eye socket — to test the quality of their friendships.
Female white-faced capuchin monkeys living in the tropical dry forests of northwestern Costa Rica may have figured out the secret to a longer life — having fellow females as friends.
“As humans, we assume there is some benefit to social interactions, but it is really hard to measure the success of our behavioral strategies,” said UCLA anthropology professor and field primatologist Susan Perry. “Why do we invest so much in our relationships with others? Does it lead to a longer lifespan? Does it lead to more reproductive success? It requires a colossal effort to measure this in humans and other animals.”
Perry would know. Since 1990, she has been directing Lomas Barbudal Capuchin Monkey Project in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, where her team of researchers document the daily life of hundreds of large-brained monkeys. While chimpanzees and orangutans are more closely related to humans, the white-faced capuchin monkey has highly sophisticated social structures that influence behavior and are passed to others.
Throughout the year, Perry’s team of graduate students, postdoctoral students, international volunteers and local researchers, trek into the forest for 13-hour days of observation to try to draw conclusions that may help us understand our own relationships, culture and other behaviors.
Female-female relationships matter
The latest findings, published recently in Behavioral Ecology, honed in on the relationship between female capuchins’ social integration and survival. The authors tracked the female monkeys’ interactions with other females, males and companions of any sex and age, based on 18 years of data. Lead author Kotrina Kajokaite earned her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate at UCLA while working with the monkey project data under Perry’s supervision.
Their key finding — adult female capuchins who are better integrated into social networks with other adult females survive longer.
Interactions counted in the study included giving and receiving grooming, foraging nearby, and taking part in coalitionary conflicts — intervening to help one another in conflicts by fighting, chasing, or making aggressive sounds and facial expressions.
There was no evidence that heterosexual relationships provided any survival-related benefits to females, at least regarding the types of behaviors measured in this study. But this doesn’t rule out the possibility that some adult females might benefit from social interactions with one or a few male partners who co-reside with them for long periods of time.
While there is also some evidence that females who were more socially integrated into their overall group survived longer, the overwhelming conclusion from the research is that female-female relationships had the greatest impact on survival.
Testing friendship through rituals
In a different study published in a special journal of the Royal Society, Perry’s team observed white-faced capuchin monkeys engaging in socially learned human-like rituals. Among the interactions: inserting a finger into the mouth, eye, nostril or ear of a social partner; prying open each other’s mouths or hand to conduct a detailed inspection of its contents; passing an object back and forth from mouth to mouth in a gentle tug-o-war; and clasping each other’s hands.
Other rituals observed included cupping the hand over some part of the partner’s face, sucking on an appendage belonging to the partner and using the partner’s back or belly as a drum to create loud, rhythmic noises. Some of these rituals went on for up to 30 minutes, even though some include uncomfortable elements that might be expected to annoy a partner.
How do these behaviors function in the lives of these animals and what — if anything — can they tell us about the evolution of ritual behaviors in humans?
The rituals are used to test the quality of friendships and alliances and are particularly prevalent in pairs of monkeys uncertain of the current status of their relationship, Perry said. They’re most often performed by pairs that rarely interact; the rituals are also most often used by monkeys with a history of primarily friendly interactions.
Although the capuchin rituals have nearly all the elements present in anthropologists’ and psychologists’ definitions of rituals, they differ from humans in that they are not performed simultaneously by all members of a group. Perry said the psychology behind the nonhuman primates’ bond-testing may have been an evolutionary precursor to the more group-oriented form of humans’ ritual practices.
Alexandra Minna Stern, currently the associate dean for the humanities at the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, will be the new dean of humanities at the UCLA College. Her appointment is effective Nov. 1.
Stern is the Carroll Smith-Rosenberg Collegiate Professor of American Culture at Michigan, where she also holds appointments in history, women’s and gender studies, and obstetrics and gynecology. Her research has focused on modern and contemporary histories of science, medicine and society in the U.S. and Latin America, and, most recently, on the cultures and ideologies of the far right and white nationalism.
She is the founder and co-director of the Sterilization and Social Justice Lab, an interdisciplinary research team that explores the history of eugenic sterilization in the U.S.
Stern has two prior connections to the University of California: She earned her master’s degree in Latin American studies from UC San Diego, and later, from 2000 to 2002, she was a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz.
Stern said she looks forward to providing creative and responsive leadership in her new role.
“I am thrilled to be the incoming humanities dean at UCLA and eager to partner with the excellent and diverse units and communities that comprise the division,” she said. “I am honored to be joining a world-class public research university that recognizes the centrality of humanities to liberal arts and the mission of higher education.”
As associate dean at Michigan, Stern enhanced humanities research, promoted curricular and funding opportunities in experimental humanities, and supported languages and global studies. Prior to that role, she held a series of other leadership positions at the Ann Arbor campus: chair of the department of American culture (2017–19), director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center/Brazil Initiative (2014–17) and associate director of the Center for the History of Medicine (2002–12). She has been a faculty member at Michigan since 2002.
Among the numerous grants and fellowships she has received are awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She is frequently quoted in prominent media outlets, from the Los Angeles Times to the Atlantic.
In a message to the campus community, Interim Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Michael Levine wrote, “Chancellor [Gene] Block and I are confident that UCLA Humanities will continue to thrive and fulfill its vital role on campus under Alex’s capable leadership and that she will be an extraordinary addition to our campus leadership team.”
In addition to her master’s from UC San Diego, Stern earned a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State University and a doctorate in history from the University of Chicago.
Stern will succeed David Schaberg, who has led the humanities division since 2011. Schaberg will return to teaching and research full time after a sabbatical.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/AlexSternportrait-363.jpg238363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-04-15 13:11:482022-04-15 13:11:48UCLA names Alex Stern dean of humanities
The UCLA College’s 2022 Sloan Fellows. Top row from left: Seulgi Moon, David Baqaee, and Mikhail Solon. Bottom row from left: Chong Liu, Natalie Bau, and Guido Montúfar. Image credit: UCLA
Editor’s note: Congratulations to all of the UCLA scholars selected to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, including six professors from the College of Letters and Science!
By Stuart Wolpert
Eight young UCLA professors are among 118 scientists and scholars selected today to receive 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships, making UCLA No. 1 among U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities in the number of new fellows.
The fellowships, among the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers, are often seen as evidence of the quality of an institution’s science, math and economics faculty. MIT, with seven new faculty fellows, had the second most.
“Today’s Sloan Research Fellows represent the scientific leaders of tomorrow,” said Adam Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “As formidable young scholars, they are already shaping the research agenda within their respective fields — and their trailblazing won’t end here.”
Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, said, “UCLA has an exceptional faculty — world-leaders in their fields. The quality of our faculty research is mind-boggling, and I’m delighted but not surprised that UCLA is No. 1 in faculty awarded 2022 Sloan Research Fellowships.”
An expert in macroeconomics and international trade, Baqaee studies the role production networks play in business cycles and economic growth. His research tackles a central macroeconomic dilemma known as the aggregation problem, which involves reasoning about the behavior of aggregates composed of many interacting heterogenous parts — for instance, how shocks to oil production or trade barriers in parts of supply chains may affect real GDP. He has also studied monetary and fiscal policy, the macroeconomics of monopoly power and the macroeconomic consequences of supply and demand shocks caused by COVID-19. A faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Baqaee is also affiliated with the Center for Economic Policy and Research.
Natalie Bau Assistant professor of economics
Assistant professor of public policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
Bau studies a variety of topics in development and education economics, with an emphasis on the industrial organization of educational markets. Her research has looked at how cultural traditions affect economic decision-making, how interpersonal skills facilitate intergenerational investment, whether government policy can change culture, and the effects of human capital investment in countries with child labor. She is affiliated with the Center for Economic and Policy Research and is a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Aparna Bhaduri Assistant professor of biological chemistry, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Using bioinformatics, single-cell genomics and developmental neurobiology, Bhaduri studies how the human brain is created with billions of cells, as well as how certain cellular building blocks can reappear later in life in brain cancers. She is detailing the hundreds or thousands of cell types in the developing brain, allowing her to produce cell atlases that improve our understanding of glioblastoma. Her research is revealing how stem cells give rise to the human brain during cortical development and how aspects of this development can be “hijacked” in glioblastoma and other brain cancers.
Quanquan Gu Assistant professor of computer science, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering
Gu leads UCLA’s Statistical Machine Learning Lab. In his research on machine learning, he is developing and analyzing what are known as non-convex optimization algorithms to understand large-scale, dynamic, complex and heterogeneous data and is building the theoretical foundations of deep learning. Gu aims to make machine learning algorithms more efficient and reliable for a variety of applications, including recommendation systems, computational genomics, artificial intelligence for personalized health care, and government decision-making. In March 2020, he and his research team launched a machine learning model to predict the spread of COVID-19 — a model that has informed predictions by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Chong Liu Assistant professor of inorganic chemistry
Liu, who holds UCLA’s Jeffrey and Helo Zink Career Development Chair, is an authority on electrochemical systems for energy and biology. His laboratory combines expertise in inorganic chemistry, nanomaterials and electrochemistry to address challenging questions in catalysis, energy conversion, microbiota, and carbon dioxide and nitrogen — with important implications for the environment. In 2020, he received $1.9 million from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences to conduct research on electrochemically controlled microbial communities, and in 2017, Science News chose him as one of 10 Scientists to Watch who are “ready to transform their fields.”
Guido Montúfar Assistant professor of mathematics and statistics
Montúfar, who leads the Mathematical Machine Learning Group — centered at UCLA and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences, in Germany — works on deep learning theory and mathematical machine learning. Through investigations of the geometry of data, hypothesis functions and parameters, he and his team are developing the mathematical foundations of deep learning and improving learning with neural networks. Montúfar is the recipient of a starting grant from the European Research Council and a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and he serves as research mentor with the Latinx Mathematicians Research Community. He and his team have organized a weekly online math machine learning seminar since 2020.
Seulgi Moon Assistant professor of Earth, planetary and space sciences
Moon studies the weathering and erosion or bedrock using various methods, including fieldwork, laboratory analysis, topographic analysis, numerical models, near-surface geophysics and rock mechanics. Among her research topics is physical and chemical bedrock weathering, which affects groundwater storage and soil nutrient supply and can result in natural hazards like earthquake-induced landslides and debris flows. Her expertise includes tectonic geomorphology, low-temperature geochemistry and quaternary geochronology, as well as quantitative geomorphic analysis and landscape evolution of Earth and other planetary bodies.
Mikhail Solon Assistant professor of physics and astronomy
Solon, a member of UCLA’s Mani L. Bhaumik Institute for Theoretical Physics, holds the David S. Saxon Presidential Term Chair in Physics. His research explores phenomena that can be described using the mathematical and physical tools of theoretical high-energy physics. He focuses on using new and wide-ranging applications of quantum field theory to understand the nature of dark matter, the large-scale structure of the cosmos and gravitational waves. He was awarded the J.J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award, the American Physical Society’s highest honor for doctoral research in theoretical particle physics.
Sloan Research Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of exceptional young scientists and scholars in chemistry, computer science, Earth system science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience and physics. Fellows receive a two-year, $75,000 award to support their research from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was established in 1934.
Fifty-three Sloan Research Fellows have gone on to win Nobel Prizes, including Andrea Ghez, UCLA’s Lauren B. Leichtman and Arthur E. Levine Professor of Astrophysics, in 2020. Seventeen have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science and 22 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics.
This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/UCLASloanfellows2022_rev-363.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-02-16 15:14:502022-04-04 16:30:22Six UCLA College faculty among 2022 Sloan Research Fellows
The tennis icon spent his life fighting for the oppressed. A new oral history collection tells his story.
By Peter Hovarth
By Delan Bruce and Mary Daily | Collage by Peter Hovarth
Arthur Ashe ’66 was a champion. Not just on the tennis court — where he won 33 titles and set world records — but throughout his life, as a warrior for justice who fought for the rights of oppressed people and devoted himself to social justice, health and humanitarian causes.
Ashe grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and was drawn to UCLA, he said, because it was Jackie Robinson’s university. He attended on a scholarship. In 1965, during his junior year, Ashe became the first African American to win an NCAA singles title. He went on to win the U.S. Open, the Australian Open and Wimbledon, among many other tournaments. He was among the greatest athletes ever to play tennis, an iconic cultural figure and the sport’s reigning champion for many years.
Fighting Apartheid
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, South Africa continually denied Ashe a visa to travel there to compete in the South African Open. He finally obtained the visa in 1973 and was the first Black man to play in the national tournament.
The visa gave Ashe permission to play in South Africa, but it did not mute his opposition to apartheid. Ten years later, he and singer Harry Belafonte founded Artists and Athletes Against Apartheid to lobby for sanctions and embargoes against the South African government. In 1985, Ashe was arrested outside the South African embassy in Washington, D.C., during an anti-apartheid protest, an event that helped focus international attention on that growing movement. He did so much to fight apartheid that when Nelson Mandela was freed after 27 years in prison and was asked what American citizen he would like to visit with, he said, “How about Arthur Ashe?”
Donald Dell, Arthur Ashe’s agent, tells the Arthur Ashe Oral History Project about meeting Nelson Mandela with Ashe.
Arthur Ashe at hearings of the United Nations General Assembly’s Special Committee on Apartheid in 1970. Ashe asked the U.S., Britain, France, Australia, Germany and Italy to expel South Africa from the International Lawn Tennis Federation, as well as to bar the country from participating in the Davis Cup. Image credit: Bettmann / Contributor via Getty Images
AIDS Awareness
The champion took on a different cause in 1983, when he contracted HIV through a blood transfusion following surgery. In 1992, he went public with news of his infection, prompting a deluge of public attention. Ashe used the spotlight to raise awareness of the virus and its victims.
“I do not much like being the personification of a problem involving a killer disease,” he said. “But I know I must seize these opportunities to spread the word.” He founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, with the goal of eradicating the disease. The nonprofit funded research into the treatment, cure and prevention of AIDS. On World AIDS Day, he spoke before the United Nations General Assembly, lobbying for increased funding for research and addressing the illness as a global issue. Although he’d retired from tennis in 1980, Ashe was named Sports Illustrated’s 1992 Sportsman of the Year because of his unshakable support for humanitarian causes.
Ashe died of AIDS–related pneumonia in 1993, at the age of 49. Just two months earlier, he had established the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health, created to address issues of inadequate health care for urban minorities. To the end, he kept fighting for what he believed was right.
Arthur Ashe Legacy at UCLA
In 2008, Ashe’s widow, Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe, established the Arthur Ashe Learning Center in New York, dedicated to providing a multimedia resource for understanding and promoting his legacy and the values he espoused. She created a website and an array of visual and innovative learning tools. Seven years later, she ceded the assets of the Arthur Ashe Learning Center to UCLA, where they became part of the Arthur Ashe Legacy Project. The project is under the direction of Patricia Turner, professor in the departments of African American Studies and World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Turner, whose respect for Ashe’s accomplishments dates back to her childhood, taught his autobiography at UC Davis and currently teaches a Fiat Lux seminar about him at UCLA.
The work of the Arthur Ashe Legacy Project includes managing a booth devoted to Ashe at the Arthur Ashe Stadium in Flushing, New York, where the U.S. Open is played, as well as reconfiguring a larger exhibition about his life that is currently being assembled and will likely travel to different venues.
Ashe was named Sports Illustrated’s 1992 Sportsman of the Year because of his unshakable support for humanitarian causes.
The Oral History Collection
One of the Legacy Project’s recent initiatives is the Arthur Ashe Oral History Project, designed and led by Turner. In 2019, UCLA alumna and oral historian Yolanda Hester M.A. ’17 began identifying aspects of Ashe’s life that a UCLA oral history collection could examine deeply in ways that existing Ashe archives hadn’t.
Ann Koger, who in 1973 became one of the first African American women to play professionally in the Virginia Slims Tennis Circuit, speaks about traveling through the South as a young Black tennis player in the 1960s.
UCLA’s Ashe oral history archive, which will be housed at the UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research and the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, explores his childhood years playing tennis in segregated Richmond. The interviews also document the experiences of African Americans playing tennis during the 1950s and ’60s. The oral histories delve into tennis’s seismic shift to its open era, when both amateur and professional players were finally allowed to compete for the major Grand Slam titles. In 1968, Ashe won the first U.S. Open of this new, much more lucrative era of pro tennis. Through intercontinental interviews, the recordings tell the story, too, of Ashe’s historic 1973 and 1974 trips to South Africa.
Assisting in assembling the collection is Chinyere Nwonye ’19, who in 2017 enrolled in Turner’s Fiat Lux seminar on Ashe. While she had seen the Arthur Ashe Student Health & Wellness Center on campus many times, she had never known that Ashe was Black. In the seminar, Nwonye and her classmates read Ashe’s memoir Days of Grace. They also took a tour of campus sites that are important to Ashe’s story, such as the location of his ROTC service. The course inspired Nwonye to join the oral history project after graduation.
The oral history method captures a person through others’ memories, sometimes in idiosyncratic detail. Hester and Nwonye note that the recordings take listeners inside the narrative in a way not possible through the written word.
Tom Chewning, a lifelong friend of Ashe’s, describes meeting Ashe for the first time at a tournament in West Virginia. The two teens were both rising tennis players from Richmond but had never met due to segregation.
Details emerge from the interviews: One interviewee recalls competing in a match, going to pick up a ball and having felt someone spit on his hand. As a Black tennis player, he felt compelled to contain his anger, wipe off his hand and continue playing. Hester says narrators shared other instances of their struggles against, and triumphs over, subtler forms of racist resistance to tennis integration — for instance, a young player’s tournament registration paperwork would often conveniently disappear.
Archival newspaper clippings: Arthur Ashe’s letter requesting approval of Otis Smith’s membership in the Los Angeles Tennis Club. Ashe featured in The New York Times in 1966. (NYT) COURTESY UCLA ATHLETICS. (LETTER) COURTESY UCLA ARTHUR ASHE LEGACY PROJECT.
Interviews Continue Through Zoom
The oral history format took on a new dimension via Zoom, with narrators in their own homes, among their personal belongings and keepsakes. Nwonye and Hester cite countless moments when narrators would stop and say things like “I’ve got to send you this!” while holding up a T-shirt they’d received from Ashe or showing a racket he’d given them.
The complete project will include interviews with more than 100 of Ashe’s associates. By midsummer of 2021, Hester and Nwonye had interviewed more than 50 people, having completed 15 pre-pandemic Q&As. In spring 2020, COVID created a dilemma. “So much of oral history is about being in the room together, communicating not just verbally but also through gesture and body language,” says Hester.
But Zoom enabled interviews with people who might not otherwise have been as accessible — those in far-flung places across the country or even abroad. This was the case with poet Don Mattera, who interacted with Ashe during the tennis star’s 1973 trip to South Africa and wrote a poem titled Anguished Spirit—Ashe. And Hester says the slower pace of pandemic life made scheduling interviews easier, so she and Nwonye moved through their list much more quickly than they had expected to.
South African poet Don Mattera recites a poem he wrote for Ashe.
How Ashe Changed Lives
One underreported facet of Ashe’s life that the interviews reveal is his business savvy. From his Safe Passage Foundation, which supported young people of color through tennis, to his role as a cornerstone of the Association of Tennis Professionals, founded in 1972, Ashe built organizational infrastructures within and outside of tennis. Hester hopes the oral history project will contextualize some of the benchmark moments coming up in the next few years regarding Ashe’s playing career and humanitarian work that reached beyond the world of sports.
Researchers, students and tennis lovers will be able to immerse themselves in the completed archive. The narrators’ stories traverse pivotal periods of recent history, such as tennis’s open era, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the women’s rights movement and the global AIDS epidemic. Nwonye sees symmetry between Ashe’s losing his life to HIV/AIDS at the height of a public health crisis and the COVID crisis challenging the world today.
If the histories are notable for their breadth, they are sometimes most striking for their intimacy. They offer reminders of how Ashe touched lives, sometimes unexpectedly. Take the case of Otis Smith ’01, now director of tennis at the Santa Barbara Tennis Club. In 1975, Smith was a rising junior tennis player who practiced often at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. The club, founded in 1920, had no African American members. Someone complained Smith was spending too much time at the club for a nonmember, forcing the 9-year-old to apply for membership.
Ashe, an honorary participant on the club’s board, learned of Smith’s plight. Fresh off his Wimbledon triumph, he dashed off a direct but characteristically polite letter advocating for Smith’s admission as a junior member — and for the 55-year-old institution to finally integrate. He presented the club’s directors with an ultimatum: They would accept Smith, or Ashe would resign his position on the board. Smith’s membership was quickly approved.
“My dad and Arthur stayed in contact,” recalls Smith, who went on to star in tennis at UCLA before playing professionally. “I met Arthur in Las Vegas, and I played tennis with him for a half-hour. He was there playing in the Alan King Tennis Classic. He changed my life.”
In Western U.S., health risks from ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter continue to grow, study shows
In October 2017, smoke from a nearby wildfire turned the sky orange-brown in Los Angeles’ Mar Vista neighborhood. Photo credit: Sean Brenner
By David Colgan
After decades of air quality improvement due to the Clean Air Act of 1970 and other regulations since, the Western U.S. is experiencing an increase in the number of days with extremely high levels of two key types of air pollutants due to climate change.
From 2000 to 2020, the growing number of wildfires — made more intense by climate change — and the increasingly common presence of stagnant, hot weather patterns combined to increase the number of days with hazardous levels of ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter. Those conditions are creating health risks for people throughout the region, according to a paper published in Science Advances.
Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist and co-author of the paper, said the increased pollution affects densely populated regions across a broad swath of the West, including the Los Angeles basin, Salt Lake City, Denver and Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The study found that the number of days when both pollutant levels were extremely high increased in nearly every major city from the Pacific Coast to the eastern Rocky Mountains. (The scientists judged pollution levels to be “extremely high” on days when they were in the 90th percentile of their daily average for the study’s 20-year span.)
Smoke from wildfires can travel thousands of miles, harming people who don’t live directly in wildfire-prone areas.
“When we looked at satellite imagery of the whole country this past summer, we could see smoke from Western wildfires making it all the way to New York City,” Swain said. “There could be a connection with air pollution as far away as the East Coast.”
Wildfires and stagnant, hot weather patterns increase the presence of pollution classified as PM 2.5 — particles that measure less than 2.5 microns in width, the equivalent of about three one-hundredths the width of a human hair — which can make its way deep into lungs and can cross into the bloodstream. Scientific studies have linked PM 2.5 pollution to health problems such as decreased lung function, irregular heartbeat and even premature death in people with heart or lung disease.
The combination of weather patterns and wildfires also increases the formation of ground-level ozone, another threat to respiratory health. Ground level ozone forms due to chemical reactions between oxides of nitrogen (such as nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide) and volatile organic compounds, both of which can come from vehicles, power plants, industrial facilities and other sources.
The researchers found that the increase in extreme levels of PM 2.5 due to climate factors increased hazardous air quality conditions by an average of 25 million person-days each year of the past two decades in the Western U.S. and adjacent areas of the Great Plains, Mexico and Canada. (A person-day refers to a single day of exposure by a single person.)
The analysis is based on pollution data from U.S. Environmental Protection Agency monitoring sites, as well as atmospheric observations and data on atmospheric pressure and temperatures.
The poor air quality conditions highlighted in the paper are likely to get worse for at least the next few decades, even if drastic climate change mitigation measures are implemented, Swain said.
“It has gotten hotter, wildfire conditions have gotten worse and we’re seeing more persistent periods of high atmospheric pressure,” he said. “Each of those factors is projected to increase in the coming years.”
While mitigating emissions from wildfires and climate change will take decades, cities could still enact regulations and other programs to that would help reduce the presence of oxides of nitrogen and volatile ogranic compounds — so-called ozone precursor emissions — in the near term. Although the benefits of those changes would take years to accrue, it could be practical for cities to implement emissions-reduction measures during periods of hazardous air quality, and it would likely help reduce the dangers to human health, Swain said.
https://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Sunsetinsmoke-filledsky-363x237v2.png237363Lucy Berbeohttps://www.college.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Uxd_Blk_College-e1557344896161.pngLucy Berbeo2022-01-24 13:17:182022-01-24 13:17:18Days with hazardous levels of air pollutants are more common due to increase in wildfires
Haven Hunt
Manon Snyder | October 24, 2022
Image credit: University of Michigan
Image credit: UCLA
By Peter Hovarth
Photo credit: Sean Brenner
