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UCLA survey finds most teens reject glamorized lifestyles in entertainment media

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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.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

UCLA

$1.2 million from Kachigian family trust establishes UCLA lectureship in Armenian studies

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Armenian language scholar Hagop Kouloujian has been appointed to the position for a five-year term
Black-and-white portraits of Kachigian siblings

Left to right: Siblings George, Alice and Harold Kachigian | UCLA

Jonathan Riggs | July 21, 2022

Key takeaways:
   • Late siblings George and Alice Kachigian were longtime supporters of  Armenian scholarship at UCLA.
   • The inaugural lectureship holder, Hagop Kouloujian, seeks to revive Western Armenian by having students compose creative works in the endangered language.

The UCLA Division of Humanities has received a $1.2 million bequest from the estate of siblings George and Alice Kachigian to support the Armenian studies program in the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures. As part of the gift, the department created the Kachigian Family Lectureship in Armenian Language and Culture.

The inaugural holder of the lectureship will be Hagop Kouloujian, a UCLA scholar and instructor who specializes in Western Armenian, a language that since the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century has been spoken almost exclusively by people in the diaspora. Kouloujian was instrumental in having it designated an endangered language by UNESCO in 2010.

“We are grateful for the kindness and visionary support of the Kachigian family,” said David Schaberg, dean of humanities and senior dean of the UCLA College. “Their generosity will contribute to the vitality of this endangered language and culture.”

Los Angeles, with the largest Armenian-speaking population outside Armenia itself, and UCLA are natural settings for such scholarship. Since the launch of the Armenian studies program in 1969, UCLA has been a destination for students interested in the field, and the creation of the UCLA Promise Armenian Institute in 2019 cemented the university’s leadership role in Armenian research and public impact programs.

Image of Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture

Hagop Kouloujian, UCLA’s inaugural Kachigian Family Lecturer in Armenian Language and Culture | Courtesy of Hagop Kouloujian

Kouloujian’s ongoing Language in Action project at UCLA, funded by the Portugal-based Calouse Gulbenkian Foundation, exemplifies his “creative literacy” approach, which focuses on teaching students by encouraging their own creative output. His students have produced hundreds of pieces, ranging from creative works to nonfiction, with the goal of contributing to the vitality of Western Armenian language and culture.

In May 2022, for example, the department of Near Eastern languages and cultures held an event to celebrate the publication of “Girkov useloo, inchoo hos em?” (“To Say With Passion, Why Am I Here?”), a full-length volume of poetry written in Western Armenian by the late Tenny Arlen, a 2013 UCLA comparative literature graduate who learned the language and wrote most of the collection in Kouloujian’s courses.

Donors George and Alice Kachigian, for whom the lectureship is named, were active members and generous supporters of the Los Angeles Armenian community. Although they moved to Oregon 30 years ago following the deaths of their parents and brother Harold, they continued to support UCLA’s Armenian studies program throughout their lives, providing research funding for faculty in the divisions of social sciences and humanities.

Alice died in 2017, and after George’s death in 2019, the siblings’ estate left generous funding to the Armenian studies program and the department of neurology at UCLA.

“The Kachigian family were friends to all, donated to many causes and counseled anyone who requested their help. They lived lives of goodness and kindness,” said Rafe Aharonian, trustee of the Kachigian Living Trust. “George, Alice and Harold wanted to help the youth learn more about Armenian heritage, and courses like Dr. Kouloujian’s encourage connections between UCLA students of Armenian heritage who might otherwise not have met.”

The Kachigians’ legacy will live on in all those at UCLA and elsewhere who, through the family’s generosity, have developed a deep connection to and appreciation for Armenian culture and language, said Kouloujian, who will hold the lectureship for five years.

“My aspiration for this lectureship is to continue to enhance UCLA’s Armenian work with forward-looking activities and community impact projects that will help invigorate the future of this language and culture,” he said. “I want to share the enduring, evolving beauty and power of Armenian with as many people as possible.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more of Our Stories at the College, click here.

Image credit: UCLA

UCLA poised to become a world leader in hip-hop studies

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Building on decades of scholarship, the campus’s new Hip Hop Initiative will highlight the local and global impact of this Black art form
Collage image of the covers of books on hip-hop and Black culture by UCLA faculty members who will play an integral role in the new Hip Hop Initiative.

A sampling of books on hip-hop and Black culture by UCLA faculty members who will play an integral role in the new Hip Hop Initiative. Image credit: UCLA

By Jessica Wolf

UCLA’s Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies today launched its wide-ranging Hip Hop Initiative, which will establish UCLA as a leading center for hip-hop studies globally by way of artist residencies, community engagement programs, a book series, an oral history and digital archive project, postdoctoral fellowships and more.

Chuck D, the longtime leader of the politically and socially conscious rap group Public Enemy, is the program’s first artist-in-residence.

The initiative focuses on hip-hop as one of modern history’s most powerful cultural movements and most visible symbols of contemporary Black performance and protest.

“As we celebrate 50 years of hip-hop music and cultural history, the rigorous study of the culture offers us a wealth of intellectual insight into the massive social and political impact of Black music, Black history and Black people on global culture — from language, dance, visual art and fashion to electoral politics, political activism and more,” said anthropology professor H. Samy Alim, who is spearheading the initiative.

Co-leading the initiative with Alim are Bunche Center assistant director Tabia Shawel and Samuel Lamontagne, a doctoral candidate in the department of ethnomusicology.

The initiative is something Alim and his colleagues have been working toward for decades. It builds on the wealth of hip-hop scholarship produced at UCLA and across institutes of higher education since the 1990s and comes at a “convergence moment” when hip-hop music and culture have become dominant in the public sphere, as evidenced by the recent Super Bowl halftime show and the addition of break dancing to the 2024 Olympic Games.

“We’re also in a historical moment of hip-hop culture entering its ‘museum phase,’” said dream hampton, a writer and filmmaker who serves on the group’s advisory board.

Indeed, the Smithsonian Institution recently released a comprehensive hip-hop anthology, and museums like the Universal Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx and the South African Hip Hop Museum in Johannesburg are solely dedicated to the music and culture.

Shining a light on the West Coast and Los Angeles

With the launch of the initiative, UCLA becomes the first major West Coast destination for scholarly explorations of hip-hop culture, which allows for a deeper focus on hip-hop’s local development and impact, said Lamontagne, whose dissertation reexamines Los Angeles hip-hop history.

“Our goal,” he said, “is also to advance the legacy of UCLA by producing original, creative, public-facing, social justice–oriented work and building bridges between academia and the community by discussing the implications of scholarly research and how it can serve Black and brown communities in Los Angeles.”

The concentration of world-renowned scholars of hip-hop at UCLA makes the campus uniquely suited to lead hip-hop studies, both locally and globally, into the future, Shawel noted.

“At this moment, the UCLA Bunche Center has a critical mass of highly regarded, innovative faculty who, in some instances, have been writing about hip-hop culture for over four decades, exploring its musical, social and political impact around the world, from South Central to South Africa,” she said.

The Hip Hop Initiative’s advisory board includes some of the nation’s leading hip-hop artists and thinkers, like hampton, Chuck D, Joan Morgan, Davey D and UCLA alumni Jeff Chang and Ben Caldwell, who will serve alongside UCLA professors Cheryl Keyes, Bryonn Bain, Adam Bradley, Scot Brown, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Robin Kelley, Kyle Mays and Shana Redmond.

Image of Hip-hop legends Chuck D, Rakim and Talib Kweli, curator and journalist Tyree Boyd-Pates, and UCLA’s H. Samy Alim at an event at the California African American Museum co-sponsored by the Hip Hop Studies Working Group at UCLA.

Left to right: Hip-hop legends Chuck D, Rakim and Talib Kweli, curator and journalist Tyree Boyd-Pates, and UCLA’s H. Samy Alim at an event at the California African American Museum co-sponsored by the Hip Hop Studies Working Group at UCLA. (March 11, 2020) Image credit: HRDWRKER/Courtesy of California African American Museum

Hip-hop studies: Growing from UCLA roots

One of the pioneering academics in the field, Keyes is a professor at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music and chair of the department of African American studies. Nearly two decades ago, a group of graduate students set up an informal hip-hop research group with Keyes as their guide. In 2005, Alim organized their efforts into the formal Hip Hop Studies Working Group at UCLA, which has become a space for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and advanced undergraduates to explore methodological and theoretical issues in the study of hip-hop culture.

“It’s been incredible to witness and mentor so many students as they reach into the histories and experiences of the communities that gave rise to hip-hop,” Keyes said. “There’s a richness and depth and context that are yet to be discovered and revealed, and this initiative will support much more of that.”

Students have also benefited from the working group’s ongoing speaker and event series, which has recently featured hip-hop icons Rakim, Chuck D and Talib Kweli at the California African American Museum and a film screening and discussion with rapper and filmmaker Boots Riley at the Fowler Museum at UCLA.

In addition to supporting the efforts of the Hip Hop Studies Working Group, the Hip Hop Initiative will include a wide variety of programs, including:

  • Artists-in-residence
    UCLA will host hip-hop artists whose work foregrounds issues of community engagement and social justice. Chuck D, who begins his UCLA residency this week, will participate in a series of on-campus events that bring together artists and members of the community.
  • Global community engagement
    Community-based projects include the Hip Hop High School–to–Higher Education Pipeline, the Hip Hop Disability Justice Project (with the Krip-Hop movement) and a long-standing project exploring hip-hop as culturally sustaining pedagogy in Spain and South Africa.
  • Book series and publications
    The initiative will expand the University of California Press Hip Hop Studies Series, which is edited by Alim and Chang along with leading hip-hop intellectuals Tricia Rose, Mark Anthony Neal, Marc Lamont Hill and others. The second book from this series, “Rebel Speak: A Justice Movement Mixtape” by Bryonn Bain, hits bookstores this spring. The initiative will also support the work of emerging scholars through manuscript-development workshops.
  • Postdoctoral fellowships
    The initiative will support a research position intended for hip-hop studies scholars whose work seeks to improve the conditions of Black life. Scholars will be housed in the Bunche Center.
  • Hip-hop lecture series
    Public-facing lectures will feature cutting-edge hip-hop scholarship presented by international scholars.
  • Oral history and digital archive
    UCLA is the first institution on the West Coast to develop an archive dedicated to the study of hip-hop in Los Angeles, which has long been a major hub for hip-hop cultural production and the hip-hop industry. Faculty and staff involved in the initiative have begun a community-based oral history and digital archive focused on preserving the history of West Coast hip-hop.

Read more on UCLA Newsroom and UCLA Magazine about hip-hop studies at UCLA:

► Teaching rap lyrics as literature

► Cheryl Keyes hits the right notes with Smithsonian anthology

► Are major labels passing up profits by playing to racial stereotypes?

► Bryonn Bain: ‘Lyrics from lockdown’

► Beat scholars

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.

Image of actor Vin Diesel with director Justin Lin on the set of “F9: The Fast Saga.”Courtesy of Universal Studios

People of color helped keep movie business afloat during pandemic

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UCLA Hollywood Diversity Report emphasizes importance of minority audiences

Image of actor Vin Diesel with director Justin Lin on the set of “F9: The Fast Saga.”

Actor Vin Diesel, left, with director Justin Lin on the set of “F9: The Fast Saga.” The movie, which featured a cast that was more than 50% minority, was the year’s third highest-grossing film at the box office. Image Courtesy of Universal Studios

By Jessica Wolf |

A large percentage of the movie business’s box office revenue and home viewership was driven by consumers of color in 2021, according to UCLA’s latest Hollywood Diversity Report. The report examines the 252 top-performing English-language films — based on box office receipts and streaming data — during the second year that the COVID-19 pandemic forced movie studios to adopt unconventional release strategies.

The report tracks progress for women and minorities in acting, directing and writing roles, and analyzes audience segments by race and ethnicity, focusing on Asian American, Black, Latino and white audiences, and age, focusing on viewers 18 to 49.

Published twice a year — with one analysis of movies and another for TV — the Hollywood Diversity Report has consistently shown increases in the percentages of women and people of color in key jobs in front of the camera. Researchers have also tracked sustained, albeit stubborn, growth for women and minorities in Hollywood writing and directing jobs.

Chart showing that The largest single category of films considered in this report includes those that were released solely on streaming platforms12 (45.6 percent), which is down from the share of streaming-only films considered in the previous report for 2020 (54.6 percent). By contrast, only 17.9 percent of films were released solely in theaters in 2021.13 Meanwhile, 20.2 percent of films were released both on streaming platforms and in limited theaters,14 while 13.1 percent were released both on streaming platforms and widely in theaters.15 Finally, only 1.6 percent of films were released both theatrically and through transactional video on demand,16 and 1.6 percent were released on streaming after a modified theatrical release window (45+ days).17

The report’s authors noted that 2021 was the first year since they began tracking such statistics that the majority of Academy Awards went to films that were directed by people of color and featured minority actors in lead roles. And the year’s third highest-grossing film at the box office was “F9: The Fast Saga,” which featured a cast that was more than 50% minority and was directed by Taiwanese American filmmaker Justin Lin. Sixty-five percent of opening weekend ticket sales for “F9” were to minority audiences, the highest figure among all films in the top 10.

The report tracks the numbers of writers, directors and actors who identify as Asian American, Black, Latino, Middle Eastern/North African, multiracial and Native American. People in those groups make up 42.7% of the U.S. population, and they form an important consumer bloc for entertainment, including movies.

For six of the 10 top-grossing films that opened in theaters in 2021, people of color accounted for the majority of opening-weekend U.S. ticket sales.

The report also analyzed box office performance based on the diversity of the movies’ casts — whether minority actors made up less than 11% of the cast, 11% to 20%, and so on, up to 51% or more. The study revealed that films with 21% to 30% minority actors had higher median global box office receipts than films in any other tier. That echoed a pattern since the report began tracking box office performance in 2011.

The report also found that, as in previous years, films with the least diverse casts (11% or less minority) were the poorest performers at the box office.

Chart showing that Median global box office peaked for films with casts that were from 21 to 30 percent minority in 2021 ($107.4 million). Twenty-five films fell into this cast diversity interval, including Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($501.0 million), A Quiet Place Part II ($297.4 million), and Cruella ($233.3 million). In a year in which theater attendance began to rebound after a COVID-decimated 2020, theatrically released films with relatively diverse casts again outshined their less-diverse counterparts at the box office. Indeed, the 14 films with the least-diverse casts (less than 11 percent minority) were again the poorest performers in 2021. “Last year, every time a big movie exceeded expectations or broke a box office record, the majority of opening weekend audiences were people of color,” said Ana-Christina Ramón, a co-author of the report and the director of research and civic engagement for the UCLA College division of social sciences. “For people of color, and especially Latino families, theaters provided an excursion when almost everything else was shut down. In a sense, people of color kept studios afloat the past couple of years.

“Studios should consider them to be investors, and as investors, they should get a return in the form of representation.”

Overall, 43.1% of actors in the movies analyzed by the report were minorities. That’s more than double the percentage from 2011, the first year of data collected by the authors, when 20.7% of actors were minorities. And 31.0% of the top-performing films in 2021 had casts in which the majority of the actors were minorities.

“Minorities reached proportionate representation in 2020 for the first time when it comes to overall cast diversity in films, and that held true again in 2021,” said Darnell Hunt, dean of the social sciences at UCLA and co-author of the report.

Hunt said the phenomenon is probably due in part to the greater number of movies that are initially released on streaming services: Of the films analyzed in the report, 45.6% were released on streaming services only.

Chart showing that During the second full year of the pandemic, the volume of major films released via streaming platforms continued to increase, from 87 films in 2020 to 164 in 2021. Again, for all groups, median ratings were highest for relatively diverse streaming films in 2021. That is, for viewers 18-49 (3.08 ratings points) and Black households (12.49 ratings points), ratings peaked for streaming films with majority-minority casts. Seventy-two films fell into this cast diversity interval in 2021, including: Raya and the Last Dragon, Coming 2 America, Vivo, and Mortal Kombat. For viewers 18-49, though, it should be noted that streaming films with casts that were from 21 percent to 30 percent minority came in a close second (2.94 ratings points). For White (5.10 ratings points), Latinx (7.34 ratings points), Asian (5.90 ratings points), and other-race households (5.48 ratings points), streaming films that were from 21 percent to 30 percent minority also enjoyed the highest ratings in 2021. Examples of the 36 films that fell into this diversity interval include: Don’t Look Up, The Boss Baby: Family Business, and The Suicide Squad.

“We do think this dual-release strategy is here to stay,” Hunt said. “And it could have a lasting impact on diversity metrics in front of and behind the camera as studios think about how to finance content for different platforms.”

For example, the report found that women and people of color were far more likely than white men to direct films with budgets less than $20 million.

“A small production budget usually means that there is also little to no marketing and studio support, unless it’s from a production company known for making art house films,” Ramón said. “And that makes it more difficult for filmmakers to get the next opportunity if their films have to fight for attention.”

Hunt said studios are likely to bank on big-budget tentpole movies and sequels as traditional box office drivers, even as they continue to experiment with release platforms and adjust the amount of time between films’ theatrical releases and their arrival on streaming services or on DVD or Blu-ray.

Among the 2021 films released to streaming services, those with casts in which a majority of actors were non-white enjoyed the highest ratings among viewers aged 18 to 49 and in Black households. Seventy-two films with majority-minority casts were released on streaming in 2021, including “Raya and the Last Dragon,” “Coming 2 America,” “Vivo” and “Mortal Kombat.”

Chart showing that Among the White,24 Black, Latinx, multiracial, and MENA directors helming 2021 films, women lagged far behind men. Only among Asian and Native directors did women approach or reach parity with their male counterparts in securing these important positions.

“In 2021, diversity in front of the camera did not equate to more opportunities behind the camera for filmmakers who are women and people of color,” Ramón said. “They continue to receive less financing, even when they make films with white lead actors. Most of these filmmakers are relegated to low-budget films. For women of color, directing and writing opportunities are really the final frontier.”

Of the filmmakers who directed the movies analyzed in the report, 21.8% were women and 30.2% were people of color. Among the screenwriters for those films, 33.5% were women and 32.3% were people of color. Diversity in both jobs increased incrementally from 2020.

Out of the 76 minority directors of 2021’s top films, just 23 were women. And among Black, Latino and multiracial directors, at least twice as many were men as women in each racial or ethnic classification.

Although there was gender parity among Asian American and Native American directors, the overall numbers of directors from those groups were very small: just 17 Asian American directors and and just two Native American directors were represented in 2021. Among white directors, 32 were women and 143 were men.

The authors counted one trans woman among the directors of the 2021 films they analyzed.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu/news.

Department of African American Studies launches ‘Celebrate Us’ speaker series with talk by Kyle T. Mays

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At the close of Black History Month, the UCLA Department of African American Studies launched its new “Celebrate Us” lecture series, which focuses on topics that explore and celebrate Black life. On February 28, 2022, inaugural speaker Kyle T. Mays joined a virtual audience to discuss “Afro-Indigenous Relations from Black and Red Power to Contemporary Popular Culture,” based on themes explored in his recent book:

Mays, a Black and Saginaw Anishinaabe scholar, teaches African American studies and American Indian studies at UCLA. His book, “An Afro-Indigenous History of the United States,” is a groundbreaking intersectional study of U.S. history, racism and Afro-Indigenous solidarity.

Darnell Hunt, dean of the UCLA Division of Social Sciences, introduced the series. “Our motto in the social sciences division is ‘Engaging L.A., Changing the World,’” Hunt said. “Lecture series like ‘Celebrate Us’ contribute to the dialogue and positive impact we hope to see in the world by helping us make sense of the dynamic changes affecting the Black community today.”

Department chair Cheryl L. Keyes, also a professor of African American studies, ethnomusicology and global jazz studies, led the event, which was co-sponsored by UCLA American Indian Studies.

Learn more at the UCLA Department of African American Studies website.

UCLA, Howard University launch summer program on race, ethnicity and politics

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The new UC-funded Mark Q. Sawyer Summer Institute will support young scholars in this burgeoning academic field
Image of Mark Sawyer

The program’s namesake, the late Mark Sawyer, was a professor of political science and African American studies at UCLA and a pioneer in the field of race, ethnicity and politics.

By Jessica Wolf 

The first-ever Mark Q. Sawyer Summer Institute will bring four undergraduate fellows from Howard University in Washington, D.C., to the UCLA campus this June for an immersive six-week academic research program that explores the crucial role of race, ethnicity and politics in society.

The multiyear program, a collaboration between faculty from UCLA’s political science department and Howard, is funded by the UC–HBCU Initiative, which seeks to boost the number of undergraduate scholars from historically Black colleges and universities who enroll in and complete advanced degree programs at University of California campuses.

Named for the late UCLA professor Mark Sawyer, a pioneer in the field of race, ethnicity and politics, the newly launched summer institute will be led by UCLA’s Lorrie Frasure, an associate professor of political science and African American studies, and Natalie Masuoka, an associate professor of political science and chair of the Asian American studies department. Their Howard counterpart is Niambi Carter, an associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies.

“Our objective is to create an inclusive and supportive environment for students to develop their skills in research methods and design and to encourage participants to see themselves as confident and qualified applicants to an advanced degree program in political science,” said Frasure, who also serves as vice chair of graduate studies in political science.

Fellows in the program will focus on race and ethnicity as a central category that informs political processes in the United States and will help produce research that spotlights the underrecognized political role played by African American and other communities of color. The scholars will familiarize themselves with empirical research methods through innovative workshops and participate in seminars that explore theories of U.S. racial and ethnic politics, specifically Black politics.

The four undergraduate scholars selected for this summer, all of them political science majors entering their senior year at Howard, are Justina Blanco, Havillyn Felder, Donroy Ferdinand and Yasmine Grier.

Carter said the partnership between UCLA’s political science department and Howard’s program in Black politics provides an ideal opportunity for some of Howard’s best and brightest students to work on cutting-edge research while carving a pathway to graduate studies and professorships.

“I am excited that our students get to experience a different campus and different approaches to political science. I am also expecting UCLA to learn a lot from our students, whose worldview has been shaped in really important ways by Howard University and our motto, ‘Truth and Service,’” Carter said. “This partnership helps both our campuses achieve our shared goals of producing bright scholars who will bring all of who they are to the classroom and in their approaches to studying some of the biggest issues in political science. We look forward to creating lasting, deep connections and looking for other places to connect our campuses.”

As part of the mission of the UC–HBCU Initiative, the University of California will waive application fees for alumni of the initiative’s programs — including the Sawyer Summer Institute — who apply to any of the more than 700 academic graduate programs at the UC’s 10 campuses. Those admitted to advanced degree programs will be eligible to receive competitive funding packages.

The field of race and ethnicity politics at UCLA today serves as a model for universities across the nation, thanks in no small part to the efforts of Mark Sawyer, Frasure said.

Sawyer, a professor of political science and African American studies who died in 2017, co-founded the race, ethnicity and politics program in UCLA’s political science department in 2006 and was instrumental in establishing the campus’s department of African American studies in 2015.

“Professor Sawyer is remembered as an outstanding scholar and a committed mentor and teacher,” Frasure said, “but he is most remembered as a visionary builder of lasting institutions.”

UCLA’s political science graduate program is currently one of only a handful in the U.S. to have established racial and ethnic politics as an institutionalized field of study, and its political science department boasts one of the largest concentrations of faculty engaged in the specialty.

► See UCLA’s recent study of how attitudes toward politics and policy vary among racial groups.

The Sawyer Summer Institute will also benefit from programmatic partnerships with UCLA’s department of African American studies, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and Academic Advancement Program.

“We’ve assembled an incredible team of scholars and programs for this first year of the initiative,” Masuoka said. “We are eager to welcome these young researchers to UCLA but also look forward to learning from them. We have an opportunity to consider how their experiences and ideas can inform novel and innovative research questions.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.

Illustration of rat near Hollywood signAmisha Gadani/UCLA

Intricacies of L.A.’s urban ecosystem are focus of new UCLA podcast

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Illustration of rat near Hollywood sign

The podcast’s premiere episode explores the conflict between people’s attempts to battle one species, rats, while preserving another, mountain lions. Image by Amisha Gadani/UCLA

By Jonathan Van Dyke

Not all of the celebrities in Los Angeles are humans.

Just witness the excitement around sightings of the city’s famous wild animals. One recent Los Angeles Times headline read, “Famed mountain lion P-22 makes dramatic appearance in Beachwood Canyon backyard.”

But even Angelenos who are fascinated by the big cats of the Santa Monica Mountains might not realize that the animals are threatened by factors that seem totally unrelated to their natural habitats. For example, what if the rodenticide being used to fight rat infestations in Los Angeles neighborhoods might ultimately harm P-22 and his running mates?

That’s the topic of the first episode of “The Labyrinth Project,” a new UCLA podcast available now on Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon and Stitcher. Through six episodes, the series engages listeners in a range of ecological conundrums, all of which are as interconnected as the city’s vast natural ecosystems.

Its creator is Christopher Kelty, a UCLA anthropology professor and member of the UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics. Kelty’s Labyrinth Project research initiative inspired the podcast, and his work is funded in part by the UCLA Sustainable LA Grand Challenge.

“People see nature in different ways, and with different stakes,” he said. “Some people want to conserve nature in a certain way, other people want to exploit it and others are afraid of it. We wanted to really explore that idea.”

The premiere episode explores the conflict between people’s attempts to battle one species, rats, while preserving another, mountain lions. Studies by UCLA researchers and others have shown that rats killed by pesticides wind up in the food chain that ultimately leads up to bobcats and mountain lions, which can damage their immune systems and alter their genetics.

“We could ban the poisons, but the question remains: Do we want to live with rats? Should we be changing our relationship to rats as well as mountain lions?” Kelty said. “This podcast is an attempt to say that if you focus problem by problem, you won’t see the bigger picture. We’re trying to bring the bigger picture into focus in a way that’s easy to grasp. And we’re asking listeners to take a step back, and maybe to not have a strong opinion immediately.”

The podcast is written and produced by Kelty and five UCLA undergraduates and graduate students. Future episodes, which will be released each Monday, explore stories around coyotes, feral cats and the pressure people can feel from being bombarded with messages about living sustainably.

“I really delved into my own feelings about trying to live a sustainable lifestyle,” said Emma Horton, a third-year undergraduate student majoring in human biology and society, and a co-producer of one episode. “I found what I call ‘sustainability guilt practices’ all around me, and I realized there are these subtle forms of shaming consumers into living environmentally conscious lives, even though a lot of it is really out of reach for the average person.”

The team represents a wide range of academic interests. Spencer Robins, for example, is a doctoral candidate in English, with a focus on environmental literature.

“If you go out into Los Angeles and start talking with people who really know and care about the natural world here, you’re going to meet really wild characters with wild stories,” he said. In the Labyrinth Project, those characters range from trained scientists to a family that feeds a coyote at its front door to members of a satanist cult that morphed into the no-kill movement in Los Angeles.

For Chase Niesner, a graduate student in the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the project drove home the interconnectedness of a wide range of issues.

“What this project is really about is understanding and respecting the complexity of the urban ecosystem, and understanding that if you pull one thread, it changes everything else,” he said. “In urban ecology, you really can’t think of any one conversation separately from the others.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.

An image of the Bitterroot River Montana forest fireJohn MacColgan/Creative Commons

Forest fires increasingly affecting rivers and streams – for better and worse

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An image of the Bitterroot River Montana forest fire

Bitterroot River Montana forest fire. Image credit: John MacColgan/Creative Commons

UCLA-led study finds greater ‘streamflow’ may mean more water for the West, but could increase risk for floods, landslides

By Anna Novoselov

Forest fires can have a significant effect on the amount of water flowing in nearby rivers and streams, and the impact can continue even years after the smoke clears.

Now, with the number of forest fires on the rise in the western U.S., that phenomenon is increasingly influencing the region’s water supply — and has increased the risk for flooding and landslides — according to a UCLA-led study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers examined streamflow — a measure of water volume over time in rivers and streams — and climate data for 179 river basins. (Basins are areas of land where precipitation collects and drains into a common outlet.) All of the areas were located in the western U.S., and all had been affected by forest fires between 1984 and 2020.

Using a mathematical model they developed, the scientists discovered that streamflow in the years after a fire tended to be higher than scientists would expect based solely on climate conditions, and that larger fires tended to be followed by larger increases in streamflow.

In basins where over 20% of the forest had burned, streamflow was 30% greater than expected based on climate conditions, on average, for an average of six years.

Park Williams, a UCLA associate professor of geography and the study’s lead author, said forest fires enhance streamflow because they burn away vegetation that would otherwise draw water from soil and block precipitation before it ever reached the soil. Intense forest fires can also “cook” soils, making them temporarily water repellent.

From 1984 through 2020, the amount of forested area burned each year in the West increased elevenfold, and that trend is expected to continue or even accelerate due to climate change.

“As a result, we’re starting to see sequences of years when large portions of forest are burned across some very important hydrological basins such as those in California’s Sierra Nevada,” Williams said.

The study’s findings suggest that wildfires will soon become yet another important consideration for those in charge of the supply and distribution of water resources. Each year, the region’s water managers must carefully calculate how much water will be available and determine how to conserve and allocate it.

In one sense, the increase in streamflow from forest fires may be beneficial, Williams said.

“This could come as good news to dry cities like Los Angeles, because it could actually enhance water availability,” Williams said.

But other outcomes could be troubling. For example, in the coming decades, too much water could overwhelm reservoirs and other infrastructure, and could increase the risk for catastrophic flooding and landslides in and around burn areas.

To adapt to increasing flood risks, Williams said, water managers in California may have to lower the water levels in reservoirs in the fall and winter to make room for excess water from major rainfall and snowstorms. Such a strategy could avoid disastrous flooding in some cases, but it could also put communities at risk for having too little water during the state’s increasingly hot, dry summers.

Water after a forest fire also tends to be heavily polluted, carrying mud, debris and large sediment loads. So even if the quantity of available water increases after a large fire, it’s likely that water quality will worsen.

Williams said he hopes the findings help water managers and climate scientists make better predictions about water availability and flood risk.

“Water is a really heavy and destructive thing,” Williams said. “It’s great when it comes to us in the expected amount. It is catastrophic when it shows up unexpectedly.”

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.

Courtesy of Justin DunnavantPhoto by Susan Urmy

Archaeologist Justin Dunnavant’s research in the spotlight

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Courtesy of Justin Dunnavant

Justin Dunnavant at Garland for Academic Pathways Program and myVU. Photo by Susan Urmy

UCLA archaeologist and assistant professor of anthropology Justin Dunnavant is working toward a more just and equitable future — and the scientific community is celebrating his efforts. National Geographic magazine has spotlighted his work to uncover shipwrecks from the global slave trade, and Dunnavant has participated in a special season of the SAPIENS podcast, featuring narratives and research by Black and Indigenous archaeologists.

“Part of the reason I got into this field was that I saw the potential for archaeology to really shed light on issues faced by marginalized communities without formally recorded histories,” Dunnavant told the UCLA College of Letters and Science last fall. “Archaeology provides us with another way to explore questions about history and heritage, and the more people we have coming in from diverse backgrounds, the more it leads us to more innovative questions, interpretations and methods.”

Dunnavant co-founded the Society of Black Archaeologists and has been named a National Geographic Explorer, a title the organization bestows on “exceptional individuals in their fields who receive funding and support from the Society to illuminate and protect our world through their work in science, exploration, education, and storytelling.”

You can explore Dunnavant’s work in the March 2022 issue of National Geographic, read his profile in the magazine, and listen to his insights (starting at 8:45) on the SAPIENS podcast. National Geographic will also release a podcast series about his work, and he will appear in an upcoming episode of the Science Channel and Discovery+ series “Underground Railroad: The Secret History.” Some content may require registration or a subscription.

Image of parched land in NevadaFamartin/Wikimedia Commons

Megadrought in southwestern North America is region’s driest in at least 1,200 years

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Image of parched land in Nevada

Parched land in Nevada. A UCLA-led research team studied centuries of megadroughts in the region spanning southern Montana to northern Mexico and the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains. Photo credit: Famartin/Wikimedia Commons

Climate change is a significant factor, UCLA-led research finds

By Anna Novoselov

The drought that has enveloped southwestern North America for the past 22 years is the region’s driest “megadrought” — defined as a drought lasting two decades or longer — since at least the year 800, according to a new UCLA-led study in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Thanks to the region’s high temperatures and low precipitation levels from summer 2020 through summer 2021, the current drought has exceeded the severity of a late-1500s megadrought that previously had been identified as the driest such drought in the 1,200 years that the scientists studied.

UCLA geographer Park Williams, the study’s lead author, said with dry conditions likely to persist, it would take multiple wet years to remediate their effects.

“It’s extremely unlikely that this drought can be ended in one wet year,” he said.

The researchers calculated the intensity of droughts by analyzing tree ring patterns, which provide insights about soil moisture levels each year over long timespans. (They also confirmed their measurements by checking findings against historical climate data.) Periods of severe drought were marked by high degrees of “soil moisture deficit,” a metric that describes how little moisture the soil contains compared to its normal saturation.

Since 2000, the average soil moisture deficit was twice as severe as any drought of the 1900s — and greater than it was during even the driest parts of the most severe megadroughts of the past 12 centuries.

Studying the area from southern Montana to northern Mexico, and from the Pacific Ocean to the Rocky Mountains, researchers discovered that megadroughts occurred repeatedly in the region from 800 to 1600. Williams said the finding suggests that dramatic shifts in dryness and water availability happened in the Southwest prior to the effects of human-caused climate change becoming apparent in the 20th century.

Existing climate models have shown that the current drought would have been dry even without climate change, but not to the same extent. Human-caused climate change is responsible for about 42% of the soil moisture deficit since 2000, the paper found.

One of the primary reasons climate change is causing more severe droughts is that warmer temperatures are increasing evaporation, which dries out soil and vegetation. From 2000 to 2021, temperatures in the region were 0.91 degrees Celsius (about 1.64 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the average from 1950 to 1999.

“Without climate change, the past 22 years would have probably still been the driest period in 300 years,” Williams said. “But it wouldn’t be holding a candle to the megadroughts of the 1500s, 1200s or 1100s.”

As of Feb. 10, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 95% of the Western U.S. was experiencing drought conditions. And in summer 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, two of the largest reservoirs in North America — Lake Mead and Lake Powell, both on the Colorado River — reached their lowest recorded levels.

Regulators have continued to implement water conservation measures in response to water shortages caused by the drought. In August, for example, federal officials cut water allocations to several southwestern states in response to low water levels in the Colorado River. And in October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency and asked Californians to voluntarily decrease their water usage by 15%.

Williams said initiatives like those will help in the short term, but water conservation efforts that extend beyond times of drought will be needed to help ensure people have the water they need as climate change continues to intensify drought conditions.

The study was a collaboration among researchers from UCLA, NASA and the Columbia Climate School.

This article originally appeared in the UCLA Newsroom. For more news and updates from the UCLA College, visit college.ucla.edu.