Evelyn McDonnell, professor of journalism in the LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts, has been appointed the inaugural faculty director of Media Arts & A Just Society (MAJS), effective January 2024.
McDonnell, an expert on music, gender, and politics, will develop and implement a range of media studies initiatives to advance MAJS as a hub for impact on and beyond the bluff through interdisciplinary connections that facilitate project-based learning, research, and creative works, and team teaching opportunities.
Envisioned by the faculty and deans of BCLA, the LMU College of Communication and Fine Arts, and the LMU School of Film and Television, MAJS builds upon LMU’s strategic goal of establishing a distinctive academic specialization in interdisciplinary and integrative thinking and supports LMU faculty and students in moving this goal forward. Though MAJS has developed out of BCLA, CFA, and SFTV, it recognizes the scholarly and creative interests in media that faculty across LMU share and seeks to engage all the colleges and schools in its work and programming.
MAJS also aims to equip LMU students with media literacy, storytelling, and multi-media production skills required for civic discourse and democracy. In a social context of partisan division and disparities of experience, massive expansion of content and corresponding audience fragmentation, declining trust in news, and emerging technologies that undermine our ability to identify truth from fiction, MAJS hopes to become a beacon for thought leadership and to host vital conversations across academy and industry around these critical issues.
“We live in a time of crisis for civic discourse. Systems that were supposed to bring communities together have been weaponized to tear them apart. LMU scholars are already engaged in the struggle for peace, equity, and justice in multiple ways. As director of MAJS, I look forward to bringing together faculty from multiple disciplines to study and create ethical and just journalistic, media, and artistic practices, that will in turn, benefit students and the community,” said McDonnell.
Through a rigorous and deliberative process, McDonnell was selected from a highly competitive pool of LMU applicants. She is an ideal director for this work, having played integral roles as one of a handful of faculty on the ground level of the MAJS project, and in expanding LMU’s journalism program, which became a major in 2018 and a department in 2022. McDonnell is currently on tour for her latest book, “The World According to Joan Didion,” one of the first books to be published about the revered writer after she died in 2021. She is the author or co-editor of six other books and the series editor for “Music Matters,” a collection of short books about musicians published by University of Texas Press. A longtime journalist, she has been a pop culture writer at The Miami Herald and a senior editor at The Village Voice. Her writing on music, poetry, theater, and culture has appeared in publications and anthologies, including the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The Guardian, Interview, and Option.
“This is a continuation of the work I have done at LMU, helping to build the Journalism Department, Project Citizen, film festivals, interdisciplinary hires, and MAJS itself. I’m humbled and grateful to be given the opportunity to direct this program and excited to continue to work with colleagues to make a vital new thought and praxis center,” said McDonnell.
Over $2M has been raised in the form of outright gifts and pledges, gifts-in-kind (production equipment), and endowments to support MAJS initiatives. McDonnell looks forward to working closely with faculty, staff, and students and will create a faculty/staff advisory group to manage the distribution of annual funds to support faculty proposals. She will also continue working closely with the BCLA, CFA, and SFTV deans, as well as MAJS affiliate faculty like Carol Costello, on strategic planning and fundraising efforts.
The next call for proposals will go out in late January for summer 2024 projects.
