Media, Arts, & a Just Society (MAJS) endeavors to bring faculty and students from all disciplines together to create and critically interrogate media practices and texts, and to cultivate and convene thought leaders committed to ethical reporting, production, and storytelling practices. MAJS Summer Fellowships are funded by a generous donation from a member of LMU’s Board of Trustees to support interdisciplinary course development, research, or creative projects that address any issue or topic surrounding media industries, texts, contexts, and ethical challenges.
This year, the MAJS initiative awarded more than $50,000 to six LMU faculty members from across multiple colleges to pursue interdisciplinary creative and research projects during the summer of 2025. This is the third year in a row LMU has awarded these fellowships.
“MAJS projects need to be engaged with questioning, contributing to, and pushing the many media industries that are based in Los Angeles, challenging them to do better, more inclusive, and ethically engaged storytelling in and of our communities.” — MAJS faculty director Evelyn McDonnell.
The courses and creative and research projects outlined below exemplify the spirit of interdisciplinary collaboration that is central to the mission of MAJS. Proposed projects explore a wide range of contemporary topics, such as the rise of Latin music, detecting misinformation trends on social networks, the role of obituaries in the American relationship with death, and more.
All projects demonstrate the ongoing need to equip students with critical media literacy, empower them to create in service of justice, and cultivate global citizens who are actively invested in their communities.
These projects were selected by MAJS faculty director Evelyn McDonnell in consultation with Richard Fox, dean of the Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts.
Please join us in congratulating this year’s grant recipients and learning more about their projects:
“LMU Greek Cinema Week Podcast”
- Katerina Zacharia, professor of Classics and Archaeology, LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
The grant will support the production and promotion of the “LMU Greek Cinema Week Podcast,” which provides listeners with a contemporary and relevant foray into representations of Greece, sharing nuanced perspectives that are increasingly needed in a shifting media landscape. Students enrolled in Representations of Greece: Ancient and Modern (CLAR 4270) in spring 2026 will listen to a selection of episodes from the “LMU Greek Cinema Week Podcast” and will participate in the podcast as student reviewers — a way for them to be exposed to contemporary Greek filmmakers and develop their critical voice within visual culture and ethnicity studies.
“From the Fields to the Garden: A Documentary about Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran”
- Rudy Mondragón, assistant professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies, LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
“From the Fields to the Garden” is a two-part project: the first is a 90-minute feature length documentary; the second is an oral history manuscript to be published with the Journal of Sport History. The project centers the life and career of Jacob “Stitch” Duran, who stands as one of the most renowned cutmen (a professional who manages cuts, bruises, and swelling on fighters in contact sports) in the history of both boxing and mixed martial arts, known for managing the physical tolls of combat on some of the most legendary fighters. Both projects document his journey from the agricultural fields of California’s San Joaquin Valley to his renowned status as one of the most distinguished cutmen in combat sports history.
“The Death of the Obituary”
- Lauren Smart, clinical assistant professor of Journalism, LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
This project will explore the tradition and history of obituary writing with an emphasis on news media, attempting to capture what is lost when communities don’t mark and honor the death of the people that comprise them. The project is built around the humanistic tendency to tell our own stories and share the stories of the people we love, taking the shape of a multi-episode podcast that explores the obituary’s relationship with death in American culture. It will look at the process of obituary writing, the desire to be remembered, the significance of remembering your loved ones, the need for a historical record, the decline in obituary writing, what has replaced it, and what the automated future has in store for the death industry.
“The New Latin Boom: Understanding the Current Rise of Latin Music”
- Vanessa Díaz, associate professor of Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies, LMU Bellarmine College of Liberal Arts
This grant funds two related projects about the history of Latin music: the development of a digital humanities online syllabus project, and the development of a short video series designed for social media called “Learning Latin Music.” “The New Latin Boom: A Latino History in Sound” will examine the evolution of Latin music over the last quarter-century and the current global dominance of Spanish-language music. The MAJS fellowship will provide the funding for media development and production costs of the website and videos. The Latin music syllabus will serve as a basis from which to develop a Latin Music class for LMU, filling a significant gap in the current Chicano/a and Latino/a Studies curriculum.
“Happy Sharing: Cultivating Curiosity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”
- Natalie Ngai, assistant professor of Media Studies, LMU College of Communication & Fine Arts
With the popularization of artificial intelligence on digital platforms, humans are getting more opportunities to collaborate with automated machines to generate ideas. This research project investigates how human-machine collaboration on digital media, including generative AI, animates people’s desire for a particular type of information through the promise of “joyful sharing.” Investigating the intersection of culture, technology, and business surrounding artificial intelligence, this project will produce scholarly articles that significantly advance the scholarship in digital and information studies and beyond; it will also present important practical implications to an interdisciplinary audience, especially those interested in media production, creative writing, and arts and humanities education.
“Detecting Misinformation Trends on Social Networks Using AI and Graph Algorithms”
- Junyuan Lin, assistant professor of Mathematics, Statistics, and Data Science, LMU Seaver College of Science and Engineering
Misinformation on social networks undermines public knowledge and trust, while false narratives can quickly gain traction on online platforms, often outpacing fact-checking efforts. Studies show human accuracy at detecting deception is only marginally above chance, highlighting the need for improved detection methods. This project will develop social network pattern recognition techniques to track, analyze, and predict misinformation trends across TikTok, Reddit, and podcasts. Recent work suggests most fake news detection focuses on content, while propagation patterns in networks are underutilized. This project addresses this gap by examining how misinformation spreads through our most popular online interaction platforms, using a pattern-driven approach.
