Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows

Current Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows

2021-2023 Fellows

Amalia Contreras

Amalia Contreras

Major: History

Project: No Place like Home: An Insight into the Resilience of Mexican Women affected by Unconstitutional Deportations of the 1930s

Mentor: Dr. Margie Brown-Coronel (History)

 

Pauli Cuellar Aguilar

Pauli Cuellar Aguilar

Major: Linguistics

Project: Queerly said: a sociolinguistic analysis of cisheteronormative ideologies in Japanese popular media

Mentor: Dr. Satoko Kakihara (Japanese)

 

C.J. Quion

C. J. Quion

Major: History

Project: Trouble in the Tropics: An Exploration of the Overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893

Mentor: Dr. Mike Perez (Sociology)

2020-2022 Fellows

Thai Butterfield.

Thai Butterfield

Major: Religious Studies

Project:  The Bible and Judeo-Christian Writings on Homoeroticism: Deconstructing Gender Complementarity and Its Hermeneutical Implications toward Same-Sex Relationships

Mentor: Dr. Janet Bregar (Religious Studies)

 

Ayza Martinez.

Ayza Martinez

Major: American Studies

Project: America’s False Narrative of Gender Equality: Dissection of Misogyny within Women’s Policy

Mentor: Dr. Pamela Fiber-Ostrow (Politics, Administration and Justice)

 

Starlina Sanchez.

Starlina Sanchez

Major: Sociology

Project: Beyond Incarceration: Exploring the Reentry of Latinx Women in California

Mentor: Dr. Tala Khanmalek (Women and Gender Studies)

 

Gabriel Taggard.

Gabriel Taggard

Majors: English

Project: Applying Queer Theory to Shakespeare’s Irony

Mentor: Dr. David Kelman and Dr. Nicole Seymour (English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics)

2019-2021 Fellows

Monique Garcia.

Monique Garcia

Major: History

Minor: Chicana and Chicano Studies

Project: The Cry for Equality: Young Chicanas/os’ Participation in the Brown Berets Organization and Their Community Action against Racial, Social, and Gender Disparities

Mentor: Dr. Margie Brown-Coronel (History)

 

Andres Munoz-Ramirez.

Andres Munoz-Ramirez

Major: History

Project: From the Fields to the Printing Press: Los Angeles Times News Coverage of Mexican Laborers in the 1950s

Mentor: Dr. Stephen Neufeld (History)

 

Mia Powell.

Mia Powell

Major: Sociology

Project: The Music of a Social Movement: Analyzing the Sociopolitical Impact of 1990s Rap in Response to Police-Civilian Tensions in Los Angeles

Mentor: Dr. Christina Chin (Sociology)

 

Isaiah Thompson.

Isaiah Thompson

Majors: Religious Studies, History

Project: Lessons from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Finkenwalde Seminary (1935-1937): A Rejection of Racism in Nazi Germany

Mentor: Dr. Jochen Burgtorf (History)

2018-2020 Fellows

Daniella Camacho.

Daniella Camacho

Major: American Studies

Minor: History

Project: Afro Asian Solidarity in Long Beach Activist Spaces

Mentor: Dr. Susie Woo (American Studies)

 

Danielle Narciso

Danielle Narciso

Major: Linguistics

Project: Analyzing BTS [Bangtan Sonyeondan]’s Use of Code-Switching in Korean-Pop-Musical Writing and Its Role as Sociopolitical Conversation

Mentor: Dr. Franz Mueller (English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics)

 

Vivian Ngo.

Vivian Ngo

Major: Comparative Literature

Project: Orientalism in the Hispanosphere: Toward a Right-of-Blood-Complex Theory

Mentor: Dr. Irena Praitis (English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics)

 

Ileana Perez.

Ileana Perez

Major: Spanish

Project: Differences in Language Acquisition Among L2 [Second-Language] and HL [Heritage-Language] Learners in Medical Spanish

Mentor: Dr. André Zampaulo (Modern Languages and Literatures)