Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellows
2021-2023 Fellows
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
Major: Linguistics
Project: Queerly said: a sociolinguistic analysis of cisheteronormative ideologies in Japanese popular media
Mentor: Dr. Satoko Kakihara (Japanese)
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
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
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
Major: Sociology
Project: Beyond Incarceration: Exploring the Reentry of Latinx Women in California
Mentor: Dr. Tala Khanmalek (Women and Gender Studies)
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
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
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
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
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
Major: American Studies
Minor: History
Project: Afro Asian Solidarity in Long Beach Activist Spaces
Mentor: Dr. Susie Woo (American Studies)
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
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
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)
