Other Programs
MAJS Faculty Mixer: The MAJS Faculty Mixer took place on January 31st from 12:00 PM to 2:30 PM at the Playa Vista Campus. The event provided an opportunity for faculty to connect, share ideas, and build community in an engaging and collaborative environment.
Echoing Cultures, Fall 2024: In this engaging talk, DJ, scholar, and writer Lynnée Denise presented a performative lecture and listening session exploring gender, sexuality, race, technology, and musical cross-pollination in the 1980s through a Diasporic lens. Drawing on critical songs, album covers, visual culture, and select photographs from Janette Beckman's exhibition Rebels at FOAM in Amsterdam, Denise illustrated her concept of a "sound system of relations." This framework amplified the overlapping political and musical ideas that emerged through the interplay of punk culture, hip-hop, and disco.
Bad Faith Screening and Q&A, Fall 2024: Bad Faith is a feature-length documentary that investigates the dangerous rise of Christian Nationalism in the United States. Blending archival chronicles with exposé-style revelations, the film uncovers the secretive political machinery working to undermine American democracy in favor of an authoritarian agenda.
MAJS hosted a screening of the film followed by an engaging Q&A session to delve deeper into its themes and implications.
Oliver Radclyffe Discussion, Fall 2024: Oliver Radclyffe, author of Frighten the Horses, spoke about writing first-person narratives as a tool for social change. Praised by Kate Bornstein as “the finest literary telling of the experience of gender transition that I've ever read,” the memoir is published by Roxane Gay Books.
Catholicism: Healing a Divided Church, March 2023: Catholics have brought divisions born in the political arena into the pews. They are deeply divided over LGBTQ inclusion, abortion, divorce, climate change, clerical sexual abuse, and Latin masses. How do we heal our fractured Church?
Former CNN anchor Carol Costello moderated a discussion featuring the new CEO and publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, Joe Ferullo; Christopher White, Vatican correspondent for NCR; Michael Sean Winters, author of “Left at the Altar: How Democrats Lost the Catholics and How Catholics Can Save the Democrats"; Nancy Pineda-Madrid, Chair of Catholic Theology, LMU and VP of the Catholic Theological Society of America; and Gabrielle Poma, M.A. Pastoral Theology ’24 (LMU).
Articulating Science, Fall 2022: MAJS embarked on a pilot project in cooperation with the School of Science and Engineering. Journalism and science/engineering professors taught a group of 30 science/engineering students about unbiased, trustworthy storytelling surrounding their research. The goal was to demonstrate how politics can poison scientific messaging to the detriment of the public health.
Sponsored Events
Mickey Huff, president of the Media Freedom Foundation, March 2023: “United States of Distraction: The Importance of a Free Press in an Era of Misinformation and Censorship”
An Evening with Media Scholar Nolan Higdon, November 2022: Dr. Higdon is the author of The Podcaster’s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasting in the Era of Capitalism (CFA, Journalism)
CMST RPA Event: Careers, Diversities and PR/Marketing, April 2022: Industry executives talked diversity with communication studies' students. The event was made into a podcast.