Departmental Self Review - UCLA Academic Senate

Our undergraduate advisor Dr. Selma Morley (UCLA PhD) is leading a small group ofvolunteers - which includes former UCLA undergraduates and UCLA Extension students ­who for the past two years have been cataloguing archaeological collections from theRainbow Bridge-Monument Valley Expedition (American Southwest) and held by the FowlerMuseum. The collections made it to UCLA via Ralph Beals, Director of the Expedition duringpart of the 1930's. Beals established the UCLA Department of Anthropology and Sociology in1940. They plan to create a DVD, a museum exhibit, and archaeological analyses.3) MEDIA, ENTERTAINMENT, AND AESTHETICSSince the 1970s, Professor Sondra Hale has been carrying research on feminist art in LosAngeles, focusing in particular on the Los Angeles Woman's Building. She has just co-editedand published an e-book entitled From Site to Vision: The Woman's Building in ContemporaryCulture. The book integrates ethnographic fieldwork with archival research on feminist art inthe greater Los Angeles area and nationally.Professor Sherry Ortner is working on the "scene" of the independent film world, in both LosAngeles and NY. She has been interviewing filmmakers, producers, and screenwriters andcarried out participant-observation on the sets of several films-in-production; she has alsoattended several film festivals (including Sundance and the LA Film Festival here in LA) and alarge number of screenings of films after which the filmmaker, producer, or writer, took Q&A.She is currently writing a book based on this project.Building on a growing body of research in the social sciences that fo~ses upon thecommercialization of the self under late capitalism, Ph.D. candidate Sasha David has beenconducting fieldwork at a variety of sites (e.g. a prominent Hollywood talent managementcompany, auditions throughout Hollywood, and television and film sets in Los Angeles)examining the ways in which struggling film and television actors in Los Angeles mustbecome commodified in order to succeed in the Hollywood entertainment industry.Another of our students, Brent Luvaas, did his MA research on the ambivalent aestheticpractices of electroclash (a kind of New Wave revival electronic dance music) performance inLos Angeles. He was particularly interested in performance practices that blur celebration andcritique and complicate any clear-cut distinction between resistance and accommodation. In thearticle he published based on this research (International Journal of Cultural Studies. 9(2): 167­187), he argued that electroclash and similar aesthetic forms constitute a set of tactics for livingthrough the confusions and contradictions of life in a media-saturated, increasingly globalizedlate capitalist economy.Over the last five years, Professor Alessandro Duranti has been documenting the jazz scene inLos Angeles, through participant-observation, interviews, and extensive video recordings ofuniversity classes, public concerts, and "gigs" in small and large venues where young49