Korina Moriarty is a fourth-year at UCLA majoring in Musicology and Gender Studies. Their research interests tend to center on the relationships of identity, power, and hierarchy within different forms of media and art, particularly music. They also enjoy reading about performance history and theory. A few of their favorite authors right now are Suzanne Cusick, Sara Ahmed, and Fatima Mernissi. Lately, they’ve been enjoying a lot of alternative, indie-rock, and folk-rock music, like Lucy Dacus, Mitski, Mother Mother, and Kate Nash. In their free time, they love making extravagant homemade dinners with their roommates to enjoy while psychoanalyzing trashy reality television.

Liv Slaby is graduating with a B.A. in Musicology and a minor in Theatre. She has written and directed several one-act plays with HOOLIGAN Theatre Company, and she hopes to pursue an MFA in theatre directing. Her research interests include environmental humanities, play, queer theory, sound and voice studies, posthumanism, and fan studies. At UCLA, Liv is the President of Active Listening Club, the Managing Editor of MUSE (the undergraduate research journal for music scholarship), the Coordinator of the U.C. Animal Studies Initiative, the Education Coordinator of the U.C. Stop the Slaughter Campaign, the Co-President of Veg Bruins, and a member of Club Gymnastics. She is the Secretary of the Alpert School of Music’s inaugural Undergraduate Student Advisory Board. Liv’s project is supported by the Undergraduate Research Center for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; she is a 2020-2021 Gandy Undergraduate Research Scholar. After graduation, she will develop her vegan home baking business. She plans to create work at the intersections of art, scholarship, and activism.

Yelena Malkhasyan is a fourth-year student double majoring in Musicology and Neuroscience at UCLA. Her research interests include studying how music affects cognition and brain plasticity, and how music therapy can be used to optimize individuals’ cognitive, behavioral, and physiological well-being. She has been involved with multiple campus organizations, including Active Listening Club, Neuroscience Undergraduate Society, and MUSE: the UCLA Undergraduate Musicology Journal. Yelena has also performed with the UCLA Symphony Orchestra as a violinist and violist for about 3 years. She likes to listen to all genres of music since she believes that all music can be therapeutic. Yelena hopes to pursue a career as a physician who incorporates music therapy into her everyday practice.

Allison Scott has spent the last four years at UCLA seeking ways to uplift Black voices in the music industry. The culmination of her academic interests was heavily influenced by the African American studies courses taken during her undergraduate years. She learned that her voice as a woman of color was incredibly valuable as a scholar. In addition to her love for music, dance has been her favorite pastime since high school. During her first three years, she spent countless hours in parking lot four practicing with the competitive hip-hop teams NSU Modern and Lemonade. In her senior year, Allison became a Writing Editor at Nommo Newsmagazine because she wanted to document her presence within one of the institution’s least admitted racial groups while also curating a safe space for other Black Bruins to share their stories. Retaining her passion for independent artists of color, she interned as a music journalist for Sparky magazine. Allison plans to pursue a career in journalism to promote upcoming artists, educate on issues of anti-Blackness within the music industry, and create an ethical, sustainable line of original custom-painted denim.

J.W. Clark is a fourth-year transfer student from Fairfax, Virginia, majoring in musicology and minoring in philosophy. They are the Editor-in-Chief of MUSE, UCLA’s undergraduate research journal for music scholarship, the Vice President of Active Listening Club, and a member of the Alpert School of Music’s inaugural Undergraduate Student Advisory Board. Outside of the School of Music, J.W. has been involved with the University of California Animal Studies Initiative, which endeavors to establish formal academic programs and curricula in the subject across UC campuses. J.W.’s research has been supported by the Undergraduate Research Center for Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences; they were a Frances and Arjay Miller Undergraduate Research Fellow in 2020 and are currently a 2020-2021 MacDowell Undergraduate Research Scholar.

After completing their studies at UCLA, J.W. intends to pursue a PhD in musicology with the hope of examining topics at the interstices of sound, voice, and critical animal studies.

Spencer Slayton is an avid record collector, horror film fanatic, and film music enthusiast. Currently a senior in the Music History and Industry program at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music, he is employing his love and passion for music and film to pursue a career in music supervision. During his final year at UCLA, he interned for the music supervisor Nora Felder at her Picture Music Company who has supervised shows and films such as What We Do in the Shadows, Stranger Things, and the upcoming Netflix horror film trilogy Fear Street. He has written articles published in the UCLA Musicology department’s undergraduate research journal, MUSE. For the Spring 2020 issue, he contributed the piece “Grave-Digging Crate Diggers: Retro Fetishism and Fan Engagement with Horror Scores” which explores the resurgence of popularity of scores to horror films of the 1970s and 1980s and for the Spring 2021 issue, he contributed “You’re Not From Around Here: Queer Country Music”, which discusses the impact of the 1970s country music band Lavender Country on queer acceptance within the genre of country music. When he’s not collecting and listening to film scores or watching horror films, he’s on the quest to find the perfect breakfast burrito.

Gabe Deibel is a young artist, musician, and scholar seeking to explore the depths of his psyche through songwriting and recording. Gabe sings of love and loss, grief and joy, hope and pain. Finding inspiration through the music of Phil Elverum and the poetry of Donald Hall, Gabe has crafted an album of 11 tracks titled All Through the Summer. After the death of his father and the immense devastation the Woolsey Fire wrought on him and his mother, Gabe has created a record seeking to push through the immensity of despair and find every beautiful reason there is to keep living.