With funds from the CLACS Endowment, the Hunter-Muelder Endowment, and CLACS’ Title VI Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Grant from the US Department of Education, CLACS has awarded 16 fellowships to students to pursue education abroad, language study, and field research in Latin America and the Caribbean during summer 2023.
CLACS Undergraduate Endowment Scholarship awardees:
Natalie Harmon (Comparative Cultures and Politics/Spanish), Michelle Sekoni (Comparative Cultures and Politics); and Kimberly (Ting) Westra (Social Relations and Policy/Comparative Cultures and Politics), received scholarships to study abroad in MSU’s education abroad program in Politics, Culture, and Society in Salvador, Brazil
Tyler Lindquist (Spanish/Arabic) received funding to cover travel to Sao Paulo, Brazil to study intensive Portuguese, while Diana Cisneros (Linguistics) was awarded funding for travel to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala to study K'iche'.
Graduate Summer Research Fellowship recipients for 2023:
Kiana Gonzalez-Cedeno (English) for Entre llantos: Literary and Embodied Representations of Lamentations in Puerto Rican and Boricua Popular Culture. Kiana’s research will focus on Bomba in Puerto Rico.
Mayra Flores Mejia (Hispanic Cultural Studies) for Entre lo sagrado y lo profano: mediació, censura y género. Edición critica de casos de hechicería indigena de los Andes centrales, sigo XVII. Mayra will conduct archival research in Cusco, Peru.
Estela Maria Gonçalves de Souza (History) for Black Masculinities and Agency: a closer look at racialized-gendered relations in the Brazilian Post-Emancipated Society 1890-1910. Estela's research will take place in the archives and museums in Minas Gerais.
Marialina Côgo Antolini (Media and Information Studies) for Girls Activists and media usage in low-income communities in Brazil. Marialina's research seeks to understand how different types of media shape the daily lives of girl activists in low-income communities in Brazil.
Jess Reed (Curriculum, Instruction and Teacher Education) for Black Girl, Infinite: Pursuing Generative Relationships Across Diasporic Geographies. Jess plans to explore localized and diasporic ways of knowing and remembering Blackness through art and other practices, focusing on perspectives and possibilities for Blackness and Black girlhood in São Paulo and Salvador de Bahia, Brazil.
Ana Patricia Ponce Castañeda (Hispanic Cultural Studies) for Female Representation Throughout the History of Mexican Horror Cinema. Ana's research aims to produce a state-of-the-art project on women's representation in Mexican horror cinema—as heroines, victims or monsters.
CLACS Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) Fellowship Recipients for language study, summer 2023:
Erik Blake-Horein (Computer Science), Nick Oliveira (Human Biology/Psychology), and Tyler Lindquist (Spanish/Arabic) won FLAS fellowships that cover tuition, fees, and subsistence costs for Tulane University’s Summer Intensive Portuguese Program in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Diana Cisneros (Linguistics) was awarded a FLAS fellowship for tuition, fees, and subsistence to pursue Tulane University’s Summer Intensive K'iche' program in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.
Jessica Reed (Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education) was awarded a FLAS fellowship to study intensive Portuguese in Brazil.
Congratulations to all of the awardees! CLACS is delighted to support your study of Latin America and the Caribbean and the languages of the region!