CSRC FELLOWS AND VISITING SCHOLARS 2020-21

Alana de Hinojosa, PhD candidate

Alana de Hinojosa is a doctoral candidate in the UCLA Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies and an IUPLR-Mellon Dissertation Fellow at the CSRC. Her dissertation project, “Unruly Terrains of Struggle: The Contested & Unresolved Spaces of the Chamizal Land Dispute,” analyzes the contested and unresolved terrains of the century-long Chamizal Dispute (1864-1964). The Chamizal Dispute was a territorial conflict between the U.S. and Mexico that resulted from a meandering Río Grande that refused to stay “in its place.” For her study, de Hinojosa utilizes archival research, ethnographic fieldwork, oral histories, and arts-based inquiries firmly in the humanities tradition. She argues that her interdisciplinary and multi-modal study ultimately demonstrates “that el Chamizal geographically takes places across layers of subaltern displacement, dispossession, and disempowerment.”
 

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, PhD

Cecilia Fajardo-Hill is a 2020-21 CSRC research scholar. She is an independent curator and art historian based in Southern California and New York. As a 2019-20 CSRC research scholar, Fajardo-Hill developed the checklist for the upcoming touring exhibition Xican-a.o.x. Body (2022).  This year she will focus on the show's accompanying publication. The aim of the catalog is to produce new perspectives and scholarship on Xicanx art, including both established and new voices in the field, as well as document the exhibition. The catalog will be structured by themes relating to the issues explored by artists in the show as well as the broader field of Chicanx art today. Fajardo-Hill is the catalog editor and will additionally contribute an essay.

José A. Muñoz, PhD

José A. Muñoz is the 2020-21 CSRC Institute of American Cultures (IAC) visiting scholar. Muñoz is an associate professor of sociology at California State University, San Bernardino. He has authored journal articles in Social Movement Studies, Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, Sociology Compass, Migration and Development, Migration Letters, Journal of Public Child Welfare, Humanity & Society, and the Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, and has taught courses in qualitative methods, theory, Latino health, Chicano social stratification, migration, and social movements. During his fellowship year, Muñoz will research and write two journal articles on the perspectives of Latino faculty and graduate students in sociology. His research project seeks to understand the experiences of Latinos in academia, examining how first-generation and working-class statuses, mentorship in graduate school, and family support impact Latinos’ presence in the professoriate. This research will include in-depth interviews with Latino faculty and graduate students. The project expands on Muñoz’s research as part of the American Sociological Association’s Task Force on First Generation and Working Class Persons in Sociology.

Rosanna Simons, PhD candidate
 

Rosanna Simons is a doctoral candidate in the the UCLA Cesar E. Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies an IUPLR-Mellon Dissertation Fellow at the CSRC. Her dissertation project, “Choreographed Migrations: Refusing Settler Surveillance, Performing Recognition,” examines contemporary state surveillance against Latinx migrants in the United States and discusses this in relationship to work of queer migrant artists whose performances, sculptures, and videos “conjure pathways to protection, freedom of movement, and joy.” Using visual and sonic analyses as well as qualitative interviews, participant observations, community-engaged performance collaborations, and archival research, Simons interprets the work of six migrant artists who, through their practice, expose the risk of official documentation. The artists are Alma Leiva (Honduras), Beatriz Cortez (El Salvador), José Torres-Tama (Ecuador), Los Jornaleros del Norte (Mexico), Yosimar Reyes (Mexico), and Alan Pelaez Lopez (Mexico).