Visiting Scholars and Artists | El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies

2016-17

Yazmin Garcia Trejo

Yazmin Garcia Trejo is a Gratis Research Scholar who is conducting research on race, politics and secularism. Yazmin received her Ph.D. in Political Science from UConn in 2014. She is a Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Language and Cross-Cultural Research Group, Center for Survey Measurement, U.S. Census Bureau.

Shannon Gleason

Shannon Gleason is a Post-doctoral Fellow who received her Ph.D.from Washington State University in May 2016. Her research interests are women and girls of color in STEM; STEM education policy; and enthnography. She is a 2016-17 recipient of the White House Women and Girls Initiative funded through UConn.

Karmele Mendoza Perez

Karmele Mendoza Perez is a Gratis Research Scholar who is conducting research in psychology, immigration and Latin American and Iberian Studies, specifically a comparison between your field of study and Latino children who migrate alone to the U.S. Karmele received her Master’s from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She will be conducting her research at UConn during the Fall 2016 semester.

Juhem Navarro-Rivera

Juhem Navarro-Rivera is a Gratis Research Scholar who is conducting research on the role of racial and gender diversity on the political preferences of non-religious Americans, with a particular focus on non-religious Latinos. Juhem received his Ph.D. in Political Science from UConn in Spring 2015. He is a Senior Policy Analyst on democracy issues at Demos.

2015-16

Alberto D. Martinez Castillo

Alberto D. Martinez Castillo is a Professor of Economics at Universidad Simón Bolívar in Venezuela. He will be visiting UConn during the first six months of 2016 to conduct research comparing Merscosur and the Pacific Alliance and exploring their possible future performance and success to promote economic development. His research fields are economic interation, public policy, and economic development.

Juhem Navarro-Rivera

Ramsey Tracy

Ramsey Tracy is a Gratis Research Scholar researching the Mayan region of Mexico. She received her Ph.D. from Tulane University in 2009 in Spanish Language and Literatures. She has taught at Trinity college, Western Oregon University, and North Carolina Statae University. She is currently working on the publication From the Heart: Rap Music, Transculturation and Language Revitalizaiton in the Zona Maya for The Mayan Studies Journal/Revista de Estudios Mayas, Columbus: Ohio State University.

2014-15

Joseph P. Feldman

Joseph Feldman is a Gratis Research Scholar who is examining the memorialization of recent political violence in Peru. He is currently working on his Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Florida. His dissertation is titled “Memory Travels: Making a War Museum in Post-TRC Peru.” His research interests are political anthropology, museums and public culture, nationalism and the state, globalization, violence, human rights, transitional justice, gender, Peru, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ramsey Tracy

2013-14

Patrick “Pato” Hebert

Patrick “Pato” Hebert is an intermedia artist, educator and cultural worker based in Los Angeles and New York. His work explores the aesthetics, ethics and poetics of interconnectedness. The practice works across a range of media including photography, installation, sculpture, language, light, temporality and graphic design.Progressive praxis, spatial dynamics and the spirit of social topographies are of particular interest. Hebert was awarded a 2010 Mid-Career Fellowship for Visual Artists from the California Community Foundation. In 2008 he received the Excellence in Photographic Teaching Award from Center in Santa Fe, NM. His work has also been supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Creative Work Fund and the Durfee Foundation.He currently teaches as an Associate Arts Professor in the Art and Public Policy Department at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. He also serves as the Senior Education Associate with the Global Forum on MSM & HIV, helping to develop innovative approaches to HIV prevention and advocacy. You can find out more about his work by clicking here.

Fernando Marroquin

Fernando Marroquin is a Gratis Research Scholar researching the migration of Guatemalan medical professionals to the United States and the voting habits of CT Latina/os.

Mr. Marroquin serves as Executive Assistant to Council Joe Cruz, Jr., City of Hartford Court of Common Council. He has served as Deputy Chief of Staff and Communications Director for the City of New Britain and been a Community Organizer and Field Representative with Grassroots Strategies of Hartford. Prior to coming to Connecticut, he was a General Surgery Resident and General Practice Physician in Guatemala.

Mr. Marroquin is pursuing a Ph.D. in Sociology and Political Science from Pontifical University of Salamanca, Spain. He received his Master of Science in General Surgery from University of Saint Charles of Guatemala in 2009.

2012-13

Falguni Sheth

Falguni Sheth is an associate professor of philosophy and political theory at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA. She has published articles in continental and political philosophy, philosophy of race, subaltern studies, critical race theory, feminist theory, legal theory, and cultural and ethnic studies. Her books are Race, Liberalism, and Economics, coedited with David Colander and Robert E. Prasch (University of Michigan Press, 2004) and Toward a Political Philosophy of Race (SUNY Press, 2009). Her current research is in several areas: hybrid subjectivity, gender, and race; methodologies of critical race theory; Foucault’s biopolitics in the context of legal subjectivity; the emergence and legal construction of Punjabi-Mexicans at the turn of the twentieth century; and the metaphysics of misrecognition. Sheth is an organizer of the California Roundtable for Philosophy and Race. She also writes a blog on legal, political, and cultural topics.

Tanya Saunders

Tanya Saunders is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Her research examines the ways in which Black artists, intellectuals and activists throughout Latin America and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, employ cultural aesthetics, such as Hip Hop and contemporary art, to work for social change locally, nationally and transnationally. She is currently completing a book about the Underground Hip Hop Movement in Cuba and on a handful of articles that address the themes of social change, artistic movements and transnational Black identity.

Dr. Saunders has published articles based on this research in the journals: SOULS: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society, Black Women Gender and Families, Feminist Media Studies and the Caribbean Review of Gender Studies. She is also a 2011-2012 Fulbright Scholar Award recipient for Brazil, where she will expand the regional focus of her work.

Her research interests are in the areas of: Sociology of Culture, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, African Diaspora Studies, Political Sociology, Social Identity and Inequality (Race, Gender and Sexuality), Sociology of Music, Sociology of Art.

Favianna Rodriguez Giannoni

Favianna Rodriguez is a celebrated printmaker and digital artist based in Oakland, California. Using high-contrast colors and vivid figures, her composites reflect literal and imaginative migration, global community, and interdependence. Whether her subjects are immigrant day laborers in the U.S., mothers of disappeared women in Juárez, Mexico, or her own abstract self portraits, Rodriguez brings new audiences into the art world by refocusing the cultural lens. Through her work we witness the changing U.S. metropolis and a new diaspora in the arts.

Hailed as “visionary” and “ubiquitous,” Rodriguez is renown for her vibrant posters dealing with issues such as war, immigration, globalization, and social movements. By creating lasting popular symbols – where each work is the multiplicand and its location the multiplier – her work interposes private and public space, as the art viewer becomes the participant carrying art beyond the borders of the museum.

Rodriguez has lectured widely on the use of art in civic engagement and the work of artists who, like herself, are bridging the community and museum, the local and international. Rodriguez’s has worked closely with artists in Mexico, Europe, and Japan, and her works appear in collections at Bellas Artes (Mexico City), The Glasgow Print Studio (Glasgow, Scotland), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles).

Rodriguez has exhibited at Museo del Barrio (New York); de Young Museum (San Francisco); Mexican Fine Arts Center (Chicago); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco); Sol Gallery (Providence, RI); Huntington Museum and Galería Sin Fronteras (Austin, TX); and internationally at the House of Love & Dissent (Rome), Parco Museum (Tokyo), as well as in England, Belgium, and Mexico. She was a 2005 artist-in-residence at San Francisco’s prestigious de Young Museum, a 2007-2008 artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute (Berkeley, CA), and received a 2006 Sea Change Residency from the Gaea Foundation (Provincetown, MA). Rodriguez is recipient of a 2005 award from the Center for the Study of Political Graphics.

As a teacher, Rodriguez has conducted workshops and presentations at Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles), El Faro de Oriente (Mexico), de Young Museum (San Francisco), the Habana Hip Hop Festival (Habana, Cuba), as well as Williams College and The Commonwealth Club. In 2003, she co-founded the Taller Tupac Amaru printing studio to foster resurgence in the screenprinting medium. She is co-founder of the EastSide Arts Alliance (ESAA) and Visual Element, both programs dedicated to training young artists in the tradition of muralism. She is additionally co-founder and president of Tumis Inc., a bilingual design studio helping to integrate art with emerging technologies.

Rodriguez is co-editor of Reproduce and Revolt! with internationally renowned stencil artist and art critic Josh MacPhee (Soft Skull Press, 2008). An unprecedented contribution to the Creative Commons, the 200-page book contains more than 600 bold, high-quality black and white illustrations for royalty-free creative use. Her artwork also appears in The Design of Dissent (Rockport Publishers, 2006), Peace Signs: The Anti-War Movement Illustrated (Edition Olms, 2004), and The Triumph of Our Communities: Four Decades of Mexican Art (Bilingual Review Press, 2005).