CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Two researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have been awarded 2023 American Council of Learned Societies Fellowships.
José de la Garza Valenzuela, a professor of Latina/Latino studies, and Yuridia RamÃrez, a professor of history, are among 60 scholars selected through a multi-stage peer review process from nearly 1,200 applicants, according to an ACLS news release.
The ACLS Fellowship Program supports exceptional scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences that has the potential to make significant contributions within and beyond the recipients’ fields. The fellowship supports scholars for six to 12 months of full-time research and writing.
For the third year, ACLS has awarded the fellowships to early-career, untenured scholars as part of its response to the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to its news release.
The fellowship will support de la Garza Valenzuela’s work on “Queer in a Legal Sense: Brown Citizenship and Other Lawful Fictions,” a study of queer Chicanx narrative that argues that legal texts are lawful fictions that establish enforceable and exclusionary definitions of citizenship not always codified in law.
The book examines queer Chicanx works like John Rechy’s “City of Night,” Arturo Islas’ “The Rain God,” Michael Nava’s “The Death of Friends,” Rigoberto González’s “Crossing Vines” and Jaime Cortez’s “Sexile/Sexilio,” alongside legal texts like the Purple Pamphlet, Boutilier v. INS, Bowers v. Hardwick, green cards, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, and the Matter of Toboso-Alfonso.
The book challenges the fictions that hold together the lawful narratives against which queer, migrant and Chicanx communities are measured, to make evident the legal experiences of intra- and international queer migrants at the peripheries of citizenship.
RamÃrez will use her fellowship to write “Indigeneity on the Move: Transborder Politics from Michoacán to North Carolina.” As the first historical study of Indigenous Mexican migration to the U.S. South, the book traces the movement of Indigenous P’urhépecha migrants from Cherán, Michoacán, to and from North Carolina during the late 20th century. It analyzes both sides of the transborder circuit and contextualizes the racial and spatial logics of each with regard to the transformation of indigeneity.
The book shows that the evolution of P’urhépecha indigeneity as it travels and changes not only provides a counternarrative to “Mexican migration” that assumes a homogenous community; it also demonstrates how people moving across borders – and their communities left behind – have adapted racial and ethnic identifications over time as tools of empowerment to confront intersecting systems of racism and colonialism.
ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 79 scholarly organizations and a leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences. ACLS uses its $155+ million endowment and $37 million annual operating budget to expand scholarly knowledge that reflects its commitment to diversity of identity and experience.
Editor’s notes: To contact José de la Garza Valenzuela, email delagv@illinois.edu. To contact Yuridia Ramírez, email yramirez@illinois.edu.
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