Nancy Morales (Feminist Studies PhD, UC Santa Barbara) and Julio Orellana (Ethnic Studies PhD, UC Riverside) are named 2023 - 2025 UC President's Postdoctoral Fellows. They join Jorge Omar Ramirez-Pimienta as successful participants of the Fellowships/Grants/Scholarships proseminar sponsored by the Global Latinidaddes Center and the Robert and Liisa Erickson Endowed Chair.
From UC Santa Barbara to the Ford Foundation, the Global Latinidades Center student staff have had dissertation fellowship successes for the 2024 - 2025 academic year. Clint Terrell is a 2024 Ford Dissertation Fellow, the program's last awarding cycle; Maria Zazzarino is a 2024 Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Dissertation Fellow; and Erick John Rodriguez is a 2024 UCSB President's Dissertation Year Fellow.
The Assistant Director of the Global Latinidades Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, is named one of the 2024-25 Crossing Latindades Mellon Humanities Fellows, funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. In a cohort of 31, he is one of two doctoral students vetted by the Chicano Studies Institute to represent UC Santa Barbara as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) committed to supporting the next generation of US Latinx Studies scholars.
Global Latinidades continues sponsorship of UCSB’s Zoot Suit production after phenomenal success of inaugural production on May 18 and 19, 2024. Co-directed by undergraduate Angel Diaz (who played the title character of El Pachuco), and graduate student Mayra Gomez-Labrada, the play brought the zoot suit era to life with the flamboyant dance steps of the WWII era, captivating audiences with its blend of raw emotion and historical significance. The 23-person production team, made up of UCSB students and community partners, mounted three packed-house performances.
For more informatoin, see the featured article in the Santa Barbara Independent, which includes interviews with the two Chicano artists.
The Global Latinidades Center will inaugurate a unique community theater project, Historias de Isla Vista/Stories of Isla Vista, based on oral histories of this municipalities diverse residents who live in the shadow of wealth and privilege of their neighbor–the University of California, Santa Barbara, where many Isla Vista residents work. This project seeks to illuminate the lives of Isla Vista’s working class and precarious houseless segments who oftentimes are effaced by the municipality’s reputation as a “student ghetto.”
The 2024 Global Spains Workshop on Conviviality and Accompaniment: Dialogues with Grass Root Organizations and Organic Intellectuals in Madrid, Spain (Global Spains) is a ten-day interdisciplinary workshop that introduces students to the ethics and methods of action-research in collaboration with grassroots organizations. The workshop focuses on non-extractive, collectivist modes of knowledge production and various models of organic intellectual praxis. This international workshop is sponsored by the UCSB Global Latinidades Center, Duke University’s Program in Latino/a Studies in the Global South, and Madrid’s grassroots organization YoSoyElOtro, and emphasizes global transatlantic approaches to various ethnic and area studies––Latina/o/e/x, Latin American, Global, and allied and intersecting fields.
The grant will support infrastructure, staff & 12 students from UCSB & the UC System for the 2023 Summer Ateneo with local community organizers and community-based researchers in Oaxaca City and surrounding communities.
